I love these little online virtual synthetic toys. The Tony-B Machine is one of these. The samples on this one are a tad cheesy, but there is a bit of control on it to make it sound good. Here’s my first attempt at it. It just a little under ten minutes which is stretching it a bi to hold any interest, but it gets pretty sweet about half ways in. There’s lot more on the site including stats and an evolving community, so go have a play… it’s great fun.

Picnic Network is a creative media festival which takes place in Amsterdam. I was fortunate to be an invited guest of DivX / Stage6 at the festival last week. On Wednesday I was on a panel entitled “Digital Video – The New Creative Process” as part of a day long session regarding “Transforming Media”. I got to meet lots of very interesting people with like minds starting with the good folks from DivX / Stage 6 ; Genevieve, Ben, Jim, Melissa, James and Jordan. The panel discussions were very stimulating as it represented a good cross section of people with new ideas for the creation and distribution of quality digital media. The following people participated alongside myself:

> M dot Strange – We Are The Strange – fantastic animator of a strange and extraordinary piece of work.
> Gabriel McIntyre – Xolo.tv – founding member of a forward thinking organisation of vloggers and a whole lot more.
> Jamie King – Steal This Film – director of the film about piracy online featuring The Pirate Bay as a case study.
> Henrik Moltke – Good Copy / Bad Copy – director of this excellent film, see my review of this from a while back
> Wendy Bernfeld – Rights Stuff – founder of advisory group for media companies
> Steven Lee – Star Wreck Studios – CEO of groundbreaking Finnish film company which explores space and beyond on a shoestring.
> Ton Roosendaal – Blender – Founder of groundbreaking animation solution, Blender.

And this was just the first day! – a great way to kick off an exciting week of new discoveries.

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