philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

Facebook Partners with Disney, Vice and Others on Video Ads

Facebook has launched a new marketing initiative called Anthology that enables advertisers to work with seven media partners to create sponsored videos. The company says that its media partners — The Onion, Vice, Disney, Funny or Die, Tastemade, Vox, and Electus Digital’s CollegeHumor — know how to get the most out of the Facebook platform. These video ads are one way that Facebook may be able to keep advertising, and soon publishing content, under its own roof.

The Anthology Network is intended to make it easier to find video creators that have already proven successful in reaching the desired audience among Facebook’s 1.4 billion monthly active viewers.

See the story here: http://variety.com/2015/digital/news/facebook-lines-up-7-branded-content-video-partners-including-vice-disney-1201478229/

and here: http://www.wired.com/2015/04/onion-vice-now-making-ads-facebook/

TV of the future may be a sphere

The new viewing experience was shown as part of a collaboration among several partners including French video software firm Ateme and British-based Pufferfish Displays, which makes the spherical projection module.

While 360-degree imaging has been around for several years in services such as Google Maps, Ateme said it is far more challenging to produce this for live television.

It "is completely different to do 360 degrees for live TV, and making it seamless," said Ateme research manager Jerome Vieron.

Other partners in LiveSphere include the Finnish technology group Finwe and France-based Kolor, which specializes in "image-stitching."

See the full story here: http://usa.news.net/article/2624571/tv-of-the-future-may-be-a-sphere

See the spherical display specs here: http://www.pufferfishdisplays.co.uk/products/puffersphere-m/

See encoding info here: http://ateme.com/en/company/about-ateme/article/about-ateme

Google and Facebook Execs Question Government Desire for Encryption Backdoors

Privacy bosses at Google and Facebook say letting the U.S. government unlock encrypted customer data would make law enforcement less accountable.

Philip Lelyveld comment: This story is a compliment to the TOR article.

See the full article here: http://www.technologyreview.com/news/536986/google-and-facebook-execs-question-government-desire-for-encryption-backdoors/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20150424

How Tor is building a new Dark Net with help from the U.S. military

To stay ahead in the security race, Tor is building the next-generation Dark Net in part with funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the U.S. military agency charged with inventing the cutting edge of new technology.

The funding, which began in 2014, comes as part of DARPA’s Memex project, a “groundbreaking” search engine designed to best commercial titans like Google at searching the Deep Web and other oft-ignored terrain for the U.S. intelligence, law enforcement, and military. To build Memex, DARPA is partnered with universities like Carnegie Mellon, NASA, private research firms, and several Tor Project developers.

New technology developments, fixes and upgrades, and in-depth statistics on hidden services were among the work funded by DARPA’s grant under the Memex project.

The Dark Net road map moving forward is ambitious. Tor plans to double the encryption strength of hidden service’s identity key and to allow offline storage for that key, a major security upgrade.

Led by data scientist Christopher White, Memex is explicitly not aimed at de-anonymizing any Tor user or “accessing information not intended to be publicly available,” according to a recent DARPA blog post.

See the full story here: http://www.dailydot.com/politics/next-generation-tor-darpa/

A quick survey of virtual reality apps beyond gaming

Cars and driving, cinema, sports, medicine and health, museums, fitness, tourism, real estate, product development, communications.

See the full story here: http://venturebeat.com/2015/04/22/a-quick-survey-of-virtual-reality-apps-beyond-gaming/

Virtual reality app puts you at the scene of Trayvon Martin’s shooting

Using the audio files of real 911 calls, architectural drawings of the area and witness testimony from the subsequent trial of Zimmerman, who was found not guilty of second-degree murder in 2013, the VR experience is disturbingly effective in transmitting what being at the scene of the incident might have felt like.

Such a chilling, VR-powered reenactment could be incredibly helpful to future jury pools and investigators, which raises the question: Why aren't such VR reenactments already a common tool for attorneys and investigators in such cases? Is VR prohibitively expensive and too technical to deploy for the many cases hinging on how an event is perceived? According to de la Peña, applying such a solution to current cases is absolutely viable.

"We built it in two weeks, with one person full-time and two people part-time," says de la Peña. "We actually used Mixamo Animations, so we didn’t actually record any new animations. [And] we got some of the models from different model houses."

See the full story here: http://mashable.com/2015/04/22/trayvon-martin-vr/

Hi-Tech Goggles Bring Augmented Reality To The Slopes

With the Tel Aviv, Israel based RideOn augmented goggles, you can transform and enhance your time on the slopes. Users are even able to set up an obstacle course to ride through, earning points on the way. For a limited time, $519 gets you the pair of goggles, from which you can access a myriad list of options, such as finding out exactly where you are on the map- helpful should you get turned around while snowboarding or skiing.  When you’re waiting for your turn for a chair lift and want to have some fun while passing the time, you can play a game. You can check your email. You can make reservations for dinner. All in the comfort of your goggles. Wanting to be as user-friendly as possible, they created a floating user interface that the wearer interacts with without losing visibility. It’s centered in the middle of the display, not the sides, as in other AR goggles. Because they are skiers and snowboarders themselves (and have friends and family that are) they designed this device for ease of use and usability in mind.

See the full story here: http://www.sporttechie.com/2015/04/22/hi-tech-goggles-bring-augmented-reality-to-the-slopes/

Groundbreaking Augmented Reality Exhibit Coming to New York’s City Lore Gallery

The epic comic book, PRIYA'S SHAKTI, which presents a new Indian female superhero and rape survivor who tackles the problem of sexual violence in India and around the world, is having an augmented reality exhibition at City Lore Gallery in New York City.

The opening reception is May 7, 2015 at 7:30PM and is part of PEN World Voices Festival. Also, a large colorful augmented reality mural from the comic book is on display at the Tribeca Film Festival.

To bring any image in the gallery to life, audiences simply need to download the Blippar mobile app on an Apple, Android or Windows device and hold it up to an image from Priya's Shakti. Instantaneously, the images will come alive and viewers will be able to interact with engaging digital content directly on the device's screen.

Inspired by ancient mythological tales, the comic book tells the story of Priya -- a mortal woman and gang-rape survivor -- and the Goddess Parvati as they fight against gender-based sexual violence in India and around the world supporting the movement against patriarchy, misogyny and indifference. 

See the full story here: http://www.marketwired.com/press-release/groundbreaking-augmented-reality-exhibit-coming-to-new-yorks-city-lore-gallery-2012818.htm

Augmented reality meets underground asset location

[The application both allows you to see infrastructure superimposed on the real world, and to correct errors in the data by properly positioning infrastructure.  It links to ESRI, one of the most popular GIS packages used by facilities management organizations  (think studios and theme parks).Footnote: "Can" is not the best example!]

It's an app for Android and iOS tablets and smartphones from a New Zealand company with the same name and it superimposes images of underground assets on the image of a streetscape captured by the device's camera. It works two ways: if the information provided proves to be inaccurate, the source can be update with accurate data on the location of the infrastructure, collected by direct observation.

According to Augview the company, Augview the app is the world's first application of augmented reality asset management for the utilities industry. It "connects to GIS web servers like Smallworld GSS or Esri ArcGIS Server via a secure internet connection, and can connect to and receive map and asset data from multiple web servers simultaneously."

See the full story here: http://www.cso.com.au/mediareleases/22178/augmented-reality-meets-underground-asset-location/

Crystal – This App Wants To Change Email Forever — By Getting Inside Your Head

You can get a free "practice account," which gives you full service to the site and the Gmail add-on for two weeks and lets you look up people to see a personality profile. Once you've signed up (Crystal recommends signing up via LinkedIn), your Crystal account will generate personality profiles based on your public social media posts and pretty much anything else that comes up when someone Googles you.

With the personality profile, you'll see advice on how to speak to the person, email them, work with them and sell to them. You'll even be told what comes naturally to them and what does not. Crystal also displays something called "accuracy confidence," based on how much information the app could find about the person.

"There are 64 different personality categories someone can be assigned from Crystal, and some are closer to each other on the spectrum than others," Crystal founder Drew D'Agostino told The Huffington Post in an email on Tuesday. "From user testing and surveys over the past few months, we've confirmed that Crystal provides a 'very accurate' reading for just over 80 percent of profiles, and that is continuing to improve as the product gets smarter."

As fun as it is to look up all of your coworkers and friends on Crystal, the really special part is how it helps you write emails. If you download the Google Chrome extension, Crystal will assist you in writing emails in your Gmail account. Crystal will appear as a little green button at the bottom of the email you're writing, suggesting a certain tone based on its assessment of the recipient's personality.

See the full story here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/25/crystal-gmail-app_n_6931478.html