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<title>Haaze.com / sallyog / Published News</title>
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<pubDate>Fri, 01 Apr 2011 07:11:00 +0000</pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[New book focuses on Google's internal struggles]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=new-book-focuses-on-googles-internal-struggles</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=new-book-focuses-on-googles-internal-struggles</comments>
<pubDate>Fri, 01 Apr 2011 07:11:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>sallyog</dc:creator>
<category>Business &amp; Finance</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=new-book-focuses-on-googles-internal-struggles</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Steve Levy&amp;39's &amp;34'In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives.&amp;34'(Credit:Simon and Schuster)Google's star has continued to rise over the last several years. But a new book reveals it wasn't all fun and games.In his upcoming book, &quot;In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives,&quot; author Steven Levy takes an in-depth look into how Google started as the brainchild of co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and became one of the most important companies in the world.But it's the book's look into missteps in China and with social networking that may be the most eye-opening of Levy's apparent discoveries.According to The New York Times, which received an advance copy of the book, Levy found that Google has endured a long and troubling relationship with China that dates back to 2004. That year, Levy writes, according to the Times, Page and Brin visited China. Prior to their arrival, their staff tried to teach them how they should act in the country. Even with that tutorial, and in subsequent interactions with the Chinese government, the company was never able to fit in with the country's customs--an issue that plagued its relationship with China for years, Levy says.Google was also suspect of the Chinese government. Levy reportedly writes that Google did not provide its engineers in China with access to the code for its many services--the company's typical practice elsewhere around the world--out of fear that the Chinese government would gain access to it.Google's issues with China hit a tipping point early last year when the company revealed it was the target of attacks that originated in that country. The company said it discovered a &quot;highly sophisticated and targeted attack&quot; on its corporate infrastructure in December 2009 that resulted in the theft of some of its intellectual property. It was one of many companies, according to Google, that was targeted. The Chinese Government has denied any involvement in the attack.Even so, the issue was enough for Google to threaten to remove its search service from China. It finally followed through with that threat months later. Those who try to access Google's China search are now redirected to its uncensored Hong Kong search page.From left to the right: Eric Schmidt, Larry Page, Sergey Brin.(Credit:Google)But China hasn't been the only troubling issue at Google as of late.According to the Times, Levy discusses an internal memo sent around Google last year that the company calls &quot;Urs-Quake,&quot; named after its author, Urs H&amp;246'lzle, a Google fellow and first vice president of engineering. He reportedly wrote in that memo that Google was trailing Facebook in social networking and the time had come to find people to improve its stance in that market. H&amp;246'lzle believed, according to Levy, that the search giant had no other choice.Though the Times didn't say when H&amp;246'lzle allegedly wrote the memo, it's worth noting that Google launched a social-networking service last year, called Google Buzz. But since its initial moment in the spotlight, the offering, which is built into the company's Gmail service, has been overshadowed by Facebook and that company's more than 600 million active users.&quot;They're super-nervous about Facebook,&quot; Levy said of Google in an interview published yesterday with the Times.Levy also reportedly took aim at outgoing Google CEO Eric Schmidt.According to the Times, Levy wrote that Schmidt once requested his search team remove mention of a political contribution he had made. The request was flatly denied. A Google spokeswoman told CNET today that Schmidt never requested a removal of the contribution.Schmidt, who has been at Google since 2001, is officially handing over the reins to Larry Page on Monday. He will stay on at Google as executive chairman.Levy's book will go on sale April 12.Simon &amp; Schuster is owned by CBS. CNET News is published by CBS Interactive, a unit of CBS.Updated at 3:53 p.m. PTto include Google comment on Levy's apparent claim that Schmidt requested the removal of a mention of a political contribution he made.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Artist makes beautiful light with Microsoft's Kinect]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=artist-makes-beautiful-light-with-microsofts-kinect</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=artist-makes-beautiful-light-with-microsofts-kinect</comments>
<pubDate>Wed, 30 Mar 2011 07:10:49 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>sallyog</dc:creator>
<category>Gaming</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=artist-makes-beautiful-light-with-microsofts-kinect</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Artist Audrey Penven used a Kinect and a camera with an infrared filter to create a series of hauntingly beautiful photos. Her gallery exhibition of the images opens Friday.(Credit:Audrey Penven)For months, we've known that Microsoft's Kinect could help make video games fun. But who knew that it projects such beautiful lightUntil San Francisco Bay Area artist Audrey Penven and some friends started taking pictures of themselves playing Kinect games, no one. But when Penven looked at the images, she realized she was on to something special.In normal light, you can't even see the light put out by the Kinect, Microsoft's new motion control system for theXbox 360. But with the help of a roommate's camera, which is modified to shoot infrared, Penven discovered scenes at once ghostly and straight from the cover of a Neal Stephenson novel. Penven said she learned that the Kinect projects a known pattern of infrared structured light, and that when it picks this up with its built-in camera, the device figures out the shape of the 3D space based on the distortion of the pattern. &quot;It uses infrared light so ambient visible light won't interfere with the process,&quot; Penven said. &quot;I imagine this is also so it can remain invisible.&quot;The images that resulted from Penven's photographic experiment show a cacophony of bright dots that encompass and enfold the people in them. They evince movement and wonder and hint at art. Yet the first time around, the light was little more than Kinect trying to gauge the movements of Penven and her roommates while they played a little Dance Central.&quot;I thought it was really amazing to see people defined by these infrared dots,&quot; Penven said of discovering the surprise in her photos. &quot;I knew that infrared was used in some way by the Kinect to map out 3D space, but I didn't know what to expect when shooting with an infrared camera...I thought it was interesting that the human form could still be so recognizable, even when only shown in tiny dots. I loved the quality of light and the different way of looking at depth and form. [And] I was inspired by the way the Kinect was using a pattern invisible to human eyes to see us.&quot;Related links&amp;149' 10 million a magic number for Microsoft's Kinect &amp;149' Culture hacker talks Kinect bounty hunt (Q&amp;A) &amp;149' Bounty offered for open-source Kinect driver &amp;149' Hacker wins contest for open-source Kinect driver &amp;149' Microsoft announces plans for Kinect SDK That inspiration led Penven to take what she had just inadvertently learned and run with it. Created with the help of artist and animator Aaron Muszalski, the result is her first-ever solo art exhibition, titled &quot;Dancing with Invisible Light,&quot; which opens Friday at the Pictopia gallery in Emeryville, Calif., and which will run through April 29.&quot;With these images I was exploring the unique photographic possibilities presented by using a Microsoft Kinect as a light source,&quot; Penven writes in the invitation to the opening of the exhibit. &quot;As a photographer, I am most interested in the nature and quality of light: how light behaves in the physical world, and how it interacts with and affects the subjects that it illuminates. For this shoot my models and I were essentially working blind, with the results visible only after each image was captured. Together, we explored the unique physicality of structured light, finding our way in the darkness by touch and intuition. Dancing with invisible light.&quot;Unanticipated use of the Kinect Though the Kinect has been an unqualified success as a video game accessory, selling more than 10 million units since its November debut, it's also been a huge hit in the hacker community.Literally from day one, that community has been out to take the Kinect places where Microsoft never intended. A $3,000 bounty offered by the open-source hardware outfit Adafruit Industries for the first open-source driver for the device bore fruit almost immediately, and since then there's been a near free-for-all among people wanting to use the Kinect for things far outside of gaming.And to some of those who have been following this movement since the beginning, Penven's work fits in beautifully.&quot;[It's] stunning. This is another great example of the tool being used in a way that [Microsoft] could not imagine,&quot; said Phil Torrone, a principle at Adafruit Industries. &quot;Are they diamonds, are they points of light It doesn't matter--it's just one of the many expressions the hacked Kinect has enabled for artists, designers, and even photography--something that's been around for almost two centuries.&quot;To Kyle Machulis, a hacker and artist who has experimented with Kinect-created visualizations, Penven's work is deeply impressive, particularly given that the device has been on the market for such a short time. &quot;It's really amazing, the way she brings such beauty to [something] happening in millions of homes around the world right now,&quot; Machulis said. &quot;We're only five months into the release of the Kinect and the technology is already becoming a bit of an afterthought to many consumers. But what's going on behind it still seems like magic even to those of us close to the technology, and [Penven's] pictures really bring that out.&quot;Of course, Penven is hardly the only one using the Kinect to make art. Do a quick Google search on the term, and a seemingly endless supply of links pops up. They range in style from the art that can be captured on screen with a series of gestures to 3D printed representations of Kinect users' motions to a storytelling initiative that helps children gain confidence in their self-expression to an effort to use the Kinect to help blind people restore some sense of sight.Just a little flash While Penven's final images blossom with light, the reality is that when she and her models were shooting the pictures, they were in a dark room with nothing more than a camera flash to illuminate them. But throw in the infrared filter and the pictures burst into life. &quot;Most of what you see was done in camera,&quot; she explained. &quot;For some shots, we experimented with longer exposures and movement. Color and contrast are the only adjustments I made after the fact. Infrared photography, by its nature, is a false color process. The infrared spectrum is represented by colors that we can actually see. I hadn't intended to change the color much from what came out of the camera, but I thought that the difference between the light from the flash and the Kinect was really cool. I decided to emphasize that by pushing the colors in different directions.&quot;Although Penven and her friends discovered the artistic possibilities of the Kinect while playing Dance Central on an Xbox, she said that for the photos in the exhibition, they never hooked up the game console. So what you see in the images doesn't has no relationship to any game--it's nothing more than the million points of light from the Kinect rolling over Penven's models.In the end, she came up with a whole set of images from the shoot. But one that she is using to promote the exhibit may do the best job of illustrating what the show is all about. In the image, a woman is seen half normal, and half flooded with purple dots. It screams cyberpunk.&quot;I love the contrast between the sides of her face,&quot; Penven said. &quot;Right after this one was taken, and there was a group of us standing around the camera to see it, someone said that she looked like she fell out of a sci-fi story. That really stuck with me. It's like a traditional portrait of a half-digital human.&quot;<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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