iPig is powerfully cute - technology review

Speakal's iPig is powerfully cute

I have recently had the pleasure of checking out the Speakal dockable ipod speaker system.  At first glance you might think it was a toy but it is not. It has 4 speakers (tweeters under the ears, the eyes are the mid range) and a 4"inch sub woofer located on the bottom of the pig. Imagine if you a large boombox and a anime character mated you would have the iPig. I have never turned the thing up to full volume. It is 5x more powerful than any other dockable system out there and it also has an aux input so I can plug my laptop, PSP, Satellite Radio, and Xbox into it.  A standard 3.5 mm stereo plug will feed the pig with any unbalanced audio input. 

When the system is powered on ( switch in the back) the mouth lights up and blinks when the remote control is being used. Visual feedback to let you know it is listening to you.

The mouth also serves as the vent for all of the power the iPig contains. I can dial in the sub woofer with a manual control in the back for the perfect sound for the space I am in. 

I also found it works best on a counter, a desk, or shelf rather than the floor. It will fill the room with sound. 

Along with the small form factor it also has a remote which is handy but the cool thing is the haptic or touch control for volume. Touch the right ear to raise the volume or touch the left ear to lower the volume.  The colors are environmentally color safe which is probably why they are only sold in 3 color combinations, white, pink, and yellow.
 

When you pick it up it feels heavy, there are some serious magnets in these speakers. A typical hard drive power supply feeds the iPig, it does not run on batteries. I am telling you this is a serious speaker system. We tested the iPig at an outdoor party with an iPod and the remote worked well, the volume was so loud we spent most of the time turning it down. We even watched a Foo Fighters video on it. We got tired of the songs on my friends iPod and so we hooked up my satellite radio to it and let it crank out the jams. At the end of the party everyone wanted one. I had to keep on an eye on because it is the size of a large starbucks coffee and it wants to be loved.

If there was anything I could improve upon this speaker system would be blue tooth, so it would be easy to power my mobile device. Only 3 people could watch the video on the iPod so a video out for it would be cool.  But for a laptop playing back videos no problem in watching and hearing it in stereo. The price for 140 retail is comparable to the other high end dockable speakers on the market but you get so much more for your money with this system.

For its size and power it is a no brainer purchase even if you do not have an iPod. 

The Prototype Movie Trailer I did VFX on

I worked on this 16mm film shot in Italy and the US over the last 10 years. The film needed some updating on the technology and some shots had not been done so they were created digitally (the radiation suit walkign away from a crashed ship). I also color graded and did the graphics for the film trailer. My team did various shots, the opening 5 mile spaceship, the new alien background that had to be roto' ed and various subtle fixes to the piece or seamless effects. Over 22 shots were manipulated to bring a new sense fo urgency to "the prototype."

Converting m2t HD files into MOV file - FCP can edit PC HD files

Focus Enhancements Hard Drive is cool ( actually when it is running it gets quite hot)
You have to decide if you are going to record m2t file or mov file - pc vs mac editing
Now if you do not know you gotsa problem.

One work around is $50.00 clipwrap that does not convert but wrap an m2t file so that FCP in a MAC can recognize it.

Supports all m2t formats:

Now you're not limited to specific HDV m2t files will be compatible with FCP when it comes time to edit.

Automatically recombines spanned files: If your direct to disk recorder splits files every 4GB,
Handy if you have multiple camera editing - lock up once and go.

ClipWrap automatically detects these spanned clips and will recombine them into a single seamless QuickTime movie.

Also it does not destroy the timecode from the original file ... in case you want to recapture or lock up sources to a timecode. .

www.clipwrap.com

a good tool to have for a production pipeline.

Future of motion tracking - feature set we will see

By combining hi-res photographs of a scene along with a video shot with a consumer camera one can have something that looks like it was shot with 70mm film.

Essentially the shot is tracked and the photos are blended into the scene seamlessly.

Probably a little more difficult with a person walking and talking in front of the shot but you need to see this paper and demo.

Probably something we will see in an adobe product in 3 years, very cool stuff.

LA Mill Coffee - coffee meets design

Coffee meets design in Silverlake. Drop in for some coffee to go or stay for the food on the menu.
It is one of the few places I know has the clover ( 10,000.00 dollar coffee machine)

Taste the difference.

Along with the clover is the chemex drip at your table which is very cool as well as espresso drinks.

We went with the Japanese Siphon method which entails steaming the water from below and filling the vessel up top. Once the steaming has stopped the liquid drips down into where it started from but now as delicious coffee. We chose a medium blend from Africa that had a definite wine note.

A cool experience, though go in the am when parking is a little bit easier to find.
Located on the right near Spaceland on Silver Lake Blvd.

Cool stuff at Siggraph

Here is a short list of odd stuff I rather enjoyed at Siggraph.

Yes Judd Yalkut and Nam June Paik like on on the desktop with this cool video synthesizer that runs on a mac or pc. www.cycling74.com. One basically program a video moog synthesizer of real time video effects.

Cinetropes or models on a turntable are shot by shuttered by XL2s creating a real time organic video display.
Has to be seen to be believed, very cool - Bellows -www.ericdyer.com

Latte Art, logos, detailed art can now be printed on to Latte foam - digital signage made personal - onlatte.com

Stereoscopy is all the rage with new tools and pipelines to create 3D glasses movies that will bring people back to the theater. Unfortunately 3D LCD displays will be coming to the home as well probably not as fast.
My concern is that it will shut out the independent film maker. 
www.digitalmaxinc.com Adventres in the NPM is a 3D short you might like.

www.futureofsound.org sponsored by illustrious - cool directions in aural events

In fashion from Japan, the wearable forest - a dress with lights and sound ( a simple white dress) that mimics the feeling of being in nature ... as well as the dreaming pillow

Slikc.com is creating virtual databases for the Web 3.0 , makign it easier to get the information where you need it and when you need it easily.

The emerging technology site showed 2 dimensional communication with devices that were powered and communicated without any wires (microwave). www.alab.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~siggraph/

www.gigapan.org gigapixel cameras - panoramas from around the globe - high res panoramas.

wUbi-pen is a mobile and wireless haptic ( touch) stylus - the pen vibrates and provides feedback on a touch screen. the next step in interactive stylus. www.kyungku.net

And visual sculpture art that had the feeling of Kawaguchi 3D models from the 90s. Yoichiro Kawaguchi had soem very cool sculptures ... www.iii.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~yoichiro/

This was the year of swag ( t-shirts and zip drives are back) at Siggraph. Usually a sign the economy might be on an up swing or the fact that t-shirts are dirt cheap.

Perhaps one of the coolest little apps was the 3d Paint tool by smith-micro groboto
http://www.groboto.com/  - using the open gl card it uses bots and autobots to create complex almost fractal like organic shapes that can be exported as an obj format. Very cool app for creating animted morphing screens.