Microsoft Patents Method To Count People In a Room Using Kinect, Charge Per Viewer for Content
A U.S. Patent and Trademark Office filing by Microsoft reveals that the company is devising a means for your Xbox peripheral to count the number of people in the room and even identify who they are in order to assess licensing fees for content based on the number of people in the room.
“In Soviet Union, TV Watches You”
![AI Developed to Improve Relevance of Commentator Patter During Live Sports
WHEN watching sport on TV …a good commentator can make all the difference, peppering a play-by-play account of the action with expert knowledge and anecdotes. But even the best commentator’s repertoire is limited.
…Created by sports fan Greg Lee at the University of Alberta in Canada, [AI Program] Scores can tap into a stash of sporting stories to find relevant anecdotes that a commentator might not have thought of.
…The system works by matching the features of a live event - such as the teams, key players, the score and the remaining time - against a database of available stories. Once stories that include some of those features are found it selects the few that are most relevant and suggests them to a human commentator.
The challenge is in evaluating the relevance of candidate stories and ranking them. Lee’s system uses machine-learning techniques to do this. The most important feature was the teams involved and the second was the difference in number of runs.
To test the system, the researchers used it to create commentary for pre-recorded sports broadcasts and presented them to 254 volunteers, who said they found the commentary relevant and enjoyable.
(via AI sports commentator knows all the best stories - tech - 04 October 2012 - New Scientist)](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mbmwam6ZQl1qgpcs1o1_400.jpg)
AI Developed to Improve Relevance of Commentator Patter During Live Sports
WHEN watching sport on TV …a good commentator can make all the difference, peppering a play-by-play account of the action with expert knowledge and anecdotes. But even the best commentator’s repertoire is limited.
…Created by sports fan Greg Lee at the University of Alberta in Canada, [AI Program] Scores can tap into a stash of sporting stories to find relevant anecdotes that a commentator might not have thought of.
…The system works by matching the features of a live event - such as the teams, key players, the score and the remaining time - against a database of available stories. Once stories that include some of those features are found it selects the few that are most relevant and suggests them to a human commentator.
The challenge is in evaluating the relevance of candidate stories and ranking them. Lee’s system uses machine-learning techniques to do this. The most important feature was the teams involved and the second was the difference in number of runs.
To test the system, the researchers used it to create commentary for pre-recorded sports broadcasts and presented them to 254 volunteers, who said they found the commentary relevant and enjoyable.
(via AI sports commentator knows all the best stories - tech - 04 October 2012 - New Scientist)
![Smartphones Are Now Cheap Enough to Throw away in Print Ads
If there’s one advantage a print magazine still has over an online publication, it’s the ability to offer all manner of crazy freebies glued to its pages…
Flick open to the right page of [this week’s Entertainment Weekly] and you’ll spot an LCD display that magically displays video ads and live Tweets from the CW Network.
Intrigued by how such a thing could function, Mashable did a teardown (literally) and discovered all the ingredients of a budget Android smartphone, including components which aren’t strictly necessary for the task at hand: a 3G modem with T-Mo SIM (which seems to have some degree of voice connectivity), a full-sized battery, USB port and even a partially-built QWERTY keyboard.
Watch the Video. It’s worth it to hear how excited the editors get as they figure out what they’re looking at. Inside this ad is a phone that would have cost $400.00 three years ago. They actually make a call on it. Look for this issue to sell out in nerdier neighborhoods.
(via Entertainment Weekly print edition comes with a ‘smartphone-like Android device’ — Engadget)](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mbdfybuyKK1qgpcs1o1_500.jpg)
Smartphones Are Now Cheap Enough to Throw away in Print Ads
If there’s one advantage a print magazine still has over an online publication, it’s the ability to offer all manner of crazy freebies glued to its pages…
Flick open to the right page of [this week’s Entertainment Weekly] and you’ll spot an LCD display that magically displays video ads and live Tweets from the CW Network.
Intrigued by how such a thing could function, Mashable did a teardown (literally) and discovered all the ingredients of a budget Android smartphone, including components which aren’t strictly necessary for the task at hand: a 3G modem with T-Mo SIM (which seems to have some degree of voice connectivity), a full-sized battery, USB port and even a partially-built QWERTY keyboard.
Watch the Video. It’s worth it to hear how excited the editors get as they figure out what they’re looking at. Inside this ad is a phone that would have cost $400.00 three years ago. They actually make a call on it. Look for this issue to sell out in nerdier neighborhoods.
(via Entertainment Weekly print edition comes with a ‘smartphone-like Android device’ — Engadget)
Physical Distribution of Film in the US to Cease by End of 2013
A recent report from IHS Screen Digest, a company that analyzes trends in digital media, says that movie studios will cease producing 35 mm film prints for major markets by the end of 2013 (the US, France, the UK, Japan, and Australia are considered ”major markets”). IHS predicts studios will stop producing film for the rest of the world by 2015.
The death of traditional film—outside of arthouse films and the occasional film student project—has been a long time coming. Film reels are more expensive than digital storage, degrade faster, and are physically much heavier to ship and carry around. Ars noted in 2006 that Canon and Nikon were taking losses on film cameras. We reported a few months later that some filmakers felt that digital film produced better movies, as it allowed them to keep the camera running while actors performed, rather than spending money on long rehearsals, only shooting when necessary.
According to the IHS study, another factor is pushing studios to make the change from film to digital: the price of silver shot up: what was once $5 is now about $28 an ounce. Silver crystals coat traditional film and help create the filmed image after exposure.
While economics may be spurring directors toward digital movies, theaters aren’t following quite so quickly on their heels. “51.5 percent of worldwide screens had digital projectors at the end of 2011,” said Deadline. While that’s an 82 percent increase from the year before, the move from film to digital will almost certainly create a burden on theaters to invest money they may not have on new projection technology. Digital projection systems can cost between $70,000 to $100,000 and small town movie houses will have trouble coming up with that cash.
Oregon Public Broadcasting reported that as many as 10 percent of US theaters could shut down over the cost.
At one point, the IHS report said, 13 billion feet of film were shuttled around the globe every year, “equal to five trips to the moon and back,” according to Deadline. By 2010, that number had decreased to 5 billion feet of film.
(ht unexpectedtech)
One thing Assange does that other broadcasters tend to avoid though, is the release of full materials in the form of a transcript. There are notes available for each episode, some of which were made from hours of recordings. It’s an interesting process and one where guests are hopefully made aware that what they may say will be released in full. These notes in themselves are pretty interesting as they show the relationship between the participants more clearly than the broadcast edits manage to.
