This is the ranch where we went on vacation last week.
Archive for the ‘Video’ category
How I spent my winter vacation
February 22nd, 2010More Random Notes from Gnomedex 9.0
August 23rd, 2009
Gnomedex is fundamentally about the why of social media, and not about the how. In other words, it’s not aimed at the engineers or the infrastructure, but how technology works to bring people together.
Nowhere was this more apparent than in the presentation by FoldIt, a video game for protein folding.
Wait, what?
A team at the University of Washington is doing advanced research in protein folding—this is critical because how a protein can be folded often determines if it’s benign of causes some nasty disease. The mechanism, in the case, is a video game (you can download it from the link above). The research team discovered that people, in playing the game (trying to fold a protein to a “low-energy state”), are much more efficient than computer simulations. Because of the large number of degrees of freedom, the task is computationally extremely expensive. By using a video game as the medium, the protein folding achieves better results, faster. In this case, there’s nothing new about the medium (video games have been around for years), but the purpose (curing diseases and advancing medical research) is extraordinarily novel.
Another novel presentation was by the creator of the Maker Bot, a 3D printer that can rapidly create any desired solid objects. By leveraging the power of the social community, the device has achieved far more than a dedicated team (in a closed company) might have done. In essence, the business is leveraging volunteer labor for the greater good.
Hulu comes to the desktop
May 29th, 2009
I’ll be honest—I haven’t really been a fan of Hulu until now. I was one of the original beta testers before the site opened, and I could just never get into it. Frankly, watching a TV show in a little window inside a web browser had a few problems:
- The video screen was too small, and
- Being in a web browser had all sorts of distractions, such as, umm, the Internet.
I used (and still use) videos purchased through iTunes quite frequently. In fact, I own an Apple TV and we use it all the time; since we’ve gotten it, we’ve nearly given up on DVDs. The quality is great; it works on the TV; and, even when viewing it on my computer, the full-screen view feels like I’m watching TV.
Yesterday, however, Hulu released Hulu Desktop, a “browser-free” tool to view video content from the Hulu website. And, I have to say, this changes everything for me. Since it’s now a standalone app, there are no more distractions from the web browser. It can run in full-screen mode, giving it a feel that’s much closer to real TV. And, it works with my Apple remote control, which means that I don’t have to be moving a mouse around to make everything work.
Is it perfect? Well, not quite. The video quality is still limited to that which is available over the web (in other words, mediocre). Apple TV, for example, allows me to purchase and view HD content in, well, HD. And it’s stunning. On the other hand, Hulu gives me instant access to an enormous library of TV shows and movies, and all for free (ok, I have to watch a few advertisements, but it’s still a better experience than television). It’s almost enough to make me lose the DVR—almost; I can lose the DVR once Hulu supports high-def video.
Hulu Desktop is available for both the Mac and Windows PCs.
Momma Fox
May 25th, 2009Yesterday morning, Momma Fox showed up. This confirms, I think, that the critters we recently saw behind the house are, in fact, California Gray Foxes. I’m guessing they have a den deep inside that thicket.
