Posts Tagged ‘Avatar’
Week in review: Did Amazon just kill the Nook?
Here’s our roundup of the week’s tech business news. First, the most popular stories VentureBeat published in the last seven days:
— Amazon announced that it will be introducing a 14-day lending feature for Kindle ebooks later this year. The move brings the Kindle up to date with Barnes and Noble’s rival Nook e-reader, which has touted 14-day book lending as a key feature.
— Adelson said Monday that he doesn’t regret not accepting offers to sell Digg to large media companies before the site began a decline that led to 37 percent layoffs this week.
— Buying Android Inc., the wireless-software startup founded by Andy Rubin, was Google’s “best deal ever,” said David Lawee, vice president of corporate development at the search giant.
— In Dropbox’s early days, the company did all the things that startups are “supposed” to do, like buying ads on Google’s search results through AdWords and hiring a public relations firm, according to chief executive Drew Houston. And the results were “horrific”.
— Apple may be holding back its promised white iPhone 4 in order to avoid a scandal surrounding the phone’s camera.
And here are five more articles we think are important, thought-provoking, fun, or all of the above:
— The electricity grid needs to change. We look at how those changes are going to happen.
— Why can’t Nokia sell phones to Americans? VentureBeat’s Devindra Hardawar says it’s because of phones like the N8.
— In a conversation with Google chief executive Eric Schmidt, film director James Cameron urged technology-minded people to become better stewards of the planet. That was a fundamental message of Cameron’s blockbuster film Avatar, and it’s also the advice he has for people who have their heads down building cool technology in Silicon Valley.
— For the past century, buying electricity from your utility has been about the same. Finally, that’s changing.
— Well-connected early-stage investor Christine Herron is leaving seed-stage venture-capital firm First Round Capital to join Intel Capital, the chipmaker’s corporate venture arm. Does Herron’s jump show that corporate venture-capital funds are no longer waiting on the sidelines when it comes to seed funding? In Herron’s own opinion: Yes.
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James Cameron Heads For Mariana Trench to Film Avatar Sequel and Capture X Prize Simultaneously
The first reported the story, saying the sub would be made of composite materials and powered by electric motors. It would have to survive the immense pressures experienced at seven miles below the surface of the ocean, where Cameron hopes to shoot 3-D footage to incorporate into the second Avatar film.
The sub would be designed to explore the Challenger Deep, a 35,994-foot deep depression in the southern end of the Mariana Trench. It’s the deepest known spot in the oceans and has only been explored three times — but since the first daring 1960 attempt in the Trieste, no one has tried a manned descent.
Attempting such a feat would hardly be a first for the director, who has waded into deep waters several times on behalf of his films, including “Titanic” and “Aliens of the Deep.” The “Avatar” sequel will reportedly be set in the fictional oceans of Pandora.
Later this year, the X Prize Foundation is expected to formally announce a to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Trieste's dive. The winnings will go to the first privately funded sub to make two repeat manned descents to Challenger Deep.
Not content to earn more money than anyone in the history of moving pictures, apparently wants an X Prize, too.
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New Camera Captures 3-D Video Through Single Lens, Using Novel Laser Sensor Tech
And that's not all: The camera's sensor also records the smallest pixel currently in the field, a mere ten millionths of a meter (roughly one tenth the size of a human hair). Add it all up, and it's one pretty sweet piece of machinery, with the ability to capture not only the highest quality of detail in images, but to produce a depth of vision you can only get by adding the third dimension.
The camera employs a sophisticated range-finding technique to add depth to its frames, bathing its subjects in ultra-short laser light pulses (ultra-short being just a few billionths of a second) that bounce off the subjects much like radar. A complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) micro-sensor picks up the laser bursts as they return to the camera, measuring each pixel's distance from the camera. From that data, the camera can place each pixel in space, adding a third dimension to its vision.
While the obvious film-making implications of such a device conjure James-Cameron-esque fantasies, the applications are far wider. The researchers envision the camera sensor assisting the elderly and disabled, its reliable eye for spatial arrangements keeping watch for dangerous situations that could cause falls or other accidents. Security cameras fitted with such a sensor could be greatly improved with a third dimension enhancing their ability to follow a subject in a crowd. The same tech could aid smarter guidance systems that could give turn by turn instructions to a person as they navigate the corridors of unfamiliar buildings.
We're more interested in video games. A 3-D camera could not only "see" a player moving in 3-D, but could add a third axis of sophistication to those movements by "seeing" when a player moves forward or backward in space. This kind of technology could lead to a true peripheral-free era of gaming where players need nothing more than their consoles and their own bodily movements to achieve a seriously sophisticated gaming experience.
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James Cameron Sending 3-D Cameras to Mars with Next NASA Rover
New zoom mast cameras could allow the Curiosity rover to take cinematic video sequences in 3-D
Cameron approached NASA administrator Charles Bolden about including the 3-D camera in January, according to the . NASA had originally cut the 3-D camera and zoom lens options back in 2007, for budgetary reasons.
But Cameron's argument that a high-res 3-D camera would boost public interest swayed Bolden to his side. The U.S. space agency recently funded completion of the 3-D and zoom-capable cameras by Malin Space Science Systems, Inc, the company which developed the Mastcams.
Restoring the zoom is not a science issue, although there will be some science benefits," said Michael Malin, principal investigator for the Mastcam. "The fixed focal length Mastcams we just delivered will do almost all of the science we originally proposed. But they cannot provide a wide field of view with comparable eye stereo."
That has led to a scramble to build and test the zoom lens cameras before the MSL rover commences final testing in early 2011. The two Mastcams under development would have 15:1 zoom lenses which can image from telephoto (100mm focal length) down to wide-angle (6.5mm focal length).
The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover is slated to carry four science cameras mounted on a remote sensing mast, where they can pan or tilt to take images all around the rover out to the horizon. All of the cameras currently have fixed focal lengths.
By contrast, the zoom lenses would allow for "cinematic video sequences in 3-D on the surface of Mars," Malin noted. Given our of Hubble 3D, it's safe to say that we're crossing our fingers for Cameron to get his in time for blastoff to Mars.
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