The user experience of buying NFTs on the Blockchain
In this article we will explore three similar users goals and provide real-world examples with screenshots:
- Buy nice artwork
- Buy artwork with the help of metadata
- Bulk buy cheap artwork
See the full story here: https://uxdesign.cc/the-user-experience-of-buying-nfts-on-the-blockchain-6f320f4d7334
CES: TV, Audio and Drone Tech Make a Splash at Central Hall
ETC’s George Gerba and Don Levy spent Thursday navigating the Las Vegas Convention Center’s Central Hall looking for unique products from major exhibitors at CES 2022 that would be of special interest to the entertainment industry. They found a Hisense ultra-short throw projection TV, a Samsung TV with an adjustment capability that would be useful in-camera as well, Fraunhofer tech for adjusting the volume of dialog separately from other audio in a consumer device, a winged drone with impressive flight duration and speed, and a few other products of note.
Hisense is showing a 120-inch ultra-short throw projection TV that utilizes three laser technology (RGB) and delivers 100 percent BT 2020 coverage (good for HDR), and 4000 ANSI lumens (screen brightness up to 430 nits). One attendee described the colors as “insane!” The projector has a built-in Harman Kardon customized audio solution with rollable speakers and a separate wired subwoofer. We take this as evidence that Hisense is now designing products that compete with the top tier of consumer electronics brands.
Even more impressively, the projection TV has built-in blending projection display technology that supports NxN multi-screen blending. Hisense showed two 120-inch projection TVs side-by-side that seamlessly blended into one ultra-wide display.
Hisense also showed a ULED 8K display (model U800) with quantum dot color, full array local dimming, and Dolby Atmos. The company’s 8K variant of the TriChroma TV is powered by an 8K imaging chipset with embedded artificial intelligence that combs through every visual scene pixel by pixel to optimize the picture, and also hosts 20,000 mini-LED partitions to enhance definition and contrast. This display is probably more for the professional market than the consumer market.
One of the new extras in Samsung’s 2022 Neo 4K and 8K QLED line is Shape Adaptive Light Control, which reduces stray illumination by analyzing on-screen objects and shaping the light to match. Another, called Object Depth Enhancer, employs more processing to further distinguish the objects from the background. (For more details, check out the CNET coverage.) We believe that this ability to micro-correct the image could be extremely useful to the professional community if it becomes available in-camera or in post applications.
Samsung has noticed a new emerging market, and is pitching its 8K panels as good platforms for showcasing your NFTs. “The platform, which will be available on Samsung’s MicroLED, Neo QLED and The Frame models, allows users to browse and buy NFTs directly from their sets,” reports Engadget. “The platform pulls in NFTs from several marketplaces, so users can preview the art and see other relevant details, like who created the work, as well as relevant blockchain metadata.”
Fraunhofer demonstrated a capability that consumers have craved for years, the ability to adjust the volume of dialog separately from music and background audio. The MPEG-H Audio technology will allow consumers to choose from presets or create their own settings for both broadcast and streaming audio. It is now possible, for example, to switch between different languages, adjust the volume of a sports commentator, enhance the dialogue, and choose from several audio description options.
Autel Robotics showed its Dragonfish Series of vertical takeoff winged drones. The drone is modular, waterproof, smart and reliable. It can stay aloft up to 180 minutes — far longer than quadcopters — and travel up to 180 km per hour. It has powerful AI tracking capabilities, a built-in 4K video and 50X optical zoom, an 18 mile range, and a multitude of modular payload options.
Shenzhen Lochn Optics Technology is a leading Chinese manufacturer of optical waveguide and diffractive waveguide components for AR glasses manufacturers. At CES, the company showed 14 form factors of waveguides, up from six form factors in the current catalog. We take this as an indicator that the industry is gearing up for rapid growth and adoption of AR products in the near future.
As was widely reported prior to CES 2022, top TV manufacturers such as LG, Sony, Panasonic and others have a greatly reduced presence on the show floor. In a clever move, LG Electronics virtually presented its new consumer electronics products in the 2,000-square-foot eco-friendly booth constructed of recycled and recyclable materials.
Visitors download an app at the entrance of the booth that enabled them to take a self-guided tour. Using QR codes positioned on cubes where kiosks would have been, the visitors could see AR versions of the products that would have been displayed.
See the original post here: https://www.etcentric.org/ces-tv-audio-and-drone-tech-make-a-splash-at-central-hall/
Metaverses with top in-house rules will be the most successful ones as people look for where to live their best virtual lives, a crypto boss says
- Metaverse companies that set solid codes of conduct will likely attract the most users, CoinFlip's CEO said.
- Ben Weiss said any new regulations for crypto are unlikely to hold back the growth of the metaverse.
- Tax regulations and other rules that apply in the real world will also apply in virtual worlds, Weiss told Insider.
See the full story here: https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/currencies/metaverse-crypto-regulations-best-platforms-virtual-reality-successful-laws-2022-1
This is how the metaverse can become a breeding ground for terrorists
Although the arrival of a full-fledged metaverse is still some years in the future, the potential threats posed by the metaverse require attention today from a diverse range of people and organizations, including academic researchers, those developing the metaverse, and those tasked with protecting society. The threats call for thinking as much, or more creatively, about the metaverse as those with malevolent intent are likely to do. Everyone needs to be ready for this new reality.
Joel S. Elson is an assistant professor of IT innovation at the University of Nebraska Omaha, Austin C. Doctor is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Nebraska Omaha, and Sam Hunter is a professor of Psychology at the University of Nebraska Omaha.
See the full story here: https://www.fastcompany.com/90711507/this-is-how-the-metaverse-can-become-a-breeding-ground-for-terrorists
CES 2022: Kura Technologies received the Innovators Award for its revolutionary AR hardware and software solutions
...The Kura Gallium surpasses rival AR headsets with a 150-degree field of view (FoV), 95 percent transparency to seamlessly superimpose images on the real world, a compact, 80g form factor, as well as an 8K resolution and brightness 100 times that of competitors. ...
Rivals have comparatively reached 52 degrees of FoV, 25 percent transparency, and a fraction of brightness, respectively, according to figures from the firm.
Kura also achieved hardware advancements for its flagship device with proprietary designs, leading to an included a full-colour MicroLED display, a custom MicroLED display driver for an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC), as well as custom pinhole waveguides, the company said. ...
The news comes after Silicon Catalyst, the only semiconductor startup incubator in the world, accepted Kura Technologies for its programme. Kura Technologies hosts a roster of prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) graduates among over half of its leadership.
Mojo Vision Raises Additional $45M to Put Smart Contacts in the Eyes of Athletes
Mojo Lens is ostensibly years away from commercialization, however the company announced at CES 2022 that it’s taking a step forward by partnering with a number of fitness brands to explore how to better integrate its smart contact lenses into sports and training. Mojo Vision has partnered with Adidas Running, Trailforks, Wearable X, Slopes and 18Birdies. ...
Much like Elon Musk’s brain-computer interface (BCI) startup Neuralink, Mojo Vision sees early applications first targeting those afflicted with bodily impairments; in Mojo’s case, it aims to use Mojo Lens to create enhanced image overlays to alleviate certain visual impairments. ...
See the full story here: https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/ditch-the-smart-glasses-mojo-visions-smart-contact-lenses-want-to-track-your-fitness/
Cinedigm Agrees to Acquire Streaming and Entertainment Company Digital Media Rights Adding 10 New Channels and 7,500 Titles
Deal scales up Cinedigm with more than 30 streaming services, 46,000 hours of content, 40 million monthly viewers, 18.5 million social subscribers, and 4+ billion views
Cinedigm enters Ad Network Business via DMR's Ad Network & Marketplace which garners more than 100 million connected TV impressions a month
First, the company is a leading global distributor of feature films and television series for the streaming ecosystem, with more than 7,500 titles under distribution.
Secondly, DMR has developed and operates 10 channels focused on enthusiast audiences. Six of these proprietary streaming services are available as free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) channels and/or video-on-demand apps (all apps have ad-supported VOD and premium, subscription VOD options):
- AsianCrush (asiancrush.com): The one-stop portal to the latest Asian entertainment featuring premium movies and shows.
- Midnight Pulp (midnightpulp.com): The perfect late-night channel to end all boredom, offering an expertly curated selection of cult programming with a twist of millennial irreverence.
- RetroCrush (retrocrush.tv): Dedicated to the Golden Age of anime.
- Cinehouse (www.cinehousetv.com): both a standalone channel with apps available across all major devices, as well as a Linear TV streaming bundle, curating niche, enthusiast channels focused on the best movies and TV shows from around the world. Among the linear FAST channels available in Cinehouse's lineup are 24/7 streams of AsianCrush, RetroCrush, Midnight Pulp and KMTV, with more being announced in 2022.
- Cocoro (cocoro.tv): The ultimate destination for kid-friendly shows designed to educate and entertain.
- KMTV (kmtvnow.com): Features all things K-Pop, from music videos of the newest releases to variety show highlights, to all things in between.
Third, through its DMR Social unit, DMR curates social video channels for most of the above brands, as well as four others, with more in development:
- C-Crush: A community for fans of the best Chinese TV and movies.
- Cinehouse Romance: A curated selection of romance-focused movie clips from DMR's library of arthouse and indie films.
- K-Crush: A community for Korean cinema, TV and pop culture addicts.
- QTTV: A community for fans of queer cinema.
See the full story here: https://www.streetinsider.com/Accesswire/Cinedigm+Agrees+to+Acquire+Streaming+and+Entertainment+Company+Digital+Media+Rights+Adding+10+New+Channels+and+7%2C500+Titles/19430520.html
Multimodal AI Modeling is the Future, But It’s Also Pandora’s Box
The discipline of building or teaching a neural net to have this kind of multifaced awareness is called multimodal modeling. Tools like DALL-E are designed to generate images based on text descriptions, while CLIP (Contrastive Language-Image Pre-training) is intended to associate text and images more robustly than current AI models. ...
Values matter to this bias problem, in a concrete sense. It’s such a low-tech part of the solution to a high-tech problem. Deepfakes are here, and to get software to identify deepfakes reliably, we are going to have to teach computers how to identify and understand us better — and there’s no putting that back in the box. As AI progresses, we’re going to leave our comfort zone over and over. It’s an inevitable consequence of making tools with near-human capabilities. What matters is how our values are reflected in the intelligent systems we create. Maybe we don’t need to worry about a robot uprising. Maybe the dystopia is coming from inside the house.
See the full story here: https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/330247-multimodal-ai-modeling-is-the-futurebut-its-also-pandoras-box
