Samsung is poised to release its own free mobile messaging service.
ChatON is designed to simplify mobile communication by connecting users on all major smartphones. It will support Bada, Android, BlackBerry, iOS and PCs.
“The idea is to enable users to communicate instantly with each other using any mobile phone, along with sharing hand-written notes, images, and video,” reports Digital Trends.
“Samsung has vastly simplified mobile communication by allowing users to connect to our upcoming feature phones and all major smartphones in the market,”said Samsung’s media solution center chief Ho Soo Lee. “Users around the world can now enjoy easier and richer interactivity with whoever they want, in the format they want — this is mobile communication reinvented and democratized.”
ChatOn will have an aggressive launch, initially available in more than 120 countries in 62 languages. Digital Trends reports that it will boast a wide range of social services including interaction with Facebook and support for conversation windows, photos and videos.
MasterImage 3D is developing a 3D screen for smartphones and tablets that doesn’t require special glasses.
The screen uses what the company calls “cell matrix parallax barrier” technology, which it claims is more sophisticated than the autostereoscopic technology currently available.
GamesBeat lead writer Dean Takahashi points out that the viewing experience is vastly improved as compared to disappointments such as the Nintendo 3DS: “But the glasses-free experience MasterImage 3D has developed is something altogether different. From what I’ve seen so far, it’s going to offer an outstanding 3D experience on smartphones and tablets.”
Roy Taylor, executive vice president and general manager for MasterImage 3D, demonstrated a working prototype for Takahashi, who was very impressed: “The quality blew me away. On a 4.3-inch WVGA screen, Taylor showed a 3D movie running in stereoscopic 3D. I didn’t need to wear glasses to see the sharp 3D imagery. When I moved my head, it didn’t get blurry. And if I moved my head too far to the side, it gracefully transitioned to a two-dimensional image.”
Despite having no host on Sunday, MTV’s 2011 Video Music Awards ramped up audience engagement through social media.
MTV delivered pictures and videos to their audience in realtime through their second screen application and social media channels.
Fans could track what celebrities were tweeting about, and who was tweeting the most. The application also showed which celebrities and content generated the most buzz. (Celebrities who did not tweet during the event could have missed out in a big way.)
The awards program scored its highest-ever ratings, pulling in 12.4 million viewers. “Not only was this year’s show the most-watched in the history of the Video Music Awards’ 27-year history,” reports Rolling Stone, “but it was also the highest-rated telecast in the 30-year history of the network.”
TechCrunch reports that a new startup named Joint is aiming to address the concerns of Twitter users who are “badly in need of a better way to facilitate realtime, private, and longer-form conversations.”
Twitter’s general philosophy so far has been to keep its UI simple and rely on third party developers to add features.
That’s where Joint comes in with its solution that “essentially turns any Twitter hashtag into an IRC-like chat room, which is integrated with a realtime hashtag stream,” indicates TechCrunch.
This enables different social interactions, including a front-and-center realtime group chat feature. “Joint could become a very useful resource for people looking to easily congregate and discuss ongoing situations like hurricanes, protests, or events, live, from any location,” suggests the post.
TechCrunch adds: “Joint and its team isn’t affiliated with Twitter in any way, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the social network comes knocking at their door at some point down the road.”
Amazon’s tablet PC is widely expected to be ready for release this fall and, according to Forrester Research, will “completely disrupt the status quo.”
Forrester analysts predict the tablet will provide competition for Apple’s iPad and could sell as many as 5 million units in the fourth quarter of 2011.
The report suggests Amazon’s success will depend on pricing the device below $300 (paidContent points out that Amazon has yet to officially confirm it will even release a tablet).
Forrester believes an Amazon tablet will prove popular based on the company’s “willingness to sell hardware at a loss combined with the strength of its brand, content, cloud infrastructure, and commerce assets.”
If successful, an Amazon tablet could significantly boost the competitive profile of Google’s Android operating system.
Palo Alto-based Flipboard plans to add film and TV to its social media magazine platform. Flipboard is currently available only on the iPad, but an iPhone version is expected to launch in a few weeks.
Reuters reports that the company “hopes to cut deals with studios to carry movies and episodes of TV shows, getting into territory staked out by Netflix, Hulu and Facebook.”
Mike McCue, chairman and chief executive of Flipboard, explained he will begin the video project at the end of this year and also hopes to sell electronic books.
Flipboard’s service takes a cut of the revenue from advertising. “We’re trying to create the largest company possible,” said Danny Rimer, general partner at Index Ventures, a Flipboard investor. Reuters points out: “Rimer believes display advertising revenue’s migration online is ‘a very big opportunity.'”
Sony has unveiled its much anticipated NEX-VG20 camcorder, the next-gen version of its popular VG10. The company explains that four key value propositions were considered when developing the VG20: the sensor, sound, lenses and design.
Notable features include: interchangeable lens capability, new Exmor APS HD CMOS sensor and BIONZ processor, recording in 1080p (1920×1080), 16 megapixel sensor, ability to save images in JPEG and RAW formats, and recording at frame rates of 24p or 60p.
“What really sounds like it’s been improved is the VG20’s audio recording capabilities,” reports Digital Trends. “It includes a Quad Capsule Spatial Array Mic that supports stereo and 5.1 channel surround sound and has a new audio level control.”
In its Hands-On Impressions section, Digital Camera Review praised the “comfortable design and smart ergonomics” of the VG20, although expressed some issue with the camera’s heft. The review spoke highly of the LCD screen’s TruBlack technology and ability to rotate 270 degrees, but had issues with the viewfinder: “I appreciated the fact that it displayed plenty of helpful information including resolution, video format, battery life, remaining memory, etc., and I thought that the picture looked pretty crisp. But after having spent some time with the outstanding OLED viewfinders on the Alpha cameras (and enjoyed how closely it projected the image to the eye, so there was little to no border) I felt like I was looking down an extremely long hallway when using the viewfinder on the VG20.”
The NEX-VG20 is scheduled for a November release. Price: $1,599 (or $2,199 with the lens mount kit).
Since Ticketmaster merged with Live Nation last year, the Justice Department mandated that Ticketmaster share its software to avoid creating a monopoly.
As a result, Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG) has launched AXS, a ticket service that “lets you buy tickets at the theater’s or arena’s own website rather than linking you to a ticket website, like Ticketmaster. And it shows all the fees upfront,” as explained in a Marketplace radio report.
“They’re not going to charge the much-hated ‘print-at-home’ fee, that no one could ever really understand why that fee was even there in the first place,” says Gary Bongiovanni of the concert trade magazine Pollstar. “And then that is part of what generated such ill-will against Ticketmaster.”
ETC’s David Wertheimer was also quoted in the report: “This deal represents competition, and competition is good. It’s good for the venues, it’s good for the artists and the teams. And you know it’s just good to have choice in the marketplace.”
Some TV broadcasters are beginning to embrace cloud-based tools and services for graphics, asset management, back-office functions and document and video storage.
While these broadcasters are attracted by cost savings and increased efficiency, others reportedly remain skeptical, citing security concerns when services are tapped via the public Web.
Among the early adopters, according to TVNewsCheck: “Gannett Broadcasting and Scripps Television. Both use Chyron’s AXIS cloud-based system for all their news-producing stations and both report that the service works reliably, saves money and has helped speed production and distribution of graphics among the stations.”
John King, Bitcentral’s VP of engineering, predicts broadcasters’ reluctance to use the cloud for all applications will dissipate. “Eighteen months ago I’d hear the term cloud every two months. Today, I hear the term multiple times a day,” says King. “I predict it will be accepted in three years … and we’ll see widespread deployment in less than five years.”
Experienced game developers are increasingly leaving the security of big publishers to work for small independent companies that offer greater creative freedom and the possibilities of making their fortunes through digital distribution.
Easy-to-use and inexpensive game creation tools also make it easier. Still, success stories are hard to find.
“Working for a major publisher can be rewarding, very quickly: you get to work on known IPs, you have job security, you get a good paycheck every month, you have the business card with the big name on it to show off to your friends,” explains Audrey Leprince of The Game Bakers, an independent developer of mobile games.
But there are downsides, she says. “You don’t really know how much you will be listened to or if your ideas will be taken into account, how much freedom you’ll have in your work, or if you’ll end up crunching on a B project after the perfect project you joined for gets cancelled.”
Developers also seek smaller independent companies when the company they are working for is acquired by a larger name and the environment changes. For example, Ars Technica cites a happy employee of Black Box who later felt like “a cog in the machine” when his company was bought out by EA, so he left for a position at Radical Entertainment. “It was a large but independent company with talented industry vets, free food, beer on tap… I was happy again,” he said.
Twitter has released its Bootstrap platform to better compete in the ever-changing app market and renew its ongoing efforts with developers.
The platform will provide a set of CSS and HTML tools for creating apps.
“At its core, Bootstrap is simply CSS, but built with Less, an easy-to-use pre-processor that provides more power and flexibility than standard CSS,” reports Digital Trends. “With Less, a range of features like nested declarations, variables, mixins, operations, and color functions become available.”
“Bootstrap remains very easy to implement; just drop it in your code and go. Compiling Less can be accomplished via Javascript, an unofficial Mac application, or via Node.js,” explains Twitter via its blog post. “Second, once complied, Bootstrap contains nothing but CSS, meaning there are no superfluous images, Flash, or Javascript. All that remains is simple and powerful CSS for your web development needs.”
In his Wall Street Journal “All Things D” Personal Technology column this week, Walt Mossberg reviews three set-top boxes: the $100 Roku 2 XS, the $99 second-generation Apple TV and the $199 Boxee Box from D-Link.
“The intent of the three products I tested is to do what a computer can, but in a simpler, cheaper and more TV-like manner,” he writes, “with easy setup, clear onscreen menus and small, simple remotes.”
Mossberg endorses the Apple TV for those who use iTunes or who own an iPad or iPhone. Apple’s AirPlay allows you to wirelessly stream content to your TV. For others, he likes the simplicity and price point of Roku, which also has a game function. Mossberg suggests Boxee is a bit too complicated and rough around the edges, but might be a good choice for techies.
Bottom line: “To watch Internet video easily on a TV, either Roku or Apple TV is the best choice for average consumers.”
Japanese R&D firm KDDI Labs announced it has developed 3D audio technology that enables people to change their listening position in a 3D space.
“Multiple microphones are used to record the audio and a unique method of audio signal processing, called virtual sound source reproduction, is used to map out the sound in a virtual 3D space in real time,” explains Akihabara News. “This can generate an unlimited number of listening positions, even in locations where there are no microphones. This technology also lets you change where sounds come from or remove them from the 3D space altogether.”
KDDI Labs says it has made the large database required to synthesize 3D audio much smaller (down to a few hundred kilobytes in size) so that the technology can be used for mobile devices such as smartphones.
According to KDDI Labs: “For example, suppose you’re watching a band on screen, and you want to get close to the guitar. As you get nearer to the guitar, the sound of the guitar gets much louder. The effect we’ve achieved now is that, if you move, for example, left from that position past the vocalist, the sound moves left. Another thing you can do with this technology is to change the position of instruments. So you can make the vocalist sound further away, and the guitar closer. Specifically, in music promotion videos, we’d like to enable users to get close to their favorite instrument, or eliminate just the vocals, and to do these things on a smartphone or cellphone.”
KDDI is developing an application that runs on a Web browser with hopes of commercializing the technology. The report includes a video demo.
As part of its partnership with the Original iPhone Film Festival, Red Giant Software has dropped the cost of its $2.99 “Movie Looks HD” app for a limited time.
According to Hand Held Hollywood, the app will be available for free via Apple’s App Store from August 23-September 1.
Movie Looks HD is a universal app capable of adding a professional finish to iPhone footage, providing services such as color correction using multi-layer color grading.
“If you haven’t tried Movie Looks HD yet, it’s an awesome universal app, capable of adding a professional, film-like finish to your iPhone footage,” reports HHH. “If you’re familiar with Red Giant’s line of ‘Magic Bullet’ plug-ins, then you already know what I’m talking about.”
The Original iPhone Film Festival asks aspiring filmmakers to shoot, edit and upload films with an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad 2 (the submission deadline is September 30). According to the festival’s site: “We’ve recruited a panel of experienced industry professionals from the worlds of advertising, film and television to watch what you come up with. They will pick their favorites and we’ll give away some cool prizes.”
Sony is developing special subtitle-enabled glasses that could be in UK movie theaters as early as next year.
According to the BBC, one in six people have some level of deafness and are not being served well by the movie industry. In fact, many film fans with hearing issues wait for films to be released on DVD when subtitles are available.
“What we do is put the closed captions or the subtitles onto the screen of the glasses so it’s super-imposed on the cinema screen, [making it look] like the actual subtitles are on the cinema screen,” explains Tim Potter of Sony.
“The good thing about them is that you’re not refocusing. It doesn’t feel like the words are really near and the screen is far away. It feels like they’re together,” said test subject Charlie Swinbourne, who is hard of hearing.
“It was a great experience,” he added. “I think it’s a massive opportunity to improve deaf people’s lives and I think there’s great hope that this would give us a cinema-going future.”
If the glasses prove popular in the UK, we should expect to see them in wider availability in the near future.
Samsung is poised to release its own free mobile messaging service.