Wired has posted an interesting article this week on the Hulcher film camera and its unfortunate decline in a digital world.
“For more than five decades, the Charles A. Hulcher Co. filled an important niche in the camera world,” explains the article. “Their cameras, which shot up to 100 frames per second, were used to make photos of everything from Space Shuttle launches to Major League Baseball games.”
But today the company has only four employees. “Digital has pretty much killed film cameras,” says Richard Hill, a Hulcher employee since the 1950s.
The original Hulcher 70 was built in the 1950s so that NASA scientists could study rocket launches in slow motion. The camera was capable of shooting 50 fps on 70mm film. When Charles Hulcher’s cameras became popular for other applications, the company produced 35mm versions that eventually reached 100 fps.
“The cameras achieved this high speed by running 100 feet of film between two large spools like a movie camera,” reports Wired. “Unlike a movie camera, however, Hulcher ran the film horizontally instead of vertically, creating a larger image area and in turn a high-resolution negative.”
The U.S. Navy used Hulcher camera technology in submarine periscopes. The Royal Canadian Air Force used the cameras for aerial surveillance. Sports photographers were fans of the Hulcher cameras because they were affordable and could be outfitted with lenses from other companies.
“One of the most famous photographers to use the Hulcher was John Zimmerman, who worked for Sports Illustrated, and made several well-known shots with modified Hulcher cameras,” notes the post. “Instead of just allowing the camera to fire multiple shots on sequential frames of film, Zimmerman would often disable the film-advance mechanism, creating vivid multiple exposures that captured the graceful movement of various sports figures.”
Golf Digest photographer Dom Furore says he used his Hulcher camera up until four years ago when he finally made the switch to digital with a modified two-camera system using Casio EX-F1s. Sports Illustrated photographer Heinz Kluetmeier claims the Hulcher images are sharper than those created with digital alternatives. “I wish we had a better digital equivalent,” he says.
Charles Hulcher passed away in 1994, but his company remains in operation five days a week, building the occasional custom high-speed camera, performing repairs on older models and producing small parts in the machine shop for NASA and other customers. “We just do this because we love it,” Hill says. “We’re always here for our customers.”
YouTube has launched a new Elections Hub that will include content from ABC News, Univision, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Al-Jazeera English, BuzzFeed and others.
The hub plans to provide live footage of the Republican and Democratic national conventions in addition to the first live online streaming of the presidential and vice presidential debates.
“We’ve seen there is a huge demand for political news on YouTube,” says Olivia Ma, YouTube’s news and politics manager.
Ma notes that the campaigns of President Obama and challenger Mitt Romney have uploaded more than 600 videos since April 2011. She says the campaign videos, and others that reference the two candidates, have been viewed nearly 2 billion times.
“With Election Hub, viewers will select the coverage they want to follow from a menu of options. Once they’ve made a choice, they’ll be able to watch live and on-demand campaign coverage — and participate in discussions,” reports the Los Angeles Times.
According to a Pew Research Center report, the number of people who go online to access political news has almost tripled since 2000 — “even though that growth has leveled off in the current election season because of a lack of interest among the younger users who are traditionally the most avid consumers of Internet news,” notes the article.
Hulu plans to roll out a redesigned website over the next few days that replaces its traditional programming grid with larger images and offers new personalization features.
The new version of the video streaming site, which can be previewed at New.Hulu.com, includes such personalized features as offering recommendations based on viewing history.
It has also added “Browse” and “Staff Picks” features. An updated search bar is designed to assist with accessing content faster.
The changes were put in place to improve content discovery, according to the company blog post.
“We’ve started by using larger, more vivid artwork to feature last night’s TV episodes and new additions to Hulu,” wrote Rob Wong, Hulu’s VP of product, on the blog. “We’ve also implemented a new tray-style format to make it easy for you to browse and discover content. And for logged-in users, we highlight the ‘Shows You Watch’ to make it super easy to jump directly to the shows you are already enjoying on Hulu.”
The CNET post includes a 1-minute Hulu Guided Tour video.
Ads are now coming to Facebook’s search results in a separate section of the typeahead results. The approach could help Facebook challenge Google for search ad dollars.
“It lets marketers target users searching for specific apps, Pages, and Places and insert a link into the typeahead results that points to their own app, Page, custom Page tab, or post,” TechCrunch reports. “Businesses cannot direct users off-site with the ads yet, though they can appear above the top organic result making them powerful for diverting traffic from competitors.”
The “Sponsored Results” can be purchased in Facebook’s native Ads API tool, Power Editor. In a move that could annoy users, Facebook has somewhat aggressively pushed Sponsored Results above the “organic result for what a user was obviously looking for,” the post states. However, users can click an “x” in the corner to hide the ad.
“Unfortunately, Facebook Sponsored Results may still be a lot less helpful to advertisers than those that show up on Google Search. That’s because when people search for an entity on Facebook, they’re typically looking for something very specific, such as a particular game or business, and might be more more likely to bypass ads,” TechCrunch writes. Also, the Sponsored Results “could dilute the feed’s quality, which is core to Facebook’s value to users.”
Facebook highlighted three primary objectives for Sponsored Results in an announcement sent to marketers:
1) “Expanded distribution of your message, with placement in one of the most used features on Facebook.”
2) “The ability to target what people are looking for, by appearing alongside related Apps, Pages, and Places.”
3) “Flexibility to customize your landing destination, such as a specific tab on your Page.”
LG has announced that its new 84-inch ultra high definition LCD TV is ready to ship in South Korea with plans to launch internationally in September.
“The 84LM9600 does 3D with LG’s Cinema 3D passive glasses technology, however its ultra high pixel count means you’re still watching in 1080p even with the resolution loss since it starts at 3,840 x 2,160, and also features ‘3D sound’ with integrated 2.2 channel speakers,” reports Engadget.
Unfortunately, 4K content is still hard to find, but plug the $22,000 TV “into a BDP-S790 Blu-ray player, certain PS3 apps or just output the latest video you’ve shot and it should be worth the price of admission,” suggests the post.
“LG has equipped its UD 3D TV with Cinema 3D technology to ensure the impressively large display provides the most immersive viewing experience possible,” according to the press release. “3D Depth Control allows viewers to fine-tune the ‘distance’ between near and far objects on the screen for a custom 3D experience. The 3D Sound Zooming feature then analyzes the on-screen objects to generate sound according to their location and movement.”
“The 4K display market is still in its infancy but it was important for LG to claim a stake in this space,” says Havis Kwon, president and CEO of LG Electronics Home Entertainment Company. “LG’s UD 3D TV represents a whole new level of home viewing experience because it offers every advanced technology we currently have to offer.”
LG will have a production model on display at the end of this month during the IFA 2012 conference in Berlin, Germany.
Nikon unveiled its first Android-powered camera this week, the Coolpix S800c, available next month for $350.
The slim camera features a 16-megapixel BSI CMOS sensor, a 3.5-inch OLED WVGA touchscreen, a 10x optical zoom lens, built-in GPS for geotagging and 1080p movie capture mode.
“It possesses the ability to generate its own network and tether with your phone,” reports Engadget, “and users can also download photo sharing applications directly onto the cam’s 4GB of internal storage.”
Engadget takes a closer look at the camera with a hands-on review: “The main selling point here is that said ‘smart camera’ is powered by a slick (and near-vanilla) Android 2.3.3 with Google services, so with the built-in Wi-Fi, you can upload your 16-megapixel images or 1080p videos straight to your various social networks or other cloud services.”
The review notes that battery life may not be ideal for prolonged entertainment, but is complimentary of the camera’s speed and quality and the OLED multitouch display.
“The most interesting thing we discovered was that it seems the camera part of the S800c can run independently from Android while the latter is still booting up,” notes the post. “Rather than letting the device stay on standby like most other Android devices, Nikon uses a shut-down timer that activates once Android goes on standby.”
“When the camera’s completely switched off, hit the power button and you’ll go straight into camera mode which lets you shoot immediately, then about half a minute later the interface seamlessly goes back to smart mode, which is when you can hit the back or home button to toggle the Android unlock screen.”
Dish Network plans to offer a satellite broadband service that will allow people in rural areas to access the Internet. The company hopes to launch the service by September or October.
Dish will use an EchoStar satellite for the service. The satellite can deliver 15 megabits per second, but Dish’s service will offer 5 megabits per second in order to serve more customers, sources tell Bloomberg.
The slower data rates will allow Dish to serve up to two million customers with the service.
Dish and ViaSat currently partner to offer satellite broadband, but cover only limited parts of the United States. The new satellite service will cover every region.
The company will likely need to add more satellites if it wishes to maintain at least 5 megabit per second speeds while expanding beyond two million customers.
Dish CEO Joseph Clayton explains that Dish’s service is meant to serve the “nearly 8 to 10 million rural American households” without Internet coverage. Dish will not compete with traditional broadband, as services like Verizon FiOS can deliver 300 megabits per second.
Millions of American citizens still do not have adequate access to broadband Internet, according to a report from the Federal Communications Commission that points at service providers for taking their time in offering high-speed services in rural areas.
“The FCC’s annual broadband report, released Tuesday, says that 19 million Americans are still without broadband,” reports CNET. “And even though things are improving, the agency says, the pace of deployment is still too slow.”
This is an improvement over last year’s 26 million without broadband, but marks the third year in a row that the FCC says the high-speed service is not being rolled out in a “reasonable and timely fashion.”
“The U.S. has now regained global leadership in key areas of the broadband economy, including mobile, where we lead in mobile apps and 4G deployment,” FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said in a statement. “But in this flat, competitive global economy, we need to keep driving toward faster broadband and universal access.”
However, John Bergmayer, senior staff attorney for Public Knowledge, argues that much needed competition is lacking when it comes to broadband.
“Unfortunately, the FCC is about to approve a deal between Verizon and several large cable companies that would allow Verizon to start selling cable broadband instead of its own DSL broadband in many markets,” said Bergmayer in a statement. “This is the clearest sign yet that broadband competition in the U.S. is far from what it should be. The FCC should work to improve broadband competition, which will in turn help its goals of broadband deployment and adoption.”
There are numerous ways to bypass commercials today. With radio, listeners can change the station or opt for commercial-free satellite subscriptions. With TV, DVRs allow viewers to fast-forward through content they don’t want to watch.
A new patent granted to Apple this week is taking a different approach and could be applied to all broadcasts.
The patent protects a new technology for “seamless switching between radio and local media,” according to the filing. It enables a mobile device to “automatically switch between broadcast content and stored media to offer the user a type of customized content consumption experience,” Apple Insider reports.
The device would allow users to bypass any media they were uninterested in — advertisements, segments of a talk show, news programming, etc. — and substitute it with their own content.
“By using metadata from assets like Radio Data System (RDS) data, broadcast listings or published third-party schedules, a device can ‘determine when an upcoming broadcast segment or media item is not of interest to the user,'” the article explains.
“When such an event is detected, the device will seamlessly switch to stored media until the unwanted content is completed. Also included as methods of discerning what a user may or may not want to consume are analysis of audio or video from the source, akin to current iOS apps Shazam or IntoNow.”
The technology would allow users to “like” or “dislike” certain content in order to develop a preference profile. It would also look for appropriate stored content to replaced the undesired sections, using a “relevance algorithm” to keep the media consistent with the broadcast stream.
The post suggests the device could work well with Apple’s rumored set-top box, blurring “the line between live and on-demand television.”
In his Scientific American column this month, David Pogue suggests five ways Hollywood can fight piracy and promote its products successfully by more effectively embracing the digital age of content distribution.
1) “Include DVD extras.” Things like deleted scenes, commentary, behind-the-scenes features and more can be found nowhere else but with the DVD itself, encouraging purchase or hard-copy rentals. “Not to mention subtitles and captions — important options for millions of viewers,” adds Pogue.
2) “Offer a reasonable viewing period.” Give online renters the chance to finish the movie in a timely fashion. Pogue suggests viewers should have at least 27 hours, providing the ability to finish the movie the next night if sleepiness or other circumstances cut off their viewing the first night.
3) “Eliminate the starting time. You have to start watching a movie within 30 days of renting it. Okay, this isn’t a big deal — most of the time you rent a movie because you want to start watching right away — but what’s the need for the 30-day restriction? If we paid for it, we should be able to watch it whenever.”
4) “Eliminate the ‘release window’ concept.” When a movie’s theatrical run ends, it is rolled out to other outlets (pay-per-view, DVD, HBO, etc.) in a formulaic way that Hollywood believes holds the best financial yield. But as Pogue aptly notes, “during each window none of the other movie sources are making any money for Hollywood.” He thinks the movie should be available to all outlets at one time.
5) “When it’s buyable, it should be rentable.” A movie will often be put on sale online for more money before it’s available for rent, thus missing revenue from renters excited for a new release.
“Listen up, Hollywood: Nobody ever went out of business offering a good product for sale at a reasonable price with an eye toward pleasing the customer,” concludes Pogue. “You should try it some time.”
Ariel Braunstein and Scott Kabat, formerly of Pure Digital Technologies (creator of the Flip Video line of camcorders), have launched a new venture called Knowmia — “a crowdsourced video platform designed to help teachers find and create online video lessons while improving the learning experience for students,” reports Digital Trends.
Knowmia is a member of Y Combinator’s collection of start-ups. Its software curates video lessons from teachers around the world for a personalized, affordable approach to online tutoring.
“The platform offers more than 7,000 free lessons that cover a variety of subjects, including algebra, chemistry, history and American literature,” notes the post.
The videos are primarily from YouTube and Vimeo. The start-up has recruited teachers who add related content including notes and quizzes. The goal is to create a centralized hub for educational videos.
Digital Trends draws comparisons to Khan Academy and TED’s new education platform.
“The team describes its ‘Knowmia Teach’ app as an ‘iMovie for teachers,’ allowing educators to mark up their lessons and videos in interactive demonstrations for their students,” explains the post. “In this way, Knowmia’s app competes directly with that of Educreations and ShowMe, both of which offer interactive whiteboards for teachers that let them create interactive, multimedia lessons.”
Kickstarter launched four years ago. It began as a clever idea intended to generate crowdfunding for projects proposed by designers, artists, philanthropists, etc. It has since grown into a very successful enterprise.
“The service, which takes a 5 percent cut of the funding that pours in, has exploded. Along with scores of modestly backed projects — from $100 for a puppet-show adaptation of “King Kong” to one woman’s $15,000 quest to develop a bionic eye for herself — piecemeal investment has yielded multi-million-dollar hits,” details the Wall Street Journal.
But as this article notes, while there are plenty of wonderful examples of success on the site, there are just as many examples of “ill-conceived projects.” Many of these, both good and bad, revolve around tech product design. The article lists examples of the best and worst.
One good example is the Pebble watch, which links to your smartphone and receives incoming texts and updates via its e-ink face. A bad example is the now-famous i+ Case, an iPhone case that ended up interfering with cell reception and Wi-Fi connections.
The good and bad examples should remind us that sites like Kickstarter are investment tools for proposed products and services, sometimes yielding quality and other times not.
According to numbers from comScore, e-commerce sales reached a high $43.2 billion in the second quarter. That’s up 15 percent from a year ago.
“The quarter marked America’s seventh consecutive quarter of double-digit growth, as consumers get even more comfortable spending online and having products show up on their front porches,” reports AllThingsD.
Amazon is, of course, growing right along with the rise of e-commerce. “The big-box retailer of the Web said that in the second quarter, it grew 32 percent if you take away the impact of foreign exchange,” notes the article.
Online auction and shopping site eBay also experienced a significant increase, jumping 23 percent, while brick-and-mortar stores continue to struggle.
However, comScore’s numbers do not include mobile sales, which saw a “staggering surge,” according to eBay CEO John Donahoe.
According to the report, the top-performing online products included: “Digital content and subscriptions, consumer electronics, flowers, greetings and gifts, computer hardware, and apparel and accessories. Each category grew at least 16 percent compared to the year-ago period.”
Cloud computing and big data is changing the game for marketers. CMOs will either “sink or swim depending on their ability to recognize the importance of the consumer information available to them and ability to capture and put it to use,” GigaOM writes.
“Marketing is being redefined in the era of cloud-delivered, self-service applications and services and Web-connected consumers,” explains Barb Darrow in the post. “Several CIOs and CTOs have told me that they agree that CMOs gaining clout in their businesses — but the most successful CMOs are those who ‘get’ that effective marketing is both broader and more focused than it’s been in the past.”
While marketing officers need to acknowledge the new data channels like social media, they also need to develop “narrower, less scattershot messaging” to reach customers, Darrow suggests.
“In order to become customer-centric and deliver a consistent message to each individual regardless of the communication channel, companies must first integrate all their customer- and prospect-related data. Up to now, organizations would silo the various types of customer-related data,” says Evangelos Simoudis, senior managing director of Trident Capital.
“Many firms spend lots of resources pursuing outside influencers who’ve gained following on the Web and through social media. A better approach is to find and cultivate customer influencers and give them something great to talk about,” adds Bill Lee of Lee Consulting Group.
In Q2, Facebook grew its ad revenue 14 percent from the previous quarter, a 28 percent rise from a year ago. While this may seem promising, it’s a far throw from the 87 percent year-over-year growth seen in 2011.
CFO David Ebersman says the lackluster increases are in part caused by the 9 percent increase in ad rates, but the larger issue at hand is the inability for advertisers to measure return on investment.
During the last earnings call, COO Sheryl Sandberg said Facebook is working on quantifying the benefits their ads provide. “Though nearly all top advertisers spent money on Facebook ads in the last quarter, she conceded that the total was only a small percentage of the advertisers’ digital ad budgets. She characterized the shortfall as an ‘imbalance’ and a ‘substantial opportunity,'” reports the Wall Street Journal.
Facebook’s online ad rivals such as Google and Yahoo are able to measure results by clicks. “But for many brands, ads on Facebook don’t consist of an offer to directly buy something. They are more akin to TV ads, which marketers study to see how brand exposure might lead to offline sales,” explains WSJ.
Facebook is working with big brands to create customized ad measurements based on each company. Unfortunately, one big hurdle stands in Facebook’s way: privacy.
“One disadvantage to marketers is the fact that Facebook doesn’t offer them access to the conversations that the social network’s 950 million users are having among friends,” notes the article. “The company hides those discussions for consumer-privacy reasons. In lieu of such data, marketers have had to use other metrics, such as how many people ‘like’ a brand’s Facebook page.”
In May, the site lost $10 million in ads from General Motors and it stands to lose more if it can’t find a way to prove ROI.
