USC Viterbi Startup Garage: version 2.0
The Startup Garage, Southern California’s only venture accelerator for engineering student-led companies, offers financial support, mentoring, legal advice, office space and other strategic resources to a select group of budding business builders over a six-month period.
More than 115 teams competed for the eight spots in the accelerator, which launched June 30 and runs to the end of the year. Each team, co-founded or led by a current USC Viterbi student or alumni, received $50,000 in exchange for a 10 percent equity. That compares to $20,000 and 4 percent last year.
This year’s crop includes a company creating a music platform that helps you discover music based on your mood; another building a system to make drones easy to fly; one producing dynamic pricing software to maximize profitability; and a mobile platform that allows a small group of intimate friends to connect and collaborate on fashion decisions.
“I think we have an excellent group of young entrepreneurs who are working on some amazing ventures,” said Ashish Soni, founding director of the Viterbi Student Institute for Innovation (VSI2), which launched the Startup Garage. “We want to make Viterbi a leading source of innovation across the region, country and world.”
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Can digital storytelling be accelerated? Only if you accelerate your Oregon Story Board application
- Digital storytelling creatives don’t often identify their projects as a business. While folks in the tech startup scene self-identify as “building a business,” many of the people pursuing awesome storytelling concepts are motivated by pure creative energy. And while they realize that they have to find ways to fund their projects, seeing that project as a “startup” or a “business” is often an non-obvious intuitive leap.
- Acceleration is not a common concept. Again, in the tech startup world, folks have been conditioned to understand the concept of an accelerator. In fact, some would argue that startups have been inundated with accelerator opportunities. But if you don’t see your digital storytelling as a business and you don’t have any peers who are going through accelerators, then seeing an accelerator as an opportunity for your company is yet another non-intuitive leap.
- “Digital Storytelling” is an even more broad and amorphous term than “startup.” From an Oregon Story Board perspective, we see digital storytelling as covering a very broad range of pursuits. It could be anything from content creation—filmmaking, transmedia, journalism, video games—to creating technology and platforms that support storytellers—blogging platforms, special effects software, editing suites—to the services industries that support storytelling—production, post production, digital agencies. But that isn’t inherently obvious by muttering the words “digital storytelling”.
Read the full story here: http://siliconflorist.com/2014/07/28/digital-storytelling-accelerate-oregon-story-board-application/
The state of the VFX industry was a big topic at this week’s CG conference.
During a session on the state of the industry VFX supervisor Scott Squires lamented that he had talented colleagues who are planning to leave the business. “One problem is we love what we do, and accept a lot of things that ‘normal’ people would not—like working 80 hours a week and [sometimes] not be paid for it.”
Read the full story here: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/behind-screen/reflections-siggraph-making-money-are-594123
Siggraph: Oculus Rift Creator Says Wider Use of Virtual Reality Is ‘Inevitable’
Panelists agreed that content is king. Henry Fuchs
, professor of computer science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, asserted that a key obstacle to mass adoption is that "it's not clear what the application is that millions will want to use augmented and virtual reality for. Until we find that, we'll be limited to a few hundred thousand users. Not millions."
AR pioneer Steven Feiner of Columbia University emphasized that "entertainment is the next big thing in VR."
Luckey warned that VR hardware makers should be careful not to focus too much on marketing a "quantifiable" feature such as resolution. He added that there needs to be improvement in numerous areas, including ergonomics and latency.
See the full story here: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/behind-screen/siggraph-oculus-rift-creator-says-724481
If You Think Big Data’s Big Now, Just Wait
GE has been working with Pivotal to better understand this problem. (It’s worth noting that GE owns a 10 percent stake in the EMC/VMware spinoff). The two companies are working together to build what they are calling a “data lake.” This is a more flexible approach to large data sets than a data warehouse, which they point out was designed a decade ago with ERP and CRM data in mind. The quantity of data today is so much greater that it requires a much more flexible architecture to accommodate it.
One of the first areas where GE is testing this technology is in its jet engine division where it estimates each engine can generate 1TB of data of data from a single flight. Multiply that by many flights per day and you are facing monumental amounts of data from just one industrial device.
Ruh claims that using data lake software cuts the time they can begin working with the data from days to minutes. How much did it improve the process? According to GE, they whittled down a data warehousing approach that took 30 days to ingest, structure, integrate and process and brought it down to 20 minutes with the data lake approach. Yes, you read it correctly, 20 minutes.
To that end they combined it with technology they developed with the consulting firm Accentureto build a tool called Taleris, which they claim can actually accurately predict part failure. The trouble was that they needed a serious amount of data for the prediction platform to do its job. The data lake developed with Pivotal gives them that.
Read the full story here: http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/10/big-data-bound-to-get-really-really-big-with-the-internet-of-things/?ncid=tcdaily
Announcing the Virtual Reality Awards Event, Coming Live to Riftmax Theater November 28th
Devs, start your engines. Now that the Oculus Rift DK2 is reaching the hands of excited developers around the globe, the VR media community is ready to unveil the Virtual Reality Awards, coming live to Riftmax theater.
See the full story here: http://www.roadtovr.com/announcing-virtual-reality-awards-event-coming-live-riftmax-theater-november-28th/
Sony Planning to Debut a Pair of Curved 4K TVs Next Month
Sony will soon join LG and Samsung in offering curved 4K LCD television sets. The Japanese company is expected to unveil two models at 65- and 75-inches during next month’s IFA show in Berlin. While Sony has yet to announce pricing and availability, the curved sets will compete with Samsung’s HU9000 line, which includes a 65-inch model priced at $4,300 and 78-inch model at $8,000. Sony currently sells a 65-inch curved 1080p TV for $2,500.
The new curved sets from Sony “feature edge-lit LED backlighting, 4K X-Reality PRO video processing engine, Triluminos Display tech, Motionflow XR 800Hz motion-compensated frame interpolation (MCFI) system, active 3D capabilities (two pairs of glasses included), and its X-tended Dynamic Range to boost contrast,” reports UK reviewer HDTVtest.
“Meanwhile its 4.2 channel Multi-angle Live Speakers use separate drivers for the first time, helping it to direct left, right and surround sounds around the room more accurately.”
See the full story here: http://www.etcentric.org/sony-planning-to-debut-a-pair-of-curved-4k-tvs-next-month/
Inside a Drone Pilot Cockpit
Interestingly, some of the newest drones or UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) incorporate the PlayStation2 controller design to assist pilots in navigating menus. This is probably a good thing since many believe the best recruits for drone flight school are already wired differently. “These kids have grown up playing Xbox and PlayStation and using other gaming systems … they have a incredible multitasking capabilities, they collaborate differently with their fellow pilots”, said Brad Hoagland, a former U.S. Air Force colonel, who now studies drones and drone pilots at the Brookings Institution.
See the full story here: http://droneinsider.net/inside-a-drone-pilot-cockpit/
First-Look Of “The Marvel Experience” 2-Acre Custom Mobile Dome Complex
Hero Ventures released a first-look rendering of the highly anticipated design of The Marvel Experience domed complex set to tour the country in 2014.
Canvassing a 2-acre footprint of more than 80,000 square feet, this state-of-the-art, custom built multi-Dome complex will represent the first time a venue of this type, size and scope will be utilized for a mobile tour. From the outside, The Marvel Experience resembles a temporary S.H.I.E.L.D. installation or “Mobile Command Center,” with the facility’s apex towering more than six stories high. Inside, a maze of connected Domes will lead guests through an array of interactive games and original animated short films including the first- ever traveling motion-based ride, where guests become immersed in this original adventure only found in The Marvel Experience. This unique, themed entertainment experience is scheduled to visit select US and Canadian markets for weeks at a time in each city and is designed to engage audiences through compelling family entertainment with a production value consistent with the iconic nature of the Marvel Super Heroes.
See the full story here: http://themarvelexperiencetour.com/about/