BSkyB Doubles Down on Virtual Reality Cinema Tech
Fresh off its move to build “Sky Europe,” British Sky Broadcasting Group Monday said it has invested a further $400,000 into Jaunt, a one-year-old U.S. technology firm developing 360-degree virtual-reality cinema.
It follows a previous $350,000 equity investment made in December 2013 by BSkyB into Palo Alto-based Jaunt.
Jaunt says its technology offers broadcasters an “immersive virtual reality experience” through headsets rather than traditional flat television screens or devices. It uses the headsets made by Oculus VR Inc., which was acquired by social media U.S. technology giant Facebook in April.
The investments will “provide Sky with additional insight into developments within the field,” the company said in a statement.
See the full story here: http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/07/28/bskyb-doubles-down-on-virtual-reality-cinema-tech-firm-jaunt/
Google (Opera) Glass Makes Debut in Puccini’s Turandot in Italy
In what is being touted as a first, the opera house in Cagliari, the capital of the Italian island of Sardinia, will have some of its singers and musicians wear Google Glass Wednesday night when they perform Puccini’s Turandot, with the images from the digital devices sent in real time to the organization’s Facebookpage.
“It gives you a completely different view of something you’re familiar with and used to watching, like having a soccer player wear Google Glass during a game,” said Mauro Meli, the general manager of the Teatro Lirico di Cagliari, the Sardinian city’s opera house.
This is not the first digital initiative of the Cagliari opera house, which this year has boosted season tickets 40% and overall ticket sales by 57% in part by other moves aimed at getting the attention of the 20-35 crowd. The opera house is an active user of Facebook, Twitter , Google+ and Instagram, and the organization’s website site has the feel of a hip concert promoter rather than an opera house.
See the full story here: http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/07/30/google-opera-glass-makes-debut-in-puccinis-turandot-in-italy/
Netflix And AT&T Sign Peering Agreement
[Philip Lelyveld comment; Is paying for a faster on-ramp a net neutrality issue?]
Interconnection agreements do not deal with how content moves across the network of an ISP, but instead focus on how it gets onto the network. In short, Netflix customers — who are also the customers of ISPs — request large quantities of data from the video-streaming company. Non-paid interconnect agreements see traffic traded between networks for no cost. ISPs are unhappy that Netflix sends so much data onto their networks, allowing the connection points between themselves and the video service to become clogged.
Netflix, therefore, pays the ISP for a direct connection to its network, ensuring that its content can find its way to its customers without delay.
See the full story here: http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/29/netflix-and-att-sign-peering-agreement/?ncid=tcdaily
Could “Force Illusions” Help Wearables Catch On?
“Amemiya discovered that when the vibration occurred asymmetrically at a frequency of 10 hertz… a distinctive pulling sensation emerged in the direction of the acceleration,” reports MIT Technology Review.
The Buru-Navi3 (pictured on right), which is about the size of a wine cork, creates a force illusion when it is pinched between the thumb and forefinger.
The Traxion works in the same way, generating an asymmetrical vibration when it is held between the fingers. Both the Traxion and the Buru-Navi3 have been able to help a blindfolded user navigate a path. However, the force illusion is much weaker when the device is only touching the skin, as it would be in a wearable device.
See the full story here: http://www.technologyreview.com/news/528886/could-force-illusions-help-wearables-catch-on/
Anti-Surveillance Camouflage for Your Face
[Philip Lelyveld comment; I've been thinking of designs for a westernized hijab to also defeat facial recognition. So far I can't get past his problem of it being to attention-getting to actual people while defeating the algorithms.]
Because here is the essence of CV dazzle’s strangeness: The very thing that makes you invisible to computers makes you glaringly obvious to other humans. During one of my more successful dazzle outings, if someone had happened to snap my picture and post it to Facebook, it would have seemed like just another object to the sensors, and, actually, less than that—a set of pixels, indistinguishable from the morass of pixels around it. An algorithm looking for a face would have passed it by.
But to a human spectator—whether in person or looking at those pixels—CV dazzle made my face highly visible. Perhaps even unforgettable.
See the full article here: http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/07/makeup/374929/?curator=MediaREDEF
Matter Lets You Add And Edit 3D Objects In Your Photographs
[Philip Lelyveld comment: This is a great example of technology that is sufficiently advanced to be indistinguishable from magic! How does it know where the surfaces are in a digital file of an image?!?!? Watch the video at the link]
Matter, an app that allows users to add 3D effects with shadows and reflections into their existing photographs.
Matter has four packs of geometric and architectural models that you can pick a color for, and style it as reflective, opaque, refractive or translucent. You can add shadows in real time and move its position and opacity as well. You can even erase the shadow or model by clicking the tool and rubbing your finger on the parts you want to erase.
The app is $1.99 on the App Store. All of Pixite’s apps are only on iOS but Guerrette said the company is currently working on porting Fragment to Android, with possibly more to follow.
See the full story here: http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/23/matter-lets-you-add-and-edit-3d-objects-in-your-photographs/
Physicists, others using science to help art of film animation
Henderson, 47, is part of an expanding cadre of high-level physicists, engineers and other scientists, including many former NASA employees, who have left careers in aerospace and academia to work in the movie business.
Demand for their services has grown as animated movies, once created by hand, push the boundaries of what can be created on a computer screen. Artists at DreamWorks, Disney-owned Pixar and other studios increasingly rely on the services of people such as Henderson to create complex algorithms to simulate realistic-looking water, fire, dust and other elements in movies packed with action and special effects.
"The physics behind what's happening in these movies is incredibly complicated," said Paul Debevec, a computer scientist and chief visual officer at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies. "You need real scientists to understand what's going on. These are Ph.D.-level folks who could have been publishing papers in Physics Today. Instead, they are working on Hollywood blockbuster films."
"This whole company is a very interesting mix of left brain and right brain," said Jim Mainard, head of digital strategy and new business development for DreamWorks. "Often we end up at the same place, but from different directions."
Much of their focus is on what he calls improving the "scale of production." Because there are so many shots in a single movie — one film might have 700 scenes with fire, for example — Henderson and his team spend much of their time trying to devise more efficient ways of simulating effects through improved software and hardware.
"I can go work for an oil company or I could go back to academia," he said, "but the personal gratification of doing something where you can clearly see the results of your work, and where you feel you are providing a unique benefit to the artists — that's what keeps me coming here every day."
See the full story here: http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-80874109/
Thiel Fellow’s Elegant Sleep Tracker, Sense, Crushes Kickstarter With $120K In A Few Hours
In addition to tracking temperature and light, his device has a particulate sensor that can detect small particles like pollen that can disrupt sleep for people with allergies. A “smart alarm” can wake a person up at the right time in their sleep cycle, like early forerunners in the space from several years ago like the Zeo.
The whole package contains three components. There’s the beautiful spherical sensor, and then a small clip-on called the “Sleep Pill,” that attaches to a person’s pillow and contains a six-axis accelerometer and gyroscope to track tossing and turning. It communicates with the sphere through Bluetooth Low Energy and ANT. There is no pairing or syncing necessary like there is with other wearables like theMisfit Shine, another great product that tracks physical activity on top of sleep.
The last component is a mobile app, of course. It awards a sleep score out of 100 based on the sensor data tracking night time disturbances and ambient light. Sense will give a breakdown of your score and help you start to notice patterns that might be interfering with your sleep.
See the full story here: http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/23/thiel-fellows-elegant-sleep-sensor-the-sense-crushes-kickstarter-with-120k-in-a-few-hours/?ncid=tcdaily
Philips Hue Lights React to ‘Sharknado 2’ for Bloody Cool Effects
Sharknado 2 will mark the first time a TV show will be able to directly control your room lighting. Syfy is partnering with Philips to create a lighting soundtrack or "light track" for the company's Hue-connected LED lights. The entire movie is choreographed, with the lights dimming, brightening or changing color, depending on what's happening on screen.
The secret sauce of the whole experience is the Syfy Sync app, which typically brings the viewer second-screen information, such as actor profiles and trivia. Similar to Shazam, the app uses audio tagging to identify what the viewer is watching, delivering the right content at the right moment. But the Philips integration takes it to another level.The app lets you select lights individually, so if your whole home is wired with Philips Hue, you can constrain the effect to just the TV room. But generally, the more, the merrier — although your neighbors might start to wonder what kind of dance party you're having if you get the whole house involved."You're almost scoring the movie," he said. "You're really going through scene by scene, second by second and determining you're getting this color of light for this long. We look to punctuate scenes — try to not pull you completely out of it — but it's Sharknado, so we could go a little more over the top."See the full story here: http://mashable.com/2014/07/24/sharknado-2-philips-hue-syfy/
