January 26, 2011
January 24, 2011
Tron Designer Interview
I love the art design created by this designer for the movie Tron 2:
January 17, 2011
History of Jazz - iPad App/Book
I Love the beautiful design of this iPad page less book:
January 11, 2011
Filmmaking on iPhone
A famous Korean movie director shot a 30 min movie entirely on an iPhone 4.
Park Chan-wook, one of South Korea’s best directors, gets lots of attention when he introduces a new movie. About 100 reporters showed up Monday morning for a screening of his latest work, a 30-minute short called “Paranmanjang,” which is Korean for “Ups and Downs.”
Some were there because of the way Mr. Park made the movie: shooting it entirely on the latest version of Apple Inc.’s iPhone.
“From hunting for a film location, shooting auditions, to doing a documentary on the filming process, everything was shot with the iPhone 4,” Mr. Park said after the screening. “We went through all the same film-making processes except that the camera was small.”
For the short, he teamed up with his younger brother Park Chan-kyong, a media artist, and KT Corp., the wireless operator that is the exclusive distributor of iPhone in South Korea. KT paid for a portion of the $130,000 in production costs.
Pyo Hyun-myung, president of KT’s mobile business group, called the movie “the product of the state-of-the-art technology meets art.” The company has sold 1.84 million units of iPhone since it became available in the market in November 2009.
The short is a fantastical tale that begins with a middle-aged man fishing one afternoon and then, hours later at night, catches the body of a woman. The panicked man tries to undo the intertwined fishing line, but he gets more and more entangled. He faints, then wakes up to find himself in the white clothes that the woman was wearing. The movie’s point of view then shifts to the woman and it becomes a tale of life and death from a traditional Korean point of view.
The quality of the cinematography is quite good, except for a little shakiness in the beginning. And the fact that the screen is coarse works to the film’s advantage, especially on the night scenes given its life-and-death theme.
KT began promoting the movie in October with an ad that was also shot with the smartphone. In the ad, Mr. Park asks himself, “Is there anything I can do that greatest directors haven’t done yet?” After stroking his chin, he exclaims, “Ah! Making a film with the iPhone!”
November 14, 2010
Future of Interactive Entertainment?
Here is a cool demo of Xbox 360 Natal. Computer interfaces are the new frontier of innovation in computing.
October 26, 2010
Zynga overtakes EA in market value
Social gaming is the future of gaming. Evidence? Zynga surpasses EA in market value.
Oct. 26 (Bloomberg) — Zynga Game Network Inc.’s estimated worth surpassed Electronic Arts Inc.’s stock-market value, a sign of the ascendance of social-networking entertainment at the expense of traditional video games.
Zynga, the maker of such games as “FarmVille” and “FrontierVille,” is valued at $5.51 billion, according to SharesPost Inc., an exchange for shares of privately held companies. Electronic Arts, the second-largest game publisher by sales, is worth $5.16 billion on the Nasdaq Stock Market.
“The valuation is not that crazy, given what’s going on in the market,” said Atul Bagga, an analyst at ThinkEquity LLC in San Francisco, who estimates the virtual goods market may reach $3.6 billion in three years. “It’s not that terribly expensive seeing the growth prospects.”
Electronic Arts, meanwhile, faces declining retail sales of gaming hardware and software. More consumers would rather play games within their social networks, rather than heading to a store to buy a shrink-wrapped program. That’s forced Electronic Arts to cut jobs and seek acquisitions for growth. Before today, its shares had dropped 7.4 percent since March 1. Zynga’s estimated value has more than doubled in that timeframe.
This is a bit of apples and oranges comparison. As Zynga is not yet a public company, so its value is derived from its share price in private markets.
This is bit reminiscent of dot com days, so we need to be cautious but the trend is pretty clear. Unlike dot com companies social gaming is making real of money. Lots of it and growing very fast.
Social gaming is going mobile, so we are still in early days. There will be other huge players in this market.
October 3, 2010
Quora
I love the idea behind Quora. It is a web service that is trying to capture and codify all the knowledge in people’s heads.
It is the first killer app I have seen working for semantic web.
August 31, 2010
Presidential Rap
This is a must watch.. Lin-manuel Miranda performs in front of the Prez.
Netflix and Hulu
I love Netflix. I have been a happy subscriber of the service for a long time. I am very impressed with their execution. Their streaming experience is pretty good and the selection has been steadily increasing. We stream Netflix movies directly on our TV using Wii. I really like their new app for iphone and ipod touch. They are profitable, growing nicely and generally kicking ass.
I also like Hulu. They offer a useful service and nice viewing experience. But their selection can be a lot better. They are struggling to find a sustainable business model. They are owned by major networks, and in spite (no, ironically, because) of that they seem to have major restrictions on what they can carry and how and where they can be played. Networks are worried about Hulu cannibalizing their revenues and therefore suffocating it.
How come Netflix seem to negotiate these tricky licensing deals much better than Hulu? It’s called Leverage. Netflix is making boat loads of money while Hulu doesn’t. That makes all the difference in the tale of these two companies.
August 30, 2010
Google Buys SocialDeck
InsideSocialGaming reports that Google acquires mobile social game developer SocialDeck.
In its latest social acquisition, Google has bought mobile game developer SocialDeck, according to a letter posted by the company.
SocialDeck’s games were downloaded about a million times in 2009. Its games include Shake & Spell, Color Connect and Pet Hero.
What makes this acquisition a bit more interesting is that SocialDeck has significant cross-platform experience. A non-game product it offers, called Spark, provides social integration across Blackberry, the iPhone and Facebook, while Shake & Spell also works on all three of those platforms.
Google’s gaming interest is obviously with Android. But it’s also reportedly working on a social platform to rival Facebook; Google’s technology plans could be advanced by SocialDeck’s experience in extending the social experience across multiple devices.
Buying SocialDeck also seems to fit in with Google’s broader plans, which we wrote about following its acquisition of Slide. With Slide, Google is likely working on a broad, viral platform for both the web and its own mobile devices.
The effort is being headed up by Slide founder Max Levchin, as we reported last week; it’s possible he had a hand in buying SocialDeck, although the timing may have been too close.
There’s no word yet on how much Google paid for SocialDeck. The company is based on Ontario, Canada.