I love the art design created by this designer for the movie Tron 2:
January 24, 2011
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 7, 2010
80/20 rule of link sharing
According to CNN’s research 27% of us share 87% of news links.
The most influential news-sharers, and the group which shared 87% of the stories in the survey, only accounted for 27% of all the users - tallying with previous definitions of a minority of highly active web web users that contribute a majority of content online.
The big social networks - Facebook Twitter, YouTube and MySpace, accounted for 43% of all links shared, email 30%, SMS 15% and instant messenger 12%.
September 28, 2010
AOL Buys Techcrunch
Tim Armstrong (AOL CEO) and Heather Harde (CEO TC) and Mike Arrington (TC founder) signed the deal on stage at TC Disrupt. Terms were not disclosed. Mike says he can see staying with AOL for at least 3 years. Congrats TC!
September 21, 2010
Six Apart Acquired by VideoEgg
If you are an early blogger, you know Six Apart well. They are one of the early pioneers of blogging software with their Movaeble Type and Typepad products. Today they are acquired by VideoEgg, started as a YouTube wannabe, but later pivoted to become an ad network. As GigaOm aptly puts it, it is the end of an era (somewhat like Netscape being acquired by AOL, but at a much smaller scale).
After denying rumors of a deal over the past several weeks, blogging platform Six Apart and advertising network VideoEgg have confirmed they are merging to create a new social-media company called SAY Media. Chris Alden, CEO of SixApart, is stepping down, and VideoEgg CEO Matt Sanchez will become the CEO of the combined company once the deal closes in several months. Although the two companies say Six Apart’s existing Moveable Type and Typepad businesses will continue, the deal effectively means the end of the company — one of the early pioneers of the blogging world — as a standalone entity.
For some early blogging fans, watching Six Apart get more or less absorbed by an advertising network is likely to be a painful sight. The company, led by husband-and-wife team Ben and Mena Trott, was one of the pioneers of blogging almost a decade ago (the name came from the six-day difference in age between the two founders). Along with Blogger, which was founded by Twitter CEO Ev Williams and later sold to Google, the two software platforms from Six Apart — Moveable Type and Typepad — were used by hundreds of thousands of early bloggers.
Perhaps it’s true that in a day when Huffington Post and other digital-media giants rule the web, blogging has to grow up. But for some, this deal is going to look like the end of an era.
So long Six Apart.
September 11, 2010
August 31, 2010
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.