The App Store censorship horse may have been beaten to death, but mainstream German media—whose iPhone applications have been censored by Apple because of its content—are not surrendering. I’m glad. In fact, I hope they win this war.

The censorship problem is not only about the 5,000 titillating apps that fell down in flames after Apple’s latest puritanic raid. Except for apps from well known slippery-when-wet publishing houses like Playboy, that raid closed the smutty graphic category entirely. The censorship problem goes a lot deeper than that, and it has affected mainstream publications already.

Freedom of the Press

The polemic in Germany started when Apple took down Stern’s iPhone app without notice. Stern—a very large weekly news magazine—published a gallery of erotic photos as part of its editorial content. It wasn’t gratuitous: It was just part of the material published in the magazine itself, integrated in their usual sections.

The entire app was taken down, according to the Spiegel, and publisher Gruner + Jahr had to eliminate that content in order for the application to go up to the store again. They learnt their lesson, since they haven’t published any other material that may offend Apple’s “moral police”—as the German press calls it.

Then came Bild, a large daily newspaper printed by publishing powerhouse Axel Springer AG. Bild also distributes its content through a dedicated iPhone application. This app gives access to its sections from a central springboard. Last December, they released a new mini-app called Bild-Girl, which shows a woman moaning and getting rid of her clothes every time you shake the iPhone with your free hand.

Apple didn’t take that well and asked Bild to put a bikini on the girl. Bild complied. But now Apple also wants Bild to censor the naked girl that comes in the PDF version of the printed newspaper, which is accessible from the Bild application too. Apple is trying to force them into censoring their publication, even while the women are pre-emptively censored: Their nipples are pixelated and unrecognizable in the iPhone-distributed PDF document.

That’s when the Bild editors went ballistic.

It Can Get Worse

I don’t blame them, because I’m going fucking ballistic at this stage of the proceedings too. How Apple can force Bild to change their editorial content? Or putting it another way: If Gizmodo decides to release an iPhone application tomorrow, would Apple take it down whenever we publish a NSFW post that shows nipples?

Probably they would, if they receive enough complaints. (We receive some from time to time, so it’s not out of the question). What about magazines, books, or comic books—like Watchmen and other adult graphic novels—that contain explicit sexual descriptions or graphics? Would those be censored too in the future, if enough people think it’s politically incorrect?

What about other content? Like Bild Digital’s CEO Donata Hopfen says: “Today they censor nipples, tomorrow editorial content.” The Association of German Magazine Publishers agree, and they have asked the International Federation of the Periodical Press to make a complaint to Apple. I agree too: This is just not about the nipples. If Apple had established a firm set of rules about tits and pink beforehand, there wouldn’t be any problem. But this censorship is completely arbitrary and unexpected.

How? Imagine Gawker develops an iPod/iPad application, one that gives access to Gizmodo.com, Gawker.com and all its publications—except Fleshbot, for obvious reasons. Now imagine that we get the scoop of the Next Big Thing from Steve Jobs, and decide to publish it in the app. Would Apple send another letter threatening us to take down the app, perhaps? Would Apple have banned an hypothetical Gawker app when Gizmodo uncovered Steve Jobs’ health problems?

I don’t think that’s a crazy thought. In fact, knowing how things work, I think it’s entirely possible.

And it doesn’t have to be about Apple or tits. There are plenty of applications that have been deemed blasphemous or offensive by Apple, and banned from publication. Would publications showing a caricature of Prophet Mohamed be taken down as well? That would get Phil Schiller plenty of complaint letters.

I don’t really know what Apple may do in these cases. And that’s the problem. The fact is that they forced Stern and Bild to do change their editorial content decisions, and anyone or anything could be next. Apple is a corporation and they can do whatever they want, after all. In fact, that’s the argument of the people who defend these decisions: It’s Apple’s prerogative to do whatever the hell they want with their store.

But knowing that the Apple iPhone-iPod-iPad triumvirate is the largest mobile application platform in the world—practically owning the category—couldn’t that be considered an abuse of quasi-monopoly power? I have no idea. I will leave that question to the lawyers of the Association of German Magazine Publishers. And the lawyers of the International Federation of the Periodical Press.

And if indeed things get any worse, I hope the lawyers at the European Union, and hopefully some commission at the United States’ Senate will give us the answer. [VDZ and Bild (Google Translated) via Spiegel]

http://gizmodo.com/5490310/its-time-to-declare-war-against-apples-censorship

I spoke to Imagination Technologies—maker of the PowerVR chip that powers smartphones like the iPhone, Droid and many others—and they said, definitively, that you’ll have graphics comparable to the PlayStation 3 in 3 years.

They know this because these are the chips they’re designing right now. The way the development process works for phones is that Imagination comes up with a chip, which they license, and that works its way through development cycles and people like Apple or HTC, which then incorporate them into their phones, which they in turn have to productize and bring to market. The whole thing takes three years. But in three years, says Imagination, you’re going to have a PS3 in your pocket. And that’s not just running at the 480×340 resolution that most phones have now, that’s PS3-esque graphics on 720p output via HDMI to a TV. Hell, some phones in three years will have a 720p display native.

But there are going to be some interesting things between now and then. Imagination is still working on support for the products out now—the chips in the iPhones and the Droids and the Nokias that use PowerVR. The two most interesting things are Flash acceleration in hardware and OpenCL support, which enables GPGPU computing.

The first is obvious. By utilizing a software-based update, phones on the market right now can run Flash acceleration. Imagination’s been working with Adobe for about three years now, and they’ve gotten the acceleration up to about 300% compared to using just software. They think they can do even better. Even still, 300% is pretty damn good for just pushing what you can do with your current phone.

Secondly, there’s OpenCL support, which allows devices to utilize the GPU—the graphics chip—to help out in general purpose computing. For a more in depth look on what this means, check out our feature on GPGPUs, but in essence it’s going to allow multi-threaded tasks to be executed faster than they would be otherwise.

I also asked Imagination about what’s going to be different about their chips that will hit the market one, two and three years from now, and they say one of the big things is going to be focused on multiprocessors. Theoretically you can get about three or four into a phone without going too crazy on power demands, which will help them pull off that PS3-equivalency we talked about earlier.

Keep in mind that this stuff is what’s “possible” in three years, based on what hardware is going to be available in the phones released then. A lot of this is still based on phone makers like Apple or HTC or Palm or Motorola to make these features available. But since most of the major phone manufacturers are going to have essentially the same chip, it’s in everyone’s self-interest to push as much power out from their phones as possible.

But if you’re looking forward to what’s coming one year from now, check out the screenshots in the post, taken from the demos they had running on sample hardware.

http://gizmodo.com/5490330/you-will-have-the-power-of-a-ps3-in-your-pocket-in-3-years

“We use the epub format: It is the most popular open book format in the world.” That’s how Steve Jobs announced the iPad. And wow, that sounds like all the ebooks you own will just work on anything. Um, no.

The idea of an open ebook format that works on any reader sounds nice. Buy it from any source, read it on any device. In a few cases, it’s true, and that open format thing can work for you. But, in reality, right now? You’re pretty much going to be stuck reading books you buy for one device or ecosystem in that same little puddle, thanks to DRM. And well, Amazon.

The Hardware

Okay, so the easiest way to put this in perspective is to quickly list what formats the major ebook readers support. (Why these four? Well, they’re the ones due to sell over 2 million units this year, except for Barnes & Noble’s, which we’re including as a direct contrast to Kindle just because.)

• Amazon Kindle: Kindle (AZW, TPZ), TXT, MOBI, PRC and PDF natively; HTML and DOC through conversion

• Apple iPad: EPUB, PDF, HTML, DOC (plus iPad Apps, which could include Kindle and Barnes & Noble readers)

• Barnes & Noble Nook: EPUB, PDB, PDF

• Sony Reader: EPUB, PDF, TXT, RTF; DOC through conversion

You’ll notice a pattern there: Everybody (except for Amazon) supports EPUB as their primary ebook format. Turns out, there’s a good reason for that.

EPUB, the MP3 of Book Publishing

The reason just about every ebook uses EPUB is because the vast majority of the publishing industry has decided that EPUB is the industry standard file format for ebooks. It’s a free and open standard, based on open specifications. The successor to Open eBook, it’s maintained by the International Digital Publishing Forum, which has a pretty lengthy list of members, both of the dead-tree persuasion (HarperCollins and McGraw Hill) and of the technological kind (Adobe and HP). Google’s million-book library is all in EPUB too.

It’s based on XML—extensible markup language—which you see all over the place, from RSS to Microsoft Office, ’cause it lays out rules for storing information. And it’s actually made up of a three open components: Open Publication Structure basically is about the formatting, how it looks; Open Packaging Format is how it’s tied together using navigation and metadata; and Open Container Format is a zip-based container format for the file, where you get the .epub file extension. When you toss those three components together, you have the EPUB ebook format.

While we’ve only see EPUB on black-and-white e-ink-based readers so far, like Sony’s Readers or the B&N Nook, the capabilities of the file format go way “beyond those types of things,” says Nick Bogaty, Adobe’s senior development manager for digital publishing. Unlike PDF, which is a fixed page, EPUB provides reflowable text, a page layout that can adjust itself to a device’s screen-size. With EPUB, content producers can use cascading style sheets, embedded fonts, and yes, embed multimedia files like color images, SVG graphics, interactive elements, even full video—the kind of stuff Steve promised in the iPad keynote. So, we haven’t seen the full extent of EPUB’s capabilities, and won’t, until at least April 3 and presumably much later. Even if the books you buy from Apple iBook store worked on other devices—and as you will soon see, there’s little chance of that—don’t count on the coolest stuff, like video, to be somehow compatible with current-generation black-and-white e-ink readers.

D-D-D-DRM!

But let’s not get too excited seeing the words “free” and “open” so much in conjunction with EPUB. It’s like MP3 or AAC, and not only because it’s become a semi-universal industry standard. Make no mistake, these files can be totally unencrypted and unmanaged, or they can be wrapped up in any kind of digital rights management a distributor wants.

So far, according to Bogaty, the DRM every EPUB distributor currently uses is Adobe Content Server, which conveniently also wraps around PDF files. Sony and Barnes & Noble both use it on their readers, though since Adobe’s DRM doesn’t allow for sharing books between accounts, B&N actually uses a slightly custom version, and manages the Nook’s lending feature using their own backend. (Adobe is working on a sharing provision.) It does, however, support expiration, which is how Sony’s vaunted library lending feature works.

The plus side of all this compatability that it’s actually possible to move files from a Sony Reader to a Nook, using Adobe Digital Editions to authorize the transfer. (Though according to some reviewers, that would be like moving pelts from a dead horse to a rotting bear.)

Apple, on the other hand, chose EPUB as the preferred file format, but will be wrapping DRM’d files from its iBooks Store in the FairPlay DRM, which is used to protect movies and apps (and formerly music) in the iTunes Store. As always, expect them to be the only company using it.

(There’s a precursor to EPUB’s dilemma: Audible downloads. You can buy Audible audiobooks from an enormous number of sources, but the ones you buy from iTunes aren’t going to play on any other Audible-capable device, no matter how many logos they slap on the box.)

You may be thinking that it’s just a matter of time before ebook stores all go DRM free. That would be wishful thinking at best. While ebooks might seem a lot like digital music circa 2005, you can’t rip a book, so the only way to get a bestseller on your reader is to buy it legally, or to steal it. It’s pretty much that simple. There will be free books, there will be unencrypted books, and the torrents will rage with bestsellers (as they already do). Still, DRM’s gonna be a hard fact of life with every major bookstore, since they’re going to at least try to keep you from stealing it. You don’t see Hollywood giving up DRM, do you?

Kindle, Barnes & Noble, and How The Dead PDA Business Affects the Live Ebook War

Did you know that Amazon owns Mobipocket, which mainly targeted ebooks for PDAs and smartphones, and had its own file format that with roots in the PalmDOC format? The Mobipocket format, consequently, has two extensions: .mobi and .prc. I bring it up, not because you should care about Mobipocket—you really shouldn’t—but because the Kindle’s preferred AZW format is actually a very slightly modified version of MOBI, which is why it’s easy to convert files from one format to the other. Unprotected AZW files can be renamed to the MOBI or PRC format and simply work with MobiPocket readers.

The problem with Mobipocket is that it’s not a very capable format, since it was originally designed for ancient-ass PDAs and all. So there’s another special Amazon format that’s a little more mysterious, called Topaz, which is more capable than MOBI, with powers like the ability to have embedded fonts. It’s used for fewer books, and carries the file suffix .tpz or .azw1. For what it’s worth, some people complain books in the Topaz format are less responsive than the standard AZW files. In truth, none of this may matter if and when the Super Kindle arrives.

In terms of DRM, Amazon uses its own DRM on both formats. Both have been cracked, though it apparently took longer with Topaz. This may be good news for pirates, but matters not at all from a cross-platform point of view, since that format is completely proprietary, and nothing but the Kindle or Kindle software will read it anyway.

But the old PDA legacy crap doesn’t stop with Amazon. Palm once owned its own ebook platform, which it sold to a company who called it eReader. Eventually, the format and the software platform came to be owned by Barnes & Noble. I’m only dragging you into this because Barnes & Noble actually still sells many books in this format, even while they transition to the more popular and “open” EPUB format. You can spot an eReader format because the file ends in .pdb—but you only see that after you bought the damn thing. That is to say, even if you care enough about formats to go with the reader that supports the one you like, you still might get stuck with a limited, if not completely proprietary, stack of books.

PDF, I Still Love You

In comparison to EPUB, PDF is simple. Developed over 15 years ago by Adobe, the portable document format has been an open standard since 2008. You’re probably pretty damn familiar with it, but the main thing about it versus these other formats is that everything is fixed—fonts, graphics, text, etc.—so it looks the same everywhere, versus the reflowable format that adjusts to the screen size. Hence, Amazon offers PDF without zoom on its Kindle DX, which has the screen real estate to (usually) not muck it up too much. With smaller screens than the PDF’s native size, it requires some pan-and-zoom voodoo, and it still usually looks pretty disgusting.

Zoom issues notwithstanding, having a fixed format has advantages. For instance, a lot of “electronic newspapers” were transmitted via PDF back in the day, because it retained their design. It’s really nice for comics. (Consequently, you can bet scanned-comic piracy to explode when the iPad arrives, unless Marvel and DC come up with killer strategies to get their comics on a device that’s clearly begging for it.) Wikipedia covers a lot of the technical ground, surprisingly thoroughly, even if the usual Wiki caveats apply. As mentioned above, it can be protected with Adobe Content Server DRM, just like EPUB.

The Great Shiny Hope: Apps

The other path for digital publishers: Build an app to hold your books and magazines. This is the route magazines are taking, because they’re envisioning some fancy digital jujitsu. With Adobe AIR, which is what Wired and the NYT are using in various incarnations for their respective rags, they’re able to do more advanced layouts, more rich multimedia, Flash craziness, and other designer bling that EPUB can’t handle, says Adobe’s Bogarty. Also, importantly you can dynamically update content, like when new issues arrive, which you can’t really do with EPUB.

Interestingly, the publisher Penguin is also taking the app route for their books, building apps using web technologies like HTML5 for the iPad, so their books are in fact, way more like games and applications than mere books. So it’s another tack publishers could take.

But the app business can help with the openness of the big ebook file formats, too. Many people read Amazon’s proprietary formats on their iPhone, because Amazon wants to sell books, and Apple wants people to use apps. Barnes & Noble has a reader app, too; while not great, it at least somewhat helps get over the PDB/EPUB confusion. It’s pretty likely that these and many other ebook apps will turn up on the iPad, unless Jobs decides that they “duplicate” his “functionality.” Since iBooks itself is an app you have to download, it probably won’t be an issue. Here’s hoping.

The Upshot

The idea of an open ebook format that works on any reader sounds really nice. And in some cases, if you pay really really close attention, it’s true. That open format thing actually can work for you. But the reality? You’re pretty much going to be stuck with the books you buy in one device working only in that same ecosystem, or at least hoping and praying for an assortment of proprietary reader apps to appear on all your devices. Now, where’d I put that copy of Infinite Jest? Was it in my Kindle library, my B&N library or my iBooks library?

Still something you wanna know? Send questions about ebooks, bookies or horse heads here with “Giz Explains” in the subject line.

http://gizmodo.com/5478842/giz-explains-how-youre-gonna-get-screwed-by-ebook-formats

We just finished watching Google’s live announcement of the launch of the Google App Marketplace. Keep reading for information on what they’re offering users and developers. Oh, and know that the Marketplace is live today. Updating.

The event is called “Google Campfire One” and it’s all about how easy it will be to create, set up, and install apps using Google’s App Marketplace. It appears that the big focus is on how everything—apps and existing Google products—will work together seamlessly and allow for all your tools and data to sit in the cloud. Right now the appeal is for business applications, but the potential seems incredible.

The first portion of the announcement is about what developers will give and get in this whole deal. Google is offering them access to 25 million users and only asking for a one-time fee of $100 and 20% revenue in exchange—that’s less than what access to Apple’s App Store requires. Of course, Google is providing a solid system with apps being authenticated using OpenID, secured using oAuth, and made available through a universal Google Apps navigation system.

While there are already 50 partners right at launch, we’re hearing that after new apps are submitted, they may take a few days to show up in the Marketplace—mind you, there’s no word on what kind of approval process there is. But once an app is in the Marketplace, it’s easy for users or buyers to add them to their Google accounts: They agree to some terms of service, grant access to data—such as Gmail or GCal, and enable the app. Tada! It’ll show up in the new apps drop down.

Now apparently development of these apps is so simple that there are 40 developers who are on a bus traveling to an SXSW event and working on apps right now.

It looks like apps will be easy to integrate into existing Google products as seen by a demo of a payroll app by Intuit—information from it was embedded into Gmail or Google Docs.

Now remember how there have been some nice previews of YouTube videos in Gmail lately? Prepare to see more of that from these new apps because Google is offering developers the chance to set apps to be triggered by certain emails, events, or specific types of content.

What does all this mean right now? For business users, there are plenty of apps already available—ones for payroll, data entry, management, and an office suite—and they’ll be able to run everything right from the cloud. For us plain Janes and Joes though, the Marketplace is full of potential at this moment. Think social media, data management, communication—all the things you already get from Google, just better.

Yes, my head’s already in the cloud. Hopefully everything else will follow and I’ll be able to work and play there.

http://gizmodo.com/5489679/the-google-app-marketplace-doing-it-all-in-the-cloud

Here’s the story: I’m in love with the Wacom Intuos4 Wireless tablet. Free from cables, it’s the best graphics tablet experience I’ve ever had.

Smoother Than the Smoothest Thing

The Wacom Intuos4 was quite a leap from the Intuos3. It doubled the pressure sensitive levels, and it added multifunction Touch Ring trackpad, on-screen radial menus, and eight user-definable buttons with OLED tags—called ExpressKeys—in a thin, ultralight 2.2-pound package. The Wacom Intuos4 Wireless has all those characteristics, and they work equally as well over the Bluetooth connection.

With a sightly smaller working surface than the Medium model—8 x 5 inches versus the 8.8 x 5.5 inches of the cable-bound model—the wireless tablet is a pure joy to use. The 2048 levels of pressure sensitiveness, requiring only 1 gram of pressure to start painting vs the 10 grams of the previous version, offer the best real drawing simulation of any of the tablets I’ve ever tried. It feels like the real thing, with the slightest touch transferred to the screen as if it was real media. The brushstrokes are as smooth and precise as the real thing, and the tablet never misses a single beat, no matter how fast I try to move its very comfortable stylus—which comes with different tips for different surface feedback.

This performance is not only good for digital painting. It is perfect to retouch in Photoshop, allowing you to mask or clone with absolute precision, down to the last pixel, without having to vary the size of the brush. It makes everyday brush tasks so easy it makes me giddy when I’m using it.

Screw the Keyboard

But plenty of other tablet features also help dramatically in the daily workflow, allowing you to circumvent the keyboard almost completely.

Take the multifunction Touch Ring, a circular trackpad that allows you to perform four different, user-definable functions, like zoom: Circling my finger in one direction would zoom in. Doing so in the opposite direction will zoom out. The second function will cycle through layers, the third will change the brush size—although sadly this doesn’t work in Photoshop—and the fourth rotates the canvas to face the physical orientation of your tablet. To switch to the next function, you click in the middle button. An LED will change and your monitor will display an elegant transparent dialog that fades in and out briefly, but long enough to identify the new trackpad function.

The eight user-definable ExpressKeys are located in a perfect position: Four above and four below the Touch Ring. Each is labeled with a completely customizable OLED display, much like the Optimus Maximum keyboard, but presented in a starkly contrasting black and white. (The display looks so good that, at first glance, you’re sure the buttons are permanent, backlit cutouts.) Like the Touch Ring, you can define the functions for these buttons using the Wacom control panel. The labels will change according to your preference.

Another favorite feature of mine—which I’ve been jonesing for since I stopped using Alias PowerAnimator and Maya—are the radial menus. These are just software-based and can also be found on the Cintiq line, but they are great timesavers. Pop-up radial menus are easier to use than regular pop-up list menus (both for mouse and tablet operation). They are also user-defined, and give you eight functions at a time, which can also be sub-menus.

However, the best thing is that all these features can be application dependent, something that was possible with previous Wacom tablets, but not with this level of detail and finesse. In Photoshop, for example, my radial menus are tailored to fit my most used program features. The result is that I touch the keyboard very rarely, if at all.

Perfect Wireless Performance

All these cool features and exceptional performance, however, are shared with the existing, cheaper, cabled Intuos4. The question here is: How good is the performance of the Intuos4 Wireless over the Bluetooth connection? And what about the battery life?

Response is just as fast and just as good. The Wacom Intuos4 Wireless works just like the USB-based Intuos4.

As for the lithium ion battery, it charges quickly via USB. The tablet puts itself to sleep when it detects no signal and, as a result, you can use the tablet for a day, heavily, without recharging it at all. (Or just keep it around without worrying about losing power.) The advantage of USB recharging is that you can be using it while connected to the computer, with the cable itself as the connection (the Bluetooth goes off when the tablet is connected physically).

My only little gripe with the wireless component of the tablet is that, on occasion, it will take a few seconds to reconnect when you turn it on. This happened when the computer wakes up first, so I suspect is an issue with Bluetooth getting silly after the Mac wakes up. 99% of the times is instantaneous, however.

A Joy to Use

If you have a Wacom Intuos4 you can probably skip this upgrade. That is, unless you are itching to have the freedom of movement of the Bluetooth connection. That’s the joy of this tablet: You can move around freely with it. It adapts to your position, not the other way around. You don’t depend on your table. You can lay back on your chair, and lose yourself in hours of photo retouching or illustration.

Given the nature of its custom menus, any user can take advantage of the Intuos4 for every program. You can be using it constantly, instead of a mouse. If you just want to use it for graphic applications, however, another advantage is that you can put it away easily, without having to disconnect it or struggle with cables.

This tablet could only be bettered if they made it into a wireless display. Like the iPad, but connected to the computer so I can use Photoshop on my bed, the sofa or outside on the terrace (the Bluetooth signal gets there, I tried). Like the Cintiq 12 I tried, but with the same response, weight, and form factor.

If you have an Intuos 3 or any other display-less Wacom tablet, get the Intuos4 Wireless. Even though it doesn’t come with a mouse—like the regular Intuos4 Medium—it’s absolutely worth its $399 price tag (just $30 more than the USB-based Intuos4’s list price).

Amazing performance with 2048 levels of pressure and only 1 gram of minimum pressure

Touch Ring and ExpressKeys customizable controls avoids touching the keyboard

Slightly pricier than Intuos4 Medium, and it doesn’t come with the mouse

A couple of times it took the Intuos4 a few seconds to reconnect after being asleep, although this is probably related to the computer coming out of sleep as well

The renowned MIT Media Lab is a place where every project is an amazing, unbelievable glimpse into humanity’s technological future. Now, thanks to a massive $90 million extension, the architecture can match the wondrous excitement created within.

In case you haven’t had the opportunity to swing by this particular block in Cambridge, Massachusetts, here’s what the old Media Lab looks like. It’s still there. In fact, you can see the extension under construction, and marvel at the stark contrast in design.

Mensa Tetris

The six-level, interconnected extension, the work of the famed, award-winning architectural firm Fumihiko Maki and Associates, is like an immense Tetris puzzle. Every piece represents a functional element that is tightly connected to others, giving anyone inside the feeling of being inside a finished puzzle. Maki, himself the winner of a Pritzker Prize, was on hand over the weekend to officially open the MIT Media Lab. (It’s technically been in operation since December.)

As he described it, each piece of this six-level building connects to the next. Balcony offices overlook open air labs and work spaces. Colorful stairways bisect the central atrium, their red, blue and yellow coloring inspired by Piet Mondrian’s Composition with Yellow, Blue and Red.

Color aside, the trait hitting visitors in the face before they even walk through the door is glass. Cambridge building codes prevented a 100% glass exterior, so Maki came up with a loophole: bamboo. Inspired by translucent Japanese bamboo screens, Maki covered the remaining exterior with a mix of glass and aluminum tubes.

The result is at the same time beautiful and energy efficient, but also functional. We’re constantly reminded that this is one incredibly open, collaborative working environment.

From the street, especially at night, passers-by can literally see lab work happening within. Maki called this “filtered views,” inspired by the work of the pointillist artist George Seurat (lots of dots!). MIT played a part too, having provided Maki with an image of the Visible Man to further drive home the point that this lab space be open.

But enough architecture? What kind of world-changing stuff can we expect this multimillion dollar, 163,000-sq. ft. incubator to pump out in the future?

Well, if the past is any indication, plenty. The place that saw the beginnings of Guitar Hero, e-ink displays, OLPC and Lego Mindstorms is still driving much of the stuff that gets the Gizmodo editors, at least, sweating profusely in their blogging sweatpants.

The Media Lab will help “plumb the depths of how technology can have a greater impact on industry, society and business,” said Media Lab director Frank Moss.

To net denizens and geeks like you and me, that boils down to robotics, prosthetic limbs, AI and the obligatory Minority Report UI reference that any article mentioning 3D interfaces must include.

Fluid Media

As part of the opening, I was lucky enough to get a tour or some, but not all of the departments at the Media Lab. Departments like Biomechatronics, Cognitive Machines, Fluid Interfaces, Molecular Machines, Personal Robots, Smart Cities, Synthetic Neurobiology. It reads like Stephen Hawkings’ shopping list.

In any event, Fluid Media was one of the labs I got to tour first.

If you know Arduino, you’d be at home here, alongside the luminescent wallpaper, smart fabrics, “sewable computing” and inexpensive 3D fabricators that had me waxing nostalgic about Cory Doctorow’s Makers.

Above: No, not coasters or doilies. Sewable computers. If you aren’t wearing your mp3 player now, you will be soon.

Kindergarten Kids, Forever

The sense of play felt throughout the Media Lab’s open spaces owes itself to the students, of course, but it’s certainly assisted by the design. Moss called the atmosphere “serious fun,” in a building where bright minds “design by serendipity.” It’s pretty spot on. One lab leads into the other, encouraging social and professional interaction. Artists huddle with biomechanical engineers. Sometimes the union is short-lived, and sometimes it’s Guitar Hero.

But it’s serious fun: There’s a mission here, one that’s produced limbs for soldiers maimed in war; helped children learn robotics with crazy new Lego software; and created a paint brush, simply called I/O, that captures the essence of whatever you point it at—visual, musical or otherwise.

Even so, the fun, relaxed environment is apparent in this lab that director Moss says will change our futures. He and others, like Lifelong Kindergarten Department grad student Karen Brennan, were genuinely having fun while working with these high concepts and brain-bending experiments. The future, wild as it will be, looks pretty fun. Seriously.

Image credits: The Visible Man is a well-known see-through anatomy model from Craft House Corp. Composition in Yellow, Blue and Red from Wikipedia.

For this week’s Shooting Challenge, I asked you to capture a photography by the light of just one candle. Your response, as always, was remarkable.

Most Meme

“Taken with a tripod mounted Canon XSi with a Canon 50mm f1.8 and an extension tube. Exposure was f/2 @ 1/50s, ISO 320.”

[Ed note: Close call, given the Portal shot in the galleries.]

-Adam Carlson

Most Clever

“This was “shot” using my Canon 7D with the 50mm f1.8 prime. Tripod, ISO 800, 1/6 shutter, f2.8. The only light in the image is from a taper candle inserted into a disassembled MAG-Lite. To keep the flame from melting the reflective lens of the flashlight, the setup was aimed up and the final image rotated.”

-Christian Shaffer

Most Fiery

“The shot was taken with my Canon S90 @ F8, ISO 400 and with a 15sec exposure on a tripod. To achieve the blur, I adjusted the head of the tripod downward and back to it’s starting position quickly at the start of the exposure.”

-Jesse Oliveri

Favorite on Film

Camera: Mamiya RZ67

Lens: Mamiya-Sekor 110mm

Film: Kodak 160VC

Shot at: f2.8 at 1 sec

Reflective metered with a Sekonik L-508

Scanned at a low resolution

-Gabriel Padilla

Winner

Canon 5dMark II

Sigma 70-200mm EX

ISO 100

F 2.8

Shutter speed 2.5

“I hung the statue upside down to make it appear that the light was coming from up above. Using long term exposure I quickly moved the candle to light the side of his face.”

[Ed note: This image subverted my expectations completely, re-imagining soft candle light as a crisp backlight. Also, I have a soft spot for The Incredibles, silhouettes and the color red.]

-Felix Mendoza

Note: there are two galleries this week for the sake of our back end:

If participants proved one thing this week, it’s that a single candle is more than apt for photography by modern dSLRS. Well, that, and they’re all gluttons for punishment. Nice job, everyone.

Now cheer* on your favorites in the comments!

(*Just be sure to do so without, you know, being a dick to other participants. Also, for anyone wondering why the lead shot didn’t win, it was taken last summer making it ineligible for competition.)

http://gizmodo.com/5488484/133-photos-lit-by-a-single-candle

Sony’s finally put a name to their motion controller, and it’s called PlayStation Move. Updated with hands on.

Sony will have multiple packages. A standalone Move controller, or a package with PlayStation Eye + Move + a game, or an entire console solution. The Eye and Move and game combo will be less than $100. The preliminary launch window is Fall 2010.

One of the games for it is called Sports Champions, a game with a bunch of smaller mini games. One demo is a swordfighting duel game with a sword/mace and shield. It’s similar to the swordfighting one in Wii Sports Resort, but with a shield too. This needs two motion controllers at once.

One cool effect that they can do with the benefit of having a PS Eye is that they can do augmented reality stuff, like putting a paintbrush or a tennis racquet onto your Move controller on screen.

Sony also didn’t say that the controllers came in a pair, so for the games that require two controllers (like the swordfighting one), you may have to buy two Move controllers. Very Nintendo WiiMote + Nunchuck-esque in terms of having to buy two things.

Motion Fighters. A street fighting game that actually looks pretty cool, as it makes you make the entire motion instead of just flicking your wrist.

Oh, and there’s also a sub-controller that you can buy as an attachment to turn the controller into a WiiMote+Nunchuck like configuration. It’s also wireless.

Hands On

Update: I just got hands on with two of the games, one is Socom, a shooter that has been adapted to use the Move and the sub-controller, the second is the Sports Champions swordfighting.

Socom, compared to point-and-shoot shooters on the Wii, was much smoother, much less jittery and more accurate. The combination of Move and PlayStation Eye seems to work well in this aspect, but it’s not exactly better to use this when you compare it to a standard controller or a Mouse + Keyboard. I can see this as better for novices to shooters, being able to aim where you want to shoot.

The other game, the Sports Champions sword + shield fighting, is about what you’d expect. It’s more or less 1:1 motion, like the Wii MotionPlus, but it’s not so much more accurate than the Wii that you’d call it a dramatic improvement. An improvement, yes, but not dramatic. The left hand also holds a controller in order to wave the shield around, and that was a bit awkward in my experience. Right hand was fine, left hand a bit awkward to control simultaneously.

Swinging the hammer to your left, or right, or over your head actually moves it on screen, but again, it’s not SO much better than Wii MotionPlus. The graphics, of course, are one generation higher, but the controls, ehhh.

PLAYSTATION®MOVE MOTION CONTROLLER DELIVERS A WHOLE NEW ENTERTAINMENT EXPERIENCE TO PLAYSTATION®3

New PlayStation®Move Sub-Controller, Enabling Intuitive Navigation, to Accompany the Release of the Motion Controller This Fall and 36 Developers and Publishers to Support PlayStation®Move Platform

Tokyo, March 10, 2010 – Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) today announced that PlayStation®Move motion controller for PlayStation®3 (PS3™) computer entertainment system launches worldwide this fall, offering a motion-based, high-definition gaming experience unlike anything on the market. Concurrently with its launch, SCE will also release PlayStation®Move sub-controller to be used along with the motion controller for intuitive navigation of in-game characters and objects. The PlayStation Move platform, including the motion controller, sub-controller, and PlayStation®Eye camera*1, together with a strong lineup of software titles, will deliver an innovative and highly immersive experience on the PS3 system.

The combination of the PS3 system and PlayStation Eye camera detects the precise movement, angle, and absolute position in 3D space of PlayStation Move motion controller, allowing users to intuitively play the game as if they themselves are within the game. PlayStation Move motion controller delivers unmatched accuracy through its advanced motion sensors, including a three-axis gyroscope, a three-axis accelerometer, and a terrestrial magnetic field sensor, as well as a color-changing sphere that is tracked by PlayStation Eye camera. Through PlayStation Move system, both fast and subtle motion can be detected, whether the user is swinging a tennis racket, or painting with a brush. With PlayStation Move motion controller, users can provide direct input through action buttons and an analog trigger, while receiving physical feedback from rumble functionality and visual feedback from the sphere’s ability to display a variety of different colors. Furthermore, PlayStation Eye camera can capture the player’s voice or image, enabling augmented reality experiences.

The newly announced PlayStation Move sub-controller is a one-handed controller, developed to further expand the game play options that PlayStation Move games can offer*2. PlayStation Move sub-controller features a sleek curved design that pairs with the motion controller and comes with an analog stick and directional buttons that allow users to easily control the game when moving characters or choosing a direction. Like all other Wireless Controllers for the PS3 system, it comes with a built in lithium-ion rechargeable battery as well as Bluetooth® technology, enabling the controller to transfer the input information wirelessly to the PS3 system without a cable. PlayStation Move motion controller and sub-controller will further broaden the gaming experience on the PS3 system for all genres, from games that use one motion controller to games that use both controllers.

The introduction of PlayStation Move controllers has been well received within the industry and now 36 third party developers and publishers*3 have decided to support PlayStation Move platform. In fiscal year 2010, SCE Worldwide Studios will also release more than 20 games that are either dedicated to or supported with the PlayStation Move platform.

SCE, with strong support from software developers and publishers, will deploy various measures to enhance the PlayStation Move software title line-up and vigorously promote the PS3 platform.

http://gizmodo.com/5490508/sony-motion-controller-is-called-playstation-move-launches-fall-2010-hands-on

If you’re in the market for a netbook—the gimpy kittens of the laptop jungle—know this first: on the inside, they’re all basically the same. Making the little differences all the more important! And yes, they do add up.

For our Battlemodo, we decided to look only at netbooks powered by Intel’s Pine Trail (Atom N450) processor. Netbooks sporting older processors are a bit cheaper, but they’re also a little slower and don’t achieve the same impressive battery life as Pine Trail. And they’ve been reviewed to death elsewhere.

Netbooks with an Ion GPU are also available, but they’ve got their own baggage. First: they’re around $50 more expensive than non-Ion models. Second: they’re not available yet on Pine Trail. So you can either settle for an older processor with Ion and take a battery life and performance hit, or wait until the first Pine Trail-compatible netbook—the Acer Aspire One 532G—comes out later this year and pay the premium. Once you’re spending $500+ on a netbook, though, you may as well step up to a full-function ultraportable.

So: Pine Trail netbooks it is. Usually we put the benchmarks off until the end, but in this case it’s worth highlighting up front just how comparable these machines are inside:

Peas in an underwhelming pod. Which is why when you’re even considering a netbook, it’s vital to pay outsized attention to design, display, keyboard, and all the extras that’ll ultimately inform your experience.

The Results

I’ll say this as many times as I have to: netbooks are a sea of sameness. And it’s a shame that even the ones that stand out come with some significant caveats.

The Winner (If You Need Affordable HD Now)

Dell Inspiron Mini 10

Price: $425

The Dell Mini 10 is a little bulkier than the other contenders, but I’m happy to trade a little weight for the sturdier build. The glossy red top was a welcome splash of color without looking cheap. And where most netbook batteries stick out the back end or bottom like oblong tumors, the Mini’s is safely tucked away in the bottom deck. The result? A small form laptop with a big boy design. The Mini 10 was also the easiest to type on, with flush and raised keys leaving me pleasantly hand-cramp-free compared to the island-style netbook keyboards.

Most importantly, Dell (along with HP) has managed to mitigate the netbook HD problem by throwing Broadcom’s Crystal HD accelerator into the mix. It won’t offer the full 3D graphic support of Ion, and you’ll have to download Adobe’s Flash 10.1 beta 3 for the full effect, but once I did I was able to reliably stream 1080p video off of YouTube, as well as full-screen HD content from Hulu. it’s your best bet until Pine Trail Ion 2 netbooks start popping up later this year.

Here’s the catch: the trackpad is bad. Really, truly, frustratingly bad. Not so bad as to be unusable, but it’s too small and the integrated buttons respond clumsily.

Runner Up: HP Mini 210 HD Edition

Price: $465

Admittedly, this was a close call. The HP Mini 210 has a similarly solid feel to it, and handles HD video almost as well as the Dell. But in the two areas that are arguably most critical to a netbook experience—battery life and price—the Mini came up way short. Unlike other manufacturers who include a 6-cell battery as standard, HP offers theirs as an $80 add-on, driving up the price of a usable configuration. Not that it did much good: the Mini 210 fared worst of all in our battery test, lasting only 4:09.

The Winner (If You Don’t Care About HD)

Acer Aspire One 532h

Price: $350

If you don’t consider watching HD clips on your netbook an integral part of the experience, congratulations! You’re going to be able to save yourself a good chunk of cash and walk away with an otherwise comparable user experience. The Acer Aspire One 532h has a sleek design and performs at least on par with the Dell and HP in almost every other respect. It had the best battery life of the bunch, it’s wafer-thin and extremely light, and has a raised trackpad that’s actually enjoyable to use.

The main drawback to the Acer is its keyboard. Although I like the larger buttons, there’s a certain amount of give in the middle that makes an otherwise crisp design feel cheap. The glossy top is also prone to smudging in a way that the other models manage to avoid. Otherwise, though, it performs as well as the extremely capable Toshiba NB305—for $50 less.

Runner Up: Toshiba NB305

Price: $400

The Toshiba stands out as being good at everything, but not great at anything. And if it were a bit cheaper, it’d be my pick here. But paying $400 for a computer with an Atom processor that doesn’t play HD seems like a tough sell, especially when for just a few more bucks you can step up to the Dell.

Feature Comparison

Battery life was tested by running each laptop on moderate performance settings, three-quarters screen brightness, and refreshing a page in Firefox every thirty seconds to simulate active browsing.

Verdict: Buy What’s Cheap

I wish there were a clear-cut winner. I wish Pine Trail had more to offer. I wish Sony weren’t charging $480 for their incredibly subpar Vaio W Eco edition. But hey, that’s just netbooks.

It’s an interesting dilemma. There’s clearly value in an affordable computer you can carry around for basic tasks, but is this really the best we can do? And the more triage we do on netbook guts to increase usability—be it Ion graphics or Broadcom HD accelerators—the more expensive they get, and the less apparent that value proposition becomes. And who knows? Maybe netbooks themselves have never been more than a patch. Maybe what we’ve really wanted all along are tablets and smartbooks.

For now, though: find the cheapest netbook you can that does what you need. If that means HD, go for the Dell. If not, the Acer’s your pick, or even an older, discounted model, if you don’t see yourself needing maxed-out battery life. It’s purely a commodity purchase: treat it like one, and you’ll be fine.

http://gizmodo.com/5490111/tested-the-best-new-netbooks

Even if you don’t own a PlayStation 3, Heavy Rain is a game you should know because it re-imagines both videogames and movies, combining them into a new genre of Choose Your Own Adventure digital narrative. (Very minor spoilers ahead.)

This is not to say Heavy Rain is perfect, but think of this piece as less a review than a critical discussion of a new work. How about we start from the beginning?

Heavy Rain is by a French company named Quantic Dream. Unless you’re a hardcore gamer, there’s no way you’ve heard of them. Before Heavy Rain, they’d made a game that was so plagued by budgets and launch schedules that its narrative lost basic cohesion—yet Sony has most likely sunk millions of dollars (be it in indirect support) into Quantic Dream to create a unique, PlayStation-exclusive IP.

Why? There’s no other development studio on the planet like them.

Quantic Dream creates a game that’s equal parts video game and movie. And I don’t mean that it’s a game peppered with a few, slightly congruous extended cutscenes, like Metal Gear Solid 4 or any Square Enix RPG.

Heavy Rain, and its predecessor Indigo Prophecy (also known as Fahrenheit), are highly directed pieces of media, deploying fixed cameras to tell the story of a scene as your character walks through, nuanced motion capture to add realism to both jumping through windows and merely turning off a sink, and choices that stem from real actions and dialogue that will change the course of the story you see unfold.

What’s this mean? If a person cries in Heavy Rain, you will most probably feel for them as you would any fictional character in any photographic media. These games aren’t Grand Theft Auto, with humans filling the landscape as silly, bleeding sheep-like diversions. Heavy Rain’s writing is melodramatic to say the least, but its basic presentation of character is on par with any well-directed drama.

Heavy Rain may chronicle a serial child murderer through the perspective of four characters—an overweight private eye, a young FBI agent, a sexy photographer and a depressed father—it may take you through high speed chases and fight sequences that rival any action flick—it may have all the twists of any good yarn—but it opens with a father waiting for his son to come home.

The father walks through his house, exploring his life, completing mundane tasks and thinking aloud at any time with the tap of a trigger button.

Much of Heavy Rain explores the mundane, some of which fills in backstory, other of which just puts you in the shows of another’s life—like The Sims for someone 30 or over.

However, there is something to be learned in all this shaving and cooking. You’re mastering button combinations, strange holds and releases and analog stick maneuvers that you’ll need when things don’t go so well for Dad and his family. To drink a carton of milk, for instance, you’ll want to move the analog stick in the shape of a fishook…but slowly! Too fast and the realtime animation might make you spill on your face. Shaving works similarly.

Eventually, this same motion, coupled with a properly timed X or square button press could be the difference of life and death. And if your character dies during the course of the game, their story merely ends.

I know why Quantic Dream uses these quick time button mashing events. They want to make the gamer literally feel like they’re really controlling a character. And no matter how coordinated you are, knowing you’ll need to hit a random button at the right time is always stressful—allegedly mapping the stress your character feels in, say, ducking a swinging crowbar to your psyche as you press down on the controller.

And herein lies Heavy Rain’s greatest flaw.

I want to choose whether or not my character shoots an innocent man for information. I’d like to decide the best way to hide a body without getting caught. And yeah, when and if I kiss the girl—that should be my call, too.

Knowing a scene can end so many ways to make a story branch so many ways feels like, well, it feels like something very important in the future of storytelling and gaming alike.

But when these decisions, my decisions, are impeded, not just by my gaming skill, but by the nature of the Dual Shock itself, it rips me from the story and reminds me that this is just another game filled with characters that aren’t real.

A simple shake of the controller, that was the difference between life and death for two of my characters. I shook the controller, timing it just right. They both died.

Sure, that could be the end of their story—people die, and that’s one potential outcome that I witnessed. But while I find the ability to affect choices interesting, if my gaming prowess is put to the test—even when that Dual Shock is working fine—I don’t want my heroine to perish because I missed hitting X when prompted. I want her to perish because I stupidly told her to go into a deserted house where a murderer was waiting, or because I told her to fight the guy off with a banana instead of a meat clever.

It’s a key question that future entities like Heavy Rain will need to answer better than they are now: How much of a story’s outcome is based on the story, and how much is based upon player skill? But I have the distinct feeling—as intense as it is to jiggle an analog stick to unhook a bra clasp—we’ll realize that watching two people make whoopie is a lot more exciting than making a lame minigame out of it.

And just as we have for millennia, we’ll watch a story unfold in front of us, passively, just with a bit more choice and replay value.

If titles like Heavy Rain show us anything, it’s that, yes, technology is unlocking new ways to tell a story. While most video games focus on a very linear plot, modeling themselves after movies and theater, they have the great potential to allow the audience to explore parts of a story that could have happened, altering fiction to better emulate real life and challenging the construct of a story as we know it—all well allowing the viewer to feel like they’re somehow involved beyond mere spectating. Fiction evolves from a series of events to a series of choices, much like life.

All my critiquing aside, you should absolutely play Heavy Rain. The PlayStation 3 title, available now, blurs the boundaries of media, offers an extremely entertaining 10 hours (or more if you replay chapters for different outcomes) and, for just a few moments over the course of the game, renders characters that are spitting images for real people. (And the rest of the time, the game still looks damn good.)

Oh, and one of the characters has these virtual reality glasses that are really cool.

http://gizmodo.com/5490360/heavy-rain-a-peek-into-the-future-of-movies-and-games