Augmented reality has potential to reshape our lives

TV football fans are used to seeing

augmented reality in action.

That virtual yellow first-down line

superimposed on an actual football field is

one of the more visible examples of a

technology that is still not well known. But

augmented reality is quickly emerging from

obscurity and could soon dramatically

reshape how we shop, learn, play and

discover what is around us.

This is cool stuff and I agree it will reshape the way we do things. Get ready!

Amazon glitch raises questions on cloud

As technical problems interrupted offsite data storage provided by Amazon for a second day yesterday, industry analysts said the troubles will prompt many companies to reconsider relying on remote computers beyond their control.

“This is a wake-up call for cloud computing,’’ said Matthew Eastwood, an analyst for the research firm IDC, who used the term for accessing services and information in big data centers remotely over the Internet from anywhere, as if the services were in a cloud. “It will force a conversation in the industry.’’

That discussion, he said, will likely center around what data and computer operations to send off to the cloud and what to keep inside the corporate walls...

follow link read the rest... the article does make an excellent point.

Cuban at MIT: Video revolution needs some work

The outspoken Mark Cuban told a crowd at MIT last night that the amount of video content on either the Internet or TV is going to explode and drive innovation.

“Our consumption and creation and utilization of video is going to grow faster than the Verizon’s or the Comcast’s and the rest can support,” he told a sold-out audience of more than 300 during the MIT Enterprise Forum’s event “IPTV, The Scrum for the Last 6 Feet.”

The evening started with a fireside chat between Prism VentureWorks partner Woody Benson and Cuban, the founder of Broadcast.com andHDNet, and the owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team. After the chat the evening moved on to a panel discussion with panelists Cuban; Avner Ronen, CEO and founder of Boxee; Paul Sagan, CEO of Akamai Technologies Inc., and Will Richmond of VideoNuze.

Cuban took a fairly contrary position to the other panelists when it came to behavioral changes happening because of the rapid growth in the amount of video content, mainly because parsing the huge amount of available content is beyond any current cable or IPTV interface, at least in any easy way. And easy is what TV watching is all about, Cuban said.

to read the rest follow the link:

http://www.masshightech.com/stories/2011/01/31/daily53-Cuban-at-MIT-Video-revolution-needs-some-work.html

Google Chrome ditches popular format for web video

WOW, check this out...

The jockeying to see which tech giant controls the future of video on the Internet has hit another flash point.

Google's decision to dump a widely-used video standard, called H.264, from its Chrome browser, in favor of a format it has created, called WebM, is drawinghowls of derision in the tech community.

The H.264 format is used on about 66% of the video on the Web. It is royalty free as long as the video is distributed for free; otherwise, companies have to pay a licensing fee to the patent owner, MPEG LA.

Google's WebM format at this point in time is free -- no licensing fees of any kind. It's supporters includes Adobe, Mozilla and Opera, among others.

Meanwhile, Apple and Microsoft are huge supporters of H.264, as is Abode, whose ubiquitous Flash video player works on H.264, but not yet on WebM.

Last October, Apple dumped support for Flash from its Mac OS X computer operating system, drawing criticism from cybersecurity experts. Users of OS X no longer get Flash player, or its security updates, by default.

IDC tech industry analyst Al Hilwa tells Technology Live that Goolge's move boils down to a dollars and cents calculation.

"Google made a business decision about licensing money that it had to pay for using what has become an industry standard video format, namely H.264," says Hilwa.

Google product manager Mike Jazayeri says the company's goal in dumping H.264 is to enable "open innovation." But that claim rings hollow, says Hilwa.

"It is hypocritical, but not untypical of either Google or other companies who use Open Source software for financial gain," observes Hilwa. "Google spent over $100 million a year ago onacquisition of On2, which owns the video technology they used to put into WebM."

Hilwa says the rate of adoption of Google's Chrome browser could actually decline. He says the search giant has "upset a lot of developers and web-content owners" by putting all of its chips on WebM.

Google is locked in a high stakes poker tournament against Microsoft, Apple, Mozilla and Opera. Each covets a dominant share of the browser market, going forward.

"No one knows how this will all turn out, but the tech giants are playing their hands," says Hilwa. "Whoever controls video on the Internet could be in the best position to dominate video on mobile devices."

By Byron Acohido