WowWee rocks with sensor-embedded instruments

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July 11, 2011|By Mark Baard, Globe Correspondent

Digital music

For rainy days and sleepovers at our house, no gadget is a bigger hit than the cheap Paper Jamz “guitar,’’ which is made of paper and plastic.

The toy, which WowWee Group Ltd. released last year, emits prerecorded sounds from a built-in speaker when you strike its illustrated strings (it doesn’t have real strings). It comes preloaded with rock standards and rhythms you can play along with.

The new Paper Jamz toys that WowWee is selling this year might still qualify as toys, but they do look and sound a bit more like actual instruments. The key is the incorporation of touch and motion sensors, which are so cheap they are turning up not only in $400 smartphones, but $40 gadgets such as WowWee’s Paper Jamz Pro Series Guitar.

The Pro guitar has 14 fret sensors for playing power chords as well as a whammy bar for vibrato effects, according to WowWee. Cooler still is the accelerometer WowWee has baked into the Pro guitar. For maximum glam rock effect, you can change pitch just by shaking the neck.

Aspiring pop stars are no longer limited to the handful of tunes on the original Paper Jamz instruments. Now you can download any MP3 onto the Pro guitar. WowWee promises that there will soon be thousands of songs licensed and formatted for the Pro guitar, in its Paper Jamz Pro Download Library.

For about $30, you can add the Paper Jamz Pro Series Microphone to your instrument set. WowWee says the mic will automatically fine-tune your voice to a perfect pitch, and duplicate or triplicate your voice to create harmonies. The Pro mic also has an Auto-Vibrato mode and other neat features children can use to have fun with their voices.

WowWee recommends the Pro toys for ages 8 and older, but as with many musical instruments, playing them (for children, anyway) is intuitive. My friend’s 2-year-old has no trouble hammering out chords on the Paper Jamz guitar, for example.

Android Apps

Here’s another way to look at presentations

Waltham-based Brainshark Inc. last week released an Android app that allows smartphone users to review the multimedia presentations you create with its online software.

Using Brainshark, you can add voiceovers to PowerPoint slide shows and other documents to create effective video sales pitches and other presentations.

The Android app lets people view those presentations and navigate them by scanning a table of contents that shows thumbnails, titles, and the length (if there is embedded video or audio) for each slide. Folks can download attachments and documents related to your presentations and participate in whatever polls or surveys you set up using an enhanced version of Brainshark.

There is also a Brainshark app for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch. You can also view and navigate Brainshark presentations on BlackBerry and Windows smartphones, and HP webOS (also known as the Palm Pre) devices.