Today ATI has announced their newest product, “Eyefinity”. Get a new ATI Radeon DirectX-11 compliant card and you’ll have the ability to hook it to 6 ultra-high definition displays in a 3×2 matrix.
ATI Eyefinity technology brings AMD closer to delivering true eye-definition experiences, where the display of a virtual environment is so detailed that it seems optically real to the human eye. Using ATI Eyefinity technology in a single PC, it is now possible to power displays with a combined theoretical resolution of 268 megapixels, roughly equivalent to the resolution of a 90 degree arc of what the human eye sees.
They’re working closely with Samsung to make special ultra-thin bezel LCD displays to work with it, and they have a pretty impressive demonstration video of the system running Tom Clancy’s “HAWX” at 5760×2400 resolution across the six monitors. See the video after the break.
The Washington Post has compiled President Obama’s personal schedule into an interesting infographic showing where he spends most of his time. No surprise to see the largest blocks on Foreign Policy and the Economy, but you can dig deeper and see which months he spends, how many other people were involved, and more.
Every day President Obama meets with key members of his administration, Congress, foreign dignitaries, interest groups and regular citizens. Use our interactive database to track how Obama is spending his time, what issues are getting the most attention and who is influencing the debate.
They plan to continue to update the chart as the term progresses.
It’s a few days later than originally announced, but Pixologic came through and has just announced that ZBrush 3.5 for Windows is now available. A short list of just a few things you have to look forward to:
ZSpheres 2 and ZSketch
Surface noise
Brush noise
Improved LazyMouse with Backtrack and Snap to Track modes
New brushes such as Trim, Planar, Noise, Move, Spherical, Slide, Form, Flakes, Crumple and more
New Brush Depth Masking to give complete brush control on a surface
New MatCap materials for ZSpheres 2/ZSketch mode
Gradient PolyPaint
and much much more
It’s a free upgrade for existing ZBrush users, so go get it now!
Visualizing the Web has been a long-running idea for several individuals and groups, but now OneRiot has decided to put some money behind finding a usable solution.
OneRiot is offering $1,500 to the organization or individual who can deliver the most compelling data visualization of the realtime web. Using OneRiot’s API, participants should seek to creatively and captivatingly communicate the information offered within, allowing viewers to visually experience the (currently) invisible travels of realtime data.
They are careful to claim that the prize will only go to original solutions, so pointers to pre-existing solutions will have the chance to “Win” but not receive any prize. Know of any contenders?
NVidia has released a new Quadro & CUDA product, the Quadro Digital Video Pipeline (DVP), which using the massive potential of CUDA processing for real-time video effects and processing. In particular, the uses for “virtual studios” are staggering:
“The advanced capabilities of the Quadro Digital Video Pipeline mean for the first time a single workstation can process live feeds from four simultaneous HD cameras, dramatically reducing the cost of virtual studio solutions,” said Steve Hart, development director at RT Software, a London-based supplier of high quality real-time 3D solutions used by international broadcasters. “With this solution we see enormous advantages by using the GPU for chroma-keying and applying color correction. The real-time performance enables on-screen talent to interact with the virtual set environment more naturally, without the annoying, distracting lags of other systems.”
The hardware has a pricetag somewhere between $5k and $8k, making it one of the most affordable solutions I’ve ever seen. Read the full press release after the break.
A new whitepaper is available from NVidia Intel and Dr Dobbs Journal detailing some of the neat tricks you can do with GPU rasterization on the new Larrabee hardware.
Download the recent Dr. Dobb’s article titled “Rasterization on Larrabee: Adaptive rasterization helps boost efficiency” and get a behind-the-scenes look at how this multi-threaded, vectorized, many-core processor can significantly accelerate software rasterization capabilities in game development. After all, better performance is the name of the game.
It has a great sense of humor as well, starting with the opening paragraph:
You don’t tug on Superman’s cape
You don’t spit into the wind
You don’t pull the mask off that old Lone Ranger
And you don’t mess around with Jim
The first time you heard the chorus of “You Don’t Mess Around with Jim,” you no doubt immediately wondered why Jim Croce left out “And you don’t rasterize in software if you’re trying to do GPU-class graphics, even on a high-performance part such as Larrabee.” That’s just common sense, right? It was obvious to me, anyway, that Larrabee was going to need a hardware rasterizer. But maybe Jim knew something I didn’t, because it turned out I was wrong, and therein lies a tale.
The Pixelmator Team has just released the latest version of their amazing image editing product for the Mac, Pixelmator 1.5. Big features in this version are features for Web image editing.
The new Web tools in Pixelmator allow users to prepare and export images for the Web with minimal effort, whether it is an individual image or a complex page layout. Images can be optimized and saved in Web-standard JPEG, PNG, or GIF file formats with different quality settings.
The new powerful Slice tool in Pixelmator can be used to slice an image into pieces, allowing each piece of an image to be optimized and saved using its own optimization settings. Saving an optimized part of an image is as easy as dragging and dropping it onto the desktop. The file size and preview of optimized slices or images are available in nearly real-time in the Pixelmator window.
It’s a free update for existing Pixelmator owners, and available for everyone else for $59.
Musical group “They Might Be Giants” has a new album ready and Boing Boing managed to get a sneak peek at the video for one song “Meet the Elements”. It’s a fun collection of infographics related to atomic compositions and properties, all synced to a catchy tune.
Boing Boing Video proudly debuts “Meet The Elements,” a new animated music video from They Might Be Giants. This animated, upbeat ode to the periodic table of elements and how they form our world, appears on the new TMBG kids’ album “Here Comes Science.” Video directed by Feel Good Anyway.
At the Edward Tufte Lecture Tour stop that Maitri Erwin attended, and kindly wrote up for us here, she received four of his most popular books on data visualization and infographics (included in the registration cost). For your reference, the four books were:
Stamen Design is the talk of the geospatial design world. Each offering is smart: minimalist yet visually pleasing, multi-variate and ready for analysis. Flowing Data, no stranger to fine infographics themselves, recently featured Stamen’s California Stimulus Funding Map with high praise: “It’s slick as hell.” This is what good information design gets you. And, as far as academic memory serves, the revolution in modern information design started with a man named Edward Tufte.
Tufte, or ET as he prefers it, possesses an invaluable combination of talents that he draws from and to our collective benefit as visualization workers: an eye for art, thorough knowledge of content, design prowess, discipline, a desire to share and the energy for successive public speaking engagements in which he preaches his gospel. I met up with ET after one such lecture in Cincinnati on August 25th, at which time he was kind enough to participate in an audio interview that sits at the end of this post.
Read the rest of Maitri’s article & hear the interview after the break.
Today ATI has announced their newest product, “Eyefinity”. Get a new ATI Radeon DirectX-11 compliant card and you’ll have the ability to hook it to 6 ultra-high definition displays in a 3×2 matrix.
The Washington Post has compiled President Obama’s personal schedule into an interesting infographic showing where he spends most of his time. No surprise to see the largest blocks on Foreign Policy and the Economy, but you can dig deeper and see which months he spends, how many other people were involved, and more.
It’s a few days later than originally announced, but Pixologic came through and has just announced that ZBrush 3.5 for Windows is now available. A short list of just a few things you have to look forward to:
Visualizing the Web has been a long-running idea for several individuals and groups, but now OneRiot has decided to put some money behind finding a usable solution.
A new whitepaper is available from 
The Pixelmator Team has just released the latest version of their amazing image editing product for the Mac, Pixelmator 1.5. Big features in this version are features for Web image editing.
Musical group “They Might Be Giants” has a new album ready and Boing Boing managed to get a sneak peek at the video for one song “Meet the Elements”. It’s a fun collection of infographics related to atomic compositions and properties, all synced to a catchy tune.
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Stamen Design
VizWorld.com 
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