🎤Voice Changers, Mood boards, and FlashFood
let's get creative
Hey friends!
How are you this fine Monday morning?
Here in Tennessee, it’s beginning to cool down a bit in the mornings and nights. We finished our patio on Saturday - and are looking forward to sitting outside by a nice fire on cool nights.
I’ve cut down a lot of brush - and burning “fresh wood” takes a lot of time - even with lots of lighter fluid. If you have any good fire-building tips let me know.
It’s been weird having our own backyard to hang out in! We’ve been so used to apartment life that the idea of “our own space” lost all meaning.
Have you watched Ted Lasso? I started watching it with my wife last week - and it’s really good! I had no idea! I’m not really a “sports show” guy - but I was hooked after the first episode. Hooked I tell ya.
I’ve only watched the first 5 episodes of the Cyberpunk anime so far . . . mainly because I’ve been living in the game trying to do all the sidequests. I can tell though - it’s gonna live up to all the memes.
There’s so many good sidequests though! I really underestimated just how deep the lore goes in the game.
Like - rogue AI on the net deep.
Oh - I got the Spotify Car Thing! It makes using Spotify in the car soooo much easier. I look forward to testing it out as I drive to work this week. I will say - I’m glad it only cost $30. I don’t think it made sense at the earlier $50 or $90 price point.
Let’s dive on in!
🎛Voice Changers
Deepfakes are getting better every year - but what about AI-generated voices?
And not just - put in an hour of audio and get an AI-generated version back - i mean - live time AI voice generation.
There’s a new program called Koe Recast which wants to make this a reality!
Koe Recast emerged recently from a Texas-based developer named Asara Near, who is working independently to develop a desktop app with the aim of allowing people to change their voices in real time through other apps like Zoom and Discord. "My goal is to help people express themselves in any way that makes them happier," said Near in a brief interview with Ars. (source)
It’s a very intriguing idea - as it allows you to remove yourself one step further from any definitive sense of self.
Vtubers (virtual streamers - check out Hyper Online to get a good sense of how it works) are very popular these days - and hand/eye tracking is getting pretty good.
However - most of these Vtubers tend to have a human voice still . . . which can have its downsides.
I am the dark vampire lord Ctharaz. I can only do the booming vampire voice in small doses due to vocal cord limitations.
That’s not always ideal - especially when you have a robot Vtuber and want your voice to sound metallic - or when you have an anime vtuber and want that particular anime sound.
Here’s a demo of Koe Recast a la Mark Zuckerburg as ‘Ruby’
It’s uncanny - It’s reading into the vocal intonations and pauses that Mark makes and translates them into Ruby’s voice.
When asked what specific kind of AI powers Recast's voice transformation under the hood, Near held back specifics but generalized how it works, "We're able to dive in and alter the characteristics of voices within the embedding space that we've created. Our goal, then, is to modify the parts of audio that correspond to a speaker's personal style or timbre while preserving the parts of the audio that correspond to the spoken content such as prosody and words. This allows us to change the style of someone's voice to any other style, including their perceived gender, age, ethnicity, and so on." (source)
Now that’s some next-level AI voice work - able to convey the emotion and weight of someone’s real voice in a digital voice.
I recorded a little bit in the “Marcus voice.”
anddd the “Karesu voice” lol.
Just from these small samples - I believe Near’s product has a TON of potential to change the video and streaming space.
I’m looking forward to getting into this beta to try out the live time feature. Maybe I should try it on some zoom meetings . . .
You can try out the demo today! Change your voice at the link and have some fun.
🖼️Mood Boards
Sometimes you need a blank space to create an aesthetic - a blank canvas to put ideas on “digital paper.”
Like an old school summer journal with cutout photos and newspaper clippings.
The other month we took a look at that awesome Pinterest app Shuffles - where you could create a vertical moodboard in a tiktok style ui/ux. It was pretty cool for moodboarding on the go or on the couch during that show you don’t like.
At the moment I’m an Android guy - so I only get a chance to use that on my iPad.
I stumbled across another moodboarding tool called Landing Space that looked pretty interesting.
It’s geared towards collaboration and sharing - as opposed to a lot of other tools in this space.
When logging in - you can see moodboards from other creators - and it’s easy to tell that people put in some serious effort.
That’s even MORE apparent when you start creating your own moodboard . .. and realize that you have to bring a lot of images with you.
Want to create a Cyberpunk themed aesthetic moodboard?
Start getting those images off Google Search or Pinterest - because there aren’t many images on here.
There is a community library of images - it seems that the idea here is that a vibrant community will upload tons of images, thus creating over time a massive database of images to use.
As the platform is still pretty small - that hasn’t happened yet.
It would be awesome if Landing Space incorporated a drag + drop version of Google image search or something similar . . .
Here’s a loosely-themed cyberpunk one that I threw together in 10 minutes.
It’s definitely a fun platform to mess around with when you need some inspiration - or a place to put cool images if you like to collect them.
It also has some Ecom potential with the ability to link out from images - so it’s quite likely that Landing Space can help creators make money from affiliate links.
A creative source of traffic - if you will.
For example - Go check out my fall collage for all the latest looks - and where to find them.
Start creating your moodboard at the link!
FlashFood
There’s a new food app in town to prevent food waste - and it may be coming to a grocery store near you!
In the past I’ve chatted about Too Good to Go - a similar food waste fighting app that targets restaurants / bakeries to sell their “still good but not full price good” food. It’s a really incredible startup and I hope they expand to Tennessee soon.
Basically - here’s the gist of Flashfood
Grocery store has food nearing expiration date
Grocery store lists food for super cheap via Flashfood app
Consumers orders and pays for food in app + head to store pickup
Less food goes to feed the waste mosters. Win - Win.
It’s a no brainer service that every grocery store should offer if they actually care about the environment other than buying carbon credits/planting trees and writing nice PR copy. Soooo many pounds of food go to die at grocery stores every day.
Not to mention - they’d still make some money off the products if they sold them via Flashfood. Better to make some return than none at all - right?
The closest location to me is a grocery store in Kentucky - everything is super cheap too!
If I lived near here - it’s no question that salmon and bacon would be on the menu this week.
Currently - Flashfood has partnerships with a bunch of grocery store chains. From their map it appears that they’re working their way from the Canadian north down across the United States.
I hope they’re able to secure partnerships with Kroger and Publix here in the South!
I can’t wait to try out the app.
Check it out at the link and see if there are any stores near you!
🐙The Land of Random
Those random links you crave.
Lazeret Looks Horrifying
Idk if I could play this game.
Football in the Future
A bizarre website that details the adventures of an old satellite and its conversations with another satellite about football.
Mouse Goes Crazy
A swirling pattern will follow your mouse. Hit the draw toggle to draw - it’s delightfully chaotic.
Got Mac Ram?
Soooo you discovered the Stable Diffusion AI and want to create your own images. Use this free app on your Mac to make your own cool pics. You need 16 gigs of ram tho. Check out this little article about it. Maybe it will work on less ram, who know?
The Horrifying AI woman
Have you heard the legend of the woman who keeps showing up in AI images? like some sort of spectral net haunt?
The Cutest Website Ever
This website is so delightful it might make you want to cry tears of techno-optimist joy.
It’s Mystery Flight Time
DELAWARE!!
🎵TikToks You Can't Miss
What IS THAT going down the train tracks.
Did she just take a selfie from a Razr V3
So THAT’S WHY the ice trays are shaped like that
I looked too and all I could find is weird indie films.
Wartok humor is bizarre I tell ya.
📻Vybes
You need some dope lofi and vibin gifs?
The Land of Web 3
I bought a Kreepy Klub NFT last week. It’s a fun “for the art” project. They do free NFT art claims that are pretty cool - and some top-tier artistic talent from Junkyard and others.
That’s all for this week! See you next time.