Posts Tagged ‘Feature’

Feature: Ars reviews the Motorola Droid X

Posted on July 22nd, 2010 • Filed under mediarosa • No Comments

Motorola’s Droid X is an impressive new contender in the emerging category of large form-factor touchscreen smartphones. The device’s high-end hardware specifications and massive 4-inch touchscreen set it apart from the rest of Motorola’s current product lineup. Although the Android-based device has much in common with HTC’s recently launched EVO 4G, the Droid X succeeds where the EVO fell short—by matching an excellent feature set with all-day battery life.

The Droid X comes with a new iteration of Motorola’s custom Android environment, which offers tightly integrated social networking functionality. It has outstanding power management features and the best support for messaging that we have ever seen on an Android handset—characteristics that make up for the rough edges that are present elsewhere in the user experience.

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Feature: Gnomon School of Visual Effects: training the next generation of effects artists

Posted on July 7th, 2010 • Filed under mediarosa • No Comments

The Gnomon School of Visual Effects was launched on the premise that those who are actively working in the special effects industry would be in the best position to train others working in the industry, and a classroom setting where pros teach other pros would be the best way to bring about a grand sharing of techniques and ideas. Soon after the school opened for admission, however, it turned out that most of the applications were from folks who wanted to get into the industry—not people who were already in the business and looking to learn new skills. Furthermore, many students entered wanting to work in the world of video games, rather than television or movies. But if you’d like to do any of these things, there are few places better suited to build your skills and find a job.

I was invited to tour the school during my time in Los Angeles for E3, and I jumped at the chance to check out where the people who make games are trained. My tour guide was Alex Alvarez, the Gnomon’s founder and director. I said that I could give up a few hours early in the morning before E3 began, and the PR rep seemed a little taken aback. “Alex is an artist,” I was told. “He’s not going to like getting up that early.” Alvarez met me at Gnomon at 8:30 in the morning, bleary eyed, holding a cup of coffee as if it were a life preserver. 

The school’s stats are impressive: 350 students, and a 98 percent placement rate. The instructors are all working professionals from studios, so they know how the industry is now, not what it was like before they left it to begin teaching. “Every night they’re driving in from Sony or Blizzard or Activision,” Alvarez tells me. “Dreamworks, Digital Domain…” This is something that is constantly stressed: you are being taught by people in the industry.

Let’s take a look at what makes Gnomon School of Visual Effects so special.

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Feature: iPhone 4: the Ars Technica review

Posted on June 28th, 2010 • Filed under mediarosa • No Comments

The iPhone 4 is Apple’s “biggest leap since the original iPhone,” at least according to Steven P. Jobs speaking at the WWDC 2010 keynote. Indeed, in the three years since Apple first introduced the iPhone, the device has come quite far. At the same time, the basic concepts behind the iPhone have remained very consistent over the years. Despite regular modifications to the OS and yearly hardware upgrades, the iPhone 4 is very much a more modern, more capable version of that original device that made such a splash in the industry back in 2007.

We’re not living with our heads in the sand: if you have come to hate the iPhone, walled gardens for developers, and everything Apple stands for, you will likely hate the iPhone 4 and there’s nothing anyone can say to change your mind. Luckily for you, Apple is no longer competing against the saddest of the sad: there are now plenty of solid phones from other manufacturers that have multitouch screens, app stores of their own, great cameras, and much more extensible OSs. If you are curious about Apple’s latest offering, however, read on. The iPhone 4 is not without its flaws—some of them more serious than others—but the device remains a really cool evolution in Apple’s lineup.

(We have already reviewed the majority of the OS, now called iOS 4, in a separate review. If you’re looking to read about our impressions of the features in iOS 4, go read that one first and come back. This review is focused on the hardware of the new iPhone and on specific parts of iOS 4 that are limited to the iPhone 4.)

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Feature: Successful science communication: A case study

Posted on June 25th, 2010 • Filed under mediarosa • No Comments

It is no secret that, in general, i.e. outside of dedicated science reporting venues and the occasional medical report on the evening news, the scientific community does a craptastic job of communicating with the general public. While I think we at Nobel Intent do it admirably, we are but an infinitesimal sliver in the pie of science. A report that appeared in a recent edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences highlights a case study of effective science communication and deconstructs it to show what parts may be generally applicable to other areas of science.

“More effective communication is badly needed at almost every level of science,” said Kirsten Grorud-Colvert, a research associate in the Department of Zoology at Oregon State University. “It doesn’t have to be expensive, but we have to get out of the ivory tower, away from our scientific jargon and work more closely with our various audiences.”

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Feature: Ars reviews Adobe Lightroom 3

Posted on June 22nd, 2010 • Filed under mediarosa • No Comments

After a public beta and the release of Camera RAW 6 over a month ago, Lightroom 3’s feature set wasn’t the best-kept secret. Nevertheless, anticipation has been high for this release because of the notable improvements in noise reduction. Lightroom 3 may not be knee-deep in new features, but the Camera RAW 6 stuff alone has the potential to save people a lot of time. Let’s jump right in and see what else Lightroom 3 has to offer.

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Feature: Copland 2010 revisited: Apple’s language and API future

Posted on June 16th, 2010 • Filed under mediarosa • No Comments

Predicting the future of technology is a tricky business—just ask Bill Gates—but the allure of prognostication is strong. I’ve been known to try my hand at it. Sometimes I get a good read on things, like in 2008 when I wrote, “in the grim future of Apple/Adobe, there is only war.” Vague, humorously hyperbolic, and with no explicit timescale: all the essential ingredients of a successful prediction.

Other times, I’m not so lucky. Five years ago, I wrote a three-part series of articles entitled Avoiding Copland 2010. This time, the message was earnest, specific, and had a year right in the title. In other words, a perfect setup for failure. Well, here we are in the year 2010—the future!—so it’s time for me to take my lumps…or perhaps crow triumphantly? But first things first. What was this “Copland 2010″ thing about, anyway?

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Feature: “Straightforward legal blackmail”: a tale of P2P lawyering

Posted on June 7th, 2010 • Filed under mediarosa • No Comments

On January 26, 2010, the UK’s Lord Lucas of Crudwell and Dingwall—yes, it’s a real title—stood up and told his fellow peers in the House of Lords that the new crop of anti-P2P “settle or we’ll sue your trousers off” warning letters were a travesty of justice.

“In a civil procedure on a technical matter, it amounts to blackmail,” thundered the libertarian lord-slash-blogger. “The cost of defending one of these things is reckoned to be £10,000. You can get away with asking for £500 or £1,000 and be paid on most occasions without any effort having to be made to really establish guilt. It is straightforward legal blackmail.”

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Feature: Cloud tradeoffs: freedom of choice vs. freedom from choice

Posted on June 4th, 2010 • Filed under mediarosa • No Comments

Joseph Tobolski is a partner at Accenture Technology Labs, and as one of Accenture’s go-to guys for all things cloud, he participated in the cloud panel at the recent Smart Salon. I caught up with Joe after the panel, and we talked about the challenges to cloud adoption in the enterprise, the use and abuse of “cloud” as a buzzword, and the fundamental tradeoffs that cloud demands of its users.

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