Byte Into It blog: August 2010

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

An Impressive New Feature Makes Gmail’s Inbox Smarter

[link to original | source: gigaom.com | shared via: feedly]

Google announces new Google Mobile YouTube Channel

[link to original | source: thenextweb.com | shared via: feedly]

YouTube courting Hollywood for pay-per-view movie service by end of 2010, says Financial Times -- Engadget

[link to original | source: www.engadget.com | shared via: feedly]

AppleInsider | Apple-supported H.264 standard gains free license for Internet video use

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Google Shows Off Chrome, HTML5 With Interactive Music "Experience"

Google has released its latest "Chrome Experiment" today in the form of a music video "experience" that takes you, quite literally, back to the streets of your youth.

The experiment is the work of writer and director Chris Milk and social media-savvy band Arcade Fire, and it shows off the interactive, artistic and technical capabilities of open-Web tools like HTML5 and Google products like Chrome, Maps and Street View.

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As Wired magazine's Eliot Van Buskirk points out, it's easier to call the entire thing an "experience" rather than a video, as it goes well beyond a traditional music video. Don't get us wrong - there's music and there's video, but there's also real-time graphics rendering and real-world imagery pulled from Google Maps satellite and Street View imagery. There are multiple windows, with 3D rendered birds flying from one to another and there's even a sentimental moment when you can pen a note to your younger self.

The experiment begins by asking you for "the address of the home where you grew up"and you quickly begin seeing images pulled directly from Google Street View and birds-eye-view satellite imagery from Google Maps of your childhood neighborhood.

Google Creative Lab tech lead and co-creator of the project Aaron Koblin told Wired magazine that they were "excited about breaking out of the traditional 4:3 or 16:9 video box, and thinking about how we could take over the whole browser experience." Koblin also noted the importance of "incorporating data-feeds on the fly, and tailoring the experience to the individual."

According to Chris Milk, HTML5 is still in its "infancy" but he sees the browser as the next artistic medium, because of its ability to allow for interaction between the art and the user. The entire experiment showcases a number of HTML5 features, such as the ability to choreograph windows and synchronize music and video between them, use HTML5 for 3D rendering, rotating and zooming of Google Maps satellite imagery and even inserting animated sprites directly over satellite imagery.

Beyond the neat tech involved, the experiment is quite the experience and we encourage you to take a look. Google advises (of course) that you use its own browser, Google Chrome, and close down windows and other programs before beginning, as it can be quite processor intensive. And after you take a look, tell us what you think - how long will it be before HTML5 eats Flash's lunch?

Discuss

[link to original | source: ReadWriteWeb | shared via: feedly]

Microsoft cofounder drops patent bomb on Apple, Google, Facebook

[link to original | source: arstechnica.com | shared via: feedly]

Oracle isn't completely wrong to sue Google over Android | NetworkWorld.com Community

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Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

With iPad, Apple is No. 3 in portables - Apple 2.0 - Fortune Tech

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The Jailbreakme bigger issue: iOS is now wide open for security exploitations | 9 to 5 Mac

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Office for Mac 2011 Hitting Store Shelves This October: Qualifying new purchases of Office 2008 will include a full upgrade to Office 2011.

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Tor Developer Detained At US Border, Pressed On Wikileaks

suraj.sun writes with this news from CNET: "A security researcher involved with the Wikileaks Web site — Jacob Appelbaum, a Seattle-based programmer for the online privacy protection project called Tor — was detained by US agents at the border for three hours and questioned about the controversial whistleblower project as he entered the country on Thursday to attend a hacker conference. He was also approached by two FBI agents at the Defcon conference after his presentation on Saturday afternoon about the Tor Project. Appelbaum, a US citizen, arrived at the Newark, New Jersey, airport from Holland Thursday morning, was taken into a room, frisked and his bag was searched. Officials from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the US Army then told him he was not under arrest but was being detained. They asked questions about Wikileaks, asked for his opinions about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and asked where Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is, but he declined to comment without a lawyer present, according to the sources. He was not permitted to make a phone call, they said." Appelbaum told me that he just spoke at length with The New York Times, and quipped that his Defcon talk about Tor was "just fine, until the FBI showed up"; this post will likely be updated with more details. Update: 08/02 03:59 GMT by T : Here's the NYT's coverage.

Who Is Downloading the Torrented Facebook Files?

eldavojohn writes "Gizmodo's got an interesting scoop on a list of IPs acquired from Peer Block revealing who is downloading the Facebook user data torrented this week: Apple, the Church of Scientology, Disney, Intel, IBM and several major government contractors just to name a few. The article notes that this doesn't mean it's sanctioned by these companies or even known to be happening, but the IP addresses of requests coming to one of the users' machines match to lists of IP blocks for each company."