As part of our special report on manufacturing, we askedNeri Oxman, a professor at the MIT Media Lab and an internationally recognized artist whose work is part of the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, to create a sculpture that would illustrate the future of manufacturing. ...
3-D printing encompasses a range of technologies—from inkjet heads mounted on gantries that can deposit plastics layer by layer to form intricate models, to more recent laser-based systems that sinter metal powders to make durable parts for airplanes. 3-D printers have mainly been used for prototyping, but they are becoming an option for manufacturing as well, and may eventually even be used to print buildings, Oxman says. But designers and architects haven't yet learned to take advantage of their capabilities. ...
Oxman's lab is also developing robotic systems that could print large concrete structures for buildings. The new robotic system is being designed to be able to vary the density of the concrete, making it possible to use dense, strong concrete where it's needed for support, and lightweight, porous concrete for non-load bearing walls, to save on materials costs. Eventually, it may even be possible to print concrete that's so porous that it's translucent, reducing the need for indoor lighting. ...
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An open creative movement that broke out on the web.
A new form of creativity originating from the web.
The major players of this movement are the "virtual singer Hatsune Miku" and "You." This is a new style of participatory creativity, where works of no-name to big name creators, songwriters, composers, arrangers, illustrators, dancers, video directors stimulate one another through "Hatsune Miku" and generate entirely new pieces of work.
Besides the 30-thousand original tracks, many more works are still being released through the Internet.
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Despite Loss of Big Supporters, Show Remains Center of Connected World
HOOKED INTO TV
The connected-TV revolution will continue to gather insurgents, with announcements and demos expected from Google TV, Sony, Nintendo and others.
At CES, Roku will be pitching its idea to Internet-enable millions of TVs, including Best Buy’s Insignia line, with a version of its streaming-video set-top box that it has boiled down into a stick about the size of a USB flash drive. “We think there’s opportunity to expand our streaming platform to smart TVs,” Roku founder and CEO Anthony Wood said.
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Roku now offers more than 400 channels, including Netflix, HBO Go, Disney, Fox News, Amazon Instant Video, Hulu Plus and a sampler channel from Showtime Networks that launched last week.
But alongside the Internet-to-the-TV storyline, major manufacturers — coming off a dreary year of sales and plummeting retail prices — will also be focused on delivering HDTVs that are mainly bigger, thinner and brighter.
Hoping to dazzle show-goers, LG Electronics plans to show a 55-inch full-HD 1080p organic light-emitting diode TV at CES, billed as the world’s largest OLED display. Samsung Electronics also is expected to debut an OLEDbased set at the show.
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The caveat: They’re going to be ultra-pricey. The 55- inch OLED HDTVs will carry a list price of about $8,000 when they begin shipping in the third quarter of 2012, ...
VIDEO SLINGING
The ongoing migration of video content to a swarm of tablets and smartphones will again be a big CES theme.
Broadcom, for one, is integrating EchoStar Technologies’ Sling Media place-shifting software into high-performance set-top and gateway chips.
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“It’s clear that consumers expect a wide array of television viewing options on their favorite wireless devices, and EchoStar’s Sling Media technology solution is the gold standard for place-shifting,” Dan Marotta, executive vice president and general manager of Broadcom’s Broadband Communications Group, said.
Zenverge, a developer of advanced media chips, will showcase multistream transcoding and encoding products for the North American cable market, which provide the ability to simultaneously transcode up to four HD channels (or up to 16 standard-definition stream) for delivery to devices in the home. Investors include Motorola Mobility and Entropic Communications.
Another company looking to make multiscreen waves at CES is Shodogg. The Valhalla, N.Y.-based startup is pitching a solution to TV makers and content owners that lets smart phones send any Internet-hosted video content to connected-TV devices.
“We’re AirPlay for everybody else,” said Shodogg CEO Herb Mitschele, referring to a feature of the Apple TV set-top that streams content from iPads and iPhones to television sets.
But Shodogg’s approach simply facilitates the playback of Web video on connected TVs, so content owners have complete control over how it’s distributed. The company has approached several TV makers about embedding its playback client in their Internet-connected sets.
The technology was developed David Strober, an information- technology professor at Westchester Community College. His brother is Michael Strober, Turner Broadcasting System’s vice president of advertising sales in New York, who is listed as one of Shodogg’s founders. The company, founded in May 2011, has raised a $1.7 million seed round of funding from individual investors. (Disclosure: Bill McGorry, chairman of sister pubicationBroadcasting & Cable’s Hall of Fame, is on Shodogg’s advisory board.)
Elsewhere in the cross-platform arena, Civolution will demo a new real-time content triggering service that enables synchronized ad delivery to second-screen applications. The service uses Civolution’s broadcast monitoring infrastructure of more than 1,700 TV channels worldwide, of which more than 1,250 are in North America.
BUILDING A SMARTER HOME
CES also will feature advances in products and technologies aimed at letting consumers live the “connected lifestyle,” to access media more easily on a range of gadgets and control the electronic systems in their homes.
Motorola Mobility, for example, will roll out a device it touts as the brains of the connected home of the future.
The Connected Home Gateway, built on Motorola’s 4Home platform for home automation, security and energy management, plugs into any outlet in the home and automatically connects to the diff erent devices it discovers. That promises to let service providers sell new services that let customers remotely control and monitor their lights, thermostats, security systems and other “smart home” components.
“People want anywhere, anytime access to their digital lives,” Motorola Mobility president Dan Moloney said in a statement. “Our suite of award-winning products addresses the new ways that people are embracing their connected lifestyle in the home.”
The gateway is built on Marvell’s 800-MHz Armada processor (upgradeable up to 1.2 GHz) and supports a range of networking technologies, including Wi-Fi 802.11.n, Z-Wave, Bluetooth, Ethernet and a USB 2.0 host port. Th e two-pound device measures 4.5-by-1.5- by-4.5 inches.
The Connected Home Gateway includes Motorola’s Edge Service Assurance software for remote support, troubleshooting, proactive quality assurance and service activation.
The 4Home system has been deployed by Verizon Communications, which introduced its “smart home” services last fall. Motorola acquired 4Home, whose investors included Verizon, in December 2010.
Motorola Mobility is in the process of being acquired by Google for $12.5 billion, pending regulatory approvals. The deal is expected to close in early 2012.
Analysts at Consumer Reports, the independent and nonprofit product-testing organization, have chosen the five most important trends seen at the 2012 International CES, which officially opens Tuesday in Las Vegas.
While others are trudging around looking for the latest breakthrough, Consumer Reports is more interested on what regular people are going to have in their real-world homes. Therefore, R=rather than look at any one product category or technology breakthrough, Consumer Reports looked at the big picture to determine what the coming year is likely to hold for everyday life.
1. Thinner yet stronger
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2. Cloud connections
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3. More power
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4. More voice activation
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5. Less 3D, better 2D
The belle of the ball for 2011 CES was 3D television, and it’s not going away: this year will see 3D TVs that don’t require special glasses, for instance. But what Consumer Reports expects is the rise of improvements to the regular 2D version, incuding 4K super-high resolution TV sets.
“This year’s CES promises to introduce products and services that allow easier access to content as well as some notable enhancements to make that content better, notably in in visual quality,” said Paul Reynolds, Consumer Reports’ Electronics Editor.
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Thumbtack, which operates an online community marketplace where people can easily list and book local services, has raised $4.5 million in Series A funding, TechCrunch has learned. The round was led by Javelin Venture Partners, with MHS Capital and venture capitalist Tim Draper participating.
Founded in 2009, Thumbtack aims to “make hiring a service professional as easy as it is to buy a book on Amazon.com”. It’s up against startups like Redbeacon and OpenChime, among others.
It seems users have had no trouble finding their way to their website. Thumbtack says a new user has signed up every minute of every day for the last six months, on average.
The company also says 240,000 local merchants (carpenters, life coaches, wedding photographers, babysitters, math tutors, makeup artists and whatnot) have listed on Thumbtack.com to date, or roughly half as many registered merchants one can find on review site Yelp.
Thumbtack currently has 8 employees but plans to use the additional capital to hire more.
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We're two days away from dropping in on Las Vegas for the start of CES 2012. Before we get started on all the crazy new stuff that'll get shown off in a convention center full of bloggers, journalists and business folk, let's hop in our time machine and take a trip back to CES 2011.
Was last year's CES just smoke and mirrors, or did the companies that promised their gadgetry deliver? Follow us through as we warp back to last January.
Read the full story here.
Sortable has posted an excellent info graphic of CES here:
Driven by 3D pricing, average Spanish tix prices have risen 35% since 2004 to $8.70. This discourages family film attendance, said a source at Spain's Acec cinema circuit.
Even in Germany, Cinemaxx's Arne Schmidt said, "The market is already partly flooded with 3D. We had 'The Smurfs,' 'Kung Fu Panda 2,' 'Cars 2' and 'Rio' very close together. It was just too much."
The lesson for 2012? 3D hasn't morphed from B.O. panacea to poison but it may be proving too pricey for many cash-strapped Europeans.
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Summary: Teaching geek stuff to artists and arts to geeks is a key goal for GAFFTA, an innovative startup focused on bridging the cultural divide in San Francisco…
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The 2012 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), held in the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC) from Jan. 10-13, will feature nearly 49,000 exhibitors, 530 speakers and over 1,000 industry analysts. With dozens of individual functions and awards ceremonies and so much to see in a limited amount of time, we've broken down the 10 best must-see CES events in 2012.
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SportsNation in 3D: You don't have to love sports to enjoy SportsNation, a fast-moving, off-beat talk show that highlights the best and worst of today's sports, mixing in pop culture just for fun. At CES 2012, the Emmy Award-winning program will enjoy its first live telecast from Las Vegas, which will also be the show's first telecast in 3D. The monumental ESPN event will be an hour long.
When and Where: Wednesday, Jan. 11 at 2 p.m. LVCC, Central Hall (ESPN 3D), Booth #13632
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Developer University at CES: Developers finally get some love at the first-ever developer-centric event designed by the Consumer Electronics Association. The discussion features developers and product manufacturers, who will discuss their platforms, tools, API,s, programs and sdks. The eight-hour event on Thursday will be broken down into sections for different categories, such as device APIs, third-party API, desktop apps, Web apps, mobile apps and TV apps.
When and Where: Thursday, Jan. 12 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. LVCC, South Hall Connector, Room S228
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Mobile Apps Showdown: Similar to Last Gadget Standing, app developers are given two minutes to showcase their application designs, and an applause-o-meter will gauge the audience's enthusiasm to decide the winners. Judges will select 10 finalists, and two winners will be selected overall: One from the live vote at CES, and one from online voters.
When and Where: Thursday, Jan. 12 at 12:30 p.m. LVCC, North Hall, N255
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See the full post here
We're two days away from dropping in on Las Vegas for the start of CES 2012. Before we get started on all the crazy new stuff that'll get shown off in a convention center full of bloggers, journalists and business folk, let's hop in our time machine and take a trip back to CES 2011.
Summary: Teaching geek stuff to artists and arts to geeks is a key goal for GAFFTA, an innovative startup focused on bridging the cultural divide in San Francisco…