Intel May Introduce Wireless Charging Tech in Ultrabooks and Phones

  • Intel may integrate its own wireless charging technology into Intel-based ultrabooks and smartphones by the second half of next year, according to sources.
  • “In addition to Intel, there are already several smartphone players and telecom carriers aggressively developing wireless charging technology,” reports DigiTimes. “Japan-based NTT Docomo and Sharp both previously launched smartphones with wireless charging functions that meet the Wireless Power Consortium’s (WPS) Qi standard, but high prices are still creating barriers that distance consumers, the sources noted.”
  • Samsung was expected to unveil a resonance wireless smartphone charger this summer, but the project was delayed due to performance issues. The company may release a magnetic induction wireless charger first.
  • “Intel’s wireless charging solution uses an ultrabook as the power source paired with related software and a transmitter to wirelessly charge a smartphone,” notes the post. “According to Intel’s data, the solution will feature lower power consumption and does not require the phone to be put in a very specific position.”
  • Intel has reportedly designed power charging software that includes functions such as equipment examination, charging control, and position tests.
  • “Sources from notebook players also pointed out that Intel’s Haswell platform is unlikely to fully adopt the wireless charging technology and the idea is expected be seen in just a few models in the second half of 2013,” concludes the post.

What is Old is New Again: Beck Returns to 19th Century Music Publishing

  • Eclectic musician Beck is trying something new for his latest collection of 18 original songs and two instrumentals, by going back into the recording industry’s history prior to the phonograph.
  • “Beck’s new album — entitled ‘Beck Hansen’s Song Reader’ – won’t be on vinyl, CD, or iTunes,” reports Digital Trends. “Instead, it’s available only as a beautifully illustrated book of sheet music, published by the retro-fetishists of McSweeney’s.”
  • “The songs here are as unfailingly exciting as you’d expect from their author, but if you want to hear ‘Do We? We Do,’ or ‘Don’t Act Like Your Heart Isn’t Hard,’ bringing them to life depends on you,” explains the artist.
  • Many music fans may find the approach unsatisfying, but Will Burns, writing for Forbes, describes the idea as “brilliant.”
  • “As Burns points out, making an ‘album’ that only exists in printed-paper form is an effective end-run around the piracy industry, since there’s no easily reproduced digital bits to download,” notes the post. “And in an era when touring is how musicians make most of their profit, it’s sure to drive up interest in Beck’s next tour, where fans will (presumably) be able to hear the author’s own delivery in his unmistakable voice.”
  • For nearly a century, the music industry was the same as the sheet music industry (Tin Pan Alley never recorded a note). Treating performance and song as synonymous would come later.
  • “It’s a great adjustment to the modern era of participatory culture. McSweeney’s will be hosting renditions of the songs by select amateur and professional musicians on its website, and fans are already promising to put together bar bands and YouTube projects to record their own versions of the songs,” explains the post. “Beck is cleverly placing his music in the world of webcam performances and viral videos, making the listener part of the experience in a very direct way.”

BarryDriller.com: Fox Sues Aereo-Like Start-Up for Streaming Broadcast TV

  • Fox has filed suit against start-up BarryDriller.com for using a system of antennas to retransmit its Los Angeles affiliate KTTV without permission.
  • The Aereo-like service was created by Alki David, whose efforts to stream broadcast signals through FilmOn.com was shut down by a federal court in 2010.
  • “Last month, a New York federal judge, Alison Nathan, declined to immediately put a halt to Aereo, which streams signals to subscribers via thousands of dime-sized antennas,” reports Variety. “By declining to issue a preliminary injunction, Nathan delivered a blow to the networks, which say that such services undercut their business models. They are in the midst of pursuing an appeal.”
  • In the wake of the Aereo decision, David launched BarryDriller.com — the name of which serves as a play on Aereo’s most famous investor, Barry Diller.
  • It is an “homage to a great guy and at the same time it’s drilling him a bit,” David told the Wall Street Journal.
  • At $5.95 per month, the new service is offered at a lower price point than Aereo, and David says he’ll pay retransmission fees to the networks.
  • “David said that BarryDriller is in four major markets — New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Minneapolis — and plans to launch in San Francisco and Dallas in the next two weeks,” notes Variety. “He also said that FilmOn is launching its first broadcast channel in the country, KILM-TV Channel 64, in Los Angeles starting on September 1.”

Game Center: Has iOS Become Next Generation Top Gaming Platform?

  • According to consulting firm Asymco, a comparison of Apple’s Game Center numbers to console sales indicates that iOS has become the most popular gaming platform.
  • “Their report ‘Measuring iOS as a gaming platform,’ suggests that while Microsoft and Sony may have had the big-name games, and Nintendo delighted millions, more people play games on iOS devices than any console,” reports Digital Trends.
  • Asymco counted the number of registered Game Center accounts and determined there are 130 million iOS gamers. The report then compared this tally to the most popular game consoles: 67 million gamers purchased Xbox 360s; 65 million bought the PlayStation 3; and Nintendo has sold 96 million Wii units.
  • “The triumph of the iPhone suggests that bird-in-the-hand convenience is the secret of market penetration,” suggests the post.
  • And what has been the industry’s response? “Sony’s PlayStation Minis was a clear attempt to get in on some of that cheap, small, downloadable game action,” notes Digital Trends. “Nintendo was so rattled by having real competition in the mobile gaming space that it blatantly copied competing products with the Wii U’s announced ‘app store.’ Even Amazon has adopted Apple’s neologism for its Android marketplace.”
  • The posts further notes that although iOS may be on the rise in the world of mobile gaming, Game Center’s numbers have not yet reached lifetime sales figures of the Nintendo DS and Nintendo Game Boy.

SIGGRAPH: Futurist Claims Playing Games Can Help Improve Lives

  • Game developer and futurist Jane McGonigal delivered a keynote at least week’s SIGGRAPH Conference in which she suggested that playing games has helped people suffering from autism, ADHD, PTSD and cancer. She cited scientific studies and her own extensive research.
  • She also believes that games can help make people more optimistic and resilient. “McGonigal explains that games bring out positive emotions, including curiously, excitement, contentment, creativity, wonder, joy, relief, love, purpose and pride,” writes Carolyn Giardina for The Hollywood Reporter.
  • McGonigal is director of game research and development at the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, California, and author of “Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make us Better and How they Can Change the World.”
  • “We are in the business of the art of shaping people’s destinies,” she told the crowd at the LA Convention Center. “We need skills and abilities to get the future we want … physical, mental, social and emotional resilience. When I think about games, I’m very interested in what abilities they create and also the destinies they lead us toward.”
  • McGonigal has created a resilience-building game called “SuperBetter” that is available at the App Store.
  • “During her keynote, McGonigal led an estimated 3,000 SIGGRAPH attendees through a sampling of the game,” notes Giardina. “Tasks included raising their fists in the air for five seconds — ‘worth plus-one physical resilience … every single second that you are not sitting still, you are actively improving the health of your heart, and your lungs and brain.’”
  • McGonigal told the crowd that those who played along during the demo earned an extra 7.5 minutes of life.

SIGGRAPH: Highlights from the Computer Graphics Confab

  • SIGGRAPH 2012 wrapped on Thursday of last week. With extensive reporting from the show floor, fxguide discusses news from Side Effects, the RenderMan user group, NVIDIA, Massive, Open Source, DreamWorks and more.
  • Side Effects made several key announcements including a rebranding of its flagship product, Houdini Master, as Houdini FX; a new pricing structure ($4,495 for Houdini FX and $1,1994 for Houdini — formerly known as Houdini Escape); elimination of the $800 fee for the Annual Upgrade Plan; and a new asset marketplace called Orbolt, designed to help artists create and sell 3D assets.
  • The article notes that the new Houdini FX “includes all Houdini features with a focus on particles, fluids, Pyro FX, cloth, wire and rigid body dynamics.”
  • The Pixar RenderMan User group had an impressive turnout when it met Wednesday night. “RenderMan had a huge release with version 16,” explains the article. “The next release builds on this and improves performance. Gold mastering on the new RMS 4 and RPS 17 is very soon with a ‘wide’ beta starting the week after SIGGRAPH, and the final gold mastering planned for the end of September. Interestingly, with the new rolling release schedule, 17.1 b1 release will follow not long after around the 1st of November.”
  • NVIDIA unveiled its Maximus second generation workstation platform and the latest versions of its Quadro and Tesla cards.
  • “Maximus certified workstations (from HP, Dell, etc.) contain two NVIDIA cards — a matched Quadro GPU as well as a Tesla GPU,” explains the article. “This divides the tasks normally done with a single card; the Quadro drives the display and the Tesla card is used for computationally intensive tasks, such as fluid dynamics simulation, GPU rendering, and real-time color correction.”
  • The new Quadro K5000 will ship in October at $2,249 and the Tesla K20 is slated for December availability at $3,199.
  • Massive 5.0 was unveiled, the company’s first major release since February 2010. “The new 5.0 aims to address long-term user requests, new features and some interesting extensions,” notes the article.
  • “What is of even more interest is not just what Massive is releasing but how teams are using it. DreamWorks in particular presented a brilliant paper at DigiPro 2012 (SIGGRAPH co-located event) on accessing the Massive sim output data directly and using it to improve the characters that the agents drive by having a high quality render time deformation engine (RTD), where high quality character geometry is generated on the fly,” explains fxguide.
  • “This technique required significant changes to DreamWorks’ animation rigs. Character TDs created Multidimensional Rigs, where a character can run in a ‘service mode,’ interfacing with the RTD server to deliver any model in a crowd for any pose as requested by the renderer.”
  • Stephen Regelous, founder of Massive software, demonstrated the company’s latest work in crowd simulation, the details of which are provided in the article (including related videos).
  • This fxguide article features tech specs, video demos and performance evaluations for these products and others. An earlier fxguide write-up includes highlights of session reviews, tech papers and notable new software releases.

Nearly Indestructible Meshworm Robot May Have Range of Applications

  • Taking their cues from natural science, engineers have developed flying drones inspired by birds and swimming robots that emulate jellyfish.
  • The earthworm is the latest creature to inspire a team of scientists from MIT, Harvard and Seoul National University. Led by Professor Sangbae Kim, the team has created a robotic device named “Meshworm,” that crawls along the ground via the principle of peristalsis.
  • “The device is propelled by a spiral-shaped coil of artificial muscle made of a titanium and nickel alloy, a material chosen for a particular reason: It stretches when heated and contracts back to its original shape once cooled,” reports Smithsonian.com.
  • “The engineers used an internal battery and circuit board to apply a weak electric current to different muscle segments within the Meshworm, heating each of them in turn,” explains the article. “When each segment is heated, it expands in length, causing the outer circumference of the mesh to briefly contract, then return to its original size quickly afterward.”
  • The motion occurs successively at each segment of Meshworm, creating a wave of contraction that enables movement across the ground (the article includes a video of the lifelike movement). Steerage is controlled via lengthwise artificial muscles that are pulled when heated.
  • Since the Meshworm parts are all fibrous and flexible, it is nearly indestructible.
  • “The research is funded by DARPA…and some speculate that the robot could someday be used in reconnaissance missions, since it could be air-dropped, launched or thrown over relatively long distances and land without harm,” notes the article.
  • And since it can navigate rough terrain and fit into small spaces — quietly and inconspicuously — it may serve as a future robo-spy. The shape-changing artificial muscle technology may also be used for medical devices, prosthetics and CE devices such as mobile phones and portable computers.

New Kind of Reality TV: Online Streaming of Mars Rover Beats Cable News

  • Last week’s online streaming coverage of the Curiosity rover’s Mars landing drew more viewers than most of the prime time cable news channels.
  • “Ustream, the website that broadcast the landing, told Mashable that its live-stream reached a peak viewership of 500,000, besting CNN, MSNBC, and HLN,” reports Slate. “A total of 3.2 million people tuned in to the live stream at one point or another.”
  • The numbers suggest that Americans are very interested in seeing history unfold live, even if the production value is not on the same level as other traditional media.
  • Additionally, NBC served 1.5 million live streams of the women’s gymnastics team final during its recent Olympics coverage.
  • “How many were actually watching at any given time is unclear, but the figure suggests sports fans are at least as enthusiastic about watching events online as science buffs,” notes the article.
  • Although online broadcasts may be starting to reach a mainstream audience, their numbers do not typically come close to those involving television viewers. TV still reigns supreme for now.

SnagFilms Brings 3,200 Indie Films Online to Multiple Platforms for Free

  • SnagFilms, a new media start-up founded by Ted Leonsis (who also co-founded AOL), is hoping to connect lesser known films with audiences via online streaming.
  • More affordable camera and post production equipment has led to an increase in independent film production. However, effective distribution remains elusive for aspiring filmmakers — and competition within the festival circuit has become fierce.
  • For example, approximately 9,000 films are submitted annually to Sundance every year, and only a fraction are selected (118 last year). Only about 20 percent of those films selected by Sundance will see a distribution deal. “You have a better chance of getting into Harvard (5.9 percent admittance rate) than Sundance,” suggests Mashable.
  • “SnagFilms currently has more than 3,200 films in its library, and all are available to watch any time for free,” explains the post. “With investors ranging from Leonsis, to Steve Case and Comcast, SnagFilms is a frontrunner in the indie space online. It also runs the Webby Award winning site, Indiewire, which is a go-to source for independent film news.”
  • SnagFilms makes its money via advertising and says its video player is highly social. “We were the first streaming service to develop and integrate the Facebook Open Graph,” says CEO Rick Allen.
  • The post includes a 10-minute interview with Allen from “The Valley Girl Show,” hosted by Jesse Draper.

Streaming the Olympics: Is Live Video the Next Logical Step for YouTube?

  • YouTube may be best recognized for its sports highlights, user-generated content, music videos and classic TV clips available on-demand, but its live streaming of the Summer Olympics may indicate where the video giant is headed next.
  • YouTube partnered with NBC to provide 34 million live streams during the first week of the Summer 2012 Games. Nearly 1.5 million people watched live streaming of the U.S. women’s gymnastics team winning the gold and nearly 1.2 million watched Michael Phelps beat Ryan Lochte in the 200-meter individual medley.
  • YouTube built an entirely new platform to support as many as 100 simultaneous high-definition feeds. Jason Gaedtke, YouTube’s director of software engineering, suggests the efforts will not stop at the Olympics.
  • “While it’s true we built this platform for the Olympics, a better way of characterizing it would be to say we used the Olympics as an opportunity to challenge our capabilities and set some high quality-of-service and streaming goals going forward,” he says.
  • YouTube has live streamed concerts and last year’s Royal wedding, but now has a larger infrastructure in place for the future. “We certainly see strong demand in a couple verticals: gaming, sports, news increasingly — anything with a realtime or community-driven aspect to it seems to play well in this format,” adds Gaedtke.
  • YouTube is also looking to increase its social features, as evidenced by its recent hosting of Google+ Hangouts and adding publicly viewable audience analytics. Decreasing the distinction between live and on-demand video is next.
  • “We’re intentionally blurring the line between live and video-on-demand,” Gaedtke explains. “With the technology we’ve built here — real-time transcoding at a high level as well as how we prepare the media stream — we can immediately go from a live to DVR experience once an event ends.”

SIGGRAPH: PC Vendors Reveal New Focus on Media and Entertainment

  • PC makers Dell, HP and Lenovo touted products and initiatives last week at the SIGGRAPH conference that target media and entertainment.
  • “The PC system vendors are absolutely getting more aggressive in the media and entertainment space,” notes NVIDIA exec Greg Estes. “They perceive there is an opening with some of the latest decisions Apple has made.”
  • HP has teamed with Adobe and Red to launch the Z820 Red Edition desktop workstation, “a customized version of the HP Z820 that comes ready for production with a Red Rocket accelerator card and two Red SSD card readers,” details Carolyn Giardina in The Hollywood Reporter.
  • “We are not aiming to get away from Mac,” explains Red exec Ted Schilowitz. “But it’s pretty obvious that Apple’s focus is in the mobile computing world. [Filmmakers] drive a lot of data. Mac is viable, but if want the most horsepower, you are now looking at HP.”
  • Dell announced a new advisory board comprised of industry professionals that use Apple’s Final Cut editing software. “According to Scott Hamilton, Dell’s vertical market strategist for workstations, some of the company’s advisors have stated discontent with Final Cut Pro X and Apple’s workstations,” notes Giardina.
  • Lenovo showcased its latest ThinkPad and ThinkStation technology at the conference. The company has plans to certify its technology for media tools including Avid Media Composer and Adobe CS6, according to the article.

SIGGRAPH: Canadian Firm Releases Cloud-Based 3D Rendering System

  • Montreal-based tech company TeamUp demonstrated its new cloud-based Multi-Optics rendering technology at SIGGRAPH last week in Los Angeles.
  • “The TeamUp platform is designed so that customers have access to the fastest machines available and do not have to download, install, license or set up anything before working with 3D content,” reports Below the Line.
  • “3D rendering is traditionally the slowest and most complex process,” notes TeamUp co-founder Thiago Costa. “The back and forth with clients and peers can become tedious and costs a lot of time through miscommunications and scheduling consensus.”
  • “We built TeamUp to truly improve this experience,” he says of the real-time 3D collaboration system, “so creative teams and their clients can see the same render live, edit and make decisions in real-time on multiple devices, and arrive at the look they want for any 3D asset.”
  • “One of our techniques to achieve such high quality results is to take physical objects and measure their many optical properties to come up with an accurate representation,” explains scientist and TeamUp co-founder Arno Zinke.
  • “This way we can make hair, sand, cloth, metals, volumetrics, and many complex materials look real,” he adds. “Besides providing a constantly growing library of materials, users can also create their own materials from these fundamental properties.”
  • The system is presently in beta for standard OS platforms and Apple iPad OS. TeamUp’s cloud-based, subscription service anticipates a fall launch.

SIGGRAPH: The Challenges of Shooting Movies at Higher Frame Rates

  • The annual SIGGRAPH computer graphics conference featured a panel on shooting films at high frame rates. The panel attracted in excess of 1,000 attendees (including studio execs) and lasted more than two hours.
  • Filmmakers such as Peter Jackson and James Cameron are now advocating shooting at 48 frames per second or higher. “Avatar” producer Jon Landau suggested that filmmakers, rather than the studios, need to drive the process in order for high frame rates to succeed.
  • Landau noted the dip in 3D audiences. “In 3D, studios decided to impose it on filmmakers, and the result suffered and the public picked up on it,” he said.
  • “We have a responsibility to find what tells story in a better way and drives people out of their homes and into the cinema,” he added. “[With high frame rates,] they will walk away having been more engaged in our movies.”
  • Cameron plans to produce his “Avatar” sequels at a high frame rate and Jackson has chosen 48fps for “The Hobbit” trilogy. Filmmaker and innovator Douglas Trumbull described Jackson’s pioneering effort as a “bold step” that will hopefully pay off, considering theater attendance is at a 16-year low. “Peter Jackson’s commitment [to high frame rates] is very brave and very important,” he said.
  • “Supporters of higher frame rates argue that the they create a more lifelike image and truer illusion of continuous movement,” notes Carolyn Giardina in The Hollywood Reporter. “In particular, they improve 3D and action sequences by eliminating or greatly reducing motion artifacts like blur. Others argue that images shot at higher rates look too real, resembling video more than the traditional look of film.”
  • The panel discussed the strain that additional data places on the post production process, noting the challenges involved with computing, storing and rendering the increased data that results from shooting at higher frame rates. However, panel members did not waver in their support.
  • “We know these problems are coming,” said Dennis Muren, Industrial Light & Magic’s Oscar-winning VFX supervisor. “We can start thinking about ways to do this more economically and faster.”

Smartphone Income: New Mobile Apps Offer Small Gigs for Moonlighters

  • Two free apps — EasyShift and Gigwalk — enable users to earn money by doing small jobs for companies. Users submit the work via the apps and then collect the payments through their PayPal accounts.
  • “EasyShift, made by Quri Corp., launched nationwide in May 2011 as an iPhone app that’s focused on stock-checking tasks in grocery, convenience, drug and discount stores,” explains the Wall Street Journal. “Gigwalk launched nationwide in May 2011 and works on the iPhone and Android phones. It matches businesses or people with workers, so its gigs, like taking menu photos for $4 or testing a mobile app for $20, vary more than EasyShift’s jobs.”
  • WSJ reporter Katie Boehret took both apps for a test drive: “The tasks I completed were easy and some were even fun, like answering a few questions and taking photos of energy drinks at CVS for $2. I found myself scouring the apps’ built-in maps for nearby jobs as I drove around Washington, D.C., where I live. In cases when the job felt more like work than fun, I got paid enough that I didn’t mind ($8 for taking seven simple photos).”
  • “I was startled by how much pride I took in doing the task correctly — all for a few bucks and a good reputation within the app’s community, which can lead to higher-paying jobs,” she adds.
  • Some of the more active workers make $200 to $800 a month. Boehret notes a couple who made $1,000 to pay for their honeymoon.
  • “With EasyShift, most people who do work during the day get paid that night,” she writes. “Gigwalkers get paid within a day or two of submitting work and no later than five days after finishing a job. Both apps offer simple ways to make quick cash — and no one is overqualified to say no to that.”

Good News for BitTorrent: Internet Archive Adds 1,398,875 Torrents

  • As part of its mission to provide “universal access to all knowledge,” San Francisco-based non-profit the Internet Archive has added more than a million torrent files to the BitTorrent ecosystem.
  • “The torrents link to almost a petabyte of data and all files are being seeded by the Archive’s servers,” reports TorrentFreak.
  • Starting this week, “all new files uploaded to the Archive will also be available via BitTorrent,” explains the post. “In addition, a massive collection of older files including concerts from John Mayer, Jack Johnson and Maroon 5 and the Prelinger collection are also being published via torrents.”
  • Founder of the Internet Archive, Brewster Kahle, hopes the next step will be turning the popular file-sharing protocol into a distributed preservation system for the Internet.
  • “I hope this is greeted by the BitTorrent community, as we are loving what they have built and are very glad we can populate the BitTorrent universe with library and archive materials,” Kahle told TorrentFreak. “There is a great opportunity for symbiosis between the Libraries and Archives world and the BitTorrent communities.”
  • “In the wake of recent news featuring raids, crackdowns, DDoSes and lawsuits, this announcement from the Internet Archive brings some very welcome positive news about BitTorrent,” notes the post.