Friday, January 30, 2004

Pixar dumps Disney Take that Disney! Hah! Love it. Rumor has it that Pixar is starting their own 2D animation shop. Sounds like retro is on the return. [Driving Sideways] That would be odd. More likely, Pixar will develop some 2D shaders... 11:53:04 AM    trackback []

	Friday, January 16, 2004

PuppetTime Fans I got this email tonight. :-( Hello, As a long time Puppettime fan, it came as quite a dissappointment that puppettime.com is now a porn site. I just can't believe that cycore would let this happen. I have repeatedly emailed my disappointment in their mothballing of puppettime and have received minimal form letter responses. They did not respond at all to my less than diplomatic email regarding their inability to retain ownership of the puppettime name on the web. About a year ago I even encouraged Apple Canada to try to purchase Puppettime, and they sent my ideas down to the "decision makers" in California, but I never heard back. This software is the perfect app for apple to market their computers to the 11 to 15 year old market. Little else in their software library (except for listening to tunes) is targetted at this age group. We still use Puppettime in our technology lab with 13 and 14 year olds. (1200-1400 students per year over the last 3 years) Those who follow our manuals exactly are very successful, but for those who aren't as careful the beta glitches cause frustration. We were hoping that by now Cycore would get off its duff, but odds no longer seem good. We will probably phase out our Puppettime module this year to be replaced with an iMovie digital editing module. Because of our reduction in staffing we have to go to something which will run smoothly for all students, not just the careful ones. This saddens me as Puppettime is a one of a kind product offering students an experience that no other software that I know of is capable of. I hope cycore never makes it out of the red. Cult 3D who cares? Look it spins around and opens its doors. wow! Rob Davidson Bluewater Technology Centre (J.D.S.S.) Hanover ON Canada 10:16:27 PM    trackback []

	Wednesday, October 29, 2003

10secondclub... this one's for deeje [steve cooley's Weblog] Good luck to them! 11:56:55 AM    trackback []

	Thursday, July 31, 2003

A requiem for virtual reality In... The legal blog Due Diligence comments on the recent spate of 3D news and commentary: In a short Wired interview of Neal Stephenson, he reflects on Snow Crash, his first novel that became the ur-myth for the virtual reality investment craze of 1996-8: For the most part, Snow Crash turned out to be a failed prediction. People have shown limited interest in immersive 3-D technology, so I think it worked better as a novel than as a prognostication. But it provided a reasonable, coherent picture of a particular kind of entertainment technology. Stick-your-head-in-it VR has turned out to be a niche market, valuable in some applications such as training and modeling. Those who bet on it as a horizontal market, for entertainment, shopping or what have you, all died on the road. Remember VRML, the next big standard? Paragraph, Intervista, and Newfire? Mark Pesce and Tony Parisi? Even the avatar modeling tools have been reduced to gimmicks for selling clothing. A cautionary tale on taking a compelling, coherent yarn as an argument for a real market. What's actually happening is in many ways more interesting. Rather than substituting a synthetic reality for the actual thing, information is becoming co-extensive with reality. Now it's mobile data and other gadgets, soon it becomes networks of sensors and information tags. Some have tried to gin this up into a ubiquitous 'augmented reality' that will happen Real Soon Now, often with visions of (again) data glasses that will overlay the virtual on the real. Take that with large grains of NaCl. Economic value is not evenly distributed in real space, and ROI will drive deployment. Check out the malls and warehouses first, long before you find sensors hanging on random trees. As for those HUD goggles, see the lesson above. [Due Diligence] Of course, Tony Parisi stuck with it via Media Machines, kept VRML going and at least generated some revenue, then sold to Many One. Now they're pursuing a 3D world browser. Two other 3D ventures worth following are Linden Lab and their Second Life immersive subscription service, and their pseudo competitor There. (btw, a lot of other 3D news is circulating because of the recent Siggraph show is So.Cal.) For all that, I think Neal is somewhat right in his own retrospect. With today's limited delivery systems, CG 3D will remain an entertainment-only medium. 12:12:56 PM    trackback []

Joe Firmage!!! Web 3d??? Good morning! OH MY GOD! Joe Firmage?? Remember 5 years ago, WHEN I USED TO WORK FOR YOU? And I was helping my brother start up his company doing WEB 3D? And nobody wanted to talk to me about it?? THANK YOU! Yet another example of US BEING RIGHT. cnet.com On Tuesday, Firmage returns from the high-tech wilderness to the Siggraph computer graphics gathering in San Diego to announce that his company, ManyOne Networks, has acquired San Francisco-based Web start-up Media Machines, a 3D technology company. Read the rest of the article for the interview... grrr. [steve cooley's Weblog] Even more iconic is, I know the owner of Media Machines... Tony Parisi! 12:07:07 AM    trackback []

	Wednesday, February 26, 2003

Mikael Frederiksen becomes CEO & President of Cycore I'm starting to wonder what happened to the last crop of 3D companies, so I figured I start another channel for 3D. This press release rekindled my interest in the space. UPPSALA, Sweden, February 11, 2003 - Cycore, the market leader in interactive 3D for e-communication, today announced that Mikael Frederiksen will replace Bengt Starke as CEO & President of Cycore as of Monday, February 10, 2003. Bengt Starke will remain in the Board of directors of Cycore. In addition, the Shareholders Meeting on January 30, 2003 elected a new Board of Cycore. In November, Cycore implemented a new shares issue from existing investors, leading to a major change in the ownership structure of the company. As a consequence a new board has been put in place under the chairmanship of Mr. Jens Jordan. Secondly, Cycore is also now putting more emphasis on a strategy where it keeps the on-line, mass market activities but focuses more directly to a partner/OEM oriented software company. As a natural consequence of this Bengt Starke will, as of Monday, be replaced by Mr. Mikael Frederiksen, who has a strong OEM background. Bengt Starke will remain on the board of directors. Mikael Frederiksen, 42, has extensive experience from a number of start-up and growth companies. Most recently, Mikael Frederiksen worked at Nycomed, implementing new sales & distribution strategies. 12:29:45 PM    trackback []