E-Paper to Launch

Electronic Paper Will Launch In Europe Next Month

 

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As of next month you’ll be able to buy an electronic paper display (EPD) to read your newspaper on courtesy of electronics company LG. This digital paper will have a six inch display with a 1024×768 screen and will be 0.7mm thick or “as slim as cell phone protection film.” It can bend at an angle of 40 degrees and weighs 14g.

The idea is that it’s more durable (it’s scratch resistant and can be dropped from a height of 1.5 metres) and thinner than lugging around an e-book, will consume less electricity, and will be cheaper because of this.

E-paper is one of those futuristic devices that when you pictured the future as a kid, you’d see people sitting around reading in the back of a flying taxi. And now it’ll be here (in Europe anyway) in under a month.

April 1, 2012
Categories: Technologies . . Author: MyMotorways . Comments: Leave a comment

Going to NAB Show this Year…. ?

Planning to go to NAB Show this year in Las Vegas?  Want to go to the Exhibits for free?   My friends at TV Technology are offering the following pass code:

Use Code PA03

You can register at : WWW.NABSHOW.COM

 

See you there!

March 29, 2012
Categories: Inside Hollywood, Technologies . Tags: , , , , . Author: MyMotorways . Comments: Leave a comment

Warehouse Robots Get Smarter With Ant Intelligence

 

 

Amazon may have just gotten its claws into Kiva Systems, but there’s more than one company out there looking to automate warehouses with smart little robots. At the Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics, researchers are looking for ways to make warehouse robots smarter and more efficient by getting them to communicate and cooperate like a swarm of ants.

A swarm is just exactly what you want with warehouse robots. There are a lot of them, and they’re all identical and interchangeable, cooperating to complete complex tasks by combining simple actions. The big difference between a swarm of (say) ants and a swarm of (say) robots is that the ants don’t have any high-level control: each ant has its own little tiny brain, and even though ants have specific tasks that they are directed (or bred) to perform, they decide on an individual level how to go about carrying out their instructions.

What Fraunhofer is trying to do is mimic the ant swarm system with robots. For example, instead of having one central computer control the movements every robot (as with Kiva), Fraunhofer’s system utilizes robots that make their own decisions with onboard computers. Each robot communicates with all the other robots in the swarm simultaneously using WLAN, and they use algorithms based on a model for how ants forage for food to cooperatively decide which of them should go where and do what.

The robots don’t need fixed localization points, but instead rely on “integrated localization and navigation technology” (including signal-based location capability, distance and acceleration sensors and laser scanners) to find the most direct routes to their destination without crashing into anything or each other. This makes them very efficient, and it also makes the system easily scalable, since you can introduce new things and the robots won’t freak out.

Scalability, reliability, and flexibility are why swarm robotics has been getting so much attention lately: need a bigger system? Just toss more bots into the mix. Lose a bot to a mechanical problem? It’s not a problem, since another bot just takes over. We’ve seen lots of swarms related to search and rescue (i.e. military) applications, but as far as a way to improve a commercial (or industrial) project, this research seems like a promising way to go.

 

 

March 29, 2012
Categories: Technologies, Vendor News . Tags: , . Author: MyMotorways . Comments: Leave a comment

Amazon announces new tie-in with Discovery Networks…

Below is text from Amazon new content from Discovery Networks:

Dear Customers,

Today we’re announcing our biggest addition yet, bringing nearly 3,000 more titles to Prime Instant Video. We’ve struck a deal with Discovery Networks to bring some of the highest quality, non-fiction, informative and entertaining content about the world to our Amazon Prime customers. Rolling out over the next few weeks are TV shows from Discovery, TLC, Animal Planet, and Science. Prime members, at no additional cost, can now stream more than 17,000 titles.

The new titles include hits such as Deadliest Catch, Mythbusters, Man vs. Wild, Dirty Jobs, Gold Rush: Alaska, and Shark Week, TLC series like Say Yes to the Dress and Cake Boss, as well as content like How It’s Made from Science, and The Jeff Corwin Experience from Animal Planet.

Interesting – seems like Discovery has “found” a digital outlet for content – it will be interest to see who else joins in….

March 15, 2012
Categories: Inside Hollywood, News you can Use, Technologies, Vendor News . Tags: , , . Author: MyMotorways . Comments: Leave a comment

Hatsune Miku virtual japanese popstar coming to LA…

This seems a bit out there, but read about the ticket sales…

(Tokyo) – Having just closed a 4-concert tour in tokyo, japanese pop star hatsune miku is among the most successful contemporary
japanese performers, but she is also virtual: an avatar with a computer-programmed voice, who sings songs compiled
of lyrics written by her fans.

The voice-synthesizing program that powers the popstar is the work of crypton future media, which bills hatsune miku
as ‘a virtual singer who can sing any song that anybody composes’.  and indeed her songs are generated by her own fans,
arranged based on suggestions from as many as twenty different people. she originated as a way of showcasing
the company’s music software, but has since encouraged an entire movement of consumer-generated media,
spread originally via the nico nico douga sharing website further facilitated by crypton via the piapro portal for collaboration
and posting.

The 10,000 tickets for the four tokyo performances last week, each priced at 6300 yen (76 USD) sold out within hours,
as thousands more watched telecasting of the performance in movie theatres in shanghai, hong kong, and taiwan,
and others paid about 40 USD for their own access to the live video streaming feeds. the virtual popstar has also already
sold out shows in LA, and aluminum plates with her image on it composed part of the spacecraft akatsuki (launched may 21st, 2010)
after a petition towards the project received over 14,000 signatures. ‘project diva‘ by sega offers both at home video games
and standing arcade models of rhythm-testing games featuring the singer, with a new release called ‘project MMT’ expected in 2012.

March 14, 2012
Categories: Events, News you can Use, Technologies . Tags: , , . Author: MyMotorways . Comments: Leave a comment

New Amazon Locker Service Offers Postal Delivery Options

Amazon’s locker banks have today turned up in New York City, the third location after the company rolled out the lockers in Seattle and London last month. AmazonLocker is a neighborhood self-service pick-up facility that consists of oversized post office boxes installed in a variety of locations such as several Gristedes, Rite-Aid and D’Agostino stores in Manhattan. The service offers an option for people who can’t or prefer not to take delivery of a shipment at their home or office.

While Amazon has remained mum on its test markets, Amazon customers in NYC, Seattle and London may have noticed the Locker option on their shipping page during checkout. When an AmazonLocker location is selected, Amazon delivers the package to a designated locker and sends an email with a six-digit code to unlock the box. Amazon has installed eight locker banks in each city so far.
What city is next? Amazon is not saying, but we’ll keep our fingers crossed that the lockers will come to more locations soon

March 2, 2012
Categories: Technologies . Tags: . Author: MyMotorways . Comments: Leave a comment

Google plans to launch glasses with a heads-up display by the end of 2012

Google plans to launch glasses with a heads-up display by the end of 2012, the New York Timesreports citing sources familiar with the matter.

The glasses, who were previously rumored to have a front-facing camera with flash and a voice input interface, will be Android based, sources say.

They will include a display, mere inches from the wearer’s eye, streaming real-time info about your surroundings, similar to the various augmented reality applications we’ve seen on smartphones.

The data will be fetched through a 3G/4G data connection, and the glasses will retrieve information about their surroundings through GPS and several sensors.

The glasses will cost “around the price of current smartphones,” sources say. While definitely not very precise – current smartphones cost anywhere from $150 to $600 – this price range shows that Google intends the glasses as a product for the mass market.

Will these glasses be something you need as opposed to want? We doubt it – we haven’t seen a must-have augmented reality application yet, although we have seen some very cool ones in the past.

AR heads-up display glasses, however, are the stuff sci-fi dreams are made of, and it’s a product we’d definitely like to see in the real world – even if they make us look like total geeks.

February 29, 2012
Categories: Technologies . . Author: MyMotorways . Comments: Leave a comment

Google’s Safari Tracking: Here Come the Lawsuits

Interesting article regarding the continuing saga of tracking software; this time Safari  (see below)

Google’s Safari Tracking: Here Come the Lawsuits.

February 25, 2012
Categories: News you can Use, Technologies . . Author: MyMotorways . Comments: Leave a comment

Sony files patent application for Kinect-like device for PlayStation

Illustration from the patent application showing how virtual objects could be inserted int...A recently published patent application indicates that Sony may be working on a Kinect-like 3D depth-sensing device for PlayStation. If Sony follows through with development of such a device, it will no doubt be looking to make up some ground lost to Microsoft, whose release of the Kinect in November 2010, overshadowed the release of Sony’s PlayStation Move just a month earlier.

Like the Kinect, Sony’s patent application for a “User driven three-dimensional gaming environment,” involves the use of a 3D depth sensing camera to allow users to interact with virtual objects on a screen in a 3D space. The patent application also mentions visually altering the onscreen appearance of real world physical objects – mapping of virtual clothing to the user, for example.

With the current PlayStation Eye sporting only a standard video camera, Sony will have to produce a new peripheral capable of obtaining distance or depth information. The application lists infrared or stereo cameras as possible technologies to accomplish this.

Seems like Sony is a bit late, (again)!

February 23, 2012
Categories: Technologies . Tags: . Author: MyMotorways . Comments: Leave a comment

Sony Pictures Imageworks Expands Vancouver Studio

Oscar-winning visual effects/digital character animation company, Sony Pictures Imageworks,reports it will expand its Vancouver, British Columbia capacity by opening an additional 16,000 square feet of space in the Yaletown area for work on the current productions “Men In Black 3”, “The Amazing Spider-Man”, “Oz The Great and Powerful” and Sony Pictures Animation’s “Hotel Transylvania”, currently in production.

“Imageworks growing presence builds on the Vancouver studio’s experience with ‘The Smurfs’ production for Sony Pictures Animation and the successful integration of the Canadian team with Imageworks’ Culver City workforce and infrastructure. The new office effectively doubles the floor space. The two Vancouver locations, two blocks apart, are fully connected to Imageworks’ Culver City data center. Imageworks Canada will occupy a total of 32,000 square feet of office space when the new location comes online in March…”
“Vancouver today is a vibrant digital production center that offers a strong talent base and significant government incentives vital to our ability to deliver exceptional quality and value to our clients,” said Randy Lake, executive vice-president and general manager of Sony Pictures Imageworks.
“Imageworks Canada here in Vancouver is a true extension of the Culver City studio,” says Rick Mischel, Imageworks’ Senior Vice President of Satellite Production, who is based in Vancouver. “Video conference, large-screen viewing suites that mirror the set-up in Culver City, and data transfer connect the artists here directly to our home base.”
“To have Sony Pictures Imageworks Canada expand their studio space by an additional 16,000 square feet is a great vote of confidence in Vancouver,” said City of Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson. “We’ve worked hard to make our city a global destination for digital media talent, and are thrilled that Imageworks is putting down deeper roots in Vancouver.”

February 9, 2012
Categories: Inside Hollywood, Technologies . Tags: , , . Author: MyMotorways . Comments: Leave a comment

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