As discovered at the recent NAB show, we’ve had the opportunity to demo the new 13″ Wacom Cintiq and think this new form factor is pretty great. They’ve done away with the power brick which makes it much less complex to connect and the size works really well – especially with a laptop.

http://www.wacom.com/en/products/pen-displays/cintiq/cintiq-13hd

I’ll probably have the tablet for another week or so so email me directly if you want to check it out.

WACOM also let me know of this tablet:

http://www.wacom.com/en/business-and-education/products/pen-displays/dtus/dtu-1031

I wasn’t familiar with it so I wanted to forward it along. Not sure of the use cases but maybe for point of sale or even as a way to have an alternate interface into a digital signage application.

If anyone has a use case and would like me to assist with coordinating a demo, let me know (oit dash its dash info at duke dot edu)

During our meeting with Ryan and Brian we learned of a new Crestron wireless content sharing technology device that they are working on.  It will allow content sharing over the network to a small footprint box that has HDMI out similar to an Apple TV.  They are claiming that several operating systems (Windows, Mac, iOS and Android OS) will be supported.  That is all we know for now but we are very anxious to learn more.

http://www.ivsimaging.com/Products/CostarIV-PTZHDUSB.aspx

Ian told RedShark:

…the App is a bit of a test to see if we (three of us, film, web, digital heads) could apply all our skills into one project and make a really easy, modern, good-looking Clapperboard App that was affordable and actually a help to our work-flow.. not a hinderance.

We’ve aimed it specifically at the semi pro DSRL shooter, still and motion shooters, student film makers and indie documentary teams..  personally I’m quite excited just to have my first App!

We’ve had over 2000 downloads form all corners of the globe since last saturday and more good feedback than we ever could of imagined.

This success will let us fund iPhone and Android versions this coming summer.

To find the app on the Apple App Store, search “clapperboard”.

Make sure to turn the sound down at first when you check out the demo here: http://youtu.be/Jkuutgfe8Hs

http://kk.org/cooltools/archives/9723?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CoolTools+%28Cool+Tools%29

The main distinguishing feature of this microphone appears to be the inclusion of a built-in headphone amp (with volume control), so that you can monitor your voice in real time, and in doing so up the quality of your delivery style.

Some additional features include (according to many reviews) significantly improved audio quality over other popular USB mics (including other Blue mics), and four different polar pattern settings (Cardioid, Stereo, Bidirectional and Omnidirectional), and a simple and solid build.  On the negative side, this is a very large microphone, at about a foot high, and one review I read noted that maybe a couple of the knobs are a little flimsy.

There is a pro version of this microphone that is 2.5x the price, but includes professional recording via analog XLR, a separate analog circuit path, and better sampling rates and frequency response.

Details on the End of Life timeline are summarized below:

• August 6, 2013 – Last day to order new C20 codec and peripherals
• August 6, 2014 – Last day of new software release for C20 codec
• August 6, 2014 – Last day of routine failure analysis for C20 codec hardware
• August 6, 2014 – Last day to order a NEW SmartNet support contract
• November 1, 2017 – Last day an existing SmartNet contract can be renewed
• August 31, 2018 – Last day the C20 codec can be covered under SmartNet support contract

As an alternative, the Cisco SX20 is the current model that Cisco is concentrating their development efforts on for this smaller type of conference room system. It has proven to be a very capable replacement while providing similar if not enhanced capabilities while remaining very affordable for a true HD video conferencing system. For a comparison, please take a look at Jack D’Ardenne’s blog post from last year.

As always, please contact oit-its-info@duke.edu if you have any questions concerning this announcement or other video conferencing products.

Please visit the Duke Digital Signage webpage for more information about the service.  If you are interested in participating, please fill out the participation form which can be accessed from this page.

Needing a better tool for hand held small cameras while shooting news, documentary, and many reality television shows, Doug perfected this invention after 10 years of prototypes. Rigorous field testing and help and advice from talented and very patient engineers, tailors, artists, and camera folk has resulted in this simple but perfect tool.

Looks as if it might be a useful tool for folks using smaller video cameras for production. An interesting solution for a common production problem, especially for those of us used to the “old world” of handheld (read: “your shoulder is your tripod”) video.

I’ve had discussions with a few people on how best to handle this, some of what was suggested:
1) Leave the archive as a wild no-man’s land. Focus on making an easy system for organizing/images images moving forward.
2) Cherry pick the most useful seeming folders, organize them, forget the rest (a friend’s advice)
3) Run all public images through Picassa, tag moving forward, and tag past images when convenient with a bit of assistance from the facial recognition (my current tentative plan)
4) Bite the bullet and manually go through all the images

Was just wondering if anyone at Duke had dealt with this successfully, and/or had suggestions for tools and best practices for working through this. (Note: This was previously posted to WebCom, though I feel some folks here might have suggestions as well). Thoughts?