Facebook-owned virtual reality company Oculus VR said today it will host a developer conference in late September. Oculus Connect is planned for Sept. 19-20 in Los Angeles and will feature keynote talks from CEO Brendan Iribe, founder Palmer Luckey, CTO John Carmack and chief scientist Michael Abrash. Oculus also said it had acquired a networking middleware company, RakNet; it’s the company’s second recent acquisition, followingCarbon Design.
See more details here: http://www.oculusvr.com/connect/
[Philip Lelyveld comment: The EFF makes three good recommendations in this editorial. Like any good advocacy organization, they usually greatly overstate threats and underplay the negative ramifications of their positions ("While the threat of incarceration continues to stifle innovation on and off campus,..." much more in the EFF's mind than in the real world), but these are well-reasoned and workable - at least on first read.]
There are some simple steps that universities can take to foster inventiveness in their campus communities:
1. Create a legal intake mechanism or program for students who receive subpoenas and are threatened by computer crime laws. Student innovators need to know where to go to receive help.
2. Publish a guide on CFAA and in-state computer crime laws so that students and researchers can better understand the contours of the laws that may be leveraged against them.
3. Universities should be pushing for computer crime legal reform and come out with strong institutional support for reform efforts on the federal and state level.
- Read the full story here: http://www.wired.com/2014/07/students-who-push-tech-boundaries-should-be-encouraged-not-punished?curator=MediaREDEF
[Philip Lelyveld comment: I love the main caveat toward the end - the 4K set you bought already is "completely incompatible" with this new standard!]
4K TV channels in the UK took a step closer to reality over the weekend after a new Ultra HD TV broadcast specification was approved for Europe by the DVB Steering Board.
The new DVB-UHDTV Phase 1 specification allows for the over-the-air transmission of 3840x2160 resolution pictures at 60Hz and promises much improved colour depth with 10 bits per pixel rather than 8.
Once officially standardised, this specification will surely open the floodgates for 4K TV services to launch both on satellite and over-the-air platforms across Europe.
While great news for 4K enthusiasts, there are some caveats to all this excitement. The main one being that the new specification is completely incompatible with any of today's TV tuners, even the ones inside brand new 4K TVs with HEVC decoding built-in.
So if you've bought a 4K TV already, you'll need to splash out on a set-top box as and when. If all goes to plan, we would expect compatible TVs to start shipping in 2015.
See the full story here: http://www.techradar.com/news/television/tv/4k-tv-channels-on-the-way-as-dvb-uhdtv-standard-is-approved-1256181
[Philip Lelyveld comment: Wow! Trying to win hearts and minds in the Net Neutrality debate.]
When videos blur, buffer, or won’t play altogether, YouTube is now pinning the blame on your internet service provider.
“Experiencing interruptions?” reads the message in a blue bar underneath choppy video, as seen in the above screenshot. Clicking “find out why” brings you toGoogle’s new website, where it displays video playback quality for internet service providers (ISPs) in various countries. It’s like a report card for your delinquent ISP.
See the full story here: http://qz.com/230603/youtube-like-netflix-is-now-publicly-shaming-internet-providers-for-slow-video/
Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg's PewDiePie channel is at the top of the charts this week with an incredible nine-figure view count. The 24-year-old Swedish gamer's YouTube channel scored more than 100,424,123 million views during the week, an impressive 22% increase over the week prior. Meanwhile, Shakira is in a far distant second place. The international pop star whose World Cup anthem, "La La La (Brazil 2014) ft. Carlinhos Brown" is still getting a lot of online video play, ended the week with more than 58.7 million views.
In third place is DisneyCollectorBR. The longtime chart topper and online video destination for videos of adults playing with children's toys ended the week with almost 55.9 million views. Up next in the #4 spot is StamyLongHead. The UK-based online video gamer nearly 43.3 million views in the last seven days. And rounding out the Top 5 is Katy Perry. Despite no major music video releases within the last several weeks, the singer was still able to obtain nearly 42.1 million views on the week.
See the full story with links here: http://www.tubefilter.com/2014/07/04/top-50-most-viewed-youtube-channels-worldwide-week-of-070414/
The 11 companies selected to participate in the Disney Accelerator program are:
- Buzzstarter - Buzzstarter is the world's first scalable programmatic content marketing platform.
- ChoreMonster - ChoreMonster is a web and mobile platform that makes chores fun for kids and turns parents into superheroes.
- Codarica - Codarica serves as children’s first interaction into the world of code with help from characters Cody Coder and Holly Hacker.
- Cogo - Cogo provides video monetization solutions for content creators.
- Jogg - Jogg simplifies the act of acquiring video from anyone. Users can gather, edit and share much more than just video from their own device.
- Sphero - Sphero is the connected play company, which fuses digital and physical play by creating robots that you control with a smart device.
- Sidelines - Sidelines fixes the problem of substandard online discussions and comments by sourcing smart, high-quality discussions from its curated team of over 400 experts, and distributing these discussions to publishers based on relevance.
- SnowShoe - SnowShoe makes simple, magical pieces of plastic that interact with touch screens to create the perfect bridge between physical items and digital content.
- Twigtale - Twigtale provides parents with personalized, high-quality, accessible expert advice for every major transition a child undergoes.
- TYFFON - TYFFON is an entertainment app development company and creator of the ZombieBooth series with more than 25 million total downloads.
- Ubooly - Ubooly is a learning toy that talks and listens to kids. Ubooly can be customized to know your child's name, teach lessons, and much more.
See the full story here: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/walt-disney-company-announces-participants-150000249.html
While a great deal of attention has been lavished on the habits and behaviors of Millennials (born in the 1980s and 1990s), another generation of digital natives is coming of age. To better understand the motivations, perceptions and browsing habits of these “digital kids,” Huge conducted multiple focus groups with an ethnically and economically diverse group of ten-year-olds to hear in their own words what excites them and how they discover new content.
As children spend more and more time with mobile screens (both phones and tablets), they are becoming increasingly sophisticated at navigating these interfaces. At the same time, the influence of offline media on their desires and discovery behavior remains pervasive, even if total time spent with these media is declining. Huge also observed childrens’ online behavior. We discovered that this cohort is far savvier online than most marketers give them credit for.
...
Kids are functional and task-oriented browsers. The vast majority of their visual interactive experiences, on sites like Cool Math 4 Kids, would make most designers shudder. Bright colors, cluttered interfaces, and non-intuitive navigation are endemic to these experiences but are not necessarily seen as an impediment to use. Rather than drive kids away, they appear to act as beacons, alerting children that these are experiences meant for them, rather than for adults.
...
While children enjoy engaging in “play” through the use of customization features, as seen in experiences such as Nike iD, the influence of their peers and siblings is pervasive in determining what’s “cool.” Repeatedly, participants noted that something is cool “if a lot of people have it.” This dependence on friends to help delineate what makes something cool seems at odds with the desire to customize items. In fact, children are not that different in that aspiration than teenagers or adults, who want simultaneously to fit in with their friends and co-workers and also to express their individual taste. This tension, born from the countercultural ethos of the 1960s, sought authenticity and rejected conformity while at the same time was co-opted by mainstream popular culture and marketing. It is still relevant today.
...
When we asked participants how they find out about new content or products they want, most cited a TV commercial. Despite the increase in time spent with mobile devices such as phones and tablets (within these focus groups, every child had access to a tablet and preferred to use it to surf online, regardless of family income), the influence of TV is still pervasive. Seeing an ad for something on TV is still a powerful way to fan the flames of desire for children. Additionally, offline channels such as magazines and catalogues (the children have a hard time distinguishing the difference between the two) are also potent motivators for choosing the products they covet.
See the full story here: http://www.hugeinc.com/ideas/report/digital-kids?curator=MediaREDEF
De la Peña has made several immersive virtual-reality documentary films including Project Syria, about refugee children in Syria, which was commissioned by the World Economic Forum, and Hunger in Los Angeles, a film about access to food banks in the U.S. that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2012.
“I start with eyewitness video, audio, and photographs and then carefully reconstruct an event with high-end animations, environment models, and spatial soundscapes to create a first-person experience of the events,” De la Peña explains.
New modes of storytelling could have broad cultural and social impact.
De la Peña is a former classmate of Oculus Rift’s creator, Palmer Luckey (see “10 Breakthrough Technologies 2014: Oculus Rift”). In 2012, the pair studied under Mark Bolas, a researcher who runs the Mixed Reality Lab at the University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies. Hunger in Los Angeleswas, in fact, created with help from Luckey and other USC students.
De la Peña describes her work as “immersive journalism.” While the work is more challenging than traditional reporting—managing teams of animators, character designers, 3-D modelers, and sound designers—she insists that the medium draws upon the same skills and effort necessary for all strong journalism. “Source material captured at real events is necessary to really make these pieces work,” she says, “and that always takes a lot of time and effort whether you are using traditional news platforms or virtual reality.”
See the full story here: http://www.technologyreview.com/news/527931/will-virtual-reality-reshape-documentary-journalism/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20140704
Koons, more than any other artist, has embraced the new possibilities that open up when you can charge seven- or even eight-figure sums for a single piece: his art is like the new luxury apartment buildings going up in Manhattan, which only make financial sense once the residences inside can sell for more than $5,000 per square foot. Koons’s art might be empty; it might be banal. But Koons does something very interesting, which very few other artists do. He turns money into art, rather than just turning art into money.
See the full story here: http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/jul/03/jeff-koons-master-innovator-whitney-money-art?curator=MediaREDEF
How about one that makes fake reservations at restaurants and then sells them to the highest bidder?
The assumption in Mayer’s post — and, it seems, the assumption behind similar business models like ParkingMonkey or Sweetch — is that if something can be monetized, then it should be. It’s as though capitalism, or tech-startup life, was a game in which founders try to spot loopholes in the laws or social contracts that govern our behavior, and then figure out ways to get someone to pay to exploit them. This isn’t necessarily a recipe for disaster, but it avoids any question about whether such loopholes *should* be monetized. As Mayer puts it: “If someone does pay for it willingly, is it really unethical?” Well yes, maybe it is.
See the full story here: http://gigaom.com/2014/07/04/its-getting-harder-to-tell-whats-a-real-silicon-valley-startup-and-whats-a-parody/?curator=MediaREDEF
[Philip Lelyveld comment: Wow! Trying to win hearts and minds in the Net Neutrality debate.]
Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg's PewDiePie channel is at the top of the charts this week with an incredible nine-figure view count. The 24-year-old Swedish gamer's YouTube channel scored more than 100,424,123 million views during the week, an impressive 22% increase over the week prior. Meanwhile, Shakira is in a far distant second place. The international pop star whose World Cup anthem, "La La La (Brazil 2014) ft. Carlinhos Brown" is still getting a lot of online video play, ended the week with more than 58.7 million views.
While a great deal of attention has been lavished on the habits and behaviors of Millennials (born in the 1980s and 1990s), another generation of digital natives is coming of age. To better understand the motivations, perceptions and browsing habits of these “digital kids,” Huge conducted multiple focus groups with an ethnically and economically diverse group of ten-year-olds to hear in their own words what excites them and how they discover new content.
Koons, more than any other artist, has embraced the new possibilities that open up when you can charge seven- or even eight-figure sums for a single piece: his art is like the new luxury apartment buildings going up in Manhattan, which only make financial sense once the residences inside can sell for more than $5,000 per square foot. Koons’s art might be empty; it might be banal. But Koons does something very interesting, which very few other artists do. He turns money into art, rather than just turning art into money.