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| Alec Baldwin's Words With Friends Addiction Gets Him Booted Off Plane | |  Alec Baldwin likes Words With Friends, the scrabble game available on multiple platforms including the iPhone, so much that he missed a flight because of it. On Tuesday, Baldwin was kicked off an American Airlines plane at the Los Angeles International Airport and had to switch to a different flight. It's unclear if Baldwin was actually booted off the plane because he had refused to turn off his phone, but according to his tweets, it definitely had to do something with the popular game. "Flight attendant on American reamed me out 4 playing WORDS W FRIENDS while we sat at the gate, not moving. #nowonderamericaairisbankrupt," tweeted Baldwin on Tuesday. He continued to lash out at American Airlines after the incident with a barrage of scrabble-related jokes. "Now, as I was kicked off this flight, the word I was playing was UNITED," tweeted Baldwin, alluding to another airline company. American Airlines tried to reach Baldwin via Twitter and said in a statement the company would not "comment on something that might or might not have happened." Zynga's Words With Friends is a scrabble game that lets you take turns against your opponents at your own pace. The game is known to be highly addictive, and for Baldwin, it seems, waiting a couple of hours was not an option. Image courtesy of iStockphoto, EdStock |
| Flipboard Re-engineers Itself for the iPhone | |  Flipboard, a popular social newsreading app for the iPad, is launching its long-awaited iPhone app Wednesday. The app, which displays feeds from both formal news sources and social networks in a magazine-like format, has been entirely reengineered to serve the unique habits of newsreaders on the iPhone: That is, users who want to access all of their newsfeeds in quick, short spans without sacrificing what Flipboard CEO Mike McCue describes as "the notion of bringing beauty to these posts." Flipboard has streamlined its signature tile format into a single stack, which users can move through not by swiping right to left, but from top to bottom. McCue says this is a more natural movement for the iPhone and in our early tests, we have to agree. As they scroll, users can also mark interesting-looking headlines for later reading -- handy for quickly gathering must-read material. One of the more welcome new features is Cover Stories, which pulls up stories Flipboard's algorithms determine are most relevant to you and the people you care most about. The feature, McCue says, will improve the more you use it. Next, Flipboard plans to bring Cover Stories to its iPad app. After that, the company will focus on making both apps more relevant for users in various international markets. (Just yesterday, a Chinese version was launched.) And what about Android? "Very gradually we'll go to other platforms," McCue says. "The iPhone app was almost a completely new product. If we were to go to another platform you'd see a similar level of thinking go into the experience." |
| Kaboodle Founders Launch Mobile Fashion Marketplace | | Tuesday, December 06, 2011 10:31 PM | Lauren Indvik |
|  The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. Name: Poshmark Quick Pitch: Purchase and sell pre-owned apparel and accessories via your iPhone. Genius Idea: Four-and-a-half years after their last startup was acquired by Hearst, Kaboodle's founding team is at it again. On Monday, Kaboodle cofounders Manish Chandra and Chetan Pungaliya, along with Tracy Sun and former Kaboodle engineer Gautam Golwala, launched Poshmark, an iPhone app that lets you browse, buy and sell clothing and accessories in just a few clicks. You can shop and sell items individually or through pre-scheduled shopping events called "Posh Parties," which bring together a number of items under a single category or theme, such as "Coats and Capes" or "Holiday Sparkle." To list an item, you need only snap a photo or two with your iPhone, apply an optional, Instagram-like filter, and add category and pricing details. There's no listing fee, but Poshmark will take a substantial (20%) cut that includes the cost of shipping and customer support. The company will intermediate if there are issues with a product, but buyers are otherwise unable to file for returns. One of the app's biggest flaws at present is its lack of filtering options. There's no way to search or browse for items by category; you can only sift through Posh Parties and the listings of users you follow. And although the app is designed to get women to sell clothing out of their closets, there's nothing that would seemingly prevent you or other users from putting other goods on sale too. Still, we believe the app has potential. It is indeed easier to list items on Poshmark than eBay, and the timed, themed events should keep shoppers coming back for more. In addition to its launch, Poshmark announced Tuesday that it has secured $3.5 million in Series A funding led by Mayfield, a $2.7 billion early-stage investor fund. Previous Kaboodle investors Kanwal Rekhi through Inventus Capital, Jeff Clavier through SoftTechVC and Ron Conway through SV Angel also participated in the round. Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark
The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark, a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today. |
| Microsoft Reveals Windows Store in Bid to Crash Tablet Party | | Tuesday, December 06, 2011 10:04 PM | Sam Laird |
|  Developer-friendly revenue sharing, new app capabilities unique to Windows 8 and easy compatibility with touch or mouse-and-keyboard devices were among the upcoming Windows Store features that Microsoft touted at a special preview event for developers and media Tuesday evening in San Francisco. The Windows Store will debut with the launch of Microsoft's new Windows 8 operating system, which will be released in beta in February 2012, company officials said on Tuesday. The full release is believed to be coming in the fall of next year. The Windows store will be "the most significant development opportunity ever," Windows Web Services team corporate vice president Antoine Leblond said on Tuesday, and "a really important part of the Windows 8 platform." Microsoft's new app store will compete for developers' attention with Apple's Mac App Store, and will offer free trials of programs for Metro-themed programs in addition to the full paid version, company officials confirmed on Tuesday. The Windows store will split app sales revenue 70-30 with developers, in keeping with the unofficial industry standard established by Apple, but that rate will increase to an 80-20 split for developers once apps reach $25,000 in sales. Microsoft also trumpeted the Windows Store's ability to take on apps written in a variety of programming languages including HTML5 and JavaScript, another departure from Apple's model, as well as access to Microsoft's unprecedented reach with more than a billion Windows PCs worldwide and more than 500 million licensed copies of Windows sold in the past two years. Developers present in San Francisco on Tuesday expressed excitement about the level of opportunity presented by Windows 8 and Microsoft's coming app store. "It's going to be easier for us to go online with this platform," Sina Mobasser, co-founder of the BarMax app, which sells for $1,000 and helps law students prepare for the bar examination, told Mashable. But industry insider and former Microsoft manager Scott Berkun cautioned on Monday that developers and users won't be able benefit from the Windows Store for some time yet. "The problem is it won't be available yet -- there are no plans for a Windows 7 store," he told Mashable in an email. "So this will have no real impact until Windows 8 launches, which will be a year at best." When Windows 8 does launch, it will represent a radical departure from previous Windows operating systems, with a much more interactive feel designed to do well on tablets and other touch-screen devices. Instead of the traditional start menu, Windows 8 will feature a start screen with tiles representing different programs and applications (see photo), including direct access to the new Windows Store. In a smaller example of Microsoft's eagerness to gain ground in the changing hardware landscape, users will have the option to sign in using screen gestures instead of the normal type-in password. The new user interface's touch emphasis caused the International Data Corporation research firm to predict that "Windows 8 will be largely irrelevant to the users of traditional PCs" in a recent report. But Windows 8 users will be able to access a desktop tile that reveals a user interface nearly identical to Windows 7, as Microsoft representative Christopher Flores demonstrated to Mashable in a preview Tuesday morning. "Windows 7 is really just another app sitting on the desktop," he said. "We have a very thin Metro UI for the new stuff, and a very thin Windows 7 UI all sharing the same core of the Windows 8 operating system." Nonetheless, the touch-centric primary UI and complementing app store do represent a clear bid by Microsoft to gain ground in the tablet space, where Apple, Amazon and Android have a significant head start as the computing industry moves from traditional menu tabs and pop-up windows to touch screens and apps. Multiple Microsoft Windows-based tablets are expected to be released in 2012. "They clearly are in a hole when it comes to tablets and mobile, and so it will be interesting to see what kind of impact this will have," Robert Scoble, an industry analyst, former Microsoft tech evangelist and regular company critic, said in an email to Mashable. "This strategy might not make them the sexiest company on the block, but it does give them a firm base to build on," Scoble added. But as Microsoft does look to make a splash in the tablet and mobile worlds, its success or failure in grabbing market share from Apple and Amazon won't make or break the gigantic Seattle tech company's overall fate. In Scoble's words: "Microsoft has something like 14 different billion dollar businesses, most of which won't be affected one bit if their new strategy doesn't succeed or not, so I'm not worried about Microsoft's future." Mobasser of the BarMax app says he's optimistic about the Windows Store's potential moving forward. "It seems like they've learned a lot of lessons that developers have gone through with the Mac App Store and Android Market, and kind of brought their own twist to it," he said. "So, even though they're a little late to the game we're very excited." Bonus: A Closer Look at Windows 8 |
| Future Tech: 8 Ways We Could Recycle Our Wasted Heat | | Tuesday, December 06, 2011 9:53 PM | Julian Taub |
|  Julian Taub is a freelance science writer and performance poet in the East Village of NYC. He writes a nanotechnology blog called Julian's TechSplurge, and runs Late Nite Labs' science blog. You can follow him on Twitter: @JulianTaub. Every electrical appliance -- from a humble light bulb to a MacBook Pro -- leaks precious heat. Electric companies love this fact. We, on the other hand, should be looking for solutions. Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute teamed up with the University of Wollongong in Australia to design a new material that converts heat into electricity. They mixed zinc oxide nanoparticles (the material that makes sunscreen dry clear on your skin) with aluminum and heated it in a microwave for about three minutes. The zinc oxide conducts electricity and the aluminum makes it harder for the molecules to transfer heat. The difference in temperature between the two parts of the material sparks the electrons to start an electrical current. Though the resulting thermoelectric material is far from efficient at this point, the zinc oxide has a new property: the ability to transfer heat was lessened by twenty-fold. Thermoelectric materials that turn heat into electricity have been around for a while, but are typically expensive and inefficient. The microwaved zinc oxide is an environmentally friendly technology that should produce affordable materials. The question is, how can we use this material to make a much-needed impact on society and the environment. Here are eight implementations that would help the movement gain momentum. 1. Heat-Trapping Computer Mat Laptops are getting more and more efficient, but they still lose a significant amount of heat during use. By creating a thermoelectric layer on the bottom of your computer, you can conserve some of it. This "mat" would connect to a heat pipe (a device that channels all the heat in the computer to a specific area) and turn the heat back into electricity. The mat might also be used to charge additional devices like a mobile phone or iPod. 2. A Heater That Powers Your Lights While modern household boilers are more efficient than their predecessors, they still waste a lot of energy as they heat your home -- not to mention the significant heat lost through steam pipes. By covering your boiler and lining pipes with thermoelectric material, you would save energy while reducing the electric bill. The material can also link up to your regular (or holiday) lights, powering them with heat energy that would otherwise be wasted. 3. Hot Air Conditioner Cooling and heating systems have used thermoelectricity in the past; however, these devices turn electricity into heat, not the other way around. They are also very inefficient and expensive. For instance, a thermoelectric cooler that holds only nine soda cans costs about $80 and uses a battery power or an AC adaptor to draw the heat away from the container. These types of devices also tend to break down easily. Despite their flaws, if you're interested in checking out one of these bad-boys, I suggest a Koolatron. The expense for thermoelectric home air conditioners is so high that virtually no market exists -- the systems can cost upward of $900. However, this could change very soon. This technology can be improved so that the heat from the surrounding environment runs the machine -- it wouldn't require a battery or plug at all. The air conditioner would react to the heat outside, then create an electrical current that pumps cold air into the room. 4. Powering Transportation Accessories The team that originally developed the zinc oxide material had this application in mind. A high amount of energy is required to run these types of vehicles, and a lot of heat is lost in the process. However, thermoelectric heat from turbines or pistons can power almost any vehicle accessory, from the GPS system to the automatic windows to the seat warmers. It could also prevent a car from overheating. 5. A Hot Summer Day Powers Your Car Radio While similar to the previous idea, here the material is not attached to the engine. Rather, it's built into the car frame's interior and exterior. That way, the hot air outside will contact the thermoelectric material and power your car speakers, or create a hot air conditioner by extracting that same outside heat energy. 6. Body Heat Powers Your Watch Since the advent of smartphones, watches have become optional accessories. However, expensive watches remain stylish status symbols. Thermoelectric material can break into the existing accessory industry by marketing body heat watches to mainstream tech culture. The watch design is simple. Watches, which usually run on quartz crystal, don't require much energy to keep time. Because the human body is constantly producing heat, skin temperature would generate the watch's energy, and then store it for long term use (say, if you haven't worn your watch in a while). Ultimately, the clock would receive energy through a steady release of voltage. 7. The Meal You Cook Powers Your Dishwasher Nobody really enjoys washing dishes. Besides, dishwashers guzzle up electricity. However, heat produced by your oven, stovetop or microwave could provide more than enough energy to get the cleaning job done. One patch of thermoelectric material would absorb energy during the cooking process, convert the heat to electricity, and store the energy in a capacitor. After a hearty meal with friends and family, place all the dirty dishes in the dishwasher. Once you flip the switch, the electricity collected from the hot stovetop or oven would activate the cleaning cycle. 8. Temperature Changing Clothes In 2009, MIT graduate Kranthi Vistakula started his own clothing company in Ahmadabad, India. ClimaWare clothing uses thermoelectric material to control the wearer's external temperature. The wearer can adjust temperature settings by pressing the modules on his clothing. The material is lightweight, no heavier than a regular pair of jeans. The only major downside? Each jacket costs about $800. Nonetheless, this amazing technology has the capacity to revolutionize the clothing industry, especially amidst rapidly changing weather patterns. The main customers right now are the U.S. and Indian armies. And as thermoelectricity technology continues to advance, these options will become less expensive and more accessible to the public. Images courtesy of Flickr, SiamEye, Jan Tik, nouveaustar |
| Angry Birds Dress Makes Big Fashion Statement | | Tuesday, December 06, 2011 7:28 PM | Samantha Murphy |
| 
Angry Birds has made its way into fashion before with the introduction of t-shirts and accessories, but the wife of a Rovio executive is taking the brand to a whole new level with an off-the-shoulder ballroom gown that pays tribute to the widely popular game. Teija Vesterbacka - who is married to Peter, CMO of the company that created the game - wore an Angry Birds dress to an event on Tuesday night at the Finish Presidential Palace to celebrate Finland's independence. The red dress features the iconic face of one of the Angry Birds characters. SEE ALSO: Angry Birds Cookbook Finally Revealed News of the look made its way onto Twitter and was met with a mixture of reactions, as some called it "epic" while others were "disgusted." "Sooooo glad my husband didn't create 'Angry Birds.' Quelle horreur! This dress is a nightmare," tweeted Nanea Reeves via @naninja. Meanwhile, Twitter user @sircoolio said the following: "Love this! Company pride!" Many praised Vesterbacka's wife for enhancing the brand's marketing strategy. Angry Birds has taken the game market by storm since it first debuted in December 2009. In fact, the company recently announced that various versions of the game have been downloaded 500 million times. Rovio also revealed that fans have played a whopping 266 billion levels, shot 400 billion birds and collected 44 billion stars. This amounts to 300 million minutes played of the game each day and 109.5 billion minutes played each year. What do you think of the dress? Will this make a splash in the fashion industry? Image courtesy of Italehti. |
| XXX Domains Are Here: Now What? | | Tuesday, December 06, 2011 4:09 PM | Peter Pachal |
|  For some, today's official grand opening of the .xxx domain is the best thing to happen to Internet pornography since it was injected with life in the 1990s, as depicted in the movie Middle Men. For others, it's a dangerous move that comes with too many negative consequences, some subtle and some severe. The idea of setting aside an Internet domain for adult material has been around for over a decade. In 2000 and 2004, proposals were submitted to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), but garnered widespread opposition from conservative groups. After ICANN initially approved the domain in 2005, .xxx faced six years of legal and procedural hurdles before getting the final go-ahead in March 2011. Since then the ICM Registry (which polices the domain) hosted an initial closed sale for some .xxx domains, and today they're available to anyone who wants one, at $60 a pop. The general sale is far from the last word on such a controversial topic. Those opposed to adult entertainment, those who produce it, and consumers have all staked out their territory on the debate, sometimes on both sides of the debate, over whether .xxx domains are a good idea. Cases For and Against Many conservative groups suggest that creating a top-level domain (TLD) for porn is tantamount to an endorsement of it. The same logic is what keeps most cities from creating an official red-light district, like in Amsterdam, where adult activities are permitted, if regulated. By setting aside part of the Web for porn, those groups would have to accept that it'll be around in some form no matter what. "We are not in favor of the establishment of that domain," Patrick Vaughn, general counsel for the American Family Association, told Mashable. "It just creates more real estate for the pornography industry, and it doesn't exclude the sites that already exist. It might have been helpful if they set up .xxx, and that was the only place to find pornography. As this is, it just givesmore to work with." The ICM Registry says creating a .xxx domain is better for those who don't like porn, since it provides an easy way to filter out adult-entertainment sites. After all, if a site has the .xxx suffix, it's clear before you even go there what kind of content will be there, and telling software to simply filter those sites out is an easy thing to do. At the same time, .xxx domains provide better protections than other porn sites, and that benefits people who do want access to adult material. Since anyone who runs a .xxx site agrees to certain conditions -- among them a daily scan for malware, dedicated servers for search, and access to a new micropayment system -- the sites will theoretically be safer and easier to use than other adult sites, which are sometimes breeding grounds for malware. Despite those benefits, some think the idea of putting all the Web's porn eggs in one basket makes it that much easier for a government or third party to simply push a button and make it all go away. Besides the censorship concerns, some vendors of adult material object to the whole idea of a .xxx domain, arguing that it relegates to an Internet "ghetto" aspects of human sexuality that society shouldn't be ashamed of in the first place. The Real Issue: $$ However, some see such principled stances as merely a pretense to oppose the move toward .xxx on the real issue: money. Hundreds of webmasters of adult sites have written to ICANN over the years to oppose the domain's approval for that reason. The company that runs Playboy.com, for example, strongly opposes the .xxx domain and has refused to take part in its implementation in any way. Luxembourg-based Manwin, which also manages YouPorn, xTube, and other sites, is suing ICANN and the ICM Registry for essentially forcing businesses to cough up money to register domains before cyber-squatters do. For example, if, say, Apple was concerned that a porn site wanted to start operating under the site apple.xxx, they would need to pay to obtain it (and they may have done so, since it's not available, according to the ICM Registry). Many universities have been reported as snapping up their .xxx addresses before anyone else does. The Future of .XXX While many have opposed the creation of .xxx over the years, the fact is it's here, with domains for sale at $60 each from GoDaddy and others. However, being available and being a success are two different things. Adult sites aren't required to use the domain, and if only a small percentage do, it may fade to oblivion. After all, the domain .mobi made a big debut five years ago as the TLD for sites optimized for mobile devices, and it went absolutely nowhere. Will the same thing will happen to .xxx? That depends on how strong the ICM Resistry's outreach is to the adult-entertainment community, and how consumers respond. Five years from now, .xxx could be a bustling adult marketplace, or a gaudy ghost town. Tell us which you think it'll be in the comments. |
| Real or Fake? The Texts Behind Damn You Auto Correct | | Tuesday, December 06, 2011 4:00 PM | Samantha Murphy |
| 
The popular blog Damn You Auto Correct went viral on the Internet again this week, after the site unveiled its funniest auto-corrected text messages of the year. As amusing as they are, some readers question whether or not the texts submitted were actual autocorrect failures. But the site's founder Jillian Madison insists the texts published on the blog are not fabricated. Damn You Auto Correct features a collection of outrageous auto-corrected text messages submitted by readers. "It's the Internet - everyone thinks everything is fake," Madison told Mashable. "If Michelangelo was painting today and had a website, there would be some guy in the comments section screaming, 'That's fake!'" Some of the confusion comes from the fact that auto correct is inherently inconsistent - what auto corrects for one user differs from another, depending on the words they've typed already. "The bottom line is that auto correct is a mysterious beast," Madison said. "No one knows exactly how it works. What we do know is that it behaves differently on everyone's phone and it 'learns' words based on things you have typed in the past. You may not be able to recreate something on your phone, but it doesn't mean it didn't happen to someone." Still, Madison noted there is no way to prove that all Damn You Auto Correct submissions are real. "Have I seen my iPhone do some absolutely ridiculous things that make no sense? Yes. There are billions of texts sent every week, so we know there are funny things happening everywhere with auto correct," Madison said. "In this case, I think less skepticism and more laughing is a good thing." This isn't the first time published texts have been met with criticism. The Smoking Gun recently reported that the wildly popular Tumblr blog Texts from Bennett -- which went viral last week -- is fabricated by its site owner, 30-year-old rapper named David Sheldon also known as "Mac Lethal." Texts from Bennett features text messages sent to Sheldon from his 17-year-old cousin Bennett. "He is a white boy that thinks he's a crip, works at Amoco, has a girlfriend named Mercedes and is one of the most unintentionally funny and brilliant souls on the planet," according to the site. "By the way, this blog is 100% real." Sheldon - who has had a few brushes with YouTube fame over the past few weeks- argues that the blog is indeed real, and he refuses to give out Bennett's real name and contact information to protect his identity. Some critics believe that text messages can be created by sites such as FakeiPhoneText.com, which allows users to type in text they want displayed on a fictional iPhone screen shot. Then again, it would be just as easy to fake a text message exchange if your friend is in on the joke. Check out our gallery below -- it contains seven hilarious texts from Damn You Auto Correct, and one we made up ourselves. Can you tell the difference? Warning: Some of the content is not safe for work. |
| T-Pain Talks Autotune, Apps and the Future of Music | | Tuesday, December 06, 2011 2:32 PM | Zachary Sniderman |
|  Technology has permanently changed the way we listen to music. One of the artists credited (or blamed) for that shift is T-Pain, the perpetually auto-tuned R&B and rap hit-maker. Some years ago, auto-tune was inescapable. Every rapper seemed to have an auto-tuned hook or run. The tacky technology was originally used by producers to help correct notes that an artist couldn't hit or hold. The hope was that listeners wouldn't be able to tell the difference. In the mid-2000s, auto-tune broke onto the hip hop and R&B scene with producers and rappers exaggerating the effect to extremes. T-Pain was one of the first of those artists to feel the success and also the inevitable backlash of auto-tune. Critics said the technology was disingenuous and destroyed any need for vocal talent. Auto-tune wasn't just decried by music purists and angry bloggers -- celebrated artists such as Jay-Z came out against it, and even released a song on his 2009 album The Blueprint 3, titled "D.O.A. (Death of Auto-tune)." Well T-Pain survived the barbs and is currently riding another wave of auto-tune success with the release of an iPhone app, novelty microphone and a brand new album, rEVOLVEr, released in 2011. The app, I AM T-Pain, lets users auto-tune their voice by singing into an iPhone, whereas the microphone, called the "I AM T-Pain Mic," is a stand-alone toy dedicated to auto-tuning. Mashable had a chance to speak with T-Pain about auto-tune, his app and microphone and the future of music in the age of technology. The Road to the App Store T-Pain has always had a mind on technology and saw a perfect opportunity to get into the app game when other celebrities, such as Britney Spears, Pink and Lil' Wayne, started releasing their own apps. "I said, 'Well, I guess I'm so famous for the auto-tune, I guess I should make an app.' And it's just been flying off the shelves," T-Pain, born Faheem Najm, says. The app was a smart move. It has been downloaded more than 2 million times since its launch in 2009, according to T-Pain's team. That was just the start: "You know I had pretty good projections with the mic and a lot of adults buy it, like, pretending they're buying it for their kids ... Adults would call me saying they're tired of their kids slobbering all over their phones," T-Pain says of his decision to create a mic version of his auto-tune app. T-Pain insists that the mic is all about making music fun. "I don't do the whole, 'Put my name on it, make me famous' thing," Pain told us, although there is a video on T-Pain's site in which he says of the mic: "I mean, we're just, we're milking this thing baby. We're milking it." Regardless of the intent, T-Pain's mic is selling well. "Hard & B" It's hard to stay mad at T-Pain, who swears by a type of music he calls "Hard & B." It's more about process than genre. "Basically it's the hard way of doing music," T-Pain says. "I write my music. I produce my music. I sing it. I damn near record all of it myself and you gotta go out and perform it. It's a hard way of making music. On the other hand,get someone to write and produce it and you just sing it in the middle like a puppet." In that sense, auto-tune is less a way for T-Pain to hide his voice but to create music in a different way. "My dad always told me that anyone's voice is just another instrument added to the music. There was a time when people had seven-minute songs and five minutes of them were just straight instrumental," T-Pain says. "I got a lot of influence fromand I thought I might as well just turn my voice into a saxophone." He credits the core of his music and lyric style to R. Kelly and Cee Lo Green, two R&B artists known for their expressive -- and unfiltered -- voices. After years of success, however, T-Pain still enjoys talking about the tech he applies to his voice as a way of educating people on how it works. T-Pain says he studied the technology behind auto-tune to better understand his craft. Auto-tune, it turns out, is actually sort of hard to pull off: "You know, because it was made to correct bad notes and stuff, of course people say you just slap it on your voice and anyone who's tone-deaf can make a half-decent song." It also turns out that T-Pain is a decent singer even without the tech. "The crazy thing is ... there's always a songwith no auto-tune and those are always the songs that go overlooked," T-Pain says. Social media has helped alleviate some of that frustration thanks to massive support from T-Pain's followers. Although he has more than 700,000 followers on Twitter, he tries to stay humble: "I don't know man, because you look at someone like Soulja Boy and all these other people and they have millions of followers and I'm proud to even have two follows; my mom and my dad .... The way that people show me love on Twitter? I don't know man. It's amazing." T-Pain has a busy year ahead. After our phone call, T-Pain had a day of interviews with press before heading to Jimmy Kimmel Live! to perform "Drowning Again" on piano and without auto-tune. Through the madness, his iPhone app and auto-tuning microphone continue to sell to legions of would-be crooners and lotharios practicing their Hard & B. |
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