Keene on Tech

In the past year we have seen the public debut of the micro projector. The gee whiz gizmos that allow you to project fairly large images just about anywhere (given its dark enough). David Pogue wrote enthusiastically about the Optoma Pico Project mentioning he wowed folks in a plane by projecting a movie above his seat. He subsequently reviewed a few more models that have hit the street. We have an Optoma projecter here in our offices and its been an interesting little gadget to hook up to an iPhone to project videos out out your iTunes to a 50 inch wide image onto just about anything you want. Well, Nikon has jumped into the fray and introduced a still camera with a projector built in. So you can take your pics and then instantly project them from the camera out into the world onto anything you want, just like the Pico Projector and similar other projectors. I suspect that we will see more of this in the future and perhaps see a small projector embedded in iPhones or even the next generation of tablets that seem to be on the inevitable horizon. Keep your eyes peeled for these new devices and soon we’ll be sharing our media in more places than just on screens.

Here are the specs for the Nikon camer/projector.

Keene

As the newspaper industry endures the pain of transition to the brave new digital world and the age old tradition of college textbooks is challenged by the Web and a slew of new electronic reading devices, Amazon is answering the call by providing digital outlets for the publishing world. The original Kindle was launched in November, 2007 and then this past February, Kindle 2 was released to great fanfare. Tomorrow, Amazon will unveil a new Kindle that is supposedly bigger and will be more appropriate for reading things like newspapers and textbooks. Should the new device be all it is trumped up to be, it could definitely shake things around further on campuses and newsrooms around the nation. The e-reader revolution is upon us and Amazon is not sitting idly on the sidelines. While there is little information about the new Kindle features other than it will be larger, the device will definitely get lots of press. What remains to be seen is how well the public will take to it. The price point will have to come down, I would imagine, for students to really take notice. At $359 its not exactly pizza change. One report noted that a Kindle is about the same price as some Netbooks but without most of the functionality of a Netbook. Its a good point. Unless you just have lots of digital information for serious reading, e-readers may not be for you, but at some point in the not too distant future I think its a safe bet that some form of e-reader will become commonplace. As the new devices proliferate, they will take some getting used to. I know people who swore they would never read news online and now that is all they do ending their paper subscriptions. With textbooks delivered wirelessly to students’ e-readers, the whole textbook market stands to be shaken as well. Watch the news tomorrow and see what Amazon has in store. It should be quite a read.

On a quieter note, Amazon recently acquired the excellent e-reader software Stanza by buying its parent company Lexcycle. Stanza is probably the best e-reader software out there so it will be interesting to see what Amazon does with its new acquisition and how it will play into the Kindle initiative.

Keene

Apple fans may be so overly enthusiastic about their devices because Christmas comes several times a year for the faithful when Apple releases new products and makes new announcements. Heck, the rollouts should be on an iCal calendar pushed out by Cupertino HQ. In any case, the four pronged launch last week of the iPhone 3G, the 2.0 version of the iphone software, MobileMe and the iPhone/Touch Apps store gave much fodder for frustration and joy. When I upgraded my iPhone to v.2.0 and started loading up on free apps, I was a kid in a candy store. How cool!…Well that excitement lasted about a day when all of a sudden my apps were crashing left and right. I could not get anything to launch after the initial installation. Hmmm…. it turns out that its easy to forget that the iPhone is running the Mac OS X and now that applications are being installed, all sorts of “interesting” things can start happening. The two gotchas that kept my apps from launching was the fact that I did not have much space on my iPhone left over. Actually, I had just over 1 GB of space (I have an 8 GB non-3G device), but it seems that may have not been enough. The iPhone uses disk space on its solid state drive as virtual memory so it needs free space to load applications and execute them. I ended up deleting my music off the iPhone to free up space and tried launching the applications again. Then they all worked (for the most part). Some were a little sluggish as I am not running on a 3G phone and just about all the apps I have need to access the web to do their thing. So if you are having app problems, check to see how full your phone is and unload little used music or movie files to see if that helps.

The second issue is launching apps if you need to sign onto a wireless network. If you need to authenticate to the network, launching apps before you do this will cause the application to crash and in some cases the iPhone to reboot. This is understandable, but it would be nice to perhaps have a message saying the network needs to be activated before the application can be launched. Maybe this is not the problem, but after I was logged onto the network, the apps launched just fine.

Covering the problems with apps launching are the folks over at iPhone Atlas who posted a special report about troubleshooting crashing apps. There is also talk of Digital Rights Management issues or problems with Apple’s firmware. A patch, v. 2.0.1, is supposedly in the works and should be imminent. One of the scapegoat apps has been the highly touted WHERE which is a location based app that feeds you information about your surroundings using the iPhones geo-referencing capabilities. It has been sluggish to work or not working at all, although some improvements have been seen. It has lots of cool potential so give it some time, both for Apple and the developers of Where.

People hold the bar pretty high for Apple. Launching a new platform is not an easy task. People can be quick to criticize the downfalls, but overall, despite the hiccups, things could have been worse with the launch of not only a new piece of hardware, but also significant software. Patience please! If users are still having problems a few weeks down the road then perhaps the gripe meter can be turned on again, but for now give it some time, take a deep breath and reboot when necessary.

Keene Haywood (University of Texas@Austin – DIIA)

Unless you have somehow happened to miss the news the past few weeks, today Apple finally rolled out its long anticipated new 3G iPhone along with the MobileMe and the new iPhone Apps store. And somewhere over in Cupertino, there are no doubt dozens and dozens of Apple employees who dread these rollouts. Hyped to the hilt and covered by the media to a suffocating extent, any new product out of 1 Infinite Loop always faces slings and arrows to some misfortune as well as praise. The antiperspirant must be handed out in cases at Apple’s HQ during these times. Today’s rollout was no different. From glitches activating new phones in Apple Stores, to issues with iTunes and MobileMe not behaving properly, there have been stumbles across the board angering many who are used to “they just work” products. Welcome to the world of technology!… On the bright side, the one seemingly smooth rollout has been the new iPhone and iPod Touch Apps now accessible in the new iTunes v.7.7. There is already a rich offering of apps, many that are free and even more that are priced at a modest $9.99 or less.

MobileMe promises to offer some Web 2.0 twists and revamps to the aging .Mac service which ceased existence sometime in the past day or so. Promising over the air “push” synchronization, MobileMe keeps calendars, contacts and emails synced and accessible across multiple computing devices and is touted as “Exchange for the rest of us.”. This is the really new feature with the iDisk still in the mix. The switch to MobileMe has not been smooth. Server outages and sluggish response of the web apps through the browser have plagued the new service today, but it is hopeful these things can be resolved quickly.

And then there is the new iPhone 3G. Fast and furious, slick and slim, the new device promises a few pluses over the original iphone. The details of the new device can be found all over the web so no need to re-hash this here. The 3G network capability and a better GPS system are the really new features that make this model attractive, but be cautioned the 3G phone will use more battery power (you can talk and surf the web simultaneously) so turn off 3G if you are not in a 3G area. A big addition in the 2.0 iPhone software is support for Microsoft Exchange with push capabilities giving corporate users an excuse to ditch their Blackberries. This is all designed to work with MobileMe in the computing cloud.

I want to return to the new Apps for the iPhone and iPod Touch. While neither the new iPhone and MobileMe are truly revolutionary, the opening of the Apps store for Apple’s new portable devices is quite newsworthy. Its worth one’s time to browse what is already available for download now through iTunes 7.7. Some of the educational apps look very promising. This really marks the dawn of development for an entirely new way of interacting with computers, phones and information. The innovation is in the hundreds of developers who will begin rolling out applications with new possibilities never before seen in software for the masses. This is what is truly the good about today’s news. MobileMe and the iPhone 3G are very nice and all, but give me the apps and the shiny new iPhone 2.0 software that works on the old iPhones as well and I’ll be a happy camper for now. Plan on hearing more about the new apps here in the near future.

Have a good weekend and welcome to Hello World 2.0 courtesy of Apple and its band of developers.

Keene Haywood (University of Texas@Austin – DIIA)

Digital cameras. Everyone seems to have one, and boy aren’t they great! Instant gratification. But can your still or video camera shoot 1200 frames per second? Uhhh probably not. Casio realized this little gap in the market and recently released their EX-F1. Its not a budget camera coming in at $1000 msrp, but what you get for that money is something that would have cost much more way back in 2007. It also packs essentially two high speed cameras in one, providing both still and video capture abilities. This is something that is more and more common in prosumer and consumer digital still cameras. This camera has the unique ability (for now) to capture extremely slow motion imagery at up to 60 frames per second for still imagery and an eye-popping 1200 fps in its movie mode. It can also capture video at 300 fps and 600 fps. The trade-off for such stunning effects is resolution. The 1200 fps mode gives you an image that is only 336 x 96 pixels. Shooting at 600 fps gives you a 432 x 192 pixel image and at 300 fps the image is 512 x 384 pixels. So these are not movies you would want to display on your 50″ plasma TV. But, despite the image size compromise, you gain an almost unprecedented ability to capture imagery in a consumer camera that the naked eye could not perceive. The results are very, very cool and interesting. I suggest you take a look at the samples at Casio’s website and prepare to be a little astounded. Even the small images shot in the 1200 fps mode are cool to watch on a computer screen. And in case anyone forgets, the camera also shoots stills, which is its primary function. The 6 megapixel camera can snap up to 60 images per second, which is also not too shabby. All of this high speed, slow mo imagery is done with the help of a single high-speed CMOS 1/1.8″ sensor. It offers 12x optical zoom and can shoot in RAW mode along with the ubiquitous JPEG. All of this is very nice. In case anyone decides they would rather shoot more “normal” looking video, the camera can deliver HD resolution video at 30 fps (1280 × 720) and 60 fps (1920 × 1080). Video is captured in MOV format using H.264/AVC and IMA-ADPCM (stereo) audio. As if all of this was not enough, Casio offers an Other Functions link at the camera’s international website. It has a best shot feature, face detection, auto bracketing and multiple recording modes (including all manual).

For institutions and departments that do work in the visual arts, this camera may well be worth a hard look. It offers some truly innovative and unique features for capturing imagery that can be used in disciplines ranging from engineering to anthropology.

Complete tech specs can be found here.

Keene Haywood (University of Texas@Austin – DIIA)

A few posts back I talked about Pure Digital’s Flip Ultra video camera and its rising popularity. I also mentioned there was evidence of a new Flip camera coming out. Well, that has now happened and the Flip Mino has made its debut. Its $20 more ($179 mrsp) than the Ultra but it is slimmer and lighter (3.3 oz). It also includes these enhancements:

• a rechargeable lithium ion battery for 4 hrs of power (charge via USB to computer or power adapter)
• touch sensitive controls
• a newer version of the Digital Motion Video engine (v2.5)
• an omnidirectional microphone
• Fast Forward/Rewind controls and Pause controls
• Slightly different focus specs (1m to infinity vs 0.8 m to infinity for the Ultra)
• And only two color options, black or white.

It still shoots 640 x 480 video in MPEG-4 AVI format. It has the same 1/4″ VGA CMOS chip and the same fast f/2.4 lens. One surprise to me is the decision to go with a rechargeable battery. The Flip Ultra and the original flip use AA batteries which is very convenient. But rechargeable batteries are more eco-friendly so points for that. The Flip Ultra and original are still available. The Mino now heads the pack as the most feature rich product Pure Digital offers with the Ultra now the midlevel camera and the original the low end offering. All cameras are under $200 and will give you very decent video for “point and shoot” video aimed for web distribution. I think we will see more and more ultra compact video cameras from various manufacturers hitting the street as video becomes commonplace on the web and beyond.

Keene Haywood (University of Texas@Austin – DIIA)

No, its not a newly discovered dinosaur, but it is a newly developed hardware/software package that takes digital photographs from point and shoot cameras to a new level. The Gigapan is not revolutionary in what it does, but it is revolutionary in its price and ability to take your digital images off to new horizons that will more than make your Aunt Gertrude smile. She might just drop her dentures. What does it do? It is a robotic device that can enable your still camera to take dozens of images of a scene and then stitch them together into one image that you can then zoom into seeing a high level of detail. Gigapan is still in beta but will soon be unleashed on the world… The education world should take note that this tool may very well be something to add to your arsenal if you use still images in your teaching or research. Gigapan is the brain child of scientists at Carnegie Mellon University and NASA Ames, along with support from Google and a little place called CharmedLabs here in Austin. CharmedLabs has been making the hardware and CMU and Nasa have been working out the circuitry and software. Once an image is created, it can be uploaded to the Gigapan.org web site where people can explore the images, annotate them with “snapshots” and even add additional links to things they discover in the images. This is not QuickTime Virtual Reality (QTVR), but a close cousin. Once the system is calibrated for your camera’s field of view (a number of the point and shoot models have been tested in beta), the system rests on a tripod and the user directs the camera to the upper left and lower right corners of the images. Hit the OK button and Gigapan then fills in the gaps creating the panorama. There is a 360 degree option as well that will let you create a seamless image that you can navigate. Other devices out there can capture equally if not more jaw dropping images, but not at the price point of the Gigapan which should be in the $250-$300 range (including software) when it comes to market. The purpose of the Gigapan is to allow this type of photography to be within reach of people who have point and shoot digital cameras, limited budgets and possibly skipped geometry class in High School. The Gigapan was also developed in conjunction with the web site which serves as the public front for the images created with the Gigapan. Some of the best images are also found in a default Gigapan layer in Google Earth. I can keep babbling about this technology, but to really appreciate it, you need to see the results. Go to Gigapan.org and be prepared to say Wow! The device should be out for sale to the public sometime later this summer. I will post a note at this blog when they are available. And, btw, the software is very easy to use. It makes stitching and publishing literally a minimal button affair.

Keene Haywood (University of Texas@Austin – DIIA)

One of my first posts talked about why I would choose an iPhone over the iPod Touch despite the need the have an AT&T contract. Cellular connectivity is my main argument for the iPhone. With the new, faster 3G iPhone arrival imminent, this only bolsters the iPhone as the tool of choice for a constantly connected communication and information device (assuming you have access to 3G networks). But there is one other thing that I failed to mention in the earlier post. This is the fact that the iPhone has a camera. Granted, its not a very good camera, but a camera nonetheless. Its terrible in low light, you have to be very steady to get a sharp image, no zoom, no flash, etc etc. Its about as bare bones as one can get and its only a 2 megapixel image. But the Touch does not have a camera at all… As meager as the iPhone camera is, there are still a few tricks you can do with it. With the SDK out it looks like Apple will be adding a geotagging feature to the camera. Speculation is that the new phone will have true GPS capabilities giving users a much more accurate fix than the current cell and wifi triangulation it currently uses, thus making accurate geotagging possible. Geotagging is a big deal these days and it would be great to have it on the iPhone. This would open up some new possibilities for the device, especially for field based education and research. The rivals out there such as Nokia and Garmin’s Nuviphone (which is still vaporware but should appear later this year) offer full fledged GPS chips in their phones. So once again, I think an iPhone wins head to head against the iPod Touch despite the Touch having larger storage capacity. Now if someone can just come up with a battery that lasts longer than the lifespan of gastrotrich (which is three days btw) to power the gps, the wifi, the bluetooth, etc…

Keene Haywood (The University of Texas@Austin – DIIA)

Technology is sort of like the weather here in Texas. If you don’t like it wait a few minutes and it will change. While the Flip that I just posted about has been around for awhile as tech gear goes (over a year), its still a fairly recent addition. A new model called the Flip Minos will supposedly be debuting in early June. So keep your eyes peeled. If anyone spots one and gets the lowdown on it let me know. It will supposedly retail for about $178 but not sure what the feature set will be.

Keene Haywood (University of Texas@Austin- DIIA)

While its not a brand new item out on the street, Pure Digital’s diminutive Flip is catching on big time in the video world. David Pogue recently reviewed the Flip Ultra and states it now has about 13 percent of the consumer video camcorder market (according to the manufacturer). The reason…its drop dead easy to use, the footage looks decent and its reasonably priced (under $150 for the Ultra and $99 for the original Flip, which has lower resolution and less features). In addition the footage is easy to edit with the included Mac/PC software or with iMovie. For educators, this may be a video camera well worth considering if you want to incorporate video into your work but videography is not the primary focus… It would be a great camera for beginning film students since its so easy to use you can concentrate on composition and story as opposed to learning a complicated,expensive camera. A teacher could buy a dozen and still not break the bank. For field work it would do nicely for visual documentation and research. Keep in mind, this not a camera you would shoot your next theatrical release. But for experimenting, doing small classroom projects or spontaneous capturing of events, its hard to beat in its ease of use and its price. Where it really shines is in low light and indoor situations where its single 1/4″ CMOS chip does an excellent job of rendering an image. Its built-in microphone is decent as well. The video is shot at 30 fps, 640 x 480 resolution. Its not even close to HD but that’s not the point. The point it is its easy to use, inexpensive and gives you more than $150 imagery. The camera creates its clips in the AVI format. The Ultra has a 512 MB 1 GB version that holds 30 mins worth of footage and a 1 GB 2 GB version that holds an hour. Again, don’t expect to shoot Lord of the Rings with this thing. But for those looking for incorporating video into your projects, especially online projects, this device might something you would, well, Flip for.

Addendum: I should also mention that the Flip stores video in internal memory (no removable tape or media) and connects to a computer via a USB connection. A USB port “flips” out and you plug the device directly into the USB port and it mounts on your desktop like a hard drive. Just drag the clips to your desktop or folder and it will copy over. A USB extension cable (not included) can be used if you have tight quarters getting access to your USB port. In addition to the ease of use, this camera is also significant in that it is tapeless. We will see fewer and fewer new cameras coming to market that use tape based storage for video. It will be on internal/removable memory or internal hard drives. This makes everyone’s life a little easier and post-production much better. The only challenge will be safely archiving footage that does not reside on tape.

Keene Haywood (University of Texas @ Austin – DIIA)