Admit it: you've always wanted to talk like Darth Vader. Alas, your voice has all the deep, menacing bass of Justin Bieber's.

Enter Star Wars: Vader Yourself, a Lucasfilm-licensed app that makes your spoken words sound like the big man's--in theory, at least.

I like the app from a style standpoint: it's modeled after the control panel on Vader's chest. To make a recording, you tap the Record switch, provide a filename, then start speaking. You're instructed to use a loud, menacing voice--meaning you should probably find a very secluded area, unless you're fond of bemused stares.

When you're done, you'll hear Vader's trademark heavy breathing, followed by a slowed, deepened version of your voice. The expectation: that you'll sound like James Earl Jones. The reality: you don't. There's no metallic undertone, no computer-generated Dark Sidey-ness.

Granted, you can fiddle with pitch, speed, and tempo sliders to get your sound bite just how you want it--but it'll never sound like Darth Vader. Once you get past that inevitable disappointment, the app is at least fun to play with. And you can share recordings via e-mail or Facebook.

I do have to register a complaint with the name. Vader Yourself? Sounds like an insult. "Ay, buddy, go Vader yourself, alright?" I wonder if whoever came up with this moniker was the same marketing genius who liked "The Phantom Menace." (I know, I know, that was Lucas. I'm down on Star Wars right now because I rewatched "Revenge of the Sith" over the weekend and was appalled by how bad it was. Just terrible moviemaking.)

For 99 cents, Vader Yourself is probably something kids would enjoy. But as Star Wars apps go, disappointed in this one, I am. (A much better bet: the still-fun Star Wars Trench Run, which was recently updated with some new levels.)

Originally posted at iPhone Atlas

It was just last week that Apple relented on its ban of ported Flash applications for iOS devices, but unsurprisingly, Adobe is still toddling along with its piecemeal rollout of HTML5 support in its Creative Suite 5 applications. The HTML5 pack for Dreamweaver became an official update patch at the end of August, and now the company is following up with an informal update for Illustrator CS5. Adobe refused to call it a beta, but neither is it a final version; it's a "compatibility update and will not roll out through the normal update process, and will change as standards change and users provide feedback," according to David Macy, senior product manager for Illustrator. For now, it's a free download from Adobe Labs. The pack includes support for CSS3 and canvas tags, and expands SVG export capabilities.

One of the key new features is the integration between artboards and both CSS and SVG (scalable vector graphics). In the SVG export dialog, you can have it save each artboard as a separate file, with concurrently generated CSS media queries for each. In addition, the program can generate CSS directly from the Character Styles and Appearance panels; so for example, with properly structured layers in your illustration, you could export the layout and style (such as gradients or drop shadows) CSS code separately. You'll also be able to turn graphics into new Canvas objects (though you still have to manually code the linked Javascript), and export variable-driven SVG objects.

Originally posted at Crave