A few days back, Microsoft posted the support lifecycle for their Windows Phone devices, both those running version 7.8, and newer devices running Windows Phone 8. If you’re familiar with lifecycle patterns at all, these numbers seem pretty reasonable. Windows Phone 7.8 will continue to be supported until September 9th, 2014. The newer WP8 actually ends earlier, in July of 2014.

While no official announcement about an update to WP8 has been made, the chances are that there will be an update to those devices either later this year, or possibly the beginning of next year. Of course, the widely reported conclusion is far different than what actually makes sense, in that some are reporting that WP8 will be abandonware July 2014, meaning your phone will be orphaned like an Android device in under a year if you buy it in August 2013.

That just doesn’t make sense though.

For example, I bought a Windows Phone in October of 2010. I received my updates in a timely manner from my carrier. Barring any additional version updating, that phone from 2010 will still get support until September of 2014. This is true whether you have a Samsung Focus on Rogers, an LG Quantum on Bell or an LG 900 on Telus.

Of COURSE, support for 7.0 ended a while ago, but that’s irrelevant, because all those phones received the 7.8 update, as they should. Some don’t consider much of an update, even though it was the only update that made changes to the main UI, unlike 7.1 and 7.5. Even if one is of that mindset, according to MS’s versioning, it certainly is, in that update extends the support of that device.

In short, a phone that shipped in October of 2010 is getting just shy of 4 years of official support.

If Microsoft never does another update beyond 7.8, well, they’ve supported the hardware for basically 4 years, which is a pretty decent life span for a mobile device. That’s twice as long as a typical 2 year US contract, or one year longer than a 3 year Canadian contract.

To put that in perspective, the LG 900 came around the same time as the HTC Desire Z. Like just about every other Android phone from that era, updates stopped with Gingerbread 2.3.3, which came out only 4 months after the Z, though the update wasn’t released until later, if they were lucky to get it at all.

In comparison, the iPhone 4 did get the latest update to the OS, minus some features given the older hardware, which is to be expected.

NOTE: this ignores xda-devs and other workarounds – in THAT case, the HTC HD2 is clearly the best phone ever made, because you can run anything you want on it.

IF MS does release one last number update to the 7.x line, which I doubt, then that too would in all likelyhood get 18 months of support, since it’s highly unlikely that MS would release a numbered upgrade and give it ZERO months of support.

As for WP8, it’s 99.9% likely that there will be a point upgrade for them (Blue or 8.1, 8.5, who knows), and at THAT point, the new version, and all phones running that, will probably get 18 months of support, unless you once again happen to believe that MS is going to release and point upgrade and provide ZERO months of support for it.

This falls in line with what MS said way back when WP originally launched in that they’ll support them for 2 years.

Alternatively, I could jump to conclusions like a lot of ‘tech gurus’ out there, and assume that MS, by listing lifecycles now is bailing on the phone market in mid 2014, and will cause all Windows Phones to explode Mission Impossible style at the end of their respective support cycles.

Budweiser recently released the Red Light, a limited edition a wireless hockey goal light that’ll blast the horns and spin the lights when your favourite team(s) score a goal.  It’s the perfect addition to any den or man cave inhabited by even casual hockey fans.

The Red Light has been such a hit for Bud that they’re now back ordered until May, and a brisk second hand market for them on Ebay with the kind of 200% to 300% markup you’d expect from a gizmo limited to Canada, leaving US hockey fans out in the cold. I was lucky enough to get one as an early birthday present from a friend…

but there was a caveat that came with it.

Officially, you need either an iOS or Android device to configure the Red Light to sound for your team. That certainly covers the majority of the smartphone market, but since I’m not part of that majority, I had to see whether there was a workaround.  It was that, or borrow an appropriate device to get it going, which seemed excessive.

Ultimately though, that’s easy to work around, using BlueStacks.

Blue Stacks is a program that allows PC and Mac users to run Android apps on their computers, complete with connections to Google Play and other app stores. In fact, once you add a GMail Google account to BlueStacks, you can browse the Google Play store, and install software directly from the website to BlueStacks with ease.

The steps to getting the Red Light up and going are pretty straight forward.

1) If you don’t already have a Gmail account (and I somehow doubt that), set one up at Gmail.com

2) Install BlueStacks using the default settings, and add your Gmail account to it.

3) Go to the Google Play store while logged in with the same Gmail account, and search for the Budweiser Red Light app. Once you find it, simply hit the Install button.

NOTE: I recommend doing this as opposed to searching for it using the BlueStacks software/ Every time I searched, I would see the app for a split second, and then would be shunted into the book store. I’m not sure why, as many other apps were easy to discover. Maybe it’s because BlueStacks is register itself as a T-Mobile Galaxy S2. Just use the web install and you’ll be fine.

If you left BlueStacks running when you installed the app, Budweiser Red Light should already be in your list of installed apps in the My Apps section.

From here, run the app and follow the directions as if you’re using an actual Android device, with the following pointers.

a) During the configuration process, one of the steps asks about which network to use. If you’re on a wired connection, you’ll probably have to add the wireless network and password manually, though the first time I ran the app, my wireless was already listed. Your mileage may vary.

b) BlueStacks allows you to run in a window, or full screen. Make sure you’re in full screen mode, and the apps itself is running full screen.

Even with a proper Android or iOS device, the manual mentions that you may have to repeat the syncing step a few times. I wasn’t sure what the problem was at first, but running it in full screen mode did the trick.

Why?

The Red Light doesn’t actually get configured over your network. It ships with an SD card sized ‘electric imp’ card, which is a combination wireless chip and light sensor. Once you pick your settings, you hold your phone up to the Red Light, and hitting “begin” causes your screen to flash black and white, essentially sending instructions to the chip using Morse code. In the case of using your PC, you’ll be holding the Red Light up to your monitor.

NOTE: Maybe I should have mentioned that you should configure your Red Light BEFORE you permanently secure it on the wall above your TV. That could get awkward.

In the end, the process only took a few minutes, which struck me as a more viable option than switching to a whole new phone platform.

As for the light itself? The build quality is great. With a solid steel construction, it feels like it was salvaged from an old hockey arena. If you want to see a proper review of the Budweiser Red Light, I suggest you hop on over to habseyeontheprize.com, where managing editor and all around good guy Andrew Berkshire has posted a video review, also embedded below.

After moving back the release of World War Z from December to the summer of 2013, it’s not surprising that the trailer is getting a lot of buzz.  Too bad that before the end of the first minute of the trailer, I already didn’t give a crap.

The trailer opens with Brad Pitt and his family stuck in NYC gridlock.  Every lane is packed with cars, and Brad Pitt gets out to see what’s going on.  There’s an explosion far up ahead… so far so good.  Something ominous, and unexplained fireworks in downtown NYC always creates filmic tension.

A motorcycle cop comes riding down between the packed lanes of cars, to tell Pitt to get in his car, when he’s suddenly hit from behind by a garbage truck moving at what appears to be about60 Kmh.

That’s when I tuned out.

Why is that?

They’ve already shown the street behind Pitt’s car, multiple times in that first minute, and all lanes are completely blocked… impeding any fast moving garbage truck.

They’ve also shown that the street ends in a T section, about 7 car lengths back from the Pitt family car.

In fact, RIGHT BEFORE the cop gets hit (about 2 seconds in movie time), they actually have a shot of the street behind Pitt as he gets in his car.  All lanes are full, and there is no garbage truck in sight, even though the viewer can see to the end of the block.

For this to work, we have to believe, in the course of about two seconds, a whole lane of cars disappears, a garbage truck rounds the corner, and manages to pick up speed to hit about 70 kmh.  This isn’t the kind of nonsense that it takes repeated viewing to “unearth”.  It’s right up there on the screen, and even IF the viewer doesn’t know right away why the scene plays as fake, it still comes across that way.

All this before we even see a single zombie.  When we DO get to see the zombies, let’s just say that I’d rather fire up Left 4 Dead than go to the theatre to see WWZ.

It’s not as if I wanted this trailer to be bad.  In fact, everyone here at RGB Filter loves a good zombie story, and we’re all fans of Max Brook’s World War Z, having interviewed him a couple of years ago at Fan Expo.  It’s too bad the film makers didn’t see what Brooks had to say regarding the debate between slow and fast zombies

This post is both a shameless self-promotion and an explanation of sorts.  Over the past while, the site has been quieter than usual.  While there’s still more to come from Fan Expo, and we’ll still be writing other pieces, a lot of time has gone into another endeavour – The Practical Dead. It’s a new web comic written and drawn by myself and RGB’s own Rebel Scum. What is The Practical Dead you ask?

It’s a weekly webcomic which follows the misadventures of Fisher and Duncan during a zombie outbreak.  From the description…

“Either this weed is incredible, or the Zombie Apocalypse just happened.” Introducing the story of Fisher and Duncan, two best friends making the best of a really, really bad situation. When everyone else saw themselves getting disembowelled by the undead horde, they saw opportunity.

Despite being tech-oriented in general, and both Wacom users, the comic is mostly done with traditional pencil and ink, with some touch ups and lettering putting it in the digital realm.  We’re hoping you’ll enjoy it…

Click here to read from the beginning.

The Practical Dead has its own Twitter and Facebook accounts as well.

Since its humble beginnings a decade ago, the Toronto Zombie Walk has grown to become a massive annual event, every year attracting thousands of the undead to the streets of Toronto. On Saturday October 20th, the dead will rise again.  Here’s just a partial schedule as to what’s going down…

OCTOBER 20^th TZW Schedule:

12pm-2:30pm – Meet at Nathan Phillips Scare. (100 Queen St. West)

Enjoy vendors, bands and our Creeped out Blood Booth.

Meet John Russo and Russ Streiner of Night of the Living Dead infamy and have your zombie groans recorded at the “MOAN ZONE” for the upcoming play Night of the Living Dead Live!!!

The first 100 registered zombies to visit The Toronto Zombie Walk booth will receive a free copy of the novel Alice in Zombieland, courtesy of Harlequin.

Buy your Power House of Terror Tickets here. You will not only receive $5.00 off, but every ticket sold will pay $5.00 to the zombie walk. Let’s keep this event running.

2:30pm - Opening announcements and performances, including a special performance by Skin Tight Outta Sight and Great Canadian Burlesque. Followed by our annual costume Contest judged by our special Guests and Grand Marshals Russ Streiner and John Russo.

3:00pm - The Toronto Zombie Walk commences. Join the Undead in a 5 Kill-o_meter stroll through the city while feasting on the flesh of the Toronto Living.

Get all the details about what’s happening during the day from the Toronto Zombie Walk site!

Diana McCallum joins the rgbFilter crew by taking up mic duties in our interview with Conor McCreery and Anthony Del Sol, the co-creators of the comic Kill Shakespeare.  In it, they discuss the future of Kill Shakespeare in other mediums, and offer some advice on getting your own property off the ground.  That, plus a healthy dose of humour makes it an all around good watch.

So Friday Sept 21 finally arrived, and with it, the latest iteration of the venerable iPhone. Me being the new-toy-nerd that I am, and one that is beginning to come to grips with what may be a severe case of Fanboyism, I dutifully ran down to my local Rogers store and waited in line with the masses to get my hands on the shiny gadget I’d wanted all my life…since 9 days prior.

Things were a little different this year, though. Instead of lining up at 2:AM and finding myself standing in the mid-20s, I arrived 10 minutes before the store opened and secured myself spot number 9. There was no great fanfare, there was no huge promotion, there was no time to wax nostalgic about our communal iLust with my fellow line mates; 10 minutes, the doors opened, and within 5 minutes I was seen to and a brand spankin’ new iPhone 5 was handed to me. It was almost surreal. Then, of course, Rogers’ system went down and it took over 2 hours to get the damn thing activated, and suddenly I felt right at home. So if nostalgia plays a factor in you phone upgrade habits, Rogers has you covered in that department.

Nevertheless, soon (ish) I was released back into the wild, holding in my hand a freshly activated iPhone 5 in black. My contacts and calendars were synced from iCloud before I could even hail a cab. My apps would be restored that evening from an iTunes backup, but beyond that, I was ready to roll. It was literally that easy.

Now it’s 5 days later, and the novelty refuses to wear off. But is it really the best iPhone ever, or is the lack of a huge teardown in terms of industrial design a disappointment?

Let’s take a look-see:

DESIGN

I’m gonna say it here, loud and clear for the cheap seats: The i5 design is a huge win. Here’s my rationale: Think of the i4. When that came out, everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, hailed it as the best designed phone ever. Even the haters. TechRadar described the detailing by saying “The edges are stainless steel, apparently forged by winged unicorns in an iceberg (or something) to be 10 times stronger than ‘normal’ steel.” Hyperbolic, clearly, but it made me laugh as I read on when they say “sleek is clearly still ‘in’ at the Cupertino HQ, and we can’t say we blame the designers when you look at the lines.” For my part, I have yet to meet anyone, even Fandroids, who doesn’t (or didn’t, at least) hold the phone and say at least “Wow that’s really slick”, before moving on to shred it down to the bone with harsh Pro-android sentiment. It is, simply, gorgeous. So why, when the i5 comes out as a natural evolution of the same design, is it suddenly scorned? “Apple can’t innovate” they say. “Steve would never have allowed this” they say, oblivious to the fact that this device has almost certainly been in R&D since far before Job’s passing. If the i4 was so close to perfect, how is the i5 so far?

I’m here to say, it’s not. The screen is just the right size. The weight is so minimal you fear you’re gonna throw it across the room when you pick it up. The material is top-shelf. And the decisions make SENSE. The headphone jack is the ultimate example. Think about how you hold a phone. Does it make more sense to have to coil the headphone wire behind your hand, or let it hang loosly below? And how about just the simple action of putting it in your pocket? Now you just naturally reach for it topside-down…no more flipping the phone around in your hand, which I imagine will lead to fewer drops. The speaker is better. It’s made of some serious-abuse-taking material. This phone is the next logical evolutionary step for the best designed phone on the market. And it’s just gawddam beautiful.

iOS 6

OK, iOs, you’ve had your fun, but it’s about damn time you grew up. The extremely-familiar-to-ANYONE operating system has been a workhorse for the iPhone for 5 years and through 6 iterations now, and aside from some spit & polish, almost nothing has changed. It’s faster, it does more, but the same problems that have plagued iOS since day one persist. You can’t customize your springboard. There are no widgets. You have to dive into the Settings app to take care of what should be the simplest tasks, like turning WiFi on and off. Android has answers to all these issues, and has managed to evolve the OS into something mutatable and incredibly slick with Jellybean. And Windows Phone has arguably the most intuitive OS on the market, with everything a quick touch or swipe away.

By comparison, iOS feels dated and unpolished. IN fact the only UI feature they can still say is better than the other guys’ is Folders, though Metro has an interesting take on grouping apps with its At a Glance system. All in all, it’s time for iOS to evolve they way MacOS did. Sadly, MacOS waited until they got to version 10, and because Apple loves round numbers, I have a weird feeling that’ll be the case here too. Hopefully I’m wrong; that figure is predicated 100% on a feeling and nothing more.

So why do I stick with it?

Honestly, 4 reasons, only one of which is quantifiable. I’m familiar with it; there’s absolutely zero learning curve on a new Apple device. I like the features; Siri, for instance, is actually kind of great, and the new Maps app is gorgeous, even if it’s got more bugs than a basement Chinataown restaurant (To the naysayers, I say, shut up, it’s launch software; it’s bound to be buggy and we early adopters will just have to deal with it in the short term. Relax.)

The devices are beautiful; as much growing up as the OS has to do, the phone itself is just the sexiest thing on the market, bar none. And the fourth, the one and only quantifiable reason, is that I’m heavily invested in the Apple ecosystem. At home I have a mid-2012 iMac, a late-2011 Macbook Air, and an older Macbook Pro. At work I have a mid-2012 Macbook Pro. I have an Apple TV, 4 ipods, an iPad 2 and now 2 iPhones. And you know what? Every single one of those devices talks flawlessly to each other. I take a picture on my phone and it shows up on my iPad which is ported to iPhoto and then it shows up as a screensaver on my Apple TV. I schedule a meeting and it shows up in every calendar and my home computers, work computer, iPad and iPhone all remind me of it. It’s all seamless and slick and easy.

Yes, I can get this feature on other platforms, but I’m all Apple all the time at home and at work, and trying to get another phone OS to integrate as seamlessly is way more hassle than I’m willing to invest time and effort into. In short, my system just works. And to be fair, I still think iOS is a great OS…but its age is showing, and has been for a few years now. I’m reasonably sure the iOS team is cooking up something new for the future, but I’m also reasonably sure that that future is far enough away to make the less devoted among us take serious pause and reconsider their purchase decision when the iPhone 5S comes out next year.

LIGHTNING

Get over it. It’s a plug. Plugs get smaller. So you’ll either have to buy an adapter or all new docks. We’ve all had it pretty easy for like 8 years without a change. Even USB went through several rounds before it landed on Micro. Technology evolves. If I had ANY beef with lightning, it’s that I find it ludicrous that they would call it that and not make it compatible with Thunderbolt. But again, that’s coming. It has to be. Moving on.

THAT SCREEN

Other than the ageing OS, the one and only beef I have always had with the iPhone is the size of the screen. Sure, it was kind of huge when it launched, but it didn’t take long for the rest of the world to sit up and say “Hey…how bout we try bigger?” And the Battle of the Hugeness began. HTC said “Screw 3.5 inches…People want 3.8!!” And it snowballed from there, all the way up to the impressively huge and incredibly stupid-looking-when-you-use-it-as-a-phone Samsung Galaxy Note, sporting a 5.3″ display that basically doubles as a shield for your face if you don’t want people looking at you on the subway. The most popular Android phone on the market today, the Samsung 3GS GS3, rocks a slightly-less-massive-but-still-effing-huge 4.8 inch screen, and people are going nuts over it. Clearly, a lot of people want bigger screens on phones.

I was one of them until I held the i5. When it was announced, I was extremely disappointed when they made the screen only taller but not wider. I like a lot of real estate on my screens (I have 3 monitors at home side-by-side totalling 77″ in viewable space…I like to stretch my legs) and was really hoping for a 1280×720 resolution or better. But then I picked up the i5, and it occurred to me: this is a phone. It’s portable. It spends most of the day in my pocket. And accuse me of drinking the Kool-Aid all you want, but that rhetoric about your thumb being able to reach from one corner to the other ain’t bullshit; that’s how you use a freakin’ phone. (Well it’s how I do, anyway.)

Do I still want a bigger screen? Yes, partly…more real estate is a good thing, but if the iPhone ever does reach 1280×720, I hope they can improve the pixel density to the point that the display doesn’t get so big it fails the thumb test. The only other display I’ve played with that I may envy more is that of the Nokia 900, which at 4.3″ and 800×480 px might just be the sweet spot for phone displays everywhere (even if the resolution is a little low.)

FLAWS

Oh yeah, the iPhone has flaws. Two in particular. One of them is a bit of a surprise in that it’s a tech fail, and the other in that it’s one of the stupidest decisions I’ve ever seen applied to a mobile device.

First, the former: If you’re lucky enough to live in an area with LTE coverage, you’re probably enjoying lightning fast browsing speeds and snappy texting and emailing with your i5. If, however, you’re doing as I am and leaving LTE on all the time without switching to WiFi, you’ve probably watched your battery life just nosedive at an alarming rate. Apple claims the new i5 battery should get up to 8 hours of Web use on LTE, and I’m here to call bullshit on that. And blogs like this one agree with me. If I’m watching a video over LTE, especially if I’m also doing something else like sitting on hold, I can literally watch my battery meter plunge. My last full cycle charge saw me get somewhere in the neighbourhood of 3 hours of use and 8 hours of standby. That’s abysmal, and LTE is the culprit. Switching over to 3G sees significant improvement, but personally, I didn’t buy an LTE phone to use 3G all the time. It’s a feature I’m paying for. I want to use it. Fortunately I’m never far from a charging station, but that doesn’t excuse the problem. The iPhone 5 battery just sucks out of the box.

However, there are reports that people on older devices are seeing similar issues after updating to iOS 6. This smacks of the issues iOS 5 users had last year; reports of terrible battery life were rampant. An update from Apple was not far behind, and hopefully that’s the case again this time around. With conflicting reports of battery longevity, I’m on the verge of exchanging my phone in the hopes I just got a lemon.

And now, the latter: The finish on the black iPhone 5′s body. Whoever had the bright idea to clad the black Iphone 5 in anodized aluminum deserves a punch in the back of the head. Yes, anodized aluminum, possibly the single greatest way to make sure that aluminum attracts every single chip, scratch and scuff it comes across in daily use. Hacking up aluminum with an anodized treatment is so freakin easy, even a baby can do it. This baby, right here:

To take a device that is going to be pulled in and out of pockets, clanked against zippers, and carried around next to car keys and loose change all day and put a hyper-delicate powdery coating on it is fully stupid. Yes, sure, it looks amazing out of the box (…mostly) but it’s going to be a very short time before the complaints of hacked-up i5s come rolling in. This could be worse than antennagate, if only for aesthetics.

SUMMARY

So is the iPhone 5 the best iPhone ever? Absolutely, hands-down, yes. It’s lightning fast. It’s super light. It’s sexy as hell. iOS 6 is further evolved than it’s ever been, even if it could benefit from a Joan Rivers-level facelift. Yes you’ll need new docks, but oh well. Yes the battery’s a bitch, but software updates will likely help, if not solve, that issue. And yes the chassis is finished beautifully provided you don’t touch it or do things, but it’s hardly any less damage-prone than the cheap flimsy plastic bodies found on many of the more popular super phones out there.

Is it the best PHONE on the market? Well it is for me, but honestly, I believe there’s no clear answer to that question. There are more powerful phones, there are bigger phones, and there are cheaper phones, but ultimately, what defines a phone as “best” is how it fits into your personal life. It’s goddam time we took a stand against OSism and accepted the choice as a personal one, don’t you think? Look at ANY thread about Apple vs. Android vs. Winphone and you’re likely to agree.

So that’s it; my 5-days-in review of the iPhone 5. How do you feel about yours? Do you love it? Is it an improvement over the last version? Do you have that horrible battery drain issue, or are you one of the lucky ones? Let us know below. And the person who carves the best image into the back of their new i5′s anodized aluminum body and sends us a picture of it will WIN…our hearts.

When we stopped by actor Tom Noonan’s table at Fan Expo, we weren’t expecting to get one of our favourite quotes from the whole event. That’s just what he delivered though, when we asked him his take on movie remakes, when he compares them to someone sleeping with your girlfriend, though he’s a bit more blunt about it…

So as anyone whose interested knows, today Apple released the latest developer preview of iOS 6, named iOS 6 Beta 4. Several improvements were made, but the only thing about which anyone is talking is the omission of the dedicated YouTube app from the build.

I have to admit, it’s pretty fun watching the tech community lose its collective shit online. Immediate speculation is that Apple is twisting the knife in Google’s side as much as it can. While there may be a grain of truth to that, the pure vitriolic ferocity with which this theory is being spread online may (or, to be fair, may not) have something to do with this gem of a quote from Gizmodo’s article on the subject:

Of course, with the iPhone no longer offering an app for YouTube and YouTube being owned by Google, it’s more evidence that the two companies want to kill one another.

Um, OK? At the risk of disagreeing with the venerable juggernaut of journalism that is the Gawker Network, I offer up 4 simple truths about the iOS6 YouTube debacle that may or may not help put things in perspective.

YouTube on iOS isn’t going anywhere.

Apple has officially said that anyone will be able to access YouTube content through Safari, just like it always has. From The Verge:

Our license to include the YouTube app in iOS has ended, customers can use YouTube in the Safari browser and Google is working on a new YouTube app to be on the App Store.

All Apple has done here is stop making its own YouTube app and asked Google to submit their own. When iPhone OS launched in 2007 the app store didn’t exist and Apple needed an easy way to get YouTube content on the phone to fulfill one of its tentpole offerings. Naturally, they built and licensed a native app to do exactly that. Now, with that licence coming to an end, and with myriad ways to get the same content on the iPhone, they no longer want or need to keep supporting a native app and are letting Google do it themselves. There’s no word on timing for this, but my guess is it’ll be ready for the end of September. And if not…so what?

Apple and Google are competitors.

People chalk up the differences between Apple and Google as a personal fight, and yeah, there’s some truth to an old grudge match between the two companies. But regardless of the veracity of such a claim, it bears remembering that Apple and Google are two companies vying for dominance in the same market. They’re corporate competitors, and speaking in a strictly corporate sense, not friendly ones. Each is out to crush the other. That’s the mandate. So of course Apple doesn’t want to support Google’s software in-house. It’s not like Pepsi has an agreement to help sell more Coke.

Apple is not blocking Google from the App Store

Apple’s reputation as a walled-garden ecosystem is well earned, but less deserved these days than in those of yore. Even we here at rgbFilter have written some pretty nasty articles calling Apple out on its bullshit as pertaining to the App Store and its practices. But those days are long since over and the acceptance rate in the app store, while limited, is exceptionally high. Those that don’t make it fail based on a large number of criteria, including Apple’s rule that the app must not duplicate or improve upon native iOS functionality, but mostly it’s if the thing just doesn’t work. (This OpenTracker thread actually breaks it down quite nicely.) And Apple is not doing a thing to prevent Google from having its own apps on the App store. Chrome, Gmail, and the Google Search App all live on my phone. The fact that they all work for shit is incidental; Apple is not preventing its competition from being a part of the iOS app experience. Quite the contrary; they’re inviting them in to do it so they no longer have to.

The iOS YouTube app kind of sucked anyway.

You know how you’re searching for a video on your phone? And you find it and hit play? And then you’re kicked out of the browser and into the YouTube app? And then the video has to load again? And then it only loads a small portion at a time and drops connection? And when you scrub back to kickstart it again only to have the player re-load the entire video again? And then you say “the hell with it” and decide to email it to yourself for later but you can’t because there’s no share button so you have to back up to the search screen and look for it again? Yeah I’m sure we’re ALL gonna miss that experience.

These are of course the thoughts of an individual, but in summary, the internet’s focus on the news of a lack of a dedicated Youtube app on the iPhone only proves that people don’t give a shit about the olympics and we need something else to talk about. I think we can move on from this one.

iOS 6 is widely expected to be released on September 12 alongside the newly announced next-generation iPhone. Prepare to access Youtube one of a dozen different ways come early Fall.

Ever since its launch, the Kinect has been a favourite for people to experiment with what can be done with motion controls. In what could be the coolest mash up to date, a pretty big team of talented individuals combined for the V Motion Project. In a nutshell, two Kinects, along with a couple of controller machines (one PC, one Mac) to create an interface that provides a visually stunning motion controller to work with the Ableton Live audio software.

This goes beyond the typical Kinect hack though. The V Motion Project was sponsored by V energy drink maker Frucor, along with their ad agency Colenso BBDO, as a promotional event.

The resultant video below is a Kinect enabled conductor projected onto a massive 30 metre by 12 metre wall, accompanied by some great visualizations that take their inspiration from old school vector games like Battlezone. In fact, while watching it, I couldn’t help but want a scaled back version of this at home. While it’s not a video game, it’s reminiscent of my favourite Kinect game, Child Of Eden.

The blog for the V Motion Project is very detailed as to how the project came together, and the technical challenges they encountered.  If you happen to like the track, you can download the MP3 from the official V Motion Project page.

[Source: V Motion Project blog]

[via: The Verge]

Sure, it’s Canada Day, and we all should be outside.  In the meantime, if you haven’t added Texts From Superheroes to your regular list, you really should.

Yesterday, Microsoft showed how grown up it’s become over the past 5 years by proving it still remembers what it’s like to be a kid. The venerable software giant held a special event at Los Angeles, but unlike any other Microsoft event, keynote, or trade show presentation that I can remember, this one was…well…cool. Like REALLY cool.

>Held at the über-slick Milk Studios, the event was understated, interest-piquing, and for the ultra-nerdy, dare I say, exciting? Is my geekbone showing if I call this thing exciting? Whatever, I don’t care. Because what came next was well worth the Frinky nature of my reaction, as Microsoft was about to unveil Windows Surface. More on that in a minute.

It bears mentioning that Microsoft’s approach to this presentation rings extremely familiar. From Ballmer taking the stage to set the tone, to the rest of the team thanking the rest of THEIR teams, to the perfectly scripted (if poorly executed…seriously Steven Sinofsky, take an improv class dude) presentation full of repetition and catchphrases and nouns repurposed as verbs (With Surface, you can Surface your life, it seems), the only thing missing is a pair of white Reeboks and a black turtleneck. Not that I find anything particularly wrong with that; Cupertino may hold a lot of patents, but presentation skills ain’t one of em. In my opinion, learning from Apple’s approach to keynote addresses is no different than reading Jack Welch’s First, Break All The Rules, and then actually following the advice therein. It’s a winning formula, and in the highly competitive tablet market, going with what works is not just a good idea; it’s an imperative.

It’s REALLY hard to call the tablet market “highly competitive” with a straight face. In the world of tablets, there’s iPad, and then there’s everyone else, and everyone else has a stranglehold on crap. Everyone I know who has an iPad LOVES it and actually uses it. I personally use mine countless times a day…mostly for Simpsons Tapped Out, but occasionally some actual work sneaks in there. As for those with a Playbook…well, my Mom loves hers. And for those of you with an Android tablet…I haven’t actually had the pleasure of meeting any of you. As far as market superiority is concerned, the iPad still holds a commanding lead, but has seen its market share dwindle somewhat since the onslaught of lower priced options, including the Kindle Fire.

But now, for literally the first legitimate time ever, there’s a real contender in town. Windows has been plugging away at Windows 8 now for a while, and while their hype machine has been running kind of low and their rollouts are jerky and inelegant, the product itself is anything but. W8′s metro UI is right at home on a tablet screen, and the thing is just drop-dead sexy. I’ve been playing with it a little bit thanks to the Developer preview, and while there are some things I miss about it (and a couple of things I downright loathe), you can not help but give MS credit for accomplishing the design equivalent of putting away the pipe and tweed jacket in favour of a joint & a hoodie. Buttery smooth and innately intuitive, W8 is, in my humble opinion, the perfect companion to a well built tablet.

Enter Surface. At first glance, Surface appears to be the best-looking device this side of Windows, and everything it gets right, it gets dead-on right. The industrial design is superb. The materials are first-rate. It has a 16:9 display with Gorilla Glass. It has I/O…REAL I/O. It’s non-proprietary. And unlike certain convertible machines that are trying to be everything to everyone, Surface knows what it is: A tablet PC that is powered by easily the most flexible OS on the market.

Futureproofing is baked-in, too, with the top-of-the-line model sporting a 3rd gen Ivy Bridge i5 proc, processing power hitherto unheard of in a tablet. With the optional Keyboard covers, your Tablet does one thing your iPad can’t: serve as a suitable notebook replacement.

Speaking of the keyboard covers, how amazing are THOSE things? Say what you will about the Surface, Windows 8, or tablets in general: I find it virtually inarguable that Microsoft has brought to market the single best cover/case for a tablet, or any computer, ever. This is of course a first impression, having never touched the thing, but as far as I’m concerned, the Surface Keyboard Cover has set the new standard for Smartcovers and Smartcover clones everywhere. In terms of just the idea, there is simply no better cover on the market. Dude, it has a TRACKPAD. (Oh, sorry, my Geekbone is showing again.)

So at first glance, Surface is possibly the best tablet on the market, even better than iPad. But is it an iPad killer? Probably not.

Which is a shame because I really, REALLY want one. And I hope the rest of the world will, too. The iPad is a sexy, SEXY piece of equipment. Not gonna lie, now and then I just stop what I’m doing and just…look at it. Perfectly built, beautifully designed, the pinnacle of industrial design at its time; I have a lot of “I love you, She-Hulk” moments with it.

But the best-built device is only as good as what powers it, and let’s face it: iOS is starting to show its age. Functionally, iOS has grown up a lot since its launch in 2007, and its baked-in functionality is the best on the market, no question. But the UX and UI are about due for a serious overhaul. MS’s at-a glance UI is a radical departure from anything we’ve seen in an OS to date, which would throw up warning flags if it weren’t for the fact that it works, and works REALLY well. I truly, truly hope Windows 8 and Metro serves as a wake-up call to the industry when it comes to how important UI really is on a touchscreen device, because it’s simply the best there is.

But for everything MS is doing right, they’re still making some of the same old stupid mistakes they’ve always made, plus a couple of new ones. First off, there is not one, but two versions of the Surface: the Windows RT version, based on an ARM SOC, and Windows 8 Pro, based on the aforementioned i5 proc. In other words, there will be the version you will want, and the version you don’t, and guess which one will be priced affordably?

Yours is as good as mine, as pricing has yet to be announced, but you can bet that the entry-level RT will be priced somewhere between $650 and $850, assuming it has a 3G or LTE antenna built-in, a feature conspicuously missing from the announcement. But if you want the upgraded version, the one with the i5, active digitizer and the USB 3 port, I think you’re going to be somewhat north of the 4-figure mark.

At this point you have to ask yourself not which tablet you want to buy, but whether you want a tablet or an Ultrabook, which will have the exact same OS, a bigger screen, more connectivity, and a real keyboard. This is a shame, but in the tablet market is has been proven over and over again that fragmentation does NOT work. One look at this insane Wiki page and you’ll see that when you start fragmenting your own devices you create a market of confused would-be customers who will just instinctively migrate over to the trusted brand name, or at least, the most common one.

Granted, MS is only offering the Surface in 2 configurations, but that’s only half the problem: each Surface also runs a unique version of Windows 8. At this point I would like to address Steve Ballmer directly.

Dear Steve

STOP MAKING DIFFERENT VERSIONS OF WINDOWS.

kthxbai.

Interactive videos are hardly all the rage anymore, thanks to YouTube allowing anyone and everyone to clutter up the screen with a pastiche of semi-transparent boxes urging viewers to “CLICK TO SEE MORE VIDEOS”, whichh will in turn be cluttered with semi-transparent boxes. But every now and then, someone comes along and puts a new spin on the whole idea. BooneOakley, the little North Carolina ad agency you may have seen recently on AMC’s The Pitch, is the best example of doing it right I can think of without resorting to Google, and that’s at least 10 years old. The short version is, BooneOakley needed a website. In a time when YouTube was not yet a household name and ad agencies were saying to themselves “This Internet thing just might be taking off”, BooneOakley saw potential in YouTube’s built-in button feature and made the decision to have their entire website exist as a series of linked YouTube videos. And the kicker? It works. Check it out here for yourself. It’s just stupid-good stuff.

I’m sure there are tons of other examples one could cite, but that to me is the perfect trifecta of good site design: it’s innovative, it’s engaging, and it’s easy. In a world of “Fast, Good and Cheap: Pick Two”, it’s a refreshing reminder that the tools for innovation are sitting right in front of us at all times. So when I saw Jet Lag today for the first time, I had to tell the world about it in more detail than just hitting “like”. So excuse me while a gush a little.

Jet Lag is an interactive promo for the book of the same name by Jean-Marie Dru, Chairman of TBWA Worldwide, the ad agency that’s responsible for, among other things, Apple. Mr. Dru is worth knowing in ad circles because he’s of the increasingly rare mind that old media will not be replaced by new media, only complemented by it, and that TV ain’t goin’ nowhere anytime soon.

“The future of this business is the integration, the ability to create interaction between all the different media,” he said. “To do something on TV that resonates on the Internet and vice-versa, to do an event that will create a buzz on the Internet.”

And, Dru added, “integrating all these disciplines is a discipline in itself.” – New York Times

The site launches with a beautiful art-of-flight-inspired ride-along through the clouds, when suddenly you find yourself seated in Business Class, sipping a drinks and leafing through a copy of Dru’s book. The genius here is that the promo is divided into 26 chapters, and the user navigates them with the most obvious of input devices: their own keyboard. In each chapter, the book flips through the pages to arrive at the content, which is narrated in Dru’s own voice, while a slick animation plays out on the facing page to accent the content.

Again, in terms of promo and interactivity, this hits that trifecta that ad people should always be shooting for, while having the benefit of being not only uniquely about the product it’s promoting, but also pure and honest in its message. A book about building brands by a guy who’s travelled the world building brands, set in a traveller’s world while building its own brand? That’s cool. It’s also where a lot of us are likely going to read it, and, probably, where the thing was written in the first place.

You can download Jet Lag: An Ad Man’s Vision of the World from iTunes here.

Amid all the shiny new toys announced and demoed at NAB 2012 by the usual suspects of companies such as RED, Arri and Canon, one company not even known for cameras at all lay the smackdown on all the camera manufacturers. Past the initial shock and gadget giddiness, I’ve had a chance to collect my thoughts on this exciting new development.

Blackmagic Design (BMD) -best known for their high end video capture cards and cross converters- unveiled their new Digital Cinema Camera to the shock of everybody at NAB2012. It is a 2.5K camera that shoots in Prores, AVID DNx, and RAW in the ADOBE CinemaDNG format in 23.976/24p/25p/29.97/30p fps. All for $2995 USD. This is big news. Seriously. The key lies in how it shoots and records.

A Nod to the Past and an Eye to the Future

The BMD Digital Cinema Camera’s strength and beauty lies in the fact that it can shoot footage in Adobe’s CinemaDNG format, an open, non-proprietary, non-vendor specific file format. To be absolutely clear, this is not the heavily compressed video stream (like H.264) found in most cameras/camcorders these days. It is in fact an uncompressed image sequence. That’s right! It shoots still images at the various frame rates from 24 to 30 frames/stills per second. Each still image is not only uncompressed, it’s RAW, so it retains a very high level of detail and dynamic range. So Blackmagic’s new camera is by definition a digital motion picture camera; a camera that shoots a series of 2592 x 2192 still images to mimic motion.

This harkens back to the early days of cinema. During the early days of film back in the 1700′s, there were only still photographs. Then in the mid-1800′s, someone figured out that if one took a series of photographs that showed a change in motion bit by bit and flipped them one after the other really quickly or mount them in a circular drum that rotated them, it would create the illusion that the image is actually moving. This led to the invention of the zoetrope, then the film strip, and then of course the film projector. Thus, motion pictures/moving pictures/movies were born.

But a strange thing happened on the way to digital HD video cameras. And the operative word is “video”. All HD and even the 2K and 4K cameras we know today evolved from broadcast video technology. They shoot an electronic video signal via a CCD or CMOS sensor which themselves owe their existence to the vacuum tube. Then manufacturers started compressing these video signals so that more footage can be recorded onto tapes, and then later to cards. But with video compression, a lot of picture detail and dynamic range is lost.

This is why most HD cameras today still look like video. Sure, the invention of progressive frames and the much loved 23.976 frame rate has gotten them to look a LOT closer to film, but they still look closer to video than real film because deep down in their core, they are video cameras shooting and recording either a NTSC or PAL video stream that’s heavily interpolated to try to recover the data that’s lost. But as you know, you can get close with interpolation but you can never fully get back that which was never recorded in the first place.

The Future is… Digital Image Sequences

As funny and old timey as it sounds, the future of filmmaking is Digital Motion Pictures, literally. BMD is not the first company to offer this type of camera. Ikonoskop in Sweden has their A-CAM dll, a HD camera with a 16mm sized sensor that shoots HD in RAW CinemaDNG. But that camera is around $10,000. And the people over at the Digital Bolex Project are getting ready to get their 2K 16mm equivalent, RAW shooting Digital Bolex camera ready for production; a camera that will not only record in CinemaDNG but also TIFF and JPEG image sequences. But that camera is not in production yet. The Phantom high speed cameras also shoot DPX image sequences, but they’re priced between $50,000 to $150,000, depending on the model.

If BMD sticks to their Fall 2012 target shipping date, then they will be the first one to offer a truly affordable Digital Motion Picture Camera. Offering such a camera at a relatively low price will empower indie filmmakers like never before. RAW image sequence image acquisition will change the current workflow and enable many budget filmmakers to create theatre-quality films of their own with insane levels of post production value that’s never seen before. Imagine being able to do digital effects work by working on the highly detailed still image sequence directly or being able to pull close-to-perfect linear keys from green/blue-screen footage shot with this camera. And by all accounts of people seeing the test footage, it comes really, really close to looking like film.

It is definitely a great time to be a filmmaker! One thing is certain… demand for SSDs are going to skyrocket.

It’s funny, I’ve been keeping tabs on this technology for a while now and this is the direction I was hoping the DSLR manufacturers would go ever since they enabled HD video recording on their cameras. I mean, who better to put out a camera that could shoot RAW stills at 24 or 30 pictures per second than either Canon or Nikon? I really hope they are taking notes from BMD.

There’s Always a Critic

I’ve already heard from some people that the BMD camera is a bit of a letdown because it’s sensor is just slightly (and I do mean just slightly) smaller than a Four Thirds sensor and that it only shoots 2.5K footage.

Firstly, even though its sensor is 16mm sized does not mean it is garbage. Yes, while it is smaller than DSLR sensors, it is still much bigger than most video camera sensors which are tiny in comparison; from 1/2.5 to 2/3 inch sized sensors. As well, having a smaller sensor also means that the image data can be scanned a lot quicker than with the larger sensors, so it should help alleviate the dreaded rolling shutter/jello-cam effect that plagues the DSLR’s large sensors.

The only issue I can see is getting a good wide angle lens for it. With basically a 2x crop factor, a 8mm (full frame format) fisheye lens becomes a 16mm one. But since the mount is Canon EF compatible, you can bet there will be an adapter made available that will allow you to use any one of a plethora of lenses out there, including some excellent Micro 4/3 lenses like the Voigtlander’s awesome Nokton F0.95/17.5mm lens or the Leica-branded 25mm Summilux f/1.4 lens.

Secondly, as for the “it’s only 2.5K” argument, we are talking about an image size of 2592 x 2192. 2592 x 2192 -that’s still pretty big! Most people cannot tell the difference between HD and 4K resolution projected on a theatre screen. Legendary director Martin Scorsese shot his movie HUGO on the Alexa in HD resolution because he saw a test (projected on a theatre screen) which compared HD footage and the 3K ArriRAW footage – and he DID NOT SEE MUCH OF A DIFFERENCE. In fact, working as a Digital Cinema Camera Technician myself, I have been fortunate to have participated in similar HD vs 3K/4K tests via a 4K projector on a large theatre screen and you know what? The perceived resolution difference to the naked eye is very, very slight indeed. It took a LOT of staring into the fine details to be able to spot the difference. And even then, you would have to get really, really close to the screen to be able to see the real difference.

Why is that you might ask? Because our eyes tends to blur details at a distance. This is at the heart of a debate that is currently being argued in Imaging Technology; whether the human eye can actually resolve the extra detail in a 4K projected image. All signs seem to be pointing to no. Time and time again with these resolution tests on new cameras, people sitting at a regular viewing distance from a theatre screen cannot distinguish between films shot in HD/2K and 4K. The only way they could actually see all that extra detail is if they physically get really close to the screen, or the image gets zoomed in to magnify those extra details. And you know what, no one watches movies in theatres from the first 2 rows anyway.

Now couple that with the Bayer patterning most cameras currently employ on sensors (which effectively reduces the density or number of pixels on a sensor surface that can record each red, green and blue component of light) and the complex compression schemes used in cameras/camcorders and you will notice how misleading the whole 4K argument is. What these tests did show me was how important colour and dynamic range is, much more than resolution. So give me colour and dynamic range over “high” resolution any day!

By the way, if you are interested in reading more about this resolution phenomenon, check out the amazing article “The Truth about 2K, 4K and the Future of Pixels” by John Galt, an expert and pioneer in digital imaging who helped develop the Panavision version of Sony’s HDW-F900 camera and led the team in the creation of the Genesis Camera. He definitely knows his stuff.

So How Do You Handle All Those Images?

So one question you might be asking is, with a camera like this where does it store all that wonderful, uncompressed data? This camera shoots directly on ordinary Solid State Drives (SSDs) that you can pick up at a computer store/outlet. No redesigned custom interface (hear that Sony?), the same industry standard SATA interface that every off the shelf SSD uses. Just pop one in and away you go, shooting to your heart’s content. And by the way, it doesn’t have those pesky recording time limits that DSLRs have.

So you may be asking, how do you edit footage shot as still image sequences? There are several ways to do this. The first and most obvious method is to use the colour correction software Resolve, a $999 software package that is included free with every BMD Cinema Camera. With Resolve, you can create a proxy file that links to the image sequence. The proxy file then acts like a video file, allowing you to edit much in the same way. You import the proxy file into your editing software and edit. But it differs in that it does not contain any video/picture data -it just points to the image sequence of RAW stills when the editing software needs it. Another way of handling the image sequences is to use your editing software or an animation program to import the entire sequence of images and create a video file that you use to edit. Or you can just shoot Apple ProRes or Avid DNxHD video files and edit with that. As you can see, there are many options available to help you edit the footage.

The Death of DSLR Filmmaking?

As opposed to last year at NAB when several manufacturers offered up several new HD video cameras with those large DSLR-sized sensors, many in the industry prematurely proclaimed that the HD-DSLR was dead. Unfortunately that was not the case because those new cameras came with fairly high price tags compared to their DSLR counterparts. The charms of HD-DSLRs were their ability to shoot beautiful images with a host of interchangeable lenses at a very low price.

I even noted in my “Death of DSLRs?” article last year that…

“The only way the DSLRs are really going to die is if there comes a camera that will house the 35mm sensor in a proper video camera-type body AND will be the same price or cheaper than a DSLR. …Then again, maybe a cheap 2K/4K camera will come out and plow everyone else aside.”

The BMD Cinema Camera appears to be that camera. It has left many in shock just after its announcement. With all its brilliant features, it is the closest thing that can stem the tide of people using DSLRs for video. But it will not stop everyone from using DSLRs for video. The BMD Cinema Camera is still a $3000 camera. As much of a bargain it is for that type of camera, there are people out there who cannot afford it. When you can buy a Canon T2i for roughly $500, DSLR filmmaking is still far, far from dead.

Never has there been a shakeup this big since DSLRs were able to shoot HD video. And with a $3000 price tag, Blackmagic has taken aim squarely at prosumer HD-DSLRs. For the first time, indie filmmakers can finally afford a camera that will enable them to produce those theatre quality masterpieces they previously only dreamt of.

More info on:
Blackmagic Digital Cinema Camera
Adobe’s CinemaDNG

Werner Randelshofer, a visual computing student at ETH Zurich, has taken it upon himself to archive digital artwork from early computer systems that are no longer with us, such as the Commodore Amiga, IBM clones, the Atari ST and many more. 

The site does a great job of archiving systems by type, and artist.  Beside the abundance of game stills and animations, there are some classic demos on display, converted for modern viewing, including an old favourite of mine, Automated Light by James M. Robinson.  Randelshofer took the time to contact the original artists, who in some cases provide additional commentary on their work.

The site makes it clear that even with the limited computing power of the late 80s and early 90s, there was no lack of imagination.

via The Verge.

While the fourth has been around for a while now, today marks the second annual celebration of all things Star Wars, with Star Wars Day TO.  Once again, the festivities take place at the Toronto Underground Cinema, and kick off at 7pm.  Besides various screenings, there will be a costume contest, trivia (I’m guessing NOT about Game of Thrones, but that’s just a hunch), special guests and prizes.  All the proceeds for this year’s even will be going to the SickKids Foundation.

You can find out more about the event, as well as order tickets, via the official StarWarsTO.com website.

It’s been a while since I first embarked on this 3-part article.  Since then, life happened as it always does and before I knew it, quite a bit of time has passed and the digital camera landscape has completely changed.  But always for the better.  Newer and more affordable video and cinema cameras have surfaced that surprised everybody.  For the sake of completing this series, I will not discuss any of the new developments.  That is best left for another article altogether.

But first, if you haven’t read the Parts One or Two of this series:
Click here for Part One.
Click here for Part Two.

Okay, now it’s decision time!  It’s been quite a journey, one with plenty of surprises.  Coming into this series back in 2011, I had thought my decision would come rather easily.  As I delved into both cameras, I learned this was not going to be the case.  Which camera did I decide to go with, the Canon 60D or Nikon D7000?

And what of the new cameras?  Well, Canon in the past while released the T3i and Nikon with the D5100.  While the T3i looks like a decent successor to the T2i, it is still basically the same camera as the T2i with less features than the 60D.  The same can be said about Nikon’s D5100.  It’s an awesome consumer-level camera, but the D7000 still has advanced features that gives the shooter a lot more control and flexibility.  Once again, I have to remind everyone that this evaluation was not a scientific one at the least and is based on my requirements as a filmmaker.

First, let’s review what I like about each camera.

Canon 60D:
- swivel screen
- ability to record HD video at 1080 @24p (23.976 fps)
- low compression HD video – 45 Mb/s
- Full Manual control in video mode
- dial-able Colour Temp in Kelvin
- ability to use my manual focus Leica R lenses with an adapter

Nikon D7000
- very, very clean low light shooting capability
- ability to record HD video at 1080 @24p (23.976 fps)
- noise is luminance noise which looks like film grain, not video noise
- smarter B-Frame H.264 compression scheme
- Full Manual control when shooting video
- dial-able Colour Temp in Kelvin
- ability to use my manual focus Leica R lenses by using a mount replacement adapter

The Decision
And my decision is…

The Nikon D7000!

Well, it’s been a really tough choice.  Both the Canon 60D and Nikon D7000 are great cameras to shoot your next indie movie with.  But for me, I’ve gravitated towards the Nikon D7000.  Here’s why:

1.  Nikon Colours – this is something that is completely subjective and will vary depending on the person.  I really love the colour renderings from the D7000.  It seems to reproduce colours much more accurately.  The blues and greens come out really well and the reds are well controlled without sacrificing any of the blue and the green hues.  I find on the 60D (which is the same for all Canons) that the video and pictures come out too warm for my liking.  Now I know what you’re about to say; why don’t you just colour correct it in post?  Well,  it’s not as simple as it sounds.  With these cameras, when I’m talking about colour reproduction/rendering, I’m actually talking about the base colours that each camera can capture.  Every camera processes the basic components of light (red, green, blue) differently because of their proprietary sensors and processors.  One may favour blue, while the other might favour reds a bit more.  It’s these basic colours that cannot be re-processed in post.  While you can colour correct to give images a more warmer or cooler hue, the base colour set will remain the same.  This is why Nikon cameras have Nikon colours, Canon cameras have Canon colours and so on.  I personally prefer the more natural/neutral look of the Nikon cameras.

Canon Lizard

Nikon Lizard

2.  Low Light & Noise Performance – this is where the D7000 really shines.  In low light, the D7000 can shoot very cleanly up to 1600 ISO, with very little noise at 3200.  Even 6400 ISO is very usable.  But the kicker is that the noise itself is mainly luminance noise, not chroma noise, so it looks like very organic film grain when you do get it.  For me this is very cool because there are times where I like to use grain to give HD video footage a stylized textural look.  However, I must add that when the D7000 is pushed to the ulta-high ISOs, then it does start to show signs of chroma noise but even then, it still does not seem to have quite as much chroma noise as the Canon 60D.  Since I won’t be shooting HD video with the Hi-1 or Hi-2 modes anyway, this is not a concern for me.

Camera Noise

The following pictures were shot -in HD video- at 9:30 in the evening with the D7000, well after the sun had set.  Notice that even shot at a relatively high ISO of 4000, the noise looks very organic in structure because of the lack of chroma noise.

NOTE: The two images below open to full HD 1920 x 1080 resolution.

3.  Sharp detail retained in HD video – this is something that gets me.  Even though the D7000 uses more compression than the Canon DSLRs, the D7000 retains more detail, especially in the blacks.  Don’t get me wrong, there’s still artifacting, but it is really minor compared to the Canon 60D.  This is due to 2 things; a) the D7000 rescales the data from the sensor by binning -a type of rescaling by interpolation- as opposed to line-skipping which is what Canon does with their cameras which looses detail  b) the D7000 using a smarter B-frame based compression which encodes more detail in half the space.  This negates the criticisms in my books.   For more information on these, please read Part 2 of this article.

NOTE:  The two images below open to full HD 1920 x 1080 resolution.

One feature that I started to use in the D7000 is the built-in intervalometer for doing timelapse photography.  While this is not a feature that’s on my must-haves feature list, it is very useful to be able to do timelapse photography on a camera straight-out-of-the-box without the need for a separate intervalometer.

So there you have it.  It’s been a long and tough journey, but I finally found a camera that I can shoot my next films with, without breaking the bank.  Some of you may or may not agree with my choice, but I hope that this series have helped shed some light on the filmmaking potential of these new DSLRs.  In particular, the potential Nikon DSLRs have in this arena, which surprised even me.  Many people who use DSLRs for video tend to gravitate towards the Canon cameras, not giving Nikon a fair shake.  With excellent colour reproduction and a much smarter video compression that retains more detail than the Canon DSLRs, I find that the Nikon D7000 is a really great option.  But in the end the camera is still only a fraction of the filmmaking equation.  It still comes down to having a good story and a keen visual sense; something that no camera can give you.  But with better and even more economical cameras on the horizon, there really is no excuse for not going out there and making your own films.

Many thanks to Michel Plaxton, Daniel Lessard, and Paul Laroquod for helping me shoot some of the test photos for this series.  As well, additional thanks to Michel Plaxton for the use of his lizard.

Cheers!

Microsoft’s SkyDrive cloud storage has been around for a number of years now, providing users with up to 25 GB of free storage, with their Live ID login.  Yesterday, they updated the service by releasing an updated Skydrive application for both Windows (Vista, 7 and 8 ) and Mac OS X (Lion).

Once installed and you provide the proper login, the SkyDrive folder simply appears as another folder in Windows Explorer and the Mac Finder, much like other cloud solutions such as DropBox.  The maximum filesize has also recently climbed to 2GB while using the native app.  Official mobile apps are available for iOS and Windows Phone 7, while 3rd party apps are available for Android.

Another extremly handy feature of the SkyDrive application is remote fetching from other computers with SkyDrive installed.  For example, say you were working on a Photoshop file at home, and you didn’t save it to the SkyDrive folder.  If your home machine is on, and has the SkyDrive application installed, you can simply log into your home computer from the SkyDrive web interface and download the file.

If you need more than what the free SkyDrive storage allows for, you can opt to pay for extra storage, and you can see the breakdown in the chart below.

With every good bit of news, there has to be some bad though.  Microsoft is changing the 25GB free down to 7GB for new users.  If you’re a current user you can keep your 25GB if you alread have 4GB stored on the service.  If you have less than 4GB, you can log in here, and claim the 25GB for free right here.  There’s no word on how long this will be available, so you should get over there now.

In other cloud storge news, Google has launched its Google Drive, which functions similarly to SkyDrive, providing 5GB of free storage and Google Docs integration.  Users will have the option to upgrade to 25GB of space for $2.49 a month, 100GB for $4.99 a month, or 1TB for $49.99 a month, and upgrading to a paid account will expand your Gmail storage to 25GB.

Google Drive also includes cross-platform support for desktop and mobile (iOS and Android), though as of this writing, there’s no word on a Windows Phone 7 app, and I’m not gonna hold my breath on that one.

As Google Drive is brand new, I haven’t had a chance to try it out yet. In fact, it became official just before I hit “Publish” on this story. The pricing structure for both services is very similar, and it will be interesting to see how long time 3rd party cloud solutions like DropBox hold out.

Jack Tramiel, who founded Commodore International, passed away this past Sunday at the age of 83.  Born in 1928, Tramiel survived Auschwitz and a labour camp in during World War II, and later emigrated to the United States and started building typewriters.  He later set up Commodore Business Machines in Toronto for supply chain purposes, and branched into computers with the Commodore PET, which was a staple of computer classes in schools at the time.

It was the Commodore PET that inspired me to get my first computer, the VIC-20.  Before then, I was always “into art”. In particular, I loved drawing, and writing, and always wanted to do that sort of thing for a living. That’s until I discovered computers, with the aforementioned VIC-20. I grew up a Commodore kid, eventually trading in the VIC-20 for a Commodore 64. I didn’t have any real interest in either Microsoft or Apple because they were vastly inferior products.

With its colour screen and large software library, I spent many a night messing around with the computer in my bedroom, and hogging the phone line to dial into various BBSes, hoping to hear the squeal of a modem on the other end instead of a busy signal.  At one point I started using a program called Doodle, which allowed the user to draw in colour on the computer, and I filled up floppy discs and data cassettes with my digital creations, pining for a colour printer to make them real.

As it turned out, I got access to one for free.  In high school at an undisclosed time in the 80s, I was in the art department office talking with my art teacher, when I saw a Commodore 64 box along with an OkiData colour printer just sitting in the back corner. When I asked her about it she said every department in the school got one, even though the art department never had a need for computers, so it had been collecting dust for a while.

That’s when I (probably in an overly excited voice) explained to her that the art department could do something with it, and I could show her.  She said that if I knew how to set up it, I could do whatever I want with it.  Of course, the next day I had a stack of floppy discs with images (and some demos), and set about setting up the gear.

While the resolution of these images wasn’t great, she was surprised that people were painting on computers, as I took her through the software.  Best of all, she let me print out my work, which had previously only existed on the screen, and she even asked me to show each of the art classes what could be done.  I was even allowed to do some of the class assignments directly on the computer.

To make a long story short, it was Commodore, from the VIC-20 to the Amiga that enabled me to combine my love of computers with my love of art, and ultimately go down the career path that I have.

For that, I’ll be eternally grateful to Commodore the legacy of Jack Tramiel.

Rest in peace.

Ever since the days of the original Palm Pre, worries about saturated market has permeated many reviews and reports about new entrants in the smartphone ‘race’. A lot of the tech press were raising flags, suggesting Palm was in a “too little, too late” position.

Palm was certainly in the “too little” category, I’d argue they were far from “too late”.  There were a lot of problems with Palm’s WebOS reboot, few of which had to do with timing.  Unfortunately, because Palm (via HP) did crash and burn, it reinforces the idea that “market saturation” is the problem when it comes to both Windows Phone’s adoption rate and RIM’s hopes with Blackberry 10 to reverse its downward trend.  

All attention is on the current front runners.  “There’s just no more room for a third ecosystem to grow, and lets just watch Apple and Google fight it out, and everyone else should just pack it in now” is the overwhelming vibe that everything from small blogs to online editions of major newspapers tend to propagate.  The only problem is, the idea that the smartphone market is saturated is a myth, which brings me to this quote:

“You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant.”
- Harlan Ellison

Since before starting up rgbFilter.com in 2008, most analysts have been saying that the smartphone market will hit saturation in sometime 2015 in the US, which is a good barometer for us here in Canada as well, given our similar adoption patterns so far.  Market saturation for most products means when roughly 95% of the market potential has adopted them. In some countries, especially in Western Europe where a lot of cross border travel occurs, there is more than one mobile phone per person, though these aren’t all smartphones.  Some other parts of the world won’t see saturation for many years. 

For example, the latest numbers from Nielsen show that the US smartphone market just hit 50% saturation in February, with about 2/3 of new customers choosing smartphones.  Similar numbers that quash the myth also released in the past month are the latest projections from IDC are suggesting that worldwide smartphone shipments will more than double between 2011 numbers and 2016.

In short, the smartphone market is far from saturated.  Why does the myth continue then?

“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”
- Anais Nin

The above has long been amongst my favourite quotes.  It’s both elegant and all encompassing, while conveying a certain introspection and being open to multiple interpretations.  My personal interpretation of it is as a mantra, to attempt to look at things beyond my own pre-conceived notions.  How does Anais Nin’s quote apply to the common myth of market saturation?

It’s the perception of saturation. From my personal experience, most people I know are using smartphones of one type or another. If I were to use my circle of friends and family as a barometer, the market would be over 90% saturated. But that’s from my limited experiental knowledge.  Experiential knowledge is crucial, but at the same time, personal experiences by their nature often cloud objectivity, even in the light of cold hard facts.

We as humans tend to gravitate towards like-minded individuals.  As we do, we’re influenced by each other, and often encorporate mannerisms and phrasologies from each other.  In some cases, we develop communication short hand to the point where an outsider would be lost to what we were saying, even though we speak the same language.  It’s a part of the subconscious nature of experiental knowledge.

The same linguistic shorthand applies to the online world as well, and this applies to the market saturation myth.  The myth has been around for a few years now and has never been questioned by any of the major tech press, instead repeating what they’ve read elsewhere, building their own unassailable reality.  Barring a dramatic shift in the market, even the US is about 2 years away from market saturation.  All the historical data, tracked for years now, points to this… and has been covered by the very same tech sites that still propagate the “we’ve hit market saturation” myth in every opinion piece and review.

I can’t help but see some irony in that.

The University of Pennsylvania’s GRASP Lab has been working with quadrotors from some time, demonstrating how the flying robots can be used for everything from assembling structures to flying through moving hula hoops. Back in January, they put out a video demonstrating the capabilities of their minaturized ‘nano quadrotors’ flying in formation.

Vijay Kumar of U Penn gave a talk at TED 2012, and the video above goes into greater detail about the hows and whys of quadrotor development and application.  The second half of the video shows even more complex applications, including a Kinect-ed quadrotor navigating and compiling a 3D map of building it has entered for the first time.

“[Agile aerial] robots like this have many applications. You can send them inside buildings as first responders to look for intruders, maybe look for biochemical leaks … [or they] can be used for transporting cargo.”

I won’t spoil the grand finale.  It’s definitely worth watching.  Below is the video from January, which is available in HD.

YouTube video

Nokia, which has long held the crown as ‘best camera on a phone’ with their 12 megapixel N8 today upped the ante with the announcement of their PureView 808 phone. The phone will ship with a custom 1/1.2″ sensor, much larger than most smartphone cameras. While this leads to a noticable hump on the back, the results make up for it, as it sports a 41 megapixel sensor, enabling it to capture images up to 38 megapixels in size.

41 megapixels dwarfs most DSLRs on the market today, and Nokia is the first to admit that most users won’t be needing such hi res photography. Instead, the PureView will use a custom sampling algorithm to downscale full sensor image to creat 5MP images (or 8MP if you choose). Instead of the the standard digital zoom found on most cameras which crops and scales up an image, the 808 in standard 5MP mode allows for zooming up to 4 times without a loss of resolution. The design is the result of 5 years of research from Nokia, spearheaded by Damian Dinning, who also worked on the N8. 

If you click on the above image, you can see the 1:1 pixel detail that the 808 is capable of capturing.   You can also explore this GigaPan made by Engadget Chinese, to zoom into some of the sample photos.

Beyond still images, the sensor will also be able to record video at up to 1080p, with a wider angle than other phones on the market, with the same zoom capabilities.  To further enhance the overall end result on the audio end of things, Nokia has also created a Rich Recording feature that does a better job of capturing audio. You can catch a quick launch video below…

With the phone running Symbian Belle, it probably won’t see much of a release in North America.  Nokia has stated that they will be bringing the technology to other platforms, which suggests that this will probably be seen in future Windows Phones from the company.

On the Nokia Windows Phone front, it’s now been confirmed that the Lumia 800 will come to Telus on March 2nd, while Rogers will be bringing an LTE enabled Lumia 900 to Canada sometime in the second quarter, with most estimates suggesting April.

Over the years, Microsoft has taken a lot of flak for their horrible naming conventions and overly long names, and deservedly so.  When first announced, Windows Phone was going to be called Windows Phone Series 7, so a user of such would be using a Windows Phone 7 Series device.  They officially chopped of the “Series” by launch, and now just advertise it as Windows Phone.  It just makes more sense.

Similarly, they last year rebranded their paid Office cloud service to Office 365, which competes on price and services with Google Apps paid services.  Office 365 makes sense.  It’s Office, all the time.  Do you know what they called it previously?

Business Productivity Online Suite.

That’s right.  It was known as BPOS.  It is probably one of the worst names you could come up for any product anywhere, outside of shit sandwich.  It’s doesn’t matter how well it works; when you say BPOS, there’s no way that “Business Productivity Online Suite “ is the first thing that comes to mind.

With the Metro UI sporting Windows 8 Consumer Preview about a week away, Tom Warren over at The Verge has come out with some additional information on how Microsoft is planning to unify its brands moving forward.  First and foremost is the unification of services.  In the past, Microsoft’s branding was all over the place, from Xbox, to Zune, to Windows Live, it was a horrible tangle.  Rafael Rivera over at Within Windows has more screenshots (one which I’m using for this article) of what the interface looks like for the Microsoft account.

While it has been a hodge podge of naming conventions, that doesn’t mean things didn’t work together.  A lot of consumers just weren’t aware of the disparate services.  Take a look at Hotmail.  It’s still the number one web mail service in the world, used by 100’s of millions of people.  Many of them will log into Hotmail.com and not think about it again, even though by the mere fact of having a Hotmail account, you also have access to Microsoft’s SkyDrive cloud storage solution, their free Office Web Apps and the Zune media portal.  Cribbing from the aforementioned Tom Warren, here’s the lineup change for Microsoft moving forward.

• Microsoft Account (formerly Windows Live ID)
• Mail (formerly Windows Live Mail)
• Calendar (formerly Windows Live Calendar)
• People (formerly Windows Live Contacts)
• Photos (formerly Windows Live Photo Gallery)
• Music (formerly Zune Music Player)
• Video (formerly Zune Video Player)

Zune is a prime example of a somewhat successful service that nonetheless failed with consumers.  The Zune HD as a media player received nothing but stellar reviews when it was released, and to tie into that hardware was the Zune service, which provided much of the same media consumption options of iTunes, as well as a subscription based Zune Pass music service.  One of the problems that hurt widespread Zune adoption is that the hardware was US centric, though it did launch in the UK as well.  This alone made it a niche player.

Speaking of a niche player, the Zune software on the PC represents a 3^rd way Microsoft users could play music and video, after Windows Media Player and Windows Media Center.  Unfortunately, Zune never supported the 3^rd party codecs that Windows Media Player and Media Center did, making it at most a “sometimes use” interface.  While operating with a more forward thinking user experience, and a precursor to Metro, the only functionality it added was the media purchasing/rental, and the sync tool for Windows Phone.  With the introduction of the Windows Marketplace in Windows 8, the media purchasing/rental aspects aren’t needed.  The major functionality of the Zune software will live on, but directly integrated into the OS itself. 

This lies in stark contrast to the Xbox, which will become the gaming/media touchstone for most Windows 8 users.  While not on the above list, the Xbox has managed to resonate with consumers and not just gamers.  Just over a year ago, Microsoft released numbers for Xbox usage, and while the average daily usage went up, on average 40% of the console time is now for watching videos or listening to music.  The goal of turning the Xbox into more than a gaming console was working, whether it’s through 3^rd party services like Netflix or rentals through the Zune service. One of the ironic things about killing the Zune brand though, is that for now it’s the Zune software that allows Xbox users to rent and purchase music and videos.

It’s interesting that between 2009 and 2010 the Zune more than doubled its video market share to 18% in the US, though most casual users would probably identify more with “renting a video on Xbox” than “renting a video from Zune on the Xbox”.  In short, while the Zune service works, it’s the Xbox brand that most consumers think of when it comes to digital entertainment from Redmond.

This unification under a single interface will also help raise awareness of the other services Microsoft makes available to users.  Besides increasing the functionality of SkyDrive, for example, it will also be integrated into the new OS, as will a light version of their Office suite.  The latter, while having roughly the same number of users as Google Docs, doesn’t have the mindshare.  While I think Office Web Apps is better than Google Docs, especially with it automatically attached to my SkyDrive account, if most Windows users aren’t even aware of its existence, then it’s just not going to get that mindshare.  The unification of everything under a singular Microsoft Account, along with the new Metro UI that makes features more prominent, can go a long way in changing that.

This is probably true with the social aspects of the OS as well.  On the phone, they’ve already provided OS level integration with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and their own Live Messenger services, and it’s a seamless integration.  There’s no reason to think that this same integration won’t happen in the Windows 8 People application, along with the addition of Skype, which is an interesting case on its own.

Skype, as a recent and costly acquisition, is in a unique place It’s presumed that Microsoft will link Skype directly into the People hub, while still providing standalone Skype applications for users on other desktop and mobile operating systems.  While Skype was an expensive purchase at 8 billion, in its last fiscal year, the VoIP service pulled in $800 million in revenue.

In short, even with branding unification, there’s no way that Microsoft is going to knife the Skype baby.

Zune, however, is one baby they can offer up in sacrifice, and quite readily, but that’s okay.  The Zune DNA is already an integral part of Microsoft’s future.  One needs to look no further than the UI of Windows 8, Windows Phone and the Xbox to see that.

Life imitates art, right? That doesn’t have to mean it’s good art to result in a good cause.  In that vein, the Swiss Space Center yesterday announced that they’ll be launching the CleanSpace One project, with its first goal to build and deploy a “janitor satellite” named CleanSpace One, with the singular task of tracking down the detrius we’ve left stranded in our solar front yard. The space junk will then be carried back towards Earth, with the goal of burning up during re-entry.

“It has become essential to be aware of the existence of this debris and the risks that are run by its proliferation,” says Claude Nicollier, astronaut and EPFL professor. To move beyond mere rhetoric and take immediate action to get this stuff out of orbit, the Swiss Space Center at EPFL is launching CleanSpace One, a project to build the first prototype in a family of “de-orbiting” satellites.
From: [EPFL]

When CleanSpace One’s mission is done, it’ll burn up along with the trash, though subsequent models may have a more long term contract. Oh, and that “life imitates art” bit, see the video below… It’s not every day that one gets to drop a somewhat relevant Quark reference.

SOURCE: [EPFL] – VIA: [The Verge]

Back in 2010, six French students won the GDC Student Showcase award for the liquid physics puzzle game Puddle.  Konami later picked up the title, and after development by Neko Entertainment, Puddle was released on both the Xbox Live Arcade and PSN a couple of weeks back.

The premise of the game is straight forward.  The player guides liquids through hazardous environments, while trying not to lose so much volume that you have to start over.  In the early levels, this means navigating water through pipes filled with fire and heated surfaces that cause the water to evapourate.  In later levels, the liquid, now nitro glycerin, becomes a hazard, as not only will environmental obstacles destroy it, but move too fast, and you’ll end up blowing up.  To help you along, there’s a liquid gauge in the upper left hand corner that indicates both the amount of liquid left, and how much you need to complete the level. 

Controls are very straight forward on either the Xbox 360 or PS3, consisting of using the left and right triggers to rotate the environment.  The PS3 version of the game also allows the player to opt for either SIXAXIS or Move control, which I didn’t get a chance to test.  Controller play works well with the game, and the physics are spot on.  Rocking the environment back and forth yields a convincing feel of viscosity that is easy to grasp, but more challenging to master.

The game does mix up the goals from level to level as well.  In one early example of a boss fight, you’re controlling water trapped in a boiler.  Instead of trying to make it to the end intact, your goal is to set off the boiler so that the water will evapourate, all before the timer counts down to zero.  Finding just the right timing to hurl water onto the heating elements can be tricky.

There’s a wide variety of environments to play in, from a laboratory with lasers and fire traps to a forest of water-sucking plants.  Visually they strike a tone similar to games like Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet, with blurred parallax scrolling backdrops causing the foreground to pop.  It’s a style that I’m particularly fond of, as it keeps the focus on the gameplay.  The soundtrack, with an almost calming ambiance that urges you to think of the flow, and suits the game to a tee.  One of my personal favourites eschews this style, instead presenting an X-Ray of a person drinking a glass of liquid, which then has to be guided through the human body.  I won’t spoil the ending on that.

Keeping in the chemical nature of the game, performance on each level is measured by a combination of speed and percentage of liquid that made it through the gauntlet.  You’ll be rated Gold, Silver, or Copper, represented by the periodic table symbols of Au, Ag and  Cu.  Besides the glory of getting Au, higher rankings also unlock items for the experiemental Laboratory, where you can play around with the physics properties in the game on your own terms.
 
Not all is perfect in Puddle though.  It is one of those games that you can expect to die in.

A lot.

That in its own right is perfectly fine.  The real frustration comes in the load time to get back to the beginning of the level.  While 7 seconds or so may not seem like a lot, cumulatively it makes for a less than ideal gaming experience.

Adding to the frustration is not knowing what is coming up around the next bend.  As you progress through a level, the liquid can become separated, and some amount may get left back around a previous bend.  If it straggles for too long, it’s gone for good, decreasing your overall level.  Combine this with the kinetic nature of the game, I found myself wishing for a birds eye view by the end of the second level.  While I don’t need to have the whole level splayed before me to dissect, a mechanism to zoom out even by 25 to 50% for a brief moment would have gone a long way in mitigating some unnecessary failures.

Ultimately, Puddle has a lot to offer someone looking for a unique puzzle game.  Just be warned that the extended load times in a very much ’learn by death’ game might have you swearing at the screen more ofthen that you expect.  You can find it for $10 on PSN or 800 points on Xbox Live, and both versions have a demo, which I highly recommend taking for a spin first.

The always wonderful to read “Art of the Title“, which focuses on the craft of creating effective title sequences, generally using film and TV, has posted its first game sequence, with Deus Ex: Human Revolution.  Included is an extensive interview with both Paul Furminger from Goldtooth Creative (director of the sequence) and Jean-François Dugas from Eidos-Montreal (Game Director). 

Art of the Title: Could you tell us about the original concept for the title sequence and how it was developed?

Jean-François Dugas: It started with us at Eidos-Montreal. We knew we wanted a sequence that would tell the story of Adam Jensen’s life being saved on an operating table. The thing is, we didn’t want anything basic or expected. We wanted something more stylish and conceptual. We talked to the guys at Goldtooth Creative and explained our idea as to the direction we wanted to take and they started to pitch really creative ideas.

Paul Furminger: Central to the game is the exploration of the murky boundary between man and machine in a technological age. In the opening scene, Adam Jensen, the first-person protagonist, is attacked and left for dead. Without consent, his employer reconstructs his body, saving his life
but changing him forever. It was this reconstruction that we needed to depict in the opening title sequence – to show machinery slowly taking over Adam’s body and, more importantly, to show his body accepting the augmentations, using them to become stronger, to become something more than human.

The two discuss influences, and the process, in great detail.  The article is full of concept art as well as visualization and multi-pass render samples.  Definitely worth the deep dive.

Last week, a promotional video showing the Kinect integration in Mass Effect 3 was release. action.  The Kinect integration actually appears pretty useful, especially in the issuing of commands to the non-player teammates.  They do mention that while there is almost a second of lag while the Kinect interprets the command, it ultimately does pay off.

Joystiq had some hands on time with it, and has some good things to say about it.  For example, you can point to a location and issue a move command via voice.  While the command is being processed, you may have moved on to target an enemy, but the system remembers where you were pointing when it was spoken.  All in all, it seems that the “Better with Kinect” moniker really does apply, as issuing commands in more or less real time seems a lot more appealing than hitting that pause menu and breaking the flow of the game.

The demo for Mass Effect 3 launches on February 14th on PC, PS3 and of course Xbox 360, with the full game being released in March.

Media artist James George calls it “an old tourist movie from the future”. A walk down the summer streets of Barcelona recorded through a handheld 3D scanner. He was quite properly trying to avoid using a genericised trademark (like saying Xerox when you mean photocopy): he shot it using the output of a Kinect. Put to music by Alva Noto & Ryuichi Sakamoto the images become recognisable as much through their movement as their form. The two and a half minute  piece “alley posts” has been posted on Vimeo. George’s other videos are linked here.

2011 is not turning out to be a good year for those with paranoid tendencies.  With the Carrier IQ story gaining mainstream attention, it’s interesting timing that Wikileaks and friends have launched a new project called Spy Files. Compiling information from over 280 documents, Spy Files has created an interactive map that shows widespread montioring of just about every electronic form of communication, from the internet to GPS and speech analysis.

Wikileaks has held off on releasing the source documents as part of a fund-raising effort, but according to Spy Files, the digital surveillance business is a good one to be in, topping out at $5 billion.  You can browse by country, which will show what types of monitoring is going on.  We here in Canada appear to escape relatively unscathed compared to others, but it’s no less creepy. 

Maybe Rockwell was right after all…

YouTube Link – Rockwell – Somebody’s Watching Me

Back in October, a story ran on XDA Developers about software running on HTC Android phones called Carrier IQ (CIQ) that appeared to be collecting a fair amount of data about your device and not doing a good job of storing it securely.  Beyond your device ID, it collected phone numbers, geo-location and account names. Since that initial discovery, there’ve been reports of it being even more invasive, leading Carrier IQ to issue a Cease and Desist letter and denying what it does. 

When Trevor Eckhart (TrevE) wrote about what he discovered, calling it a rootkit, Carrier IQ was quick to send a Cease and Desist letter, claiming that they don’t record as much information as TrevE is reporting.  That’s when the Electronic Frontier Foundation got involved on TrevE’s behalf.   CIQ quickly backed down and issued a press release stating that the CIQ software doesn’t do all that.  They claim they don’t record keystrokes, provide tracking tools nor inspect the content of your communications (emails and SMS).

Of course, that didn’t stop TrevE.  He’s just put out another video that appears to prove all those claims wrong.  In the video, TrevE is quick to point out that while he’s using an HTC phone, the software is also present on other devices.  People on XDA Developers have found it on a number of devices from multiple manufacturers.  The software appears to be embedded at the kernel level, making it almost impossible to completely remove.  In fact, while the IQRD app can be seen in the Android task manager, it’s impossible to issue a force quit on it.

YouTube video link

In the above video TrevE uses his factory reset HTC Android device to demonstrate what Carrier IQ does.  In the first few minutes, he actually sets up his phone to decline all geo-location services, as well as declines any geo-location, social networking  or OEM debugging information.  In short he runs the phone at a bare minimum, and uses Android’s USB debugging tool to see what’s happening on his phone.  CIQ’s IQRD application runs in the background and records the following…

• geo-location of phone
• hardware button presses
• application launches
• individual key presses
• email and SMS content
• data recording in a supposedly secure HTTPS session (recorded unencrypted by IQRD)

In short, it records just about everything you do with your phone, and that information is unencrypted.  While he presses keypad numbers to demonstrate that IQRD records the information, he doesn’t actually make a phone call.  The IQRD application does have permission to record audio on your phone though.

Since TrevE’s initial findings, the software has also been found Android devices by other manufacturers including Samsung, as well as on Blackberry and Nokia Symbian devices.  In fact, Carrier IQ’s home page shows a running total that as of this writing stated that it was on over 141 million phones, with a new device being added every second.  There’s no definitive list of partners available, but Carrier IQ is known to be on Sprint and Verizon phones, and Carrier IQ has partnerships with Vodafone Portugal as well as hardware makers NEC and Huawei.  Out of the other major OSes, it appears that both iOS and Windows Phone are free of Carrier IQ software. UPDATE: according to one blogger, CIQ is also on iOS devices, but he has posted an easy way to disable it, unlike Android.

From the Carrier IQ home page:

Carrier IQ is the leading provider of Mobile Service Intelligence Solutions to the Wireless Industry.  As the only embedded analytics company to support millions of devices simultaneously, we give Wireless Carriers and Handset Manufacturers unprecedented insight into their customers’ mobile experience.

Unprecedented sounds about right, when you record everything your phone does.  While I’m not implying that CIQ is doing anything malicious with the information, and Carrier IQ claims they don’t sell it to 3rd parties, I’m skeptical when I see the term “market researchers” in their press releases (PDF link).

Whenever you set up your phone with accounts, be it from the OS maker, hardware manufacturer, or a 3rd party app, you’re generally greeted with permissions pages, asking you whether the software can collect information.  You’re given the choice.  With CIQ, there’s no way to opt out, and since CIQ isn’t your carrier, the device maker or the OS maker, it’s unclear exactly what privacy policy this falls under.

Ultimately, end users should know what exactly their phones are logging, and what bits of privacy they’re giving up and to whom.  The very existence of Carrier IQ flies in the face of that.

Additional updates:  According to this Globe and Mail report, neither RIM nor any of the big three Canadian wireless carriers make use of the Carrier IQ service.