...more recent posts
VLC for Apple mobile platforms
Tricks of the trade: lossy compression aims to remove the stuff that's least perceptible.
Note: The article makes an over simplification. The primary channel is "luma" which is derived from R,G and B. G is a big contributor to luma. By the way, the human visual system works amazingly well considering how much it sucks. Lossy compression is about taking advantage of the suckitude.
And I started a digital video company that wasn't YouTube.
AT&T Adding Smartphones as End of IPhone Hold Looms
book 'em danno!
tv-over-web provider ivi fights on two fronts: technology and copyright law
HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection) allegedly broken. Someone has apparently released a method of generating the master key that is used to create the keys generated for manufacturers of such things as HDCP compliant Blu-Ray players and TVs. If true this would supposedly be impossible to fix ("they" can revoke regular keys but not the master key without breaking all existing equipment.) A slashdot commenter points to this cryptome message from 2001 outlining this crack in theory. Not sure why it took this long for someone to do it (well, it might be hard I guess, but it doesn't really sound like it.) Will be interesting to see if this is true. Sure sounds like it is.
MPEG LA announced today that websites streaming free H.264 video will be able to do so royalty free forever:
MPEG LA is announcing today that it will continue to offer a royalty-free license for the H.264 video codec for video sites that offer free video streams to consumers “during the entire life of this (l)icense.” In other words: Web sites like YouTube will be free to use H.264 for its streams without having to fear they’re eventually going to have to pay massive royalties to MPEG LA.This still doesn't solve all the worries, but it's certainly a nice step and removes the most wild speculation from the equation (e.g. "I won't be able to put video I shot with my h.264 camera onto my personal website and show it to my friends without paying MPEG LA!")
The company, which has assembled a patent pool for H.264 patents, had previously said that it would offer H.264 streaming for free until 2016. That announcement was met with skepticism, with Mozilla CEO John Lilly at the time tweeting that this was “like 5 more years of free to lock you in 4ever.”
WTF? Motorola buys 280 North, creators of the Cappuccino web framework which includes the very Apple-esque programming language Objective-J (a play on Apple's Obective-C language.) Cappuccino is a very cool way to write web applications. I think Apple missed the boat here on an obviously good fit. Hopefully Motorola will be a good steward - they might really have something here for developing their own flavor of Android (or just for writing apps that run under Andriod.) It just strikes me as a strange (but good!) move by Motorola.
The dirty little secret about Google Android
tl;dr: Android is ceding control back to carriers.
No Shit -- They're Competitors
The Singularity Will Not Be a Webinar
The clock is ticking for iPad competitors -- giving Apple a 1 year head start is poor strategy
Why software patents are a joke, literally