A source from Microsoft revealed to The Daily some facts about the Kinect motion-sensing technology for Windows 8-equipped devices.
According to the inside source, Microsoft will license the technology to other manufacturers with the requirement that it is the only motion-control tech on the devices.
Asus will likely be a launch partner, but the company is not directly involved in testing the product.
Microsoft techs have been using prototypes “in the wild” at crowded locales to fine-tune the sensor.
Devices with the technology should be plugged in as much as possible because it quickly drains batteries.
Fragmentation, like that of Android when manufacturers created dissimilar versions, may happen because Microsoft enables makers to customize the look of Windows 8 on Kinect-enabled devices.
Perhaps most notable, the “log me in” feature enables the Kinect sensors to analyze the user’s voice and face to grant access.
A consortium of Vancouver-based production, tech and media companies recently launched a service called RenderCloud.
“Vancouver is revving up its computing horsepower to allow Hollywood studios to more speedily render data-intensive animation and special effects in the cloud,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.
“Vancouver is also hoping its ultrafast RenderCloud server will allow the west-coast city, already enjoying the advantages of close proximity to Los Angeles, [to] compete with emerging global production centers in the UK, Australia and New Zealand.”
The local server farm will allow studios to render in the cloud and enable work-sharing on projects. Clients will pay on an as-needed cost-per-day basis with an option of subleasing their resources to other studios.
The project is led by Vancouver Studio Group, Great Northern Way Campus, Scalar Decisions and BC Film and Media. RenderCloud includes more than 600 servers, with plans to grow to 1,500 by this summer.
The service is designed for large-scale production of 3D, animation and special effects for film, TV and games.
Wireless Direct from Hewlett Packard enables people to print from iOS devices with AirPrint, even without the name or password of the local wireless network.
Apple’s AirPrint standard lets iPhones and iPads print from any networked printer without setup, configuration or driver installation.
All of HP printers include AirPrint-supported ePrint, which enables wireless printing, printing documents from anywhere in the world using email, accessing documents in the cloud, and other features.
With Wireless Direct, printing is becoming entirely seamless: “Wireless Direct-enabled printers broadcast their own SSID, allowing iOS devices (or any Wi-Fi enabled computer) to connect directly without knowing any details of the local network. Users can choose ‘HP-Print-4f-LaserJet’ as their network, for instance, and as far as your iPhone is concerned, it is connected to a Wi-Fi network with an AirPrint-compatible printer,” explains ArsTechnica.
Wireless Direct should prove useful in situations where network passwords aren’t commonly shared.
For anyone who goes by the California Science Center just south of USC, you may have seen this curious-looking CHIP Solar House, a prototype of a highly efficient, futuristic living space.
The “Compact, Hyper-Insulated Prototype” was created by students from CalTech and the Southern California Institute of Architecture.
“CHIP’s flexible, stepped interior adopts the ethic of ‘doing-more-with-less,’ allowing a single, continuous volume to perform in a variety of different ways to serve the occupants’ daily needs. The program is divided into a series of platforms which are terraced upward and inwards, from the most public to most private. The distribution of program from north-to-south, and high-to-low, facilitates the occupants’ daily rhythms: a progression downhill in the morning in the form of sleep/groom/dress/eat/live – and vice versa in the evening,” the team explained.
CHIP produces all the energy it requires and can even save and sell back power to the grid in some parts of the country.
An Xbox Kinect command station enables occupants to use hand gestures to operate home systems. Also, a 3D camera tracks movement and turns off lights when an area becomes empty.
The Mashable post includes pictures. The house is on display until May 31.
In response to the latest piracy debate, GigaOM blames the studios for forcing consumers to download illegally by not making it easier for them to find and pay for content.
“Hollywood’s windowing system is essentially keeping consumers from being able to access the content that they want to watch. Without a reasonable option to pay, many are left to pirate a film that they wouldn’t go to the theater for anyway,” the article states.
Most of the time, people pirate content that they can’t find in a legitimate way. That doesn’t mean, however, that they won’t pay if the content were available.
Hollywood is concerned about losing theater sales but, as the article points out, “there are plenty of consumers who won’t go to the local megaplex to see a romantic comedy or drama, but are happy to pay for the convenience of watching it on the TV at home or on another device.”
Hollywood continues to preserve the current distribution and windowing scheme despite the rapid evolution of content consumption. Although it has made some concessions with UltraViolet, “until those movies are available in a timely fashion — i.e., not months after they’ve already left theaters — there will remain a huge audience that the studios will never capture, whether it’s because they’ve pirated the film or because they’ve chosen to watch something else,” GigaOM concludes.
“Congressional leaders on Friday indefinitely shelved two antipiracy bills that had rallied the Internet and rocked Capitol Hill, dealing a major defeat to the traditional media industry while emboldening a new breed of online political activists,” reports The New York Times.
The Wednesday online blackout had a profound effect on the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate.
However, Senator Harry Reid tweeted that he is optimistic the delay will enable issues to be resolved and a compromise should come within a week. He added that the longer it takes to pass anti-piracy legislation, the more jobs will be lost and economies hurt “by foreign criminals who are stealing American intellectual property and selling it back to American consumers.”
In the House, Republican representatives have almost completely backed away from SOPA. It will be redrafted but “the Committee remains committed to finding a solution to the problem of online piracy that protects American intellectual property and innovation,” says Rep. Lamar Smith, chairman of the Judiciary Committee.
In a related article, Los Angeles Times looked into what censored Chinese bloggers were saying about the U.S. Web companies’ uproar regarding censorship. Some more or less laughed while others used the opportunity to promote their own case, suggesting “Americans should try a minute in our shoes before invoking online Armageddon.” China’s Internet companies have “no choice but to submit to government pressure.”
At CES, Intel promised that “2012 will be the year of the Ultrabook,” reports Mashable.
“Future Ultrabooks will have touchscreens and voice recognition, Intel vice president of PC Client Group Mooley Eden demonstrated at CES. Intel showed off several concept Ultrabooks doing things like swiping through a Windows 8 Metro interface via the screen.”
“Intel didn’t demo voice recognition, but Nuance’s chief marketing officer, Peter Mahoney, made an appearance to announce a partnership with Intel to put his company’s voice-recognition tech into Ultrabooks,” explains the post.
The company also teased gesture control and suggested that real-time language translation is “in the works.”
Intel’s concept laptop shows rear touch enabled display for alerts and calendar browsing (see 2-minute video demo).
Shodogg uniquely allows you to share videos from any of your devices to any of your other devices over the Web, rather than through a home network.
Each of your devices is given a unique Shodogg registration number. You can register any number of devices, but each has a unique ID.
Any content that you are able to receive via stream or download can be viewed simultaneously on any of your other devices.
You can create a playlist composed of video from multiple sources and share with your friends (for example: Vimeo, Cable DVR, YouTube).
The requirement to register each device with a unique number can serve as an impediment to piracy. Although they don’t limit the number of devices an individual can register, if they see an unreasonable number of devices assigned to a single account they said that they would take action.
The SD Association released the Wireless LAN SD standard at CES, which adds Wi-Fi accessibility to the standardized storage format.
The new memory cards allow consumers to wirelessly download, upload and share photos or videos in addition to using the Wireless LAN SD memory cards as control points for other devices.
Consumers will be able to transfer content from cameras to cloud services and between SD devices over home networks.
“As cloud servers and wireless technologies continue to penetrate the consumer experience, wireless accessibility will become increasingly more important,” said Michael Yang, senior principal analyst, IHS iSuppli. “The addition of wireless capability to the existing SD memory card standard, will enable SD memory cards to remain relevant to shifting market demand, and add value to consumers and manufacturers of new cameras, tablets, and mobile phones.”
At CES last week, Boxee announced that in 2012 it will deeply integrate with Facebook and provide live TV to its “smart” set-top box.
With an HD antenna, Boxee Box can now access programs from local broadcast stations. As always, the box will also run local content and online content, which has set it apart from competitors.
According to Lost Remote: “One major differentiator between Boxee and the rest is the ease at which you can play files downloaded from places like BitTorrent on your TV without needing to convert them.”
Its new TV app for Facebook allows users to share what they’re watching on Timeline, enabling video discovery among friends. For those users concerned about privacy, they will be able to customize settings to selectively share.
Boxee is praised for its intuitive, sleek remote but the article questions whether the device is actually “the one box your TV needs,” as the company claims. One point of contention is the size of the box, which does take up space (compared to Roku’s recently released stick).
Also, the box does lack in content without Hulu or Amazon Instant. With other options such as Xbox, Roku, Apple TV and connected TVs, Boxee may or may not have enough to set it apart in an increasingly competitive market.
Comrex Corp. is making professional news gathering more nimble with LiveShot, “a compact solution for doing live low latency video delivery for electronic news gathering — or what the industry is now calling IP ENG.”
Set to ship in March, it will work in conjunction with an IP network (in the case of this video demo, the 4G LTE network from Verizon) to transmit broadcast quality audio and video over the Internet.
Comrex already has thousands of customers in the field using a similar technology to produce audio feeds for radio, using its LTE-enabled Access device.
“With $15,000 worth of hardware mounted onto a camera and the use of a 4G LTE network, television news crews can do the same thing they did with a quarter million dollar satellite and microwave truck,” Comrex’s Chris Crump said.
LiveShot works with any professional camera equipped with an Anton/Bauer mount (or adapter) and an HDMI port (it also works off a composite or HD-SDI signal).
The camera-mounted encoder costs $7,000 and the studio-resident decoder $5,000.
As part of Variety’s Entertainment Summit, industry leaders were asked about the future of media.
Included on the panel: Darcy Antonellis, president, Warner Bros. Technical Operations; Chris Cookson, president, Sony Pictures Technologies; Ed Leonard, CTO, DreamWorks Animation; Arnaud Robert, SVP Technology, The Walt Disney Company.
On content over technology: Consumers should not have to think about technology. The focus should not be on the device but on creating and providing access to great content. UltraViolet, as one example, was created to enable a connected experience — seeking to make technology transparent, cross platform and optimized for the device.
On mobile platforms: Mobility is a way to engage consumers and build a deeper relationship. Adapting to mobile platforms is an extension of cross platform support. Studios are evolving to support multiple screens. The challenge is how to provide the best experience.
On user interfaces: Unlike before when studios created the UI for videocassettes and DVDs, today content aggregators are creating them. We’re moving towards collaborative interfaces developed with partners.
On social media: It’s an opportunity to create a dialog with the consumer. We can create a community around movies. It’s becoming woven into everything we do.
On innovation: Innovation is accelerating and studios are tapping the skills of all their employees. You don’t have to be an engineer to have a great idea that becomes a new service or product.
Connected TV has taken center stage, and at this CES we are seeing production model TVs equipped with Intel’s WiDi capability out of the box.
WiDi, or wireless display, extends the laptop to the television screen.
Intel introduced the technology in 2010, but it’s just now beginning to bear fruit, with a multitude of WiDi-ready devices coming to market, including all new ultrabooks and models from 100 different OEMs.
It will also be enabling WiDi on Intel-chip tablets and phones. Intel is only now entering those markets, and was showing at its booth pre-release Lenovo tablets and phones.
Samsung and Sharp are among the manufacturers shipping sets with built-in WiDi, as is AT&T on its U-verse boxes, and consumers can expect “Intel WiDi” badges to become as ubiquitous as “Intel Inside.” Adapter boxes that retrofit existing sets hit retail last year for $100.
Connectivity-wise, WiDi is also going to be used to connect computer-to-computer, or computer-to-phone. Intel is emphasizing the creation of an optimized Android SDK for the Intel chip architecture, which should result in a number of interesting mobile apps.
