Bliss me blog for I have been lockedinned, it’s been 19 days since my last post!!
Well, it has been a busy couple of weeks so I have a lot to post about here, where I will get into in the next post. The last one was 19 days ago and I haven’t got my Nine Inch Nails cd yet, but not to worry as it is still been by soundtrack for the last few week. Class album, nuff said.. well except that I must make a video for them (along with all the other videos I am making!).
Talking about video, that is what this post is about.. well one aspect of it… online video.. and how you search and view it. One of my favourite web apps from the last couple of months has been Cool Iris’ “PicLens“. I gave it a mini review in the asides post on the, well, side of this page. Really I should have gave it more of a review as I think it is a fantastic little add-on for Firefox and really puts an new slant on image search. It is so slick and I reckon we will be seeing a lot more webapps in this style over the next few months. I guess they are built in the Adobe Flex environment, but I can’t be sure. Anyway I was showing it off the other day and was thinking “wouldn’t it be really cool if it done video too?”. Well, guess what… it does!! Just as I got online today there was an update for it.. for YouTube videos and it works a charm. You can see it in action in the images above where I did a search for remix (something on my mind a lot this week) and the random video I pulled up is from Matt & Kim… and here it is…
(can you guess where they got that riff from?… answers on the back of a postcard or in the comments!!)
The new NIN album is out now. Well that was dropped without much fanfare, but it had been expected to soon follow Trent’s outing with Saul Williams. It is a four part album and available at different ‘fair enough’ price plans and you can get part one for free. It was released yesterday and gave the servers a bit of a battering so the site is temporarily down while they work a fix. However, in a first for sure, you are directed over to The Pirate Bay to download a torrent of the free songs!
This post was originally an obituary of sorts for Stage6, but I have added to it over the last few days and brought in a strand which looks at online video in certain areas in more depth. I also suggest some ideas in a Q&A with myself at the end!
Stage6, the high quality video hosting / sharing site operated by DivX withdrew it’s service last Thursday (28/01/08). This was sad news for the community of users who had used the site to share videos over the last year and a half or so. I’ve been meaning to post this over the last few days, but was waiting to see if there was any other developments. On Monday last (25/01/08) the news was sent out that the video site Stage6 is to close down. Tom (aka Spinner) was the messenger who broke the news which was displayed as a blog post on the front page. Continue reading ‘Exit Stage6 & the way forward…’
And now for a more in depth post. I was sent a link by Mr. Gudenfast to this really cool video on Youtube a few days ago. It’s about using the Nintento Wii for more innovative VR type purposes. I’m really interested in the Wii as a new type of interface and have been eager to try it out for a few things. The application I am beta testing for VJ-ing, VDMX has the functionality to control parameters using the Wii and also with bluetooth devices. I have controlled it using my K750i phone after a tipoff from Artificial Eyes and thought that was pretty cool until I seen what they were doing with the iPhone as an interface. So now I’m hungry for a Wii and an iPhone, although I would wait for Apple to implement 3G before I though about that and more to the point, would wait until I actually had some money in my pocket!
So anyway, back to the Wii and the cool video(s). Well this is amazing sock knocking off stuff, what you are about to see here… Johnny Chung Lee presents some of the really cool projects he is working on, first up, well, the title say it all….
Head Tracking for Desktop VR Displays using the WiiRemote
Makes you wanna Wii doesn’t it?!! Fair dues to him on this. EA have now picked this idea up for commercial release on a game. But he’s not getting paid for this, it is his passion he is about advancing technology and is happy to see his ideas implemented. He will go a long way.
So naturally after seeing this great work I had to see what else he was up to. Next up…
Automatic Projector Calibration with Embedded Light Sensors
Ok, so in a semi regular feature from here on on I will post some links to cool stuff of interest that I bump into around the web that I etiher don’t have time to blog about, is covered elsewhere better anyway or just needs no explanation. Generally this is what I used Stumbleupon for anyway so some of my stumbles will be repeated here. The linkage posts are aside from the asides over on the side there too!
Previews : Firefox Extension so you can see the page these links link to without leave the page. Essential app from the makers of PicLens, the image browsing cool tool for Firefox, as previously mentioned in the Asides.
Tell Rall’s Cartoons…. some great political commentary on the run up to the US elections.
I will do a proper post on the above at a later date. I have a lot of thought in that area. I could write a book about it! In a nutshell, I agree with Chris but there needs to be building block put in place to ensure that content creators can earn at least on par with service providers.
Google Sites is released providing an excellent way for groups of people to communicate and collaborate in a wiki format about work or education over and intranet or the internet.
