🍎Tala Snacks, Pockit Computers, and Playbox

Bring musical ideas to life

Apr 4

Hello from the frigid land of Tennessee. It’s still in the mid 50’s here most days. How was last week for you?

My week was a veritable “carnival of errors” as they say. It started with taking our daughter to the hospital (nothing serious - we were disturbed to notice she wasn’t using her arm one afternoon, and the doctor said it was a pinched nerve), our car broke down, and we encountered a few bouts of food poisoning!

Phew!

Everyone is finally feeling better though, and I hope this week will go off to a better start.

I found some Coke Starlight last Monday, and I have to say that it’s pretty good! I hope they make it a permanent flavor. It tastes a bit like some kind of berry vanilla combination . . . like some combo you might make at one of those Coke Freestyle machines.

Your best bet to getting it would be from a delivery service - because it’s very hard to find in grocery stores.

Now my next mission is to find some Nitro Pepsi.

Did you see Azuki go to THE MOON this week? Every anime-related NFT project is popping off right now.

Azuki has already flipped MAYC. Will it flip BAYC?

What is the next Azuki?

Dunh dunh duhhhhhh

I picked up another really awesome Rosko this week. I sold my Goopdood and Dezuki, and decided to pick this up. I’m on the hunt for some decent projects with my current liquidity so let me know if you know of anything good.

Let’s hop on in, shall we?

🍎Tala Snacks

When the word “fruit snack” comes to mind, what pops in your head? I’ll go out on a limb here - and guess this.

Gushers are one of the classic brands that come to mind . . . or maybe one of those organic ones that tasted somewhat like Gushers.

Yeah - they tasted good - but never as good as the Gushers.

Well - there’s a new snack called Tala coming to town.

Tala is reinventing the fruit snack, so to speak.

We started TALA with a simple philosophy: Fruit snacks should be made of fruit. We grew up enjoying fruit snacks of all kinds but corn syrup isn't a replacement for nature's best! So, we package freeze-dried fruit into convenient pouches to offer a single ingredient fruit snack that's guaranteed to satisfy. (source)

Tala reminds me of those freeze-dried fruits you might find in the baby aisle - but for adults. Mind - I’m not saying that’s a bad thing - they actually taste pretty decent. No - I promise I don’t steal many from my little son.

With a snack like this - I’d argue that the “heart and soul” of the brand lies in the branding - rather than in the snack itself.

After all - what’s to stop you from just buying the freeze-dried fruit at the store?

PRETTY COLORS AND COOL FONTS.

The branding is very minimalist - I’d buy these just for the aestheticc.

Like - tell me you woudn’’t buy these awesome snacks just for the box alone.

THESE ARE AWESOME.

Tala currently has 4 flavors - mango, banana, pineapple, and dragon fruit.

Check it out at the link!

Get Tala

💻Pockit Computer

Remember Project Ara? Google’s attempt to create a modular phone?

but then they said - NAH. Let’s keep selling people unmodifiable lumps of plastic instead of revolutionizing the cell phone market.

Project Ara might be deader than Quibi (at least Roku bought out Quibi), but Pockit may just be continuing the Modular dream.

The same concept as Project Ara applies.

You have a base magnetic board - and you add on different modules to create different applications - such as a game console.

The project seems to have started in 2019 - and the creator has been making steady progress ever since.

At the moment - the creator has a working prototype - and it works just like the original vision of the Project Ara Phone.

He envisions “hardware as elastic as software” with “hardware-agnostic software.”

Blank magnetic smart surface → Embed the modules you want.

It’s mind-boggling watching him take different blocks and stick them on the board - and watching them work effortlessly.

Oh - a light? Boom.

A light with a screen and power button? Say no more.

A computer? Yup.

A night vision camera? Fantastic!

Here - skip around the first few minutes if you’re short on time - Watch THE WHOLE THING if you can.

It’s mindblowing to finally see the concept of modular electronics work in real life.

Go check out the website and hop on the mailing list! I’m eagerly awaiting the day this ships.

Project Pockit

🎵Playbox Music

I’ve often wondered how AI will intertwine with music creation - and - until now - I’ve mostly just found AI tools that create random midi sequences.

They can be kinda cool - but don’t stimulate the same way messing around with a tool like Output Arcade might.

Meet Playbox.

Playbox is a consumer-facing product for introducing new musical ideas.

Goodbye writers block, hello inspiration. Overflowing with samples, chord sets, effects, and presets, PLAYBOX comes loaded with everything you need to generate musical ideas. From igniting your creativity, to providing the final layer to complete a production, PLAYBOX lets you do it all. No matter your style or experience, PLAYBOX is a workflow gamechanger, giving instant and one-of-a-kind results for every music maker. (source)

The branding is absolutely wild - with jello, aesthetic spheres, squishy squares, and other fun vibes.

Check out these fun colors and shapes. I’ve never seen anything . . . so cute . . . in the plugin space.

Playbox allows you to create all kinds of really interesting sounds with different voices, Bass lines, Synths - and you can even import your own sounds too!

You can roll virtual dice to mix up your sounds - and import the ones you like into your DAW for later use.

Honestly - that’s probably the coolest part to me. Sometimes we find sounds that we like - but aren’t sure how to use them. Rolling the dice and meshing them with new sounds or different combinations could be just the juice you need for making a new track.

Heck - even if you’re not a musician - this sounds like a great way to fool around with creating fun sounds.

Check out this video for a deeper dive . . .

I think it’s only a matter of time until we see a software like this that can completely generate new songs.

If you’re interested in playing around with Playbox, you can get a free month of their subscription service - or pay to have access to it forever. I plan to sign up and mess around with it as soon as I get a chance.

Maybe I’ll even generate some new tracks. Who knows!

Check it Out

🦑The Land of Random

The Random links you desire, just for you

Can I plz have Tinder?

Find your cat someone 2 love.

Cat Tinder

Generate Your Own Vybey City

Load the page to create a generative city wallpaper. Something different every time! Check out more about the project here.

Create Your Cityscape

10 Most Lived In Game Worlds

I will say this is one of the most important game aspects to me. Out of all these - I find Dishonored 2 the most “real” world. How important is the “life” of a game to you?

Download a Page

With this handy chrome extension, you can save any web page as an HTML file. Very useful for archiving websites for analysis.

Single Page Download

Maglit Link Shortener

This Link Shortener allows you to encrypt links so they can only be opened with a particular password. Very cool! It’s open-source, so you can inspect the code on Github at your leisure. To test it out, go to this link - and enter the password: random

Maglit