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Vdio Comes Out of Beta: Offers Movies and TV Episodes

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June 20, 2013

Video discovery and viewing service Vdio, which was created by Skype co-founder Janus Friis, officially came out of its limited beta this week, making it available for anyone interested in renting or purchasing movies and TV shows in the U.S. and U.K. Vdio is available online and as an iPad app. According to the Rdio Blog, “starting today, you don’t have to be an Rdio listener to buy, rent and share your favorite movies and shows with friends.” Continue reading Vdio Comes Out of Beta: Offers Movies and TV Episodes

Free Amazon Storyteller Tool Converts Scripts to Storyboards

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June 10, 2013

Amazon Studios, the production arm of Amazon.com, has introduced a new tool called Amazon Storyteller to help with its initiative to develop original movies and TV series. The free online tool enables writers and content producers to easily convert RTF scripts into storyboards. According to Amazon, Storyteller scans the script and then “identifies the scenes, locations and characters from scene descriptions, and ‘casts’ them from a library of thousands of characters, props and backgrounds.” Continue reading Free Amazon Storyteller Tool Converts Scripts to Storyboards

Steam Takes on the Console Competition with Launch of Big Picture Mode

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December 6, 2012
  • In a challenge to console makers, Valve has officially launched its “Big Picture Mode” for its cloud-gaming platform Steam, enabling users to play titles on their televisions by simply connecting their computers.
  • “Steam has been offering its users the option to put the service on their television since September in beta mode,” the Washington Post reports, “but the company has deemed it ready to lose that testing tag. The mode makes it possible to use almost all of Steam’s features including its Web browser, social network and — of course — its games in a way optimized for television screens.”
  • To promote the new mode, Steam has put the compatible games on sale. “All the sale titles have full controller support, which means that users won’t have to tote their mouse and keyboard to the living room,” the article notes.
  • “There are also quite a few partial support titles, such as ‘XCOM Enemy Unknown,’ ‘Hitman: Absolution,’ and ‘Call of Duty: Black Ops 2.’ Steam is very clear about which titles have full support and which do not,” explains the article. “Titles with partial support may need the keyboard and mouse during installation or for ‘limited interactions’ throughout the game.”
  • Because Valve has established itself in the gaming community, the company could move further into the console territory currently dominated by Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo. “Some see this step into the living room as a test for bigger things in the future,” the article suggests.

Trap.it Offers a New Approach to Search, From the Makers of Siri

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November 21, 2011
  • “A new take on the search engine called Trap.it uses the same AI technology that Siri does courtesy of the CALO project (which was funded by DARPA), and has launched its public beta,” reports Digital Trends.
  • Described as something similar to a hybrid of Pandora and Qwiki in its approach to an “information experience,” Trap.it uses Facebook and Twitter accounts to help curate the Web for individual users.
  • “Via the ‘discover’ bar, you ‘trap’ information that comes up in visual-heavy icons with short text summaries. Hovering over these images lets you vote up or down if this is what you were looking for, share the information, or bookmark it for later,” explains the post. “Your feedback on these ‘traps’ is how the search engine learns and gets smarter, so eventually you’re receiving more and more spot-on results.”
  • “It’s yet another signal we’re moving from search to discovery,” suggests Digital Trends.

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