BlackTech Blog

New Apple Store on 14th street and 9th ave. See my Top 5 Geek gifts for the holiday season.

It used to be that health benefits and a generous number of sick days were enough to have top-notch talent scratching at your corporate threshold. Now? Not so much. READ MORE

Was poking around over on the Future Boy blog and found a cool video. READ MORE

Another reason people input false information into social networking sites... READ MORE

This past weekend, I was invited to a colleague's holiday party. I found myself rubbing elbows with the CIO of a multi-national imaging corporation. When I explained that I'm a social media strategist and consultant, he asked me flat out, "Should I be blogging?"\ READ MORE

As a journalist sometimes your gut is your best friend when it comes identifying a story with real legs. Unfortunately, if the subject isn’t on your beat or you simply don’t have the time/resources, a story you know is important will go ignored for years. Such is the case with this blog and the dangers of cell phone use. I’ve been casually tracking any stories relating cell phone use to health problems for years and one thing that remains consistent is that no matter where the story is published it’s almost always a “small” story. I’ll leave the conspiracy theories to late night radio hosts and simply say that it’s a shame more isn’t published on this topic.

That’s why I was pleased and not a little scared when I found this item today, “Israeli study says regular mobile use increases tumour risk.” There’s nothing iffy or inconclusive about the story, it pretty much makes a flat out case that using cell phones is incredibly dangerous. But the story, for some reason, is tiny and has received very little coverage. Aside from asking yourself if potentially shaving years off your life is worth the convenience of a cell phone, you might also ask yourself why this story is receiving so little exposure in the way major coverage. Why?

*Background On This Post (or, Why I started posting on the potential dangers of cell phones): Around 1991 I was working as a marketing exec in the music business. At the time having a pager on your hip was standard operating equipment. I loved it. But after a couple of months I began to notice an aching pain where I had my pager clamped. I assumed it was just the clip, or the pressure of the device pressing against my body. So I started moving the pager around trying to find a more comfortable spot. It was then I that I realized that it was not the device’s body that was causing me pain. In fact it was the power/signal coming from/transmitted to the device that was causing the aching pain. I immediately stopped wearing pagers and the pain disappeared.

Then, a few years later when cell phones became standard operating equipment for nearly anyone doing business in New York, I experienced the same thing. For all my friends that have long wondered why a geek like me doesn’t carry around five cell phones and doesn’t always rush out to get the latest model, you now have your answer. I try very hard to limit my cell phone use and direct contact. I don’t need a major scientific study to tell me that when I keep a pager or cell phone close to my body it hurts and that that can’t be good.

I absolutely love cell phones and think they are an important part of our future, but I fear that we’re ignoring the underreported side-effects of using these devices because cell phones have simply become too important to get rid of completely. I expect more reports like the one above to surface. But at this point I’m not so sure that finding out cell phones are potentially bad for your health would stop most people from using them. After all, smoking cigarettes remains as popular as ever. Cough, cough…

Photos by: PartsnPieces

Just like people who don't vote don't have the right to complain about the governmental administration, brands that refuse to create their own 'turf', lose their right to complain about anything negative said about their organization in the blogosphere. READ MORE

Big media is finally grasping that the sands beneath its feet are shifting; and Vivendi’s bold step for Activision may be the beginnings of dramatic change for all kinds of digital entertainment.

And it’s about time. George Lucas (I know, major name-dropping here) told me not too long ago, that one of the key reasons for his studio’s success is the seamless integration between his LucasArts video games division and LucasFilm, his studio operation.

But he’s been doing it for years. Other studios simply have not been able to grasp the magnitude of that kind of arrangement. … The world is moving online, and the entertainment industry is no different. But like music, and then movies, Hollywood has been slow to see these trends develop, and by the time it does, it’s usually too late. …

George Lucas has to be sitting in his office this morning; celebrating yet another reason for the industry to think of him as “visionary,” and it cost him so much less than the check Vivendi has to write.

CNBC Tech Check: Big Media Now Gets “It”

3D interactive media is going mainstream. Moving rapidly from video games to machinima and ultimately to TV, movies and augmented reality, interactive 3D will be the norm in less than a decade. 2008 will mark a key turning point as virtual world citizens and You Tube producers get their hands on the next generation of machinima production tools. Leading Hollywood directors have seen this coming:

Imagine a movie in which the viewer is swept along by a narrative, following the action from place to place, but without the intervention of a camera. You can choose which character to watch in a scene, as if you’re an invisible witness standing there while a real event plays out. This is still years away, at a level of realism people would consider cinematic, but certainly not decades away.

I can imagine the dense fantasy worlds I like to create for movies having an equal or greater life in a world of interactive play, authored by others, in a partnership. Of course, add massive multiplayer capability to this, and people will never leave their homes.

Beyond 3D: James Cameron in BusinessWeek

“Do you still use a typewriter?” he asks a TIME movie critic. “Do you go to a library and consult books for most of your research? Is your story set in type, letter by letter? No. Your business takes advantage of technological advances. Why shouldn’t my business?”

Google+YouTube=Handwriting of the Wall of the Web: George Lucas in Time Magazine

Beowulf is currently making a strong showing now, James Cameron’s Avatar movie is slated for 2009(see also More Signs of Convergence: Avatar - the Movie ) and there are rumors that The Hobbit will be a 3D production due in 2010. More productions are in the pipeline and theaters are gearing up:

• CNN: Movies in 3D: into the next dimension
• 3D Movies Rise Again
• Let’s Talk 3D Movies
• Time for the Digital Age

Given the level of realism being delivered by Second Life’s new Windlight viewer and improvements in avatar robotics, machinima is poised to explode. Some relevant links:

Machinima and what might be

Why Machinima Is Good For Hollywood

BBC: Machinima waits to go mainstream

Croquetlandia

Machinima For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech))

3D Game-Based Filmmaking: The Art of Machinima (with CD-ROM)