Stephen E. Dinehart's IMD Blog

The Mad Prophet is a messenger from a future Earthen civilization that has long forgotten the details of it’s past. The prophet sent back 12 idols across space-time in an effort to regain lost knowledge, to remap the path of humanity’s past, and to enlighten we the infidels of our insurrections so we may pave a path to a better tomorrow.

One of the 12 landed here, and it is our quest to lead our messenger to the knowledge that may very well preserve our heritage, and lead to our salvation.

Re blog from
http://cellphones.engadget.com/entry/1234000677061389/

Qualcomm says that their MediaFlo division is going to build a new high-speed wireless network specifically for downloading stuff like audio and video content. It’s meant to complement, rather than replace, the regular high-speed 3G cellular networks that are being built out right now, but the upshot for Qualcomm is that cellphone makers’ll have to buy their chipset if they want their handsets to be able to access the network. The big unanswered questions, though, are whether people actually want to watch video on their cellphones, and if they do, whether a new wireless network to do that is really needed.

A stange, but very Japanese, home entertainment center control agent.

reblog from http://www.akihabaranews.com

Lapinou, the robot rabbit! Hitachi presentes this small robot rabbit that can be connected a variety of PC products and home A/V equipment, and that can interact with human beings. It recognises the human speech and face, and it starts whatever you tell it to switch on, e.g. "Lapinou, record the football game on channel 4 at 5pm"... and there you go!

http://biz.gamedaily.com/features.asp?article_id=10650&filter=
According to a Telephia study, 36 percent of mobile games were free to download. Unsurprisingly, puzzle and strategy games have the largest market share, with a 27 percent share of revenue and a 48 percent share of all free downloads. A second study sponsored by I-play indicates that American gamers are more likely to show off their mobile games to friends and are more competitive about gaming than their European counterparts.

http://www.cenriqueortiz.com/weblog/Mobility/?permalink=Mobile-Data-Usage.html

This makes allot of sense to me. Most of the mobile market seems to be patched with mediocre content, wallpaper and ringtones etc. After working for JAMDAT, I know very few people there go home after work and use the products they offer. I didn't want to either, I was so sick of crappy handsets by the end of the day, I didn't want to go near them.

This passage was particularly inspiring to me:

You know, handsets are first and most, a communication apparatus, a social device, to connect and interact with other people - friends, family, work. It is not only about ring-tones, and access to weather or stocks, and so on. This is why email and IM and voice! and blogs (i.e. communication) are the killer apps. We need to continue to improve, innovate how people communicate. And there is a lot of innovation to be done, to enhance the people-to-people communication (and social) experience.

It's true the mobile device is primarily used for communication, and as we all know of our experience of the past 15 years, there is allot of improvement in communication to be had. This is just the beginning...

http://www.devx.com/wireless/Article/29355?trk=DXRSS_WIFI
http://www.mobilepipeline.com/blog/archives/2005/09/surprise_nobody.html

More than 152 million Americans - some 70 percent of the total U.S. adult population - own portable entertainment devices, according to a new report issued today by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA).

According to the study, consumers show a reasonable interest in handheld content subscription services. However, lack of awareness may be to blame for the low number of consumers who currently subscribe to such services. Only 16 percent of online adults who own a portable entertainment device subscribe to a service that allows access to content, with 35 percent reporting that they were unaware of any companies that provided such services. This represents a significant opportunity for subscription-based content providers to educate the market and capture additional revenue.

Sorry for the Reblog, but the file is now working @ GameSpot, it is availble as an MPEG or for download to your PSP!!! please check it out!

Scroll down to the side bar titled "Featured Videos"
Armed and Rabid

There will be a new Machinima short by next week!

Well it's been released so now I can talk about it. The first of the Machinima Movies I am producing for Activision, Armed and Rabid, has been published and is now being viewed by a world-wide audience. I've produced media for years and have never seen these kinds of numbers, with my work; it amazes me how when someone has connections, media can be proliferated globally in a matter of moments.

Please let me know what you think. I'd be happy to answer what questions I can; but due to my NDA I can only speak of so much. Thanks to the department (Jen) for forwarding this opporunity; it is amazing.

The Movies site

:) that's for you Perry.

This past weekend I presented @ LAFlashapaloozastock a prequel to MMs MAX conference this week in Anaheim. My presentation seemed to go well, made some connects.... but then the nights last presenter got up on the M-I-C and wowed me...

Grant Skinner was his name, and the cutting edge o’ Flash 8 was his game. He was doing stuff w/ Flash 8 that made Processing look bad; creating procedural organic vector based tress, interactive smoke and fluid simulations, with thousands of sprites animating at once and yes some fine ass Braitenberg Bots.

My favorite of these was called Jungle, he combined a piece called “Garden” in which flowers where being generated with “Vein” a dynamically generated vein system. It was creating this dynamic vine that would grow flower and blur into the distance of the back round.

Then to top it off interfacing, directly from Flash8, to his i-Site he was performing motion tracking w/ LEDs and silhouettes, in real time with nothing but Flash and a cam.

He had built some basic applications w/ this technology akin to Sony’s Eye-toy. A piece that made the cam data look like it was a fish tank, the user could then makes waves and ripples in the tank and gather bubbles with his hands as they rise to the surface.

He had also created a navigation system that was inspired by the Minority Report interface he called “Mista”. He had a glove with two LEDs one on his thumb and another on his for finger, which was tracking.

The goods are now on the street check out these tutorials, examples and articles on Motion Tracking with Flash8:

http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/flash/articles/webcam_motion.html

http://www.flashguru.co.uk/flash-8-webcam-motion-detection/

a great video example:
http://www.playdocam.com/flash8/fire.html

I've been making some good progress with the design of the Cloud intsruction booklet. Here is the newest version of Dream 1. I muc more but will wait until more is finished to post the whole PDF.

The Cloud website V1.0 has gone live as of noon today! Check it out!

www.thatcloudgame.com

The Instruction Booklet PDF, and V1.0 build can be found there. The Flash Player 8 is required.