A Guide to Senior Citizen Usage on Facebook
12:16 pm
ESPN 3D review: college football kickoff
12:00 pm
Engadget has posted an article about the Boise St./Virginia Tech matchup on ESPN 3-D the other night. In particular they describe the trials and travails of getting their 3-D TV setup (including a Mitsubishi 73-inch WD-73838) to watch the game. There was a lot that they had to go through to get ready for the game in advance, including calling Comcast to add the package to their bill, and working around an older cable box that did not support HDMI 1.4. In the end, they were very pleased with how it turned out.
It’s obvious that in 2010 3D is still an early adopter’s product, with exclusive broadcasts and movie deals still ruling the day, but once it spreads out we’d suggest grabbing a pair of glasses and checking out broadcasts in your area — for sports the experience is a worthwhile one. A new TV setup might be a bit pricey, but at a fraction of the cost of lower bowl tickets to a big game and the ability to catch the action from all around the field, we’re already looking forward to a premiere Ohio State/Miami game Saturday afternoon.
Disney, Sony team on 3D, Blu-ray marketing
11:54 am
First Panasonic gets the exclusive rights to bundle Avatar with their big-budget Plasma Viera televisions, now Disney and Sony team up to make Bolt & Alice in Wonderland exclusive to Sony Bravia sets.
U.S. consumers buying select Sony Bravia 3D TVs will get their choice of bundled 3D Blu-rays of the two Disney titles.
Similar bundling arrangements in other markets will follow.
A Disney spokesman said under this exclusive deal, the “Alice in Wonderland” and “Bolt” 3D Blu-ray discs will be available only with the purchase of a Sony product, at least for now.
While I’m sure the studios & television producers are hoping this will help to drive sales of the televisions to all those consumers thirsty for 3D content, I have to argue that in reality it’s doing exactly the opposite. You know how many 3D movies are available right now? 1. And they’re making the next 3 exclusive to certain TV manufacturers.
Bullet? Meet Foot. Say Hi.
via Disney, Sony team on 3D, Blu-ray marketing – Entertainment News, 3D, Media – Variety.
LG PX950 is first 3-D TV to Receive 3-D Certification from THX
11:00 am
LG has announced today that their PX950 series of plasma HDTVs are the first to achieve 3-D Certification from THX. The PX950 will come in two model sizes, 50 inch and 60 inch. The 50″ LG PX950 is expected to be selling for $2,500. Both models are just 1.22 inches (31 mm) slim, and both support 1080p. The 60″ LG PX950 will be selling for $4,200. You can download a PX950 PDF product brief directly from the LG website.
The PX950 continues LG’s history of setting new standards in picture quality. To earn the new THX 3D Display Certification, the PX950 passed more than 400 laboratory tests evaluating left and right eye images for color accuracy, cross-talk, viewing angles and video processing performance. In addition to the first-ever THX 3D Display Certification, the PX950 had to pass THX certification for superior picture quality in 2D, which must be achieved before passing THX 3D certification.
With the push of a button, viewers can select THX 2D or 3D Cinema Modes for pristine 2D and 3D movie experiences from broadcast sources and Blu-ray Discs. The PX950 plasma HDTV recreates the cinematic viewing experience by setting optimum color temperature, luminance and gamma levels.
via : LG Electronics Introduces World’s First 3D TV to Receive 3D Certification from THX
85 Days Of Solar Rotation
8:00 am
Solar images in three different wavelengths in extreme ultraviolet light are combined together to show solar activity over almost three months (June 2 – Aug. 26, 2010). Each wavelength is shown in a different color. The wavelengths are at 211 (red – 2 million degrees), 193 (green – 1.3 million degrees), and 171 Angstroms (blue – 600,000 degrees). The cadence is basically a frame every 45 minutes. The brightest areas are active regions, which have stronger magnetic field than the surrounding area.
credit: NASA
source: http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/potw.php?v=item&id=22
Daily Viz from Visual Loop – 08/09/2010
7:00 am
Today, we start our selection some thousand feet above the ground. First, Flight Global‘s Airline ranking, followed by Simply Flying‘s five steps to successful crisis management for airlines, in the age of social media – as it happened with the Iceland volcano crisis, among others. From Meet The Boss comes a “painful” comparison between CEO salaries and mass layoffs, and designer Ciaran Hughes shows us some Premier League financial stats – and its big money. The last piece for today goes to the beautiful design made by Thumb on who’s got the worst urban sprawl.
Infographics Summary for 2010-09-08
10:30 pm
Screening of rare 3-D films at AMPAS’ Linwood Dunn Theater
4:00 pm
Over the past year we have had a glut of 3-D films thrown at the consumer. Avatar was by far the best 3-D film of the bunch. Unfortunately, there have been many films that have been outright bad and that hinders that adoption of 3-D. This is not the first time that 3-D has been tried. I unfortunately remember going to see Jaws 3-D at the movie theater. However, long before that, photographers and film makers were experimenting and showing 3-D pictures and films. Serge Bromberg is a film preservationist who is showing movies that were in 3-D as early as 1900. My favorite quote is this:
In the 1980s, engineers discovered a way to do stereoscopic 3-D with one projector. “Basically the idea was that you would cut the normal frame in two, the right eye would be up and the left eye down. Basically you could use a standard projector. Then you had such films as ‘Friday the 13th, Part 265.’ After a while, the novelty wore off and the films were stupid.”
via Screening of rare 3-D films at AMPAS’ Linwood Dunn Theater – latimes.com.
Tracking firefly trails in the forest
3:30 pm
One of my favorite websites to visit, FlowingData, has posted a piece on Kristian Cvecek tracking firefly trails in the forest.
Physicist Kristian Cvecek hangs out in the forest sometimes to take these beautiful pictures of firefly trails, using slow shutter speeds on his camera. Even better than the long exposure shot of a Roomba.
via : Tracking firefly trails in the forest
via : If you glow down to the woods today… the moment fireflies turn woods into an enchanted forest
New Hubble Observations of Supernova 1987A Trace Shock Wave
3:00 pm
This image shows the entire region around supernova 1987A. The most prominent feature in the image is a ring with dozens of bright spots. A shock wave of material unleashed by the stellar blast is slamming into regions along the ring’s inner regions, heating them up, and causing them to glow. The ring, about a light-year across, was probably shed by the star about 20,000 years before it exploded.
An international team of astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope reports a significant brightening of the emissions from Supernova 1987A. The results, which appear in this week’s Science magazine, are consistent with theoretical predictions about how supernovae interact with their immediate galactic environment.
The team observed the supernova remnant in optical, ultraviolet, and near-infrared light. They studied the interaction between the ejecta from the stellar explosion and a glowing 6-trillion-mile-diameter ring of gas encircling the supernova remnant. The gas ring was probably shed some 20,000 years before the supernova exploded. Shock waves resulting from the impact of the ejecta onto the ring have brightened 30 to 40 pearl-like “hot spots” in the ring. These blobs likely will grow and merge together in the coming years to form a continuous, glowing circle.
“We are seeing the effect a supernova can have in the surrounding galaxy, including how the energy deposited by these stellar explosions changes the dynamics and chemistry of the environment,” said University of Colorado at Boulder Research Associate Kevin France of the Center for Astrophysics and Space Astronomy. “We can use these new data to understand how supernova processes regulate the evolution of galaxies.”
Discovered in 1987, Supernova 1987A is the closest exploding star to Earth to be detected since 1604 and it resides in the nearby Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy adjacent to our own Milky Way Galaxy.
Credit: NASA, ESA, K. France (University of Colorado, Boulder), and P. Challis and R. Kirshner (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics)
via : New Hubble Observations of Supernova 1987A Trace Shock Wave
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