MoMinis looks like a promising development suite for game developers, who want to enter the domain of mobile phones. Unfortunately I haven’t had the time yet to take a deeper look on that. MoMinis Studio should be similar to GameMaker, with the difference, that you will get results, ready to distribute and use on mobile phones. Right at the moment they are doing a development competition, where developers can win up to 2000 Dollar and an advanced handset.

The intelligent toys series is a netaudio-compilation, that pushes the border of quality up, up, up. The 5th compilation of “Intelligent Toys” got massive music and extraordinary high quality artworks as well. Let’s start to dream with IDM, Ambient and Electronica. Just take a look at this videoclip here from Sleepy Town Manufacure, with a song called “O Nei”. (This is Russian and means “about her”, someone has told, not “Oh no”.)

The whole motion is based upon handdrawn characters, but are boosted up with some special computer-generated effects. I am sure you will notice them. Look and vibe are just a little bit like the classic Czech cartoons, that are really missing this days. Man, I’ve grown up on such stuff!

Compilations like this don’t happen overnight. Read an interview with Sutemos about Intelligent Toys, the label and the work behind the curtain.

via Phlow-Magazine

Ok, I am not the type of guy, who worship packaging design and things like that. For sure, sometimes packaging does make a difference. For exmple this here: it seems that it is mostly meant as a joke. The lunchboxes by Emma Smart replace necessity by fun. Simply by coloring the inside of lunch-to-go-boxes with printed dinnerware.

Wouldn’t it be great to take this concept further? There should be much more products with fun inside. We could definine a new relationship between packaging, product and the space between them. Most packaging makes the product be, leaving the newness intact and protecting it from harm. But what if the packaging would get a whole new meaning in the process. Adding fun and added value by setting the customer into action. For example by play or experiment. You can build a WiFi-antenna out of a pizza-box. I am sure, many readers will remember the Yps-Magazine.

via Yanko

The Monome controller is a good example and shows a little, how the electronic music has become today: unlabeled, ephemeral, multi-functional and everything you want to make and do, you have to have in your head. At least, the impression of this controller is magic, a little bit like the music itself, that spills out of the boxes.

(via Create Digital Music, thanks!)

Osmos is a truly beautiful game, very concentrated, ambient-like. The game uses the biological principle of “Osmosis” as basic game-mechanics. You are a mote (something like a cell). By absorbing other motes, you will grow bigger and if you run into a mote, that is bigger, you will be absorbed, until you die. You can use propulsion to navigate through the matter around you, but beware, propulsion will cost you energy and shrinks you again: “Good things come to those who wait”, the makers of the game say. The motes look like cells or even planets, and also behave a little bit like them. There are special orbit-levels available with gravity involved.

Osmos is a mixture of a gaming and an ambient experience. The game has a special soundtrack, provided by musicians, that are around the netlabel scene, too. At the most recent version, the music was made by Loscil, Julien Neto and Gas/High Skies. Truly a good match! Let’s float around a little bit and relax with the game.

Until now only the demo of Osmos is released. There is a small suggestion, to enhance the controls in the next version of the game: At the recent version, you have to use the mouse wheel, to zoom in or out the scene. But what, if you don’t have a mouse wheel? It would be good to offer two more alternate zooming mode controls, for example with the right mouse key + mouse moving or even plain keys on the keyboard.

Left to right movement, simple and ill-designed colors. Pixelstyle and multiple-headed monsters and a conceptional storytelling. This is a love-story, right? All mixed up with a grown-up track from Goto80. This is “L-V–SC-LD-RTH-ND–TH”. What else do we need?

The video was made by Raquel Meyers. Oh, Goto80 announced yesterday in his blog, that he released 225 songs in 2008 and that he will concentrate in 2009 more on quality upon mass. First step reached!

Neat news from the leading Lego-enthusiast blog E-Klocki. The people really have a good sense for finding the right shapes and angles, like this late 2008 interpretation of a knights castle.

But they also do more. Look at this impossible shape to do. Not possible you say? Visit the post on E-Klocki to see how it can be done. More impossible Lego-things for example at the webpage from Andrew Lipson.