The Phantom Corsair is an automobile prototype from 1938. It is a six-passenger coupe that was designed by Rust Heinz, a member of the H. J. Heinz family, and Maurice Schwartz of the Pasadena, California based Bohman & Schwartz coachbuilding company. The design was a departure from contemporary car design and it did away with many features, common at the time, that were eventually abandoned by mainstream designers.
Stunning.
Plausible explanation.
Computer Scientists Create 'light Field Camera' Banishing Fuzzy Photos
If you’re interested in photography at all, this ‘new’ technology should have you excited.
It’s really promising technology which might completely change the way we take pictures.
(via Instapaper)
Fraser Speirs: Stop Lying
In this blog post Fraser Speirs — programmer, teacher and “Apple Distinguished Educator” — comments on an article written by James Bridle. Among other things it’s about judging today’s and tomorrow’s technological advancements in reading and teaching by yesterday’s standards.
A serious must read; the original post and the commentary.
Microsoft provides a HTML5 H.264 extension for Chrome
Claudio Caldato, Microsoft:
Google recently announced that its Chrome web browser will stop supporting the H.264 video format. At Microsoft we respect that Windows customers want the best experience of the web including the ability to enjoy the widest range of content available on the Internet in H.264 format.
Today, as part of the interoperability bridges work we do on this team, we are making available the Windows Media Player HTML5 Extension for Chrome, which is an extension for Google Chrome to enable Windows 7 customers who use Chrome to continue to play H.264 video.
When Microsoft steps into the breach for Windows users because ever-so-open Google denies users ability to make use of universally accepted, closed source web standards, something isn’t right.Or something is very right at Microsoft.
via Daring Fireball
Larry Dignan on Tablet Pricing
John Gruber:
Larry Dignan:
When Apple CEO Steve Jobs launched the iPad it wasn’t clear how aggressively these newfangled devices were priced. Now we know because Android tablets and other rival tablets can’t hang on pricing.
Today’s Apple has turned the pricing story on its head. Used to be the knock against Apple was their kit was overpriced. Now, even putting quality aside, competitors can’t match Apple’s prices.
It’s going to be interesting to see how long it will take competitiors to catch-up this time.
Apple granted patents on TimeMachine and CoverFlow
Just after Apple lost the patent infringement suit covering this, potentially costing them $208.5 million, it was awarded patents that should at least overlap with those named in the lawsuit.
That’s one hell of a coincidence.
Apple filed those patents quite some time ago and has been using technology like this since before Mirror Worlds, LLC applied for theirs. It’s going to be interesting how this plays out, considering the newly awarded patents and prior art on Apple’s side.
The case for an IR remote for the Apple TV
In the tech publications I read and the podcasts I listen to, I’ve heard a lot of complaints about how the Apple remote is still IR-based, making line-of-sight a necessity for controlling the new — and old — Apple TV, and often bluetooth is named as the solution.
I don’t think so for the simple reason of reliability. A regular household is home to so many wireless devices, cluttering-up the wireless spectrum around the 2.4GHz mark, that even with bluetooth’s ’Frequency Hopping’ we’re faced with connection problems sometimes.
In episode 31 of Dan Benjamin’s ‘The Conversation‘, his guest Dave Nanian mentioned the “spousal approval factor”, talking about the long wait times and lack of responsiveness of the old Apple TV when loading content. He said that in moments like this, when you really just want to sit down, press play and have your favourite show start immediately, even the slightest delay becomes a nuisance.
Now imagine having to recouple the bluetooth remote, in order to be able to do anything with the Apple TV (or any other device for that matter).
I can picture any significant other sitting on the couch, folding his/her arms and frowning.
I think Apple feels that inconveniencing customers with wireless-woes in this setting, is worse than forcing them to keep this inconspicuous little black box in the line of sight.
reminiscent of a PADD
The iPhone 4 feels even less like a phone to me than the iPhone 3GS. The latter was already an impressive design, but the iPhone 4’s ‘density’ and finish are of a different class. The first thing that came to my mind when I held it, was that this is what I imagined the smaller PADDs from Star Trek to feel and behave like.
Apple’s stock is rising because Apple seems poised to capture a new market.
He’s dead on, as usual, here’s why:
Thinking along the lines of Ansoff’s ‘Product-Market Growth Matrix’, it depends how you look at it, or rather whom you ask:
From a tech-versed person’s point of view, Apple does product development; a new product in an existing, albeit never seriously worked market. The innovation is mostly software and a bigger screen; two features that, strictly speaking, do not constitute a unique selling proposition. ’Strictly speaking’ because the market is still playing catch-up with the AppStore.
From an ordinary customer’s point of view, the iPad is Apple engaging in diversification (new products in new/untapped markets). Ultimately the iPad stands for a dead-easy to use, client-host based computing solution for the masses, and Apple might’ve just invented the ‘casual computing market’ with it (on the analogy of Nintendo’s ‘casual gaming market’).
The latter is what intelligent analysts expect, why the stock is going up up up, and what competitors have to understand before they can engage in another round of “catch me if you can” with Apple.
The iPhone was a similar phenomenon. Upon release we had a case of product development, but when Apple realised the potential of native applications, it quickly went from product development to diversification.
