Devin Coldewey is a Seattle-based writer and photographer. He has written for the TechCrunch network since 2007.
Some posts he’d like you to read:
The Dangers of Externalizing Knowledge | Generation i | Surveillant Society | Choose Two | Frame Wars | The User’s Manifesto | Our Great Sin
His personal website is coldewey.cc.
A couple years back, I got to take part in the production of a music video being shot locally on a RED and filmed partially on board a custom helicopter build. It was interesting watching the operator and director work using the rig, but I was struck by how very specialized the copter was. Built from scratch by AerialPan Imaging, it was far from a personalized or affordable solution.
A new Kickstarter project called eye3 intends to make just that: an affordable aerial platform that can be automated and controlled from afar, yet is robust and customizable enough to meet the demands of serious photographers. → Read More
Oh god! Megaupload has fallen and its brethren are dropping like flies! The age of the cyberlocker is passing. No longer will we be able to host a large file somewhere for free and have someone else download it.
Actually, it’s not quite so dire, but it’s true that a number of major file hosts have either shut down, closed part of their service, or changed the way they operate. It’s not the first time that file-sharing tools have received a shock to the system, though, and this little contraction is less the end of an era and more a winnowing of the herd. That’s a good thing. → Read More
Sony has announced a new line of image sensors that will, in all likelihood, end up in dozens of smartphone models. The improvement is not in megapixels, which have more or less hit a ceiling, but in the actual layout of the light-sensitive wells that make up the pixels in the image.
The new sensors have, in addition to the usual red, green, and blue-filtered pixels, an unfiltered pixel element as well that will accept any wavelength of light. It can’t be used to determine color, but it will add (they say) to both sensitivity and brightness. Essentially what they’re doing is including a hard luminance-detecting element. This is good, much more accurate than taking the average from the RGB elements, and should in fact make low-light photography significantly better. → Read More
You can’t always count on the wisdom of crowds. But this particular project turned out not merely good, but amazing. Star Wars Uncut is a project by filmmaker Casey Pugh (and edited by Aaron Valdez and Michael Pugh), in which Star Wars: A New Hope was divided into 15-second segments, each of which was replicated by fans in whatever way they chose. Connect the new segments and voila! Crowdsourced magic.
Watch the video inside. → Read More
Imagine you’re a hunter-killer robot, hovering over the broken wasteland that used to be the world of men. You have surprised a group of biologicals in an act of petty insurrection, and they have split into two groups and begun to flee. You can only pursue and eliminate one group, but you don’t have the spare milliseconds to analyze your high-definition imagery; yet you must determine which group is greater if you want to meet your termination quota.
It’s a good thing that back in 2012, a university lab in Italy helped machines like you evolve approximate number sense! → Read More
Google appears to have made some changes to its account creation process. Whereas before, all it took was an email address of any kind and some basic demographic data, now you are required to create both a Gmail account and a presence on Google+. This doesn’t strike me as a user-friendly change. → Read More
Microsoft’s quarterly earnings statement didn’t have any big surprises. It was generally good news: record total revenue, growth in many key sectors, big sales in Xbox, 525 million total Windows 7 licenses sold, and they even seem to be losing a little less money in the Online Services area. But all that is a side show. 2011 was a big one for Microsoft in mobile (at least, big in that they took major actions), but for their core businesses it has been a hold-steady year. 2012 will be an adventure.
Windows 8 is Microsoft’s next big thing. And trends suggest that by the time Windows 9 comes around, things in the personal computing industry may look a lot different. The way they handle this next phase will set the stage for the inevitable “post-PC era” changes. → Read More
Popular file-hosting site Megaupload, probably known to our readers for a variety of reasons, has been taken down after the FBI charged some of its staff with copyright infringement and “conspiracy to commit racketeering.” Seven people have been charged, and four arrested (in New Zealand), and the site itself appears to be down as authorities around the world closed in on the site’s resources.
Bizarrely, it was also just revealed that the CEO of the company is none other than Swizz Beats, the husband of Alicia Keys. Clearly the rabbit hole goes much deeper than the FBI expected. → Read More
Occasionally, in this line of work, I need to have a slight freak-out moment where I rave about the fact that things like this OrcaM “reconstruction sphere” actually exist. Not only does this thing look like a prop out of a sci-fi movie (or Transmetropolitan), but it acts like one as well. → Read More
Google generally gets in hot water when it is thought to be abusing its pole position in the search industry. But it’s no use denying that while some moves skirt the edges of abusing monopoly, others are more than welcome. During natural disasters, for instance, Google has provided helpful links and resources for people who want to donate or volunteer. And their logo doodles pay homage to personages and events many people would otherwise have overlooked.
Today must rank among the best applications of their choice placement: a link on the Google homepage and thousands of shares have produced a mind-blowing 4.5 million signatures on their anti-SOPA petition. → Read More
Hundreds of websites (TechCrunch included) have gone dark or visibly changed their appearance as a protest against the Stop Online Privacy Act and its Senate doppelganger, the PROTECT IP Act. It’s a powerful statement and many are saying that it is already producing effects: Senators are changing positions, awareness is rising, and the opposition is becoming a dinner-table topic.
But is this activism?
I’m not asking whether it’s a good thing (it certainly is) or whether it is effective in guiding policy (it certainly might be), but whether it is right to call it activism. → Read More
The Playstation Vita handheld system, unveiled at E3 last year, went on sale just before the holidays in Japan. It saw serious sales: around 325,000 units (500,000 by Sony’s reckoning) were sold in its opening week. Naturally numbers tend to drop after the initial rush, and the next week saw healthy sales of around 72,000. But The numbers kept decreasing, and it is now reported that for the week ending January 15, the new device sold only 18,361 units, not including online sales. That’s less than the PSP. → Read More
It’s not often that you improve on a bit of math that has been around for 200 years. The Fourier transform was first proposed in 1811 by a Frenchman named Joseph Fourier, though it wasn’t until the middle of the 20th century that he was given the credit he deserved. His technique broke down a complex signal into a number of component signals, which could be transmitted or processed separately and then recombined to produce the original in a fairly nondestructive way.
In 1965 the Fourier transform got a boost as James Cooley and John Tukey discovered a way to apply the transform on the fly using a computer. And now, in 2012, another major improvement has been proposed. → Read More
President and CEO of the Motion Pictures Association of America Chris Dodd has issued a strongly-worded statement regarding tomorrow’s planned outages and protests relating to the SOPA and PIPA legislation. If you didn’t already think the MPAA was a ship of fools, this will convince you once and for all. → Read More
Some of Facebook’s scholars-in-residence have published an analysis of approximately 283 million Facebook users’ sharing habits. The study, which has to do with the paths by which information is caught up and shared — which types of friends share the most, where you post the most content from, and so on. The study itself was, no doubt, spurred by honest intellectual curiosity, but the summary on Facebook a slightly editorializing bent that suggests things were more purposeful.
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Our readers are probably familiar in passing with UltraViolet, a new content rights management system that is supposed to unify the rights architecture on the web, allowing cross-platform sharing and authentication of movies and TV. But for such a major effort by so many device makers and content producers, very little has been heard or said about it. Probably because it’s still in its infancy: only 19 titles with UV compatibility were released in 2011, and the first signups occurred in October. Yet despite its tender age and low profile, the most common sentiment has been one of preemptive rejection.
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If you’re wondering why we didn’t stop by to test out the Samsung SUR40 touch-table, AKA the Surface 2.0, during CES, there’s a good reason: we did that last year. The device, while impressive, isn’t exactly new. But as it has little in the way of competition — the Surface is the nonpareil of touch tables — they probably didn’t feel they needed to get it out in any kind of hurry.
The device, which costs $8400 and ships this month, must be quite a bit more attractive than the original to companies eager to spruce up their public spaces. The old Surface was kind of a chunk, and the limited resolution was no help, either. Oh, and the price. The new Surface beats it handily in every respect. It’s flatter, lighter, wall-mountable, and 1080p. → Read More
CES 2012 has come and gone, and it’s time for the inevitable summary and think pieces on the directions the industry is heading, the highlights of the show, and so on. We’ll also be posting some interviews and highlights from our live coverage this week, but before that it is, of course, necessary to publish some sort of top 10 list.
So here are five winners and five losers of CES, as judged by those of us who went to the show, and with consideration both for the limited, short-term nature of the show itself and the longer-term sea of trends on which these companies and devices are sailing. → Read More
Our coverage of CES is coming to a close, and we’re finishing it off with a third and final video podcast from the show floor. We’ve got some really great stuff to give away, both for viewers and our audience here at the booth. After this, our live CES coverage is concluded and we’ll be focusing on posting some of the highlights from it, as well as our lists and editorials relating to the show. Then, sadly, it’s back to business as usual.
The show starts at 4PM sharp! Read on for details on the giveaways. We’re talking cameras and helicopters here. → Read More
It’s day three of CES, and our last one here. The show goes on for one more day, but we’re taking off, since after today we’ll have gone through all the major sections of the show. Day one was the central hall, with the major CE companies’ building-sized “booths,” then day two was the cavernous south hall, populated with smaller vendors. Now we’re off to the north hall, where we’ll find car tech, health gadgets, and tons of accessories for the devices many of us have. Live coverage starts at 9:30!
And in the afternoon, we’ll be starting things off with a nice hot shave. Yes, you read that correctly. → Read More
