Wow!  It has begun!  Like.com is the start of a search tool that could become part of an emotional search engine.  Like.com is a search tool that uses an image reference to find images of items of similar shape, color, and pattern on the internet.  As described in the article,  it is a shopping aid that is intended to help users find items similar to the item they’ve referenced.  So imagine, now, that you’ve built up a collection of images you like and then sent them out through an avatar to find similar things, or, if such information were available to retailers, they could advertise to you items they have to sell that are similar to items you like.  Or, imagine if designers could have access to the likes of a certain demographic to guide the design of future products.  Nice … :).

It sounds like the search algorithm needs more work, but the idea is cool.  I hope the powers that be understand the possibilities of this type of search engine so development will continue.

LCD blackboards and a gymnasium floor that can instantly change configurations, these are some of the future innovations presented in the anime series, “Code-E.”  “Code-E” is an interesting and very pleasing anime about a girl who emits an unusually powerful EMF, and consequently, everywhere she goes she fries electronics.  This is a very inconvenient way to be in a world that is dominated by electronics and the everyday gadgets of life.   Her house is free of electronics, except in the basement where her father has built shielding to protect his computer.  She and her father plot ways to school and the food stores that avoid vital infrastructure (hospitals and the like) and places with high concentrations of electronics.  She doesn’t carry a cell phone or a bus pass because she will fry the phone and demagnetize the bus pass.  And when she gets to her new school, she fries the LCD blackboard and everyone’s cell phone.  Someone wrap a Faraday cage around her!

Anyhow, what’s interesting about the world of this show is the technology and the way the technology seamlessly integrates into life 20-years from now.  The LCD chalk board is pretty cool.  It’s touch sensitive so you can write on it like a chalkboard, but you can also display class materials from a computer on it.  You can almost imagine a central server from which school materials could be pulled from.  You could watch multimedia presentations or you could hold class with other students from around the world with a high speed internet connection.  The gymnasium floor has an array of lights beneath it that can be changed to alter the configuration of the lines on the floor, so the space can be turned from a basketball court to a volleyball court with a button push.  Nice.  Then there is virtual art and the advanced cell phones that everyone was either talking into or looking at.  It all seemed very normal.

It’s early in the series, so I look forward to seeing what more the storytellers of this show come up with.  Get on the Internet and check it out :).  It’s called “Code-E” and so far it appears to be 10+ years old friendly.

This is really cool!  I imagine the pilot program is a success because lots of kids (and some adults too — including myself) have the Nintendo DS or DS Lite device.  This kind of application really shows the power of having a small wireless entertainment device.  An added advantage to DS and DS Lite proliferation is the cost, which is around $129, which is pretty cheap for a hand held wireless device.  I think it would be neat to have more interactivity like this in other places besides the baseball field, like theme parks and museums.  Can you imagine having additional information about an exhibit available to you or your child through their DS?  They could take the info home via the DS.  Or maybe content specific gaming (aka targeted ads) at various attractions — like a maybe a theme park ride sponsor’s mini-game or “entertainment” available while waiting in que for the ride.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/gaming/2007-07-09-dslite-interactive-baseball_N.htm

After 7 years of marriage my husband and I have finally purchased a TV!  Well, it’s not like we don’t have a TV — we have a 25-in TV we bought before we got married and we have a digital projector that we been using as a TV for the past 4-5-years.  We are constantly living in fear that our projector bulb will go out since it’s now several hours (years) past its life, so we figured we head off the situation by getting a HI-Def TV.

This has been a decision at least 3-years in the making.  We started fearing for our projector’s bulb’s life the first time we were warned about its age and saw that the replacement bulb was $500 (!!!).  Our first experience with Hi-Def was at CES 2003 when plasma TV were getting popular and many of the manufacturers were finally getting over the screen life issues.  We were instantly turned off to plasma because of the amount of heat the TV’s put off.  We  seriously questioned just how much of whatever is that thing radiating?  I have a vivid memory of being stuck in a stifllingly hot little demo room in which the walls were made entirely of plasma TV’s and escaping the room delirious with dehydration.  We resumed our exploration of Hi-Def TV when LCD TV’s started showing up — again, our first introduction was at  CES.  At that time (2004) “affordable” LCD TV’s were topping out at 32-in and cost a little over 2X plasma.  We would have bought one then, except our local big box electronics store (which shall remain nameless) sold us goods they didn’t actually have.  Our hopes dashed, we put it out of our minds and soon after thanked the heavens that we didn’t buy then, because shortly after prices began to drop and screen sizes increased.  Today, plasma TV’s and LCD TV are about on par cost wise — it’s just a matter of preference and how you intend to use the device.

For us, plasma has really never been a consideration since we don’t watch much broadcast TV.  I’d say about 80% of what we watch is either downloaded from the Internet or DVD’s from Netflix.  This was our main driver for getting the digital projector 4-5-years ago when we started watching fansubbed anime.  We were unable to watch our shows on our television because our TV did not have the proper interfaces to connect our laptop and when we figured out how to fudge it, the resolution was so atrocious we quickly abandoned the idea and got an HP digital projector expressed shipped to us.  *U-wah!!!*  *Sparkly lights and heavenly glow.*  The projector that we got has a max resolution of 1024 x 768 and for all purposes it functions like a 720-i Hi-Def device.  But alas, came the second half of 2006 and the shows we get from Asia are starting to show up in 1080 horizontal resolution and now I can only enjoy the full resolution is on my wide screen laptop — they weren’t kidding about being able to see every pimple and pore on an actor’s face — amazing! — but woefully only 15-in wide and I have to watch from my office chair — food in my keyboard, darnit! (“Goong” in Hi-Def — 16-Gigs of one of the most over the top soap operas ever.  A must watch if you like mush.  The Hi-Def really shows off the detail and the texture of the costumes and the set pieces.)  Spurned by this experience, the I-must-have Hi-Def bug kicked in and I got into high-gear looking for a projector upgrade or a new TV.  My husband, who has been keeping he hi-def desire in check, sheepishly grinned at me after I woke up from my 48-hr “Goong” orgy (watched it twice!!!) knowing that the TV that he had desired was finally going to be his.  Anyhow, I ordered an LCD TV from HP, and it should arrive in a week and half.  BTW:  the 360 is moving downstair … 🙂

Before looking into this, I also looked into other devices necessary to go fully hi-def.  I looked into upgrading our DVR and our cable service.  I had decided against upgrading the DVR and our cable for now since there aren’t many Hi-def cable channels available and we don’t watch enough TV to justify the expense.  “But Jen …” whines my husband.  We also need some Hi-Def sound.

So anyhow, we have new media challenges ahead of us now that anime is coming out in Hi-Def — mainly memory and processor power.  The files are now 2X what they were before and our entertainment laptop (a wonderful HP 7000-series machine) is having trouble playing some of the files.  Yep, I’ve got my eye HP media vault to meet our new storge needs and on a 9000-series laptop for the processing power and the HD-DVD drive, but I’m lamenting that I don’t have the option to get Windows XP.  I’m not feeling good enough about Vista yet to make the move.   Sigh, … what’s a girl to do?

I’m so glad HP is into the digital entertainment space and that most of the products have been good.  I’m quite pleased with the products I have purchased so far, although, a few years back customer service was horrible (!!!).  Now if we can get some further integration of devices and wrap it all up in a slick and easy-to-interface so I can finally clean up the wire clutter in my office and living room and patch the holes in my walls :).

My entry into the world of high-definition continued last weekend and let me say that setting up a new TV and plugging in the various peripherals we own was not easy.  To set the scene properly, start the music from the Nutcracker Ballet going on your internal MP3 player.   First there was the task of dismantling our old set-up with the digital projector.  Since I’m the smaller of the pair between me and my husband, I had to venture behind the electronics pile to disconnect the stereo, the Tivo, the cable box, an antennae, and the hub.  The devastation from the Cord Fairy was extensive.  We were also visited by the Dust Bunny who left an egg-size wad of sneezing fun (thank goodness for mini-shop-vacs).  This was something I didn’t want to do until we actually got the TV in place because I had no idea how I was going to remember where all these cords plugged into without disconnecting and reconnecting them into the new holes one-at-a-time.  My husband challenged the engineer in me and after a long staring contest, in which I tried my best wifely “you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me” scowl, I gave in and with reckless abandon unplugged everything and did head to head battle with the Cord Fairy and the Dust Bunny.  With everything unplugged; the components spread out and the cords laid neatly in rows before us; my husband and I  lugged the TV onto it’s thone.   *Uwahhhh* (Imagine the Christmas tree unfolding scene)  Nice … again, since I’m the smaller of the pair, I climbed into the little triangle of space behind the TV, and pulled cords and components through the TV stand as my husband placed them into the empty cubby holes.  Okay … cable out the wall and into the cable box … S-video from the cable box and into the TV.  Red and black sound from the cablebox to the Tivo.  Red and black sound from the Tivo the stereo and then to the TV.  And so it went, the marvelous weaving the cords and within a blink of an eye, the Cord Fairy had struck (Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy is the Cord Fairy’s soundtrack) … “Honey!  I need some twist ties!”  Sigh … after an hour the cords were nicely contained and it was time to turn the TV on and test the cable and Tivo connections before plugging in the X-Box 360 and the entertainment laptop.

Miracle of miracles, my engineering prowess prevailed and everything came on!  (That wiped the smirk right off my husband’s face 🙂 ).  Now, onto the X-box:  Not wanting to be outdone, my husband decided that he could fit behind the TV too if he only used his upper body.  He sat down upon the TV stand facing out towards me and then leaned back and to the side to get behind the TV to plug in the HDMI cable, after which he discovered that he couldn’t get back up as he was then propped precariously on one butt-cheek and didn’t have enough leverage.  After chuckling a bit I helped him up and he powered on the X-Box and ramped through the resolutions.  480 lines – check, 720-lines – check, 1080 lines interlacing – check, 1080 lines non-interlacing – failure.  Huh?  It turns out that 1080p is a box spec and can only be shown on the display if pushed through at 30-Hz, which none of our devices can do.  My husband pouted, but I assured him that we most likely wouldn’t be able to see a difference.  We then enjoyed a couple of Halo 3 previews in all their 1080 lines of resolution glory.  *Nice*

Onto the nightmare – the PC:  The TV comes with a VGA port to directly plug a computer into.  We connected our trusty 3 – 4-year old entertainment laptop in (it may be old in computer years, but it still has respectable specs, even for a current desktop).  At first the TV defaulted to 1024 by 768 – no!  We then ramped through the resolutions only to get no response from the TV.  We fiddled with the refresh rates and dual view and again we were able to do 1024 x 768 and a few higher resolution settings if we spread the view of the desktop onto both screens.  After 1-hour of futility we gave up and figured that maybe the laptop was too old.  So we plugged in our laptop that is ~1-yrs old.  This time we were able to get more resolution settings to work, but not to our satisfaction.  Apparently the video card in that laptop scales everything according to the native resolution of the laptop.  We were able to push 1920 x 1080 into the TV, but it was scaled from 1280 x 800, so we had to pan in order to access the edges of the desktop.  No good!  It was now time to probe deeply into the finer features of the video driver.  After much trial and error, the video card recognized the TV as a TV and reported back that the native resolution of the device is 1360 by760-ish – Huh?  We set the resolution accordingly, laughed at HP “box specs”, and then enjoyed the third installment of the “Hellsing Ultimate” OVA.  BTW:  The TV produces excellent reds, which if any of you know anything about “Hellsing”, then you understand how marvelous (in a beautiful and hideous way) red can be.

After watching “Hellsing” we came back to reality and decided that we could not keep the working laptop downstairs because it is severely infested by Cord Fairies.  This is the computer that we download entertainment content to, print from, and do everyday computing stuff with and consequently it has 2 external hard drives, a printer, speakers,  a wi-fi mouse, and now a TV plugged into it – it looked like a hardware explosion in the middle of our Spartan family room.  So it was back to the old laptop.  Using the tricks I had learned from fiddling with the driver on the newer computer I tried a different approach on the old laptop and after an a couple of hours of trial and error and then a couple of TV synchronizations I got the thing to work at 1360 x 760-ish.  Victory!  And the casualties were: 1 digital projector which took 2 cords with it and three more cords because my husband figured out how to run all the audio connections to the TV such that there only needed to be one connection to the stereo for all the video components we have. 

Some observations on the TV:  The TV by default renders color vividly.  The is great for us because this feature really makes anime “pop,” it’s but not so good watching live action content because it causes flesh tones to look unnaturally flushed or washed out against vibrant backgrounds when the vibrancy is dialed down.  Since my husband is color blind he didn’t understand what I was talking about and I don’t particularly care because the colors are rendered much better than t
he digital projector and I like “poppy” anime.  The other thing is that watching TV (broadcast and cable) on this display sucks as it would on any high-res display.  This was made worse for us because there is significant noise in the connection between our Tivo and the TV.  Another thing about this TV is that it takes FOREVER for the thing to power up and it doesn’t come on until the second attempt to power it up.  This has gotten a lot better as of yesterday.  It now powers up on the first attempt in about 30-seconds.  Perhaps there was a burn-in period ???  Overall we are very happy with our TV.  It’s great for viewing anime, playing video games, and watching hi-def content (we watched some hi-def movie previews via the X-Box 360 and they looked outstanding! – it could be that the X-Box renders better so we didn’t get the weird flesh tones.).  As for cable TV, we watch it from a great distance so as not be upset by the blurriness.