Red One faces Arri Alexa in high-res, Choose Your Own Adventure-style face-off

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/28/red-one-faces-arri-alexa-in-high-res-choose-your-own-adventure/

Most of the time when one product takes on another in a no-holds-barred face-off somebody walks away with a championship belt. Not this time. Here it's Gunleik Groven, Norwegian filmmaker and photographer, comparing the RED One Mysterium X and the Arri Alexa, two pro-quality shooters that come in at a price semi-pro producers can afford -- the RED clocking in at $42,485 the way Gunleik configured it, the Arri at $70,000. There are some obvious differences, like the RED shooting at 4K and the Arri at 1080p, but the vast majority of the comparisons here are far, far more subtle than that, meaning you're just going to have to pore over the comparison on the other end of the source link yourself and download the gigabytes of sample footage that's been thoughtfully provided. If you do need something of a conclusion, though, it's this: "These are both excellent cameras we could only dream of 5 years back... you cannot really complain on the equipment if you don't get your shot with either of these."

Red One faces Arri Alexa in high-res, Choose Your Own Adventure-style face-off originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 28 Mar 2011 09:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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BrainGate hits 1,000 day mind-control milestone, nearly three years of pointing and clicking

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/28/braingate-hits-1-000-day-mind-control-milestone-nearly-three-ye/

Aspiring Svengalis rejoice! For BrainGate has reached a significant landmark in computational thought-control -- the 4 x 4-mm implantable chip has given a woman with tetraplegia the ability to point and click with her brain for 1,000 days. An article recently published in the Journal of Neural Engineering said the woman, known simply as S3, performed two easy tasks every 24 hours, using her mind to manipulate a cursor with 90 percent accuracy. Each day she was monitored, S3 would post up in front of a computer and continuously command the thing with her thoughts for 10 minutes. Functionality reportedly deteriorated over time, but the paper points to the chip's durability, not sensor-brain incompatibility, as the culprit. Research is currently underway to incorporate BrainGate into advanced prosthetics that could get tetraplegics like S3 up and moving again. Now, how's that for the power of positive thinking?

BrainGate hits 1,000 day mind-control milestone, nearly three years of pointing and clicking originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 28 Mar 2011 10:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Hot New 'Color' App Lets You Stalk People Having More Fun Than You [Gawker]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/#!5786184/hot-new-color-app-lets-you-stalk-people-having-more-fun-than-you

Have you heard about this "Color" phone app? It's the hot new location-based photo-sharing social network thing that everyone's talking about but nobody really understands. Well, I've figured it out: It's the best way to stalk strangers who are richer… [Gawker]

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Atomos Ninja and Samurai HD video recorder / monitors bring compression jutsu to pro filmmaking

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/26/atomos-ninja-and-samurai-hd-video-recorder-monitors-bring-comp/

We all drool over the hi-res video shot by cameras like the RED EPIC, but for indie-film types, processing the massive files produced takes a lot of time (and therefore money) and not everyone has an ARRI ALEXA to do native recording compression. Enter the Atomos Ninja and Samurai HD recorder / monitor / playback devices that take your 10-bit video and compress it in Apple's 1080p ProRes QuickTime format to make your post-production life a little easier. The Ninja pulls video through HDMI and deposits it on your choice of 2.5-inch HDD or SDD storage, does playback via a 4.3-inch 480 x 270 touchscreen, and has continuous power thanks to dual hot-swappable batteries (available in 2600, 5200, and 7800 mAh varieties). Meanwhile, the Samurai matches the Ninja's specs, but swaps out the HDMI connection for HD-SDI ports and adds SDI Loop-Through to connect an external monitor, a larger 5-inch 800 x 400 display, and 3D support (if you get two Samurais genlocked together). Both units have FireWire 800 and USB 2.0 and 3.0 connections for offloading your vids. Those with Spielbergian aspirations can pony up $995 for the Ninja right now, or pay $1,495 for the Samurai upon its release this summer.

Atomos Ninja and Samurai HD video recorder / monitors bring compression jutsu to pro filmmaking originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 26 Mar 2011 11:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Scientists improve blue OLED efficiency, don't promise everlasting light

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/26/scientists-improve-blue-oled-efficiency-dont-promise-everlasti/

Although this is not the first time we've seen an efficiency increase in blue OLEDs, it's worth noting that their proposed cap of productivity up to this point was a lowly five percent. It's exciting to learn, therefore, about a breakthrough by professor John Kieffer and graduate student Changgua Zhen from the University of Michigan, which has resulted in them successfully increasing azure diode power efficiency by 100 percent. The duo, accompanied by some bright minds in Singapore, manipulated performance controllers by rearranging OLED molecules in a computer model, improving material characteristics. In simple terms though, we're still looking at a measly ten percent efficiency, so we'll see where they take it from here.

Scientists improve blue OLED efficiency, don't promise everlasting light originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 26 Mar 2011 20:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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