Technology

Attila the Professor said:
Theatrical presentation prepatory? Does this mean that one thread of yours might have a lot more activity sometime in the future?

The Plaza in Texas and the Music Box in Chicago are advertising the Digitally Restored 30th Anniversary Presentation...in contrast to theaters that: "celebrate Indy's 30th Anniversary."

The hints are all in place...I don't know why they would be waiting to announce a rerelease, but I hope they give it a formal run.
 
Touch-screen ads to enliven a bus-stop wait and revolutionise street advertising

The future of advertising

A recent JCDecaux ad in Sydney's Martin Place used NFC technology to transfer promotional material directly to an interested person's smartphone.

BUS stop touch screens, footpath-level digital games and cinema picture walls are set to revolutionise street advertising in Australia.

Interactive advertising can invite consumers to try out smartphone apps on screens in the street, order goods after hours by tapping a transparent shop window screen, and view stock on an enormous 2.7m-long touch sensitive table at shopping centres.

Interactive ads also will open the world of viral online marketing campaigns to street advertisers by letting people share product likes and dislikes with friends on social networks while at a bus stop shelter.

Outdoor advertising corporation JCDecaux, which has about 3000 advertising structures in Australia, cited pedestrian walkways, bus stops and transit locations such as railway station as places where the public eventually will interact with advertising.



JCDecaux Australia chief executive Steve O'Connor said the coming breed of near field communication (NFC) added another dimension to interactive advertising by allowing people to simply tap their phone on ads to download product information and media.

NFC advertising specialist Tapit has been leading the charge with campaigns for Nova Radio, the Queen Victoria Building shopping centre and the Ten Network's The Renovators with NFC-enabled street advertising.

Chief executive Jamie Conyngham said NFC tags were placed behind the ad glass.

A tap on the Nova Radio ad would cause radio to livestream to the phone, The Renovators ad would see daily program content delivered to the phone, while tapping the QVB ad would enter the owner in a competition to win $5000 of shopping. The admittedly experimental use of NFC-enabled ads was successful, despite the lack of NFC-enabled phones on the Australian market, Mr Conyngham said.

They were, however, confined to one Nokia, Samsung and Huawei handsets until the next wave of new phones was released.

Mr O'Connor said JCDecaux were about to establish two networks of NFC-enabled advertising signs across Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

The Sydney-based marketing agency The Creative Shop, meanwhile, is readying for its rollout next month of ads at JCDecaux locations that employ touch-sensitive screens.

"What people are going to see come October moving forwards is more advertising they can actually engage with through touch, feel, sounds, driving engagement," Creative Shop director Brian Smillie said.

He said eight panels would be rolled out in Sydney, three in Brisbane and a couple in Melbourne. One would be in Sydney's Martin Place.

"Basically, consumers will walk pass a traditional JCDecaux advertising box (and) within that box we'll have a 55-inch LCD panel which will have a very strong call-to-action offering you a chance to win, touch here," Mr Smillie said.

Panels would link users to their Facebook account, they'd have an ability to capture a consumer's email address, and capture the data of a consumer who plays a product-based game, he said.

They could be mailed a chance to win a product, and through sharing the application with friends at street level on Facebook, they would have more chances to win.

In February, Mr Smillie and Creative Shop managing director Mark Bailey formed a partnership with digital marketing agency iPartners of Korea, where touch-screen advertising is becoming common.

Creative Shop also is promoting transparent touch screens that can be mounted in shop windows.

When switched off, they are invisible. Switched on, they display a computer's screen contents. For marketing, that means inventory and sales programs.

Mr Bailey said shoppers could check out item catalogues from the shop window, and after hours, even order goods they saw on display.

"If someone's going to a shopping mall, going to the movies that night, walks past a shop front window, says I really like that product and want to engage with it, but the shop's not open, I'd actually like to come back and make that purchase, you can actually connect to an online store and complete the transaction that way," Mr Bailey said.

The 22-, 26- and 46-inch screens are in their infancy and to date are being sold encased in boxes that promote in-store merchandise.

Interactive table tops are another means of promoting stock inventory and sales. Microsoft's Surface coffee table has been a pioneer as an integrated hardware and software solution.

Users interact with content using table-top gestures, but at $US12,500 ($12.205) each they are expensive, and while Microsoft does not reveal national sales of Surface, it is believed relatively few sold here.

One of its first clients, ANZ Bank, last year conducted trials of three Surface tables for private banking, and deployed a Surface table at the Australian Open tennis tournament in Melbourne. The bank would not comment on their success or otherwise.

However, it is understood using Surface to show customers marketing scenarios can be achieved with far less expensive tablet computers.

The Creative Shop said it was building largish in-house touch-screen tables -- 2.7m long by 1.2m wide -- for use in shopping centres.

"We can have six individual people playing with six individual pieces of content at any one time, capable of handling six interactions at once," Mr Smillie said.

"One person can be searching for shoes for his wife, while another is searching for the cinema opening hours and another booking a restaurant for friends -- all at the same time from the same table.

"You can send information to them -- you can attach Google maps, a reservation number, all those sort of things."

While not a fan of Microsoft's Surface hardware, the Creative Shop is certainly a fan when it comes to Microsoft's most innovative offering, Kinect.

The company employs a Kinect programmer capable of adapting it, and with the recent release of the Kinect Beta software development kit (SDK), sees a future in gestures being available for the public to interact with street signage.

Mr Smillie cited the example of an advertisement on a wall for an Indiana Jones movie. A consumer could stand in front of the ad and gesture to transform into characters in the film."They can share that to their smart device or their tablet, or send it to Facebook or email, and they've got a reference."

AMP Capital Shopping Centres head of marketing and communications Stuart Langeveldt cited a virtual supermarket in a South Korean subway as an example of things to come. Customers could view products, scan a QR code, buy displayed goods with their mobile phone and have them delivered home.

Interactive ads gave an immediate competitive advantage, Mr Langeveldt said. "Retailers are a bit slow in adopting these technologies, but customers want it."

Melanie Ingrey, research director of media at Nielsen, said research showed the execution of interactive ad campaigns needed to be well-targeted, and the interactive offerings relevant to the consumer.

"Increasingly in this market, it is consumers under 24," she said. "They're confident in engaging with content and they often show a lot more openness and tolerance, whereas older consumers are more cynical."
 
Apple Dumps "Jew or Not Jew" App in France

French don't allow personal details to be released without consent

An iPhone app that has users guessing whether famous people are Jewish or not has been yanked in France, where disclosing such information about people without their consent is illegal.

"Jew or Not Jew," invented by Frenchman Johann Levy, is still available elsewhere including in the U.S., where it costs $1.99. The app lists thousands of famous Jews ? including movie stars, musicians, Nobel Prize winners. The iTunes store description says: ?Hey, did you know that Bob Dylan is Jewish? Of course I did! But was Marilyn Monroe really Jewish? And what about Harrison Ford? How many times have we had this conversation without being able to know for sure? You can now find the answer.?

Lévy, a 35-year-old engineer who is Jewish, told Le Parisien he doesn?t understand the outcry.

?I?m not a spokesman for all Jews, but, being Jewish myself, I know that in our community we ask ourselves often if this or that celebrity is Jewish or not,? he told the French newspaper. ?For me, there?s nothing pejorative in saying publicly that this person or that person is Jewish. Instead, it?s something to be proud of.?

But releasing details about the personal lives of people, even celebrities, without their consent is illegal in France. In addition, one leader from France's Jewish community says knowing who is and who isn't is not so simple.

?The issue of Judaism and ?who is Jewish? and ?who is not? is particularly complex. Nobody has the authority to decide on the Jewishness of others,? Marc Eisenberg, president of Alliance Israelite Universelle, said in written statement. ?The fact that (the app) was created by someone who is of Jewish faith does not excuse a thing.?

In the U.S., the worst Levy can be accused of is probably bad taste, Ken Jacobson, the Anti-Defamation League's deputy national director told CNN.

?Maybe it reflects my age,? said Jacobson. ?Everyone is sharing their whole lives with everyone else. ?That?s not the way things used to be.?
 
Technology and the Effect of Raiders...

Led by Dartmouth's James Haxby, neuroscientists unlock shared brain codes

Haxby found that the brain's responses to movies reveal a detailed code that is the same for all individuals

A team of neuroscientists at Dartmouth College has shown that different individuals' brains use the same, common neural code to recognize complex visual images.

The paper, "A common, high-dimensional model of the neural representational space in human ventral temporal cortex," is in the October 20, 2011, issue of the journal, Neuron. The lead author of the paper is James Haxby, the Evans Family Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. Haxby is also the Director of the Cognitive Neuroscience Center at Dartmouth and a professor in the Center for Mind/Brain Sciences at the University of Trento in Italy. Swaroop Guntupalli, a graduate student in Haxby's laboratory, developed the software for the new methods and ran the tests of their validity.

Haxby developed a new method called hyperalignment to create this common code and the parameters that transform an individual's brain activity patterns into the code.

The parameters are a set of numbers that act like a combination that unlocks that individual's brain's code, Haxby said, allowing activity patterns in that person's brain to be decoded ? specifying the visual images that evoked those patterns ¬? by comparing them to patterns in other people's brains.

"For example, patterns of brain activity evoked by viewing a movie can be decoded to identify precisely which part of the movie an individual was watching by comparing his or her brain activity to the brain activity of other people watching the same movie," said Haxby.

When someone looks at the world, visual images are encoded into patterns of brain activity that capture all of the subtleties that make it possible to recognize an unlimited variety of objects, animals, and actions.

"Although the goal of this work was to find the common code, these methods can now be used to see how brain codes vary across individuals because of differences in visual experience due to training, such as that for air traffic controllers or radiologists, to cultural background, or to factors such as genetics and clinical disorders," he said.

Because of variability in brain anatomy, brain decoding had required separate analysis of each individual. Although detailed analysis of an individual could break that person's brain code, it didn't say anything about the brain code for a different person. In the paper, Haxby shows that all individuals use a common code for visual recognition, making it possible to identify specific patterns of brain activity for a wide range of visual images that are the same in all brains.

As a result of their research, the team showed that a pattern of brain activity in one individual can be decoded by finding the picture or movie that evoked the same pattern in other individuals.

Participants in the study watched the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark while their patterns of brain activity were measured using fMRI. In two separate experiments, they viewed still images of seven categories of faces and objects ? male and female human faces, monkey faces, dog faces, shoes, chairs and houses ? or six animal species ? squirrel monkeys, ring-tailed lemurs, mallards, yellow-throated warblers, ladybugs and luna moths. Analysis of the brain activity patterns evoked by the movie produced the common code. Once the brain patterns were in the common code, including responses that were not evoked by the movie, distinct patterns were detected that were common across individuals and specific for fine distinctions, such as monkey versus dog faces, squirrel monkeys versus lemurs.

This work is part of a five-year collaboration with signal processing scientists at Princeton University.
 
I want!

IRIS 9000

IRIS 9000 is a voice control module for the iPhone 4S and Siri Video, designed to evoke the HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick?s classic, groundbreaking science-fiction film 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. Simply dock your iPhone and use the built-in micro remote to trigger Siri from up to 50 feet away.

?I?m sorry, Dave, but that is simply to cool for school.?

Product Details:
?Control your iPhone 4S and Siri from across the room
?Classic Sci-fi styling. Aluminum accents.
?Included micro remote triggers Siri with a single button press
?Built-in mic picks up your voice at a distance
?Embedded speaker amplifies Siri?s responses
?Use as a standard speakerphone to make and receive calls
?Glowing LED eye flickers along with Siri?s voice
?Powered by included 120-240V AC adapter
?ONLY COMPATIBLE WITH iPhone 4S
?Patent pending technology
?Exclusive product designed and manufactured by ThinkGeek

Price Range: $59.99

iris_9000-560x756.jpg
 
Dr. Gonzo said:

Oh to be so wealthy...

I could somewhat justify spending on the kids but not myself. That said, I would love HAL in the morning, in the evening...

Think Geek has some great stuff...did some Christmas shopping there for my children, (and myself).

Got my boy a Portal Gun for his birthday and for Christmas freaked out the family (his grandmother wanted to get him something he woud like besides clothes) with his sh!t eating grin over GladOS.

Nothing like the look of fear when you tell you parents to just get their grandchild the biggest potato they can find!
 
THX Ltd. v. Apple Inc. 13-01161, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California

THX, Founded by George Lucas, Sues Apple in Patent Case

Apple Inc. (AAPL) was accused by THX Ltd., a company founded by ?Star Wars? producer George Lucas, of stealing speaker technology used in iPhones, iPads and iMac products.

THX holds a 2008 patent for a speaker unit that can boost sound output and attach to computers or flat-screen televisions, according to a complaint filed yesterday in federal court in San Jose, California.

Apple products that incorporate the speaker units infringe the THX patent, causing the company ?monetary damage and irreparable harm,? according to the lawsuit. The complaint seeks a court order to stop the alleged infringement and a reasonable royalty, or damages to compensate THX for lost profit.

THX, founded in 2002, drew its name from Lucas?s first film, THX 1138, according to Wookieepedia, a website about ?Star Wars.?

Once part of Lucasfilms, THX created a set of standards and a certification system for theater sound systems to ensure the sound quality of ?Star Wars? movies could be reproduced for moviegoers, according to the company?s website.

This year, San Rafael, California-based THX announced its first mobile application, THX tune-up, available in Apple?s iTunes App Store, according to a Jan. 29 statement from THX. The app allows consumers to use an Apple device with the iOS operating system to adjust the performance of televisions, projectors and speakers, according to the statement.

Marika Knapp, a spokeswoman for THX, said in an e-mail that the company doesn?t comment on pending legal matters.

Colleen Patterson, spokeswoman for Cupertino, California- based Apple, declined to comment on the complaint.

The case THX Ltd. v. Apple Inc., 13-01161, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Jose).

Interested in the detail...when they're available. Interestingly Apple sued Samsung because their recent smart phones had rounded edges which resembled the iPhone...hmmm.
 
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