Last September, Youtube launched a beta feature which allows users to convert their videos into 3D through a single click. Since the company claim that hundreds of thousands of videos have been converted into 3D since then and today, they’re expanding the beta to the general public so that anyone can convert their videos into 3D. However, the only catch is that they must be short-form videos (anything under three minutes) and they must be uploaded in 1080p.
Announcing it on the Youtube blog, once those criteria are met, users can select 3D viewing in the Quality settings below (the gear icon) on the Youtube player. After that, just pop on your 3D glasses (assuming you have ones handy) and see Nyan cat and other hits in a new light. Here’s one of the examples Youtube provided on its blog.
Basically how it works is that the video conversion technology used to convert from 2D to 3D notices the different video characteristics used such as colour, spatial layout and motion to estimate a depth map for each frame of a video sequence.
Also through machine learning, they can figure out video depth characteristics and apply them in depth estimation from the number of true 3D videos uploaded onto the site. Ultimately, the generated depth map and the original monoscopic frame creates a stereo 3D left-right pair, that a stereo display system needs to display a video as 3D.
After acquiring this knowledge of 3D conversion, they then apply cloud computing scalability to make the conversion possible across the different videos on Youtube. They achieve this by breaking up the video into tiny chunks of data and processing them in parallel on Google’s cloud infrastructure lets them process these videos.
While it’s not going to set the world alight, (seriously how many people have 3D glasses handy when they’re using a computer), it’s a pretty cool feature and we could see different brands using it for future campaigns. The first campaign that comes to mind is the Skittles Touch campaign which requires you to place your finger on the screen. What other video campaigns could benefit from this feature?
We keep hearing about how each browser, with their latest updates and newer versions, delivers the fastest experience yet or performs better than their competitors. However, if everyone is claiming this, then it obviously means that they all can’t be right, but which ones are worth considering?
New Relic, a company that specialises in cloud application performance management, ran a study focusing on browser speed and performance for the most popular desktop and mobile browsers. Focusing on speed and usage for Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Windows Internet Explorer (IE) and Apple Safari, they analysed data from its Real User Monitoring feature which monitors over 5 billion page views a week.
Their findings may surprise some people, the global average for page load speed is 5.5 seconds, which was only a slight improvement of last year’s average of 6 seconds suggesting that while wireless speeds have improved over time, the majority of browsers used aren’t able to keep up with this
When it came to browser speed on Windows and Mac, IE9 surpassed Chrome for speed on Windows platforms, loading web pages in under 3 seconds. For Mac users, Chrome 13 offers the fastest overall browsing experience loading web pages in just 2.4 seconds.
With they analysed the popularity of browser on Windows, IE was still the most popular choice at 40 per cent due to its status as the default browser. However Chrome is catching up with 33 per cent of the market share while Firefox holds 24 per cent.For Mac users the market share is even more lopsided with Safari having an overwhelming majority of 59 per cent. The two closest competitors Firefox and Chrome only have 21 per cent and 19 per cent respectively. The news will be encouraging for IE whose campaign ‘The browser you loved to hate‘ is spearheading the release of its new browser IE9, which has been receiving positive reviews and comments.
When analysing mobile browsing speeds, the fastest experience was found when using Blackberry Opera Mini at 2.6 seconds, this was twice as fast as its closest competitor, Safari 5.1 on iPad which took 5 seconds to load a page.
The data for the study was compiled on March 22nd 2012 between the hours of 12pm and 3pm PT, where an average of 694,000 page views per minute was monitored.
After a lot of rumours and numerous Terminator references later, Google’s Project Glasses team has released concept images and a video on their Google+ page showing what people could expect when the eyewear is released to the market.
Google, who are working on other projects such as self-driving cars and Google TV, are still testing the glasses, which have been under development for the past two years.
The video is shot from the perspective of one person wearing the digital glasses. Making his way around New York City, the wearer sends messages, takes photos, get directions and making a video call, all activated via the user’s voice.
On its project page, Project Glass said: “We’re sharing this information now because we want to start a conversation and learn from your valuable input. So we took a few design photos to show what this technology could look like and created a video to demonstrate what it might enable you to do.”
Reuters report that the glasses will be tested in public by members of the Google team and that while there isn’t a release date for the glasses, Google’s philosophy is to develop technologies that can be used in a relatively short period of time, instead of dreaming up creations that won’t be possible for ten or more years.
That hasn’t stopped others from parodying the glasses, one has already gone up from a person named Tom Scott, which shows the potential pitfalls of Google’s project.
And while not a direct parody of Google Glasses, this video, created by Keiichi Matusuda two years ago, takes a satirical look at how augmented reality could end up affecting everything we do.
For a device that was originally created to challenge the Wii, Microsoft’s Kinect is getting a lot of love from developers and is inspiring them to bring gesture controls both to Kinect and other devices. The latest example is from a start up called Bot Square who have released an Mac app called Flutter. The app allows users to control both iTunes and Spotify using only simple hand gestures.
Bot Square say that Flutter was developed because they “hated using the keyboard and mouse for controlling music in the background or watching movies on [their] computers from a few feet away.” So the idea was born and let’s face it, the ability to control any music or videos without having to go near your computer is certainly an appealing one.
The app is still in alpha build so the list of commands that you can gesture are limited, yet more improvements and gestures will be added in due course. Flutter is currently available to download for free on their site.
Google Maps already has a feature which shows you exactly how good/bad traffic is in a particular area, but now they’ve added a new feature which highlights just how long it will take you to reach your destination by factoring in both live and historical traffic data.
Accessing it is just a matter of bringing up the directions feature on Google Maps, this time when you enter in your locations, alongside the estimated time it takes to travel from point A to B, there will be an estimate underneath it that factors in current traffic conditions. The information offered is regularly updated so that you can adjust your travel plans in due course.
The idea is that through this feature, you can estimate how long it will take to travel using different modes of transport and find the quickest method. So comparing driving to public transport or cycling may show that the latter option is the fastest if faced with current traffic conditions.
Google say that it’s available in specific areas for now, mainly in U.S. cities, but like all Google products, it’s only a matter of time before the service is expanded to other countries.
After originally announcing their self-driving car project in 2010 and doing numerous tests and experiments since then, Google has made real progress in making the project a reality. With more than 200,000 miles of computer-led driving completed since then, the company has shared a preview video highlighting their progress so far through a test journey.
The video features a blind man named Steve Mahan who, through a pre-programmed route, is driven to a fast food outlet and to the dry cleaners before being dropped back home. While the car is carefully programmed to drive in a specific route, the cameras and sensors fitted into the car makes sure that it avoids any obstacles and doesn’t get into any unfortunate collisions.
While there’s clearly a lot of work to be done before such cars are made commercial – the lack of traffic in this video highlights that coping with the unpredictable nature that is human drivers is still beyond its capabilities – they’re fascinating experiments to watch and shows how far the technology has come.
While they won’t be available for a while, certain organisations are warming to the idea. For example, Nevada became the first U.S. state to allow the use of self-driving vehicles on its roadways after approving it back in February. Test vehicles will display a red license plate, and when the technology is approved for public use, these cars will carry a green license plate.
We’ve seen tons of these sorts of stunts where the lights are projected onto buildings, but this is the first time we have ever seen anything projected onto a human in this way and it’s pretty hard to get your head around.
The only worry we do have is that the poor guy appearing in the video must be getting the eyes burnt out of him with all those high powered lights focusing in on him! The campaign is for ‘Explore Your Dual World’ which ties in with one of their new phones. Make sure you watch the bit where the eyes and glasses start swiveling in real time and prepare to ask yourself: “How on earth are they doing that?”
We’re fans of silly experiments that bring social media into the real world, especially if they involve gadgets. We’ve seen a belt that lets you like something on Facebook by thrusting your hips in its direction, a tiny printer that prints all your smartphone subscriptions as a mini newspaper, and now two Dutch students have decided to bring poking into the real world.
Jasper van Loenen and Bartholomäus Traubeck created the Poking Machine, a wearable device that physically pokes you whenever you’re poked on Facebook. The device connects to an Android phone via Bluetooth, and keeps track of any incoming pokes. The custom built circuit is housed in a laser-cut box that you can wear on your arm.
The website elaborates by saying: “Online social networks are platforms for communication, enabling us to connect anywhere we go. However, they still lack the mediation of physical communication…The Poking machine converts the message into an actual physical poke, extending the reach of this haptic gesture indefinitely. This way users can connect not only virtually but also physically.”
It’s silly, but the concept of poking on Facebook was silly to begin with so it only adds to the fun. On a more serious note, it’s useful in finding out different ways to connect the virtual world to the real world, and provide interaction that Twitter and Facebook can’t bring. Alternatively you could just walk up to one of your friends and poke them, but where’s the fun in that?
Very rarely will you ever come across a graph, map or anything related to technology that will look as stunning as this. Aaron Parecki, co-founder of Geologqi, a platform for real-time location, messaging and analytics, decided to illustrate all the data that he logged in through Geoloqui over the course of three and a half years. Once he had all the data gathered, it was run through a custom script that project the GPS logs onto a 2D map.
According to Parecki, approximately one GPS point was recorded every 2-6 seconds when he was moving, and the images represent about 2.5 million total GPS points. As he says himself:
“Collectively, they represent a data portrait of my life: everywhere I’ve been and the places I’ve been most frequently. The map is coloured by year, so you can see how my footprint changes over the years, depending on where I live…To get data at this resolution, I had to bring back-up batteries with me and charge my phone whenever I could. I would manually turn the tracker on when I moved, and turn if off when I was at an indoor location for a long period of time. To get this level of accuracy results in a great deal of battery drain.”
It’s fascinating (and perhaps a little unsettling) to see just how well our movements can be tracked and over such a long period of time. It also helps that the graphs are nice to look at, almost looking like a piece of art instead of a large amount of data represented visually. You can see the rest of Parecki’s graphs and visualisations on his Flickr page.
With all the different services such Google has, switching back and forward between the Android Market, their music service or their ebook was something that the company felt was too unfocused for them to successfully market their products.
With that, Google has combined these services and placed them under the one umbrella with their new service ‘Google Play‘. Describing it as a “digital entertainment destination” on their blog, the service combines the company’s 450,000 apps for its Android device, 20,000 songs, their range of ebook and their movie service and places them in the one spot for you to find. From today, all links to the Android Market, Google Music and their eBook service will automatically redirect to Google Play.
The full service is currently available in the U.S. who have access to music, movies, books and apps. For other countries, Canada and the U.K. have access to movies, books and apps, Australia have access to books and apps and the rest of the world only has access to apps for the Android store.
The service is entirely cloud-based so any music, movies, books and apps you own are stored online so you can recover them once you log in with your Google account. to promote the launch, Google are offering a different album, book, video rental and Android app at a special price each day for the next week in their ’7 Days Of Play’ sale.
It’s an obvious move to make but the reason it’s such a good one is that it taps into Google’s most popular market, the Android App Store, and exposes them to their other services. While downloading a game or app, they may feel inclined to try out the movie service or download songs from their collection by letting them shop in the same space.
Of course this is all relevant to the number of Android users out there, but considering that they currently have the biggest share in the smartphone market, Google may be onto something once they begin adding extra content and services like they’ve promised.
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Last September, Youtube launched a beta feature which allows users to convert their videos into 3D through a single click. Since the company claim that hundreds of thousands of videos have been converted into 3D since then and today, they’re expanding the beta to the general public so that anyone can convert their videos into 3D. However, the only catch is that they must be short-form videos (anything under three minutes) and they must be uploaded in 1080p.
