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Sony La Croix PSP Phone: blend business with pleasure!
"While cellphone companies out there are pumping millions of dollars into marketing to try and make their handsets more popular, designer Nate Ribbens has come up with a way to make cellphones literally sell themselves. The Sony La Croix PSP Phone created by him is a marvelous design that blends all the essentials of a business phone with the goodness of a larger than life PSP. Thanks to a handy touchscreen and video playback support, the device allows uses to easily switch from phone mode to game mode and the delicious 180 degree slider makes us wanna ask for more." "While cellphone companies out there are pumping millions of dollars into marketing to try and make their handsets more popular, ... more
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Technology's low powered future: vibration power
Next month is the 50th anniversary of the invention of the microchip. Dan Simmons travels to Texas, the home of the chip, to look back at its past and forward to its future. Next month is the 50th anniversary of the invention of the microchip. Dan Simmons travels to Texas, the home of the chip, to look bac... more
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Olympus Hazard-Proof Tap-To-Snap Stylus 1050 SW and It's Skinny Sidekick, the...
"Olympus' tough-as-nails Stylus 1050 SW updates the 1030 SW with a tap-control feature that makes it easy to take pictures in extreme environments. While the specs are nearly identical to the 1030—10.1MP, 5 feet shockproof, 10 ft. waterproof, 14°F freezeproof—the 1050 uses an accelerometer to allow button-free control. Tapping the top, back or sides of the camera cycle through different options, so you can make adjustments to your pictures even if you're wearing gloves. It'll be out in October, and for $300, I'd tap that..." "Olympus' tough-as-nails Stylus 1050 SW updates the 1030 SW with a tap-control feature that makes it easy to take pictures i... more
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The FCC and the Emperors of TV have no clothes
Big Media and their sock puppets at the FCC have engineered a massive theft of public resources -- the giveaway of more than ten thousand newly minted digital TV channels to themselves. They have finagled the regulatory process to exclude community groups, unions, local entrepreneurs, women, African Americans, Native Americans, Latinos, colleges, universities or local government entities from even being able to ask about getting channels for themselves, and imposed a news blackout on their evil deed. Their theft is settled law now, to be consummated in February 2009.
Their only fear is that the nationwide movement for media justice will awaken in time to inform and arouse the American people as it did 2003. A parade of pot-bellied naked corporate thieves are hoping nobody notices the crime scene or their progress to and from it, until it's too late.
“...this is a country of laws, as the elite like to tell us, and FCC decisions, no matter how transparently undemocratic and crazy, are indeed the law.”
Every now and then, the powers that be overreach themselves with a move so transparently greedy, self-serving and counter to the public interest that even with platoons of pundits and absolute control over the media they know they are absolutely unable to publicly justify themselves. One such moment occurred in 2003, when the Federal Communications Commission gave the green light to any of the half dozen Big Media corporations to own virtually all the TV and radio stations in any US market, along with its daily newspapers.
The people who made this decision, and those they made it for were not stupid people. They knew it was utterly impossible to craft any reasonable “it's for your own good” explanation for unbridled monopoly in media that an ordinary citizen, no matter how conservative, how far to the right, could listen to without laughing out loud. So they just shut up. After all, this is a country of laws, as the elite like to tell us, and FCC decisions, no matter how transparently undemocratic and crazy, are indeed the law. ***continues, click link to read more*** Big Media and their sock puppets at the FCC have engineered a massive theft of public resources -- the giveaway of more than ten thous... more -
Too Digital.
Troppo digitale. Da un'amante del web come me, una piccola riflessione sulla sfumatura dei sensi provocata dal "Tutto e subito" downloadiano ...
Ieri ed oggi, dite la vostra.
(l'argomento si sviluppa al link indicato)
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http://nonleggerlo.blogspot.com/ Troppo digitale. Da un'amante del web come me, una piccola riflessione sulla sfumatura dei sensi provocata dal "Tutto e subi... more -
New York game law unconstitutional?
New York became the latest state to enact legislation enforcing video game age ratings with the signing of a new bill by the state's governor, David A. Paterson, this week. The bill, which has already attracted the ire of local civil rights organizations, adds legal weight to the existing system of age classifications provided by the Entertainment Software Ratings Board.
"We have the obligation to be constantly vigilant about amending our laws to protect the residents of New York State. Many of these bills will do just that by closing loopholes or creating new laws to enhance the quality of life for all New Yorkers," said Governor Paterson in a Tuesday press release.
The majority of the bill's requirements are already implemented by game console manufacturers and software publishers. It mandates the inclusion of parental lockouts on all new consoles by 2010; however, the Wii, the PS3 and the Xbox 360 all already include such restrictions. It further requires all games to carry content ratings, in a similar way to those ones that are already there. Thirdly, it promises to establish "an advisory council to conduct a study on the connection between interactive media and real-life violence in minors exposed to such media."
Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, responded to the legislation in a press release this week, saying that the law violates the First Amendment.
"New Yorkers do not need the state judging which video games are appropriate and which aren't," she sad. "Parents, not government committees, should be responsible for making those judgments. If the legislature wants to reduce youth violence, it should fund educational programs to teach students conflict resolution skills."
Attempts by other states to implement similar legislation have uniformly failed to pass Constitutional muster, sometimes at considerable taxpayer expense. Whether or not video game industry advocates will bother to mount a legal challenge to this bill, given its ineffectual nature, remains to be seen. New York became the latest state to enact legislation enforcing video game age ratings with the signing of a new bill by the state... more -
Feminists cry foul over "Fat Princess" game
She's plump, powerful and ready to cause more controversy than "SuperSize Me."
She's Fat Princess, the star of Sony's upcoming video game of the same name. Debuting at last week's E3 expo, the colorful Fat Princess is a capture-the-flag game with a twist: you can thwart capture attempts by locking the once-thin princess in a dungeon and stuffing her full of cake, thereby increasing her girth and making her harder for your enemies to haul back to home base.
According to popular gaming blog Joystiq, two feminist gaming sites have already voiced their displeasure with the weighty issue.
Feminist Gamer's "Mighty Ponygirl" rings in diplomatically, suggesting a new way to play the game altogether.
"Instead of running out into the forest to find cake to fatten up the princess with, why not go out and find gold (which is a lot heavier than cake) to stuff into a treasure chest. The more gold in the chest, the heavier it would be, and the harder it would be to carry," she said, before adding, "Oh, but that's not as "cute" as cake and fat chicks. Right."
Over at Shakesville, however, writer Melissa McEwan cuts to the chase, telling Sony she's "positively thrilled to see such unyielding dedication to creating a new generation of fat-hating, heteronormative ---holes."
Sony has yet to issue an official response, although Joystiq did receive a particularly informative update from James Green, Fat Princess' lead art director, who clued gamers in on the origins of the game:
"Does it make it better or worse that the concept artist (who designed the look, characters, everything) is a girl?"
Hmmm...hope the game's detractors don't mind eating a bit of crow. She's plump, powerful and ready to cause more controversy than "SuperSize Me." ... more -
Ex-Pumpkins Members Sue For Digital Royalties
Two former members of the Smashing Pumpkins sued Virgin Records yesterday (July 24), saying the label shut them out of profits after signing a deal with the rock band's frontman, Billy Corgan.
In their lawsuit filed in Los Angeles, James Iha and D'Arcy Wretzky-Brown, both 40, accused Virgin Records America Inc. of not paying them for music downloads and other digitally delivered Smashing Pumpkins music.
Iha and Wretzky-Brown, who were founding members of the Smashing Pumpkins, said in their lawsuit that, five years after the band first broke up in 2000, Virgin entered into a deal with Corgan, 41, and began licensing Smashing Pumpkins music through electronic transmissions.
"To date, Virgin continues to engage in the exploitation of electronic transmissions of the band's recordings without plaintiffs' consent," the lawsuit states.
A spokeswoman for Virgin, a unit of privately held EMI Group, declined to comment on the lawsuit because the company had not received it.
Corgan, the group's primary songwriter, resurrected the Smashing Pumpkins last year, without Iha or Wretzky-Brown. He told reporters in April that he has "zero" communication with them. Wretzky-Brown, who quit the band in 1999, has largely left the music business. Iha has kept busy with a variety of musical collaborations.
In March, Corgan sued Virgin Records over a promotional campaign involving Pepsi and Amazon that he said damaged the Pumpkins' image and reputation.
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The thing is with Smashing Pumkins,they are something as Trent Razor who handles everything in the studio and Nine Inch Nails only exist in the music videos and live. Billy handled guitar, bass, and vocals, and Jimmy handled drums. Thats is one reason they were put into the Hollywood Rockwalk and not the other two. Still I think they should have been put in and should get their money. Two former members of the Smashing Pumpkins sued Virgin Records yesterday (July 24), saying the label shut them out of profits after s... more -
2008 Web/Tech Influencers
“Applications, green, mobile, networks, open, social”
These were the Meta Trends for Web and Tech as appeared on the Influencers Groups on 2008 forecasts.
About the report:
While seeking to bring you our 2008 trends prediction from an angle not suggested before, we present you the Meta Trends for 2008. For this, we selected a group of 10 web/tech influencers suggesting their trends forecast for 2008.We profiled each forecast according to 3 relevant categories for general trends predictions: “in”, “out” and “yet to come”. Finally - we ran a tag cloud on all forecasts to present what will be “In” for 2008.
How can this help you?
* You can see it as a summary tool for what we see as the best Web & Tech forecasts for 2008.
* From research perspective- what you get is a new format of content analysis conducted on the reports of Web & Tech influencers.
* From web 2.0 angle – you get the most popular trend tags to the best / most popular Web & Tech trend reports.
Do tell us your thoughts and insights.
More on Trendsspotting http://www.trendsspotting.com/blog/?page_id=303 “Applications, green, mobile, networks, open, social” ... more -
What “WWW” stands for in Japan ?
While following Japanese tweets (and ofcourse other user generated sites like BBS) you must have seen the letter “w” being used sporadically at the end of lines on Japanese text. Ever grown curious what that may mean??
iShare Inc. conducted a research on how Japanese recognizes “www”, among 472 internet users (valid responses).
The findings :
61.2% of the Japanese in their 20’s thinks “www” is LOL or laugh out loudly , as against the rest 38.8% who thinks it as “the world wide web”. However among the 30’s the ratio was reversed.
The origin of the “www” is (笑) , which means “(laugh)” and pronounced as “warai” in Japanese. Typing the Kanji characters are time consuming. Hence the network gamers & IM -addicts introduced “(warai)” & “(warai ” later shortened to (w) & (w.
Eventually, even the opening brace was erased, as it can be distinctly recognized from main Japanese text.The character “W” became emoticon for laugh - “ww” for laughing little more & “www” -for lol or laugh out loudly.
Now curious - what WWWW means?
Check that out here : http://www.trendsspotting.com/blog/?p=406 While following Japanese tweets (and ofcourse other user generated sites like BBS) you must have seen the letter “w” being used sporad... more -
"Tera Era” - Digital Technology Adoption Is On Rise
A recent study conducted by KRC Research and Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi GST) found that US consumers of all ages have a voracious appetite for digital content. KRC Research conducted a national random telephone survey of 1,008 U.S. adults during last May. The explosive growth of content along with the rapid adoption of digital devices today is fueling the storage requirements of tomorrow - which Hitachi has dubbed as terabytes era or “Tera Era“. Consumers now are increasingly demanding for more digital storage space. The survey reports, 26% now wish they had “so much storage that it was never an issue.”
Other findings from the Survey :
* On average, U.S. consumers now store more digital contents on their digital audio players, digital cameras, camera phones, digital video recorders (DVRs) and desktop or notebook computers. Young adults (aged 18-24) store 2,065 songs (an increase by 874 songs) on their digital devices which is far more songs than all of the other adult age categories.
* Adoption of digital devices is on the rise :88% Americans now own some kind of electronic device with digital storage capabilities. Camera phones and digital audio players are the biggest gainer since the 2005 study. Six in ten Americans now have a cell phone with a camera, more than doubling the level from 2005.
Earlier Trendsspotting reported on five-year forecast for 15 consumer technologies & predicted "Early Adopters Phase to decline from years to months".Is that really happening??
Read more at Trendsspotting : http://www.trendsspotting.com/blog/?p=431 A recent study conducted by KRC Research and Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi GST) found that US consumers of all ages hav... more -
American Poverty Includes Internet Access!
"Ten years ago, MySpace didn’t exist. Neither did Facebook. Just one site, called SixDegrees.com, dominated the online social networking market. But soon a bunch of sites sprouted up: LiveJournal, Friendster, LinkedIn, MySpace, and in 2004, Facebook. Back then, Facebook was just for Harvard kids.
But a new study from the University of Minnesota says these days even the least privileged kids have profiles on MySpace and Facebook. And they’re on the internet all the time. That finding goes against past studies that have found a ‘digital divide’ between rich and poor kids.
The researchers surveyed 600 urban teens from families making less than $25,000 a year. Nearly all the kids said they go online, usually from home. And more than three quarters of them have pages on MySpace or Facebook. The students say they’ve learned valuable technology skills in the process: they edit and upload photos, videos and music, and some of them even mess with html to personalize their pages. The researchers say teachers might want to build on that experience. Slipping a little MySpace between reading and ‘rithmetic could be really rewarding." "Ten years ago, MySpace didn’t exist. Neither did Facebook. Just one site, called SixDegrees.com, dominated the online social net... more -
How we created a digital movie star
Digital Movie Star - Kyra, was produced with the collaboration of top acting talent, technicians, and artists from the Montreal scene, using the latest developments and techniques in the industry, from award winning software, to optical motion capture, facial expressions techniques, and hair, fur, and cloth simulation. Digital Movie Star - Kyra, was produced with the collaboration of top acting talent, technicians, and artists from the Montreal scene,... more
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Could Google monopolize knowledge?
Should a single company be left in charge of putting all of the world's books online?
An impressive list of world-class libraries and book publishers don't seem to mind. In 2004, they signed on as partners with Google, the Internet search and advertising colossus based in Mountain View, Calif.
Yet some observers have strong concerns about Google Book Search and how the collected thinking of human history will be accessed in the future.
Those anxieties rose late last month when Microsoft announced that it was withdrawing from a rival book-scanning project headed by the nonprofit Internet Archive (archive.org).
Internet access to books is becoming more important, some observers say, as portable book readers, such as Amazon's Kindle, become more common and as more people expect to find all their reading needs online.
"I wouldn't say Google is 100 percent of the digital book world, but it's getting near 90 percent," says Siva Vaidhyanathan, a cultural historian and media scholar at the University of Virginia, who writes a blog called "The Googlization of Everything."
(ABC News) Should a single company be left in charge of putting all of the world's books online? ... more -
Apple addicts camp out for Sydney store opening
Call me an old fogey, but I just don't get the concept of queuing for a store opening. Apple is tonight opening it's first store in the southern hemisphere, in Sydney - my hometown. While it is an impressive building, and all it contains is awesome in terms of technological beauty and usability, queuing overnight to be the first in just doesn't make sense to me.
The first 2500 customers through the door receive a gift - not an iPod, a Macbook, or anything remotely electronic, in fact, but a t-shirt. Woooowwww!!!
Sorry, don't get. I'll wait till the crowds die down, and then pay a visit. The shop isn't likely to be moving anywhere soon. Call me an old fogey, but I just don't get the concept of queuing for a store opening. Apple is tonight opening it's first s... more -
Average teenager's iPod has 800 illegal music tracks
I'm sure I speak for everyone when I say I'm not in the least bit surprised by this research. The study goes on to say that, based on the average number of songs per music player, around 48 per cent of the music is illegally downloaded.
How does the music industry counter this? Already, we've seen Trent Reznor take the initiative by giving away not only his music, but sometimes the source files for those tune, too. He's still making money. Radiohead, Coldplay and others have also tentatively stepped into the "freebie" world this year, but is it enough? I'm sure I speak for everyone when I say I'm not in the least bit surprised by this research. The study goes on to say that,... more -
Chop Chop Salon
Chop Chop is a extraordinary hybrid: two parts hair salon, one part art gallery and zero parts pretense.
Located at 830 N. La Brea Avenue in the heart of trendy LA, Chop Chop Salon is a simple mix of chic and grass roots style whose mission is to create color and cuts that befit their client’s personality, taste and lifestyle.
The creative force behind the salon is owner and bay-area native, Darin Birchler who after 18 years of styling hair came up with the concept of integrating an art gallery and hair salon.
The artist, Jorge Oswaldo explains why this collaboration is fresh and how it has affected his career.
Reception for this artist will be at the salon on:
Saturday, June 28th, 2008
7-11pm
http://www.chopchopsalon.com
http://www.jorgeoswaldo.com Chop Chop is a extraordinary hybrid: two parts hair salon, one part art gallery and zero parts pretense. ... more -
Cyber police are watching what you download
Proposed amendments would make it easier to prosecute those who download Internet material illegally. If the bill is approved, people caught downloading copyrighted files would be fined $500. Proposed amendments would make it easier to prosecute those who download Internet material illegally. If the bill is approved, people ... more
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Samsung, LG unite on mobile digital TV standard
Couch surfing from your bucket seat in 2009?
It’s hard enough getting digital TV from an antenna in your house. Forget about in a car. But Samsung and LG aim to change that. In a scary reminiscence of Blu-ray vs. HD DVD, the two companies had been developing similar but incompatible standards (called AVS-B and MPH) for digital TV that can be delivered on the road.
But the two companies shook hands today on an agreement to work together on a common standard for the US. As we reported a few months ago, moving your TV around poses all kinds of problems for reception. TV signals bounce off buildings and other cars, so you get dozens of reflected signals, that change constantly, confusing the decoder. You also get the Doppler effect—with waves scrunching up as you drive toward an antenna and spreading out as you drive away. The LG and Samsung technologies fix these problems with heavy-duty error-correction so the tuner can be sure it got the right information.
Unlike the MediaFLO mobile TV that Verizon and AT&T are delivering to cellphones, the new standard will come from your local TV stations in a version of the digital ATSC standard that can be transmitted alongside their HD broadcasts and come from the same antenna. So it’s a way to get local weather, news and sports, plus network TV. And it may be free, like over-the-air broadcasts to your home.
The next step is for the companies to hash out the technology with the Advanced Television Standards Committee (ATSC). Rough prediction is that the technology will be available to TV stations and in receivers in 2009. Couch surfing from your bucket seat in 2009? ... more -
Wayne Forster, Cinematographer: Online Gallery
Wayne Forster, talented DP of many feature films, national commercials, music videos and much more has posted some of his favorite work in an online gallery. This is a terrific resource for anyone looking for a great cinematographer, or fans of great motion picture images. Wayne Forster, talented DP of many feature films, national commercials, music videos and much more has posted some of his favorite wor... more
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