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If you were impressed when manufacturers began putting home theaters in boxes, wait until you feast your eyes on NewTek’s TriCaster, which packs an entire live television production studio into a comparable cube of space. With minimal training, anyone who can operate a computer can use it to broadcast professional-quality live video over the internet or on television.

“It’s basically a live TV truck in a backpack,” said Philip Johnson, NewTek senior vice president of strategic development. “It’s being used by everyone from the NBA [Development League], to Fox Sports, to Fox News. John Dvorak uses one for Cranky Geeks, and Leo Laporte [and Tom Green] use it.”

YouTube and inexpensive cameras have already democratized video production to a large degree, of course, but the production values of many of those videos is barely ready for America’s Funniest Home Videos, let alone prime time. In contrast, TriCaster enables broadcast-quality production values that’s equally suited for television and for the internet.

This disruption of the normal live video production process means content attractive to niche audiences is now worth televising to local communities or streaming worldwide. “You don’t have to have a million people watching,” said Philips, “because the budget of making the show is almost nothing.”

The TriCaster is essentially a high-powered computer with special ports. Like other computers, it plugs into a display and it’s operated using a mouse and keyboard. The onscreen interface resembles a traditional TV-studio switching console, but after a short tutorial, just about anyone can figure out how to switch between cameras, add graphics and so on. I saw how easy this was, and heard countless testimonials about high schoolers and church volunteers learning how to use it in a half hour.

“We had to take a process that normally has 5 to 30 people creating a show and make it easy enough for one person to run, [someone] who has never run a TV show before,” explained Philips. Indeed, the TriCaster allows a single operator to mix multiple cameras (higher-end models support more cameras) interspersed with graphics, pre-recorded clips, real-time effects and more than 300 three-dimensional transitions. The box outputs to the web, television stations or big screens in churches and sporting arenas.

NewTek’s entry-level TriCaster, with support for three cameras, costs $4,000. That may seem like a lot, but considering that it can be used in place of a mobile production vehicle, four grand is small potatoes, relatively speaking.

The benefit to niche video broadcasters has been significant. Many high schools, colleges and minor-league sports teams can now afford to broadcast and stream most or all of their games.

“In 2004 and 2005, we dealt with a regional sports network to distribute our video content,” said Nate Flannery, director of new media and technology for Horizon League, a Division I conference of NCAA, “and we were getting 15 games on each year, paying $25,000 to $30,000 [per game].”

After switching to TriCaster and webcasts, they were able to display 150 games the following season for the same budget. “It allowed our local production crews to do a full production to the web with just literally a PC-type box and a monitor court-side, plugging in their cameras and just going for it,” explained Philips.

Since then, Horizon’s process has become even more efficient. “Last year, we produced 408 live events and 350-plus on-demand videos — all for the same budget that we produced those 15 TV games for.” So far this year, he said the company is on par to spend less to broadcast more than 400 events than it did to televise 15 of them four years ago.

This is not just for online video. At least one Horizon school has started routing video from a TriCaster directly to the local television station in addition to streaming to the web. Larger broadcasters have shown interest as well.

“What’s been the surprise for us is that this is being adopted by people with big budgets,” Philips told us. “One of the first big projects we did was working with MTV on The Hills…. They said, ‘how do we take those fans from the show and bring them to our website?’ So we took a TriCaster to a fan’s house in New Jersey, set it up in her basement, plugged it into her dad’s DSL line, ran camera cables up the stairs, and did the Hills aftershow party…. It was a smash success … and it never would have been tested if not for the guerrilla tactics of doing this with a small crew.”

In the music world, TriCaster is used by Total Request Live, touring bands webcasting their shows and Jon Anderson from the band Yes, among others. “He’s is doing this show from his house, where he’s doing green screen … on virtual sets and he’s collaborating with musicians all over the world,” said Philips. “They send in tapes of them playing and then he plays live with those tapes. He’s about to launch this.”

“Crazy ideas can be made now, especially by someone like Jon Anderson who’s so creative,” added Philips. “He’s going to have his very niche market, but it’s all the Yes fans, and there’s a lot of them.”

Original Article wired.com

I loved the poster for this so I had a look round and got quite intrigued. Although the music maybe a little experiMENTAL hehe I like this guys idea, and optimism. Using youtube.com some nifty looping software and of course the trusty macbookpro he has packaged up his music and gone on a full world tour from his bedroom!! complete with digital dates across the globe!!! Love It! It’s certainly one way to reach a global audience, with a carbon footprint of zero!! All we need now is a way for the bands to get virtual feedback/moshpit/crowdsurfing from an audience and then the best gig spots in the world will become just digital outposts on a server!

mm I think I prefer the old fashioned blood sweat and tears of a moshpit!!!! RAWK! but maybe the live gig could go the way of vinyl, something I’ll enthuse mystically about in my senior years to a wired sweat free generation!!

Props to mercedeath tho some intriguing stuff going on there!!

Just been checking out an Asian agency called wktokyo http://www.wktokyo.jp/ apart from the great website (simplistic, amazing typefaces) the quality of the work is fantastic. Inspiring stuff.

Asking ‘shall we watch a film?’ could soon be replaced by ‘shall we watch a dream?’ For the first time, researchers have successfully reproduced images on a PC screen that were captured inside a human brain. According to several online sources, Japan’s ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories first showed a group of test subjects the six individual letters that make up the word ‘neuron’. Then by measuring brain activity – specifically, activity in the brain’s visual cortex – ATR’s researchers were able to reproduce each of the letters, from each of the subjects, on a PC screen.

The Kyoto-based lab said in a statement that it was the first time that it had ever been possible to visualise what people saw directly from their brain activity. But where will the researchers go from here? ATR added that the technology may make it possible to, one day, record and replay subjective images that people perceive as dreams. So no more forgetting what that weird dream was less than 30 seconds after you wake up.

original article reghardware.co.uk

So something that I have been aware of but never really paid much attention to is Last.fm. Having always been into these music discovery sites, (I was an avid user of Pandora and Musicovery) I was have absolutely fallen in love with the last.fm service. Only a day in and i’m obsessively collecting artists both new and long lost forgotten ones into my own personal radio station, tied it into this here blog and will be spending much more time using the service. From a design point of view its everything a web 2.0 app should be, quick easy to use loads of info but not overload and a shared sense of discovery and community, last.fm has these in buckets. Now I plan to make stations for all sorts of things, office work, going out and traveling the list goes on. I can’t see why at some point (when car stereos have a wi-fi connection) that I can’t have have my own personal play list anywhere I am. It’s all part of what seems the endless march to being walking bunch of preferences, our worlds at the tip of our fingers anywhere we are.

Nice