Friday, November 22, 2013
Sunday, November 10, 2013
Open Back Yards via Google Earth
Forget The Police, Google Earth Is Here
The police has found a new ally in terms of surveillance technology: Google Earth.
The story is pretty amazing: in the state of Oregon, the authorities thought it would be a great idea to investigate a suspect using the popular Google App. And it really helped them. They thought a man could be growing more marijuana (for medical purposes, we must say) than it was permitted, and they were absolutely right.
Apparently, the man was bragging all around town about his weed crops being cultivated in his property and once they checked Google Earth, they caught sight of ”satellite images of rows and rows of plants”. They didn’t stop there, though. They went and verified the crofts with an aircraft and, after that, the DEA team arrested the gardener man and dealt with him.
As surprising it might seem, this isn’t the first time and probably not the last that law enforcement agencies use this methods in order to catch illegal activities. However, there’s an important detail that needs to be taken into account: images seen on Google Earth aren’t live so… how can we be sure that they’re not 3 years old, for example?
The story is pretty amazing: in the state of Oregon, the authorities thought it would be a great idea to investigate a suspect using the popular Google App. And it really helped them. They thought a man could be growing more marijuana (for medical purposes, we must say) than it was permitted, and they were absolutely right.
Apparently, the man was bragging all around town about his weed crops being cultivated in his property and once they checked Google Earth, they caught sight of ”satellite images of rows and rows of plants”. They didn’t stop there, though. They went and verified the crofts with an aircraft and, after that, the DEA team arrested the gardener man and dealt with him.
As surprising it might seem, this isn’t the first time and probably not the last that law enforcement agencies use this methods in order to catch illegal activities. However, there’s an important detail that needs to be taken into account: images seen on Google Earth aren’t live so… how can we be sure that they’re not 3 years old, for example?
CrowdFlic - Multiple Views Single Event
CrowdFlik's Auto-Synced, Crowdsourced Footage Lets Anyone Become A Documentary Filmmaker
Have you ever tried to film your favorite song at a concert, only to have someone block your view with their massive head? Or discovered that the only footage of an interesting panel discussion on YouTube was shot by someone with shaky hands? CrowdFlik is a new app that lets you assemble clips shot by different users at the same event, making sure that everyone has video of exactly what they want to see. What makes CrowdFlik unique–and fun to use–is its unique technology, which syncs all uploaded footage to a master clock and geo-location data.
This means you don’t have to hunt down footage from the same event or time-sync it, one of the most tedious parts of video editing. When footage is shot with CrowdFlik, the app automatically slices it into 10-second segments that are synced within 100 nanoseconds using the U.S. Naval Observatory Atomic Clock, allowing you to assemble videos with precise cuts even for fast-moving events like sport matches. All you need to do is open an event in the app, view the collection of clips by other users and drag favorites into your timeline, where CrowdFlik instantly places them in the right order.
CrowdFlik’s iOS app launched last month and an Android version will be released soon. The team plans to push out updates quickly, including one that will allow users to download their edited videos.
Before founding CrowdFlik, CEO Chris Hamer worked in executive marketing positions at companies including Clear Channel and Sony. He came up with the idea for the app after going to a Dave Matthews concert and seeing how many people were filming it on their smartphones.
“Almost everyone films songs at concerts. I just looked at that and thought there must be a way to bring all that great content from different angles together, put it on a platform that is super simple and allow any user to create his or her own edits from synchronized, gathered content,” says Hamer.
He describes CrowdFlik’s ten-second slices of footage as Legos that can be rearranged into videos up to 50 minutes in length. One of the ways the app’s team plans to gain user traction is by promoting CrowdFlik for private events (protected albums are an upcoming feature) such as weddings, children’s sports, conferences and even birdwatching expeditions.
“Our model to get people to use CrowdFlik is to put it in environments where it can solve a problem,” says Hamer. For example, he describes filming a dance troupe in New York City’s Washington Square Park when a bystander wandered into the frame and blocked the shot. Fortunately, Hamer discovered that someone else in the crowd had uploaded clear footage to CrowdFlik, allowing him to assemble a video.
“When the lights go down at the end of an event, that continuity of sponsorship ends,” says Hamer. With CrowdFlik, however, brands can pre-name an event tag in the app (for example, Absolut Presents Dave Matthews At The Hollywood Bowl). Eventually, users will be able to find out more information about a sponsor, performer or venue through events on CrowdFlik, allowing promoters to increase engagement with fans and consumers in a novel but unobstrusive way.
From a user’s perspective, the most intriguing (and fun) thing about CrowdFlik is that it allows any smartphone owner to turn into a documentarian. The challenge of creating videos that fit within Vine‘s six-second time limit unleashed the creativity of users who make videos ranging in tone from comically surreal to sublimely beautiful. Like Vine, CrowdFlik opens up new possibilities.
The app’s ease of use makes it attractive to people of many ages and levels of tech literacy. It can also draw in users who might not be particularly interested in shooting mobile videos, but discover that they love playing with other people’s footage. Hamer says CrowdFlik will eventually enable multiple replays in the same video, allowing you to create vignettes that tell the story of the same event from different perspectives (imagine creating a video of your kid’s soccer match that uses the same non-linear narrative technique as “Pulp Fiction” or “Inception”).
“The whole [mobile video] ecosystem is growing in leaps and bounds,” says Hamer. “CrowdFlik brings a multidimensional view and ability sync multiple cameras. There are infinite possibilities.”
The app’s early investors include James Huaslein, the former CEO of Sunglass Hut, CEO 13 Mobile founder Stephen Maloney, Source MarketingCEO Derek Correia, Source Marketing managing directors Mark Toner and Richard Feldman and social media expert Sarah McClutchy.
Seeing without being Seen - Disconnect
Disconnect Search, Built By Ex-Google And Ex-NSA Engineers, Lets You Use Google, Bing And Yahoo Without Tracking
Started as a side project by then-Googler Brian Kennish back in 2010 to cut out ad tracking during a person’s Facebook browsing session, Disconnect has gone on to raise funding (twice), expand to work on multiple browsers and sites, and create apps for specific users (eg, kids), and take on more engineers, including two more from Google and one from the NSA. With its apps now used by 1 million people every week, Disconnect is now tackling the most popular way that people discover content online today: search engines. Today, the company is launching Disconnect Search, an extension for Chrome and Firefox browsers that lets users searching on Google, Bing and Yahoo, as well as Blekko and DuckDuckGo, to remain private while doing so.
The extension works both on the search portals’ main sites, as well as through a browser’s omnibox (in the case of Firefox) or browser bar (in the case of Chrome). (The “search from everywhere” feature is still in beta.) Disconnect says that it has applied for patents to protect the proprietary way in which it does this.
Casey Oppenheim, the former consumer rights attorney who is the co-founder of Disconnect with Kennish, points out that search engines, partly by virtue of being a portal to everything else, are often some of the most invasive when it comes to a user’s privacy. “Your searches are anything but private,” he noted in a statement. “Search engines, and even websites and Internet service providers, can save your searches and connect them to your real name through your user accounts.” Indeed, if you’ve been logged into your Gmail or another Google service and then visited Google.com, you’ll know exactly how this works.
Somewhat more alarmingly, this happens even when you’re not logged in to another service, notes Patrick Jackson, the ex-NSA engineer who is now CTO of Disconnect (he also was behind the neat kids app Disconnect launched in August). “Even if you never log into an account, search engines and many websites typically save your searches and connect them to an IP address, which can allow companies to uniquely identify your computer.” A technique, I guess, an NSA engineer would be all too familiar with.
Disconnect Search works along four channels, the company says, with some of the method taking a hat-tip from VPN tunnelling services that mask your IP address:
– Search queries are routed through Disconnect’s servers, “which makes the queries look like they’re coming from Disconnect instead of a specific user’s computer,” the company says.
– As a result, search engines are prevented (blocked) from passing keywords to the sites that are visited from search results pages.
– All queries are encrypted, which prevents ISPs from seeing them.
– And on top of this, Disconnect doesn’t log any keywords, personal information, or IP addresses after it routes your query to its own servers.
The results do not come through in any noticeably different way to users. They remain “native” to the search engine in question, just as users can engage on the sites in the same way that they already do. The two searches I did when testing out the product, one using the Disconnect Search filter and one not, product, more or less produced a similar set of results. There is a very slight delay in delivering those results via Disconnect Search.
As with Disconnect’s other products, the idea longer term will be to build out specific paid services that offer users additional features; and I wouldn’t be surprised if we see the company also move into specific solutions that might work with organizations that have their users sit behind firewalls that today may prevent those users from accessing the full Internet for reasons for security and privacy protection (this is, for example, the case with some networks in government organizations).
But for now, Disconnect Search, as an unpaid service. remains a strong example of why it’s not always the case that if you are taking a free service, youby default become the product.
Panasonic SLR 4K or Bust?
Detailed Panasonic GH4 rumoured specs – 10bit 4:2:2 and 4K video
Compelling Panasonic GH4 rumours have come in from two good sources. Disclaimer: I’m not a rumours site but if I was I’d give this a high rating. That said, it’s still a rumour! Nothing official has been announced by Panasonic.
The model has a pro-range product code. It will be dubbed the Panasonic AG-GH4.
Rumoured pricing is around $2999 body only. It’s a lot cheaper than the Panasonic AF100 was at launch. This will be a fully video orientated camera. No mention of stills capability was made by our sources.
This will really take the fight to Cinema EOS.
Specifications -
4K/24/25/30fps
16mp sensor with full pixel readout
10bit 4:2:2 codec (likely AVC Ultra)
200Mbit MP4 ALL-I and 100Mbit IPB options
Adapter that sits on the camera has 4x 3G-HD-SDI and 2x XLR
Up to 30fps in 4K mode
OLED monitor, 1 million dot
21mm OLED viewfinder, 3 million dot
Form factor similar to the GH3 but slightly larger, all output jacks facing out of the left side
Time code
I love what Panasonic, it seems, may be doing here.
The GH4 isn’t a replacement for the GH3, but I know a lot of GH3 owners who would jump on this camera; myself included. The GH3 consumer compact system camera will likely progress with the GH5 in the same way Panasonic’s numbering of consumer cameras usually skips the ’4′, like GF3-GF5 and LX3-LX5. The AG-GH4 will be for 4K video.
As always with rumours there’s a chance this might not happen. Panasonic have not officially announced anything yet.
It’s great to see the 10bit codec and there’s more to the camera than 4K. A full pixel readout captures more of the available dynamic range and colour information from the sensor, not just more resolution. I suspect the video is downsampled slightly to 4K from the full 16MP on the image processor side, which is a huge improvement on the current sensor binning techniques used to drastically chop 16MP down to 1080p.
The XLR / HD-SDI add-on box is also a very smart move by Panasonic. This will give videographers a way out of the dreadful 2.5m audio jack and wobbly mini HDMI ports that plague other cameras of this form factor.
According to the rumour, price is extremely accessible to consumers as well as pros, which gives the camera a broad appeal, though initial shipping quantities will be more limited than the GH3.
We do know the camera is capable of stills but beyond that, only the 1/8000 shutter speed and 16MP sensor were mentioned.
Footnote: if you’re curious – 43rumours also had the same news from the same sources
The post Detailed Panasonic GH4 rumoured specs – 10bit 4:2:2 and 4K video appeared first on EOSHD.com.
Imagery or Full Motion Video - Cross over is the norm
Open letter to Japanese manufacturers on the enthusiast video market – improve or lose it
The Blackmagic Pocket Cinema camera is a wake-up call to the bigger manufacturers and their afterthought video modes.
A very traditional photography philosophy pervades the Japanese offices of Canon, Nikon, Sony, Fuji and Olympus. For only really Panasonic have made any attempt to take cinematic video to the masses.
Canon have been by far the luckiest of the major manufacturers when it comes to video and the filmmaking community. The 5D Mark II paved the way for increased sales of Rebels and the 7D to video enthusiasts the world over. They never intended for that to happen.
Several high profile filmmakers helped further cement Canon’s position at the top of the food chain at the same time Panasonic was offering more features and a sharper image on the GH1 and GH2.
Then with the 5D Mark III, just as the dying embers of the Canon DSLR video era were burning out and users were changing to other cameras like the GH3 and Sony FS100, Magic Lantern develop raw video. Canon really have had luck on their side big time.
It’s a lack of attention and focus which also hurts stills photographers using the live-view display.
On the X100S for example, an other superb stills camera, the EVF and LCD become virtually unusable under certain types of lighting as the sensor is only enabled for NTSC frame rates no matter what region it’s sold in.
On the RX1 video quality is like a broken VHS cassette despite Sony putting the same sensor into a dedicated video camera.
That lack of attention on video during the sensor design stages screwed the Sony VG900 on the market and it has seen massive discounting down from 3000 euros to 1000 euros in just 12 months.
I firmly believe the manufacturers are their own worse enemy.
Then comes the Blackmagic Cinema Camera, which proves the manufacturers CAN do what we’re asking of them.
The Canon 1D C 4K cinema DSLR costs $15,000 and yet doesn’t shoot ProRes. This does.
It has peaking for manual focus, something stills cameras have only just begun implementing, though not the 1D C! The colour space and sampling for video on the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera is 10bit 4-2-2 and even though the sensor is a small Super 16mm chip it’s actually perfectly usable at ISO 1600 in low light. There’s none of the mushy compression AVCHD gives us or any of the electronic looking colour of 8bit codecs, all this for under $1000.
On the RX1 video quality is like a broken VHS cassette despite Sony putting the same sensor into a dedicated video camera.
That lack of attention on video during the sensor design stages screwed the Sony VG900 on the market and it has seen massive discounting down from 3000 euros to 1000 euros in just 12 months.
I firmly believe the manufacturers are their own worse enemy.
Then comes the Blackmagic Cinema Camera, which proves the manufacturers CAN do what we’re asking of them.
The Canon 1D C 4K cinema DSLR costs $15,000 and yet doesn’t shoot ProRes. This does.
It has peaking for manual focus, something stills cameras have only just begun implementing, though not the 1D C! The colour space and sampling for video on the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera is 10bit 4-2-2 and even though the sensor is a small Super 16mm chip it’s actually perfectly usable at ISO 1600 in low light. There’s none of the mushy compression AVCHD gives us or any of the electronic looking colour of 8bit codecs, all this for under $1000.
With all the technology and resources at their disposal, I am amazed none of the big corporations in Japan can properly cater for the enthusiast and prosumer video market.
Embracing the niche
All new markets start as a niche.
You also have markets trickling down from the very top of the filmmaking industry and becoming more widely known. A perfect example of this is that of the anamorphic lens.
At play here is a cultural element that is very hard to see in the sales stats.
Director J.J Abrams has been using anamorphic lenses and flare in a range of massive cultural hits in the West.
As a result the anamorphic look has become more mainstream and more sought after (even creating price bubble for lenses as there are so few of them).
Nobody at Canon or Sony take any notice of things like this because they are focussed so intently on where the next billion dollars of growth is coming from.
The enthusiast video market is not as big as the prosumer stills camera market so Canon neglect us.
They prefer to concentrate on high added value products like the Cinema EOS range.The problem with this is that you become stuck with the status-quo and exposed when the momentum changes.This happened to Nokia when Apple came along out of the blue with the iPhone.
Today Blackmagic are too small and shipping in too low a quantity to be Apple and truly hurt Canon with disruptive technology, but there are signs of it happening elsewhere. Smartphones have killed the compact camera while Samsung have disrupted Sony and Panasonic’s TV businesses in a major way, simply by giving consumers a better image for much less money.
In the end that simple business principal will come to the enthusiast video market and the big manufacturers will completely lose their grip on it.
The post Open letter to Japanese manufacturers on the enthusiast video market – improve or lose it appeared first on EOSHD.com.
At play here is a cultural element that is very hard to see in the sales stats.
Director J.J Abrams has been using anamorphic lenses and flare in a range of massive cultural hits in the West.
As a result the anamorphic look has become more mainstream and more sought after (even creating price bubble for lenses as there are so few of them).
Nobody at Canon or Sony take any notice of things like this because they are focussed so intently on where the next billion dollars of growth is coming from.
The enthusiast video market is not as big as the prosumer stills camera market so Canon neglect us.
They prefer to concentrate on high added value products like the Cinema EOS range.The problem with this is that you become stuck with the status-quo and exposed when the momentum changes.This happened to Nokia when Apple came along out of the blue with the iPhone.
Today Blackmagic are too small and shipping in too low a quantity to be Apple and truly hurt Canon with disruptive technology, but there are signs of it happening elsewhere. Smartphones have killed the compact camera while Samsung have disrupted Sony and Panasonic’s TV businesses in a major way, simply by giving consumers a better image for much less money.
In the end that simple business principal will come to the enthusiast video market and the big manufacturers will completely lose their grip on it.
The post Open letter to Japanese manufacturers on the enthusiast video market – improve or lose it appeared first on EOSHD.com.
Citizen Sensor - A recorded life
Autographer wearable camera launches tomorrow priced at £400, we go hands-off
It's been a long time coming -- close to a year, but OMG Life's clippable, er, lanyard-able life-logging camera will be available to buy tomorrow. TheAutographer launches in the UK (where the company's based) and most major European countries on July 30th, priced at a rather prohibitive £400 (we're still confirming a US dollar price, but a later launch has been promised) and pitching itself as "the world's first intelligent wearable camera." We'd position it as an addition to your smartphone and/or standalone camera -- like Lytro or the incoming Memoto -- for those that have the cash.
There's a curious appeal to it, helped by an attractive design that's predominantly plastic. We spent over three days wondering around, sometimes with it on a leather lanyard (included) around our neck, sometimes clipped to our belt or shirt pocket. For better or worse, it's a truly hands-off camera: there's really no way to frame or even time your captures. The Autographer itself chooses when to take a shot using its five sensors (monitoring changes in color, temperature, magnetometer, motion and acceleration), which means there's a hefty dose of luck involved in how your photos turn out. See whether Lady Luck was shining down on us (the sun certainly wasn't) and check out our sample images below and first impressions after the break.
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