Ratchet Up

Feature Film Streamed Via Internet Connection

he “premiere of Rize that took place last Saturday at [Sundance] was a historic event — the first feature film to be delivered via wireless internet technology. [...] David LaChapelle's documentary is an adrenaline-pumping tour through Los Angeles' urban dance scene, and when projected onto a big screen and through a big, booming sound system, it played just fine — especially considering that the source material was located 800 miles away. [...] The success of the Rize screening may hold broad ramifications for the future of the movie business.

But first, here's how it worked: Intel technicians in Hillsboro, Oregon, encrypted Rize, which was shot on high-definition digital video. The file was streamed to Salt Lake City, then beamed via microwave to Park City and through a WiMax connection to the top of a 10,000-foot mountain. A receiver at the ski lodge sent the file to an HP Media Center PC, where it was decoded and projected through a high-end digital projector. Intel's wireless connections allowed huge amounts of data to travel quickly — at up to 24 Mbps, about 20 times as much throughput as DSL provides. [...] studios could send films to venues around the world simultaneously. Demand for pirated materials could drop and movie releases could become huge, global events. The savings to studios and distributors would be substantial, too — creating, shipping and destroying 35-mm prints cost an estimated $1.5 billion a year.

But wireless delivery might be an even bigger boon for independent venues, and not just theaters. Got a cafe and want to screen the new arty experiment from Belgium? Or are you hoping to use a documentary to rally Wal-Mart opponents in your local library? Or to show some gritty shorts in your hipster club? Once a wireless infrastructure is in place, you'll just need a computer, a projector, some chairs and a white wall. Sign on, select from what could become a nearly infinite menu of titles, pay your fee and you'll be in the movie business. [...] Establishing either a wired or wireless system of distribution, Bachar added, would be ”the final step of the building-out of the microcinema network — it would make content more readily available and delivery that much easier and cheaper.“ Jim Johnson, general manager of Intel's broadband wireless group, acknowledged that a substantial infrastructure will be required to make wireless movies the norm. The build-out is a very big deal, and probably years away.”

[Wired]

Six Big Trends

The Horizon Report from New Media Centers is a annual project identifying key technologies that will inform teaching and learning in the next years. This year's edition highlights six areas:

1. Extended Learning
2. Ubiquitous Wireless
3. Intelligent Searching
4. Educational Gaming
5. Social Networks and Knowledge Webs
6. Context-Aware Computing/Augmented Reality

The report includes a thorough discussion of each, plus links and other resources. Just a great resource.

Go for it in PDF.

Browser Compliant Tatoos, Depricated U-Trow

[Tokyo G-Cans Project]

Tokyo's G-Cans Project is an underground dreamscape built to handle rainy season overflow from the city's many rivers. It looks like the best movie set in the whole world. Lemmy Caution, where are you?

[G-Cans Project via del.icio.us/urbandesign]

Mouse Gives Birth To Rabbit Ears

TV comes to your PC via good old fashioned rabbit ears. The technology makes sense, but the remediated shock of recognition on seeing rabbit ears--a cherished icon of the '50s--plugged into a laptop is strangely unexpected. The rig comes with software enabling you to watch TV and immediately produce a DVD from your recording.

“The Canopus KTVX1000 USB TV Tuner is a currently only slated for a Asia wide release and not there is not a lot of info on it. The big selling feature is that it has a single click function for DVD production. so you will be able to be watching something and will be able to press a button in the software and it will record it onto the HDD and then make a DVD Disc for you. Most likely wont see this one outside of Asia.”

If their USB antenna doesn't work, try attaching a piece of aluminum foil to it―a sure winner.

[MotherDigital]

Googleizing the Image

“The Feature's” David Pescovitz interviews technologist Harmut Neven. He's working on something like a visual Google. Take a picture of something, send it to a database for analysis, and then read out a variety of associated information:

You take a picture of something, send it to our servers, and we either provide you with more information or link you to the place that will. Let's say you're standing in front of the Mona Lisa in the Louvre. You take a snapshot with your cameraphone and instantly receive an audio-visual narrative about the painting. Then you step out of the Louvre and see a cafe. Should you go in? Take a shot from the other side of the street and a restaurant guide will appear on your phone. You sit down inside, but perhaps your French is a little rusty. You take a picture of the menu and a dictionary comes up to translate. There is a huge variety of people in these kinds of situations, from stamp collectors, to people who want to check their skin melanoma, to police officers who need to identify the person in front of them. [...]

If you have millions of objects in the database, you can't search through every one of them looking for a match. The search strategies have to become smarter. You have to find effective ways to prune down your search early on so you're only comparing the photo you took to the most relevant sets of objects. Also, you eventually need to think about smart balancing between processing on the phone and the server. As the discrimination needs increase, you must account for finer image details. That would require sending a higher resolution image to the server, which could be expensive and clog the system. I think it would make sense to put more of the intelligence on the handset to do some pre-processing. That way, the handset would only send the necessary image features to the server where the recognition process would be completed. [...]

Yes, the goal is to use cameraphones to accurately identify humans as well as objects. Right now in my laboratory, we have a working version of a single image multibiometric system. It fuses classic facial feature comparison with iris scanning and skin texture analysis. Your skin texture is like a fingerprint for your face. Our system can create a very high quality biometric signature without expensive sensors or cameras.

[The Feature]

Chances of Success: .06%

n the early years of my latter-day life as a film prof, it was often difficult to decide whether I should encourage students in their filmmaking dreams, or warn them off, in essence joining the chorus of doubting voices that regularly sing in the ears of young people looking to find their way in the world. But early on I decided that my role was to be a supporter, an enthusiast. When a student's friends, parents or even their own inner voice of self-doubt tells them to fly rather than fight, someone has to be there to say, “Hey, give it try. But be realistic.”

Of course, I realize that the odds of actually becoming, say, a film director are slim. But striving to become one can lead to a rich, creative life down the road. And if youthful dreams of directing morph into the reality of becoming a mid-life scrapbooker, so be it.

Still, idealism and aspiration have to be tempered with regular doses of realism, and realism is the theme of today's post: a link to a lean, sobering article in the “New York Times” this week about the odds of making an independent film that makes it.

By all means go for it, but get real.

Wireless Courage

Sports, Chipped

uture sports: bionic, designer bods and sports balls chipped for precise measurement? Future ref? Germany's Fraunhofer Institute has developed a new, wireless ball and player location system that can immediately tell referees and game analysts where the soccer ball or striker is at any point in time―to the centimeter. [...] The Fraunhofer Institute planted electronic bugs of a sort in the balls and the players' shinpads which enable sensors to pinpoint their exact position on the field at any time. [...] The chips read the current position of the ball and the 22 players on the field up to 2000 times a second, according to the institute's René Dunkler. The data is then pick up by antennas that are placed around the field and sent on to a central computer, which processes the statistical information. The new technology could, for example, tell spectators in a fraction of a second that the ball accelerated from 21 to 137 kph after the most recent kick or that it missed the right goalpost by 3.9 centimeters. Coaches could also tell which players were hustling around the pitch, and which were holding back, either out of fatigue or laziness. [...] on Feb. 26, a chip-laden ball will be used at a test match. If the trial is successful, the ball will be used in the Carling Cup final in Cardiff on Feb. 27. Referees have also shown interest in the new technology. It could potentially help them in the many high-stress situations they find themselves in, when the calls they must make in mere moments seal the fates of careers, titles and millions of euros. [...]

Although the technology was initially developed for soccer, other sports could just as well benefit from the new chips, such as ski jumping, football, basketball or baseball. Bookies could find use for the development, as the statistics generated could open up new vistas for gamblers. Besides sports, tests using the chips in airports are underway and were featured at a recent trade fair on security. Developers say the system could also be used in searching for missing persons, guarding prisoners or maintaining security around buildings. A revolution that is beginning with a little black-and-white ball looks like it could spread much further.

[Deutche Welle via SmartMobs]

Images in the Air

The Ratchet has kept an eye open for new and unusual image projection surfaces.

FogScreen is a new invention which makes objects seem to appear and move in thin air! It is a screen you can walk through! The FogScreen is created with a suspensible device, there is no frame around the screen. The installation is easy: just replace the conventional screen with FogScreen. You don´t need to change anything else - it works with standard video projectors.

With FogScreen you can create a walk-thru wall, or a door you don´t need to open. The viewer can walk through the screen – walk directly into the images, and through them! People and things can be brought into view through the screen.

The fog we are using is dry, so it doesn't make you wet even if you stay under the FogScreen device for a long time. The fog is made of ordinary water with no chemicals whatsoever. With two projectors, you can project different images on both sides of the screen.

The basic components of the screen are a laminar, non-turbulent airflow, and a thin fog screen (or any particles) injected into and inside a laminar flow. Created this way, the fog screen is an internal part of the laminar airflow, and remains thin, crisp, and protected from turbulence.

The fog is made within the device using water and ultrasonic waves. If you hold your hands in the fog flow, the fog feels dry and cool, and your hands do not get wet.

After the screen is formed, images can be projected onto it. The screen can be translucent or fully opaque. The quality, size, and other features of the screen have been thoroughly improved in the production model FogScreen Inia.

The FogScreen works very much like an ordinary screen in terms of projection properties. It can be used for both back- and front-projection.

[FogScreen and their interactive video demo]