Youtube user Thepeterson puts together collections of the major radio hits, movies, video games, and technology of a given year. So why not take a time machine trip to the media landscape of :
1997,
1999, and
2002
posted by The Whelk
on Apr 23, 2013 -
109 comments
The Forces Of The Next 30 Years - SF author and
Mefi's Own Charles Stross talks to students at Olin College about sci-fi, fiction, speculation, the limits of computation, thermodynamics, Moore's Law, the history of travel, employment, automation, free trade, demographics, the developing world, privacy, and climate change in trying to answer the question
What Does The World Of 2043 Look Like? (Youtube 56:43)
posted by The Whelk
on Mar 27, 2013 -
18 comments
In the wake of their grunge-y breakout hit
"Creep" and the success of sophomore record
The Bends, Thom Yorke and the rest of
Radiohead were under pressure to deliver once more.
So they shut themselves away inside the echoing halls of
a secluded 16th century manor and got to work.
What emerged from that crumbling Elizabethan castle fifteen years ago today was a shockingly ambitious masterpiece of progressive rock, a visionary concept album that explored
the "fridge buzz" of modernity -- alienation, social disconnection, existential dread,
the impersonal hum of technology -- through a mosaic of
challenging,
innovative,
eerily beautiful music unlike anything else at the time.
Tentatively called
Ones and Zeroes, then
Your Home May Be at Risk If You Do Not Keep Up Payments, the band finally settled on
OK Computer, an appropriately enigmatic title for this
acclaimed harbinger of millennial angst. For more, you can watch the retrospective
OK Computer: A Classic Album Under Review for a track-by-track rundown, or the unsettling documentary
Meeting People is Easy for a look at how the album's whirlwind tour nearly gave Yorke
a nervous breakdown. Or look inside for more details and cool interpretations of all the tracks -- including
an upcoming MeFi Music Challenge! [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi
on Jun 16, 2012 -
66 comments
We expect even more rapid innovation in the web media platform in the coming year and are focusing our investments in those technologies that are developed and licensed based on open web principles. To that end, we are changing Chrome’s HTML5 <video> support to make it consistent with the codecs already supported by the open Chromium project. Specifically, we are supporting the WebM (VP8) and Theora video codecs, and will consider adding support for other high-quality open codecs in the future. Though H.264 plays an important role in video, as our goal is to enable open innovation, support for the codec will be removed and our resources directed towards completely open codec technologies. - Google's Chrome is will be joining Firefox in
no longer licensing the MPEG-LA H.264 video codec favoured by Apple and Microsoft for use in the HTML5 <video> tag (
previously).
Not everyone is seeing this as a good thing.
posted by Artw
on Jan 13, 2011 -
145 comments
Java 4-Ever (safe for work apart from that one bit) - an amusing language centric film trailer made to promote the Scandinavian
JavaZone conference.
posted by Artw
on Jun 25, 2010 -
25 comments
The
<video tag>, as defined by the HTML5 spec, is an element "used for playing videos or movies". Which
codec those videos or movies are in is currently undefined, with the two contenders being the free open source
Ogg Theora and the proprietary
H.264. With the unveiling of
Internet Explorer 9 both Microsoft and Apple are supporting H.264 in their browsers, and
comparisons of the standards seem to bear out H.264 as the better of the two. However Mozilla have taken a stance against incorporating H264 into Firefox on the grounds that it is
patented and has to be licensed. Arguments are now being made
for and
against Mozilla sticking to its ideals.
John Gruber of Daring Fireball points out that Firefox already supports proprietary formats such as GIF.
Um, perhaps not the best example.
posted by Artw
on Mar 21, 2010 -
140 comments
Enhancing video using photos "Using Photographs to Enhance Videos of a Static Scene" sounds a bit dry, but watch the demo video. Not only are exposures correctable, resolution can be enhanced enough to do a flawless digital zoom in post, and objects can be undetectably changed or removed from shaky handheld video.
This is amazingly cool for video people, but also turns the slippery slope of "Can I trust what I see?" into a gaping chasm.
posted by lothar
on Aug 15, 2008 -
43 comments
Hitler Speaks
Using advanced speech recognition technology, researchers and voice-over actors have been able to put a soundtrack to long-silent video relics of Adolf Hitler:
Eva Braun's infamous home movies filmed at the
Berghof, private filmed meetings between Hitler and various Reich cronies, as well as the last known footage of him taped before an awkward bunch of Hitler Youth at the Reichstag in the final days of the war made famous in
Downfall. Chilling stuff.
Via.
posted by auralcoral
on Mar 22, 2008 -
177 comments
The ultimate in nerdy tattoos? "Jim Mielke's wireless blood-fueled display is a true merging of technology and body art. At the recent Greener Gadgets Design Competition, the engineer demonstrated a subcutaneously implanted touch-screen that operates as a cell phone display, with the potential for 3G video calls that are visible just underneath the skin."
posted by tugena13
on Feb 27, 2008 -
63 comments
The
Digital Freedom Campaign believes that new technologies are essential to the creativity and innovation, and that digital technology enables anyone and everyone to be an artist and an innovator. The DFC is dedicated to defending the rights of artists, innovators, creators and consumers to use lawful technology free of unreasonable government restrictions and without fear of costly lawsuits.
posted by terrapin
on Mar 28, 2007 -
10 comments
Ever since I became a TiVo addict, I've found myself wanting to use its features in real life, wishing I could rewind & replay moments of random comedy & chaos, usually involving my pugs. Soon, thanks the good folks at Deja View, I will be able to, with the help of a
head mounted micro video camera unit that is always on, recording a 30 second buffer of real time, and up to four hours of manually recordable space for once you activate the record button. The scourge of ephemera will be wiped out in our lifetime.
posted by jonson
on Jun 19, 2003 -
13 comments
The Scopitone was a French video jukebox that made its debut in 1960 and was imported into the US in 1964. Although they usually featured high production values, catchy melodies, and lots of gratuitous cheesecake, the singers were often relative unknowns and the music was square even by the standards of the day. Consequently, they never caught on in a big way outside of Europe, and many of the original Scopitone jukeboxes and films were destroyed. Fortunately for us, a few Scopitone enthusiasts have
catalogued the songs,
scanned the advertisements, and even preserved a few Quicktime clips of the original
French and
American Scopitone films.
posted by MrBaliHai
on May 4, 2003 -
9 comments
Lying with video. Researchers at MIT have created videos of people uttering sentences they never said that consistently fool viewers and are accepted by them as real. Once upon a time, it was a lot harder to be false with film, but whether the medium will be in any way trustworthy going forward seems doubtful. What will it mean when you can't even believe your own eyes?
posted by zoopraxiscope
on May 15, 2002 -
17 comments
Survival Research Labs: as covered by KCOP TeeVee in L.A. I like this clip because not only is the contrast between the slick newscaster and exploding, flaming machinery bizarre in and of itself, but there is some great footage of the SRL shows and machinery. Hey, it's summer!
posted by mecran01
on May 9, 2001 -
9 comments
iPix Movies are cool interactive movies, you choose the angle you view while it is playing and you can turn to any angle, up, down, left, right and zoom. This is pretty wild but takes a broadband connection so if you are a dial up user, forget it. I want the little helicopter the camera is on, very cool.
posted by me myself and i
on Apr 13, 2001 -
11 comments
