They have developed Ostar, an LED bulb that despite its 1 square millimeter size can put out 1,000 lumens of angelic light. Siemens explains the significance:
A 60-watt light bulb emits 730 lm, while a 50-watt halogen lamp has an output of approximately 900 lm
So LEDs are bright enough to light our houses and last 10 times longer than even halogen technology. We’re ready to upgrade.
If only we had a price or release date.
Okay, this is the last of me getting my geek on. Today.
•March 19, 2007 • 7 CommentsDavid Byrne’s comments on “Digital Rights Management”
•March 19, 2007 • 8 Comments(for those of you who don’t know, DRM is what keeps you from buying a song with itunes and then making a digital copy, for whatever reason)
David Byrne: Labels Should Ditch DRM, Accept Music Sales as a Loss Leader
David Byrne, former lead singer of the Talking Heads and pretty much the coolest geek on the face of the planet, spoke out against DRM and big record labels this week at South by Southwest. He predicted that online sales would surpass CD sales by 2012, forcing labels to choose between accepting music sales as a loss leader for tours and merch, focusing more on marketing for many artists, or only shooting for mega-stars like Britney Spears.
He goes on to say that labels need to drop DRM in order for sales to really take off, as he only gets his music from eMusic or downloads it illegally to avoid DRM. Once they ditch DRM, he says, iTunes will lose their “monopoly” and the market for online music will really open up.
As if we needed another reason to idolize David Byrne. You’re dreamy, David! – Gizmodo.com
Tasty photons!
•March 19, 2007 • 2 CommentsRay Tracing is fucking cool. Open RT is an open-source ray-tracing initiative similar to Open GL.
What’s the difference, you ask? Well, previously it required mega-intense processing power to light scenes in a realistic manner – by following the actual light from the fictional light sources. All the best animation uses ray-tracing (Lord of the Rings, for instance), but most consumer 3D products, including video games, use rasterization (aka “filling triangles”). Technically, computer-modelled ray-tracing works backwards, starting from the “camera” instead of the light source.
The point, though, is that new algorithms and new simple hardware solutions mean that we’re only a few years away (rather than the dozens we imagined) from real-time ray-tracing games on your ordinary PC.
Allow me to geek out at the possibilities for a moment.
Protected:
•March 19, 2007 • Enter your password to view comments.I love me thistlepod
•March 16, 2007 • 2 CommentsThistle and shamrock is nice to listen to while coding – it’s a little less blood-pounding than the techno-industrial MaCHiNe, but still quick-paced and unique.
Now if I can just figure out why my shuffle isn’t syncing…
Seen on the intarweb
•March 16, 2007 • 3 Comments“Resistance can be thought of as anything that pulls us away from
doing the work we know is most important to us. It takes many forms
(including procrastination, fear, distraction, and negative self-talk), but
the effect is often similar: we find or permit all kinds of barriers to keep
us from becoming the person we want to be, or from completing the thing we
really want to make.”
Unrelatedly, this from Ad Age:
http://adage.com/article.php?article_id=115481
*GARFIELD*: I want to ask you one more thing: Those Mac ads — how do you
feel about the John Hodgman character?
*GATES*: I can’t comment on someone else’s ad.
*GARFIELD*: OK … but he’s you.
*GATES*: Yeah, I’m not gonna comment on someone else’s ad.
*GARFIELD*: OK, well, Bill Gates, thank you so much for joining us.
(Silence)
*GARFIELD*: Can I just have a clean goodbye?
(Silence)
*GARFIELD*: OK, can you just say goodbye? Thank you or goodbye or something
like that?
*GATES*: Goodbye.
The Faded Color of Empty Words
•March 15, 2007 • 18 CommentsMy friend holyscapegoat posted some text from a fark.com discussion, and I was curious what your thoughts were on it. Agree or disagree or give me a ‘that’s interesting’, but share! Personally, I really identify with “You’ve got to have a message that matters.” I’ve always been very skeptical of advertising, though. Is our society actually changing?
Advertising isn’t working like it did a few years ago. You’ve noticed this, right?
Most advertisers are convinced that technology is to blame.
TV advertisers will tell you that TiVo and her sister Digital Video Recorders are blocking their television ads. But according to a recent report released by Leichtman Research Group, only 12 percent of American households own a DVR.
But TV ad results are down far more than 12 percent.
Radio advertisers will tell you that everyone is listening to iPods and satellite radio. But in truth, most of radio’s loss has been in the 12 to 17 year-old age group. These pre-adults are now spending only 51 quarter-hours per week listening to commercial radio, down from a zenith of 65 quarter-hours per week during the pre-Internet 80s and early 90s. The rest of us are listening about as much as we ever did. We wake up to radio alarm clocks and listen at work and in our cars. Overall, the audience for commercial radio has declined only about 4 percent over the past 3 years.
But Radio ad results are down far more than 4 percent. The rest
Protected: Meta-thoughts: not for skimmers
•March 14, 2007 • Enter your password to view comments.Love it
•March 14, 2007 • 5 Comments“Speaking to a sold out crowd at the Berkeley Physics
Oppenheimer Lecture, Stephen Hawking said yesterday that he now believes
the universe spontaneously popped into existence from nothing. He said
more work is needed to prove this but we have time because ‘Eternity
is a very long time, especially towards the end.’ There is also a
Webcast available (Realplayer or Real Alternative required).”