Video: My American Idol Audition

This has been a good season for American Idol, but it would have been a lot better if they had not disqualified me. Oh well...

When Virtual Girls Get Creepy

Here is an example of someone you would meet on a virtual blind date... click on the photo to visit with her live (just like a real date, you may have to wait for her to load).


Motion Portrait
This virtual freak is a creation of a Japanese company called Motion Portrait. Motion Portrait is a Sony spin-off that was created based on this one technology. The idea behind this is that they can take a single flat photo and create a 3D rendering of the person. The purpose of the tool is widespread, but I would assume the clients of theirs with the biggest pockets will be video game shops who are always looking for, and developing better ways to animate more realistic characters. Any actors scared that they'll be out of a job? Don't worry, there is always voice work; Motion Portrait "can match lip movements with voice through microphone in real-time".

This technique is not limited to just humans. Check out this little fury friend.

I can't wait until I go to order at a drive through and that hottie is there to help me. Here's a list of possible solutions Motion Portrait offers...

Transmorphers: More than Meets the Eye!

My wife and I were sifting through my mother-in-laws movie collection for something to watch when Sunny found a particularly deceiving title, "Transmorphers". It's cover actually resembled another recent blockbuster, but I don't remember seeing the advertisements for this one. That's because there were no ads. This one was a low-budget piece of crap film that they made solely for three audience types:

1. The elderly buying gifts for their grandkids
2. People in a huge hurry (my mother-in-law's situation)
3. Immigrants
   

These little straight-to-video gems are going to become less-and-less sellable. Not because there won't always be a large immigrant population pushing these things at swap meets, but because more and more movie sales will come from online. Let's explore:

Apple TV
Apple's recent consumer electronics genius is that they design great products and then give you a full delivery system to fill your electronics up. Most are familiar with the iTunes and iPod method. iTunes delivered music in a convenient model to their 1st generation iPods. With the advent of the video iPod, iTunes moved into television shows. People loved spending a half hour watching episodes of The Office, but 2 hours watching Office Space wasn't as big a hit. So Apple introduced Apple TV. The purpose of this devise is to allow you to use the iTunes format you are familiar with and deliver it to an appliance that's tied to your home entertainment system... a system you already watch movies with. If there is only going to be one winner in electronic movie distribution, your best bet is Apple.

Netflix
I am a huge Netflix fan. I hated walking up and down the isles at Blockbuster judging movies by their covers. Netflix has an elaborate recommendation system based on your feedback. If you don't trust their recommendations, you still have the reviews of the Netflix customers. Netflix has a digital download system that works pretty well, but the selection is limited and it's streamed to your computer. If you are a Netflix customer, you get this included as a part of your service. Give it a shot and let me know what you think.

Amazon Unbox'd
One of my favorite companies ever launched a video download service called Amazon Unbox. I'm bias to bet on success with Amazon. Amazon has amazing sales power and has a die-hard audience of reviewers that will help steer people in the direction of good movies vs. transmorphers.

Proof that I'm Right
Meet Duane. Duane is the only guy on Amazon who wrote a review for Transmorphers. He gave it 2 out of 5 stars. His review was called, "Could Have Been Worse". Here was the first paragraph of his review:

"When I saw this movie first listed, I thought that some one had misspelled 'Transformers' for the title. But, it turned-out to be a separate film entirely. Being curious, I decided to invest the 86 minutes of my night off to watch it."

Genius.

Why I Don't Steal Anymore

Many of us in our 30's would say that the golden days of the internet were back in the 90's. These joy-filled days revolved around 1 website: Napster.

You could say that we were a part of the internet hippie generation. Those were good times. There was peace, and love, and music... oh there was music. I'm talking about music that we shared because it was beautiful and it was meant to be shared. We weren't going to let evil record labels screw musicians anymore! We took over that task. Actually, we felt like musicians weren't in it for the money. They wanted us to have their music. Willie Nelson even promoted free downloads of his music on his own website. We downloaded music for Willie and figured that his friends wanted us to support them as well. And we did. I really supported the Beatles, Pearl Jam, and countless other artists. I remember joyfully dancing around my computer watching the race that took place between the 60 or so songs I would have slowly reaching for completion. 60 songs was about the most I could do on my dial-up at one time.

The evil record labels didn't know what to do. They sat in their Donald Trump-like conference rooms with bad lighting and lots of smoke and tried to figure out how to stop this. The nice thing is that big business back then moved as fast as the Titanic avoiding icebergs.

After 2 years of meetings, the executives had a brilliant plan... sue! Sue the living tar out of Napster, but better yet, sue the people downloading the music and hang their dead, broke carcases up in the middle of town so everyone could see what happens to sinners.

That's when it hit us. Maybe it was illegal to download an undisclosed amount of music for free. That ordinary kid who just got sued by the record labels and settled for $10k could've been me. It could've been any of us. And where were the artists who we were supporting by downloading their music for free? They were no where to be found. They left us out to dry. Frankly, they screwed us.

A Fork in the Road
There were 3 divisions that took place when Napster was finally taken down. One group was scared straight. They cleaned off their computers of the evidence and got jobs and you probably work with one of them and you don't even know it. The second group started buying songs. A few pre-iTunes sites began to welcome people to buy music. This didn't make sense to me. NO ONE, not even today's iTunes, had the selection that Napster had, and now you had to pay for it; less selection, more money. The third group were the guys that went underground and continue to this day to 'live on the edge' and download music (and now MOVIES!) for free.

Napster With a DJ
Online radio came eventually. I particularly enjoyed live365.com. The only thing different about online radio is that there were no audio ads (typically) and a much larger selection of music than you can get through terrestrial radio. Then came Pandora. Pandora has a very simple interface. You plug in a song you like or a particular artist, and they play music that may have similar characteristics. From experience, they are extremely good. If by chance they pick a bad one, give it a 'thumbs down' rating and you won't hear that song again. Continue to rate songs as they come up and it will help Pandora refine the selection it presents. Also, you can create as many stations as you want.

Napster was nice because if you heard an artist that you liked his song, you could download a dozen songs from him to explore him further. Pandora is better than that. I've actually discovered more artists through Pandora without having to sift through tons of downloads to do it. The glory days of Napster are definitely behind us, but hopefully Pandora will be with us for years to come... but that is still to be determined.

Adobe Photoshop For Free!

Not quite. It's Adobe. It's free. But it's not quite Photoshop. A few weeks ago Adobe launched Adobe Photoshop Express beta. I am a big fan of their products such as Photoshop and Premiere. So when they launched this beta, I was in.

Two things stand out immediately. First, this is free. Second, it's 100% web-based. There's no software that you need to download so you can run it from any computer (mac or pc) with no problem. Adobe has started making some big moves into what they call "rich internet applications" (RIA). These are websites that are made to work and feel like regular desktop applications except with the benefit of being on the web (or the benefit of not being tied to Microsoft as some may see this).

Who Is This Tool For?
You ever wonder when they designed the spork, who their target audience was? That was my first impression when I visited the site. Don't get me wrong, as far as websites, it's functionality is quite advanced. But if you are used to Photoshop, or even their skimped down Photoshop Elements, you will be disappointed. This spork was not designed for you.

The audience as I see it are people who want an effective way to share photos. Their are two advantages that I see. First, you have a minimal tool set to improve the photos. Some of them are pretty intuitive such as the 'Red-Eye Removal'. Others don't seem to work well at all like the 'Sharpen'. But these are better than some other online photo gallery options. Second, they have built some REALLY impressive sharing capabilities into this with my beloved Facebook and with the extremely helpful Picasa. So if you don't want to publish directly through the gallery they give you, you can publish through other sites that Adobe has built-in to this.

Show Me the Goods
I took my Facebook photos, imported them from Photoshop Express, created an album, gave Adobe lots of permission to display this over the web, and they gave me a link. Here's the end result:
http://nwright.photoshop.com

What I Think
I want to like this product a lot, but I don't see using it a ton. I don't want to spend the time to clean up photos for the web. If there is anything that I really want to spend the time to clean up, I'lll use a serious program such as Photoshop to do it. As for sharing, it excels, but the application is not enough by itself to draw people to use it frequently. Until Adobe starts creating a suite of online apps to work together, this one will be one of the slickest sporks on the web.