Mogees Turns Anything Into a Musical Instrument with Your Phone

Budding Beethovens, listen up. A new appcessory lets you turn any object around you into a musical instrument so you can strike up a tune wherever you go. Called Mogees, the device and companion app for Android and iOS devices is available for $65 (€48), if you back the Kickstarter project. The final produce is expected to ship in August.  

Mogees includes a microphone accessory that looks like a squat,  thumb-sized snare drum and an app that turns the collected information into notes. Plug the Mogee in your phone and attach the microphone’s sticky end on any thing you want turned into an instrument. The contact microphone analyzes the vibrations made from your interactions with surfaces and turns them into sounds. 

MORE: 10 Things You Did Not Know Your iPhone Could Do

In a video on the Kickstarter page for the project, creator Bruno Zamborlin, tapping on a bowl of fruit with Mogees attached, played snippets of melodies note-for-note after guitarist Rodrigo Sanchez strums them. Each tap creates an individual note. And different types of interactions, such as taps, swipes or even a breakdancer’s spinning head, creates new sounds. The companion app also lets you preload the MIDI file of a song, and then you can manipulate the tempo of the notes by touching and tapping your selected surface. 

Mogees is available in a variety of colors, including green, red and black. The campaign has already successfully met its £50,000 ($83,505) funding goal with 13 days remaining. 

Cherlynn joined the Laptopmag team in June 2013 and has since been writing about all things tech and digital with a focus on mobile and Internet software development. She also edits and reports occasionally on video. She graduated with a M.S. in Journalism (Broadcast) from Columbia University in May 2013 and has been designing personal websites since 2001.

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Review: Open Drive turns cloud storage services into one big file sharing network

Open Drive If you are looking for a document or a template, you would normally Google for it. But a lot of people keep these things on their cloud storage services, and are willing to share. Open Drive indexes them...

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You can keep your Google Drive files private, or you can use it as one huge file sharing network. Many Google Drive users allow public access to their files, which means that if they have a certain type of file that you also need, you can request a copy...if you can find it.

Ironically for a company whose core business is based around search, you cannot directly search for anyone else's files within Google Drive, nor can you look effectively for them using regular Google search either. Mcom Multicartes created Chrome extension Open Drive to provide a search interface for these public files so you can find them more easily and efficiently.

Open Drive's search can be slow, but its thoroughness more than makes up for it.

What's more, using Open Drive, you can also simultaneously search other cloud storage systems (such as Dropbox, SkyDrive, Evernote, and Box) and have those files sent to your Google Drive account. Depending on how many cloud services you are searching across, searching may take a few moments for the results to come back, so be patient.

Once you get your results, you can then do one of the following: download it, send a copy to your Google Drive, get a shortlink to the document (for say emailing, or sending to someone via IM), or simply open it and see what is there.

If you can't find what you're looking for, you can join Open Drive's Google Plus community and request what you need. If another member of the group has it, they can send it to you.

As with any search engine results, there's some dross mixed in with the gold. However, there is still a high success rate in finding relevant files. Searching across so many cloud services at once in the same interface, saving time and mouse clicks is so convenient it borders on amazing.

Note: The Download button takes you to the Chrome Web store, where you can install the latest version directly into your Chrome browser.

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Thuraya’s SatSleeve Turns Your iPhone Into A Satellite Phone

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MakerBot Replicator Turns Physical Objects Into Digital Designs

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Review: Connectify Hotspot turns your laptop into a hotspot

Your phone isn't the only piece of equipment able to share an internet connection with other devices. Windows has been able to do this for years; the problem is getting it accomplished quickly, easily and wirelessly, especially on the go with a laptop system. Connectify Hotspot (two editions, various pricing) provides the tools to do precisely this, acting as a software router between whatever internet connection you provide and the other computers connected to your laptop.

The free Lite version is robust enough for most personal use and includes a simple firewall program to boot. The Pro version lets you use your laptop as a repeater and permits sharing of 3g/4g connections as well as Ethernet and Wifi, plus other benefits outlined in the vendor's comparison chart. Connectify Hotspot Pro isn't cheap however, running anywhere from $30 for an annual license to $45 for a lifetime license.

Note: The Download button on the Product Information page takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the desired edition of the software.

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Review: iCookbook turns your Windows 8 laptop or tablet into a gorgeous cookbook

https://twitter.com/the_ezuk

Endlessly tweaking his workflow for comfort and efficiency, Erez is a freelance writer on a mission to discover the simplest, coolest, and most effective software and websites to make tomorrow happen today.
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There are few things more appetizing than gorgeous, high-resolution photos of delicious food. Cookbook editors have known this for years, and the modern cookbook is bursting with full-page glossy photos showcasing the recipes. iCookbook is a $5 cooking app for Windows 8  that takes this aesthetic and brings it to life with thousands of photos, each leading to a beautifully typeset recipe.

Windows 8's Modern UI is all about tiles, and iCookbook uses them to good advantage. Every recipe is represented by a tile bearing a photo and caption, but they're not all the same size: The main screen is subdivided into several categories, each with a large centerpiece tile and three smaller tiles below. These categories let you browse recipes by dish, ingredient, theme, cuisine, occasion, and brand.

iCookbook’s main screen surfaces recipes using beautiful, bold imagery.

If one of the images on the main screen catches your fancy, just click to open the full recipe. But if you'd like to drill deeper into a category, you can click its header and find yourself in a submenu with vertical tiles, one per subcategory. So click Dish, and you get Appetizers & Snacks, Beverages, Breakfasts & Brunches, and many more. Click a subcategory, and you'll find yourself in a screen full of alphabetically sorted tiles, each for a recipe in that subcategory. There are often more recipes in a subcategory than can fit on the screen, so you can scroll to see more – horizontally. In fact, all scrolling in iCookbook is horizontal. This can be strange and distracting at first, but such is the way of the Modern UI.

iCookbook lets you easily and visually browse recipes by several different categories.

With thousands of recipes available, search is a must-have feature. At first I just tried typing, expecting a search bar to pop up with my first keystroke, like it does in the Windows Start Screen and Windows Store. When that didn't happen, I brought up the Windows 8 Charms bar and clicked the Search icon. That did the trick, and I was able to quickly search for recipes.

When you pull up an individual recipe in iCookbook, you get a larger version of its photo first. It starts off blurry, becoming sharp after a few seconds. Next to the photo, you'll find important information about the recipe, such as its level of difficulty, how many people it serves, how many calories are in a serving, how long it takes to cook, and its average rating (you can also set your own rating for the recipe). Some of these values are underlined, which means you can click them for further information. For example, you can click a recipe's calorie information to get a full breakdown of nutritional values. This is great information, but unfortunately, you can only use some of it for filtering: There's no way to search for all cookie recipes that are marked as "Easy," for example. There’s also no way to adjust quantities (turn a 9-person recipe into a 2-person one).

The recipe view uses large typography, so you don’t have to set your laptop or tablet too close to your work area.

Right by the recipe information you'll find a list of ingredients and notes, often with branded ingredients (2 envelopes FLEISCHMANN'S RapidRise Yeastand so on). Some of the more complex recipes, such as Apple Cinnamon Rolls, have complex ingredients with recipes of their own, such as Apple Filling or Cinnamon-Sugar Topping. These say "(recipe follows)", but there's nowhere to click, and no way to actually get to that ingredient's recipe. Even manually searching for "Apple Filling" didn't bring up that recipe, instead yielding a long list of apple cakes. The vendor is working on a solution for this.

Each recipe has interesting metadata, but it can’t be used for filtering.

Fortunately, not all recipes are this complex, and many are self-contained, so you just need a single recipe to make the dish. Once you find such a recipe, you can scroll (horizontally) through each step as you work through the recipe. Steps are displayed with large, bold typography, each ending with a small "What's next" note so you know what's coming. The large typography means you can set down your Windows 8 laptop or tablet somewhere in the kitchen and glance at it every now and then while cooking without having to put it in harm's way.

You can quickly search through recipes using the Search feature build into Windows 8.

ICookbook was fast and responsive in my testing, with search results, categories, and individual recipes all coming up instantly. Animations were smooth, except for the home screen, which had a jumpy, stuttering transition every time I brought it up. If you're looking for some culinary inspiration and love photos of food, this is a great app to try out.

Note: The Download button on the Product Information page takes you to the Windows Store, where you can download the latest version of the software.

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Skype turns the Internet into your own personal telephone line

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Expatriate Scotsman now living in Wurzburg, Germany, freelance writer, frustrated future bestselling author, obsessed bibliophile. Other interests include trying to understand The Architect in the Matrix movies, decrypting codes and ciphers, and trying to persuade my landlord and my wife to let me have a Highland Cow for a pet.
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Skype is a free software app that for most people needs no introduction. It has been on the scene for nearly a decade and has transformed the telecommunications industry by offering a cheap way to make long distance phone calls.

Skype allows you to make telephone calls over the Internet. All you need is the app from the Skype website and a headset. If you want to make video calls, a webcam is also needed.

Installing Skype is a breeze so you shouldn't be put off using it by the thought of any complicated setup and steep learning curve. It really is just a case of installing the program, creating your user account and you're all set to go.

Calling other Skype users is free for as long as you want, wherever they are in the world, which is great if you have a child traveling the world or a spouse fighting with the armed forces.

View your contacts on the left of the Skype window and either call or instant-message them.

The only time you have to pay is when you are calling someone who doesn't use Skype, such as when you are calling a landline or a cell phone number. But even then, the rates are extremely cheap. With rates around roughly 1 cent a minute, it would be hard to get closer to free.

These low rates have driven many people to abandon their landlines in favor of using Skype. But you should be aware that call sound quality can vary at times, plus some countries do not allow calls to emergency services using Skype. So do your homework into these issues before ditching your landline.

As with any communication app of this kind, instant messaging comes as standard and is a pleasure to use. You can also send text messages (SMS) to cell phones (provided you have the necessary Skype credit) but sometimes these SMS messages are slightly delayed, so you should not rely on the service for any important time-sensitive messages.

With the new versions of Skype comes Facebook integration where you can view your Facebook News Feed in a separate window as well as being able to log into Facebook Chat. Another new feature is Skype Wi fi, which enables you to use your Skype credit to pay for wi fi hotspot access by downloading a smartphone app, logging into the provided hotspots, and paying for it with your Skype credit. You can also pin your most frequently used contacts to the top of your contact list for easy access.

For heavy users of the service, there is Skype Premium, or alternatively a subscription package where you can buy calling minutes to one pre-chosen country every month for a set price. Skype Premium on the other hand gives you group video chat and group screen sharing–-all for a price, of course.

But Premium allows you to buy a one-day temporary access so you can "try before you buy," which is nice if you are hesitating to commit to any long-term financial arrangements.

This is one software app that everyone should have on their computer. It may have its small downsides, but it more than makes up for them in other areas.

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Review: DayZ turns frustrating military game into top-notch survival horror

I lasted just over three hours on my first day in the fictional Russian state of Chernarus. I'm told this is quite good, but just leaving the beach alive was victory enough for me. I pulled free of the bloodied arms grabbing at me, but it was dumb luck that found me sprinting frantically up a steep, dark wooded hill until I lost the gray-faced pursuers in the thickets and weeds. Exhausted, I lay down to hide but discovered I was wounded and bleeding. By the time I learned to use my single bandage, I was bleeding out.

A steep learning curve, but I had absorbed my first lesson: Stay out of sight. My second lesson occurred later that day, when I realized the sound of my rifle was a dinner bell. I died in the street with my legs broken, drowned in a mob of screaming madness. DayZ teaches by brutal example. Exposition is nonexistent, but once you learn something, you tend not to forget it.

Military simulator ARMA II's moddable, sandbox nature spawned unexpected offspring early this year when Dean Hall released his unassuming, open-world, zombie apocalypse mod for the game. 1.3 million users later, he's begun development of a standalone product destined to outsell ARMA II itself. DayZ is an honest gaming phenomenon.

You play from ARMA's familiar third-person cover-shooter perspective, a view you'll come to prefer over first-person for the situational awareness it provides in this game, especially under cover. The generally unpleasant, janky feeling of ARMA's engine is preserved, but works in DayZ's favor as imprecise aiming, motion delays, and other sloppy details only reinforce the survival horror mood the mod works overtime to present.

Get used to crawling in the weeds. You'll do it a lot if you want to stay alive in DayZ.

The goal is simple: Stay alive. You'll need to find water, food, shelter, and eventually weapons. Likely in that order. You can salvage preserved food, but hunting is also viable option. Blood transfusions restore lost health and cure ailments, but there's a catch–they require the assistance of another player to perform. In DayZ, fellow humans are potentially far more deadly adversaries than their undead counterparts. They lie, they cheat, they steal and they will kill you for a can of beans. Or, they just might save your life. Until you lower the gun and ask, you'll have no idea of knowing for sure.

Installation is a different kind of horror show. Both ARMA II and the standalone Operation Warhead are required for DayZ, and you need to complete a seven-step process that outlines the various installations, updates, launcher shells, and more before you can be eaten alive. Many things can go wrong along the way, and often do, judging by the pleas in forums dedicated to the game.

The code itself is famously unstable, described somewhat modestly as in an "alpha" state, but the biggest problems are gamers hacking the servers with bizarre, session-ending exploits. I experienced these frequently enough for it to be a legitimate concern, although the development team regularly takes measures to crack down on this behavior. Performance-wise, DayZ is no better than ARMA II, so plan to pack a firecracker of a system if you want smooth framerates and some visual pop. Laptops and milquetoast desktops won't stand a chance. Consider the system requirements a bit optimistic.

Staying alive is a simple goal, but not an easy one. Game over.

In this era of Pride, Prejudice and Zombies, it's shocking that it took so long for a game of this nature to be made, especially given the success of other games with similar themes but radically different mechanics, like Valve's Left 4 Dead series. We have zombies on prime time, zombies fighting plants, zombie sex stories, zombies everywhere. Why it took one guy doing it for free to make this happen is a question for the gaming industry to ponder as they watch the number of players continue to grow.

For those on the fence deciding whether to try the mod or wait for the standalone version, I advise getting involved now. There's nothing more uncertain than unwritten software, and by the time Dean's team gets into gear, the moment may be over. DayZ is here, now, and it's free. There's no reason to wait. The hungry residents of Chernarus are dying to see you.

Note: The "Try it for free" button on the Product Information page takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the software.

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NYC Turns 10 Payphones into WiFi Hotspots

July 13th, 2012 by Sean Captain, TechNewsDaily Managing Editor  

“New York City by far has more payphones than any other city,” said Nicholas Sbordone, a spokesman for the city government.For years, there have been attempts by private companies to keep these data nodes relevant in the era of the cellphone by adding Wi-Fi. Verizon, for example, talked up access to Wi-Fi from its payphones for customers of its landline Internet service. And TCC Teleplex did a pilot project of a paid Wi-Fi service.Now the City has taken a baby step, persuading contractors who run payphones to add free Wi-Fi to ten of them — hitting each borough — as a trial to see how they go over with New Yorkers.“You might not necessarily stop to use Wi-Fi at a payphone if you’re walking by…if it’s not in a place that’s inviting to sit in,” said Sbordone. So the city has targeted payphones near parks and other public spaces for the trial.Why would the payphone providers — Van Wagner and Titan — give away Wi-Fi for free? Perhaps to hedge bets. Public telephones are far from a growing industry in a country where nearly everyone has a cellphone (and often a smartphone).But most laptops and tablets are not connected to cellular service, and with most wireless carriers imposing data caps, offloading to free Wi-Fi might be an appealing option for smartphones, as well.Or it might not be. The City is waiting to find out by conducting a request for information project to get citizen feedback.The current agreement between the City and payphone providers expires in October 2014, and the City is hoping to figure out what to do with the stations before then. Sbordone said that City payphones might, for example, also become charging stations, if that’s what people want.“If there’s a public amenity that we can work with these companies to provide, great,” he said.

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App2Card Turns App Art Into Business Cards

App2Card is a service aimed mainly at mobile app developers. It invites them to reimagine their app icon as a physical object and use it to drive more traffic to their app online. In other words, apps have not killed business cards…they're helping to make them. App2Card charges $30 for 100 cards.

App2Card makes it very easy to pull in your app's information.Much work goes into designing an icon for a smartphone app, and done right, it becomes the app's "face," instantly recognizable to users and fans. App2Card lets you take all that work and leverage it into the physical world. To use it, simply enter an app's name, and App2Cards will search for it on iTunes and Google Play. Once you find your app in the list, click it. You will instantly see a preview of your app's App2Card: The front has a full-size image of your icon, while the back features a QR code that leads users directly to your iTunes or Google Play URL. That's it: You can now order physical cards to promote your app. Since anyone could potentially order cards for any app, vendor AptGeek Technologies takes the time to filter orders manually, keeping an eye out for suspicious-looking orders, such as an Angry Birds icon with a QR code leading somewhere else.

Although it's optimized for mobile app developers, App2Card can also be used to create custom business cards. You can upload an image for the card's front side, and specify a URL for the QR code and some text for the card's back. This works nicely if you have a compelling personal website on a service such as Flavors.me or About.me.

App2Card cards are made out of solid, shiny plastic similar to that used for magnetic membership cards.The cards are made of card stock, but are laminated with a thick layer of glossy plastic, making them seem like magnetic membership cards. They are slightly thinner than a credit card, and much smaller. They are pricier than the popular MOO MiniCards, too: 100 App2Cards cost $30, while 100 MOO MiniCards cost $20. Then again, the narrow, elongated MiniCards don't look like square plastic icons. App2Card cards are nothing if not distinctive.

App2Card focuses on a seemingly narrow niche, but it makes sense: Mobile app markets are exploding these days, and developers are looking for interesting ways to capture attention. A custom plastic credit card with your app's icon will certainly do that--as will one with your Twitter avatar and personal website URL.

Note: The Download button takes you to the vendor's site, where you can use this Web-based software to design and order cards.

--Erez Zukerman

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Feet on with “Zombies, Run!” App Turns Your Morning Jog Into a Game

After a lengthy introduction–you start off in a helicopter that gets shot down over zombie-infested lands–you assume the role of Runner 5, who must make it back to Abel Township (population: living), and complete other missions along the way for those guiding you in by radio. In between directives from base, the app plays your music, and can pull in iTunes playlists, which we liked. 

The dialogue leans towards the melodramatic–one of the characters laments the fact that the woman he loved–a previous runner–is now a zombie. It’s quite amusing, but if you’re trying to concentrate on maintaining a certain pace, can get distracting. The overall despondency of the survivors is a bit of a downer, too. 

At certain points, you’re encouraged to run harder, as the sound of brain-munchers gets louder and louder. A robotic voice announces items you collect along the way, such as batteries and first aid kits. (Somehow, I managed to collect four sports bras during the first mission.) Then, using the app, you distribute the items to the various areas in the base (hospital, armory, recreation, comms, etc.) to raise their levels, and unlocking more missions.  

Season 1 (which you get with the original download) includes 30 missions. The faster you run, the quicker you complete the missions, so more dedicated exercisers could finish the game fairly quickly. However, the company says it will release add-ons over time, and it also says it’s planning to integrate the app with Runkeeper, as well as record your pace, distance, time, and calories burned. 

Those oiling their shotguns in preparation for the real-life “Walking Dead” will want to check out ”Zombies, Run!” At $7.99, it’s a little steep for a training app that doesn’t record vital statistics, but it could be a real bargain if adding a story line to your workout helps keep you motivated. And alive.

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Web Link Captor Turns Your Search Results Into a List of Links for Pasting

I sometimes look at software like a cook looks at kitchenware. If Google Chrome and MS Word are like my favorite non-stick pan and cutting board that I use every day, Web Link Captor (free/donationware) would be a cherry pitter, something I would need maybe once every few months for a very specific task--but does its job like no other tool can.

Web Link Captor runs multiple Web searches for a list of item, and returns a list of formatted results for use in forums, Wikipedia, etc.You feed Web Link Captor with a list of terms, such as names of books or music albums. It then searches the Web for those terms and compiles a well-formatted list of results for each item. You can then paste this list into a forum post, a Wiki page, or any HTML document. Think about it: How long would it take you to manually create a list with links to the Amazon, Wikipedia, and official homepages of ten different authors (thirty links in all)? This could easily take fifteen-twenty minutes, even if you're fast. With Web Link Captor, you can do this in seconds (after you configure it for the job).

Web Link Captor is different from utilities such as wget and curl, which simply download the page or website you point them at (curl actually does a great deal more, but it's not focused on search). But much like wget and curl, Web Link Captor was clearly written for nerds with a strong technical background.

The developer, Donationcoder.com's Mouser, took a complex process and broke it into nine clearly-defined steps, displayed as a list along the left side of the window. The first step is entering your text. This can be a straight list of names, but you can also get fancy and include additional information on each line, like a note saying "my favorite album," etc. Be sure to maintain a uniform format, because you will have to help Web Link Captor parse your list in the next few steps.

The next step is called Manipulate Input, and here Web Link Captor's technical innards start to show. The application is built as a collection of 74 Python scripts (I counted), and each step makes a few of these available for you to use and configure. This is a very technical process--the scripts have names like "Core.Modify.Process - Change Case," and each script accepts different input options (all briefly explained).

Next, you get to review the parsed input lines, to make sure Web Link Captor now understands your list. Now you can to configure search: You can use Google, Bing, Wikipedia via Bing, or Amazon via Bing (great for creating lists of affiliate links). Web Link Captor ranks search results to decide which results to include in the final set for each search term, and you can tweak that ranking algorithm. For example, you can decide that all Amazon results should appear first in your list, regardless of where they appeared in the search results.

You can also post process the results, to add your own affiliate tag to each Amazon link, for example. Once you configure any post processing, you can review the result grid, showing what hits Web Link Captor found for each term, and how those hits were scored. You can manually eliminate hits from your final list, and there's an easy way to use wildcards (i.e, never show me anything from The Pirate Bay).

Now that you have your results, it's time to configure the output. Out of the box, Web Link Captor speaks fluent BBCode (used for forums), Markdown (used for Wikis), and HTML (used everywhere else). If you need a different format and happen to be a coder, you can always extend Web Link Captor. In fact, you can write your own scripts to extend and customize any other part of the application, too.

Once you've gone through the entire process, you finally get to meet your results list, all ready to copy and paste. Web Link Captor lets you save your project, so you won't have to configure it again in the future if you want to run the same procedure using different terms. You can also share the project with other users, so they can just open the project, enter a list of terms, and click Run to get the results they're after. So, you don't necessarily need to be a computer whiz to use Web Link Captor, but you should know your business if you want to configure or extend it.

All in all, Web Link Captor is a truly unique product. I don't know that I would use it every day (or every month, for that matter), but I am glad to know it's out there, and available for free (donations welcome).

--Erez Zukerman

Web Link Captor takes a list of plaintext items, and builds an output document containing a list of url-linked results based on web searches for the items. It's a way to quickly build a clickable list of items from just their names, suitable for posting on your blog or a forum, etc.

Features

Friendly GUI lets you build flexible sets of processing steps to parse plaintext input lists and perform search and output functions.
You can save and load projects and script configurations for easy re-use.
Uses a set of standalone utility scripts that can be run without the windows front end GUI, and can be easily modified and expanded.
The included backend scripts are in Python (but other languages can be used).
Uses caching to avoid repeating web searches unnecessarily.
Comes with output formatters for HTML, BBCode, Markdown/Wikipedia.
Comes with searching engines for google, and bing/opensearch (which can handle amazon, wikipedia, and many others).
Flexible scoring system lets you interactively or programmatically tweak your results to get the best list of links.

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Sony SmartDock Turns Your Xperia P Into a Media Center PC

Why buy a media center PC when you can get just use your smartphone? The new Sony SmartDock allows users to connect their Xperia P phones to any HDTV or monitor via HDMI and access their content, documents, and more using a remote control. 

The lightweight and attractive dock has two full-size USB ports on the back for connecting peripherals like keyboards, along with a microUSB port for powering the Xperia P. Once the phone is docked, users can take advantage of an attractive, livingroom-friendly UI with shortcut icons to your apps laid out in a rotating circle that you can navigate using your remote, keyboard, or mouse. The keyboard can also be attached via bluetooth.

In a brief demo, a Sony rep showed us how the docked Xperia P could be used to display photos from your phone’s gallery, play music from its library, or write messages on its keyboard. The phone’s screen is mirrored onto the TV, allowing you to run any app from across the room.

Though the main use of the SmartDock will undoubtedly be for consuming photos, videos, and music from the couch, we can’t help but think of the productivity possibilities. Imagine using a business app like QuickOffice on your phone but viewing the contents on a big screen while you type on a real, full-size keyboard. Picture yourself coming through your email inbox on your large-screen TV while you sit back on the couch.

Sony did not announce specific pricing and availability for the SmartDock, which is only available for the Xperia P at present.

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Facebook's Timeline Movie Maker Turns Users' Lives into Film

Facebook users can use Timeline, the site’s new profile layout, to turn their lives into a movie. Marketing Agency Definition 6 and Facebook have released Timeline Movie Maker, an app that automatically parses your Timeline profile to create about a 55-second movie from your memories stored in the social network.

Facebook is hoping that more companies will be encouraged to take advantage of Timeline and create more novel apps for people to view and experience their new profile. "We think there will be lots of companies that come up with fun, innovative ways for people to extend the Timeline experience," a Facebook official told PCWorld.

Of course, that may raise the hackles of privacy advocates concerned about how a Timeline app could misuse information it is allowed to access. But it's important to keep in mind that Movie Maker and any subsequent apps are completely optional and no one is forcing users to share their data with third-party companies.

If you want to give Movie Maker a try, here's how it works.

To get started, log in to Facebook and then point your browser to the Timeline Movie Maker site and press the green button that says "Make Your Movie." You'll then have to sort through two approval screens asking you for permission to access your basic information, e-mail address, other profile data such as hobbies, your posts, and your News Feed. The app does not ask for permission to post anything to your profile automatically.

After that you can just sit back and wait for the app to sort through your profile information to create your movie. Shortly thereafter, the video will start playing, showing you photographs and videos from your Timeline. If your personalized movie looks familiar, that's because the video is built on the same template as Facebook's Timeline introductory video released in September. Your video even uses the same soundtrack and even includes some generic photos from that original video when the camera is speeding past "your" Timeline.

After the movie is done, you'll have the option to replay it or you can swap out the music for one of four additional soundtrack themes including nostalgic, cinematic, romantic and playful. Once you choose a new soundtrack, you have to press the "Remake Your Movie" button at the bottom of the screen. The app will then go through the motions to rebuild your movie. But in my tests, the music was the only thing that changed.

There is also a filmstrip at the bottom of the page that lets you change any of the photos you don't like with new ones. But you can't drag and drop or easily swap out your photos from Facebook. Instead, you have to keep clicking on the photo as the app rotates through your Facebook collection until you find an image you like.

Movie Maker also has a share option after the movie is finished playing, but it's entirely disappointing. The only thing you can share is a link to Movie Maker, there is no option to post the finished product to Facebook, Twitter or your own website. There is also no way to download the finished movie.

But if you want to have a fun look at some of your profile information that is only viewable by you and the people crowding around your PC's monitor, then Movie Maker is a neat way to experience your Timeline.

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