New & Noteworthy Apps: MoMA, Olympics and DVD’s

It’s becoming almost too difficult to keep up with the new, useful smartphone and other digital channel apps that keep cropping up. Not to fear – we are here to help as we are keeping abreast of some of the latest and greatest technology innovations weekly, here at the eTail Blog. This week a few fun new tech bites that may have you exploring your computers, smartphones and tablets over the weekend.

MoMA’s Art Lab App

The Museum of Modern Art in New York City has introduced an iPad app called Art Lab that encourages the artist in all of us to come out and create with the tools of today.

Designed by RenderMonkey Design and inspired by MoMA Art Labs, (a series of interactive spaces at the museum where guests engage with art through hands-on activities) the app offers an open-ended exploration of the various ways in which simple shapes and lines can be transformed into art. Art Lab encourages kids aged seven and up to think about artistic processes and experiment with shapes, lines and colors.

Activities on the app include using virtual scissors to cut out shapes in the spirit of collages by Henri Matisse; shaking digital scraps of paper across the screen in homage to Jean (Hans) Arp’s chance collages; covering rooms in colorful line designs, as in the work of Jim Lambie; and creating a sound composition based on art by Elizabeth Murray.

And you thought your 7-year-old was too young for art history. Pish posh.

2012 Olympic Quiz

A new London 2012 Olympic Quiz smartphone app from Thomas Cook is giving sports fans a chance to attend the August 9 Olympic final in the new London stadium.

The app will ask a series of questions to test people’s Olympics knowledge prowess. The challenges become more difficult as the app progresses and measures reaction times alongside correct answers. Upon completing the quiz, all competitors will be placed in a national league table to see how scores add up and the competitor with the highest score on the last day of the quiz, Monday, July 16, will win two tickets to the London 2012 Olympic Games.

Because who doesn’t like a modern day, timely game of Trivial Pursuit via smartphone?

AnyMP4 DVD to iPhone Converter

With so many people wanting to watch TV and movies on the go these days, it’s no wonder that Beijing-based AnyMP4 thought it wise to create a DVD to iPhone Converter. The new program can convert DVD’s to iPhone-standard MP4, MOV and M4V files with super high converting speed and top output video quality.

The program also allows for the audio files of DVD movies to be extracted and converted to iPhone-compatible audio formats. It also has the ability to trim, crop, watermark and merge DVD movies in its edit function window.

You’ll want to watch a movie on your Airplane-mode-enabled iPhone when you’re on route to the Olympics after winning the Thomas Cook quiz app.