GPU-Accelerated Internet

I've recently become aware of an exciting trend -- GPU-acceleration for the Internet. Last year, Google started things off with some cool O3D demos, then the WebGL standard got kicked off, and now Microsoft is letting people play around with their Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview. Much of this is still at the hobbyist phase of it's development with alpha and beta code being the norm, but even in it's current state, some of it looks cool and is fun to play with. Here's a list of links for the interested student to try if they want to see where the Internet is headed in the not too distant future.

Google Chromium & O3D Demos

1. Download and install the latest version of Chromium from here
2. Exit your browser and run Chromium
3. Try some of the cool Chrome experiments here
4. Download and install the O3D plugin here
5. Try some of the O3D examples on the samples page or community gallery

IE9 Platform Preview with D2D and SVG demos

1. Download and install the Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview from here
2. Exit your browser and run the IE9 Platform Preview
3. Try any of the demos on the IE9 Platform Preview website

Mozilla Minefield (Firefox Beta) WebGL and SVG Demos

1. Download and install the latest version of Minefield from here
2. Once installed, run Minefield, and type "about:config" into the web address window and hit return. You'll be asked to accept some risks. Assuming you do, then
3. Type "webgl" into the "Filter:" window.
4. Double-click "webgl.enabled_for_all_sites" so the value changes to "true."
5. Type "render" into the "Filter:" window.
6. Double-click "gfx.font_rendering.directwrite.enabled" so the value changes to "true."
7. Double-click "mozilla.widget.render-mode," and enter "6."
8. Try some of the WebGL demos from the Demo Repository, or User Contributions pages -- In my experience, many of these don't work on Intel graphics today.
9. Try one or more of these Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) demos: Ball Pool, Balloons, StressTest, AllYourGoogle

I'm keen to hear what you think about all of this. For me, it's exciting to think that the web could be much more animated and dynamic, but it's also clear that this is still in its early-days. Things will have to get simpler and more broadly supported for it to take off and impact us all.

CES Echostar Dish Network VIP 922 -- The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

While at CES, I stopped by the Dish Network booth to see what was new, and I got a peek at their new HDTV DVR set top box with Sling technology -- the ViP-922. It's pretty cool, but there are pros and cons. Here's my take:

The GOOD -- Building in Sling is great. Now people can watch their recorded shows from their PC when they're travelling as long as they have a broadband Internet connection. They've also upped the storage to a terabyte (whoopee!). As before, they still provide shared access to the same PVR content for up to two experiences (e.g. Living room and bedroom simultaneously). A less obvious "good" thing is that integrating Sling means that it's the second experience (e.g. bedroom) that gets taken over by the remote viewer, whereas if you added a Sling box to a previous set top, you were stuck with the main TV viewing being taken over by the remote experience.

The BAD -- Since they only only have two "experiences," you can't have two people watching at home AND be watching out of the home. For many people this won't be an issue, but for larger families that frequently have multiple TVs on at once, it won't be any fun when the family traveller takes over one of their experiences and they battle for the remote across state or even country boundaries.

The UGLY -- You only get half of the 1TB of hard disk for your recorded shows because the other half is allocated to video-on-demand shows that DISH puts on your hard drive in hopes you'll pay to watch them individually. This boggles the mind. In an age when more and more on-demand video content, some of it even in HDTV, is being delivered streamed over the Internet, this seems incredibly backward. I challenged the booth staffer on this, and he acknowledged that they were considering streaming as an alternative, but I didn't leave with high hopes.

According to the folks in the booth, the box will be available in the second half of 2009, and with any luck, by then, they will have realized the error of their ways, and offer a streaming on-demand solution instead of a dead-end, half-full hard-drive.

CES 2008 Overall Thoughts

I've just returned from spending several days in Las Vegas on the annual CES press and analyst schedule, and thought I'd post my high-level observations. To give some context, CES for press and analysts began this year on Tuesday afternoon with CEA presentations on the industry, and then continued with three nights of sneak-peak shows (Tuesday through Thursday), and a whole day of tier-one consumer electronics vendor press conferences on Wednesday. I also spent all day Thursday walking the show floor which span roughly 5 enormous buildings.

So what's the take-away? I'd say the high-level take-away is that everyone realizes the economic downturn has hurt the industry, and they're all hoping that 2009 won't hurt so much that they're not around to see 2010. In fact, there were several spots on the floor that looked vacant (see picture above) as if companies had decided to cut their losses and just not show up even though they've probably already paid for the space. Though the Consumer Electronics Association (host of the CES) always tends to be bullish, even they acknowledged that 2009 will probably be flat to a slight decline in consumer electronics sales worldwide. It wasn't a surprise then that there were fewer dramatic innovations at this year's show, and Sharp didn't introduce a new mega-sized LCD as they've done in years past (108" last year). In fact, the companies that looked best poised to capitalize on the economic realities were the companies that were emphasizing value, solid basic performance, and traditional products (Toshiba TVs for example).

There was innovation however, and beyond incremental improvements, the most dramatic steps related to services. Internet video has finally gone from a niche techno-geek feature to a burgeoning mainstream opportunity, and Netflix has shown the way. Until the introduction of the Netflix direct-to-TV Instant Streaming solutions in the Roku box, LG and Samsung Blu-ray DVD players, most thought that it wasn't ready for prime time. What the Netflix Instant Streaming service showed though, was that the Internet was ready to deliver a high-quality experience with the right approach to developing a content library, and a simple approach to accessing it on the TV. Nearly every major CE company made a point of describing how they will deliver Internet video services from Hulu to YouTube and Netflix at this year's CES. It seems we've finally reached the turning point for over-the-top Internet video services.

The other innovation that got considerable mention from a wide range of CE industry leaders was 3D. Some of the demos are compelling, and it's tempting to say that 3D may finally catch on, but I fear that this may also be another case of "the emperor not having any clothes." Most systems still rely on viewers wearing glasses, and there's still the risk that the effect will get in the way of the story-telling. I think the jury is still out on this one, but the industry is clearly grasping for ways to make content that is meaningfully better than DVD and HDTV so consumers will pay to upgrade yet again. If 3D doesn't pan out, I'm sure they'll be trying something else.

Most Neutral Gray Cards for Digital Photography

Do you think you have to pay a lot of money to get a good neutral gray reference? If so, read on. The best solution may be free, and it may come from a hardware store.

I am colorblind, and I am a professional photographer. That creates problems. It means that I need to have color references I can trust, because, if I do, I can use them to create images with pleasing, vivid and accurate colors. If my references are off, then my images will probably be too.

I wanted to know which of my available gray-card references was most accurate, so I decided to measure them using a Gretag Macbeth i1 Spectrophotometer that I have. The i1 isn't the world's most accurate Spectrophotometer, but it's better than what most photographers would have available. If someone wants to improve on this by providing better measurements with a higher-end tool, I'd love to hear about it.

The candidates and the i1 Spectrophotometer are shown in the image below. I used the i1 to measure the "color" of all of the choices, then summarized how much they deviated from a neutral gray in the table that follows. The gray references are the Lastolite Ezybalance (largest behind the others), the WhiBal White Balance Reference (smallest with the black and white areas), DGC-100 Digital Gray Card (medium sized -- all gray) and a Glidden Paint sample strip (Snowfield, Universal Grey, Veil, Granite Grey, Obsidian Glass, Dark Secret) from Home Depot.

The measurements surprised me. I would have thought that the photo-products would have outscored the paint sample, but that's not the case. The Glidden strip is more neutral in every case except for the extremes where "Snowfield" (the lightest color) and "Dark Secret" (the darkest color) are slightly less neutral than the DGC-100.
So, what's a photographer to do. Well, if you've got something that's working, stick with it. My measurements are the average of three measurements on a single product, and there may well be enough product variation that you've got "a good one." If you're looking to buy something new, you might just settle for the right Glidden paint strip in these tough economic times. I have to admit, I like the form factor of the Lastolite the best, but I've been using it less and less since I did these measurements.

NVIDIA Project Inspire 2008 at Overfelt High School in San Jose

Photo by Chris Pedersen

On Saturday, I had the privilege of doing the photography for NVIDIA's annual winter community service event -- Project Inspire 2008. I was fortunate enough to secure the help of two other talented photographers -- Doug Quist, and Spencer Huang.

Photo by Spencer Huang

As in years past, I was impressed by the generosity and hard-working attitude of the NVIDIA employees. For one very long Saturday during their holiday season, they painted, shoveled, scraped, assembled, raked, hammered, grappled, prodded, poked, and sweated in the cold December air -- all so the students of San Jose's Overfelt High School students would have a better environment for learning when they were done. This year, they worked side-by-side with many student volunteers that were also impressive because of their willingness to work hard to improve their school. Many of the students also participated in a cultural show to entertain the NVIDIA volunteers. In all, more than 1,000 volunteers participated in this years event -- a nice reminder that in spite of all the bad news in the world, the amount of good still outweighs the bad by a huge margin.

Photo by Doug Quist

I've included some images here, but if you're interested in seeing more, they can be found at these links:
Top 50 Gallery
Photographer Selects 500 Gallery
All Photos Gallery -- 2000+ images

I hope you'll agree with me that the images capture the hard-work and joy of the volunteers.

Photo by Doug Quist

Photo by Spencer Huang

Photo by Chris Pedersen

Blockbuster Jumps in With Download-to-TV Solution

Today, Blockbuster announced that they will be offering a video on-demand download service with a box from 2Wire Inc. that connects to the TV. At first glance, I thought they were copying the Netflix/Roku solution that we've come to enjoy so much, but they're not. Instead of an all-you-can-eat subscription model like Netflix, the Blockbuster solution is a download movie rental service. After the first 25 free download rentals, included in the $99 purchase price of the 2Wire box, rentals will cost at least $1.99. They claim that this means they'll be able to offer much more recent content than the Netflix subscription service, but Netflix has recently secured a number of top-tier Disney titles including "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End," "Ratatouille," "Meet the Robinsons," and more. In my mind, there is no comparison -- the subscription model wins. I don't think consumers are ready to "leave the meter running" on the TV set, and will be much more comfortable with a predictable bill for a set of content they value.

Switching From Satellite to ATT UVerse -- The Installation

I'm tempted to say "you just won't believe this," but with technology, almost no amount of frustration is a surprise these days.

As someone who makes a living by being up-to-date on the latest technology, and helping people craft plans for new technology businesses, I make a point to try a lot of technical things. So, when I heard that ATT's U-verse was available in my area, and that they had enabled whole-home access to their personal video recorder, I thought I should investigate. After a trip to the ATT store, I learned that we could save about $40 per month by switching from satellite to the ATT quadruple-play package of U-verse television, broadband Internet, cellphone service and land line service. That sounded like a deal, so we decided to try it. What they didn't tell me was that it would take 10 hours to install it! That's right, TEN HOURS.

Why did it take so long? Well, for starters, they need a line that goes from outside of the house, directly to the 2Wire gateway box that they install in front of the phone, Internet and TV services. That line can't have any branches off of it like most phone lines do. At first, he thought he would run a new line, but our crawl-space is very tight, and they couldn't get a tiny installer out to our house to squeeze through and install the line. Eventually, they were able to open EVERY SINGLE PHONE JACK IN OUR HOUSE and find a way to rewire them so there was a straight path to the gateway. At one point, he asked me if it was important that the phone jacks still work when he was done. I can kind of understand this question, after all, nearly everyone uses cordless phones these days, but I insisted that "yes, I would like for my house to still be in working order when you finish." He was very nice, very polite, and did as I said.

So what have I learned by trying out ATT U-verse so far? For starters, I can see why the telephone companies are having trouble rapidly growing their business. I asked him what was typical, and he said that they are allocated 3 hours for a one-TV household, 4 hours for a two-TV household, and up to 8 hours for a 3-or-more TV household. What I learned though was that the number of phone outlets, or the size of the crawl-space can also extend the installation time. I'll write later about how we like the service, but for now, let this be a warning to consumers that switching to ATT U-verse may take longer than you think. And for investors, it may take longer for telcos to eat satellite video service provider's lunch -- if for no other reason than that it takes so long to install these things!