Adobe Photoshop CS6 goes dark, brings new tricks
Posted Thursday, January 26, 2012 at 11:09 am by Jason Cartwright
Senior Product Manager, Bryan O’Neil Hughes has shown off a sneak preview of Adobe Photoshop CS6. There’s a brand new default look to the interface, this time round it’s much darker. Hughes says it’s designed to allow for a more ‘immersive experience’ that lets the interface to fade away and the images to be the focus point.
Also detailed in the video below are some new features including a new processing tool for RAW support, with many of the features being completely rewritten. Although CS6 is still some time away from release, the new RAW engine is actually the same one used by the Lightroom 4 beta which is available as a free download from Adobe Labs.
There’s also a new rich cursor support, this provides information about brush diameter, hardness and opacity so you’ll know exactly what to expect when using the brush tool. It’s really early days for CS6, so expect there to be plenty more teasers in the lead up to its release, for now enjoy the 2:25 of video.
Every second, one hour of video is uploaded to YouTube.
Posted Tuesday, January 24, 2012 at 10:48 am by Jason Cartwright
What an amazing statistic, every single second that goes by, more than one hour of video is uploaded to YouTube. If you every thought you’d watch every video on YouTube, forget it, that reality passed a long time ago.
Google have created a site http://onehourpersecond.com to visualise this milestone. There’s some great data like ‘In 24 seconds of uploads to YouTube, one full day elapses, and the nyan cat says “Nyan” over 345,600 times.’
HTC Velocity: Australia’s first 4G phone is fast, 39.85Mbps fast
Posted Monday, January 23, 2012 at 5:34 pm by Jason Cartwright
Android-focused site Ausdroid has got hands on with Australia’s first 4G phone, the HTC Velocity. Sure there’s been 4G hotspots and USB dongles before that run on Telstra’s 4G network, but this is the first phone. With all the other componentry inside a phone it was difficult to tell what speeds would be possible.
The answer is 32.82Mbps down and 11.2Mbps up. The post is correctly disclaimed with ‘your mileage may vary’, but still, it’s an impressive number. Why you would need mobile data that fast is another question. Naturally as more people move from 3G to 4G, the network congestion will increase and speeds will inevitably slow. This may be one instance where being an early adopter yields good benefits.
The only bad thing about this result is that it was done on a new device that will ship without Ice Cream Sandwich.
Update
Trevor Long just posted a photo on twitter with an even better result – 39.85 Mbps down and 11.88 Mbps. Clearly he was a little closer to the tower with a 39ms ping vs 127ms.
How to score an invite to Microsoft Socl (updated)
Posted Monday, January 23, 2012 at 4:31 pm by Jason Cartwright
Microsoft not so secret social network called Socl is beginning to open to more users, this morning sending out invites to people. Previously restricted to Microsoft staff, then students, Socl is beginning to open its doors to everyday users. If you’d like to check it out, we have 10 invites to give away.
Update
That’s it guys and girls, all out of invites. Hope to get more in the future (ping Microsoft).
You can score an invite by being one of the first 10 people to sign up to Constructiv. The invite will be sent to the associated email address. Best of luck, be fast, and connect with me once you’re on Socl.
So far the experience feels more like Google+ than Facebook, but does have some unique features. The video party is similar to sharing a YouTube video on G+, but the most interesting is the Bing integration. It allows the sharing of content from search results really quickly. This sure beats telling a friend to go search for a term, or an image, you just share the search.
When searching you can filter results by web, news, videos, etc just like Bing results. The difference being that Socl allows you to just click images in the results and add them to your post. It’s a nice clean UI, but I can’t help but think that Facebook adding this Bing functionality can’t be far away.
The future of movie distribution: Plays everywhere.
Posted Saturday, January 21, 2012 at 12:32 pm by Jason Cartwright
There’s a lot of talk lately of the digital distribution of movies vs the traditional DVD model. That’s all about to change with movie studios finally providing a way to consume content in a variety of formats. The hit movie from 2011, Rise of the Planet of the Apes was produced by 20th Century Fox on Blu-ray, DVD and as a digital copy all in one package.
The DVD comes with conversion software so the user can transfer the movie to a laptop, tablet or smart phone. The conversion process takes 20-30minutes depending on your hardware and device type. Part of the process is authenticating each playback device, using the digital verification code provided inside the cover.
The movie studio is happy as the rights management is catered for, while providing flexibility for the end user. While the multi-format version of the movie may cost a little more than the regular DVD version, it does allow the movie to be watched pretty much anywhere, so probably worth a few extra dollars.
It’s early days for the ‘plays everywhere’ brand, but is certainly a good direction for movie studios to head. What needs to happen next is to ditch the disc all together and sell digital copies directly from their website. The retail chain in movie distribution is rapidly becoming an unnecessary link (and cost) in the chain. Purchasing movies via the store has a very limited lifespan, probably around the time it take for the NBN to be rolled out. At that point there’ll be no bandwidth or time issues with downloading even at the highest qualities.
Of course another solution to digital distribution of movies is to licence the content through existing movie streaming services. The ultimate goal here is to maximise the number of places consumers can consume the content. It seems Hollywood is finally waking up to the fact that we won’t pay for content three times, but instead happy that we’re buying at all.
Electric Go Kart accelerates into the record books
Posted Friday, January 20, 2012 at 6:12 pm by Jason Cartwright
Germany, the place that brought you the Nürburgring have now built the worlds fastest accelerating electric Go Kart. While we are more commonly aware of electric engines powering cars, it seems they make a pretty great power source for a Go Kart too. The Linde E1 electric kart reached 0-60mph or 0-97km in our language, in just 3.4 seconds.
Electric engines are also making their way to motorbikes and vans and is set to change the automotive industry dramatically over the next 10 years. How long before we see an electric powered truck? Probably a while. While you wait, check out the fastest battery-powered go kart in the world. All I know is.. I want one.
