I’ve sadly (??) never been to burning man, but this time-lapse footage of the playa over five weeks is pretty inspiring. First you see a small group of folks begininning to set things up and then, when the gates open, all heck breaks loose, creating a mini-city in the desert.
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Given the widespread problems folks are having with iOS 5 we thought we’d share a few of the features and associated apps with you all.
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As promised earlier this summer, mobile video calling app Tango has finally made it to the PC. Today, a year after its launch on iOS and Android, Tango is now available for Windows desktop computers (XP, Vista and Windows 7). The company says a Mac version will be available later this year. → Read More
If you told me two-and-a-half decades ago that this tow-headed youngster from Columbus, Ohio who spent his evenings looking up at the stars, engrossed in endless wonder at the boundless horizon of the invisible universe, would one day be able to print on toilet paper in his lifetime, he would have spit at you and then kicked your dog. He was a pretty crappy kid. But it has happened: we can now use off-the-shelf components to print on toilet paper. This is the end of history. → Read More
ComScore’s August web video rankings are in, and this is for sure: Americans watch an enormous amount of online video content, with most of that taking place on — you guessed it — YouTube. Of course, last month, Facebook, already the largest photo site on the Web, became the third largest video site on the Internet in terms of unique viewers. Which I find interesting since I can count the total number of times I’ve watched video on Facebook on two hands.
Yet, comScore’s rankings find Facebook retaining third position in August, with 51.6 million unique viewers, trailing VEVO in second (with 62 million) and Google Sites (i.e. YouTube) at 162 million. Viacom Digital lept into fourth place, while Microsoft dropped into fifth, as Yahoo and Aol remained in sixth and seventh, with their unique views on the rise. → Read More
Is the second time the charm? Probably not, but Devin, Matt, and I all discuss the gadgets lying around our offices including Logitech’s new remote trackpad. We also discuss Deus Ex, Qwikster, and the value of disk-based video services.
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The folks at MIT’s Electronics Research Society know how to put on a show. In this short video they show us a Tesla coil connected to a keyboard that can play jaunty tunes using pure, unadulterated energy. While these guys are no musical virtuosos, they make up for their lack of training by creating an instrument that can feasible flatten you like a blast of heat lightning.
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Austin-based video startup latakoo has a funny name (it’s some kind of lark), but a great idea: make it easier to transfer HD video. Built by a group of journalists and technologists to solve the real-world problem of video-sharing in the newsroom environment, the company has already attracted 40 paying customers, including many TV station groups. With latakoo’s tool called Flight, videographers can quickly compress and upload large video files in a matter of minutes. Those videos are stored in latakoo’s Web-based cloud application, and can be privately shared with colleagues who can download the file on their end in a smaller, more compressed format.
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In honor of the Iron Man Triathlon in Hawaii, Panasonic has created a tiny EVolt mascot that will run, swim, and bike the course’s full 142 miles in about a week. The teeny little robot will run on EVolt batteries and, since he’s 10 times smaller than a human, he gets to take much longer to finish the course.
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IntercastNetwork is a rich-media interactive platform that allows brands to connect to audiences using a combination of live-streaming video, real-time polling, live chat, Q&A, payment processing and more. The resulting platform works well for live broadcasters, who can track audience engagement levels and feedback during in real-time, and adjust their message accordingly.
Unlike LiveStream, Justin.tv or UStream, for example, IntercastNetwork lets broadcasters and publishers push live video feeds, including those from outside sources, directly to their own website’s homepage or others’ sites, where branding, features and other platform components can be more directly controlled. → Read More
Wibbitz, a new service that functions as sort of a “play button” for the Web, has just raised a seed round of approximately half a million. The service is similar to former TechCrunch Disrupt winner Qwiki, in that it, too, automatically generates videos on the fly using the content found on a given website.
But unlike Qwiki, Wibbitz is positioned as a tool designed specifically for publishers who want to provide an easy-to-digest video summary of an article or articles’ content. → Read More
For a little under $300 you, too, can ruin passing satellites with what is purported to be the brightest legal laser available. The Krypton S3 goes up to 1000mW for an output of 86 million lux – “8,000 times brighter than looking directly at the sun.” That kind of power will cost you, though: the 1000mW unit costs $999 compared to the $300 300mW laser.
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When a man is proud of his hobbies, women notice. Nowhere is that more apparent than in this thread on RCGroups where a dapper young gent, from the comfort of his lounge chair and protected by VR goggles, approached a comely young lass with his RC Tonka truck and, we can only assume, married that same lady in a ceremony held under a sylvan glade alongside her beaming parents.
Or maybe not.
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Facebook is already the largest photo site in the U.S., and now it is climbing up the charts for online video. Facebook now ranks as the third largest video site on the Web in terms of unique viewers according to comScore, with an estimated 51.5 million people on Facebook watching a video during the month of July. The month before it was No. 6. It passed Microsoft, Yahoo, and Viacom. Only Vevo (with 62 million monthly viewers) and YouTube (158 million) are bigger.
It is only a matter of time before Facebook passes Vevo, but can it ever take the crown from Google/Youtube? I’m not sure that will happen any time soon. ComScore estimates there were 3 billion viewing sessions on YouTube in July versus 186 million on Facebook. (Note that “viewing sessions” is different than “views” or “plays” and can include multiple videos watched). YouTube still accounts for 43 percent of all viewing sessions in the U.S.
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Researchers at a Czech company, Neovision, have invented a duct-cleaning robot called Jetty. This machine is joystick controlled and has a 1024×768 pixel camera. It receives power and signal over a Ethernet-over-Cat5 cable, limiting its movement to about 35 meters right now, but it can clean and inspect kitchen, industrial, and office ducts with relative ease.
The robot uses dry ice to clean ductwork and can move up and down using its tread-like feet. The jets are situated on the middle of the robot for maximum pressure and Jetty can move through circular, rectangular, and square ducts and go up curves.
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The folks at Makerbot made a bust of Stephen Colbert and gave him a copy when they appeared on his show a month or so ago. Not content to let it just moulder in the shop, they decided to attach it to a weather balloon and send it up over Long Island. The resulting video and images are striking: the Great Eagle himself in flight high over the salty waves of the Atlantic, overtopping the great spires of American Democracy, and soaring unfettered like a plastic bag in American Beauty.
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Yokto is a newly launched video platform which offers an embeddable player that intelligently switches between a Flash-based interface or HTML5, depending on the device being used to view the content. This idea on its own is not original, of course. Similar solutions from companies like Brightcove, Ooyala, Kaltura and SublimeVideo, for example, offer much of the same thing.
But where Yokto stands out is in its “playlists” feature. Instead of simply embedding a single video on your website or blog, you can collect a series of videos from multiple sources and embed them on your website within a single player interface.
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Vuzix is now shipping their Wrap 1200 3Ds, a pair of $500 glasses (a headtracking model called the 1200VR is coming later this month) that displays a 75-inch virtual screen in front of your face and supports 3D content. You have separate focus settings for each each eye and these are as light and small as a standard pair of sunglasses.
The Vuzix 1200s also allow you to wear your own prescription lenses under the device. → Read More
We’ve seen hacks for the Kinect from the very start, and even some that suggested one like this might be possible: a Kinect being moved around like a camera, recording the depth of everything it sees and building up a full-3D map of the room and every object in it. They call it KinectFusion, and it’s really quite fascinating to watch.
The position of the camera is constantly tracked by monitoring the depth of known objects in its view, and with that information known, the 3D data recorded can be given absolute measurements, producing a static map of the room. And it all happens in real time. Watch just the first demonstration and you can see the system “painting” a 3D model of the room as quickly as the researcher can move the Kinect around. → Read More
If you’ve always wanted to play air hockey in real life and couldn’t shrink yourself down enough to stand comfortable on a regulation table, this may be a solution. It is a DIY hoverpuck that uses a motor, propeller, and a puck-shaped case to create a real air hockey experience at full scale. → Read More
