Connecting Past, Present and Future
Martin Rabl
Currently employed as Community Manager in the video games industry I focus on staying on top of new tools and ideas for communication and interaction between people, friends, customers and colleagues. After finishing my studies (economics with IT focus) I have not been programming on my own much anymore and my main interest shifted towards the practical integration of new tools in my everyday life.
Beiträge von Martin Rabl
Apple TV Updated – I Can Haz Baseball?
10. Mrz
I’m always excited about watching patch progress bars slowly moving forward and today was one of these days. Not just iPhone and iPad got their new update IOS 4.3 – Apple TV also got updated to 4.2!
I didn’t expect much more than I already knew: Support for AirPlay streaming from third party apps. Wonderful, I actually love AirPlay and use it often to stream YouTube videos wirelessly from the iPad to the TV without the need to use the (now improved in 4.2) virtual keyboard of Apple TV. New slideshow themes? Meh..
But then…suddenly a MLB.tv option appears in the internet section of the menu. This is just great, I guess this is one of those moments where I should appreciate progress, be glad that I can now watch something to make me fall asleep instantly via Apple TV instead of complaining about it. Note: I do live in the UK – even Cricket would be more appropriate.
But yeah, like I mentioned, it’s good to see something being pushed forward even though it requires a subscription to watch live matches. However I would like to finally see TV shows making their way into Apple TV in the UK or any ‘European’ sport (Maybe not Cricket) striking a similar deal. Unfortunately I think it will take another 50 years for the football (soccer) leagues to get their act together and embrace technology. Heck, they still don’t allow video decisions or goal line technologies.
Sigh…now I am off playing Mass Effect 2. Better late than never.
Annoyed by juggling remote controls? Take a look at Logitech’s Harmony One
02. Feb
Do you know this situation? You just made yourself comfortable on the couch while watching TV, realise it’s crap, want to switch to the Blu-Ray movie you wisely already put into your player a while ago and then have to juggle multiple remote controls to do this? You wish you’d be Luke Skywalker to force pull the missing Blu-Ray player remote from the table nearby and then have six arms like Dr. Octopus to perform the following sequence of actions:
Grab cable tv box remote, turn off cable tv box, exchange cable tv remote with tv remote, change input from AV1 to HDMI1, exchange tv remote with Blu-Ray player remote, start Blu-Ray player, exchange Blu-Ray player remote with surround system remote, Turn on surround system and choose correct input, put away remote control.
It does not sound too bad yet but then every time you want to adjust the volume, brightness or pause the movie, you need to look for the right remote first and ideally place them near you. I got into this towards the end of last year when I added a surround system and an Apple TV to my existing lounge setup (TV, cable box and Playstation 3) making it a total of 5 remote controls on the couch.
Call me lazy (I prefer ‘efficient’) but it annoyed me pretty soon. After a bit of research I decided to buy an All-in-one remote control and went for the Logitech Harmony One. To make it short, I love it and it cleaned up the mess – after spending some time configuring it.
What I did not expect is how well it actually works. I thought that there would be some sort of button on those All-in-one remotes which lets you change between the different remotes but thanks to a clever (but time intense) configuration process it knows that when I watch a movie via AppleTV that the arrow keys need to control that device while the volume buttons control the surround system. Plus it automatically switches the TV to the right input when I chose an ‘action’.
‘Actions’ have to be defined on the Harmony One via a setup application on a PC or Mac. Actions can be ‘Watch TV’ or ‘Play games’. The touch screen display on top of the remote shows them as buttons and once clicked, a sequence like the one mentioned above is being played through. No need to turn on, turn off or switch the channel of any device. The remote knows what it has to do. It seems to work best with TVs that have a specific button for each input (e.g. HDMI1) and not cycle through like mine. While it was possible to configure the remote so that it knows how often it needs to ‘press’ the ‘next input’ button, it fails when I switch back from using the PS3 to watching TV. Not a big deal though since I placed the ‘next input’ button on the touchscreen and just press it once. It still turns off the PS3 and surround system and turns on the cable box. Strangely it works when switching back from AppleTV to cable so maybe I just need to set it up once more.
Regarding the PS3:
As the Harmony One works with IR and the PS3 remote control (or controllers) work with Bluetooth a separate adapter is needed. It was worth buying though. It does not even use a USB slot as it simply connects via Bluetooth to the PS3 and transforms the IR signals into something the PS3 can understand.
So should you buy the Logitech Harmony One? I paid £99 for it which is not cheap but as I’ve said, I am glad I spent the money. For you, it depends on the number of remote controls in your living room and how often you switch actions on a normal evening. If you have 3 or more remote controls and switch more than 2 or 3 times each evening than you should start thinking about it. More than 4 remotes? Buy it now!
Some Headlines Make Me Cry
20. Sep
In the era of the internet a good headline for your article is important to draw attention and get readers. There is a lot of competition out there and people’s time is limited, so they usually skim the header, first paragraph and picture.
What I’ve seen on the website of the Guardian (which I usually praise a lot) almost made me cry. Well, in fact I have even sent a short rant email to a friend of mine. It almost felt like abusing the system, cheating and dangerously close to leaving people misinformed if they don’t read the whole article. This is the catchy headline of the article:
Why exercise won’t make you thin
Even worse, the first paragraph continues with “Got a few pounds to lose? Cancel the gym membership”
What will anyone who just reads this take away? That exercise is pointless and you can as well just sit on your couch doing nothing. This is dangerously wrong. Deep into the article the true meaning becomes clear. One would have to exercise a lot to equal out the donut they’ve just eaten. The better way would be to not eat the donut at all. Eating less is a much more efficient way to lose weight than going to the gym for an hour. So my point is, this is not an Either-Or situation. You can eat less AND go to the gym. Surely if two people with similar weight eat exactly the same but one is doing exercise, the latter would lose more weight. Ok, or gain some weight because of muscle mass. If you take exercise as an excuse to eat even more afterwards, it won’t do anything, of course.
But surely a headline like “Why eating less will make you thin” is less spectacular than “Why exercise won’t make you thin”
*Rant off*
(And yes, my headline sucks – intentionally)
Travel Back In Time With The YouTube Time Machine
14. Sep
Ever thought about going back to the ‘good old times’? Simply enjoying life as a kid with mullets all around you? There are these days when people say something like ‘Aaawwwww…1998 was such a good year!’. Now you can virtually travel back in time and get yourself in the spirit of a chosen year.
YouTube Time Machine is a simple filter on top of YouTube but quite effective. Choose a year (it goes back to 1860) and one or multiple categories (Music, Movies, Video Games, …), then lean yourself back, watch the flux capacitor do it’s job and enjoy the good old times. Be careful though, there are rumours that your memory plays tricks on you and not everything back then was as good as you remember. Some things should have never seen the light of day but hey, ‘Ice Ice Baby’ still rocks, doesn’t it? Even though Vanilla Ice says sorry!
Great Interactive Music Video: The Wilderness Downtown
04. Sep
Arcade Fire are bringing us an innovative, interactive and personalised music video called The Wilderness Downtown. It uses HTML5 to run in the browser and personalises the video once you’ve typed in the address of your childhood. I also quite like the song but the idea of giving everyone a unique experience when watching it is brilliant.
Unfortunately there is still a huge debate about Google Street View in Germany which made it impossible for me to use my childhood address. So I used the adress of my first work place in the UK instead. My former colleagues will recognise the environment in my personalised video, everyone else should now create their own video. Enjoy
Star Wars Uncut Wins Emmy And Nears Release
26. Aug
No, Star Wars uncut is not the long awaited debut of the Star Wars saga on Blu-Ray. It is also not the special edition. It is a VERY special edition, made by fans and for fans. Initiated by 26-year-old Web developer Casey Pugh A New Hope got cut into pieces of 15 seconds each. Groups of fans could then choose up to three of those scenes and shoot their own version of them. Several groups could claim the same scene and in the community got to choose which fan made scenes will be used in the final movie – stitched together with all the winning scenes.
To Casey’s surprise, but totally deserved, the project just won an Emmy in the category creative achievement in interactive media. Casey initially did not want to apply but got talked into it and has now won an award which previously has been given to big names like Lost or the Jimmy Fallon show.
Pugh says that the movie is finished but he is awaiting a response from LucasFilms regarding legal issues. There is hope that they will treat it as a fan film and give it a green light. You can watch the full Star Wars uncut movie on the website already but until the legal issues are resolved without the original soundtrack though. Still worth watching and a must see if you are a Star Wars fan.
Otho completes the cast of Captain Future Movie
24. Aug
My search for the ultimate cast of the planned big budget Captain Future feature movie has been pretty easy so far. For the Captain himself, Ezra Gurney and Joan Randall I already had actors in mind before starting to write about it. Otho (German: Otto) the shapeshifting android, made out of an elastic rubber like material, gave me a headache. He’s wearing a strange outfit, pink wrestler like suit and a blue cap, is a funny joker and bald. At some point I thougt about Nacho Libre and Jack Black’s appearance as a Mexican wrestler in it. The more I thought about it, the more I liked the thought.
Personally, I am not the biggest fan of Jack Black. I can totally see him pull off Otho’s strange character though and not being afraid of having his body virtually stretched and deformed while constantly being called a rubber doll by metal robot buddy Grag.
Jack Black as Otho completes the cast. Grag the robot and Simon Wright the human brain will most likely get their CGI treatment and Ken (the kid) hopefully won’t appear in the movie.
What do you think of the cast and are you already looking forward to the movie, too? I wish I still had my Captain Future comic books. As far as I can remember they were amazing and like the anime series the stories were not just for teenagers only.
3 quick tips for new speakers
17. Aug
I’m supposed to get offline in 10 minutes, have lunch at the airport and catch a plane to Cologne, Germany. It’s time for gamescom – the massive video games convention – again. It will be much quieter for me this time as I am not giving any public demos on stage or in front of the press. Some other people though will be, like me a few years ago, thrown into the cold water and have their first presentations in front of excited fans on stage. I thought i could quickly share three easy and basic tips before I’m heading off.
Mistakes
Mistakes happen. Accept it! They don’t even have to be your fault. The game crashes on stage, the server shuts down, the microphone stops working or you stumble on your way to the stage. Everything is possible. Expect things to go wrong and you won’t be surprised. If something happens, then don’t pretend like nothing happened. The most important thing though is to know that it does not mean the end of the world. Smile, maybe even make a joke about it when you land on your back and the you might even win the audience over with it.
Perfection
Scott Berkun writes in his book Confessions of a public speaker that “Confidence, not perfection, is the goal”. There are a lot of good speakers out there but even with years of experience they won’t be able to remember each word of a speech they’ve prepared in complete detail before. Do practice in advance, a lot, but don’t focus on nailing each word by 100%. Aim to be confident in what you want to bring across, understand the key points and be able to always find your way back on the track whenever you are stuck. Set yourself some sort of ‘save points’ like in a video game so that you can start again when needed.
Don’t turn your back on the crowd
It’s a common mistake made on stage which can easily be avoided by having a monitor screen at the front. Most presenters will talk along a live demo of the game or maybe just a video showing game footage running on a big screen behind them. It is a bit too late for this year’s show in case you haven’t one yet, so what to do in that case?
Again, practice your presentation and trust the footage behind you. It’s the ideal case but of course you want to be in sync with what is happening on the screen. In that case, don’t stand in front and underneath the big screen, stand either to the left or right hand side of it. Then don’t turn around revealing your back to the audience, just turn a little bit and peek at the screen but try to still look at people in the audience across the stage (like a 45 degrees angle).
If you really have to turn around and point at the screen with your fingers to show something, then still try to look at the people as much as possible without making it look awkward. However things like that should be avoided during the planning stage of the presentation.
That’s it. I have to go to the gate and see you on the other side. Let’s see how this article turns out as it’s the first one I have fully written on the iPad. If it looks strange, at least I have learned a lesson.
Of course, any comments are welcome and also don’t forget to follow me on Twitter under @martin_rabl. As I have said my convention will be more quiet this time but from time to time I might have something to share.
Who’s the hot blonde next to Captain Future?
15. Aug
My search for the ultimate Captain Future dream cast continues. A big budget feature movie has been announced and I’ve already suggested actors for Captain Future and Ezra Gurney but now it is time to reveal my favourite for the charming, hot (as hot as one can be in a tight red space uniform), blonde girl at the Captain’s side. Joan Randall (German: Joan Landor – translation mistake actually) and the Captain are obviously in love with each other but nothing ever happens throughout the whole anime series. It remains to be seen if they already find each other in the upcoming movie or of it will be left unanswered.
My favourite choice for Joan is in fact the reason I came up with this series of articles. I am currently in the middle of watching the TV show Veronica Mars and at one point it just occurred to me that Kristen Bell would make a wonderful Joan Randall. So charming and clever in the series that not even the usually very serious Captain Future would be able to stay calm. You might also know her from the TV show Heroes or some recent movies (e.g. Forgetting Sarah Marshall).
Do you like the choice? Next up is Otho (German: Otto). A tough choice. I won’t choose an actor for Ken. I wish he would not be in the upcoming movie. Grag and Simon won’t need similar looking actors – as they are robots they will rely on voice actors and they will be different in each country.
3,2,1 – eBay Movie Trailer Is Good Fun
14. Aug
We still have to wait until October to see if the movie The Social Network aka The Facebook Movie is entertaining or not. It is based on the book The Accidental Billionaires is telling the origin of Facebook – with liberal fact-checking and without Facebook sanctioning the production of the book. Some of the events have likely been dramatised to create an exciting storyline which could help the movie find a broader audience, too (not that 500 million Facebook users would not be enough of a potential audience already).
So we don’t know yet if the movie will be entertaining but its trailer has already sparked some funny spoofs which are all worth watching. It all started with a fictional YouTube movie trailer, followed by the Twitter movie trailer and the latest parody of an eBay movie trailer. In case you haven’t seen them all, I’ve collected them here in chronological order. You should watch the Facebook movie trailer first to get the references in the other videos