Here’s an article from canonrumors about the the CMOS Sensor Squared [CR2].

I first became aware of non-photorealistic rendering in 2000 when Alex Mohr, Christopher Herrman and some other students at the University of Wisconsin created a non-photorealistic rendering version of the popular first-person shooter “Quake”, NPR Quake. NPR is simply taking tools that are commonly used to create “photo-real” images, think cameras or software, and creating something that looks like it isn’t photo-real. Images can appear as drawings, paintings, cartoon cells or sketches… only no pencils were harmed in the creation of the images.

A couple of days ago, I stumbled upon an app for the Apple iPhone called ToonPAINT, and it’s rocked my world. ToonPAINT takes any of the pictures on your iPhone, or the camera itself, and allows you to create images that are startlingly cool. Cool because they can take most mundane subject and render it as beautiful art.

The team behind ToonPaint is headed up by Dr. Bruce Gooch, who specializes (among other things) in Computational Aesthetics. His vision is to create tools that engage and inform the artistic process, and with ToonPAINT, they have a winner.

The thing that I like about NPR is that it allows the creation of an image that suspends disbelief. The more photographically real something becomes, the more our brains try to reconcile, what Jeff Hawkins refers too as, our invariant model of the world. In other words, we compare what we think something *should* be, with what it is. If they don’t line up, somewhere in our consciousness, there is a disconnect. In 3D computer graphics and robotics this is called the “uncanny valley“.

Moving away from the “known” allows the mind to accept imagery that is more “mythic”, less literal, and potentially, more narrative. Black and white photography has occupied this space for the past 150 years, as the primary tool that photographers had to create images that convey another time or place.

This is also the power of comics and animation. Now, thanks to ToonPAINT, anyone with an iPhone can create stunning effects in a short time. Check it out, it’s really fun!

Robin McShaffry, Marc Jackson and Mary Margaret

I ran into some VERY COOL folks from at the 2010 Computer Game Developer’s Conference, and heck, they interviewed me… right here! Big thanks to Marc Jackson!

Hopefully, the reduction in tuning cycles will allow developers to innovate faster, and that innovation will make it into the marketplace. Unfortunately, it may just allow many publishers to simply use the technological advantages to shorten development cycles, eliminating the late stage tuning that makes good games into great ones… we will see…

Things come in in waves, if you catch them, you can ride for a while. Once the ride is over, you can paddle out and look for a new ride. Sometimes you wipe out, sometimes the ride seems like it will never end. But the ride is the thing. Waves without rides are meaningless non-events.

Clayton Christensen, of Harvard Business School, uses a chart that he uses in his disruptive innovation theory that starts on a single plane. In his model, businesses succeed until they are disrupted by other businesses that are operating on another plane of competition. It’s easy to look at the chart as a snapshot, but by adding time and a little imagination the chart starts to look a cross section of a wave with businesses peaking and crashing through their intermingled hydrodynamics.

Disruptive Innovation - Copyright 2008 Clayton Christensen

My career has always centered on media, technology, human behavior and the ways those things interact with each other. For years, the discipline that I practiced used Hasselblads and supermodels to get people to buy clothes; the medium was photography, and the message was “buy this and you will be like the person in the picture”. The business that drove my segment of image-making was something called direct-mail. In the 70s and 80s, department stores made a huge push in direct mail to sell clothing. Catalogs would fill everyone’s mailboxes. But as individual specialty stores got better at honing their brands and “big box” retailers took away profitable market-share, department stores began to collapse, and with it, much of the direct mail business that supported my photography segment.

Fortunately, I dallied in college as a computer science major, so as the new wave of digital innovation started to break I made the jump from photography to bits, catching a new wave. It may seem anathema to move from beauty to binary code, but the common thread that runs through my experiences using technology to effect human behavior. My adventures have taken me from Kodachrome and cameras, to Macs and visual media, PCs and games; from the darkroom to the floppy disk and eventually onto the broadband web. Across many mediums, but in many cases, the same messages. If you do (this), you will feel (that).

Popular memes are very often good business.

Richard Dawkins coined the term ‘meme‘ in his book “The Selfish Gene”. The word generally means an idea (or meaning) that spreads like a virus. An example of this is a catchy tune that gets stuck in your head. You may actually go to iTunes or a store and buy it. Your foot taps when you hear it on the radio. It moves you. It reminds you of something or someone or someplace. You feel good, you feel bad, you feel. Some memes stick, some don’t like colds or the flu. They also seem to be super charged by business.

I consider memes as life forms, in and of themselves. They reproduce “did you hear that song?”, they hibernate; in books, tablets, CDs, etc., and they can spread virally.

A medium is a technology for conveying memes. Technology is an invention or process for doing something, contextually, “better”. With our opposable thumbs and bicameral brains, we humans are technology too. Humans are a mediums for memes, and memes use humans as hosts. Surfboards use human beings to surf waves, to make them better, to have better rides, just as much as humans use the boards.

One of the definitions of the word “quantum” is “a discrete, indivisible manifestation of a physical property”. Memes have a quantum effect in that they change the physical nature of humans that they infect. The right word from the right person can change your blood pressure, put an idea in your head for a moment… or a lifetime. These physiological changes are real and measurable. The electro-chemical structures in your body change as information is processed by your consciousness.

As we wander through existence, our eyes, ears, mouth, nose and skin are constantly inputting new data. Some of this data is cognitively interpreted as an idea, considered, stored or forgotten. Those memes that bubble up to the top of our consciousness compete for human attention.

Humans have a limited amount of attention, constrained by our cognitive bandwidth, so competition between memes creates a dynamic zero-sum system of perception and memory where the success of one meme (attention) means the loss of another (forgotten). Waves of perceptions and ideas pass through us, some we catch, some break on the beach, creating currents and undertows, and others just swell out to sea to meet some other fate.

Shapers Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch with Clayton Christensen at the Microsoft CEO Summit 2009

Creators of messages specialize in the disciplines that are required to master each medium, they become craftsmen. Surfboards are designed by “shapers” that tailor a board for a particular kind of wave. The stick you use at Pipeline is not the same one that you use at Maverick’s.

The culture of business is to optimize values, processes and interfaces of a discipline, creating specialization in those crafts to increase profits. As craftsmen become more specialized, there is a danger of over-optimization, where the discipline becomes inextricably commingled with the messages, and messengers. That is, the craftsmen stop seeing themselves as message creators, and see themselves as medium specialists.

When new mediums (waves) appear, established stakeholders use known crafts and what they know from an established medium and try to force it’s models into the new medium. Marshal McLuhan and Clayton Christensen both refer to this “cramming” phenomena. This creates noise in the new medium, as business models try to establish themselves. It’s like riding the wrong board, on the wrong wave.

When new forms of messages compete in the marketplace of attention, other forms suffer by comparison. Often, the wreckage left in the path of this new attention is those specialists and craftsmen that have over-specialized on older mediums, wiping out. Disciplines attached to diminished mediums suffer and often die. If you ride a wave long enough, you’re sure to wind up on the beach, and if life is about the ride, then this is surely death.

In the big picture, that’s okay, because resurrection and rebirth requires loss, but in the short term, lives and careers are disrupted. Resurrection for the medium specialist occurs when there is a recognition that the message, the meme, and the ride are not the medium, the wave is.

They get back on a board, paddle out and look for a new ride, they might need a new board though. I’m always looking for waves in media and business, and checking to see if my clients and I have brought the right board… the one that will give us a good ride. Namaste.

Here’s the Abstract:

There is an increasing body of evidence that only a minuscule proportion of the sensory data processed by the unconscious mind (capable of processing approximately 11 million bits per second) is referred to the conscious mind (capable of processing approximately 50 bits per second). It is also clear that conscious awareness of stimuli from the environment lags behind actual perception by approximately half a second, but that a backward referral of subjective experience results in a individual’s perception of the stimulus and its conscious awareness as simultaneous. These findings challenge the primacy and supremacy of conscious processing of information on which a substantial proportion of educational practice and policy is based, and suggest a re-evaluation of the nature of teacher competence and expertise.

More Here

Initial production of a prototype was completed in a few weeks by a very small team consisting of a single database/web developer, an art director and a front-end developer. The original platform was Windows XP, Internet Explorer 6 and Windows Media Player 8. The choice of platform allowed the team to create a very small application (26k) that eliminated the operating system interfaces to the end user, and tied in the bar code scanner. The engine was developed as a private web site, using standard web development techniques, with the exception that there was no need to waste time supporting other platforms.

First versions included only “Scan” functionality. The assumption was that if a customer already had the product in their hand, there was a better chance of impacting a sale. Soon, “Browse” and “Search” were brought online and added. Cash register data from the merchandise management system was tied into the reporting on the system. This allowed management to analyze “Impacted Sales” (% of total receipts scanned) and scan-to-buy (% of scanned items purchased). Managers can analyze the data by time, store, and product.

The operating system was migrated to Windows XP embedded for deployment, saving both licensing costs and operational costs. The embedded operating system installer fits conveniently on a USB key chain drive that allows all stores to have an inexpensive backup image and installer in-house. Another online application also monitors and distributes upgraded software over the network to every kiosk in the system in off hours.

Bill Gates liked the idea enough to include it in the Windows XP launch.

Click here to view the embedded video.

My ability to communicate with engineers and visual designers in their own languages, allows me to create an environment for innovation. That approach to balanced technology & visual design has helped companies like 20th Century Fox, Sega GameWorks, Microsoft, and Virgin Entertainment create ground breaking applications to drive their businesses forward.

Peter Duke

In 1995, Rupert Murdoch’s Newscorp bought Delphi Internet Services, and I was hired as Director of Design to oversee the creation of the X-Files and Fox Sports websites. The sites quickly became the most popular entertainment websites on the Internet. In 1996, I joined Steven Spielberg’s GameWorks to develop web-based location based entertainment. In 1999, after creating websites for Capitol, Angel, and Bluenote Records, I was tapped by Richard Bransen’s Virgin to direct the web development effort.

At Virgin, I bootstrapped start-up Radio Free Virgin and led design and production on a Digital Preview System that allows customers to preview 250,000 CD’s and 11,000 DVD’s in the Virgin Megastore chain. Bill Gates was impressed enough with the system to include it in the Windows XP launch event. I’ve consulted for companies like Microsoft and Sesame Street, on a variety of ideas including Enhanced Digital Television, High Definition 3D and systems to make Personal Video Recorders much smarter.

Until 2008, I was the Creative Director of Technology for the Playground Media Group, leading the Design and Development of Windows Media Video High Definition DVDs, including Step Into Liquid, and ten IMAX titles. Projects at Playground also include the design and development of media and technology for the $300MM Las Vegas Springs Preserve, re-envisioning museums in the 21st century for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in association with the American Film Institute Digital Content Lab and the design and development of in-theater video game experiences for TimePlay.

Currently, I consult for a variety of entities that vary from SMS gaming applications, a charitable foundation for the homeless, user experience strategies, and social networking applications. I am also on the board of directors for the non-profit I Am Waters, which delivers clean drinking water to America’s homeless.

My home is in Pacific Palisades, where I’m married to Sara Shuman and we have a daughter, Katie Rose.

Oh yea, I’m taking pictures again, but only for fun clients…

Timeplay came to Playground Media Group to help develop a platform and content for a video game system, designed to be deployed in movie theaters. The challenge was to come up activities that could engage an entire audience. We created and developed “Behind the Screens”, and interactive game show, where the audience could participate and win prizes that would be delivered to their seats. Playground also revised Timeplay’s business models and produced marketing materials. The “Timeplay Sizzle” below is one of collateral pieces. My role as Creative Director of Technology was to establish the business drivers, and problem definition for the visual and technical teams.

Timeplay Sizzle

Click here to view the embedded video.

Behind the Scresns Demo