Every day, the dead tree publications become more digital, so does the New Yorker which appointed artist Jorge Colombo to paint its cover using Brushes, an application for the iPhone. He drew the magazine cover with his fingers while standing for one hour in front of Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum in Time Square. Colombo likes the app which allows him to paint in the dark: “Before, unless I had a flashlight or a miner’s hat, I could not draw in the dark.” (When the sun is up, it’s a bit harder, “because of the glare on the phone,” he says.) Brushes Viewer, the companion application, allows to record a video of each step of the drawing, check out the video of Jorge Colombo cover for the New Yorker here. Jorge Colombo will create a new painting each week for the newyorker.com.
[Where 2.0] I saw Earthmine for the first time when it launched at DEMOFall 07: it offers a Street View-like application that has a better image quality than the Google application (at the time of launch) and provides various web 2.0 interactive tools. This street-level 3D mapping technology allows users to collect and use all kinds of geospatial data in urban environments (i.e. buildings measurements, urban inventory), which appeals to a wide range of markets including construction, engineering, architecture, real estate, infrastructure management, transportation.
To add more fun to its pretty serious offering, the company launched Wild Style City (http://www.wildstylecity.com), a virtual graffiti application that lets digital urban artists express their talent using various interactive geo-tagging tools. Wild Style City leverage earthmine's 3D mapping platform and the earthmine Flash Viewer API, which provides access to earthmine’s data library for Adobe Flash, Flex or AIR based applications (in beta). Check out the photo gallery, the demo or try it live, this application is super cool!
Intel is rolling out a new ad campaign that hilarious. It features real-world engineers that are truly "rockstars" (or should be) like Alay Bhatt, the co-inventor of the USB. Check it out.
We know that a lot of you read us from the office (several times a day), so you just got there and you are stressed by work? Check out this stop motion video and relax for 1 minute. Good viral stuff.
Opera takes a stab at making its web browsing a bit more finger-friendly by adding an extra-step where the browsers asks you what you really want to do when clicking on something. The catch is that it is available only UIQ (Symbian) devices.
[DEMO 09] Today Avaak launched Vue a cool video streaming network solution powered by wireless tiny cameras that have a great battery, so this product is somewhat green. The mounts are magnetic and very easy to install anywhere in the house (see photo), they allow any camera angle orientation as well. Super easy to configure, unlike traditional IP camera systems, the Vue Network provides a good solution for remote video monitoring and surveillance.
With a 300 feet range and a proprietary ultra-low power wireless network technology that transmit one million frames on a single battery, this personal video system comes with a web account at vuezone.com where users can manage their multiple video feeds from any Internet enabled device. As much as fifty cameras can be connected to a single gateway (photo vertical device). It retails at $299 (including the web service) and it will be available in early, pre-orders can be placed at www.VueZone.com.
The Onion, a famous “fake news” site has released a video that pokes the consumer electronics (CE) industry in the eye with a fork. Sony was unlucky enough to be chosen to symbolize the industry, we guess more because of their brand name than because of the quality of their product. Anyway, some consumers will find a little of “it’s funny because it’s true” in the video – mainly in relation to how the industry markets new products, and how it is covered in the media. Warning: there are a lot of swear words – you’ve been warned!
PopSci has a great video hands-on of the Samsung Show W7900 that has an integrated micro projector. The projector is best used in a dark room, but basically, the phone can project a 40" image with a decent brightness - which is amazing for such a small device.
The OLED 240x400 display also looks fantastic. The contrast and saturation are just unbelievable. At the moment, the user interface homepage is widget-based, which is comparable to the Samsung OMNIA that we just reviewed. (Video in the full post)
[CES 2009] Alongside its updated version of the Camera Mask, Liquid Image is coming up with two new HD models. The Scuba HD320 shoots 720P(1280x720) video at 30 fps and will be certified for 115 feet (35 meters) underwater. Additional lighting is recommend below 5 meters, check out the photo gallery to see the lights attachments.
It will be available worldwide in Spring 2009 at an estimated price of $215.
[CES 2009] Liquid Image is coming with a line of new products for CES 2009. The Videomask 310 is an upgrade of the award winning Camera Mask launched in 2008. The original version recorded 20 frames per second in VGA, had a 3 megapixel camera and was certified for a 5 meters depth. The new version is 720x 480, records 30 frame per second , and will be tested and certified to a depth of 33 feet (10 meters). In addition there are 3 light attachments (see picture in the photo gallery) that allow the underwater photographer to keep the image quality when diving below 5 meters. It will retail worldwide for an estimated price of $159 in February 2009.
YouTube has been playing with higher quality movies for some time, but it seems that the feature has now been fully deployed for all to use and watch. Often you'll see or hear the term "HD" and in general it really means "higher quality". It might be possible to upload 720p (1280x720) movies, but so far, I have not seen anything that remotely feels like 720p quality when viewed in fullscreen. Yet, this is a great improvement for YouTube.
From a business standpoint, this is even more interesting: YouTube is still not profitable due to the high cost of storage and bandwidth and this cost is just about to go even higher. In return, better video quality will attract video makers and viewers. At the same time, competitors are going to find themselves in a place where it is tough to compete, given that they too are having a hard time to monetize their sites. The difference is that Google has much deeper pockets than anyone else in this field.
Watch the above video of Remi Kart from French prankster Rémi Gaillard and have a good laugh - after all, more than half the work week is gone and you deserve a break even if for a couple of minutes. Rémi Gaillard must've loved Nintendo's karting franchise so much that he actually took the pains to dress up like Mario and drive a go-cart around the streets of France. You won't have as much fun watching this compared to playing the actual thing though, take our word for it.
[South Africa Blogging Tour 08] Nic Haralambous is part of the Blogging Tour and the General Manager of Zoopy. Founded in 2006 by Pat Elk, Jason Elk and Gerry da Silva, Zoopy is the South African Youtube and a new version was just launched on Monday. I took the opportunity to talk with Nic about the new website during the bus trip to !Kwa ttu, the cultural center of the San people.
In South Africa, the bandwidth is expensive and Yoututbe does not have a server there, so it takes forever to upload movies. There was a real need for a local video sharing site and Vodacom, one of the three mobile carriers in South Africa, is an investor in the company since early 2008. The new features include the launch of Zoopy TV, 3 channels where journalists with “extreme blogging training” (Nic), post breakings news nation wide, the multiple uploads capability (up to 20 files simultaneously), and the mobile version, available at m.zoopy.com.
