Newsweek - National News, World News, Health, Technology, Entertainment and more... | Newsweek.com
SPONSORED BY
The Troll Blog - Newsweek.com
  • It Smashes Windows

    Brian Braiker | Sep 30, 2008 12:00 PM

    So apparently there is some big Apple event on Oct. 14, and as these semi secret/surprise Apple events tend to do, it has gotten the Mac geeks all atremble and aquiver. The speculation mill is in full churn mode and clearly the most fun one going is that Jobs & Co. will maybe, possibly, potentially, perhaps unveil the world’s first all-screen laptop.

    The long-rumored "Brick" project, says Cult of Mac, "would be a hybrid laptop/tablet/ebook that dispenses with a physical keyboard and trackpad in favor of a virtual, adaptive UI that blends multitouch, gestures and its own orientation to switch between different modes." Basically, imagine a laptop-sized iPhone, that does everything your laptop can do.

    Of course (not to go all Occam's razor on the cult of Mac or anything),  Apple could also just be unveiling a new model MacBook Air. Not that we want anything like "reason" to get in the way of your breathless blogfrenzy.

    More
  • More From Uncanny Valley

    Brian Braiker | Aug 20, 2008 10:39 AM

    Whoa. And here I thought the facial animation work the folks at Pendulum are doing is interesting. The team at Image Metrics--which produced the animation for Grand Theft Auto--analyzes facial movements at the level of individual pixels in a video (as opposed to putting dots on a face and recording the way the dots move). The result? "Emily." She's so real, it's unreal.

    More
  • Advertisement
  • Seeing Triple

    Brian Braiker | Aug 19, 2008 03:49 PM
    Pendulum is a small, little-known San Diego-based gaming/animation studio. AlterEgo is their new "facial performance division" which, I guess, hopes to drive human actors out of work through innovative CGI. Essentially, all they need to do is film one actor making a range of facial expressions, and they can render that actor as a man, woman, mutant or child. Whatever. Here's a cool test video of their digitization process:



    (Oh, and if falling completely in love with a spikey-haired digitally rendered pixie-gamine is wrong, I don't ever want to be right again.)
    More
  • Speaking of Retro ...

    Brian Braiker | Jul 29, 2008 12:02 PM
    Check out this bitchin' slide show from a 1975 IBM slide presentation. How long do you think before someone remixes this, mashes it up with something, YouTubes it and, uh, sticks it into a viral video and then works a few other Web 2.0 buzzwords into it?

    Anyway. I'd totally buy the future from this guy, wouldn't you?
     
    (tip of the fedora to the Triumph of BS)

    More
  • Apple Sauce

    Brian Braiker | Jul 29, 2008 11:49 AM

    Aw, isn't this sweet? This is, apparently, "a time capsule film made for use at the Apple International Sales Meeting held in Hawaii during October '84," according to the YouTuber who posted it. Deliciously retro. But, man this makes me feel old.

     

    (hat tip: Coudal Partners)

    More
  • Oh, Hai. I Can Haz a Newzweek Blog?

    Brian Braiker | Jul 26, 2008 04:10 PM

    Well hello there.

    I'm not sure how you found this, but welcome. You are reading this because I pitched a blog to my visionary editors and they, being visionaries, agreed to let me have one. Hopefully you will keep reading because it will grow into something thought-provoking, funny, curious and worthy of your pity. Or, think of it this way: I have two small daughters to support and if you don't come back here often--and click on all the ads--they will be sent to toil in the Peruvian mercury mines to support me. So please, think of my children.

    Meanwhile, I'll be curating things on a daily basis around here, trying to put goodies in front of your eyeballs. What exactly that will entail remains to be seen. But here's a little guide to get started with: I am a general editor here at Newsweek, covering technology, popular culture and, my favorite, unpopular culture. Mostly, I freaking love the internets. Every single last one of them. So I spend a lot of time looking at said internets--and as such, I see mountains of mind-blowingly life-changing awesomeness every day. And, you know, funny videos of piano-playing cats. Either way, I come across so much good stuff that may not merit a full-blown Newsweek-style story, but is certainly worthy of a mention. I'm talking about stuff that can only happen online (or, to give myself some wiggle room, anywhere else on earth). Stuff that inhabits that middle ground between high-brow arts, low-brow trash and mono-brow geekery. Stuff I would love to share with you, gentle reader, like the selfless lover that I am. 

    Here, for example, are a few things I'd link to RIGHT NOW if I were blogging. Which, uh, I guess I am. So. Let's get started: the webby (in more ways than one) Italian Spiderman, which wrapped its 10th episode this week and is quite possibly the funniest spoof of bad '60s Italian James Bond knockoffs you'll ever see. Or I'd hip you to new rumors of a forthcoming Mac book pro and then drool all over my keyboard so that the spacebarstopsworking. Or maybe you'd find this as interesting as I did: Wil Wheaton crumbling some Webcake at Comic Con this week. Or check out this current debate over the Los Angeles Times' policy regarding blogging about rumors surrounding a certain (probably erstwhile) potential Obama running mate--the comments raise a lot of interesting issues surrounding the role of blogs at a, ahem, mainstream media outlet.

    Of course, for each of those, I'd take the time to cook up some deliciously brilliant thoughts and conclusions. Maybe take the initiative to do a little reporting. I'd dazzle you with my unique voice, my counterintuitive take. This will be a two-way street--I encourage your feedback, tips, debate, lunch money. But not right now, OK? It's Saturday. It's nice outside. And you and I will get to know each other as this experiment continues. It is a work in progress. It is an evolution, an exploration of the tubes.

    And also there will be haiku.

    More