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Sony Exec Claims 1,000 Pre-Orders for New Super Slow Motion Camera

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June 6, 2012
  • Sony revealed its NEX-FS700U Full HD super slow motion camcorder at that NAB Show in April and since then has accepted nearly 1,000 pre-orders, according to one Sony executive.
  • The new camera, scheduled to be available in late June, is priced at around $10,000 and captures footage at up to 960 frames per second.
  • “The camcorder supports full HD quality at 120 and 240 frames per second in a 16 or 8 second burst mode respectively,” writes Carolyn Giardina for The Hollywood Reporter. “Its 480 fps and 960 fps at reduced resolution are available.”
  • “The NEX-FS700U uses a new 4K Super 35 CMOS sensor, and Sony said it is planning a future firmware upgrade aimed at enabling the camera to output 4K bitstream data over 3G HD-SDI when used with an optional Sony 4K recorder,” notes Giardina.

Third Party Developers Seek to Monetize Sharing Service Pinterest

By
June 5, 2012
  • Developers are building on top of Pinterest in an effort to feed consumer and brand needs and monetize the site’s growing popularity.
  • The interest has sparked competitors such as Fancy (iOS app with “buy now” functionality that recently reached one million users) and third party applications including ShopMyPins (simple bookmarklet that enables users to shop online when they see something they like on Pinterest).
  • Related services include PinShoppr, Pinerly and Curalate (the latter two offer analytics for brands).
  • “The whole conversation revolving around Pinterest and Pinterest-types and their ability to turn this new, visual, viral thing people have taken to at an astounding rate into a viable e-commerce model doesn’t end at proprietary applications though,” notes Digital Trends. “Third party developers are well aware that there’s an opportunity for them to be a part of this Web evolution as well.”
  • Should Pinterest be creating its own new features? “I think Pinterest is kind of going through a similar thing that Twitter went through when they were growing explosively and I really think they are focusing on the right thing,” responds Apu Gupta, Curalate CEO and co-founder. “You have to make sure the wheels stay on the bus before you do other things.”

Nuance Integrates Rovi Entertainment Database as Part of Dragon TV

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May 29, 2012
  • Nuance Communications announced it has licensed Rovi’s extensive entertainment database with plans to incorporate it into Dragon TV.
  • “Dragon TV is Nuance’s voice and language understanding platform for set-top boxes and connected TV devices,” explains the press release.
  • The collaboration will enable cable TV and connected CE device users to access Rovi-indexed content using voice commands.
  • According to the release: “The result is the ability to simply speak to change the channel, and browse, bookmark and search for content on both live and On Demand TV programming.”
  • Examples include: “Find comedies with Adam Sandler,” “Show me information on ‘The Big Bang Theory,'” and “Who plays Chuck on ‘Gossip Girl?'”
  • “Consumers want easy to use and simple ways for discovering entertainment that doesn’t require a remote control with as many keys as a keyboard. Voice brings this capability,” said Corey Ferengul, EVP of product management and strategy at Rovi.

Personalized Video News: NewsLook Announces Free iPad App

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May 25, 2012
  • Streaming video news service NewsLook has launched a free iPad app that allows users to create personalized video channels that feature curated news content from more than 50 worldwide sources.
  • “Our NewsLook iPad app offers unprecedented personalization and engages users by greatly streamlining video search and discovery, enabling them to weed out unrelated content and get just what they want, from trustworthy sources,” said Fred Silverman, former CBS producer and current CEO of NewsLook.
  • According to the press release, sources include the Associated Press, Bloomberg, and Reuters — and users can customize channels based on interests such as “sports, politics, lifestyle, fashion, art, and entertainment.”
  • “NewsLook curates and publishes 150 videos daily in real-time and maintains a vast archive of over forty thousand videos,” notes the release. “This content is also available across a variety of platforms like Sony BIV and Google TV as well as via seamless syndication.”

Intel Launches Research to Offer Smart Devices that Mimic Your Brain

By
May 25, 2012
  • The Intel Collaborative Research Institute for Computational Intelligence has begun research intended to develop technology that will not only mimic the human brain, but will be able to use information to learn about its user.
  • “Machine learning is such a huge opportunity,” says Justin Rattner, Intel’s chief technology officer. “Despite their name, smartphones are rather dumb devices. My smartphone doesn’t know anything more about me than when I got it.”
  • Rattner leads the Intel research in conjunction with the Technion in Haifa and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, “aimed at enabling new applications, such as small, wearable computers that can enhance daily life,” reports Reuters.
  • “All of these devices will come to know us as individuals, will very much tailor themselves to us,” says Rattner, who suggests that the devices, which continually record actions of the user, are expected to be available by 2014 or 2015.
  • “Within five years all of the human senses will be in computers and in 10 years we will have more transistors in one chip than neurons in the human brain,” adds Moody Eden, president of Intel Israel.

Lenovo Announces New ThinkPad Line Including X1 Carbon Ultrabook

By
May 22, 2012
  • Lenovo claims that its upcoming ThinkPad models are thinner, lighter and moving toward the ultrabook category with features such as 3G wireless and Intel’s Ivy Bridge processors.
  • The China-based PC maker says its X1 Carbon Ultrabook, for example, will be among the world’s lightest 14-inch laptops (at three pounds).
  • The company is also highlighting its X230 ThinkPad that will hit shelves next month for $1,179. Weighing less than three pounds, the 12.5-inch X230 touts 24 hours of battery life and 4G/LTE mobile broadband access.
  • “If you’d rather have your X230 in tablet form, Lenovo has thought of that, too: The ThinkPad X230t has a rotating display that can be folded over to create an instant tablet. It is touchscreen enabled, comes with a stylus pen and also works with a ThinkPad laser mouse,” reports AllThingsD.
  • Lenovo’s new ThinkPad X, T, W, and L Series laptops include Intel processors, Dolby audio, and HD displays.
  • “The T430s is the ThinkPad line’s lightest 14-inch (non-ultrabook) laptop, while the T530 has a 15-inch full-HD display. But the most notable feature of these laptops is probably the addition of 4G/LTE broadband availability through Lenovo’s upcoming contract-free broadband service,” notes the article.
  • The laptops will be available in June, priced from $879 to $1,399.

Microsoft FUSE Labs Quietly Launches Experimental Social Network

By
May 22, 2012
  • Microsoft’s experimental social network site So.cl is now available to anyone. Previously, only “students studying information and design at the University of Washington, Syracuse University, and New York University” could access the network, reports VentureBeat.
  • “So.cl (pronounced ‘social’) is an experimental research project, developed by Microsoft’s FUSE Labs, focused on exploring the possibilities of social search for the purpose of learning,” according to the FAQ page.
  • Users can sign up using either their Facebook account or Windows Live ID. When using the Facebook option, users can choose to deny automatic posts and comments to their Facebook pages.
  • The social networking site “closely resembles Google+’s layout, but it also takes ideas from Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest,” explains the post. “You can follow other So.cl users or follow interests like food, art, or movies.”
  • The “Everyone” feed provides a simple way for users to see what most So.cl users are searching.
  • “So.cl can be used by the general public, but it is our goal to focus on learning communities,” indicates the FAQ page.

New Home Theater Experience Possible with Dolby TrueHD Technology

By
May 21, 2012
  • Dolby has developed a way to improve the playback performance of soundtracks on Blu-ray discs. Using its TrueHD lossless audio technology, Dolby hopes to provide more of a surround-sound experience in home theaters.
  • “The company is incorporating Meridian-developed 96kHz upsampling technology into Dolby Media Producer, a post-production product that encodes Dolby TrueHD bitstreams for use on Blu-ray discs,” reports TWICE.
  • “The technology creates 96kHz Dolby TrueHD soundtracks from the 48kHz-PCM mixes that the movie industry creates for movie theaters, which use 48kHz playback equipment,” adds the article.
  • Dolby says authoring houses and sound-mixing facilities worldwide have upgraded to its Dolby TrueHD with advanced 96k upsampling in version 2 of the Dolby Media Producer Encoder.

OLED: Sony and Panasonic in Talks to Jointly Develop Next-Gen Displays

By
May 21, 2012
  • Sony and Panasonic are reportedly in early talks to jointly develop and/or produce OLED TV sets, according to people familiar with the matter.
  • “The talks are still in the preliminary stages, and there is a chance that discussions might not reach a conclusion or that other potential partners might join the alliance,” reports the Wall Street Journal.
  • “OLED is considered a promising technology for next-generation television sets because it doesn’t require a backlight, making it thinner than existing liquid-crystal or plasma displays,” explains WSJ. “In the future, the technology is expected to enable curved or flexible screens.”
  • While OLED technology is making its way into the smaller screens of smartphones and tablets, it remains an expensive proposition for TV manufacturing.
  • “An alliance between Sony and Panasonic, the first of its kind between the two companies, would mark a watershed moment in the Japanese consumer-electronics industry as companies face difficult market conditions and shifting industry dynamics,” suggests the article.
  • Both Samsung and LG are planning to launch 55-inch OLED models this year, expected to be priced in the $8,000 range.

The Future of Wi-Fi is Expected to be Faster, Smarter, More Efficient

By
May 21, 2012
  • Wi-Fi technology is about to experience several significant upgrades.
  • “Technology upgrades we’ll see within the next year or so will make Wi-Fi much smarter and more efficient in how it distributes signals,” reports Ars Technica. “It’ll be so fast, and integrated into so many devices, that you may finally get to dump a lot of those cables cluttering your living room.”
  • The 802.11ac standard, which may be certified as early as December, will use the 5MHz band to enable 1.3 gigabits per second bandwidth. Moreover, it will include beamforming technology that focuses the signal to increase the range while also reducing the interference problem.
  • Coming later in 2013, the 802.11ad standard will operate at 5-7 gigabits per second over 60GHz. At this speed, one will be able to stream uncompressed movies.
  • Finally, the Wi-Fi Alliance industry group is also adding a Passpoint program to make it easier to connect to hotspots; Voice-Enterprise certification for enhanced voice quality; better power management features; and a standard that allows Wi-Fi to network with appliances, CE devices and automobiles.

Flexible Displays to Hit the Market This Year: Longer Wait for iDevices

By
May 18, 2012
  • Wired reports that we’ll finally see some flexible displays produced this year, but warns we should curb our enthusiasm since production will be limited, early displays will not be as “bendy” as the technology aspires to be, and “they won’t appear in Apple hardware as some news outlets have recently speculated.”
  • Samsung, for example, has announced it will mass produce flexible OLED displays and has already been receiving orders. Samsung’s display is thin but rugged, and is basically unbreakable since it uses a plastic called polyamide rather than glass.
  • The article suggests we should expect to see gently curved screens in the future and bendable phones or tablets enabled by the technology. “But that’s probably not on the horizon — especially Apple’s horizon — anytime soon,” comments Wired.
  • “It’s completely impossible to see any Apple product with flexible AMOLED this year,” suggests Jennifer Colegrove, NPD DisplaySearch’s vice president of emerging display technology. “However, I do believe Apple display engineers are constantly looking into new technology to put into their products, and OLED is one of the technologies they are looking at.”
  • Apple is more concerned about functionality than making something curvy for the sake of being interesting. Colgrove doesn’t anticipate a flexible display in Apple products until at least the 2013-2014 time frame, “with truly bendy iDevices appearing in 2015 at the earliest,” indicates the article.

Viewers Rarely Drawn to Live TV, Yet Upfronts Still Booking Ad Revenue

By
May 15, 2012
  • David Carr of The New York Times observes how his own family uses TV, noting a dramatic downturn in the amount of time spent with live broadcasting.
  • He cites TV-related apps (especially for sports), Netflix, Hulu Plus and Apple TV as resources his family uses regularly.
  • “My 15-year-old has a television in her room, but it’s not even on the cable-broadcast grid; it is wired instead to a Web-enabled Wii,” explains Carr. “Like the laptop and smartphone that she never seems to be without, the television is just one more Web-enabled portal for content she controls.”
  • Live TV “seems very last century,” he writes. In fact, live ratings for network programs have declined for 14 consecutive quarters. In contrast, DVRs and video on demand each exist in nearly half of American homes. And online viewing with Netflix, Hulu and others has increased more than 46 percent over the last year.
  • “Outside of the professional football season or some breaking national news event, the television at our house has become uncoupled from the commercial-driven environment that drives the broadcast and cable business,” writes Carr. “We haven’t cut the cord so much as kinked it in a way that commercials rarely sneak through.”
  • Still, the big four broadcast networks and the CW will book some $9 billion in advertising revenue while the cable networks take in more than $9.6 billion during the upfronts. In spite of losing viewers, TV remains the mass medium of choice for advertisers.

Lenovo Debuts Android Smart TV, Announces Investment in Mobile Devices

By
May 10, 2012
  • Lenovo broke ground this week on a new facility in China that will focus on smartphone and tablet PC research and development. The company plans to spend $800 million on the effort.
  • The company also introduced an Internet-enabled television to the China market. “The TV is the first to run Google’s Android 4.0 and is powered by a dual-core 1.5GHz Qualcomm CPU,” reports eWeek.
  • Independent software developers have already produced more than 1,000 apps for the smart TV, now available in Lenovo’s Le Store online storefront.
  • “Lenovo has also teamed with SMG’s BesTV to a create an ISmartv joint venture that already provides viewers with more than 300,000 hours of high-definition video resources, and the Smart TV will come with a ‘Sandwich’ user interface said to integrate ‘touch, voice, air mouse, gravity sensor, smart keyboard and [a] traditional television remote control in a ‘Six in One’ Smart Remote Controller,'” explains the article.

Google and Microsoft Research Teams Develop New Video Technologies

By
May 10, 2012
  • Researchers at Google have developed a technique called auto-directed video stabilization designed for recording video via smartphones and mobile devices with greater stability and improved image quality.
  • The technique mimics how motion is smoothly recorded in professional productions with dollies and tripods.
  • “The technology supports an algorithm that automatically determines the best camera path and recasts the video as if it were filmed using stabilization equipment,” reports MediaPost. “The research is being integrated into YouTube to support videographers.”
  • Microsoft Research, meanwhile, is developing motion technology that will enable a mobile device to function as a weapon in a game, such as a sword used to go on the offensive or to block the attacks of other players.
  • “Phone-to-phone mobile motion games must have the ability to calculate accurate distance and range from each other. Then range, speed, and accuracy are calculated,” explains the post. “The process works similar to Kinect, a fixed infrastructure motion capture system that supports game motion in real-time.”

Hangouts On Air: Google+ Turns Video Chat into Streaming Broadcast

By
May 9, 2012
  • Google launched Hangouts On Air this week, which is essentially an extension to Google+ group video chat that allows users to stream live to large audiences around the world.
  • The company has already used this for special broadcasts by David Beckham, the Muppets and President Obama. Moreover, it is training media companies like The New York Times and Wired to run their own broadcasts.
  • “This is a much more efficient and pervasive way to organize a conversation,” Hangouts product manager Nikhyl Singhal told AllThingsD. “Maybe I needed satellite trucks and switchboards for something like this in the past.”
  • To initiate, users simply flip the “enable Hangouts On Air” switch, and the video chat converts from private to public view — and not only for an audience of Google+ users. Hangouts On Air can be embedded into Web pages and even a YouTube channel.
  • Google will be leveraging YouTube’s methods for addressing copyrighted content, hate speech, illegal activity and pornography.

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