Aug

15

Whats new is now old

Filed Under Design, Education, HighRes, Media Players, Network, TED, Technology, Virtual Reality, Web2.0 | Leave a Comment

If you're visiting my blog for the first time, you can subscribe to my RSS feed. This allows you to read the latest updates about Globalization, Internet2 and Education via feeds.
Thank you for visiting.

Microsoft’s Photosynth was a hit at TED last year and looked to be really promising regardless of running only on XP SP2 and Vista (shame on you Microsoft) but the same team along with the University of Washington has moved forward with new photo, video and VR technologies:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLLzV5qeKyk

This should be a very interesting mashup of multiple media formats.  Great work and a wonderful tool for education.

Tags: Photosynth, photo, virtual reality, panaoramic, globalization, trends

Jun

20

Internet2 on Fox News … well kinda

Filed Under Education, Globalization, HighRes, Internet2, Milwaukee, Network, Technology | Leave a Comment

Well I’m not exactly sure either guy knows what Internet2 is today but clearly Jeremy Kaplan from PC Magazine does not convey the basics of Internet2…Yikes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puaYLiUuXT8

Tags: Internet2, bandwidth, network, fiber, globalization, trends

Jun

18

Astronomy without borders

Filed Under Design, Education, Globalization, HighRes, Interactive, Internet2, Network, Streaming, Technology | Leave a Comment

Internet2 has partnered to transfer real time data between China and New South Wales.  Crossing the globe merging multiple countries and processing huge amounts of data.  Very cool to see advanced research and education networks grabbing 512 megs per second (per telescope — seven total) and streaming it live to Shanghai.  More info here and here

Tags: Internet2, bandwidth, network, astronomy, China, trends

May

20

My latest read - Innovation Nation

Filed Under Design, Education, Globalization, HighRes, Interactive, Internet2, Network, OLPC, OpenSource, Reading, TED, Technology, Web2.0 | Leave a Comment

Innovation Nation: How America Is Losing Its Innovation Edge, Why It Matters, and What We Can Do to Get It Back from John Kao is a timely read. To say I enjoyed his lessons how America is losing it’s innovation lead was not pleasant experience, yet the book is highly engaging.

There are timely lessons in this book from the $100 laptop and more importantly the exodus of top American talent. No surprise that top talent from India is returning home after attending college in America as globalization brings new opportunities to India.

You may be surprised to learn how Kao documents the loss of top Americans heading overseas. That’s native-born Americans leaving our best institutions (and their home country) to work in new innovation centers with more creative, less political conditions.

The list includes Paul Saffo from Stanford, John Seely Brown from Xerox PARC, Peter Schwartz from Global Business Network and Rita Colwell, former head of the National Science Foundation and current professor of biological sciences at the University of Maryland.

Read more

May

15

Bandwidth for Schools

Filed Under Design, Education, Globalization, HighRes, Interactive, Internet2, Media Players, Milwaukee, Network, OLPC, OpenSource, Smartphone, Streaming, TED, Technology, Web2.0, WiscNet | Leave a Comment

A National Broadband Policy needs to be more than just a talking point. Schools in our country need to upgrade their internet bandwidth to 25 Megabytes per second. This is for every school — not just the K12 district who slices up the bandwidth based upon the total number of school buildings in the district. The technology and educational impact upon our schools: leaving them behind just when students from around the world are joining and benefiting from the broadband educational internet.

Playing catch-up
Today we find a majority of schools around the country in the educational slow lane. For some reason it does not matter if the school is remote or urban, many are connecting at just 5 Megabits/second. Its like teaching history with books that still recognize Russia as the old Soviet Union….oh how I miss Gorgachev.
Any college connecting at less than 10MB — shows a lack of understanding and vision for their students who enter higher education seeking not just a degree but an advantage to enter the global marketplace.

Read more

Apr

21

SlideRocket Beta

Filed Under Design, Education, Globalization, Google, HighRes, Interactive, Media Players, Network, OpenSource, Rich media, Technology, Web2.0 | Leave a Comment

I have been beta testing SlideRocket, a new online presentation tool. It has a very Keynote like approach to creating presentations, or should I say is also at the exact opposite end of the PowerPoint scale of slideware. Thanks be to God for Edward Tufte.

SlideRocket Beta

The beta period looks to be stable for the short term, but SlideRocket will give Google’s online slideware tool a bit of a hard look, but I just do not believe it will be enough to move the masses to SlideRocket.

SlideRocket is a Adobe AIR application supporting Flickr photos and the ability to directly import Google Spreadsheets. The beta tag sticks because I was not able to get accurate results on my Flickr search on three attempts. It also borrow’s from Adobe the deep grey design UI of the program. Read more

Feb

25

Philadelphia Orchestra: Live via Internet2

Filed Under Audio, Design, Education, Globalization, HighRes, Interactive, Internet2, Milwaukee, Network, Streaming, Technology, WiscNet | Leave a Comment

Global concert seriesFriday afternoon Milwaukee’s Discover World hosted a live performance by the Philadelphia Orchestra via Internet2. The Philadelphia Orchestra Association is a member of Internet2.

The HD video concert was projected in Discovery World’s Digital Theater which provides viewers with a spectacular 27foot wide high definition image with a 2048×1920 resolution picture.

discoverworld
Early arrival at Discovery World

The Philadelphia Orchestra is the first major orchestra to transmit live concerts to multiple large screen venues such as Discovery World. The live broadcast uses an MPEG 2 compressed stream running at bandwidths exceeding 50 times that of conventional internet video streams. For this concert performance only 20 venues around the world participated.

Read more

Jan

18

Philadelphia Orchestra + Internet2

Filed Under Audio, Design, Education, Globalization, HighRes, Internet2, Network, Streaming, Technology | Leave a Comment

Internet2 is quickly becoming the performance stage for music. Philadelphia’s orchestra was stuck with declining audiences for its main subscription series and a downturn in ticket revenue. Pretty typical of many of today’s performing arts that must compete with consumers who have many more choices.

Their solution? Plan future performances over Internet2. The orchestra’s performance hall has installed HD video cameras and now the groundwork for performances sent in HD to Asia and Europe are underway.  This is similar to the plan by Internet2 member New World Symphony in Miami.

As they say, time to face the music. Jump on-board … or get run over. Your choice.

Tags: Internet2, Philadelphia, orchestra, globalization, network, trends

Jan

12

Photojournalism?

Filed Under Design, Education, Globalization, HighRes, Network, Technology | Leave a Comment

There has always been an uproar in journalism circles regarding the use of ‘edited’ or ‘doctored’ photographs used in both print and online news publications. There was a large debate here on the use of images in the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA) website regarding doctoring digital images.

bhutto aftermath

I am surprised to see nothing discussed about the doctored image above widely used from the Bhutto assassination. You’ll notice the motion or action effect on the photograph at right.

Maybe Photoshop’s Filter > Blur > Lens Blur effect perhaps? Is the use of a digital visual effect to ‘pinch’ the image and enhance of the impact of this image captured in the aftermath of the assassination? The original photo by Getty’s John Moore can be found here. The image appears as the 12th image in the NYTimes slideshow. So … its now acceptable to test our favorite Photoshop CS3 Filters?

Tags: journalism, photojournalism, Bhutto, John Moore, doctored photo, National Press Photographers Association, NPPA, Getty

Aug

9

The new iMac makes a leap

Filed Under Design, Education, HighRes, Media Players, Technology | 2 Comments


Apple has released a new iMac generation that has a couple of more powerful features that you may have overlooked by it’s visual design: HD video and internal hard drive capacity of 1 terabyte in size. And built-in support for optical digital audio too.

I’m not sure anyone else is shipping a consumer system with these features…it’s their high end configuration but clearly demonstrates the penetration of these features for ‘home’ users. My first Mac shipped with 512K RAM and NO internal hard drive…How about your first computer?

Well today moving forward its 1 Terabyte capacity. Yup…Terabyte.

Tags: imac, HD, terabyte, design, innovation, trends

Apr

15

Copywrong

Filed Under Design, Education, HighRes, Technology, Virtual Reality | Leave a Comment

The real golden rule: He who has the gold makes the rules.
I’m always disappointed to see how copyright handcuffs what an artist can create. For example:

stitcher

This message is from RealViz’s Stitcher program, a photographic virtual reality rendering program. “Due to legal issues” you cannot look at an image if the camera focal length is really wide.

What could a visual artist create without this man made limitation?

Technorati Tags: , photography, virtual reality, artist, creative

Feb

4

Nikon and Nokia

Filed Under Design, HighRes, Milwaukee, Rich media, Smartphone, Web2.0 | Leave a Comment

Nikon announced it will actually stop manufacturing most 35mm SLR bodies. Moving forward the company will concentrate on building digital cameras and accessories.

In the UK alone 95% of their business is digital.  Which makes the statement of Nokia being the largest supplier of cameras no surprise…Nokia builds camers into most of their phones.  This should be a trend of where the image capture market is moving towards for consumers.

Technorati Tags: , , , ,

Apr

5

Google maps with satellite

Filed Under HighRes | Leave a Comment

The topic to be spoken about around the globe:  Google maps now integrating satellite imaging.

Get ready for the sight seeing adventures to come via new reference points.

Eweek website | Google’s mapping webpage

Apr

5

Hitachi 16:9 DVD camcorder

Filed Under HighRes | Leave a Comment

Not one to post a product endorsement…since I have not played with this device (or been paid) to promote a device…
However a DVD video camera shooting widescreen 16:9

Hitachi website

Apr

2

Moscow Unrealized

Filed Under HighRes | Leave a Comment

Moscavites may have (probably not) enjoyed living in their capital city filled with soviet architecture.

English language | Tay gava-reesh pa-rooskie? Russian language

Next Page →