Apple’s Mac operating system has reportedly edged past Linux in popularity amongst developers in North America.
Windows OS remains the clear frontrunner for development with 80 percent of developers. However, while 5.6 percent of developers said they prefer Linux, Mac OS has taken second place with 7.9 percent.
“Apple has made tremendous strides in the last few years with innovative products and technologies. [As such], it’s quite reasonable to see developers adopting the Mac and its OS as a development environment,” explains Evans Data CEO Janel Garvin. “Linux has lost some of its luster after years of only single digit adoption.”
Mac OS X is based on the Unix operating system. The latest iteration — Mac OS X Lion version 10.7 — features a redesigned UI to help bridge Apple’s iOS for mobile devices and Mac OS for desktop computers.
Lucasfilm and Sony Pictures Imageworks unveiled Alembic, a computer graphics interchange format, this week at the SIGGRAPH Conference in Vancouver. Version 1.0 is now available for download.
According to Carolyn Giardina of The Hollywood Reporter, Alembic is “an open source system aimed at helping VFX companies easily store and share complex animated scenes across facilities, regardless of what software is being used.”
Sony Pictures Imageworks reports Alembic enables its artists to work 48 percent faster while using significantly less disc space.
At SIGGRAPH, leading software suppliers including Autodesk, Luxology, The Foundry and Side Effects are showing Alembic support for their top products.
Disney Research has developed a new technology that leverages phantom sensations and other tactile illusions to provide a wide range of physical sensations for gamers and film-goers via chairs outfitted with vibrating actuators. The technology is being demonstrated this week at SIGGRAPH in Vancouver.
Disney says its Surround Haptics system makes it possible for video game players and film viewers to “feel the smoothness of a finger being drawn against skin, for example, or the jolt of a collision.”
The system could potentially have a wide range of applications in movies, music and games, even communication systems for the blind.
“Although we have only implemented Surround Haptics with a gaming chair to date, the technology can be easily embedded into clothing, gloves, sports equipment and mobile computing devices,” says senior research scientist Ivan Poupyrev. “This technology has the capability of enhancing the perception of flying or falling, of shrinking or growing, of feeling bugs creeping on your skin. The possibilities are endless.”
Rdio has released a free iPad version of its streaming music app. According to the Gizmodo review: “Spotify may be stealing all the hype and pub for streaming music services but let’s not kid around here, Rdio still makes the best music apps across any platform.”
The review raves about the app based largely on its selection, album art, social aspects and quality music player.
Users can listen via their iPad headphones or through other devices thanks to AirPlay support — a feature that particularly appeals to the staff at Gizmodo: “I always thought it was funny to use the iPad as your music player but when you think about it, Rdio + AirPlay + Big Honking Screen gives you the biggest remote control in the house for the best audio system in your house with all the streaming music not in your house.”
For a better look at the interface, the post includes a brief video demo.
HP unveiled a new 4G version of its TouchPad tablet on Amazon this week.
The tablet features a faster 1.5 Ghz processor, an updated webOS, 32GB of memory, 4G and Wi-Fi capabilities, and a 9.7-inch LED touchscreen.
It retails for $699 and is available for pre-order on Amazon.com (although the listing does not include a release date).
According to PCMag: “Over the weekend, HP offered a $100 discount on the TouchPad, as did retailer Staples, allowing users to get as much as $200 off the tablet. It’s not clear if that was the original intent, however. Staples said rather cryptically that the coupons ‘were meant for different audiences,’ and did not respond to follow-up questions.”
French CE manufacturer Archos announced it is getting ready to launch an Android Honeycomb 3.2 tablet with 250GB of internal storage capacity.
The Archos G9, expected to hit shelves in September, will be available in 8- and 10-inch models ($370 and $470, respectively).
The new tablet will feature a Seagate Momentus Thin 2.5-inch hard drive modified to include 4GB of flash storage.
“Another marquee feature is the 1.5GHz Texas Instruments OMAP 4460 dual-core processor,” CNET reports. “This is the same processor that Google has approved for upcoming Android Ice Cream Sandwich devices. That means consumers can expect to see a new wave of tablets and smartphones built around the TI 4460.”
Quixey is an app-specialized search engine funded by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt.
The service hopes to make it simpler for social media users (developers and consumers) to find applications and widgets for social networks.
Last week, Quixey got closer to that goal when it added Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Foursquare integration.
The engine also indexes and categorizes tools and apps based on social chatter, blog posts, reviews and other third-party descriptions of their function. The search technology bypasses the clutter by efficiently mining data and app-related keywords.
Quixey co-founder Tomer Kagan explains: “A lot of apps on Facebook [for example] don’t even have a description attached — just a name. From a search perspective, if all you have to work with is like three words, it’s extremely difficult.”
The Mountain View, CA startup has raised $400,000 in seed money from Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors.
Photographer Vincent Laforet has been testing a new 2X Canon lens converter with his RED Epic camera.
Gizmodo explains that he uses a 600mm Canon lens “to effectively double focal length to 1200mm at a 4K resolution.”
“The results are nothing short of amazing,” reports Gizmodo, “but then, he is a professional, and had some beautiful scenery to work with.”
“This was shot with the yet-to-be-released RED Canon mount — which has full support of autofocus, image stabilization, digital aperture control, touch to focus, touch to rack focus, and distance readout. These are pretty amazing times to be behind the lens,” writes Laforet on his blog. “While long lenses are nothing new in the motion picture world — this type of resolution combined with Canon’s Image Stabilization technology is utterly impressive and should be a huge hit with wildlife and sports photographers around the world.”
GLMPS (pronounced “glimpse”), a new iPhone app, hopes to stand out from the growing collection of available image-sharing apps by creating a new type of media that combines stills and video.
Digital Trends describes the basic premise: “When you take a picture with your smartphone through the app, GLMPS captures a photo as well as a short, 5-second video clip of what took place just before the picture was taken. When viewing the GLMPS file, the video plays first, and is then shrunken down and superimposed as a thumbnail over the photo. The video then plays on repeat, much like a GIF file.”
All images are automatically stored to the iPhone’s camera roll. Users can then share the images through the free app, or post GLMPS files to social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr.
An increasing number of viewers are turning to rental programs for movies and TV shows, according to a report from Digital Entertainment Group.
DEG also reports that consumer spending on home entertainment has stabilized with an unexpected recovery to the disc-based business in the second quarter.
The report concludes that consumers spent $4.2 billion on transactional video services — disc rental, streaming and VOD — during the first half of 2011. These figures mark an 11 percent increase over the same period last year.
The report also mentions a 16 percent drop in disc purchases, with combined Blu-ray and DVD sales falling to $1.8 billion in the second quarter. However, rental — including streaming and VOD — was up 11.16 percent. (Blu-ray sales increased 10 percent, while demand for DVD declined.)
Netflix rose 45.7 percent in the first six months of this year, while kiosk rental (mostly Redbox) rose 39.8 percent.
The Hollywood Reporter adds: “Spending on Blu-ray Discs was up a solid 10 percent in the first half. DEG estimates that the number of U.S. households with at least one Blu-ray Disc playback device rose 16 percent in the first six months of 2011 to bring total household penetration to more than 31.6 million, making the format one of the fastest-growing new technologies in the home entertainment industry.”
Researchers from Microsoft’s Beijing lab have developed a technique to automatically model human faces in 3D with a new level of accuracy.
According to the research, the new approach can acquire “high-fidelity 3D facial performances with realistic dynamic wrinkles and finescale facial details.”
The technique combines 3D scanning technology with a motion-capture system, in addition to what Geekwire describes as “a technique they developed to determine the minimal number of face scans needed to create an accurate model, which makes the system faster and more efficient.”
The research paper will be presented this week at the SIGGRAPH Conference in Vancouver.
ETCentric staffer Phil Lelyveld comments: “This more-accurate facial modeling, tied to game engine character behavior generation, will make for some very interesting experiences. There was a recent story on an emotional (versus Q&A response) Turing test. Would you hurt a visually realistic avatar?”
Panasonic, Samsung and Sony are throwing their support behind XPAND’s 3D glasses in an effort to create some market standardization.
XPAND’s active shutter glasses would also become the standard for computers and home projectors.
Development of the glasses under this new initiative will not begin until September so we may not see them on the market until next year, but Gizmodo suggests they will be backwards-compatible with all 2011 Sony, Samsung and Panasonic active shutter 3D TVs.
From the press release: “To-date, active 3D technology has proven to be the most popular choice for consumers in the 3D TV market. According to the NPD Group, Active 3D technology took an average of 96 percent share of the U.S. 3D TV market in the first half of this year; and this Full HD 3D Glasses Initiative will help further drive consumer adoption and understanding of active 3D — the technology that provides the clearest and most immersive 3D experience available.”
American Airlines announced it will roll out Gogo’s in-flight streaming video service to its entire fleet of 767 aircrafts.
The service wirelessly streams movies and TV shows from an in-flight library to Wi-Fi-enabled laptops (at $0.99 per TV show and $3.99 per movie).
The current slate of 100 movies and TV shows will remain accessible for viewing after the flight has concluded. Customers will have access to the movies for 24 hours and TV shows for 72 hours.
The TechCrunch post includes a video demo explaining the service.
The new Elite brand of premium LCD TVs is the result of a collaboration between Pioneer and Sharp.
Two LED-based LCD models (60- and 70-inch) are 3D, THX certified, claim a refresh rate of greater than 240Hz and feature full-array backlighting instead of edge lighting. They also feature online services such as CinemaNow, Netflix, VUDU and YouTube.
Elite TVs include a yellow sub pixel with the standard red/blue/green, that when added together, creates more than 8 million dots on the screen.
“But the feature that the company is most hyping is something called Intelligent Variable Contrast,” reports Electronic House. “Found only on the new Elite TVs, it automatically controls both the brightness and backlight to enhance color depth, brilliance and detail in dark areas.”
The 3D Elites will ship with active shutter glasses — MSRP of $5,999 for the 60-inch model and $8,499 for the 70-inch.
Vonage has launched a new app that allows users to make international VoIP calls and pay via iTunes.
The new app — dubbed Time to Call — works on iOS devices including the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.
If the calls are limited to 15 minutes or less, there is no need for a Vonage account.
“Using Time to Call, 15-minute calls to 100 countries range from $0.99 to $1.99,” reports Digital Trends, “although fees for the remaining 90 countries Vonage can reach can be as high as $9.99 for that same 15 minutes — taxes apply to all calls.”
“Not only does this service offer tremendous value for international callers dialing from their home countries, it also provides a great solution for international travelers who want to avoid the bill shock associated with international calls and roaming charges when they call back home,” explained Vonage CEO Marc Lefar in a statement.
