When Facebook announced their $2 billion acquisition of Oculus Rift, Jaunt swears it took them by surprise. The small Silicon Valley company is working on the goal of creating cameras and audio recording equipment that lets anyone create a fully immersive, 360-degree virtual world. Jaunt's particular product goal, which still is in prototype mode, is a modular camera system designed for immersive films.
Done right, Jaunt's product can be amazing. I sat down for a demo viewing several weeks ago of some of the company's sample videos in downtown Los Angeles. As I strapped on a prototype Oculus Rift headset (Jaunt's leadership notes that their movies can be viewed on any other VR headset, and indeed on tablets and smartphones as well), I was impressed. Various clips of a day in the park in San Francisco, of martial arts demonstrations, and of other outdoor events came through with full immersive video and all-engulfing audio. Instead of the polygons and almost-real-but-not-quite textures of other Oculus products I had used, this was real video.
And Jaunt's pioneering work is just one part of a growing ecosystem of tech companies adopting Oculus Rift for all sorts of commercial purposes.
Condition One is a small San Francisco startup devoted to making movies for Oculus Rift. They are working in much the same sphere as Jaunt, and the company plans to release a movie for Oculus called Zero Point later this year. Judging by the trailer, it's an intriguing proof-of-concept for Oculus as a movie-watching platform.
A laboratory at the University of Southern California is exploring ways to turn the Oculus Rift and headsets like them into journalism devices. Late last year, I wrote about how a researcher at USC named Nonny de la Pena is working with Google, the Associated Press, and the Tribeca Film Institute to create 3-D, fully immersive journalism through virtual reality. Two fully-immersive videos her lab has put out so far place users in a food bank line where a bystander is going into diabetic shock, and at the U.S.-Mexico border when a man was beaten to death by Border Patrol officers.
See the full story here: http://www.fastcolabs.com/3030732/the-oculus-business-ecosystem?curator=MediaREDEF
Harris drew inspiration for the startup when he helped form the band Riot !n Paris, and found that interactive versions of their music videos did significantly better than videos in standard formats. He realized that there was a need for easy-to-use technology that could be used to create interactive videos.
See the full story here: http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/13/adventr-launch/
“Games for the Morpheus are going to be very different,” said Jed Ashforth, a senior game designer with Sony, who has spent the past 18 months playing and experiencing everything virtual reality has to offer to discover what’s possible with the new headsets. “The sense of having a presence within the game is something totally new. It’s a very different experience.”
See the full story here: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/12/sonys-project-morpheus-virtual-reality-console-gaming?curator=MediaREDEF
Izitru (pronounced: “is it true”) allows users to upload images that they are skeptical of, and puts the images through six forensic tests to create a “trust rating” in return.
Although Dr. Farid intended the service to be used by citizen journalists to verify whether a source is accurate or not, Izitru has great potential beyond that.
Insurance companies could verify that claimants’ accident photos are real, and could use Izitru in their online claim forms. Internet auction businesses such as eBay, could use the service to add credibility to the images of items offered for sale.
“Nobody would deny there is a need to authenticate photos,” said Dr. Farid. “More and more photojournalists are putting images out there. This is a way of getting people into the habit of bypassing the doubt.”
See the full story here: http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/07/photos-trusted-but-verified/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0
When we release information and only a small number of users use that information, we’ve generated—as a government—an informational asymmetry. That’s not cool. We shouldn’t be doing that. We need to engage more broadly than we currently are, even if the people on the good end of that informational asymmetry are well-intentioned actors—whether they’re civic activists or private citizens or academics or educators or whatever. It’s still not right. That’s a bad impact, in my view.
And then there are obvious problems, like a stalker. If I want to root around about person A, B, and C, it’s infinitely easier now than it ever was. And then misunderstanding the information is the other problem that’s big. It’s just data. They’re just LEGOs. It’s not the building; they’re bricks. It’s not the building.
See the full article here: http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/public_sector/Learning_from_New_York_Citys_open_data_effort?cid=other-eml-alt-mgi-mck-oth-1405
Moving your head around with Oculus controls the drone's camera, but not its movement. Using a VR headset means you'll need to practice up with the Skycontroller beforehand, since you won't be able to see it with something covering your eyes.
See the full story here: http://www.engadget.com/2014/05/11/parrot-bebop/
On Thursday, OMsignal unveiled four shirts that sense your heart and breathing levels via electrodes knitted into the fabric. These signals, plus details of your movements, are recorded by a gadget that snaps into a pocket on the side of the shirt; an accompanying iPhone app shows stats like calories burned and steps moved and aims to tell you things like how much energy you have left before you’ll feel spent. ...
Lucy Dunne, an associate professor of apparel design and wearable technology at the University of Minnesota, says that taking clinically accurate readings of physiological signals is hard with textiles because it’s difficult to get good contact with the body. “But it seems as if they’re aiming more at a lifestyle, quantified-self application,” she says. “From that, you can extrapolate if there’s a little bit of consistency in the signal you can still get an estimate, which can be really useful as well.”
As far as durability, Marceau says the shirt has held up through 50 wash cycles so far. It has made it through the dryer, although OMsignal recommends air drying. Though the black box is water-resistant, it’s not meant to be washed with the shirt.
Even if the shirts hold up in the wash, Becky Stern, director of wearable electronics at DIY electronics company Adafruit Industries, points out that sweat could eventually prove harmful. That’s because there’s salt in sweat, and salt corrodes silver, which could reduce the conductivity of the metal in the shirt.
[Philip Lelyveld comment: the comments capture the heart of the debate: either this is a misuse of public assets by the technology elite (one poster asks, what's next, selling your metro seat?), or a blind service with no responsibility for its users' actions.]
It was inevitable. In a place where you could pay for almost anything to come to you via mobile, to have empty parking spots eventually come to you via mobile. That is the premise behind Italian app MonkeyParking, which allows you to “sell” your parking spot (or rather, the inside information about whether your parking spot will be available shortly) starting at $5.
...
As far as I can see (Twitter) tech people are lauding MonkeyParking as the most novel form of “sharing economy” yield management yet, and SF veteransare arguing that it is yet another example of a tech corporation profiting off of public space. I guess the moderate view is that it’s some sort of Italian anarchist performance art.
See the full story here: http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/10/apesht/?ncid=tcdaily
[Philip Lelyveld comment: Tracy Fullerton gets much-deserved recognition for 10+ years of stretching the boundaries of the gaming experience and building the USC SCA gaming program. ]
Players of the forthcoming “Walden” have the abstract goal of discovering how to live a life of balance somewhere between society and nature. “Walden” may not represent what we regularly see on home video game systems, but it does bear a similarity to one particular game we’re all rather familiar with.
“This is a game in the way that life is a game,” said its creator, professor Tracy Fullerton. The 48-year-old was once a full-time game designer but now runs USC’s Interactive Media & Games division within the School of Cinematic Arts, which has a staff of more than 20, including part-time lecturers.
See the full story here: http://herocomplex.latimes.com/games/uscs-game-changer-tracy-fullerton-at-it-again/
To deepen the sense of intimacy in the Palace Theatre, "Holler's" creators decided to radically change its seating, spending $200,000 to reposition the ground-level orchestra seats into the kind of stadium seating common in movie theaters.
Rows A-J now rise in a direct line from the edge of the stage up to the front mezzanine, a change that has the added effect of focusing performers' delivery upward, fitting for a show that includes the Shakur song "Keep Ya Head Up."
See the full story here: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304279904579515591521063088
Izitru (pronounced: “is it true”) allows users to upload images that they are skeptical of, and puts the images through six forensic tests to create a “trust rating” in return.
Moving your head around with Oculus controls the drone's camera, but not its movement. Using a VR headset means you'll need to practice up with the Skycontroller beforehand, since you won't be able to see it with something covering your eyes.
[Philip Lelyveld comment: Tracy Fullerton gets much-deserved recognition for 10+ years of stretching the boundaries of the gaming experience and building the USC SCA gaming program. ]