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Bands going indie, looking for that first record label, usually put themselves on the internet to catch attention in the hope of sealing a deal. A new brand of indie music is emerging and conquering the internet through a band-in-the-box.

The Cybraphon was invented by an Edinburgh-based band FOUND (Ziggy Campbell, Simon Kirby, and Tommy Perman). With 8 months of work on their masterpiece, the fruit turned out to be a band in box that would feed on its emotions through its popularity all over the net. The Cybraphon consists of a Shruti (an Indian instrument), an organ and cymbals tweaked to play on their own – this comes with a Macbook Pro, Arduino boards and lots of wires. The computer runs custom software to monitor the Cybraphon’s web activity (through its Twitter, Myspace, Facebook, and other social networking sites) and update its emotions according to the rate at which its popularity is changing overtime.

The Cybraphon’s mood ranges from “delirium” to “desolation” and would decide which music it would play. The Cybraphon usually plays an upbeat tune when it is in a good mood, and plays a slow, sad tune when it feels otherwise. The makers of the device called named it as “an insecure and egotistical band” since a good review will cheer it up but would eventually die down and would soon become disillusioned if its popularity ceases to increase.

Aside from online attention, the Cybraphon also seeks personal physical attention. An infrared sensor is attached to the device and when people come around it, it wakes up and starts playing music according to its mood.

However, the Cybraphon only plays music exclusively and can’t be played through live streaming – like a real band can’t stream live music – though demos of it are posted on its different sites.

Currently listening to: The Used

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To say that poker has become popular is an understatement. Poker, live or online, has become more than popular, and even more than phenomenal – it’s all over the place played almost everywhere and by anyone. Poker players search for tips, books, and poker software that can help them in their online poker gaming. And just recently, the perfect application has been developed and distributed to poker enthusiasts who like to keep track of their poker playing in their pockets.

Poker Tracker and Poker Income are poker software applications for your iPhone or iPod Touch that can help you track your poker bets and statistics. These applications are almost similar in function, although with a different kind of edge over the other.

Both poker software lets you know your best game, best location and your hourly profit. All you have to do is set the variables needed (blinds, limits, game type and number of players) then enter your location and your buy in amount and when you leave, you just have to enter the amount with you by the time you left the table.

Once you’re done playing and all data are set and recorded, the application will then show you an overview loaded with information (both data and graph) about your poker gaming -  your wins and losses, streaks and time stats, gross winnings, overall win/loss, current streak, best streak, and worst streak. The time stats also reveal the hours you’ve played and your hourly rate.

The edge of Poker Income over Poker Tracker though is that this poker software has a key feature that lets you take notes on your opponents and track games played against a player. You can track the history of their styles and would make you compare your edge over your opponent and vice versa.

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It has been the clamor of many iPhone application developers worldwide that the applications they have developed for iPhone users are rejected by Apple authorities for vague reasons. Some find it unfair that the iPhone application they developed for a month or so would just be rejected because they haven’t met the standards and followed regulations for iPhone AppStore selling. The question is: did Apple made clear the “dos and don’ts” for applications development?

They did, but they didn’t.

Although Apple stated in their user agreement that "applications may not contain any obscene, pornographic, offensive or defamatory content or materials of any kind", still, it doesn’t make things crystal clear. There are more standards for an iPhone application to be approved – standards the developers are unaware of. A developer might as well send out erroneous applications in purpose so that their support team can tell the developer what and where he did wrong in developing his application.

Lots of developers have aired out concerns regarding this matter saying that the months of work in developing an iPhone application is such a waste when in the end their application would be rejected.

These developers have been demanding Apple to release a more specific, more detailed, and more comprehensive criteria and other applications development “standards” for their developed iPhone applications to be approved and be available in the iStore. This would give them a better guide on developing iPhone applications. If not, they suggested that Apple should have a pre-development approval process.

Apple may have stormed mobile and application sales with their thousands of applications and users of their devices. But with the technology advancing in a great pace, competition might come, and they sure don’t want competitors to rake in dollars from applications that they have rejected due to blurry criteria.

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Portraits made by professional artists cost much. There is much time and effort exerted in one portrait that makes its worth more than what you earn in a month. But the fast advancing technology never failed to meet the needs and expectations of its consumers. Somehow, technology found a way to make portraits easily accessible and a bit cheaper.

Lately, a lot of artists have now been doing portraits of people through social networking sites. Gone are the days when portraits were only for the rich and the famous.

Some artists, literally do the portraits only that they do it by requests from people in social networking sites (Facebook for example). New York artist Matt Held has a fan page in Facebook where he gets requests from people to make a portrait out of their profile photo. The images in he painted can be used by people online for free, yet he sells them in galleries for more than a thousand dollars. In this example, although his images are free online, his fan page and the people who uses his images can do the marketing for him that might earn him some bucks.

Other than real portraits, some people use automated programs, websites or website applications that would easily provide them a portrait of themselves – either posterized or sketched. This would allow users to now have a “virtual” portrait of themselves, ready-to-use, and without the expensive cost.

With social networking sites swarming all over the internet, people tend to take advantage of the people’s need of a more improved replica of themselves that they can show off to the people. And as technology advancing, you can never blame for the people to ask for more each day. Probably, by this day onward, we should be expecting much more to come.