Posts Tagged ‘guessed’
Kickstarter: Cassette, A Documentary About, You Guessed It, Cassettes
Author: Troy Barnes
Those of our readers old enough to remember the 90s will almost certainly recall cassette tapes fondly. The clacky little tapes and their creaky cases have more or less disappeared from the world, and no surprise: they were fragile, limited, and sounded pretty bad.
But they were also hugely empowering, and helped produce in an age of comparative consumer powerlessness the same feeling we take for granted today: that we should be able to copy, lend, and duplicate the content we’ve bought. Cassette is a documentary looking for a few bucks on Kickstarter that hopes to highlight cassette culture then and now.
Here’s the trailer:
Interestingly, the format appears to be having a minor renaissance: the manufacturer in the trailer describes a lull as CDs take over, but slowly his business returned. And elsewhere in the world, tapes are understandably more practical than CDs, MP3s, or vinyl.
Personally I think it’s a very interesting topic, though I hope they take a little time to look at the other tape-based devices that have been prominent: minidiscs, reel-to-reel, 8-track. Their failure as consumer items is part of the story as well. And more than other formats, the success and legacy of the cassette has as much to do with culture as it does with business or technology.
So far they’ve raised just under $ 8000 and are hoping to hit $ 25K. That’s pretty reasonable if it’s a feature doc and they already have their equipment. Unfortunately their deadline is coming up just in a couple days – but it’s making the rounds and if they don’t get their Kickstarter debut, maybe they’ll find the funding another way.
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Kickstarter: Cassette, A Documentary About, You Guessed It, Cassettes
Author: Laura Clark
Those of our readers old enough to remember the 90s will almost certainly recall cassette tapes fondly. The clacky little tapes and their creaky cases have more or less disappeared from the world, and no surprise: they were fragile, limited, and sounded pretty bad.
But they were also hugely empowering, and helped produce in an age of comparative consumer powerlessness the same feeling we take for granted today: that we should be able to copy, lend, and duplicate the content we’ve bought. Cassette is a documentary looking for a few bucks on Kickstarter that hopes to highlight cassette culture then and now.
Here’s the trailer:
Interestingly, the format appears to be having a minor renaissance: the manufacturer in the trailer describes a lull as CDs take over, but slowly his business returned. And elsewhere in the world, tapes are understandably more practical than CDs, MP3s, or vinyl.
Personally I think it’s a very interesting topic, though I hope they take a little time to look at the other tape-based devices that have been prominent: minidiscs, reel-to-reel, 8-track. Their failure as consumer items is part of the story as well. And more than other formats, the success and legacy of the cassette has as much to do with culture as it does with business or technology.
So far they’ve raised just under $ 8000 and are hoping to hit $ 25K. That’s pretty reasonable if it’s a feature doc and they already have their equipment. Unfortunately their deadline is coming up just in a couple days – but it’s making the rounds and if they don’t get their Kickstarter debut, maybe they’ll find the funding another way.
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Who Could Have Guessed: 3D Hurts Your Eyes
Author: Brittany Turner
After experimenting on 24 adults, a research team at the University of California, Berkeley has determined that viewing content on a stereo 3D display hurts your eyes and your brain. The scientific term is “vergence-accomodation,” which means that the eye must constantly adjust to both the distance of the physical screen and that of the 3D content. This can supposedly cause visual discomfort, fatigue, and headaches, which I had thought were just a part of life but apparently there’s a scapegoat: 3D technology.
In his Journal of Vision article, The Zone of Comfort: Predicting Visual Discomfort with Stereo Displays, author Martin S. Banks (also professor of optometry and vision science) writes, “When watching stereo 3D displays, the eyes must focus — that is, accommodate — to the distance of the screen because that’s where the light comes from. At the same time, the eyes must converge to the distance of the stereo content, which may be in front of or behind the screen.”
According to the article, 3D content viewed over a short distance (like with desktops and smartphones) is more visually uncomfortable when the stereo content is placed in front of the screen. In a movie theater, it’s the opposite: Stereo content that is placed behind the screen causes more discomfort than scenes that jump out at you.
With the explosion of 3D-capable gadgetry such as televisions and mobile phones, understanding just what this kind of technology is doing to our bodies may help us better use it in the future. The only problem is that technology tends to far outpace research, and until we get a better handle on its effects, we’re more or less walking blindly into a 3D world.
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Netflix and VUDU not hitting Boxee Box till January… as if you couldn’t have guessed
Author: Tristan Richards
According to a post that’s just gone live on Boxee’s blog, users of the Boxee Box won’t see VUDU or Netflix content on their TVs until January. We know, the wait will be painful. According to the Boxee team, VUDU offerings should hit the platform as soon as next week, but Netflix won’t be made available until the end of the month. The company claims that both services are up and running in its offices, but more time was needed to “test each application to make sure they are ready for launch.” It’s nice to know where we stand, though it would have been even nicer to get more frequent updates on the status of these apps, instead of a last-minute blog post on New Year’s Eve.
Still, the post has equal touches of hopefulness for the bright future Boxee sees for home entertainment, and acknowledgment of the massive challenges the startup faces in the coming year. In their words: “As we get ready for the New Year tomorrow and CES next week, it’s clear that in 2011 we will be competing with companies that spend more feeding their employees that we have to pay ours. We’re confident though that our small team will continue to push the envelop of what people expect from their TVs.” Here at Engadget, we’re eager to see how it all plays out, but we’re definitely rooting for underdogs like Boxee who have pioneered so much of what the world is just waking up to. 2011 is going to be a crazy year!
Netflix and VUDU not hitting Boxee Box till January… as if you couldn’t have guessed originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 31 Dec 2010 21:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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