Tech Today w/ Ken May

This morning, Google officially rolled out Google+  Hangouts On Air  to all users worldwide, following the feature’s limited introduction back in September . At the time of its initial release, this live broadcasting feature allowed top Google+ users (like celebs) to stream live video feeds directly to their Google+ fan base. The service kicked off with a Google+ Hangouts stream from will.i.am, but soon saw a number of notable participants, even including the President of the United States, Barack Obama, at one point. The worldwide rollout of Hangouts On Air, announced today via the official Google Blog , represents an interesting shift for the feature, which before was more about public figures and other types of broadcasters, like news orgs, reaching a large audience of viewers via the social platform. Now, anyone can be a live broadcaster. It’s the same promise made by services like Ustream, Livestream, and and Justin.tv, for example. It’s now also the promise of Google’s own livestreaming property, YouTube.com/live – a property which just opened up to all. Well, all who have a Google+ account, that is. According to the Google blog post , users can broadcast their live hangout to their Google+ stream…but also to their YouTube channel or their website. It’s those last two items, and primarily the option to broadcast live to YouTube as well as Google+, that makes the general availability of Hangouts on Air so interesting. Today, YouTube.com/live’s help documentation says that the service is still not broadly available to all of YouTube’s video creators: We’re slowly rolling out live streaming to our partners with accounts in good standing over time. You can check to see whether live streaming is already enabled on your account by logging in and visiting your Channel page. Look for a promotional message at the top. Plus, in April, when YouTube Live was celebrating its first anniversary, YouTube’s partner product manager Varun Talwar noted that, while the team had developed new features like pay-per-view and real-time analytics for its broadcasters “with the expectation many more of you will eventually use YouTube Live” (hint, hint?), he also said that, unfortunately, “this process takes time to roll out broadly.” Well, forget waiting, because it appears that live YouTube streaming is here…for anyone with a Google+ account. Clever, Google. Very clever. Per the Google+ Hangouts on Air documentation , using Hangouts On Air means you also get to broadcast live on YouTube. It reads: Broadcast a hangout: Invite circles or individual people to join you in a hangout, then broadcast it to the world. A live player of your hangout will be posted to your Google+ Home page and YouTube channel. The change is an important one for Google’s growth. Today, Google+ adoption appears to be less organic, and comes from the large number of integrations with other Google properties. Google, too, has been slightly vague with regards to its Google+ numbers, refusing to detail the number of visitors who hit up the plus.google.com directly. Instead, it talks of its “170 million+ users,” with “100 million 30-day actives,” but has so far refused to define “active,” or detail how many are “upgrading to Google+” outside of Google+ proper. That being said, no one can argue YouTube’s numbers. Its audience of hundreds of millions upload 60 hours of video per minute to the service. And now they can all be live broadcasters, too, via the Google+ funnel? Any guess on how long it will be before we see another announcement regarding Google+’s amazing jump in user numbers? We’ve reached out to Google to confirm all its Help documentation is correct and current (you never know). We’ll update if need be, if/when Google confirms. Update : Google wants to point out that, basically, Hangouts are the social counterpart to YouTube Live. Says a company spokesperson: “Hangouts On Air uses a combination of Google+ and YouTube Live to let you engage with even more people, while YouTube Live focuses more on broadcasting an event to your audience. For example, you’d watch your favorite band play on YouTube Live, but then engage with them backstage in a Hangout On Air.” Also, correction – YouTube’s site says 48 hrs/min, but Google says it’s up to 60 hrs/min now. Whoa. 

For fans of HD and / or nature documentaries, the BBC Planet Earth series is the unquestioned champion, and to provide a proper followup the Brits are improving it the only way they know how: doing it live. What the broadcaster calls its “most ambitions global wildlife series ever” will air simultaneously in 140 countries (more on that bit later) starting Sunday May 6th, then every Thursday and Sunday for three weeks. The plan is to track animals in seven different locations around the world in real time as they struggle for survival and broadcast it all in HD. One segment features Top Gear’s Richard Hammond following a pride of lions across southern Kenya, while another will track black bears in Minnesota. The bad news? If you’re in the US or Canada you’re not on that 140 country list and won’t be seeing any of this live. We’re not sure if there’s time to make this a campaign issue in the 2012 presidential election but we figure that, or at least bugging BBC America (while we’re on the subject — where’s our global iPlayer ?) is worth a try. Check after the break for a press release with all the details on where and when it is airing, as well as a trailer. Update : While we won’t be getting the live simulcast, BBC’s Paul Deane dropped in a comment below noting it will air the next day on National Geographic Wild retitled as 24/7 Wild . We haven’t located a program description yet, but there are already listings in the schedule starting May 7th — schedule your DVRs accordingly. Continue reading BBC’s Planet Earth returns as a live simulcast next week — but not in the US (video) (Update) BBC’s Planet Earth returns as a live simulcast next week — but not in the US (video) (Update) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 Apr 2012 04:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink    |  BBC Planet Earth Live , YouTube , @BBCPlanetEarth (Twitter)  |  Email this  |  Comments

If it happened any other way, it just wouldn’t be as satisfying, now would it? After years of leaks, murmurs, hubbub and other familiar synonyms, Google’s mythical cloud storage platform is now official… sort of. As Lady Fate would have it, the company apparently outed a memo of the features on its French blog earlier today, but before it could yank the ‘pull’ switch, an eagle-eyed reader managed to grab the text and run it through — surprise, surprise — Google Translate. What’s left is an official-as-you’ll-get-right-now transcript of Google Drive’s features, but contrary to the hype, it all feels way more enterprise-centric than consumers may have wanted. For starters, there’s no real mention of music (we guess Google Music is on its own, there), and there’s just 5GB of free storage for “documents, videos, photos, Google Docs, PDFs, etc.” According to the brief, it’s designed to let users “live, work and play in the cloud,” with direct integration with Docs and Google+. We’re also told that Drive can be installed on one’s Mac, PC or Android phone / tablet, while an iOS version will be “available in the coming weeks.” Of note, Google’s making this accessible to visually impaired consumers with the use of a screen reader. As for features? Naturally, Google’s flexing its search muscles in as many ways as possible; if you scan in a newspaper clipping, a simple Search All within Drive will allow results to appear directly from said clipping. If you upload a shot of the Eiffel Tower, it’ll show up whenever you search for the aforesaid icon. Moreover, Drive will allow folks to open over 30 types of documents directly from a web browser, including HD video, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop and more — “even without the software installed on your computer.” For those concerned about access, the new platform will have the same infrastructure as any other Google Apps services, giving admins a familiar set of management tools on that end. On the topic of storage, just 5GB are provided gratis, and while upgrade details are a bit murky on the consumer side, we’re told that administrators can pony up $4 per month for 20GB of storage, with a maximum of 16TB per user; thankfully, Google Docs will not be included in your usage total. Finally, the note played up the ability to “attach documents directly into your Drive Gmail,” and given that it’s intended to be an open platform, Goog’s promising to work with third party developers in order to enhance Drive’s functionality even further. The source link below is still dead as of right now, but it simply can’t be long before the lights are officially turned on. Oh, and if you’re not enamored at the moment, the outfit’s suggesting that “many more developments” will be arriving in the coming weeks. Update : It’s live on the Google Play store , and a pair of explanatory videos are embedded after the break! Continue reading Google Drive official: 5GB of free storage, business-focused approach (video) Google Drive official: 5GB of free storage, business-focused approach (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 Apr 2012 11:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink   Gurwin Sturm (Google+) , François Bacconnet (Google+)  |  TechCrunch , Google Drive , Google Play  |  Email this  |  Comments

There’s no better way to control the visual experience from shoot to show than to create the camera and the projector. That’s likely the thinking behind the REDray, the 4K laser cinema projector making an appearance at the company’s NAB booth today. The device supports 2D and passive 3D (up to 120fps in 3D mode), with 4K projection for each eye and has a rated laser life of over 25,000 hours. While the device itself is likely to be hidden behind glass in an elevated projector room, the REDray has the same industrial look and feel of its Scarlet and Epic capturing counterparts, with a solid matte metal construction, heavy duty bolts and dedicated access panels for the lens filter, the laser phase adjustment oscillator and the angular refraction aberration indexer. There’s also a T1.8 50mm lens mounted up front, sufficiently completing the beautifully monstrous package. Also on display was the tablet-controlled REDray Player , which includes four HDMI 1.4 video outputs with 7.1-channel audio output, the ability to move 4K video to the internal hard drive and an SD reader for ingesting content. You’ll also find dual gigabit Ethernet ports, along with USB and eSATA connectors. The projector experience is much less about the hardware than it is the projections themselves, which certainly did a justice here — especially considering the imaging device’s mid-development status. During a screening of the 3D short Loom , which was shot with the RED Epic, images looked fantastic with accurate color and excellent dynamic range, allowing us to see every detail in a contrasty dark scene, where we were able to make out a very dimly lit female actress. The projection was incredibly sharp on the 24-inch screen, despite the film being displayed with 2K for each eye, rather than the maximum 4K. There will be two versions of the REDray projector, including a home theater flavor that supports screens up to 15 feet in size that’ll ring in at under $10,000, and a professional model with support for larger venues. RED CEO Jim Jannard confirmed that the home-bound version will ship sometime this year, though he was unable to provide a more precise ship date. We weren’t permitted to record video during the screening — which is for the best, considering that there’s really no way to do this thing justice — but you can still flip through the gallery below for an early look at REDray. Gallery: REDray 4K cinema laser projector eyes-on Continue reading REDray 4K cinema laser projector and player eyes-on (video) REDray 4K cinema laser projector and player eyes-on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 16 Apr 2012 13:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink    |   |  Email this  |  Comments

Go figure — Microsoft’s Courier project lives again… as an exclusive app on Apple’s iPad. FiftyThree, a company that features folks who previously worked on the aforesaid Courier initiative, has just put forth a monumental effort dubbed Paper. The app, which is available for free in the App Store, is a sophisticated sketchbook with a highly unique user interface that’s seemingly designed with the budding artist in mind. Put simply, the company feels that this app is “where ideas begin,” enabling users to capture mental light bulbs as sketches, diagrams, illustrations, notes or drawings before sharing them across the web. Of course, “free” only gets you in the door; in-app purchases ($2 per brush, for example) keeps the creators in business, but it’s unclear at this point if a paid edition will be offered for those who aren’t much on cherry-picking what they do and don’t want to pony up for. Not surprisingly, the app ships with native support for the new iPad’s Retina display , and while fingers are welcome, a capacitive stylus is recommended. Eager to see more? Peek the video just after the break, and get your download on in the source link. Continue reading Paper: the iPad sketchbook app from the brains of Courier (video) Paper: the iPad sketchbook app from the brains of Courier (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 30 Mar 2012 02:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink   BGR  |  App Store , FiftyThree  |  Email this  |  Comments

Have you ever noticed that there is a serious amount of lag between when you move your finger on a touchscreen and when it actually registers that input? Perhaps you haven’t, but most panels and controllers out there suffer from about a 100ms delay. For taps and slow swipes that’s not an issue but, as you wing your finger around the screen faster and faster (say, while quickly doodling in a painting app), the lag becomes quite apparent. The powerful minds over at Microsoft Research have figured out a way to get that delay down to a measly 1ms. Of course, there’s no guarantee this tech will ever make it into a product, and the video after the break shows little more than a glowing box following a finger. Still, it’s always enjoyable to see where we are now versus where we could be. Continue reading Microsoft cuts touchscreen lag to 1ms, makes other panels look silly (video) Microsoft cuts touchscreen lag to 1ms, makes other panels look silly (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 10 Mar 2012 05:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink   TechCrunch  |  Microsoft Research (YouTube)  |  Email this  |  Comments

A high-level summit of the torrenting world’s elite release groups — the groups responsible for the highest quality, earliest infringing video releases — has resulted in a consensus on dumping the venerable Xvid codec (a video compression scheme) for x264, requiring the torrent-downloading public to rethink which tools, devices and converters they use. Here’s the official consensus . Torrentfreak’s Enigmax has more: The document – ‘The SD x264 TV Releasing Standards 2012′ – is extremely detailed and covers all sorts of technical issues, but the main controversy stems from the adoption of the x264 codec. “x264 has become the most advanced video codec over the past few years. Compared to Xvid, it is able to provide higher quality and compression at greater SD resolutions,” the rule document begins. “This standard aims to bring quality control back to SD releases. There are many standalone players/streamers such as TviX, Popcorn Hour, WDTV HD Media Player, Boxee, Xtreamer, PS3, XBOX 360, iPad, & HDTVs that can playback H264 and AAC encapsulated in MP4,” the doc adds. From February 22nd and earlier in some cases, release groups including ASAP, BAJSKORV, C4TV, D2V, DiVERGE, FTP, KYR, LMAO, LOL, MOMENTUM, SYS, TLA and YesTV began releasing TV shows in the new format. Out went Xvid and avi, in came x264 and MP4. BitTorrent Pirates Go Nuts After TV Release Groups Dump Xvid