Bill C61 Gone For Now
Though Canada is facing it’s third election in less than 5 years, there are a couple of things to be thankful for. First, is that Canadian election cycles don’t last 3 and a half years, like certain neighbours. Second and arguably more importantly, Bill C61, the ‘DMCA of the North’ championed by Tory Industry Minister Jim Prentice, is dead for now. That doesn’t mean the battle is over. The controversial bill, which inspired YouTube videos and very active groups on just about every social networking site, will probably see new…
Read MoreiHologram: the coolest app that never was
On last week’s episode of Diggnation (166), Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht discussed the inarguably awesome iPhone / iPod Touch app “iHologram”. The app purportedly uses the devices’ accelerometers and “works by assuming a constant viewing angle (35-45 degrees), typical for when the device is placed on a tabletop…The 3d scene’s perspective is then warped using anamorphic perspective, making the object appear to jump off the screen.” It all sounds cool…and LOOKS VERY VERY COOL. But if you go to the iTunes App store looking for it, you’re going to…
Read MoreJobs and Woz, In Manga — For Kids!
By way of Boingboing.net, my attention has been drawn to an amusing ’80s manga by Mitsuru Sugaya about the birth of Apple. Not speaking Japanese, I managed to get some gist of the artist’s commentary (though not the comic dialogue itself) from the Babelfish version. I particularly enjoyed their rendition of Mitsuru’s descriptions of one of Woz’s teen pranks. (See if you can guess what it does…)
Read MoreBill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld talk about the future of computers. Hint: They’re delicious.
Microsoft’s new campaign is in the wild. The campaign, in which Seinfeld & Gates just sort of hang out and shoot the proverbial breeze, was created by ad agency juggernaut Crispin Porter + Bogusky. The ad takes a significantly different tack than the Mojave Experiment did, and is in fact very reminiscent of Seinfeld’s “Superman” ads for Amex. See for yourself here.
Read MoreSupermodel-Skinny computers all the rage, but is there any real point to it?
It’s not been 8 months since the January 15 release of the MacBook Air, the much-praised and equally maligned ultra-portable offering from Steve Jobs’ crew of catured alien computer designers from the future. The notebook was an historic first: a practical laptop that sported a large screen and a full keyboard, internet connectivity, and video conferencing capability, that measured a scant .16 inches thick (at its thinnest point) and weighed in at a feathery 3 pounds. The thing sold itself…all Jobs had to do was pull it out of an…
Read MoreApple vs. Art, Part II: Apple vs. Fart
I have to say, when I wrote my first post on Apple’s attempts to soup-nazi new media spaces, I had no idea a sequel would be so soon in the offing. In this week’s episode, we have an actual App Store rejection letter from Apple, which is so galling in its casual application of censorship to a harmless fart joke app, that even in the unlikely event that it would be a good idea to let any one posse of techno-dudes carry the keys to the new media kingdom, it’s…
Read MoreGoogle Chrome: The Zero Day Satire
You knew it had to happen. The patronising 38-page webcomic Google had Scott McCloud pen in order to explain, with excruciating deliberation, Google Chrome, has been wickedly lampooned. In this case, by The Register and its readers. This is probably just a small sample of the massive innoculations of irony we will all require if Google’s plans to lay claim to a platform on top of everybody else’s platforms, actually come to fruition. Buy more blue paint, indeed.
Read MoreLaroquodic Photo Journal: Fan Expo 2008
As some of you know (especially those who visited — thanks!) I had a table in Artist’s Alley at Fan Expo 2008 in Toronto. I took over 4000 photographs at this event in less than three days, and there are a lot of gems. Some of which I’m saving, of course, for future episodes of Hypothesis. But others, I’ve managed to assemble into a sort of photo journal of my experiences as an exhibitor, with commentary… VIEW PHOTO ESSAY
Read MoreFan Expo: The Conventioneers
Outside the entrance to Fan Expo there was a table, a couple of guys in waistcoats and their crew. They were The Conventioneers, a show found on bitetv.ca that covers conventions of all sorts. A while ago, the irreverent commentators were banned from getting inside. Alex and Ryan ask them why. **Please excuse the audio issues. Our mic was acting up **
Read MoreVideo Enhancement Using Photographs
Using Photographs to Enhance Videos of a Static Scene from pro on Vimeo. Photographic manipulation seems to be all the rage these days, especially with the recent release of the initial version of Photosynth, the 3D environment building photo software from Microsoft. Some of the most useful techniques seem to come out of universities though. A few years back, the University of Manchester’s Advanced Interfaces Group released Icarus, which was an amazing piece of move matching software that allowed the user to remove objects from video, generate 3D camera positions…
Read More“The Dark Knight” DVD adds “please don’t download me” bonuses
According to legionsofgotham.org, the Dark Knight will be released on December 9/08 in various collectible formats. They include a DVD version packaged with a BatMask, and an exceptionally ornate version of a BatPod bust, the base of which acts as a housing for the discs. These special editions apply to the DVD release. There appear to be no value-added extras for the Blue Ray version.
Read More