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Week
of Oct 26 1998
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Oct
30
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QuickTime VR Authoring Studio
version 1.0.1 is free and includes a
number of minor fixes.
<www.apple.com
update page "QuickTime
VR Authoring Studio
1.0.1">
Issue 1 of Digital Puppet magazine,
which covers creating digital movies using
software such as Poser, is available for
download in PDF format.
<www.jps.net/puppet/>
The 3D Animation Workshop at
Webreference is an interesting
collection of articles and how-to's about
3D technologies. Definitely worth taking a
look. Some recent articles look at VRML,
Platinum's purchase of CosmoSoftware, a
review of the modeler Nendo, and other fun
things.
<www.webreference.com
web page "3D
Animation
Workshop">
VideoScript Inc. has updated
VideoScript to version 1.2.
Features include:
- Improved
user interface, editor scripting and
tabbing support.
- A
Language Reference Manual in PDF
format.
- Automatic
Execution at startup.
- The
find function up to 1000%
faster.
- Accurate
color matching.
VideoScript
1.2 is available as a free upgrade.
<www.videoscript.com>
   
EmediaWeekly has a review of
PageMill 3.0 for the Mac (though
PageMill 3.0 for Windows is essentially
the same. The review finds that while
PageMill 3 does not support DHTML and
cascading style sheet specifications,
"PageMill 3 is an elegantly constructed
Web page design tool that offers most of
the features most users will need most of
the time."
<www.emediaweekly.com
review "PageMill
3.0 for Mac grinds out Web
sites">
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Oct
29
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Sony says it will post a
loss for the first time in six
years in the second half of the business
year ending next March. Sony blamed the
strong yen and problems in Asia for it's
woes.
SanDisk has introduced the
USB version of its ImageMate
CompactFlash reader/writer external
drive for PC and iMAC desktop computers.
The ImageMate, previously only available
with parallel port connectivity, allows
digital camera owners to transfer images
from CompactFlash digital film cards to a
desktop computer. Transfer rate is at
least 20 times faster than by employing
the serial port on the camera. Images on a
10MB CF card can be transferred to a
desktop computer in less than 20 seconds.
Both parallel port and USB version of the
ImageMate have an MSRP of $89.
<www.sandisk.com>
Narrative Communications and
IBM have entered into a technology
licensing and marketing agreement. Enliven
will integrate IBM HotMedia
Java-based authoring tools with
Narrative's Enliven 3.0 Web
advertising campaign measurement,
reporting, and transactional capabilities.
The
Enliven with HotMedia service offering
will create a new type of online ad that
gives viewers control over what they see
in an advertising image. Viewers will be
able to pan, scroll, and zoom in on the
plug-in-free imagesm. The persistent
caching capabilities of Enliven 3.0
(viewers download the Enliven applet once
with no wait for consequent Enliven ads)
and the lightweight HotMedia Java applet
minimize download times to promote greater
interactivity from browsers.
A
complementary feature of Enliven 3.0,
Enliven Expand, will provide more ad space
for special effects capabilities. Enliven
Expand enables users to dynamically expand
the size of an ad on a Web page with an ad
click or mouse hover, giving content
developers much more space for more
immersive creative.
<www.narrative.com>
Harris Corporation issued a press
release saying that they, along with
Lucent Digital Video, have
completed the broadcast industry's first
tests of how high definition television
(HDTV) receivers accept over-the-air
signals generated by a digital television
(DTV) encoding system. The device tested
was...the Harris FlexiCoder. The
press release didn't actually say what the
results were -- we can only assume they
were a success
Earlier
this year, Harris and Lucent formed a
strategic partnership to bring FlexiCoder,
a MPEG-2 encoding system, to market.
FlexiCoder has already been delivered to
more than half of all U.S. television
stations currently offering locally
encoded service.
To
date, HDTV receivers from Mutsubishi,
Panasonic, Philips, Samsung, Sharp,
Thomson and Zenith have passed
interoperability tests with the Harris
FlexiCoder. Receivers from additional
manufacturers are currently being tested
or scheduled for testing.
Lucent
won a Emmy Award in 1997 for its
pioneering work in DTV as a member of the
HDTV Grand Alliance. The company, which
contributed to the original MPEG-2
specification, also built the world's
first MPEG-2 and digital HDTV
encoders.
<www.harris.com/communications>
Live Picture and the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration
(NASA) are working together to determine
how NASA's space exploration and Earth
observation programs could benefit from
Live Picture Zoom images.
"NASA
gathers an immense amount of visual
information each day, and finding a way to
manage, analyze and share that data has
been an important challenge for NASA Ames
Research Center," said Dr. Ken Ford,
Associate Center Director for Information
Technology, NASA Ames Research Center.
<www.livepicture.com>
Live Picture, along with Intel
Corp., iXL, Oracle Corp., Sun
Microsystems, Mecklermedia's Internet
World Weekly, INTERSHOP, and UMAX are
offering a nationwide seminar
series showcasing new technologies
available today for building effective
interactive Web storefronts. The seminar
will feature an overview of new solutions
built around Live Picture's Zoom
image software for e-commerce.
The
free seminars will be hosted from 9 a.m.
to 11:30 a.m. in the following cities:
Washington DC on Nov. 4, Atlanta on Nov.
6, Chicago on Nov. 10, Dallas on Nov. 12,
Los Angeles on Nov. 16, San Francisco on
Nov. 20, New York City on Dec. 1, and
Boston on Dec. 2.
Attendees
can register online or by calling
877-424-2832
<www.livepicture.com>
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Oct
28
|
A federal judge has rejected the
Recording Industry Association of
America's (RIAA) request to stop
shipment of Diamond Multimedia's Rio
PMP300. The Rio plays compressed sound
that can be downloaded from the Internet,
and RIAA believes that it violates the
American Home Recording Act
<www.diamondmm.com>
Navigator 5.0 will include the
company's new NGLayout rendering
engine. According to Netscape, NGLayout
will be 100 percent compliant with the
Document Object Model (DOM) and Cascading
Style Sheets (CSS) level 1, and will also
support features of the CSS level 2
standard.
CSS
provides Web developers with precise
control over the appearance of many pages
at once. The DOM lets developers use
scripting languages, such as JavaScript,
to manipulate text, images and other parts
of Web pages; for instance, dynamically
changing their appearance over time, or
moving them around inside the browser
window.
The
Web Standards Project, says that
Netscape's agreement to include software
in its next generation Web browser would
make Netscape the leader in Web Standards
Support. In September, WSP launched a
public campaign urging Netscape to include
NGLayout, currently under development,
after Netscape officials said it wouldn't
be included in Navigator 5.0.
More
information about Mozilla.org's plans to
switch its development efforts to NGLayout
are available below.
<www.mozilla.org/roadmap.html>
<www.webstandards.org>
International Data Corporation
predicts mass market acceptance of
Digital TV is years away, despite
42 U.S. TV stations transmitting the first
digital broadcasts on November 1. Consumer
confusion, incomplete infrastructure,
hardware costs, and technical questions
will prevent Digital TV - particularly
High Definition Television (HDTV) - from
growing as quickly as many have predicted,
according to a comprehensive Digital TV
study conducted by IDC.
IDC
forecasts that the installed base of HDTV
sets and compatible converter boxes will
expand to over 13 million units by the end
of 2002, then explode to 138 million units
by the end of 2007. In the near term, a
large installed base of analog TVs,
concern over supported digital formats,
and near term set costs will keep true
HDTV set volumes low. However, lower cost
Standard Definition TV (SDTV) sets and set
top converter boxes will provide users
with more affordable options. While not
displaying HDTV in all its glory, these
lower cost alternatives will enable users
to receive digital signals and in most
cases yield improvements over analog.
The
report, Review & Forecast of the U.S.
Digital Television Market 1997 - 2002,
includes analysis of Digital Cable
Television, HDTV, Digital Broadcast
Satellite, C-Band, Satellite Master
Antenna Television (SMATV), and Wireless
Cable. It is available for purchase by
contacting Janis Dempsey at 508-935-4145
or at jdempsey@idc.com.
<www.idc.com>
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Oct
27
|
FlashPoint Technology announced
last week that Epson will ship the
first digital photo printer based
on Digita, the software operating
environment FlashPoint developed for
digital still cameras.
The
Epson PT-100 printer will be able to
connect to cameras using a wide variety of
interface options, including CompactFlash,
SmartMedia and full-size PCMCIA cards.
Digita also makes the printer compatible
with virtually all image file formats,
including JPEG and EXIF. The 1440 x 720
dpi PT-100 will allow photographers to
preformat their images and apply
intelligent templates and filters directly
to their pictures.
Initial
product availability in Japan is scheduled
for December 1998.
<www.flashpnt.com>
FlashPoint Technology, Kodak, Minolta,
SanDisk and Digital Camera Magazine have
launched the Digita Photo Adventure
Contest to encourage photo enthusiasts to
customize their digital cameras using the
Digita operating environment and Digita
Script programming tools.
Digita
is incorporated into new cameras from
Kodak and Minolta and features an
open-architecture and text-based scripting
language - Digita Script - which serves as
the foundation for personalizing and
customizing digital cameras. Using the
Digita Script programming language and a
text editor - like Windows Notepad -
software developers and users can create
customized applets.
Users
can enter their Digita Script programs
into the Digita Photo Adventure via the
web for a chance to win the $2,500 Grand
Prize trip to Hawaii, Mexico or the
Caribbean.
<www.flashpnt.com>
Adobe has several monthly email
lists that enable you to receive new
technical documents or updates for their
programs, including PhotoShop and
Premiere.
<www.adobe.com
web page "Mailing
lists">
Canopus Corporation this month
introduced DVRaptor, a DV editing
card that provides hardware overlay,
full-screen, full-motion video preview and
seamless batch capture. DVRaptor is a DV
and i.LINK PCI card with a software DV
CODEC. DVRaptor can capture up to 180
minutes of video into one .AVI file,
overcoming the 2GB file limit of .AVI.
DVRaptor
will be available November 2nd for a
suggested retail price of $649 and
includes Canopus Raptor Video and Raptor
Navigator software, and a full version of
Ulead MediaStudio Pro 5.0. System
requirements include a Pentium 200 MMX or
above, Windows 95, 98 or NT, 32MB RAM, a
video rated hard drive, and a VGA card
that supports hardware DirectDraw
overlay.
<www.canopuscorp.com>
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Oct
26
|
Microsoft has released a beta
version of Microsoft Media Player
for the Mac OS, which supports
audio and video files in the Windows Media
format. This includes Microsoft's ASF
(Advanced Streaming Format), and codecs
for MPEG-3, MPEG-4 Versions 1 and 2, and
Voxware's voice encoding technology.
<www.microsoft.com>
Kaidan has announced the
Meridian Turntable (MT-84): A Large
Immersive Imaging Object Turntable. The
MT-84 is their largest computer-controlled
motorized turntable, with a diameter of 84
inches (7 feet) and it can support objects
up to 1000 pounds in weight. It is
controlled with Kaidan's eMCee software
and with third-party applications such as
Apple's QuickTime VR Authoring Studio,
Roundabout Logic's Widgetizer and
VRToolBox1 VR ObjectWorx. The Macintosh
version (available now) also supports
AppleEvents (direct QuickTime VR Authoring
Studio connection) and is AppleScriptable.
The Windows version is currently under
development and will be available
Q1-1999.
The
turntable breaks down into 4 quadrants for
transport and comes with the choice of
Apple QTVR Authoring Studio or Live
Picture Reality Studio. SRP
$19,999.95.
<www.kaidan.com>
MacDCS is a Macintosh application,
developed by Kaidan working in
conjunction with Kodak, that is used to
remotely trigger and then download images
from a Kodak DCS digital camera to
the hard disk of a Macintosh. While anyone
can use this utility to remotely control a
tethered (SCSI,FireWire, etc) DCS camera
from their Macintosh, the primary use will
be to employ DCS cameras for Immersive
Imaging photography.
MacDCS
works in tandem with Kaidan's eMCee
control software so the motion of the
turntable or object rig can be tied to the
image capture process. MacDCS requires a
PowerPC-equipped Macintosh and uses 12MB
of RAM. Cabling requirements (i.e. SCSI,
FireWire, and USB) vary according to the
various models of DCS cameras.
<www.kaidan.com>
Kodak has released betas of USB
software drivers for the DC220
& DC260 for the Apple iMac.
The Digita Desktop Acquire module was
developed by Flashpoint Technology Inc.,
makers of the DIGITA Operating Environment
used by the KODAK DC220 and DC260 Zoom
Cameras. The current beta of the Digita
Desktop Acquire Module will only run on
iMacs using MacOS 8.5.
According
to the download page, the software has
been tested with "software products from
ADOBE Systems Inc., such as PHOTODELUXE
and PAGEMILL Software...but has not been
tested for use with other
software"
The
best news is that the final version,
scheduled for late November, will
extend serial cable connectivity to
most, older Macintosh computers and
will provide USB support through PCI
add-in cards.
<www.kodak.com
driver page "KODAK
DC220 &
DC260">
Painter3D 1.01 patch has been
released by MetaCreations.
<www.metacreations.com
web page "Downloads">
GRAPHICS
Propeller Paint Engine 1.0, a
painting plug-in for Adobe Photoshop from
Nowhouse is available now for Power Mac
machines. (A Windows version is scheduled
to be released in 3 to 4 weeks.) The
product can be purchased online for
US$59.95 directly from their website.
<www.nowhouse.com>
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