Lets get the cynical bit out of the way first. Studios and cinemas love 3D as its impossible to do the “camera in the theatre” pirating trick with them. Just try watching a movie without the polarising glasses and you’ll see what I mean.
At the moment there are no movies that are greatly improved by the use of 3D. Just as the Jazz Singer was a gimmick where there was only 5 minutes of sound tacked in to a silent movie in 1927.
Try to imagine a modern movie done as a silent now? How much dialogue could be removed to work with those cards with the few lines? Exposition would need to be simpler in order to cope… etc.
Sound, widescreen and colour were all gimmicks once.
The entire production in photography would have to change in order to make the most of 3d. Since all movies have to be capable of being displayed on a 2d screen (DVD sales, Sales for tv broadcast, legal download) there isn’t going to be much use made of 3d, just as there isn’t much use made of IMAX.
So keeping that part of the market in mind, what is needed for 3d to take off?
The first big leap will be 3d home displays or 3D computer monitors. Then 3d still digital photography displayed on these home screens, and 3D games and interfaces on computers and consoles.
The still experiments will be what teaches the photographic and lighting requirements to the DPs (remember that lighting a black and white movie is a completely different technique to lighting a colour one. Something taken for granted today, but hard learned when it came in). The gaming and interface side will show what can be avoided an what people do and don’t notice.
Just place your bets on a 3D chess game being an early release… slow rendering is possible as most of the pieces can be pre-rendered. A slow moving game like this, well slow moving when compared to a first person shooter should be fairly easy… at most 2 pieces move at once. Then things can get faster.
Then, live action 3D comes to play… (at the moment it is limited to CG and stop motion animation).
Suddenly 3d editing becomes a desirable (and probably new found skill). Set budgets will soar (as the limited field of view is killed, as will be digital matt painting, unless they go 3d too.
Expect “AR” style commentaries on home released by that time too.
At the moment there are competing standards for home 3d, just as there were competing standards for sound in the 30s. And technicolor fought with de luxe for years. Give it time, and remember that the technical best does not always beat the good enough.
Tony points out that HD is still not ubiquitous. Well, the HD argument is flawed because of “good enough”. Few broadcasters use it, and its coming out at a time when the low definition YouTube channel is the most successful one at the moment. In other words its not being used. It may look great, but its not being used.
However, would one second of 3d and one second of HD have the same bandwidth/spectrum cost? The HD broadcast protocols might just be useful yet.
I will admit that the idea hit me while watching the video below. Disney has its Disney Princesses line. Well what about those little girls and boys not interested in being kind and nice (and trust me, its a lot of people). Those girls will eventually grow out (mostly at least) of their princess stage. Boys grow out of their Power Ranger phase (says the guy still in his Transformers phase from childhood). Can we have the Disney Bad Girls.
Think about it. Some girls want more spice with their sugar.
Some RSS readers will not display the video. If you can’t see it, either click on the last link, of click through to the post.
Essentially a sub set of the Disney Villains grouping (rarely used as a group). Name-checking Queen Grimhilde (the Queen in Snow White), Anastasia Tremaine (the kinder of the Ugly Sisters from Cinderella in the video), Maleficent (the wicked fairy godmother in Sleeping Beauty), Ursula (the Sea Witch in The Little Mermaid), Cruella de Vil (from The Hundred and One Dalmatians) and Madame Medusa (from The Rescuers).
The main problem with the female villains in the Disney movies is that they are almost all fully grown women. Compare this to the young princesses or the fairies. Is it hard for little girls to cast themselves as fully grown? Probably not. Admittedly in the case of stepmothers (the Queen or Lady Tremaine) it makes sense, Cruella is a well known character, and Maleficent is a major character in the Disney parades. But small changes can be made, just as happened with the princesses.
A shape changing Ursula could look like the queen she is in a black gown (with 6 frills or pleats on the way down the black dress to hide the fact that she is actually an octopus). Come to think of it, octopi can change shape themselves, as does the character. The major change for the character would be to have her walking out of water. Madame Medusa could easily be changed (she isn’t that well known) but a more flattering dress and stockings is all that’s needed. As for the Ugly Sister, she is already the same age as Cinderella if not a bit younger.
I’m sure that most of the princess stock could be adapted to the colour scheme of the “bad girls”, and Grimhilde or Maleficent would be good halloween costumes. Imagine a Ursula duvet cover or bedspread available with matching tentacle beanbags. And given the span of time-lines available (medieval witch queens and other magic users (yes, young Miss Tremaine gets a wand at some point) jumping to the 1930s and 1960s) there are more options available.
Unlike the princesses (who never really seem to acknowledge each other) have the bad girls working together. Maybe in a modern setting. Yes its a little bit Fables, but being bad can be just as much fun in the now, as well as in the past.
“So what position did you play?” asked the good doctor.
“I’ve never played” I replied, and I could see a twinge of pity in his face.
I never went to a rugby school. I didn’t pay attention to the sport during college. The funny thing is that I only really got to appreciate rugby when I moved to Cork. When I moved to Munster.
And while there I got to see just how loved the team are. The streets filled with red rugby shirts on a match day (and yes I have one). The roar of the crowd. I’ve seen the furious passion of the fans when in a Limerick hotel, and the bride delays her reception so she and her family can watch the match in the hotel bar’s big screen. And due to the coincidence of sharing the same gym as the Cork Constitution team, I’ve even met chunk of the team (best described as loud).
I mention this because the Tuesday Push this time around is for MyMunster a social network for Munster Rugby supporters. There you to chat and share views with other Munster rugby supporters, view club photos and videos, get the latest news. Fans can buy credits to enter competitions for Munster goodies and match tickets – they also say that buying credits helps support rugby development in the province.
Not only be part of that army of fans, but support the team at the grass roots too.
The questions that crop up are, why have a niche social network like this when the all encompassing FaceBook could do something similar? Well, I think some things can start on facebook, but if you have a vary large following, it will support itself with the mass of the interest generated. Sign up and its only Munster without any vampires or sheep (but maybe a few trolls).
And Munster has an army of fans to raise it higher.
Enter lift off?
Will Knott
p.s. Puddleducks has embedded the video of the Haka performed by the New Zealand members of the Munster team during the Munster vs. All Blacks match in Thomond Park last November. Its worth watching (just remember Mowvember was still in play, it explains the moustaches)
“History of the Internet” is an animated documentary explaining the inventions from time-sharing to filesharing, from Arpanet to Internet.
The history is told using the PICOL icons on picol.org. PICOL is an project for providing free and open icons for electronic devices. The aim is to find a common pictorial language for electronic communication.
I keep an eye on the Tuesday Push. The aim of the Tuesday Push is to get the bloggers of Ireland, usually the business bloggers or the blog of a business, to promote an other Irish company.
Those getting a push need to be offering a unique product or service, and should be taking part in the push themselves. Think of it as co-operative support. Creating a business community, one where ideas can be shared and have ideas bounce off each other freely. Or in internet terms, a meme gone sensible. Of course making the Irish technology community an actual community isn’t easy, but this helps.
That said, the key word is unique. Another template tweaked, off the shelf package generated on-line store, not for the push. I think new thinking might count, but you may have to explain what makes it innovative.
If you’re an Irish technology company that’s offering something new and have a blog (or other means to promote yourself and others), contributing to the promotional effort and putting your name forward for a Push of your own is worthwhile (just take a look at the feedback of some of those that have had a push). Or just join in, as some day you may be in the position of needing a push. By pushing now, you’re helping others, and may help yourself.
Tomorrow I’m heading in to a Collision Course between PR and marketing people and bloggers. I have the odd feeling that this will be the first time that some people in the PR world meet a real live blogger. Now some people thing that this is going to be a fight. Personally I think its going to be a repetition of common sense.
The event is being organised by Damien Mulley, a blogger turning in to game maker. After all, he’s giving away his marketing advice. All of it sensible, none of it shocking. Except for the shock of the “new”. It’s not rocket sience, its people.
You do know how to talk to people, right?
Sometimes I wonder. I’m interested in listening to the PR and marketing folk (know your enemy and all that). I’ve learned that badly done cold pitching is frequently badly done. E-mailing out all the information with a “oh, this is embargoed” tag at the end. Blindly following the “tags” in the contact database, rather than making their own in a targeted area (blame the list makers if you will).
PR and marketing is changing. Social media (and I’ll include blogging in this pile) is about conversation. Two way communication. Think about a journalist forming contacts in particular areas. A go-to gal on tech issues. An agony uncle on relationship issues. Making contacts who can help. Thats where PR is heading. Its going to be hard work, but bloggers aren’t scary most bloggers aren’t scary.
To: complaints@rte.ie, Joe@RTE.ie
From: Will Knott
Dear Sir or Madam,
Recently things have changed in RTÉ, in particular, afternoons on RTÉ 2FM.
I used to listen to the “wittertainment” (wit combined with entertainment) of interesting conversation about music, musicians, movies and anything interesting from the news on your afternoon shows.
Since the new year, Nikki Hayes and Rick O’Shea seem to have been gagged. Gone are the insightful riffs on air and conversations with their audiences to be replaced with “that was a song off the play list, here is another song off the playlist“. If I want pure music I have an extensive collection of CDs on my shelves and online music streaming services at my fingertips. (The less said about mp3 files at this moment, the better).
In one stroke (probably of a pen) you have removed the added value of the presenters. At times I wonder if the show has been prerecorded. These are presenters who would appear on Radio One’s playback on a regular basis. If the editors in RTE thought they were worthy of a special mention, why shut them up?
Was Jerry Ryan complaining about the upstarts of talk in the afternoon? Did Joe Duffy fret about being upstaged by rivals on the “youth” channel? Did other presenters resent their repeated appearances in the highlighted clip show? Did the fact the aiding the public in ways over multiple channels of communication hinder a target number of plays somewhere (the kind of thing usually reserved for a payola scheme, I assume you can confirm that this is not the case). Is this a preparation routine to move them off to other projects?
So, could you answer why the afternoons have been turned in to a “all music, no talk (except for the adverts)” festival, exactly like your rivals and so eliminating the sole distinguishing feature between most of the commercial stations and your own 2FM?
Instead of “more music”, any chance of “more entertainment”?
take care,
Will Knott
The Tuesday Push for this week is LouderVoice who have just launched a range of business services. This means that you can “white label” your reviews. Or to put it another way, your site features reviews, by your customers, of your products or services, but you don’t have the hassle of creating a reviews platform along with everything else.
All the pain of creating a review system is taken off your hands. You get to define exactly where reviews appear on your site, who can review/comment and how all of that content appears. The effort involved in adding reviews to a site using this approach is very low.
Reviewing is easy, and you can do it by blog post, SMS text, Twitter, Jaiku and even logging in to LouderVoice (how quaint).
You also get a little review and link juice for your site if you want it.
More importantly, LouderVoice is open for more ideas to make things better for you.
Its not just me who thinks they are good, they’ve been short-listed for New Company of The Year by The Irish Software Association.
And if you look very carefully on the LouderVoice, you can see some reviews I’ve done in the past. I think I’ll have to start doing them again soon.
“Shareholder value has quickly become the best excuse for companies to stop thinking ahead and stick their heads into the sand. Shareholders must be complete idiots if their short term value is maximized to a level that it endangers the long term sustainability of the company. And yet we see this pattern recurring time after time.” — Alexander van Elsas on shareholder value and the current recession.
Image via Wikipedia
Alexander’s work is all about creating passion in a workforce and making people more creative, productive and (that dirty little business word) happy at work.
The above quote hightlights some illogical thought processes in a business. Short term profit making over long term survival and production of innovative products or services. Of course the easy way, in theory, to do this is have different groups peaking at different times, but the words “in theory” show that plans don’t always survive their first brush with reality.
Or have a group that will generate huge revenues in a longer term that a quarter, and ask for patience, but reward those patient ones.
Mainly because I’m not too sure what his business is. I know that it involves use of the radio spectrum (and that was because one of the judges needed an explanation. Its something to do with dynamic spectrum access systems, cognitive radio and networks (and either policy-based systems, or regulating the policy). he has tried explaining things, but I’m not going to copy and paste something without at least a basic understanding. But his blog and site should explain this to the radio hardware fans.
The main reason was I was busy trying to get a net connection working at the back of the room, when this surprise presentation arrived. I do know that his presentation was also testing out some equipment (and broadcasting the the Derg Inn across the road), but I didn’t get to play with it.
Anyway, i need to hurry up and hit send (while I have power and connections) and check out the floods.
take care,
Will
Update : Aug 2 2008
Keith Nolan from the Centre for Telecommunications Value-Chain Research in Dublin spoke about their software-defined radio platform that replaces many of the hardware elements of wireless communications systems with software.
Software-defined radio involves taking the components of a wireless communications system that have typically been implemented in hardware and are instead implemented using software on a laptop, desktop PC, or other embedded processor device.
This approach was originally initiated by the US military who wanted to create a single radio device that combined the functionality of over 10 different military radios in one device and could operate over all frequency bands (e.g. from shortwave to radar frequencies).
Instead of taking the hardware from each radio (e.g. walkie-talkie, satellite radio, naval radios, cockpit communicators, etc) and creating one enormous all-hardware device, the idea was to use a single common piece of hardware and switch between the different radio standards in software that simply operated using a processor inside the device.
This reduces the size and power consumption of the device. As new wireless standards emerge, they can be easily added to the radio by simply involves updating the software.
This approach now applies to a huge range of consumer devices from mobile phones, wireless broadband, to mobile content-streaming services. A software-defined radio approach reduces development and testing time, development costs, slashes the time to market, and adds value to new products.
Keith described how he and his team have developed a software-defined radio system that allows people to implement many different types of radio standards in software using a single piece of hardware. This system called Implementing Radio in Software (IRIS) also enables developers to create new innovative wireless and wireline standards to cope with the increasing pressure on the airwaves and use them more efficiently, and to help get new products out into the marketplace as quickly as possible.
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