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A few days back Apple released native support for HDR photos on iPhone 4. Usually HDR videos are nothing but time-lapse footage created by stitching together individual (HDR) photographs. Now a San Fransisco-based studio by the name Soviet Montage Productions have created the first HDR video using two Canon 5D Mark II DSLRs and a beam splitter to capture the exact same subject on both the cameras. The team said, “The cameras are configured so that they record different exposure values, e.g., one camera is overexposed, the other underexposed. After the footage has been recorded, we use a variety of HDR processing tools.” The output is simply astounding on all levels!
The concept of ‘Multi-touch’ in gaming began with the iPhone and gradually moved on to other devices, finding its place in the industry. This is the next level! UMass Lowell Robotics Lab student Eric McCann hacked a version of the control scheme – “DREAM” (Dynamically Resizing Ergonomic and Multi-touch) that was developed by Mark Micire, to create a version that runs on the Surface and provides all of the functionality of a physical joystick (for games) through multi-touch interaction. This transforms the experience of controlling video games (on the Surface) seem like piloting ‘The Enterprise’ on Star Trek, only much easier.
By simply placing five fingers on the table, the joystick is dynamically re-sized and oriented to the user’s hands automatically on every hand placement. It can also be moved to any position of the screen by dragging the index and middle fingers. The video below demonstrates Microsoft’s Flight Simulator and Valve Corporation’s Portal controlled exclusively through hand interaction on the tabletop.
Betaworks, a technology incubator in New York is teaming up with The New York Times to introduce a social news service, News.me. John Borthwick, chief executive office at Betaworks said, “We’re building something wonderful and amazing in the social news space.”
Mr. Borthwick’s company has helped nurture services like TweetDeck, a popular desktop client for Twitter, Web tools like Bit.ly, a URL shortener and Chartbeat, a real-time Web analytics service. It has been in the works for the last six months and is expected to be out sometime later this year, Mr. Borthwick said. It will initially debut as an iPad application, although a Web version may be introduced at some point.
A cryptic placeholder for the service went live, yesterday. Mr. Borthwick would not say exactly how the service would work, but he hinted that its name should give some indication.
Today’s the PlayStation’s 15th anniversary and we take a quick look at its history.
Apple has published an updated document at their Developer Center listing, in very non-technical and clear terms, all the reasons why iOS apps can get rejected. They describe this as a ‘living document’ which will change as new scenarios arise in the due course of time. Read on for the full text or if you have an ADC account, read the full document at the ‘via’ link at the end of the post.
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Introduction:
We’re thrilled that you want to invest your talents and time to develop applications for iOS. It has been a rewarding experience – both professionally and financially – for tens of thousands of developers and we want to help you join this successful group. This is the first time we have published our App Store Review Guidelines. We hope they will help you steer clear of issues as you develop your app, so that it speeds through the approval process when you submit it. We view Apps di!erent than books or songs, which we do not curate. If you want to criticize a religion, write a book. If you want to describe sex, write a book or a song, or create a medical app. It can get complicated, but we have decided to not allow certain kinds of content in the App Store. It may help to keep some of our broader themes in mind:
Lastly, we love this stuff too, and honor what you do. We’re really trying our best to create the best platform in the world for you to express your talents and make a living too. If it sounds like we’re control freaks, well, maybe it’s because we’re so committed to our users and making sure they have a quality experience with our products. Just like almost all of you are too.
This document represents our best e!orts to share how we review apps submitted to the App Store, and we hope it is a helpful guide as you develop and submit your apps. It is a living document that will evolve as we are presented with new apps and situations, and we’ll update it periodically to reflect these changes.
Thank you for developing for iOS. Even though this document is a formidable list of what not to do, please also keep in mind the much shorter list of what you must do. Above all else, join us in trying to surprise and delight users. Show them their world in innovative ways, and let them interact with it like never before. In our experience, users really respond to polish, both in functionality and user interface. Go the extra mile. Give them more than they expect. And take them places where they have never been before. We are ready to help.
The only way to win against innovation is even more innovation and looks like the PC makers are finally waking up to the fact that simply aping Apple’s cutting edge designs or innovative products and business models are not going to help their wafer-thin margins. In an interview with DigiTimes, outspoken Acer founder Stan Shih called Apple products a ‘mutant virus’ that the PC industry has no cure for. An excerpt:
Acer founder Stan Shih, in a talks with reporters on September 8, commented that Apple’s strong popularity is mainly due to its products such as iPad and iPhone, and these products are like mutant viruses, which are difficult to find a cure for in the short-term, but he believes that PC vendors will eventually find a way to isolate Apple and become immune.
Shih pointed out that Apple deserves to be respected, since it has a completely different strategy than other PC brands. Apple CEO Steve Jobs has always been looking for revolution, while other PC brands evolved naturally and are developing products in a more solid way, Shih commented. But based on the historical experience, a market that evolves naturally will always turn out to be much stronger, according to Shih.
Shih used the example of the competition between Microsoft’s Windows and Apple’s Macintosh OS and noted the Apple has always looked down on Windows and believes it lacks creativity. But Windows’ open platform has attracted the adoption of most PC brands, Shih said adding that, Apple’s PC market has turned out to be limited, with a market share far less than the open Windows platform group. Shih also brought up the example of the competition between video tape formats, pointing out that the open VHS standard won against the closed Betamax format.
He believes that just like how PCs won market-share in the PC vs Mac wars, Android will win market-share from iOS in the long run,and while that optimism is very cute, Apple’s measly single-digit PC market-share has not held it back from beating 90+% market-share hoarding Microsoft, to take the title of the most valuable tech company on the planet today. The key to that lies in this quote from Steve Jobs:
via digitimes
SEIKO develops the world’s first active matrix e-ink watch, the “Active Matrix EPD” which uses e-reader technology to display time. The watch features a high-resolution 300dpi display with a total of 72,000 pixels into a 2 x 3cm screen. The timepiece also gives the wearer a somewhat wide angle view to read small numbers at odd angles.
The EPD watch has five different styles for displaying time, all of which are custom developed by SEIKO and.is powered by a self-recharging solar battery. The hi-tech electronics in the timepiece lets it function for up to nine months without additional exposure to light.
The timepiece is also radio controlled (it receives time signals from the world’s atomic clocks) and are accurate to to 10^-13 seconds a day or one second in every 30 million years.
SEIKO plans to roll out the new EPD watch in three different models: stainless steel, stainless steel with gold-tone hard coating and with black hard coating. No pricing have been revealed yet, but its expected to cost around $1,200 in Japan.
The free VLC iPad app is a port of the famous VLC media player and is right now in the AppStore review process. Once the app goes live, we’ll be able to view, hear and stream content in a wide variety of formats using a player that is familiar to all.
It is things like this that give us a peek into the complex inner workings of the clunky machine that is the music industry. Last week, in the run-up to Apple’s music event, the web was abuzz with rumors of iTunes song sample length being tripled from 30 seconds to a generous 90 seconds. Turns out not only was Apple thinking about doing that but they even got The Big Four, Universal, Sony, Warner and EMI, on-board. But it turns out that wasn’t enough as the bigwigs at the National Music Publishers Association, the largest trade trade group representing music publishers, informed Apple that it couldn’t offer extended samples until reaching an agreement with them.
“We are in active negotiations with Apple,” about the length of song samples, said Hanna Pantle, a spokeswoman for Broadcast Music Inc.(BMI) one of the performing-rights organizations that collects royalties on behalf of songwriters and music publishers.
It is surprising how many nasty surprises the music industry holds.
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