By Hazel Butters

August 23rd, 2010

Why did chipzilla buy McAfee?

Why did chipzilla buy McAfee?

Last week chip-making heavyweight Intel splashed out $7.6 billion for security security and anti-virus vendor McAfee. McAfee will become a subsidiary of the Intel Software and Service Group (yes, that’s right Intel has a software division).

This is a fascinating purchase. Intel is famous for the whole ‘Intel Inside’ and making users care about the brand of a component that they once never really knew existed.  Will Intel do the same with security?

Well, when it comes to security software and engineering clout, McAfee with its 6,100 employees and 2009 revenue of $2 billion has just that. And if you wanted to look at a vendor that had hardware embedded across billions of devices, look no further than Intel.

The big question is how will it play out? Well, I can imagine the possibilities of chip-level security, along the lines of ‘Security Inside’ (you heard it here first).

But it goes further: look at Intel’s other recent purchase – the cable modem business of Texas Instruments. Now consider the possibilities of combining security software and hardware for content and services delivered over cable. I think this has the potential to be a real market changer, and look forward to seeing what chipzilla does next as it tears its way through the market.

By Max McConnell

August 13th, 2010

Big isn’t always better, but it’s fun to experiment

Big isn’t always better, but it’s fun to experiment

Video is on our minds this week. We’ve just announced working with Aruba on video case studies and last month YouTube announced support for 4k video which we covered in our weekly newsletter (what? You haven’t signed up yet?) and it got me thinking. 4k on the internet is a gimick and not a practical service in any way. To film at 4096 pixels you need very expensive state-of-the-art equipment, the end quality is really limited by the codec used to compress the video (all web video has to be lossy compressed) and at the end of the day no-one has display devices with 4096 pixels so all that hard work goes straight out the window—unless you have an IMAX cinema in the basement.

The thing is, anyone can create 4096 pixel content using video editing tools – for example, stiching a montage of four 16:9 HD video feeds would produce a 16:9 4k video. Or, by using motion graphics software, one can choose any pixel resolution one wishes. Compress it, and stream it—it isn’t unique to YouTube.

Generally, the size of the file produced is not dependent on the pixel dimensions because compression works in the spatial frequency domain – sure, more pixels mean the *possibility* of higher frequencies, but they aren’t necessarily present, and if they are, the codec just filters them out to get the filesize small enough to stream over the internet. High quality web video is *not* about pixel dimensions, it is about optimisation: What are people viewing your video on, what internet connections do they have, what streaming media and codec settings are ‘best’ (but dont start me on that…).

We’re just finishing a video project for a client, but when that is clear I’ll post up some links to Prompt’s 4096 service, so check back here next week and let me know what you think—and what you are viewing it on!

By Doulovely

July 28th, 2010

Phytobench: Public Seating That Repairs Damaged Ecosystems

Phytobench: Public Seating That Repairs Damaged Ecosystems

The “Phytobench” is a dynamic public seating element made of milled, recycled lumber that actively grows plant communities to repair damaged soil ecosystems. Designed by SoftRigid, the multi-tasking bench serves to restore the natural landscape and serves as eco-friendly seating on which to rest weary behinds. And we’re not the only ones who think so – “Phytobench” recently earned an honor award at the 2009 Seoul Design Olympiad

By Doulovely

July 22nd, 2010

Bread is bread any way you slice it

Bread is bread any way you slice it

How do you design a symbol for a currency?  In India, you launch a contest.

On July 15th, the Indian government announced a winner for their nationwide competition to find a new symbol to represent its currency, the Rupee. The winner, D. Udaya Kumar a professor at the Indian Institute of Technology was chosen out of thousands of entries by the Indian cabinet. Kumar describes the symbol as reflecting the Indian flag and a blend of Roman and Indian letters.

Until now abbreviations such as INR or Rs were used to represent the Rupee, which were used by neighboring countries like Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and Nepal causing confusion in the world’s financial market. Feedback from the Indian population has been positive, as they see this as a chance to have their booming economy recognized all around the world.

While the winner received roughly $5,350, implementing the symbol could cost the Indian government much more. By having to print new money, ensuring compatibility on computers, software, phones and keyboards, it could be a $50 billion plus investment.

So move over $, £, € and ¥, there’s a new symbol coming to a keyboard near you.

By Laurie SantaLucia

June 30th, 2010

New Potter trailer shows promise for ‘Hallows’ release this Fall

New Potter trailer shows promise for ‘Hallows’ release this Fall

It’s been nearly 10 years since the first of the Harry Potter books was brought to life on the silver screen in 2001, and I’m just as enthralled with Potter and his wizarding world today as I was then.

Earlier this week, Mediabistro plugged the newest trailer (at 2mins 30secs) for the seventh movie installment of the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Part One) due to hit theaters in November this year — A big thank you to them for posting.

Check out the trailer here:

Call me a loser, but I was glued to my screen watching this…. anyone else as psyched for November as I am?

By Hazel Butters

June 23rd, 2010

England grinds to a halt

England grinds to a halt

Schools and businesses are closing; productivity is at an all-time low; the streets are empty as people huddle indoors waiting for some sign of hope. No, it’s not the fallout from George Osborne’s first budget, it’s England v Slovenia in the World Cup.

The nation will come to a halt this afternoon as the entire country tunes in to watch a stuttering England team try to drag themselves out of the group phase. So far in the tournament, the team have looked a shadow of the side that cruised through the qualifying campaign. Now it’s up to a (hopefully) new look team to put in the performance everyone in England is so desperate to see.

The highly-paid, underperforming stars of the England team face the biggest challenge of their careers. One bad decision can be the difference between getting booed off the pitch and being hailed as a national hero. Just ask George Osborne.

By Dave Wilby

June 3rd, 2010

Full of Apples? Time for a Streak!

Full of Apples? Time for a Streak!

If all the media hype, advertising frenzy and newsstand promotions are anything to go by, the only place you’re likely to be reading this newsletter in the UK  is on your iPhone while queuing for your new iPad.

But what if the interminable delay between the US launch of Apple’s new toy and its eventual emergence this side of the pond has given you time to get over your original excitement and allowed iPad fatigue to set in?

Fear not! Dell is at the ready to try and tempt you with its very own sexy tablet touch-screen thingamajig. They call it the Streak, and it’s not really a tablet at all, but instead would sit between a smartphone and a netbook on your goody shelf. It’s a five inch Android device, or ‘MID’, that Dell promises will keep you connected during your business day as an efficient phone and productivity tool, while cheering you up as a superb media player and web browser by night.

Unlike the iPad (fantastic screen for media, not so great on a rare sunny day in Blighty) we’ve yet to get our hands on a Streak (happy to help), but hope Brits aren’t kept waiting quite so long by Dell as we were by Apple…

By Max McConnell

June 2nd, 2010

Are you being wide?

Are you being wide?

Prompt experiments with cinematic ratio 2.33:1. We say HD and 16:9 is old hat. Join us in moving to the movies with widescreen cinematography in your promotional videos. Here is an example web video, just for fun, for you to enjoy. Go full screen for that cinematic experience.

Do you like it?

No animals were harmed in the making of this movie, and yes, it stars Crunchie, our office dog, and some of her friends.

By Dave Wilby

April 15th, 2010

Floored by latest computer interface?

Floored by latest computer interface?

Touch screens have rapidly revolutionised the way in which the majority of us interact with our computing devices. Although we had lived with touch screens for many years in public kiosks and other niche applications, it wasn’t until they began dominating the UIs in our pockets and on our laptops that most of us succumbed to the lure of intuitive graphical interaction.

So how certain are you now that the latest innovation – touch sensitive floors – will prove to be a conceptual fad or a technology cul-de-sac? Perhaps ‘touch floors’ will also become a major part of all our lives more quickly than we might have thought?

New Scientist this week asked us to imagine a world in which submersive gaming would become more sure-footed than ever before, while the way we in we which we chose to enter a room could determine the audio/visual entertainment set up for the evening.

The ‘Multi-toe‘ touch floor is the brainchild of Patrick Baudisch and a team at the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam, Germany. The prototype is a 0.5mm thick sheet of silicone lying on an eight millimetre thick layer of clear acrylic, both of which sit on a thick glass sheet to provide rigidity. Light beams bounce around inside until pressure from a foot allows them to escape. A camera below then registers an image of whatever was pressing down on the floor.

Baudisch has already hooked the Multi-toe up to video game Unreal Tournament, and even presented the technology at the Association for Computing Machinery 2010 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Atlanta earlier this week.

For the lowdown on touch floors, hop over to the latest tutorial video from New Scientist.

By David Lindner

April 9th, 2010

Best of Boston: Patriots’ Day

Best of Boston: Patriots’ Day

As spring takes shape in Boston (check out Kendall Square below), it’s time for our counter to the Oxford Cambridge Boat Race: the curious celebration of Patriots’ Day.

A Massachusetts state holiday, Patriots’ Day formally commemorates the anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord. For all intents and purposes though, it may as well be rebranded as Marathon Monday. Patriots’ Day marks the running of the Boston Marathon, the world’s oldest annual marathon and a rite of Boston passage.

In memory, if not actuality, the Boston Marathon always takes place on a sunny day, as over 500,000 spectators line the course from the Hopkinton starting line to the Copley Square finish line, 26.2 miles later. Runners pass by in waves; watch closely, or you might miss contenders, past champions (including Bill Rodgers, Uta Pippig and Moses Tanui), friends or family or any of the more eccentric runners (in Batman costumes, jugglers, or Will Ferrell).

Ultimately, for spectators the marathon is as much about what is happening (running) as what isn’t (school, business). Crowds head outside, soak in spring sun and wait for thousands of competitors to make their way by – the runners give a reason to get together and head out for the day off. Any excuse to head outside on a spring day is appreciated, and if it means shouting words of encouragement at runners slogging through their 14th mile of a race, so be it.