To prevent any more raids being blown over Facebook status updates, Israeli Defense Forces higher-ups have put these posters around bases to make very clear that soldiers should not be friending enemies of the state. Noted!
Besides, I hear Syrian President Bashar Assad is a real jerk on Farmville. [Thanks, tipster!]
This Is Real Art, a company that aims to "bridge the gap between design and advertising," recently completed a series of animated videos on the subject of satellites. They're the perfect combination: the subject matter is geeky, the animation gorgeous.
The series, which was produced for European satellite maker Astra, covers every aspect of the machines over the course of seven videos: History, Physics, Control, Launch, Why We Need Satellites, Business, and The Future.
Here's the second video of the set on the physics of satellites:
You can watch the entire series over at This Is Real Art. The company says they'll be used for education as well as marketing, and I must say, I'd be a lot more receptive to advertising if it always looked this good. [This Is Real Art via Creative Review]
I don't know how solid these are, but they look so yummy.
I want a bite too. [Enoc Armengol via Core77]
Having read the original many times, watched multiple films and TV series, and collected every object imaginable, I must confess that I'm an Alice whore. Here's my review of Tim Burton's sequel: I love it. But not on 3D.
Spoilers ahead
In fact, I like everything about the movie except the 3D. I don't hate it, but it's obnoxious and distracting through most of the film. It just doesn't add anything to the experience beyond the post-movie dizziness. It's the antithesis of Avatar.
The movie itself—a simple, delightfully wacky, adventures movie set in Lewis Caroll's crazy world—is good. The story, the dialogs, the photography, the direction, and the acting are all spot on. The digital effects are perfect for the story, from the delicate details of the White Rabbit's embroidered vest to the intricate scenarios. The design—like all Tim Burton's movies—couldn't be better: The characters, the costumes, the settings... everything exudes the spirit of the original John Tenniel's book illustrations. And then there is the adult Alice—who returns after her first adventures in Wonderland. By the end of it, you will fall in love with Mia Wasikowska, especially when she gets into her shiny armor.
The only problem with Alice in 3D is that the film doesn't seem to be directed with 3D in mind. And that's fucking great (if you watch the movie in a normal theater and avoid the 3D). Burton plays with camera moves, angle changes, depth of field, and different scene planes like he usually does, framing shots perfectly.
One example of this is the first action sequence in the movie, when the Knave of Hearts—eerily played by Crispin Glover—and his card soldiers chase Alice through the woods. As the camera frantically races with the action, Burton plays with the foreground—twisted plants and branches—to increase the anxiety levels of the audience. In 2D, this frames the action, making everything more exciting visually. In 3D, it becomes distracting. The same goes for every time the camera moves, and every time the depth of field changes: The illusion of 3D is broken by the distraction, because that's not how your brain processes the real world.
In the real world, nobody forces you to change the depth of field. When you are focusing on something, you just focus, it comes naturally to you. But when you shift this around in a 3D movie, your brain just gets confused, as if it's saying "hey, I want to keep looking at that thing."
In a normal film, a shift in focus is a device that is part of the story telling and the aesthetics of the film. In 3D, it just gets annoying.
And that's precisely my problem with 3D: Whenever you move the camera, whenever you play with the traditional cinematic language, 3D can often get in the middle.
I realized it while watching the credits, which roll inside a box in which fantastic mushrooms and vegetation grow. I was truly amazed by it, as if a new world had opened in front of my eyes. I had a hard time distinguishing the weird plants from reality. And it wasn't only me: My wife was next to me and I could hear her exclaiming "Wow. Oh, wow."
So how can I love that 3D but hate the 3D during the movie? Because during the credits, the camera point of view is fixed. The illusion is complete. Nothing bothers you. Your brain completely buys the experience. It's like being in the theater watching a play: Everything is there.
What is the solution to this? Since the invention of cinema, humans have developed a language that has evolved into different paths. All of them revolve around the idea that everything is projected in a bidimensional plane. Directors frame their movies in their minds, then with their cameras, and it's all related to that single flat silver screen.
Perhaps directors need to invent a new language for 3D altogether, where everything is in focus, nothing overlaps the action, and the depth of field never changes. Maybe they should look into the rules of theater and fixed cameras. Or maybe they should watch Up! if they really want to film a movie in 3D.
But while we all wait for that to happen, you should go and see Alice in 2D. You will enjoy it a lot more.
In today's Remainders: headaches. Microsoft's browser ballot is a headache for the little guys; CereProc talks about the painstaking process of rebuilding Ebert's voice; WiMax taxis in Taiwan get me a little steamed; a magical migraine-diminishing wand, and more.
Talk To Me
Since we first read about the Scottish company CereProc and their effort to give Roger Ebert his voice back, we've been eager to get the scoop on the tech behind the scenes. Ebert's computerized voice was debuted on Oprah earlier this week, and while it was far from a perfect recreation, no one could deny that at some points the voice was distinctly his own. Now, CNET has an in-depth talk with CereProc which sheds some light on the process behind their incredible product. It has some interesting bits, like how they usually require 15 hours of recordings to recreate a voice, though they rebuilt Ebert's from only four hours of clips. If you have even a passing interest in Ebert's incredible story, the interview's worth a read. [CNET]
Analysis
Analysts! You can't live with 'em, you can't live without 'em. Actually, you could almost certainly live without them, but then you wouldn't have little nuggets like this to consider before you toss them into your mental recycling bin: Apple, who already commands 1/3 of the entire supply of NAND flash memory, might eat up even more of that supply with all these iPads of theirs, delaying the greater PC migration to SSD in the process. The thinking is that with iPad grabbing all the NAND memory, their prices could be driven up and those of SSDs would go up along with them. Maybe, maybe not, but for now there are too many unknowns in this equation—iPad demand being a big one—to worry just yet.[DigiTimes]
Glass Windows
Secunia, a security firm, released the results of a new study that might give pause to Windows users. It suggests that if you use Windows and have software from more than 22 different vendors, you need to install a security patch every five days to keep your computer safe from all those nasty viruses. That's pretty often. Here's what gives me pause, though: Secunia, the company issuing this warning, conveniently has a program called Personal Software Inspector that presumably protects you from just these threats. Hmmm. OK, sure, their software is free (for now), but you can't imagine that it'd hurt their business to drive a whole herd of panicked users to their inspector software. In either case, I guess there's something to raise an eyebrow at here. [BoingBoing]
Stuffing the Ballot Box
We recently got our first look at Microsoft's browser ballot, a new system that gives European Windows users the chance to choose their own browser as opposed to being force-fed Internet Explorer from the get go. The system, which arose from an antitrust investigation by the European Commission, was the source of much confusion and consternation throughout the whole process, but we figured that everyone would be happy with the final screen we saw the other day. We were wrong. The ballot offers new installers with 12 choices, but only the five most popular—IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera—are visible on the screen from the start. To take a look at the other seven—AvantBrowser, Flock, K-Meleon, GreenBrowser, Maxthon, Sleipnir, and SlimBrowser—you have to scroll your way to the right. As Ars Technica explains, "The unpopularity of horizontal scrolling is well-known," and "the importance of this ballot to minority browsers is hard to overstate," (I think they just did). The ballot screen will be rolling out in the next 90 days, and in the mean time you can bet that the little guys will be fighting against the clock to save themselves from sideways scrolling obscurity. [Ars Technica]
Hello Geeks
Here we have an Apple-centric parody of Old Spice's wildly popular The Man Your Man Could Smell Like ad. Often times, parodies grow to eclipse the original item they riff on. That will not be the case here. 1. the spoof uses CGI where the original did not. 2. It is less sort of funny where the original was not. The original was extremely funny. So just watch the original. But watch this one too, because it will make you love the original all the more. [The Awesomer]
A Headache
"Neuralieve Headache Management System," Redferret's headline reads for this particular gadget, "is this the beginning of the end for migraines?" No, no it isn't, because even if the Neuralieve does rid people of their headaches, there's no way anyone's going to use this ridiculous, gigantic piece of machinery to alleviate them. The Neuralieve beams a "single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation" into your brain, supposedly halting the headache in its tracks. While it may provide some relief in the short term, I'm not sure that letting some sketchy handheld gizmo pump magnetic pulses directly into your head is necessarily going to pan out so well in the long run. [Red Ferret]
WiMaxi
Starting March 9, 1000 taxis in Taiwan will be equipped with free WiMax. Great. Whatever. Taxi WiMax I can live without. But is it took much to ask to just get it somewhere in my city? Somewhere in the state of New York? [UberGizmo]
Four Point Oooooh
Bluetooth 3.0 is old and busted; Bluetooth 4.0 is the new hotness. The improvements will supposedly let the technology work with devices that consume less power, and today's news is that it could make its way into those types of devices by the end of this year. Well, a Bluetooth-enabled pedometer doesn't seem too cool to me to begin with, so having one by the end of the year doesn't get me all that excited either.
It's time for movie night and you have several cellphones but no decent-sized TV or monitor. No worries! With Motorola's "Reconfigurable Multiple-Screen Display" technology you'll be able to turn that pile of tiny phone screens into one big display.
Motorola's patent filing describes this technology as something that allows the displays of several phones to be "configured to act like one to run applications" or stream videos while "maintaining the same aspect ratio." Basically, you stick them next to each other and pretend that there are no bezels in the middle of someone's face.
Anyway, any guesses on how many cellphones I need to construct my own movie theater? [USPTO via Go Rumors via Engadget]
Hide wires, powerboards, your prized mini-figs—heck, even the droids the stormtroopers are still looking for, all in this tidy flatpacked AT-AT model from China.
The company sends you all the materials needed to construct the AT-AT, but can't promise protection from the rebel snowspeeders lurking nearby. It costs 55 Yuan, which is only $8, but that doesn't include postage obviously. [GeekCook via WalYou]
We love Sony. We really do. And we want them to get back in the game, because competition makes everyone better. Here's how they do it.
There was a time when I might have suggested that Sony jettison its media companies, setting music and movies adrift so that the electronics divisions would no longer have to be held hostage by internal squabbles over piracy.
I've come around. While Sony Pictures has had its ups and downs over the last decade, the addition of the movie and television libraries gives Sony a strength that none of the other Big Four have—if they can loosen up.
Microsoft has games and Office; Apple sells a lot of music, but owns no content beyond software; Google has YouTube and user-generated content, but creates little professional content of its own. In this space Sony stands alone, with a rich library of music, television, movies, and games.
Imagine if buying a Sony product gave you simple, inexpensive access to that vast archive. Not even for free, necessarily. (Although Sony should continue to be liberal with its media giveaways, like it did when launching the PSP, bundling Spider-Man on UMD.) But all of it at your fingertips with an ease-of-use that put its competitors to shame.
In theory this is the aim of the upcoming Sony Online Service. (The "S.O.S." name is temporary, if apropos.) Sony has discussed plans to translate the moderately successful PlayStation Network into a cross-device infrastructure, allowing not just media downloads but media uploads, taking not only a shot at iTunes but at cloud services like Flickr and Picasa.
That's fine and dandy in theory—but why would a user choose Sony, a company that has launched and then quickly abandoned several other media stores and sharing services in the past? When they closed the Connect store, they stranded customers who had bought into their proprietary ATRAC-based DRM. When ImageStation went bust, they migrated people to Shutterfly and cited "many capable online photo services" as a reason for the closure. Why start investing dollars and time and work and memories in a company that just five years ago allowed rootkits to be installed to protect the sanctity of its media?
There's a trust issue at play, perhaps bigger than Sony realizes, as its halting and horrible missteps have made many potential customers leery of its commitment.
Lucky for Sony, there's a new age dawning in media, one based heavily in the cloud, with subscriptions taking the place of media downloads—especially in video, where customers have yet to invest heavily in pay-per-download models simply due to prohibitive costs and the infinite format war.
Sony should send the Online Service into the world with a bang: open access to Sony's media library free for a month. Or three. Take the write-down as a marketing expense, allow millions of users free access to the media that Sony controls, and use the media—not the hardware—as a loss leader to get people hooked on Sony again.
(And if they did it without DRM that'd be even better, but I'm not asking for miracles here.)
A comprehensive and liberal attitude towards online media would go a long way towards shoring up Sony's more traditional media sales strategy, as well. Blu-ray, after a long and costly battle, has finally won—just as download and streaming content is taking hold in the video space. Buying a Blu-ray disc currently guarantees me access to the video on many non-Sony devices—why not give me access to that same movie on all of my Sony products? I bought Ghostbusters on Blu-ray—now let me watch it whenever I like on whatever Sony device I choose just by grabbing it from the cloud. That would certainly make me more eager to spend money on physical copies.
Sony's software showing is weak. Its mobile devices, for a brief moment a bellwether in the "small and useful" space, are now bogged down in a swamp of too-little, too-late design. (More on that in a bit.) Its arcane PlayStation architecture is, according to many game developers, confusing. That was fine when PlayStation was the biggest game in town, but with the Xbox and Wii eclipsing PS3 sales and the DS and iPhone taking a huge chunk of the potential PSP market, Sony's inability to provide powerful, easy-to-use software for developers has been a huge factor in its poor showing this console generation. (Things are are looking up, but on the beam the PlayStation 3 has been a disaster for Sony exactly when it didn't need one.)
There is hope, and its name is Android. At first it might seem counterintuitive to suggest that Sony lean heavily on a product under the aegis of a company that by all rights should be a chief competitor. But for all its not-quite-actually-open-source issues, Android exists primarily so that Google can be insulated from Apple and Microsoft—the two companies that most threaten Sony, as well. In this case, the enemy of Sony's enemy could be their friend—especially when Google isn't interested in providing a full range of consumer products that use Android.
It wouldn't be the first time that Sony used a competitor's software: The entirety of the Vaio PC line runs Microsoft Windows, and its Sony Ericsson phones run Nokia's Symbian OS or—oh look!—Android.
And in this case, Google's weakness is Sony's strength: great hardware. And adopting Android across all its devices would do nothing to impede Sony's own platform goals. In fact, that a Sony-branded Android device could have access to the broad range of Android applications as well as Sony's Online Service and media offerings would do much to set Sony apart from the glut of also-rans that make up much of the current non-phone Android marketplace.
At its heart, Android is "just" Linux. Sony's no stranger to Linux—the PlayStation 2 and 3 both have dabbled with Linux support. But Android is Linux-as-platform, a trusted and understood consumer branding. (Or, you know, that's the goal.) It is, as far as operating systems go, as good or better than anything Sony has ever cooked up themselves. Rather than spending years on disparate software platforms for each device, Sony's software engineers could spend their time building easy-to-use and beautiful user experiences on top of a unified platform. (Remind me again why the Sony Dash doesn't use Android?)
Sony Ericsson's products are late, underpowered, designed by madmen and utterly irrelevant. Worse, the company is helmed by a man too proud to make a flagship phone with Google. Fire him. Rescue the engineers. Let the rest of the company burn.
This business has changed. There are no phones anymore. There are simply things that also phone. That there is not a PSP Phone in my hands right now is a travesty, one surely due entirely to the fact that Sony is entangled in a bizarre partnership with a European company trying to make phones that appeal to a feature phone market that started to go away a decade ago.
Sony Ericsson is a stone around Sony's neck and should be cut free as soon as possible. Telephony and mobile data are an intrinsic part of the electronic landscape. Even if a modern phone is really only a radio and a bit of software, it's too important to be anywhere but in-house—and increasingly, in every product.
Another fantastic man-on-the-street piece from Woody Jang about what regular consumers think of Sony's future.
If you ask the average person on the street what their favorite Sony product is, more often than not you'll hear "PlayStation". There's a couple of reasons for that—not the least of which is that it's the last Sony product to completely stand apart from its competitors.
It's a valuable and—when executed correctly—profitable brand. As for the hardware itself, the PlayStation 3 is powerful.
So why is it so half-assed? Why is it that I can spend hundreds of dollars on a PlayStation 3 and still not use it as a DVR? Or as a powerful, slick media center to access my media files? (You can do it, yes, but it's no Boxee or Plex.) Why does Sony sell any other Blu-ray players at all?
The PlayStation of the last few years is battered, but not broken. Half-hearted and poorly conceived projects like PlayStation Home have shown how disconnected Sony is from its users, but the device, brand, and platform still have a lot to give.
I have four boxes connected to my television: All three major consoles, plus a Mac Mini. The reason I have the Mac Mini? It's because none of the consoles do a proper job as a media center, giving me universal access to every type of media I consume, from streaming services like Netflix and Hulu, to movies and television I've ripped and downloaded (legally or otherwise), to DVDs and Blu-ray. (The Mini doesn't do Blu-ray, but since I only own, like, six Blu-ray discs that hasn't been a dealbreaker.)
Sony is trying. Netflix has come to the PS3, if somewhat awkwardly. But accessing files on the network still takes a UPnP server and other bits of annoying acronymic magic that makes my $350 console from a multi-billion dollar company feel gimpy and half-baked.
In the portable space, it's ever worse: I don't know a single person who bought a PSPgo. And why would they? It was clear from the outset that the PSPgo was a toe in the water of the digital-distribution stream, not the sort of cannonball into online game downloads that is already being explored to profitable depths by Apple.
But a PSP phone? A nicely designed portable device that has access to the library of amazing PSP titles, plus all the movies, music, and (hopefully Android) apps that Sony could provide? They'd sell a million on Day One, and have developers banging down their doors to let them create the beautiful 3D titles that the PSP is known for.
Thank goodness there are rumors that a PlayStation phone is happening—but Sony has made similar sashays before, only to jilt us later.
We've shown the absolutely monstrous number of products Sony has for sale (to US consumers) at any given time. To some extent it's understandable, if not forgivable. It's one of the strengths of megacorps to be able to shotgun lots of products onto the market to see what sticks, and diversification has been part of the Sony strategy for decades.
But it's gotten out of hand—and worse, it's turned Sony into a company that has stopped saying "Look what we've invented," to instead murmur, "We can do that, too."
I've written about how Apple's restraint has given them a product lineup that's easy to understand—and easy to invest in as a customer. Buy an Apple product and you can be sure that it'll be supported for years to come. (And that it'll be superseded by an improved version in a year, of course.)
But Sony is spitting out products that even they don't believe in. The Mylo internet communicator? The Vaio P netbook? The PSPgo? The Sony Dash? The UX Series UMPC micro whatever-the-hell? A three-thousand dollar 2-megapixel Qualia camera? Those aren't all dead products—yet. But Sony, by spewing out products that are clearly part of no greater strategy than "Let's see what sticks" has eroded the value of their brand and the trust that customers should be able to put in it.
Except for the robots! While I'll rail all day about how Sony has overwhelmed us with pointless or half-baked products, I have to admit: I miss the robots. I miss the strange little contraptions, the oh-so-Japanese experiments that clearly have no place in the greater company strategy, but exist only to show off the prowess of Sony's engineers.
Is the Sony Rolly absolutely silly and overpriced? Of course it is. But if Sony were selling just a couple of dozen products that really nailed it, the Rolly would stop serving as an all-too-fitting icon of Sony's directionless and instead take its place as a whirring, cooing, flashing reminder that Sony plays in the future.
Really, though: robot dogs! How are we supposed to believe in Sony if they don't believe in Aibo!
Once upon time, you bought Sony because "Sony" actually meant "the best." It's that reputation of quality that Sony's largely coasted on (and ridden roughshod over) for the last decade. Sony simply needs to make the best gadgets again.
Take its TVs for example, a core product where Sony is a brand that immediately comes to mind: The Bravia XBR8 is quite possibly the best LCD television ever created. Sony stopped making it last year. The products that followed it, the XBR9 and XBR10, are actually inferior products, despite costing just as much. We actually expected the XBR8 to spawn many better and less expensive TVs, not the opposite. That's the death of the Sony brand. If Sony means nothing else, it should mean the best gadgetry you can buy. The XBR11 needs to be the greatest LCD TV ever made.
Sony is lost. Too entranced by their own mythos to make the hard decisions. Too ready to listen to the Madison Avenue hucksters who convince them that "make.believe" means anything at all.
But we believe in Sony. Even their worst products, however feebly designed, retain the air of quality. (We're ignoring a few exploding batteries here and there as the travails of any massive company.)
We believe in a Sony that can practice restraint, that can encourage its engineers to dream and innovate, but also can understand that not every crazy accomplishment needs to be validated by becoming a product for sale.
More than anything, we believe that Sony can stop being so prideful, desperate to be acknowledged as the world's leading electronics company. We believe that the company of Ibuku and Morita can stop telling us they're the best, and do what they were formed to do:
Prove it.
The complete "We Miss Sony" series
• Video: Describe Sony In A Word
• How Sony Lost Its Way
• Sony's Engineer Brothers
• Infographic: Sony's Overwhelming Gadget Line-Up
• The Sony Timeline: Birth, Rise, and Decadence
• Let's Make.Believe Sony's Ads Make Sense
• The Return of Sony
For whatever reason, Maingear decided that they should stick a full numeric keypad onto a 15-inch laptop. And using whatever magic, they managed to pull it off without creating a monster.
I've got a 12-inch, a 15-inch, and a 17-inch laptop within an arms reach, yet none of them—not even the 17-incher—have a full number pad. This makes Maingear's mX-L 15 feel like the odd man out, but boy could it be useful for quicker data entry. Or maybe gaming.
The laptop can now be ordered with Intel Core™ i5 or i7 mobile processors, ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570 graphics, 802.11b/g/n support, a 2.0MP camera, and an optional SSD. Prices start at $999, ten-key pad included. [Maingear]
Sure, it has a ridiculous name, but on paper the Bloggie's got it all—1080p video capture, the ability to switch resolutions and frame rate, plus a lens attachment that lets you record 360-degree videos. Bells and whistles galore.
Sony thought adding all these bells and whistles would make a difference. They were—as ever—running late to the pocket-camcorder race, but thought strapping on featured-laden running shoes would help it take on its rivals.
Unfortunately, Sony was racing against the Flip Ultra HD (our favorite pocket camcorder) - a much smaller kid sure, but he'd been around the block many times before and was very streamlined. While it couldn't do jumps and flips like the Sony—nor did it have special running shoes— the Flip was unmistakably on top of his game thanks to a single red button in the middle of his chest which starts the action up quickly and easily.
And so, like the late-comer Sony in our story, the tardy Sony Bloggie joins last year's Webbie model in the Japanese giant's quest to take on the Flip. There are three Bloggie models available, with the MHS-PM5, MHS-PM5K, and MHD-CM5 all shooting in 1080p. The CM5 has an optical zoom and flip-out LCD screen, and the only feature that separates the PM5 from the PM5K is the latter's lens attachment which offers 360-degree filming. This is the model I tested, which costs $180.
Flip's pavement-pounder is the Ultra HD, which while only shooting in 720p at 30fps, demands so few choices to be made that it's a big seller for the market-creating company. It's the easiest device to use, with the only options being to turn on/off, start/stop recording, and zoom in/out.
Sony's Bloggie has a bewildering choice of features, which will end up being a problem if they want to appeal to anyone other than those who actually know what different resolutions are. It shoots in 1080p at 30fps, 720p at either 60fps or 30fps, and VGA. There are a few limitations with shooting in 1080p though—you can't use the zoom, there's no image stabilization, and you can't use the 360 degree lens attachment with it.
The Bloggie is very "Sony" in style. That means a glossy black finish and cheap parts that I can see breaking down very quickly, like the door that covers the AV output and protruding USB stick.
At 2.4-inches, the 4:3 LCD screen is one of the worst displays I've encountered, with a poor off-axis viewing angle, meaning you have to be facing it straight-on to actually see the footage at its best. It's also got a softer surface than desired—as you can see from some of the photos, it's covered with a few scratches from just a week's use.
To record a video, the button is located on the top right side—and admittedly, when I first turned it on I tried pressing the middle button, which just brings up the menu. You can't stop recording video without jerking the camcorder trying to get to the button, which means you'll have to edit every single video if you want something smooth.
The main draw to this camcorder over other similar makes is the lens options. The inbuilt lens can be turned around in 270 degrees angles, great for self-filmers. The second way involves clamping another lens on top, which then shoots video in 360 degrees. It's very fun to play with, especially if you put it on a sofa and leap around the room like I did, but I just can't imagine putting the extra part in my bag and wanting to pull it out and use it. It'd be lost in the draw, forgotten for months. You can see my efforts with this attachment just below, where I jump about like a heavy-footed fairy at a Talking Heads concert. How embarrassing.
To test how both camcorders handled shooting something in motion, I strapped on my running shoes and ran on my gym's treadmill. It was so well-lit inside that both camcorders produced satisfactory results, but the Bloggie's wasn't quite as smooth as the Flip's was. This is interesting, as the Bloggie was filmed at 60fps, double what the Flip can handle. You can see some jaggies on my legs as I jog—the edges are smooth, but look jagged. A touch of motion blur wouldn't be obvious to the untrained eye, but I was a lot happier with what the Flip managed to produce.
Sony Bloggie: Motion at 720p and 60fps.
Flip Ultra HD: Motion at 720p and 30fps.
The park was a perfect opportunity to see how the Bloggie performed in natural light, on a sunny (yet overcast) day. There was some wind, which the Bloggie picked up more than the Flip (which actually captured a bit of birdsong at one stage), but altogether the Flip managed to convey the colors a lot better than the Bloggie did.
As you can see from the video I shot with the Bloggie, the colors are just too washed out, it's like everything has been dampened with paleness. It was a sunny day, but at one point in the footage you can see it jumps to let even more light into the lens—which wasn't necessary. The Flip, while slightly skewing the colors so the green grass and red buses were more fluroscent than in real life, had a much healthier portrayal of colors and light.
Other tests outdoors showed individual blades of grass being made out on the Flip, whereas the Bloggie couldn't distinguish any—even when filmed at 1080p and played back on my 42-inch TV.
Sony Bloggie: Outdoors at 1080p and 30fps.
Flip Ultra HD: Outdoors at 720p and 30fps.
Both camcorders have digital zooms, but there's a major difference between the two: you can actually use the Flip's zoom. I didn't end up including video proof showing how bad the Bloggie's zoom actually is, but once you zoom half-way in (it's a 4x zoom), the amount of visual noise it produces is mind-blowing. It's like static on your TV. This occurred even outdoors, when shooting flowers at close-range.
Neither camcorder can handle the closest flowers well, which were 2-inches from the lens (without zoom activated). Focus was off, with the Flip only adjusting when it panned to the second layer of flowers, which were about 4-inches away. It's only until the Bloggie sees the third layer of flowers that it begins to focus—which would've been a good 6 - 8 inches from the lens. It's not that much of an issue when you're filming flowers, true—but imagine if this was the next iPhone that I was filming, and you couldn't even make out the icons?
Sony Bloggie: Macro, 1080p at 30fps.
Flip Ultra HD: Macro, 720p at 30fps.
Seen in the two videos here are not only my friends trying to act "natural" when two camcorders are shoved in their faces after a few drinks in the pub, but also—in the Bloggie's case—a heck of a lot of noise. I'm talking visual noise, because in terms of audio it's spot on—really clear, and able to pick up a lot more than the Flip can (though that also means more background noise, too).
Our corner of the pub was lit by two lamps, so it was pretty dark, but at 1080p on the Bloggie it coped well. Not as well as the Flip did though, which impressed me more with its lack of noise.
Sony Bloggie: Low-light 1080p and 30fps.
Flip Ultra HD: Low-light 720p and 30fps.
On a rain-soaked afternoon in my corner of London, I ventured out to the busiest intersection near me and filmed double decker buses careening around the roadworks-bespeckled corner. With the gray haze of rain, the Bloggie's trademark of dampening the colors down really didn't make for good footage. The Flip meanwhile, while heightening the colors so everything is ultra-vivid, made the video a lot nicer to play back. The red of the double decker buses may be skewed, but at least they actually look RED, unlike the Bloggie's disappointing paleness.
Sony Bloggie: Color, 1080p and 30fps.
Flip Ultra HD: Color, 720p and 30fps.
It's been a bit hard to judge the battery lives of both camcorders, as after each test I've been plugging them straight into my MacBook (yes, they're both OS X and Windows compatible), which automatically charges them. The Bloggie is showing a full battery life, and I've used it in total about three hours over the past week—charging it here and there, for about five minutes at a time. The Flip's got a quoted battery life of two hours, and hasn't held its juice as well as the Bloggie, which has a removable battery—a definite bonus in my book.
A HDMI output would've been nice on the Bloggie, but it compensates with the Memory Stick PRO Duo / SD/SDHC card slot. I stuck the memory stick in my PS3 and watched all my videos back within seconds on the TV. As both camcorders have built-in USB arms I could connect the Flip to the PS3 too, but having the memory card slot is a nice touch. It also means you can store more on the Bloggie than the Flip, which only has an 8GB capacity.
Sony was late to the pocket camcorder race, and while they stuffed the Bloggie with a extraordinary amount of features, it just feels bloated. The old adage of quality over quantity definitely rings true when holding both the Ultra HD and Bloggie in your hands, with the Flip's cut-down, simplistic ease of use winning me over. The ability to switch resolutions and play with the different lenses was nice, but it does say something when you prefer the 720p video over the footage shot with a 1080p camcorder.
It really saddens me saying this, as I was convinced upon opening the Bloggie's box that I'd be so enamored with it I'd rush out and buy one after writing the review. Instead, I'm joining the flock of supporters embracing the Flip Ultra HD at the winner's podium.
Dual memory card reader
Great battery life
Ability to switch resolutions easily
Natural Colors
Video often too dark, with motion blur and noise
Too much background noise picked up
Flimsy build with awkward placement of record button
Zoom isn't worth using
BBC's Life, or as we've called it, Planet Earth Part II, is finally coming to Discovery starting March 21st. In this clip, the crew teases some of the amazing technique that allowed the documentary to capture so many new "firsts."
If you haven't seen our earlier coverage of Life, the clips you'll find here are definitely worth your time, as is this behind the scenes of a few of Life's most epic moments. It may be old news to our friends overseas, but for those of us in America, it's definitely time to set the DVR.
According to ChangeWave, the Kindle is going to have a hard time surviving the incoming iPad wave. In a 3171-people survey on Amazon.com users looking to buy an ebook reader, 40% said they were planning to buy the iPad.
Comparatively, 28% wanted to get the Amazon Kindle, despite having a longer life, more titles in the store, and allegedly offering a better book reading experience than the iPad thanks to its electronic ink technology. The 28% to 40% comparison is higher than we thought, actually, with Kindle still doing fairly well in comparison to Apple's do-everything device.
The reason the iPad scored higher? Most probably, ereader shoppers are more excited about the color screen, Apple's design, and the multiple functions that the iPad can offer, compared to the single-function nature of Amazon's black-and-white, no multitouch, no fancy-schmancy design electronic reader. It'll be interesting to see what Kindle 3 brings, since Amazon is working on a full color, multitouch version. [ChangeWave]
An Apple patent worth gawking at, given its grander ambitions for advertising, iTunes and TV subscriptions: It details a way to make you watch ads embedded into video content, like say, a free or cheap TV show.
Conceptually, it's not too dissimilar from what you see with Hulu, actually—essentially, in order to unlock further segments of the video, you have to watch an ad. You know, just like real TV worked, before DVRs!
The patent goes in-depth about how ads would be embedded with content that could be downloaded to multiple devices—like an iPhone or iPad—how it'd react to trying to jump ahead of the ad, and gathering statistics about how the ad was viewed or interacted with.
The reason it's interesting, primarily, is that Apple's reportedly been heavily pitching networks both on selling TV shows for cheap—99 cents—and signing on to an iTunes TV subscription service that would bundle a selection of TV shows from major networks for 30 bucks a month, like say, Gossip Girl from CBS. The networks have been cool to both suggestions, given that TV's expensive to produce and stuff.
Ads, especially ones with detailed usage statistics (and maybe demographics), would help make up the revenue lost by offering shows for a buck, and make $30 subscription a lot more palatable, and possibly even offset the screams of cable operators watching content dance out the door and maybe onto the cloud.
The retrenchment of the old timeline model of television with interstitial advertising in the age of the DVRs, where we can create any timeline we want as we watch, is one of the more curious developments of networks groping for new ways to make money off of old media on new devices. What's old is new is old again, apparently.
Oh, and Apple's patent illustrators apparently like Charlie from Lost. [Patently Apple via 9to5Mac]
In March 3, 1916, the US Congress founded the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, only a 12 years after the Wright Brothers' first ever flight. In 1920, they built their first wind tunnel. And in 1958, it became NASA.
Initially, NACA was created because Europe got way ahead of the US after the Wrights flew the Kitty Hawk. They soon got up to speed, however. They built their first wind tunnel—above—at Langley Field, Virginia, in 1920. It was pretty rudimentary, but it served them to build their next big wind tunnel: the Langley Laboratory's Variable Density Tunnel, in 1923. Only four years later, they built the Propeller Research Tunnel:
A full-scale Sperry M-1 Messenger being tested in NACA's Propeller Research Tunnel, in 1927
Their engineers did a great job, publishing results of their research for everyone in the aeronautics industry. By World War 2, their work on aircraft engineering had directly influenced some of the greatest airplanes ever to fly the Earth's skies, and the United States were way ahead of everyone else in aircraft development, both for prop and jet engine-powered planes.
By the end of 50s, NACA was already figuring out spaceflight. The Russians were ahead, however. That's when it was dissolved only to be reborn as the NASA we all love today. [NASA]
Sony's newest catchphrase, "make.believe," is a fitting reminder that Sony ads make no sense. Laptops take flight, PlayStations become monsters, and pitchmen state plainly that Sony TVs make you better at playing sports. Most of all—look! Play-doh bunnies!
Back when Sony had only electronics to sell, they sold them like no other—to borrow a more sensible slogan that the company recently retired. You bought a Trinitron TV because it was the best, you bought a Walkman because it was the coolest, and you told everyone else they were dumb if they didn't do the same. "It's a Sony!" you'd shout at any half-witted amigo who was reluctant to pay the Sony premium.
Sony worked hard to make you a part of its marketing team. They even went so far as to indoctrinate the children. When the My First Sony line was launched, it actually made sense, because it reinforced what you already believed: that you would buy in and keep on buying. Brand did matter, but only by standing for specific, high-quality products. There were 170 different Walkman models released during its first decade, sure, but this was before MP3 players, cellphones, PDAs, laptops, portable game consoles and pocket-sized camcorders. Besides perhaps a 35mm compact camera, this was the only portable gadget to buy. You knew you were getting it, so choosing which one became a connoisseur's dilemma. Even gorillas knew this.
By the time Sony got into the movie and record business, and the iconic cassette Walkman gave way to the less iconic CD Walkman, the Sony brand became bigger than the gadgets. With the eventual exception of PlayStation, the electronics lost their own identities. That's not to say the gadget well dried up. On the contrary, Sony released more and more, jazzing up tried-and-true businesses with progressive industrial design and catchy-sounding sub-brands. It's not a clock radio, it's a Dream Machine. Sony's brand momentum carried it successfully into new areas where they really could make a superior product. In addition to the videogame consoles, this included digital cameras, portable computers and dog-shaped robots.
But due to arrogance, an obsession with proprietary formats and a lack of stick-to-itiveness—coinciding with the rise of unexpectedly tough competition from Korea, China and Cupertino, California—the magic wore off. The "buy the brand" message lost its grip on shoppers, but to the increasingly out-of-touch executives inside the company, it seems to have become a rallying cry.
Sony started losing Number 1 positions in TVs, cameras and even videogame consoles, and found themselves unable to get the market leadership they assumed they'd easily grab in other areas, such as PCs or ebook readers. As they slipped, their advertising just got weirder and weirder. Ads now ranged from purely artistic—products saw hardly any airtime—to trippy—products were shown, but not in a way that a buyer could relate to—to sarcastic—where pitchmen and pitchwomen spouted nonsense and openly mocked customers, as if consciously parodying Sony's own classic advertisements.
Thanks to the miracle of YouTube, we can see how all three of these categories failed to hit their targets.
What can you say about this category, except that who doesn't like rainbow-colored Claymation bunnies hopping to late-'60s Rolling Stones?
Who doesn't like bubbles falling from the sky? Or the spontaneous proliferation of several million bouncy balls? Who among you doesn't like sound/vision experiments by avant garde directors cut to ADHD-friendly 3-minute lengths?
If you answered "no" to the above questions, you are lying. But to drive the point of failure home, let's hear from one of YouTube's commenters: "It's visually interesting but it comes across as some kind of dystopian vision of the future. An Orwellian kind of hell sponsored by Sony." Hell. By Sony. And I am not entirely sure I ever saw anything I could actually buy.
Another batch of ads featured real Sony products, but not in any way that helped the consumer decision. We begin with the PlayStation 3, according to this video, a dangerous, volatile and ugly beast that does… something:
Somehow they manage to convey all the tension of gaming without any of the fun. It's violent through and through, except for that quick bit with the butterflies.
Here is the Bloggie camcorder, whose simple demonstration has been so perverted, it would cause Steve Jobs—or even Steve Ballmer—to shoot the director between the eyes:
Never mind that, on this complicated-looking copy of a Flip camera, the 270º swivel lens is the only thing everyone would figure out immediately, why does the product have to be man-sized? And what's with the fingers guy?
In this whole mess, the most organic ad I could find was for Rolly, the short-lived zany Bluetooth music robot. I love the ad, but I actually know the product. The ad, to a lay person, would be confusing at best, and at worst would suggest a degree of interactivity that the product simply didn't have:
The ads that Sony should really be ashamed of, though, are the so-called expert ads, some of which ran on our own site this past holiday season. I will admit to being a fan of Peyton Manning and Justin Timberlake, but they're not experts, and I wouldn't trust them any more than I trust any of the other people on the so-called panel.
In the Sony Reader ad, when the poor actress has to ask the incredibly dumb question "Can I read a lot of books on this thing?" Amy Sedaris says yes and holds up her book, I Like You. It's worth noting that unlike her brother's works, Amy's book is highly visual, with color photos and lots of sight gags. It's excellent, but you would never ever read it on a Sony Reader—or on a Kindle.
In the camera ad, when the actress mentions that all the cameras look the same, baby-seal photographer Nigel Barker explains that "the technology in their cameras and camcorders makes it easy to get the best shot." This is something every camera maker would say about their cameras. It doesn't differentiate, and it can never be proven wrong.
During the TV ad, Peyton and Justin play pingpong. ESPN's Erin Andrews says to a bewildered family, "You can't fake Sony quality." Justin chimes in with, "The more sports you watch on a Sony, the better you get. At sports." And then a TV appears with the words HDNA scrawled across it, though the announcer says it's called a Bravia. I don't know what HDNA is, and I was there when they unveiled it.
In a rather ironic twist, these ads got remix treatment by the Gregory Brothers of Auto-tune the News fame. This isn't some Gray Album bootleg, but a viral video sanctioned by Sony's marketing department, an approval that shows Sony can make some daring choices when they want to. But was it the right move? I enjoy this remix more than any of the original ads, but it doesn't clear up any frustration either. It is a distortion of a distortion of a message.
Don't you feel like the Gregory Brothers know this? They openly mock the customers, and they repeat "these all seem the same" over and over—and over. I couldn't help but flash a knowing smile when Julia Allison explains that the Sony PC is different because it has a Blu-ray drive and an HD screen. Like every other Windows laptop in that range.
When criticizing advertising, the easiest thing to do is to point to Apple as the counter example. "Well, Apple would've done it this way." But truthfully, Apple achieves what most companies strive to pull off, an entertaining but earnest look at the product being sold, or a comedic vignette that drives a single sales point home. (Say what you want about Justin Long, but Hodgman's Eeyore of a PC sure sells Macs.) Like everything else, Sony needs to focus. Instead of hiring 20 different artists to conceive of crazy shit, why not create a global ad campaign that focuses on specific actual products, and portrays their standout features in a way that doesn't sound like it's mocking the products or the customers? My only fear is that as Sony has less and less to brag about, this strategy will be harder to work out. Still, it's worth a shot: Pick your best products, get closeup shots, play some baby music in the background, and tell us why we should buy them. No psychedelia, no anthropomorphic gimmicks, and no smirking.
The complete "We Miss Sony" series
• Video: Describe Sony In A Word
• How Sony Lost Its Way
• Sony's Engineer Brothers
• Infographic: Sony's Overwhelming Gadget Line-Up
• The Sony Timeline: Birth, Rise, and Decadence
• Let's Make.Believe Sony's Ads Make Sense
• The Return of Sony
HTC's HD2, the last of the semi-tragic WinMo superphones, is coming to T-Mobile on March 24th. We'd heard this! And now we've heard it again, for certain, from a source within a company working with the product. [Thanks, Tipster!]
It was 3:59 AM Hong Kong, and Brando's offices reeked of Vodka and sweat. The design intern cowered from the men that encircled him. "Reach into the parts bag," one of them hissed, "and make us something we'll like."
Silhouetted by a single yellowed bulb, with memories of design school lectures still fresh in his brain, the intern hesistated. "I heard there are scorpions in there. Is... is that..." Silence. And so he reached.
He grabbed the largest piece he could find, hoping for a USB hub, or something similarly versatile. Yes, he though to himself as he pulled a miniature keyboard from the bag. There's still hope. Reentry. Fumbling. A minor puncture wound from a frayed wire. Finally, he grabbed hold of something smooth and square. He realizes his mistake almost immediately, but not before one of his new bosses could club him in the back of his head with the nearest weaponizable object he could reach, a combination power strip/barometer. "That's two items, you stupid child." A hand reached out and slapped the battery and touchpad from the intern's hand, onto the floor. "Go again."
A wireless transmitter. A d-pad. Some LED lights. A backlighting panel. Lastly, a...wait, what's this? A laser pointer? Fuck. A portly man with darkened sunglasses snorted as if he'd just been jolted awake, and gestured slowly, as if conducting an orchestra in slow motion. The room fell silent.
"That will be all," one of his apparent henchman said. He gestured toward a cracked door on the other side of the room, labeled "Engineerin." (The "g" had fallen off in 2007, and nobody had bothered to replace it.) Through the gap, the intern could see his tools: there was a flathead screwdriver, some electrical tape and a soldering iron. For a fleeting second, he thought he saw small a tube of glue, until the black shape scuttled away under the table. He loaded up his now-drenched shirt with the parts like a child hoarding Easter eggs, and shuffled wearily into the engineering chamber, too nervous even to glance over his shoulder.
The next thing he heard was the sound of a turning key; the thud of a setting deadbolt; the slow sinking of a human stomach. Hidden in the near corner was two gallons of water, a USB hotplate, and a pile of broken, unpackaged ramen noodles. "See you in three weeks" our intern heard through the door. Or was it three months? It was hard to hear over all the laughter.
The Rii Mini Wireless Keyboard is available today, for $92. Update: Commenters have found a lower price: $50 for what looks like the same product. [Crunchgear]
If only this $14 Steve Jobs MacBook decal really looked like Steve Jobs, something more stable could finally replace the black mock turtle lint effigy I've constructed in his name. If only. [Etsy via GeekyGadgets]
These fresh images and details of Microsoft's Courier paint a slightly different device than the one uncovered a few months ago—tinier seeming, perhaps less genre-busting, and a more direct iPad fighter.
This take is built on the same mobile OS core as Windows Phone 7 and Zune HD, powered by Nvidia's Tegra 2 hardware. It's supposedly thinner than an inch, under a pound, and about the size of a 5x7 photo when closed.
As you can see, the device seems even smaller (Update: maybe not), the interface, though still pen-based, seems less whizzy based on these stills than the wildly complex and sophisticated (or maybe just complex) interface shown earlier:
Is Courier progressing or regressing? It's hard to tell—we're not sure where in Courier's development these concepts are from vs. our initial reportage. But if they are newer, a few things stand out.
• Courier's grown to be more realstic and less different, which is not uncommon for mind-bogglingly radical-seeming products. (Our mind was blown by the original interface, anyway, for better or worse.)
• Shifting from using Windows 7 as its core as Mary Jo Foley first reported to Windows CE6 and mobile guts puts it more squarely against the iPad, using a similar philosophical approach of scaling up to a tablet, vs. scaling down as Microsoft's always done before. (Which makes sense, given that this is supposedly J. Allard's project—he'd want to use E&D's own goods to power his tablet.) Also, mobile guts are cheaper than low-power laptop guts.
• This could be one of the several prototype tablets J. Allard's got—which would explain why there's versions that seem more like full Windows 7 vs. Windows Phone 7.
• Engadget pegs the launch date later this year, though we've heard separately that Courier won't show up anytime in 2010.
• We're still pretty excited.
[Engadget]
This week's Photoshop Contest was inspired by this magical website: turn today's modern gadgets into utilitarian, Soviet-era devices. No fanciness, just cold usefulness.
Send your best entries to me at contests@gizmodo.com with Soviet Gadgets in the subject line. Save your files as JPGs or GIFs under 800k in size, and use a FirstnameLastname.jpg naming convention using whatever name you want to be credited with. Send your work to me by next Tuesday morning, and I'll pick three top winners and show off the rest of the best in our Gallery of Champions. Get to it!
