Digital Buzzard

The 2009 E3 is currently underway at the LA Convention Center. It’s the ultimate yearly showcase for gaming companies and an exciting time for your average gamer. Following months of speculation, leaks and fanboy baiting, the world waits with baited breath for the next big announcement from the Big Three: Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo.

When the Wii launched in 2006, Nintendo changed the game. The Wii-mote was a revolution in gaming – Sony and Microsoft couldn’t compete in terms of interaction with their devices, despite the significant advantage in processing power of the 360 and PS3.

Now both companies have had time to reflect (and drop several million into R&D), and they’ve come to E3 with their own take on motion sensing controllers, whilst Nintendo has launched their own ‘upgrade’ to the existing Wii-mote. Here’s what each company wants you to spend your hard-earned cash on in the next 12 months.

Xbox 360

Microsoft has gone all out with their innovation – Project Natal is a 9-inch horizontal bar, consisting of an “RGB camera, depth sensor, multi-array microphone, and custom processor running proprietary software”. This accessory provides full-body motion capture, facial and voice recognition, allowing full immersion within a game, and removing the need for a controller or buttons. Microsoft supported the announcement with a promotional video, demonstrating the potential of this device.

PS3

Since the launch of Sony’s black behemoth, they’ve consistently lagged behind Nintendo and Microsoft with their controllers. Force feedback was missing from the console until last year, and the 360’s ergonomic controller takes the usability crown that the PS2 had held for many years. OK, so the Six-axis did provide a level of motion sensing, but it’s underused and inaccurate. If you’ve ever used the motion control features of games such as Warhawk or Wipeout HD, then you’ll know to keep it turned off in future and rely on traditional input.

The new controller from Sony (as yet unnamed) is essentially a stick with a glowing ball on the end. The ‘stick’ contains motion and orientation sensing devices (like the Wii-mote) and the ‘ball’ is recognized by the PS3 Eye to add an additional level of accuracy.

The result is a sub-millimeter accurate device, with the added bonus of augmented-reality style overlays on the screen. They enlisted the help two uncomfortable-looking, but clearly excited developers to show the device in action at their E3 presentation.

Wii

Nintendo really didn’t pull anything out of the bag this year. Their already-announced MotionPlus sensor, which adds additional sensitivity to the Wiimote, was paraded again, but it’s far from the revolution of the original controller.

Their other new product was the Wii ‘Vitality’ – a heart rate monitor. Ok… it’s a nice idea with some interesting gaming potential, but it’s hardly the level of innovation we’d expect from Nintendo. It seems like yet another attempt to sell us a peripheral that will be supported by three games before everyone else loses interest.

In Summary…

I think we can say quite definitely that Nintendo’s innovations were disappointing. They get some points for being first with motion controllers, 3 years ago, but they clearly need to step up their game now. The Wii is massively underpowered compared to its competition, and it’s shortcomings are beginning to show, despite continually huge sales.

Microsoft have an adventurous project on their roadmap. The success of the Natal is entirely dependent on the accuracy of this device – it’s making a brave promise, but relies on a technology that is traditionally difficult technology to master. Don’t forget Hollywood motion capture still requires actors to cover themselves in ping pong balls.

Sony’s ball and Stick is certainly interesting – and promises to be the most accurate of the three. Their tech demo was impressive and has no doubt got people’s attention. They have more economic challenges ahead of them though – gamers will have to buy both the PS3 Eye and a new controller – I can’t imagine that it’s going to be cheap, especially given some of the applications demoed required two of the controllers.

There’s definitely some exciting times ahead for gamers, and I’m looking forward to seeing what games developers can do with the technology. Ultimately, it will come down to one thing: the innovation of the developers and the games they create using these new technologes will ultimately decide who wins this latest stage of the console war.

Google dominates the search engine market. No question about it. It’s the default homepage of billions of browsers, and the first stop for many internet users across the globe. Last week, I was invited to a sneak preview of something that may challenge that, or at least offer a service that Google is only just starting to explore.

Wolfram Alpha is not a search engine. Those were the first words of Gary Price, as we started on a tour of the ‘Computational Answer Engine’. No, instead, Wolfram Alpha analyses the structure of any question asked of it, and provides a response calculated from verified data. It has 20 trillion pieces of data available to it, collected over 2 years by 100 PHD-level participants. The data comes from a huge variety of sources: government census; commercial enterprises and organisations across the globe.

The project comes from the mind of Stephen Wolfram, founder of the Center for Complex Systems Research at the University of Illinois where he developed Mathematica, a “computational software program used in scientific, engineering, and mathematical fields”.

So, how does it work?

When asked “How much fuel does American Airlines use per day?”, Wolfram comes back with the exact answer, plus a collection of useful related data, charts and appropriate references. You can expand the question by adding additional parameters, such as “in US$” and the engine provides the calculated cost of that fuel in dollars, along with other currencies at the current exchange rate.

Typing in a name, such as “Russell” brings back data on the popularity of the name with global census data. The query “Brother’s Father’s Mother’s Sister” returns the answer (Great Aunt, if you were wondering) along with a handy tree diagram to illustrate the relationships.

There are obvious limitations to this system – searches on pop culture, non-celebrities or breaking news may not bring back relevant results, and the system may have trouble understanding your question, if not asked in the right way. But then, Wolfram isn’t trying to answer those sorts of questions – it’s not emulating Google, it’s providing a different sort of search – a more intelligent search with data you can really trust.

Last week, the developers accidentally left the engine exposed for 4 hours. In that time, they registered 3,000 unique visitors and 18,000 searches. They had a 72% answer success rate. 80% of the failures were determined to be vanity searches (i.e. people searching for their own names, and unsurprisingly finding no results).

During my 30 minute webinar, Gary discussed their plans for monetizing: sponsored data/targeted ads; the ability to purchase processing time for more complex queries (“The engine could be used for medical calculations – cancer research, for example”); and an exnterprise model, where companies and organisations can plug their own data into the engine.

Wolfram officially launches on May 18th, so we’ll soon see how it stands up to the myriad of questions web users will undoubtedly throw at it.

To the left right of this post you’ll see my twitter feed – a stream of consciousness contained within 140 characters or less. I highly doubt there’s a connected person on the planet who hasn’t heard of twitter, especially considering the recent explosion in coverage on television, news mentions and the bloke who sits opposite who keeps telling you about his recent tweets and how @StephenFry once sent him a reply.

I’ve found that I gone through several phases of my twitter-use since signup:

1. Frequent tweeting, obsessive checking of my feed and @replies
2. Searching for ‘celebs’, adding them, and anyone else vaguely interesting
3. Trying out several desktop/iPhone clients, running 2 or three consecutively before settling on one.
4. Realisation that I can’t read the tweets of the 90+ people I’m following, and more importantly realising that I don’t want to
5. Frequency of tweeting drops off significantly, interest wanes
6. Unfollow the unknowns, the uninteresting and the silent twitterers
7. Start approaching a good balance of followers/tweets and begin to enjoy and use the service.
8. Blog about the above

I must admit that I’m fascinated by the mainstream coverage – the related vocabulary that is entering the public conciousness and the fact that @Oprah’s joining resulted in a 43% traffic increase. I knew she was big in the US, but that’s some power – if only twitter was selling ads against her pageviews.

Now to try the Tweetie desktop client: haven’t been able to sign in yet, but I see they’ve released a 0.1 update, so I’ll give it another go…

It wouldn’t be provocative to suggest that the Internet and technology has changed the way we live our lives, particularly with regards to our consumption of music, film and other media.

Hollywood has embraced the web as a powerful marketing tool – Youtube streams thousands of trailers for blockbuster movies, and there are countless sites providing reviews, previews and insider information. Digital distribution is still in its infancy, whilst marketing activity is mainly focused on aging distribution models – Cinema and DVD.

Meanwhile, consumer tastes and in-home entertainment systems are evolving at a faster rate. High-speed optical-fibre broadband and affordable HD capable televisions mean that consumers can often get a better experience at home – avoiding cinema queues, expensive soft drinks and uncomfortable chairs. However, the legitimate services that cater to these consumers cannot keep up with piracy via torrent sites, where the latest Oscar winning movie can be found in pixel-sharp hi-definition, months before theatrical release, and downloaded in minutes.

Fortunately, there is a silent uprising of independent filmmakers who are bucking the trend. They eschew traditional fundraising methods, avoid expensive marketing campaigns in favour of cheap, clever virals, and most importantly, distribute their work online for free.

‘Elephant’s Dream’ is a fantastic example of ‘Open Source Film‘ – this animated short, released in May 2006, was created entirely using free animation software – primarily Blender. The films budget of €125,000 was largely raised by selling pre-orders of the DVD version – in exchange, purchasers received a credit in the film.

Bowie State University donated the power of their supercomputer cluster to render the 10 minute short, which once complete, was released under the Creative Commons attribution license and was available for free download (in HD) via BitTorrent and from the group’s own website.

Equally, Casey Walker’s unique approach to funding his film is to sell it: frame by frame. Visitors to his website, www.mymilliondollarmovie.com, have the opportunity to buy a frame for $10. Each contributer will be rewarded with a ‘assistant producer’ credit in the finished film. Kevin Smith, director of ‘Chasing Amy’ and ‘Mallrats‘, has shown his support by purchasing 6 frames himself.

Interestingly enough, Casey was inspired by TheMillionDollarHomepage.com, mentioned in my last post on this blog. So far the site has sold over 23,000 frames, since its creation in October 2007.

Its not just independent, low-budget filmmakers who are adopting these innovative approaches: Michael Moore, the controversial director of ‘Bowling For Columbine‘ and ‘Fahrenheit 9/11‘, made his latest film, ‘Slacker Uprising‘,  available for free on the internet, although only in the US and Canada. Truth is, there’s little anyone could do to prevent the rest of the world grabbing a copy, and the film quickly found its way onto BitTorrent as well. This was a brave move, considering ‘Fahrenheit 9/11′ took over $220m in theaters worldwide.

The reality is that Hollywood isn’t going to start giving their films away for free, but it is not unimaginable that we could see an increasingly dramatic shift towards digital distribution. Consumers have shown that they’re willing to pay, and others have proven the distribution methods can work (and are far cheaper than printing wasteful plastic discs). Cinemas may still have the edge over the average living room, but that’s changing too. Let’s hope the studios listen to the rising chorus of demand from their audiences.

At the end of last year, outgoing US President, George W Bush, narrowly missed being hit by a well-aimed shoe, thrown by a disgruntled Iraqi journalist. The world gasped and then sighed collectively, as George’s swift dodge prevented a deserved black eye. Nevertheless, within record time we were able to take our own shots at the retarded cowboy through the magic of the internet and a fantastic flash game. SockandAwe.com was born, and 87 million pieces of footwear have been launched since.

This great example of viral advertising was linked to Popjam.com – the latest venture from Alex Tew, who a few years ago created The Million Dollar Homepage and took home a considerable bounty from an innovative approach to selling advertising. He was also quick to realise the shoe-chucking event would eventually fade from memory, and sold the domain via eBay – a shrewd move netting him a quick £5000.

Popjam (currently in beta) is where social networking meets funny email-forwards. Users share amusing images, videos and links and award each other ‘LOLs’ to show their appreciation. Its the light-hearted side of the internet and a gift to procrastinators everywhere.

Fool

It’s ‘quick-hit’ style takes a leaf from the twitter’s book, and rewards our dwindling attention spans with bite-size chunks of humour, with user ratings filtering the wheat from the chaff.

As the site grows, I’d hope to see more user-generated content and unique material – currently the content is gathered from various corners of the internet and has often been seen before – 4chan and b3ta have a lot to answer for. Nevertheless, a promising start from a British startup in a crowded market – the simple approach is attractive and users will no doubt compete to increase the points they earn for submitting poppular content, with the ultimate aim of becoming a ‘Popjam Ninja’.