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Peripheral Vision 014: Will Bates on how a viral William Shatner mashup helped kickstart a film scoring career
"When I was 6 years old," Will Bates begins, with a touch of nostalgia, "I sang the whole score of Star Wars to my parents. From then on, they figured out that I was going to go in this direction." We're sitting in a dimly lit studio at Fall on Your Sword's Williamsburg, Brooklyn office. And while the film and commercial scoring company certainly marks a fulfillment of the musician's childhood, John Williams-fueled dreams, such career paths are rarely so straightforward. "Fall on Your Sword began as a video art project and a band," says Bates. "It really became an umbrella for all of the different projects I found myself involved in: scoring movies, scoring commercials, short form stuff and viral videos. The idea of the company was to have a home for all of these different facets of music production and allow them to cross-pollinate." Fall on Your Sword, the band, garnered a fair bit of notice online when it began translating its live multimedia performances into web videos, going viral with remixes of celebrities like William Shatner and Michael Caine. "It's done us really well in the end, because, in terms of notoriety, that's how things really kicked off. The 'Shatner on the Mount' video went crazy. Suddenly I'm playing at science fiction conventions and film festivals. All the sudden we're starting to score commercials based on the fact that some creator fell in love with that video. "
Daily Roundup: Amazon Prime Air drones, Cyber Monday deals, Windows 'Threshold' update rumor and more!
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
Peripheral Vision 013: Robert Howe on why simplicity is the key to building a better robot hand
Even in the world of robotic limbs, sometimes simpler is better. "Ten years ago, we kept building these anthropomorphic hands again and again, and yet we never made them function correctly," Robert Howe explains. The professor of engineering and applied sciences is Harvard's resident robotics hand expert, having pored over the subject of electronic limbs since the days of his own PhD program. A decade or so ago, however, Howe and his team decided to approach the matter differently. "We came up the idea of seeing where we could get with only one motor and very little sensing. Much to our surprise, it turns out if you get the mechanics right, one motor does pretty well, even in unstructured environments, where we aren't sure where the object is located because the computer vision isn't precise enough." Sensing, naturally, still plays a large part in the success of a robot hand -- after all, it's tough to grab what you can't feel. Once again, Howe and his team took a simple approach to a complex problem. The group looked to smartphones for an answer, the explosion of such devices having driven down the size and price of complex electronic components. "The new generation of barometer chips that are designed for smartphones include a pressure sensor, a temperature sensor, an analog to digital convertor, high quality instrumentation amplifiers, a microcontroller and a bus interface -- and they only cost about a dollar, says Howe. "We had to convert them to touch sensors from air pressure sensors, so we tried putting rubber over the top of them. That worked, but it gave us very insensitive devices. The trick was to put liquid rubber over the chips and then pump it down in a vacuum chamber. As a result, we get very good sensitivity."
Peripheral Vision 012: Dave Allen on moving from punk rock to digital advertising
"I'm pretty well known as one of the co-founders of the British post-punk band, Gang of Four," Dave Allen begins. "And then, after a while, I got the web itch." It's a study in contrasts, perhaps, from the bass player of one of the late-70s most seminal political punk bands, to a title like "director, interactive strategy," but Allen is nothing if not eclectic. Over the decades, his passions have taken him from the angular post-punk of Gang of Four to the new wave of Shriekback, through stints with Intel and E-music. And now we're here in 2013, inside North, a Portland brand agency that has imparted on him the aforementioned title. To Allen, however, it's not all that strange, the transition from punk rock to advertising. And at the very least, it adheres to tenets he's held dear all along. "When Gang of Four signed to EMI and Warner Bros. back in the day," he explains, "everyone was trying to say we sold out, but they kind of knew we didn't. We wanted to get our message across to the most people, so where's the best place to go? The big labels. They own distribution, manufacturing and marketing. They own the radio stations. For me, to work in the advertising world, whilst being critical of it - why would you do it outside the walls? Why not try to foment discussion within the very industry that we're all working in?"
Peripheral Vision 011: Ayah Bdeir on the importance of knowing how your electronics work
"I didn't set out originally to start a company," explains Ayah Bdeir. "I was trying to solve a problem." She's seated in the solution, a sunny office space in downtown Manhattan. A portable dividing screen provides some semblance of privacy, separating us from a space packed to the gills with makers and engineers tinkering with LittleBits' newest products. The company is in the pre-holiday push, bringing 20 new modules to market, additions that bring the total number of available Bits to 60. In amongst the explosion of microcontrollers like Arduino and RaspberryPi, Bdeir's company offers something different: utter simplicity. LittleBits are targeted firmly as those with the desire to create, but largely lacking the technical expertise to do so - people curious about how their smartphones work, but with no idea where to begin looking. "I realized that electronics govern our lives and people don't understand them," Bdeir continues. "There are all of these tools available to hobbyists and tech enthusiasts, but what if you don't want to go through the step learning curve? We have to speak to the wider crowd, people who are not necessarily sold on the idea that they have to know how to wire a circuit or make something move." Bdeir will be appearing this weekend at Engadget Expand in New York City.
Peripheral Vision 010: RJD2 on the power of uncertainty
"I went from being a DJ to being a producer, to realizing that I needed to branch out and have more things I could use to make records," John "RJD2" Krohn explains. "So I started immediately buying old stuff. I had built out my tool set and component set enough and felt comfortable enough doing it that the next step was to go into building modular synth components." This is the garage of a man who's branched out. Its interiors echo the outside of the suburban Philadelphia home he shares with his family next door, those front lawn childhood playsets traded in for the toys of one of the most successful and diverse indie music producers around. There's recording equipment, a slew of live instruments, including two drum sets and synths of all stripes, plus a number of self-assembled musical components in various states of disarray. Krohn, a micromanager of sorts, has happily injected himself in nearly every aspect of the music creation process, from production, to vocals, to live instruments to running his own record. Building his own equipment was, naturally, the next logical step. Among other things, the components assembled on his workbench lend an air of uncertainty that has driven his compositions and recordings over the years. "I never know what things are going to sound like until I finish them," he says. "Having an idea and exploring that idea as you're recording it is very exciting to me. That excitement pushes you and inspires you to put more time into a thing and really get every minute component of it right. And that is enormously satisfying."
Peripheral Vision 009: Jesse Thorn on using the internet to create something meaningful
"The fact that I'm an independent media businessman is because no one was interested in co-opting me," Jesse Thorn laughs. It's plenty easy to make light of with a decade's distance and a sunny office overlooking MacArthur Park and the skyscrapers of downtown Los Angeles. Maximum Fun's Westlake headquarters is reasonably quiet when we arrive, a half-dozen or so employees plugging away on the podcasting network's day-to-day operations, and prepping for its first-ever Atlantic Comedy and Music Cruise. In the past ten years, the Bullseye host has turned a humble college radio program into a bustling podcasting empire. "We started podcasting [Bullseye's predecessor] The Sound of Young America at the end of 2004," says the NPR host. "I thought if I could get 100 or 200 people to listen to this, it would be worth the extra 90 minutes for me to make it into a podcast." Thorn's secret to success is simple enough: do what you love. And doesn't hurt if you can't possibly do anything else. "It's about is creating something that means enough to you that you're willing to undergo some hardship to sustain it and to create something that means enough to your audience that they're willing to support it - even if it's in surprising ways," explains Thorn. "Even if it's backing a Kickstarter or buying a ticket to a cruise, rather than buying a newspaper. If you can bring those things together, this is a new world. When I got out of college, I didn't get an interview. It was horrible. I ended up working as my dad's secretary, and I'm a terrible secretary - and my dad is a terrible boss. Even if he wasn't my dad, he'd be a terrible boss." Subscribe to Peripheral Vision on iTunes
Peripheral Vision 008: Seth Lind on why radio won't die
"The death of radio has been foretold pretty much since its invention," Seth Lind explains. "Especially since the invention of television. Why would you listen to radio since the invention of television? One of the main answers to that is you can do other things while you're listening to radio. You can't watch the Colbert Report while driving." It's a question This American Life's director of operations gets more times than he cares to mention -- when will the internet finally put the last nail in radio's coffin? After all, Lind is the digital gatekeeper of one of public radio's most beloved shows, helping Ira Glass and co. explore new distribution platforms. Internet streaming has played a large role in the show's success in recent years -- as has the podcast, a perennial list topper over on iTunes. "Currently two-thirds listen on the radio and one-third listen elsewhere via the internet, whether that's podcast or streaming," says Lind. "Radio is pretty flat, but digital is growing, so I wouldn't be surprised if, in a couple of years, it's even. But I've honestly been surprised at how durable radio has been." This American Life's latest platform launches this week, an attempt to keep up with new listening habits that are emerging online, a sort of marriage of the always-on delivery method of radio, with the flexibility of digital. "Our 2013 This American Life product is a 24 hour stream of episodes," says Lind. "It basically will be a digital radio station that will play This American Life around the clock. What the 24 hour stream will do is take advantage of platforms like radio streaming apps like TuneIn and I Heart Radio -- and possibly the new iTunes Radio. It will find listeners who just want to turn on a channel and have the content come to them. This way you can pull up the app or go to a player and there will always be an episode playing. You won't be able to chose what it is. It will just be a story faucet."
Peripheral Vision 007: Tyler DeAngelo - 'wasting time is an important piece of innovation'
"There's something we miss when everything becomes virtual and goes online," says Tyler DeAngelo. "Tactile-ness gives it something that is more interesting and a deeper connection and makes it more meaningful." The ad executive invited us to Havas Worldwide's Chicago offices to show off his latest creation, and with Fifth Avenue Frogger, the Check 'N Chew Foursquare gumball machine and the Buzzed Buzzer under his belt, we took him up on the offer. His latest creation was born of the same desire to bridge the physical and the virtual. Created for a beer client, the bottle opener has Arduino Nano-based circuitry built-in, which connects with an Android handset via Bluetooth, sending texts to friends when you crack open a bottle. "I'm definitely not the first person to say this, but creativity comes from finding meaningful relationships between things that already exist," explains DeAngelo. "Nothing I'm doing is going to change the world. A lot of the stuff I do is wasting people's time, but I still think that making someone think differently or making someone laugh or have fun -- wasting time is an important piece of innovation." It's also, naturally, an important part of engaging a public increasingly immune to sales pitches. Getting people's attention in an ad-saturated world requires a lot more than clever jingles. "i think the most innovative things in the media field should be happening inside ad agencies right now," DeAngelo adds. "If they're not, those who aren't innovating are going to be dead."
Peripheral Vision 006: Shawn Campbell on starting a radio station with a computer and microphone
"People sometimes say, 'oh, you're just like a real radio station,' " Shawn Campbell begins with a smile. "I have to say, 'we are a real radio station -- we're just one that doesn't have a broadcast signal yet.' " Campbell is seated besides a mic in studio B of what does, indeed, look like a real radio station. I might have half-jokingly made a comment along those lines when we arrived -- one-hundred-plus years of terrestrial broadcasting is enough to instill one with certain preconceived notions about what, precisely, makes a radio station. Campbell launched Chicago-based CHIRP in 2007 with terrestrial radio dreams and a team of 75 volunteers. "I'd had a couple of bad experiences in radio where I'd really poured my heart and soul into a station, only to have it thwarted by the owners," she explains. "Initially we thought that we were going to have to wait to apply for a low-power FM federal broadcast license. We thought we were going to have to lobby and change the laws to be able to do that. But we were so engaged that after about six months, we thought there [was] no reason not to start as an online station and continue our work to increase access for low-power FM and eventually apply for a license."
Peripheral Vision 005: Adam Lisagor on how an expensive video could hurt your Kickstarter campaign
"When I started, a demo video was a screencap vid," Adam Lisagor begins, "usually a developer or an engineer, badly miced, going [he grabs the lavaliere mic from his shirt and speaks directly into it, for maximum distortion] 'I'd like to show you my new CMS financial manager.' You watch his mouse go around the screen, and it's super boring. It takes up eight minutes of your time, instead of 30 seconds." A cursory peek at Sandwich Video offers some insight into precisely how far we've come on that front, a parade of short videos produced for companies like eBay, Rdio, Flipboard and Jawbone that bring professional-level production and a dash of humor to the proceedings. Though, as Lisagor explains, it's about a lot more than just creating something that looks nice. While his company has evolved a fair deal since the days of the earnest video caps, the spots still need to actually, you know, show people what the products do. "When I first started doing them, they were meant to be a demonstration," explains Lisagor. "They were meant to show the user experience, while adding a lot more pizzazz and sparkle. We don't take the route of focusing on shock / entertainment value. We take the opposite approach, where it's all about the product and being engaging enough to want to share." And besides, production isn't everything. After all, that fancy new video for your crowdfunding campaign might actually hurt your efforts in the end. "If you're putting yourself on Kickstarter, but it looks like your video cost $100,000," adds Lisagor, "there's a certain portion of the population that's going to take that as a sign not to donate to your campaign, because it doesn't look like you need the money."
Peripheral Vision 004: Reggie Watts on using technology to make art, pterodactyls
You don't have to ask Reggie Watts to make music. He just does. As he fumbles around for cords and components in the drawers and bookshelves of his Brooklyn apartment, everything that falls within eyeshot becomes a song. Spending a few minutes in his presence, you get the feeling that Watts would have been doing this in some form or other, no matter what career path he'd ultimately settled on, making a name for himself as the singing lawyer or beat boxing chef. But the stars aligned for the musician / comedian, aided in no small part by the increasing availability of cheap, affordable technology. "I grew up in what i like to call 'the perfect technology curve,' " explains Watts. "When I was a kid, I had organic instruments. There wasn't super high tech stuff. All the super high tech stuff would have been way too expensive. The idea of owning a synthesizer in 1980 was insane for a kid. I [eventually owned] Casio keyboard. That was awesome. I got to experiment with that and make it do things it wasn't designed to do." The technology now forms the backbone of Watts' improvisational music making, inhibited only by the constraints of his knapsack. "Everything fits in my backpack," he says. "That's my setup, that's my rule. If anything else comes along, it would have to fit in my backpack."
Peripheral Vision 003: Professor John Slough on how nuclear power could get us to Mars in 30 days
"We thought of a clever idea of how you might use fusion to do manned space travel," explains John Slough. The University of Washington research professor discusses such seemingly impossible ideas with the cavalier nature one might otherwise reserve for picking out shirts in the morning. The white-haired academic wore his sandals to the office today, chuckling on occasion about the grandiosity of it all. Here in a nondescript business park in Redmond, WA, Slough and fellow UW staff members think they've found the secret to speedy interplanetary travel: small-scale nuclear fusion. "A realistic trip to Mars, as NASA has studied extensively, requires 1,680 days," Slough says, standing in front of the mess of electronics his company has taken to calling The Fusion Engine. "It required 11 launches from the most powerful rockets we have. Those two things would probably eliminate it. It would be something like $20 billion just to put the stuff in space. We thought that if you could exhaust the propellant at a speed that's comparable to the speed you want to go, which you can do with a different energy source, you can reduce that trip time to as short as 30 days." It's a lot to wrap one's head around, how imploding metal can heat plasma to fusion temperature in the neighborhood of hundreds of millions of degrees, but Slough breaks it all down on the latest Peripheral Vision with the patience and simple language of the high school science teacher we all wished we'd had.
Peripheral Vision 002: Marc Maron
In 2009, Air America relieved Marc Maron of his duties for a third and final time. He'd co-hosted the station's drive time show Morning Sedition before being given the reigns on his own titular evening program. By show three, he was relegated to the station's kitchen, joining fellow Boston comedian Sam Seder for the short-lived web video show Breakroom Live. Naturally, Maron did what any down-on-his-luck radio host would in his place: he started a podcast. "I think in the beginning, I just needed to talk to someone," he explains. "I was going through a very difficult time. I'd certainly been humbled by love and by show business." WTF wasn't the first podcast by any means, but over the last few years, it's become one of the most popular, thanks to Maron's frank and engaging conversations with comedians and other show biz types. More recently, the program has served as the basis for Maron, an IFC show starring the host as himself, which will enter its second season next year. On this second episode of Peripheral Vision, we sit down with the host to discuss the power of the medium, the trouble with Twitter and making a name for yourself from the comfort of your own garage.
Peripheral Vision 001: Eric Staller
You've never been so popular as when you're riding around the streets of San Francisco in a 1967 Volkswagen Beetle covered in 1,659 flashing lightbulbs. As the pulsing hum of electric generators comes barreling around the corner, it's enough to put a smile on the face of even the most jaded SF resident. "I'm Eric Staller," he introduces himself, as we stand outside the car for a interview, "and I just can't help but answer to my deepest subconscious impulses." Trained as an architect, the New York native soon found his calling as an artist, dabbling in sculpture and performance art at the University of Michigan. By the 80s, Staller's impulses began manifesting themselves as "Urban UFOs," strange apparitions like the Volkswagen Lightmobile and the spherical Bubbleboat that leave the casual city dwelling on-looker wholly unsure of what they've just seen. It's a strange and wonderful sort of electronic magic. Staller also created the ConferenceBike, a seven-person vehicle that has appeared all over the world, most notably becoming a mainstay on the Google campus. We can't think of a better way to kick off our new show Peripheral Vision than a ride around the City By the Bay with Eric Staller.
Introducing Peripheral Vision
Working on The Engadget Show has afforded us the opportunity to travel all over, in search of the best tech stories we can sniff out. In our travels, we've encountered some amazing individuals who are using technology in exciting and unusual ways. They're the inspiration for our newest series, Peripheral Vision. The show is a weekly look at the people powered by technology: artists, scientists, musicians, broadcasters and others who have given us fresh perspective on the way we interact with our electronics. We're kicking the series off with a bang, a magical ride around San Francisco in the Volkswagen Lightmobile with artist Eric Staller. You can check out that inaugural episode here. And for a view of what's to come, have a look at teaser trailer for the show below, featuring a sneak peak at a number of upcoming interviews. We're incredibly excited to bring this show to you. We hope you enjoy the ride.
MIT projection system extends video to peripheral vision, samples footage in real-time
Researchers at the MIT Media Lab have developed an ambient lighting system for video that would make Philips' Ambilight tech jealous. Dubbed Infinity-by-Nine, the rig analyzes frames of footage in real-time -- with consumer-grade hardware no less -- and projects rough representations of the video's edges onto a room's walls or ceiling. Synchronized with camera motion, the effect aims to extend the picture into a viewer's peripheral vision. MIT guinea pigs have reported a greater feeling of involvement with video content when Infinity-by-Nine was in action, and some even claimed to feel the heat from on-screen explosions. A five screen multimedia powerhouse it isn't, but the team suggests that the technology could be used for gaming, security systems, user interface design and other applications. Head past the jump to catch the setup in action.
Peripheral Vision: Wii Pro Pack Mini and PS3 Pro Elite Wireless
Peripheral Vision is the name of our ongoing sporadic journey into the wonderful, oft-terrifying world of third-party peripherals. Today we've got two new, surprisingly great controllers from Power A, the Pro Elite Wireless for PS3 and the Pro Pack Mini for Wii. Enjoy.
Peripheral Vision: X Scorch 360 split mouse controller
Peripheral Vision is the name of our ongoing sporadic journey into the wonderful, oft-terrifying world of third-party peripherals. Think of it as neither preview or review but rather a ... meditation on the curious object in question. Enjoy. After a lifetime of being disappointed by third-party peripherals, I've not come to expect much. Let's just say I've been hurt so many times that I'm thrilled when a controller doesn't feel like it was made out of old cardboard or has all the right buttons. That is, I can imagine just how to write the perfect intro to a review about a great third-party controller, but I don't want to mislead: The video above isn't an endorsement. The frustrating thing about the X Scorch from Bannco is how close the odd split-controller and mouse combo comes to being really great. As you'll see in the video, though, the controller, compatible with Xbox 360 and PC, is all but impossible to recommend at $79.99. Update: A Bannco representative sent along some follow-up information. Lest you think I ignored it completely, I should mention that there's no real manual included with the product, so I had no idea about the customization options. Hopefully, this would make for a better experience: "There is a button config software available that allows the user to remap the controller, set rapid fire rates and adjust button sensitivity. If you did want to use this program you would have to install the driver first. "Also, to speed the mouse up or slow it down: press and hold the mouse F button and while holding the F button, roll the mouse wheel forward to speed the mouse up and back to slow it down. While adjusting the mouse you will notice the game start to roll to the right. If you adjust the mouse so the game just stops to roll -- that is what the gamers call F0. Rolling the wheel forward by 2 wheel clicks is F2 and will be the most smooth for the game. Each game may vary. On the PC you can also increase the CPI with the F and wheel as well."
Peripheral Vision: The RealView V-Screen for PSP
Peripheral Vision is the name of our ongoing sporadic journey into the wonderful, oft-terrifying world of third-party peripherals. Think of it as neither preview or review but rather a ... meditation on the curious object in question. Enjoy. Though it was only released a few weeks ago, we've been skeptical about RealView's "depth enhancing" V-Screen for PSP since we first heard about it last summer. But now that I've had some time with it, well ... I still don't get it. Watch the video for my first impressions, but here's the general takeaway: $50 is a hefty price tag for a cheap-feeling case and an unimpressive 3D-like screen effect.
