apollak.comhomehttp://www.apollak.com/blog/2010-01-24T14:14:45ZSquarespaceFailure to Augmenthttp://www.apollak.com/blog/2009/11/14/failure-to-augment.htmlAlec Pollak2009-11-14T13:10:58Z2009-11-14T13:10:58ZSubscribe FAILWith the promotional anticipation of a summer blockbuster release and a six-figure budget, Esquire's Augmented Reality issue poised ready to pounce on the minds and hearts of the public at large. Sadly, also like a bloated budget flick, the "technology" showcase completely misses the point.

It started at the mailbox. On the cover of my shiny new AR enabled issue of Esquire, the subscription sticker came slapped right on top of the cover AR marker. Nice.

The sticker came off fairly easily and my wife and I fired up the Esquire AR app after downloading it from the Esquire.com AR page. The various AR enabled bits of the magazine essentially allow you to use the magazine as a controller for what could easily be web based bonus content. Not the point of AR. AR takes the real world and enhances it via a superimposed digital layer of information, multimedia and/or interactivity. Reality PLUS augmentation. Why is this so difficult to understand?

Now, the millions of people wooed by Esquire's marketing machine are all trying out the AR enabled bits of the magazine, trying desperately to look past the pages of the magazine to see the multimedia content wobble around onscreen and change if they twist the physical page right and left. That's not augmenting reality, that's really annoying. The question becomes, has Esquire done more damage to AR than good? Will AR still continue to capture people's imagination but fall short of its true potential? Or will such lame AR implimentations be a step on the AR path, slowly getting the public used to interacting with computers via cameras as input devices for whatever purpose, no matter how banal, redundant or simplistic.

Are attempts such as Esquire's the equivalent of vaudville-like performances passing for film content in that medium's early days? Or even the early web's attempt to replicate the print world or even TV. Only with the 2.0 version did the web really start to find it's own unique uses. Who will introduce the Twitter or Facebook of Augmented Reality? What's that sweet spot of wide appeal that truly brings the power of augmentation to bear?

Esquire has always provided the world with insightful, compelling and relevant content. They've taken a big step, experimenting with this new way of bringing that content to the world. Let's hope it isn't their last.

 

]]>Imagining New Tomorrowshttp://www.apollak.com/blog/2009/10/1/imagining-new-tomorrows.htmlAlec Pollak2009-10-01T15:59:19Z2009-10-01T15:59:19ZThe 2007 FYI TeamThree years after its reinvention as a web video company, For Your Imagination has continued to evolve and today stands as one of the premiere web-based, branded-entertainment-focused, video shops in New York, specializing in strategic development and syndication of those branded-entertainment videos. As that evolution has taken place, I've decided that in order to better exercise my talents and experience, it is time for me to move on.

]]>RIP Blake Snyder 1957-2009http://www.apollak.com/blog/2009/8/5/rip-blake-snyder-1957-2009.htmlAlec Pollak2009-08-05T11:25:33Z2009-08-05T11:25:33ZAs a part of my self-syllabused screenwriting education I have been considering attending Blake Snyder's workshop in NYC in mid-August this year. Now that chance lost along with so much potential for education and who knows how many great screenplays guided down a sucessful road. Snyder passed away suddenly yesterday leaving his "Save the Cat!" books and methods as his legacy, a legacy that inspired, shaped and guides screenwriters everywhere, including the writing group I regularly attend.]]>Like Quicktime VR but for Videohttp://www.apollak.com/blog/2009/8/3/like-quicktime-vr-but-for-video.htmlAlec Pollak2009-08-03T21:34:30Z2009-08-03T21:34:30ZYellowbird, a start-up in the Netherlands, is taking things to the next dimension. Here's a demo embedded below. I cannot wait to play with some more of this. I'd love to think that this is the future of storytelling but I thought that about Quicktime VR too and that really hasn't happened yet. Anyhoo, check it out.]]>Hilarious Poetryhttp://www.apollak.com/blog/2009/7/30/hilarious-poetry.htmlAlec Pollak2009-07-30T15:00:00Z2009-07-30T15:00:00ZFrom Conan O’Brien's Tonight Show,  William Shatner's rendition of Sarah Palin's farewell speech - as beat poem. Priceless.

]]>Ninjas! Cards! iPhones!http://www.apollak.com/blog/2009/5/15/ninjas-cards-iphones.htmlAlec Pollak2009-05-15T17:13:28Z2009-05-15T17:13:28ZOK iPhone game fans, it's time to shell out a whopping ninety-nine cents for hours and hours of card flicking amusement. The brilliant and talented Gregg Delcurla and his cohorts at Pint Sized Mobile have come up with a highly addictive game that involves both ninjas and cards (as the name would suggest.)

]]>Laura's Living in HDhttp://www.apollak.com/blog/2009/4/14/lauras-living-in-hd.htmlAlec Pollak2009-04-14T20:00:32Z2009-04-14T20:00:32Z

Check out my sister-in-law's new show over at Panasonic's Living in HD website. Go Laura!

]]>Kyle Piccolo Return! Now with WATCHMEN!http://www.apollak.com/blog/2009/2/21/kyle-piccolo-return-now-with-watchmen.htmlAlec Pollak2009-02-21T16:46:02Z2009-02-21T16:46:02ZYes that's right, that snarky comic shop clerk is back with his trusty sidekick Deuchus at his side. In a very special three-part adventure, Kyle and Deuchus make the world a better place, one customer at a time.

This series of episode is sponsored by the new Warner Bros. WATCHMEN movie. The first episode went live on the web on February 18th on http://www.kylepiccolo.com and all over the web. Can you spot all the hidden WATCHMEN references in the episodes? If you can you could win cool WATCHMEN prizes on these sites:

 And add a comment here or on kylepiccolo.com or drop me a line and let me know what you think of the episode!

]]>NY Comic Con 2009http://www.apollak.com/blog/2009/2/6/ny-comic-con-2009.htmlAlec Pollak2009-02-06T17:57:33Z2009-02-06T17:57:33ZIt is NY Comic Con time again. I reformatted the official scedule and annotated it with the panels I am planning to see. So if any of you want to find me over the next few days, you won't need Google Latitude, just this spreadsheet. (I will upload to Google Docs for online viewing when Google Docs is working.)

Alec's NY Comic Con Schedule

]]>iPhoto '09 and the Language of Faceshttp://www.apollak.com/blog/2009/1/29/iphoto-09-and-the-language-of-faces.htmlAlec Pollak2009-01-29T16:12:53Z2009-01-29T16:12:53ZApple's "iLife '09" should really just be called "Apple Faces" instead. I ordered the latest version of Apple's media management suite, iLife '09, right after Phil Schiller announced it at Macworld SF earlier this month largely thanks to Phil's demo of the new iPhoto 8.0. I have been using iPhoto since Apple first released it, enjoying its convenience and its growth with every annual upgrade.

For quite some time I made a habit of importing every photo I shot into iPhoto and tagging each one with iPhoto keywords, first using iPhoto's built in keyword tagging system and then upgrading to a series of plugins the latest of which, Bullstorm's Keyword Manager, made the chore much easier if not enjoyable. Why did I go through the painstaking process of identifying every person in every photo and every location where those pictures were shot? At first I told myself that I tagged for easy access to find people when I needed a picture of someone. Eventually I came to ask how often do I really NEED a picture of a particular person? Is it worth all that tagging effort? Plus I had started seeing a few search sites pop up that included face detection technology and I had a good feeling that eventually that's where Apple would go with iPhoto. So I stopped tagging in iPhoto.

I took to using Pixelpipe's uploading tool to send my photos to a bunch of websites including Fotki, Flickr, Friendster and Facebook. I used to be very concerned that my upload method could embed iPhoto keywords into the uploaded files for Fotki and Flickr to use as tags, but we're living in a Facebook world these days and Facebook doesn't use photo keyword. Instead you could use a Facebook specific iPhoto plugin and identify your contacts in the uploader before you uploaded. Cool. When I heard Phil talk about the Facebook integration with the new iPhoto I couldn't wait to play with it. Unfortunately I can't seem to get the Facebook integration to work, not sure why - it says it is uploading but nothing shows up in my Facebook account. I'll keep working on that.

What does work is face detection. I am mesmerized by iPhoto's ability to identify and zoom in on people's faces. In the Faces section you can view your photos in one of two View modes Thumbnail or Faces. In the Faces View Mode iPhoto automatically detects the face of the person in question and zooms in on it.

I am particularly taken with scrolling through a person's Faces screen and watching how they've changed over the years. This works especially well with children as you can literally watch them grow before your eyes. I am so surprised that Apple has not made more of this capability and enabled you to make movies or Keepsakes, as they now call books, cards and calendars, using this new Faces View of each photo. Hopefully Apple will either expand this functionality in the next version of iPhoto and will work with plugin developers to allow for the use of this Face View for exporting.

This face detection aspect of the technology alone makes it entertaining enough to actually sit and deal with the face recognition feature which at this point is really just so-so. I've only spent a few hours training the program to recognize my friends and family and it seems to be right as often as it is wrong - which isn't necessarily bad. That's 50% of the identification work done for me - not too shabby.

The 50% incorrect choices are sometimes way off but there has to be some kind of similarities in the images that the system is seeing and that in and of itself is a fascinating aspect of the process. iPhoto highlights how much my niece and nephew looked alike as babies and when it mistook some of my friends for other people I started to see similarities that I never noticed before. There's a language of faces that we know innately but not consciously and iPhoto now speaks that language, in some ways better than we do, and in others not so well. Expressions, for example through the program for a loop, whereas a big smile just reinforces a face for a human observer. In another life I'll have to read up more on this field of study but for the meantime I will enjoy dabbling with iPhoto.

In the end I come back to the same question: When am I really going to go looking for a photo of a specific person? And more importantly, without a real online synchronization of this information how valuable is it for me in the long run? Hopefully I will work out the Facebook integration kink in my system and this second question will play itself out more clearly. I'm still happy with my purchase and will write up more as iPhoto and I learn more about the faces in my world.

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