A friend recently put his NeXT computer up for sale on eBay, in the Facebook discussion it sparked someone mentioned Tektronix and I was catapulted back to 1989.
My first days of real work were on a Tektronix 4014 like the one in the picture. It was already a relic and I was only used it for a month or two before a shiny new VAXStation running VMS arrived.
It was a memorable experience, all those panels are made of steel; this was true “heavy mettle” and this thing would probably still run today, it was a tank. Read the rest of this entry »
A few weeks ago in my post Disrupt the engine market | Autodesk’s bananas I mentioned that Autodesk was getting into the IaaS (infrastructure as a service) business to reduce the IT barrier to entry of large scale film production.
Last week Side Effects Software, makers of Houdini, opened up their cloud rendering solution to Beta testers. It uses the Amazon EC2 platform so Side Effects has harnessed cloud computing for its platform without even taking on the hardware back end risk. Smart. Read the rest of this entry »
In 1997 I joined a technology startup that did everything right.. except the first thing.
Our technology allowed morphing of complex polygonal models, it allowed designers to transfer surface shape from one design to another. Very cool technology; Alias, Autodesk and Softimage were all interested.
But the founder had made a strategic error right at the start; She decided we were in the automotive design technology business. Autodesk could see how useful our technology would be in games, that’s why they were interested and over time most of us realized we were targeting the wrong industry but the CEO’s vision for her company was in the car industry.
Over on Copyblogger Briam Clark has a great article on the subject of jumping into the wrong lake, complete with Purple Rain reference. Read the rest of this entry »
Architectural visualization, camera control systems, crowdsourcing, photography and location scouting. This research presses almost all my buttons.
Photo tourism is a system for browsing large collections of photographs in 3D. Our approach takes as input large collections of images from either personal photo collections or Internet photo sharing sites like Flickr.
via Photo Tourism
One of the most valuable skills anyone can master is the ability to communicate complex ideas in a simple, entertaining and non-condescending way. This skill above all is why Einstein is a hero of mine and why I love this video.
I think a significant new trend in 2009 is the birth of the prosumer game developer.
Both Unity and Epic have made significant moves in the prosumer space in 2009.
An argument for public pricing is not an argument against direct sales unless knowing the price is the only value your sales people bring to the client.
A friend recently put his NeXT computer up for sale on eBay, in the Facebook discussion it sparked someone mentioned Tektronix and I was catapulted back to 1989.
In 1997 I joined a technology startup that did everything right.. except the first thing.