http://blip.tv/scripts/flash/showplayer.swf?enablejs=true&file=http%3A%2F%2Fcrunchgear%2Eblip%2Etv%2Frss%2Fflash%2F&showplayerpath=http%3A%2F%2Fblip%2Etv%2Fscripts%2Fflash%2Fshowplayer%2Eswf → Read More
http://blip.tv/scripts/flash/showplayer.swf?enablejs=true&feedurl=http%3A%2F%2Fcrunchgear%2Eblip%2Etv%2Frss&file=http%3A%2F%2Fblip%2Etv%2Frss%2Fflash%2F800411&showplayerpath=http%3A%2F%2Fblip%2Etv%2Fscripts%2Fflash%2Fshowplayer%2Eswf This video is unedited, so my apologies for the inclusion of any unwanted extra footage, but I wanted to get it up ASAP. → Read More
With the DEMO 2008 conference kicking off today, a bunch of tech companies are making announcements. Here are some of the highlights: BitGravity Content delivery network BitGravity is launching its streaming video offering, BG LiveBroadcast. The company aims to make streaming video online as instantaneous and high-quality as streaming video on TV, while adding an extra layer of interactivity and customization. BitGravity already provides on-demand (i.e. recorded) video delivery for fifty clients, including Revision3 and Tom Green. Its streaming video service promises to bring the same robust scalability to live events, allowing thousands if not millions of viewers to watch the same shows simultaneously. If you want to stream live events using BitGravity, you can request a machine from them that will come preloaded with all the requisite software. Costs will then accrue depending on how much bandwidth you consume. Blist Blist, a web-based application that promises to make database management as easy as using Excel, is launching in private beta this Tuesday. A number of improvements have been made to the product’s design since we covered it this past November. Of particular note is a new “visual query builder” that makes the construction of complex queries easy with a drag-n-drop interface. Blist’s approach to relational data is also notable; relationships are established primarily in the “design” phase of database construction, obviating the need to explicitly extract relational data during query time. If you become Blist beta tester, head over to InviteShare to share your five invites with others. Eyealike Eyealike is announcing a service called Eyealike Copyright that will hunt down copyrighted material found in videos posted across the web. Eyealike purportedly has a knack for finding copyright material mixed in with user generated content on sites like YouTube. The company claims that its technology can “process hundreds of images and video clips per minute by still objects, object movement, and facial recognition” with 95% accuracy and a “near zero false positive rate.” Its web interface, pictured left, features a prominent “Send Notification” button that will allow companies like Viacom to speed up the process by which they send out take-down requests. GoldMail With GoldMail, you can send slideshows accompanied by audio messages to friends, family, and business contacts. The goal is to enrich communication over the net by providing a way to send not only your voice but visual materials, such as photos and diagrams, that reinforce your → Read More
For any aspiring guitarists out there, here is a site for you. iVideosongs is launching at DEMO today after two years in the making. It offers video tutorials on how to play guitar from world-class instructors, musicians and sidemen. You won’t find instruction videos from Slash here (yet), but there are guitar videos from Graham Nash, John Oates, and Alex Lifeson (the guitarist from Rush). This site seems to be aimed squarely at the aging Baby Boomer male who still wans to play guitar. And there are a lot of those. But, actually, anyone can learn from the videos, which are quite good. The videos are large and clearly show closeups of exactly what you need to do. The startup was founded in 2006, and has raised $3 million in angel funding. It’s spent the past two years licensing rights to song libraries from all the major music publishers. The site offers some free tutorial videos, but most cost $5 (for instructor videos) or $10 (for artist videos). Compare this to $35 to $40 an hour for guitar lessons. That’s the beauty of the Internet: you can be taught by the best instructors at a fraction of what they would charge you for a one-on-one session. With each download, you get one song, broken up into bite-sized chapters for learning a song’s intro, verse, chorus, bridge, and outro. Artist videos also include interiews where they talk about their influences, guitar-picking history, and inspiration for a particular song. The site is launching with a catalog of 50 songs, plus 25 free tutorials. By the end of the year, it hopes to have 1,000 different songs. Instructions for how to play the drums and keyboard are available as well. Here are some more screen shots: → Read More
Blu-ray 2.0 gets demoed and looks kind of cool. I feel like a lot of the stuff going on in the video has been available on HD DVD, but I could be wrong. Video can be found here. → Read More
I haven’t been to Japan in over two decades, so I’m pretty sure I’m due for a trip out East. We know Street Fighter IV is coming and now we’re being told that a playable demo is coming next month. The product manager spilled the beans on the game’s official Japanese Weblog days ago. If you’re in or around Tokyo on February 15th you may want to visit the AOU 2008 Amusement Expo. Tell us all about it and you’ll surely be the talk of the town. Street Fighter IV Going Playable [IGN UK] → Read More
Did he say ‘oogle’? Download the SDK here. It’s so easy to build an app and play Sudoku! Watch the other videos after the jump. → Read More
Here’s a pretty in-depth look at the interface on the new Zune 80GB. I won’t lie, it looks pretty slick. → Read More
I’m with Vince on this whole BioShock thing. I don’t know anything about it, but after watching the trailers and perusing the Web for other tidbits I won’t lie when I say this is going to be an awesome game. So frigging awesome that I’m going to reinstall Bootcamp or, now that I think about it, VMWare Fusion just so I can download and play the demo tonight! It’s going to be awesome. Set an alarm for 7PM EST. Oh, be sure to download the latest drivers from ATI and Nvidia or else the 1.84 gigs of awesomeness will have you pulling your hair out. Fileplanet will have some exclusive pre-loading business, so be sure to hunker down for a couple hours. Ken Levine wants you to stay away from the message boards if you don’t like spoilers, too. Cult of Rapture → Read More
Very few video games hold my interest except for Tetris, Moto GP 3 and whatever FIFA game I have for my PS2. It’s no secret that I loathe the PS3 and I make it known if anyone asks my opinion on it or even if they don’t ask. It’s a terrible console, but it may have piqued my interest if for only 2 seconds. I’ve been a hardcore Gran Turismo fan since Day 1. I remember getting GT3 and playing it for days straight until I achieved all the licenses. Anyways, the trailer for GT5 emerged for the PS3 at E3 and let me tell you how excited I am about it. It even makes me want to purchase the over-sized hunk of junk. What say you? → Read More
I need to book my next flight ASAP. Nintendo is getting ready to test out ‘download stations’ at the international airports in New York (JFK: Terminals 2 and 3), Atlanta (Hartsfield-Jackson) and Cincinnati (Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky). What are they testing? That’s a very good question and I have the answer for you. Nintendo DS owners will be wirelessly downloading a handful of demos including Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Legend and Cooking Mama. Good idea, Nintendo, but not everyone has a DS. Free Nintendo DS Game Demos [Gamer Blorge] → Read More
. Apparently they tried tethering these wireless controllers, but the experience just wasn’t the same and it just made people cry. In unrelated news, Gamestop is not selling Zune games, assuming the Zune plays games, and Sony sucks the big rock because they didn’t give out enough schwag at the annual Gamestop manager’s conference. Kiosk To Require Credit Card? [Kotaku] → Read More
The DEMO conference is underway here in San Diego and some clear trends are emerging among the 67 exclusively selected companies presenting. Many of the products are just launched and still less developed than they could be, but they are exciting none the less. The following are some of the most prominent themes of the conference and my favorite examples of companies working in these directions. Breaking it down Lots of companies presenting are focused on making data and online objects more granular for portability and user manipulation. Pluggd is demonstrating a new technology called HearHere, which uses speech recognition and semantic analysis to let users search inside audio files for key words and related terms that are displayed on a heat map for skipping to relevant parts of a podcast. I posted more details and a screen shot in this post on Pluggd. BuzzLogic is showing off an enterprise social media tracker that’s been two years in development. It discovers and ranks influential blog posts and mainstream media stories about any topic of interest, displays circles of influence in a nice UI and tracks actions taken in response to emerging conversations by a team of users. Priced very low, the company gathers and presents the same kind of data that sophisticated search and RSS could acquire but in one place and a usable format. I think this could be a winner in the race to make the new web usable for non-technical users. MindTouch is unveiling their DekiBox enterprise appliance that, among other things, extracts data from email messages and attachments with one click and places it in a secure wiki. SportsStatz works with high schools and colleges around the country to capture video and stats on sporting events. The company provides cameras and software loaded laptops to the schools and the teams get free game tapes and stats. Just four seconds after real time, individual subscribers to the service can search inside games to find particular highlights and view them on the web or with a mobile device. Highlights from favorite players can be subscribed to and delivered automatically. Clips can be saved, shared and commented on in a social networking environment. The service is in early stages but has completed tracking one season of high school basketball in several states and aims to secure partnerships with 1000 schools by the end of the year. Though the site → Read More
San Francisco, CA
