The latest proprietary media format to fizzle? Sony's Universal Media Disc format, developed for its PlayStation Portable. Anyone who wanted to produce movies on UMD had to pay Sony a license fee, and the movies only played in that one Sony device.Now two studios, Universal (coincidentally) and Paramount seem to have stopped supporting the format, according to this piece from The Hollywood Reporter.
This robot makes short films based on its visual experience. Its eyes travel about the city on buses while the body sits in a gallery. The eyes collect snippets of video, and transmit them to the body when their buses come within range of a Cafenet wireless internet node. The robot body splits the video into individual frames and analyses each one, obtaining twenty numbers reflecting the arrangement of colour, shape and detail within the frame. These numbers are treated as coordinates in a twenty dimensional space, in which distance is somewhat related to visual difference. For twelve hours a day the robot traces a zigzagging path through this space. This path passes through a series of images, which become a video sequence. Visitors to the gallery can see this video, called variously the robot's 'dream' or 'stream of consciousness'. At the end of the day the robot looks over its days work and joins the best parts together as a finished film. The robot uses neural networks and heuristic rules to choose waypoints for its daily dream, but the finished film is mainly selected for the smoothness of its movement through the space. The robot will remember everything it sees until it has five million images in its mind, after which it will replace its least favourite images with new ones. In addition to getting images from the eyes, the robot creates false memories by combining and manipulating well-liked and overused images.
The January/February issue of RES Magazine has an interesting article on how to make 3D videos with a pair of Apple iSights. We'll post a link when the article gets archived, otherwise, grab yourself a copy!
Up for sale is a circuit bent video synth created by Corneilius Brown in 1999. It was originally designed to control the sexual stimulation of large crowds or individuals. It accepts customized slides and projects them onto any video screen. (TVs, video projectors, etc). It also displays colorful geometric shapes that change with the control unit. The two video sources combine to create a very strange phenomenon. [...] I made a website dedicated to Corneilius (no not 'Cornelius') Brown. I put most of the pictures on there because I'm not sure if ebay would accept them or not due to their sexual nature.
PLEASE visit the website as it has more pictures and info...
According to a survey conducted by RBC Capital Markets, about 75 percent of roughly 1,000 people polled said they had no interest in watching TV on their cell phones. And about 70 percent said they didn't see themselves using their cell phones for musical entertainment.
