Perceptive Pixel is a new startup founded by Jeff Han, the creater of the Multi Touch technology, acquired by Apple in June 2006 with the purchase of Finger works.
There were rumors that Apple had tried, unsuccessfully, to hire Jeff at one point to work on the launch of the iPhone, but Jeff had other ideas, and states that Perceptive Pixel, Jeff´s new vehicle is about to change the face of computing.
iPhone
"Multi touch uses a technique called Frustrated Total Internal Reflection (FTIR) to accomplish the tasks shown. It involves the use of a transparent screen with the images rear-projected onto it. For touch-sensing, a camera is placed behind the screen to detect the user interaction"
And Jeff made his feelings clear on the iPhone commenting to a NY times journalist.
"The iPhone is absolutely gorgeous, and I've always said, if there ever were a company to bring this kind of technology to the consumer market, it's Apple. I just wish it were a bit bigger so I could really use both of my hands."
Watch this incredible video to see Jeff Han and Phil Davidson showing how a multi-touch computer screen will change the way we work (and play).
The future looks bright for multi touch technology; whilst it creating an understandable level of WOW factor during its release in March 2006, its only starts to seem truely revolutionary and a ground breaking moment in global communications when you think of it in the context of Apple.
Apple are about to pump this technology, or something similar, to the millions - worldwide and that just has to be a good thing.
Further reading:
Multi touch screen
iPhone
Jazz mutant
Saturday, February 10, 2007
iPhone will use Multi touch technology
Friday, February 9, 2007
Beta token entry - A Plugin for Joost
Dieter Huelskamp;- Due to my master thesis I would recommend a plugin for geo-navigation, then you just pick a place from the globe to get latest news from any interesting place on this world.
I think most interesting for Joost will be, how much interesting content will be available, not wheather I can chat whilst having tv in the background etc.
Hopefully Joost will make watching WebTV easier then using democracy + rare media rss feed offer in the web.
Wednesday, February 7, 2007
Beta token entry - A Plugin for Joost
Well I have not used Joost, so I do not have an idea of the available plug-in. But I am trying to be on a position of a user and I like to have the following plug-in:
1)The most important an Outlook plug-in to see new emails and next appointments. (I am going to see TV in the 5 minutes between appointments or in the meantime of an Email answer)
2) A weather plug-in customizable. (It’s important to know the weather in your area to decide to stay or leave somewhere else)
3)A dictionary translator (sometimes watching a movie you need to know what something means)
4)As the previous comment, an small area to watch another channel so you can switch between them (imagine commercials or boring sections of a film). Well I hope to have won a token..... Thanks JJ
Beta token entry - A plugin idea for Joost
What I'd like to see is a multi-tuner sort of feature, that would let me watch a movie and keep an eye on the game. I could see it as picture in picture system or a split screen system.
Tuesday, February 6, 2007
Joost Beta 0.7.4 released including dual monitor support
Dirk-Willem van Gulik of Joost support announced that version 0.7.4 of the Windows client has been uploaded.
Joost has incorporated a lot of customer feedback into this version - from better coping with certain local configurations, firewalls and virus scanners, fixed crashes, added
locale support - all the way to user interface tweaks such as better fonts.
They have also improved upon the small window behavior, improved the tooltips, and
added channel numbers in the EPG (Electronic Program Guide) that are selectable from the keyboard.
Airbag support is now included in the client which will create a minidump
file in the minidump directory within the profile directory if the client program crashes.
Dual monitor support has been added and the window can be dragged from screen to screen or to overlap screens. Dirk commented.
"We're far from done - the zero in 0.7.4 still signals a beta - so any and
all suggestions are very welcome"
Beta token entry - A Plugin for Joost
If it is possible, a streaming (even at very low resolution) of a different channel would be great! In this way we will be able to check if something interesting is happening on another channel and swich only when it is necessary. I could be useful especially for sport events.
I want a token!!! ;-) Paolo
If you think Paolo´s Plugin is a good idea leave a comment for him on this post -
Monday, February 5, 2007
Want to watch Joost TV? 6 Beta tokens to give away
I was chatting on Skype with Matt at Joost this morning and he told me that they are really focusing on plugins.
What are plugins? I hear you ask and its a fair question, particularly if you've not seen Joost in action yet.
Put simply, plugins are widgets that load onto your Joost screen and kinda hang there, semi transparent, its hard to describe, but they look great and they work.
The Joost beta version that I'm running includes a clock, feed reader, instant messaging - Jabber and Google Talk, rating plugin, notice board, and channel chat.
an example of the chat plugin on Joost6 Joost Beta tokens to give away this week and I will award them to the best comments left on this post.
Enter today and you could be watching Joost this weekend - simply leave a comment on this post and if it makes the grade Ill publish it and let Jooster readers vote on your plugin idea.
IPTV a brief overview of the market
IPTV is creating "buzz" in the blogsphere with the recent entry of Joost and a war chest of billions; the fight for media dominance has never looked more uncertain.
Cheap bandwith, web 2.0 and the power of social networking has really made an impact, but with things changing so fast its hard to keep up. I hope this article lightens a few corners.
Duncan Barnes BSc (Hons) Broadcast Technology and currently a freelance technical director for Sky Plc, summarizes the changes that have taken place in the IPTV market during the last year.
- Peer to Peer in general; When I wrote my dissertation figures were put P2P as responsible for 60% of global internet traffic by Cachelogic, unfortunately the research notes citing this which were freely available at the time are no longer so and as statistics on this differ it would be difficult to reference here a comparable current figure. I think it would be accurate to say that it has increased significantly and that Andrew Parker’s (Cachelogic CTO) point still holds true that “P2P is driving consumer broadband uptake…and broadband is driving P2P uptake”. When I originally wrote the text media companies were starting to explore P2P as a delivery medium, the BBC and others mentioned below have indeed started to make significant moves in this area which will push its impact in the legal arena although despite the best efforts of the MPAA and others, the piratebay and other torrent search engines appear to be catering for an ever increasing user base.
- BBC iPlayer; The BBC iPlayer which at the time was in a limited user test period with little information besides screenshots and projections of what the service could offer has now moved into a public consultation phase but in my view its appeal and potential impact has been damaged significantly by the proposed limits passed on in recent findings by the industry regulator Ofcom. Ashley Highfield (BBC Director of New Media and Technology) said in 2005 that “when switch-over begins, I want internet television to be a viable alternative to satellite, Freeview and cable”. This it still has the potential to be but if the programs capacity is limited ‘in the public interest’ then it may not be so promising.
- Apple TV; Now this is probably going to be quite popular to say the least among the mac community, Apple’s success with the iTunes business model is likely to work the same way with the video world as it has with the music world when Apple TV launches. Naturally its Quicktime based, will have DRM etc and as with the current iTunes/iPod business model offers a fantastic vendor lock-in solution where the system works perfectly if you have entirely Apple hardware but requires iTunes to work with Apple TV and is probably not going to work with anything else!
- Sky Anytime; When I wrote a year ago there was very little information available about what this was going to be and Sky declined to comment when I enquired, saying that they were ’still developing an offering’. A year down the line and Sky Anytime is looking to be quite a good service, via PC, Phone or Television offering a wide range of content from the Sky channel line-up including shows such as Lost and 24 as well as films and sports.
- 4od; The Channel 4 on demand service allows you to download a wide selection of content both for rental and to keep although as can be expected with all the more well known companies there is the expected dose of DRM in there so you can’t take the content onto your laptop from a desktop to watch on the train or onto a portable player like the video iPod or the Creative Vision W
. - TIOTI; Tape it Off the Internet was at the beginning of last year just a subject of blog posts with little real information known, the service has now opened up in beta although I must say I was unfortunately disappointed with a service which didn’t help me find content and instead got in my way and added another link in the chain. I’ve mentioned this before so I won’t delve into it too much again but I do believe it would have worked much better as a desktop client including a media player such as VLC and a bittorrent client alongside its social offerings.
- Joost(The venice Project); Last year Joost didn’t exist at the time of writing, in the last year this has grown from a simple and quite nondescript website into Joost beta which markets itself as ‘infinite choice, and TV that is truly interactive. TV anywhere, anytime…’. While the interactive side appears to be limited, the brainchild of the people behind both Kazaa and Skype seems to be heading off to a good start and when it launches (?) should hopefully flourish as an online provider. To be honest I prefer the idea of a company who is not already a media giant (BBC, Sky etc) ruling the roost for IPTV offerings and hope it goes this way. Time will tell but Joost seems to be one to watch in both senses of the word! Wired magazine have a good if a little lengthy article on this but it has some informative diagrams as well.
- Youtube is so widely discussed and such a figurehead of online video that there is not much point in mentioning its continued growth over the last year as well as Google’s expensive aquisition of it, suffice to say it has been a significant mover!
- Sopcast and Rawflow; The main difference between the two of these is that Sopcast is currently a free offering where as Rawflow is pushing itself more at larger broadcasters/content providers. Both services use P2P for transmission and support live content although I haven’t had the opportunity to experience this yet. Rawflow supports Windows Media, Real Player, Shoutcast and AAC based streaming media and the DRM capabilities of these formats. As the Sopcast system employs a similar approach although information is limited it would seem it offers the same potential.
Joost content programmer competition winners
I just want to say thank you to everyone that entered the Jooster content programming competition, the winners have been announced and the beta tokens sent - so there should have been some very happy Jooster´s this weekend.
Michael Bohnstedt
Michael Staal Olsen
Kenny Collins
Chen Jin Xing
I was speaking with Joost this morning and we are working on a new Beta token giveaway for this week, stay tuned to the Jooster to find out how you can win a Beta token.
