AllThingsD » photo

Facebook Gives Its Ads a Boost, Using Your Photos

Peter Kafka — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 22:58:10 +0000

Facebook is the world’s biggest photo-sharing service. And now, as the company prepares to go public, it’s looking to make a bit more money from all of that sharing, via a newly designed photo-viewer that gives ads much more prominence.

The photo-viewer started rolling out earlier this month, and appears to have been implemented widely in the last few days. Plenty of folks have noted that it’s similar to the format Google uses in Google+. I think the ad treatment is much more interesting.

Here’s the old format, via a Huffington Post screenshot:

And here’s the new one:

Those screenshots give you some idea of the new prominence the ads get, but it’s even more obvious in real life. Put it this way: I look at Facebook a lot, and I didn’t even realize that Facebook had been showing me ads when I clicked on photos. Now I can’t avoid them.

For now, that is. Entirely possible that I’ll develop the same “banner blindness” that I have for lots of other Web ads.

Also worth noting that these ads only seem to show up on photos that don’t have many comments on them. Photos that do have lots of comments display those comments instead. So if you’re looking at, say, pictures posted by Mark Zuckerberg, you won’t end up seeing ads next those images at all.

I asked Facebook reps for comment, and they offered a boilerplate response: “We’re constantly testing new designs and layouts on Facebook.”

So I’ll take the liberty of adding what they might say — if they had a beer or two and weren’t talking to a reporter: “See? This is one reason why you guys should trust us when we explain that we’re in the early stages of social advertising. If this format works, it means we’ll have opened up a huge slug of real estate we weren’t using. Boom! Instant revenue stream! And it’s also why you should just chill out about the fact that we don’t yet make any money from mobile. Of course we’re going to figure out how to put ads on your iPhone! We just haven’t gotten around to it yet.”

Thanks, imaginary slightly tipsy Facebook rep! Look forward to chatting with you again soon.

Photobucket: Holidays Were All About Mobile Photos -- And Fido

Lauren Goode — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 23:13:07 +0000

This past holiday season, many consumers ditched their digital cameras in favor of smartphones, a new company-sponsored report from Photobucket says.

Data from the popular photo-sharing service shows the number of mobile photo app users who use the apps at least once a day doubled to 42 percent, up from 20 percent midyear in 2011.

Meanwhile, only 64 percent reported using digital cameras to capture the majority of their images throughout the season, down from 82 percent a year ago.

Anecdotally, this means more bad news for camera makers, as they become increasingly threatened by smartphones with decent image-taking capabilities.

The Photobucket report also points out that pets were, shall we say, very present in this year’s holiday cards. Some 41 percent of respondents used an image for their holiday cards; among pet owners, 58 percent included Fido/Rudolph in the photo.

The surge in smartphone use didn’t apply to just pictures: Capturing videos on mobile devices also saw a jump during the holidays. A full 80 percent of survey respondents took video using a mobile device at least once throughout the season, up from 59 percent in Photobucket’s summer sampling, while 50 percent of respondents used a mobile device to record video daily or multiple times a day.

While already-avid users of mobile photo apps increased their usage this past holiday season, a substantial 43 percent of respondents indicated they have yet to try a mobile app for taking photos.

Photobucket says it gathered responses from more than 2,200 survey participants, and culled data from Photobucket’s more than nine billion image uploads for the report.

(Photo courtesy of HollyLovesArt/Flickr)

Viral Image: The Biggest and Bluest Marble

Kara Swisher — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 09:33:19 +0000

I am at the funeral of my aunt today, giving the eulogy later, and it’s a sad occasion.

But for some reason, this stunning new version of the “Blue Marble” photo of Earth — taken on Jan. 4 by the Visible/Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite instrument on NASA’s Suomi NPP satellite — is vaguely comforting.

Perhaps because it speaks of a much bigger picture, and of how delicately and elegantly life hangs in the dark universe.

All via an amazing piece of tech, the Suomi NPP, which NASA said is the “first of a new generation of satellites that will observe many facets of our changing Earth.”

Enjoy:

(Image Credit: NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring)

"Goofy" CEO Andrew Mason on "60 Minutes" This Week

Kara Swisher — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 17:58:32 +0000

Of course, this infamous kooky cat-on-his-head photo from a Vanity Fair magazine shoot made it into an upcoming profile of Groupon CEO Andrew Mason. Lesley Stahl of “60 Minutes” has done a piece on the Chicago-based social buying phenom, set to air this Sunday.

And, naturally, Stahl trots out the “goofy” description of Mason.

In addition, said the preview caption for the CBS television news show: “Groupon’s Andrew Mason says he may not be as smart, mature or experienced as other CEOs, but being company founder is his edge.”

Dumber, juvenile and just-arrived — but I created this three-ring circus with my own two hands? Sounds good to me!

Here is a preview of the Stahl-Mason segment, as well as my own wacky interview with Mason from last year’s D: All Things Digital conference:

[ See post to watch video ]

(Photo credit: Martin Schoeller, exclusively for Vanity Fair)

Mattebox Photo App: More Than Just Filters

Lauren Goode — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 21:01:55 +0000

We get it, mobile photo snappers. We’ve seen your Kelvins and your Hefes and your Lomo-fis. We’ve seen your tilt-shifts and your tweets linking to your iPhone photos.

We know there are good reasons why Apple just named Instagram as its iPhone App of the Year.

But what if you’re just a regular camera user looking for a mobile app that mimics the DSLR experience? Then you may want to check out Mattebox, which just became available in the App Store.

The iOS app offers a wide variety of options for setting up your smartphone for smart photo-taking, as well as post-production features for professional-level imagery.

As you can see from some of the images here, the interface shows focal distance (in the upper right-hand corner), which tells users how far or close a subject is; shutter speed is at the bottom of the screen and one-tap white-balancing is at right. The lock on the left indicates that the focus and exposure are locked — so users can adjust their framing but maintain the same settings, if they’d like — and the app uses a slide-down button on the right to take the photo, which feels a little bit more intuitive then moving to the bottom of the phone to snap a shot.

After a user has taken a photo, there are five adjustment controls — white balance, exposure, contrast, saturation, and vignette — and a “crop” button within the app. And for filter freaks, there are a handful of those, too, including Faded 35mm, Contrast Lovers, Square and Soft and Red Filter. Plus, a user can save an unlimited number of favorite settings, combined with a filter.

The app’s creator, Chicago-based Ben Syverson (whose previous projects include the Lou Zoom app from rock guitarist Lou Reed), says he created Mattebox to serve as a one-stop app for all photo-shooting and filter needs. The independent software developer says he has about two dozen camera apps on his phone, but felt that none of them gave him the control and simplicity of a plastic camera.

I wouldn’t call Mattebox incredibly simple for most consumers, but for professional or “prosumer” photographers who are used to the settings of a DSLR, it does pack many of those features into a nicely designed app.

One drawback is that there are no explainers within the app for all of the functions, though Syverson points out that there are video tutorials on the Mattebox.net Web site. Another sticking point for some users might be the lack of social-sharing options, which may be worked into a later version.

Mattebox costs $4.99, pricey compared to the free photo apps that are available. But Syverson believes this is a small price to pay for a mobile-phone experience not unlike Lightroom or Aperture, and thinks serious photo-takers won’t care about the cost.

Syverson says his goal is to introduce cloud storage on the Mattebox.net site, to provide seamless sharing and storage options; he’s also planning a version of Mattebox for Mac desktops, and an Aperture plugin.

Jetpac Transports Friends' Photos to the iPad for a Truly Personal Travel Magazine (Video)

Drake Martinet — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 20:09:19 +0000

Facebook is full of clever little apps that deliver interesting but useless stats and graphs to the user.

After getting authorization, an app spins its wheels, hoovering up all the data it can and finally spitting out some pretty graph, friend-web, or stat sheet about which “Harry Potter” character a user is most like.

Not that I’d know anything about that.

But a new cadre of applications is rising above this fray and attempting to deliver a deeper set of services based on the data users so willingly fork over.

Jetpac, a new Web app from co-founders Pete Warden, Derek Dukes and Julian Green, is one such service.

What began life as a simple Facebook-connected Web application is quickly growing out of its Web-browser box and into something novel.

Jetpac’s initial user experience is simple: Connect a Facebook account and Jetpac will return a personalized visualization of where a user has traveled, where all of their friends have been and how much of the world they’ve collectively covered — all tidily bundled up in a vintage-travel-inspired Jetpac.com profile page.

To get the data, Jetpac crawls the captions of every image ever shared across a user’s entire Facebook friend group.

Warden said that translates to an average of 200,000 photos accessible to each Facebook profile, with slightly more than a quarter of those being geolocatable based on a word search of the captions.

“We realized that people do the work of telling us what photos are important and travel-oriented by choosing to take the time to name them,” Warden said.

“People don’t caption pictures from the local bar with the location, because their friends would know. They put the location in the caption when location is an important part of what they are sharing.”

But it’s a fine line between helpful serendipity and photo-stalking.

Warden knows better than most about the dangers of over-creepy geolocation. Back in April, he and a colleague uncovered the iPhone’s location-tracking “bug,” which made national tech news. Their discovery caused Apple, Warden’s former employer, to update its software and eliminate the location-storage issue.

But photo crawling is just the means to an end for Jetpac, which is aiming to launch its iPad app in late January.

The app, which is still in active development, is part photo viewer, part friend-powered travel magazine and part vacation-destination browser.

The app organizes all of the user’s friends’ photos into location-based albums, which can be searched and browsed based on various criteria.

The version I saw was unfinished, but the mixture of photos, friends and places that the app presented felt like a new kind of media experience — one where my friends were part of the story of a place. I was able to see who had only uploaded the requisite tourist shots, and who had spent more time in a given place.

As with many clever ideas, much stands in the way of a successful Jetpac takeoff.

Facebook users are accustomed to a certain kind of relationship with Facebook apps, and the thought of making one connection to the Jetpac Web service, then instantly getting a customized experience on the iPad, may be too foreign for some.

Cutting-edge media problems aside, the tech behind the app isn’t flawless, either. Identifying places by their name can be tricky.

Warden said: “We couldn’t figure out why we were seeing lots of pickup trucks in albums, and then we realized it was called the Chevy Tahoe.”

Apparently, Jetpac can have similar problems differentiating between people who’ve been to Chad and people who know a guy by that name.

Word-nerd jokes notwithstanding, the service’s eventual monetization strategy is also unclear — though it’s not hard to imagine how compelling a product like this could be for the travel industry.

But many start-ups in Silicon Valley don’t focus on making money from the earliest stages, and while Jetpac will eventually have to cross that bridge, the whole construct of a personalized media experience, based solely on the free content pulled from a user’s Facebook account, is a compelling idea — one that will likely be remixed and reissued by others before it finds the right niche.

I talked with Warden and Dukes in their San Francisco office, where they shared some of the big thoughts behind their fledgling app. Enjoy:

[ See post to watch video ]

Viral Video: Shrieking Monkeys Don't Make Good Gifts

Kara Swisher — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 08:22:45 +0000

This is a commercial, for sure, and it came from a PR pitch that begins with the words “shrieking monkeys.” But this video for a photo-books product made me laugh out loud.

And it was not only the shrieking monkey part. I also liked the nail-gun incident and the flaming robo-vac.

Enjoy:

Yahoo's Product Runway: Are You In or Out?

Kara Swisher — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 17:41:24 +0000

I am here at Yahoo HQ in Sunnyvale, Calif., to check out “Product Runway,” which is the Silicon Valley Internet giant’s attempt to show that it can still innovate.

First and foremost is the launch of Livestand, a personalized news reader that is similar to Flipboard and a variety of other rivals, including — soon — Google.

It’s Yahoo’s attempt to present a business-as-usual feel — amidst a long and agonizing and very public strategic overview that might also include the sale of the company (or not!), in the wake of the recent firing of its last CEO, Carol Bartz.

It has caused a lot of trauma inside Yahoo, which can’t help with innovation.

But we press on!

In other words, despite the three-ring circus going on outside, Yahoo wants you to know it is still hard at work.

We begin:

10:35 am: As the strains of U2 die out, Yahoo Chief Product Officer Blake Irving takes the stage, which is actually set up in the company’s cafeteria. I can smell lunch being made nearby and I am hungry.

Apt — Yahoo certainly needs to show off a lot of cool stuff or its fate will be cooked.

No pressure, Blake!

“Personally, I am more bullish on Yahoo today,” he said. “What is Yahoo? Simple. It’s the premier digital media company. Period. Stop.”

Oh, if it were only that easy.

10:46 am: Irving pulls out his favorite slide, which looks like a chemistry test. It lists the various elements of the product strategy, with things like personalization, mobile, premium.

Now to Livestand, which is available on the Apple iTunes app store right now.

Don’t all rush at once!

Irving notes that Livestand is more than just an app — it is a platform.

In other words, Yahoo wants to help publishers publish online. Kind of a Facebook of content.

If Yahoo can pull it off, that is. (And, of course, unless Facebook decides to do the same.)

10:50 am: Livestand is an HTML5 “personalized living magazine.”

“This is the way Web pages are going to look,” declares Irving. Which is to say, heavy on photos, swoopy navigation, a television screen-like interface.

Irving uses the example of Surfer magazine, which is a good idea since waves always look pretty. Especially in a video-in-frame with Kelly Slater in Hawaii.

But, in essence, for anyone who has used Flipboard for years now, none of this is entirely different.

10:54 am: The look of what would be the Yahoo News page is actually much more interesting, since it is clearly a whole lot better than the Web page.

Irving also shows off a “living ad” — in this case, an unusually snuggly couple on a couch. It is cool, but creepy.

When launched, the ad has tap points. Irving — naughtily declaring about what is an ad, “I’ll tap that” — taps the lady’s butt, which would also have been my move. We learn about the jeans, of course.

10:58 am: Irving then shows off the ability to add feeds.

Next, something called “Cocktails.” First up, a developer tool called Yahoo Mojito and Yahoo Manhattan, which is a hosting service. The company will open-source both the technologies in 2012.

Irving brings up Mike Kerns, VP of Personalization & Social, who came to Yahoo when it bought the innovative sports fan site called Citizen Sports.

“We like to ship sh#t,” he notes. I like Mike Kerns immediately.

Kerns intros C.O.R.E. No, it is not a secret government organization that takes out fussy bloggers, who might be more critical than Yahoo execs would like.

In fact, it stands for “content optimization relevance engine.” Of course it does.

Simply put, C.O.R.E. is trying to link the right content or whatever to the right consumers and who likes what. Ladies like this, dudes like this. Apparently, “men of multiple ages” enjoy stories about golden chicken.

11:11 am: Kerns is moving on to social, especially its integration with Facebook. While much touted, sources tell me it has gone slower than expected in terms of use, but that it is improving.

Kerns talks about the idea of matching content to conversations to interests and, well, you know — the now exhausting world of modern media consumption.

The world in which you can no longer simply read an article and enjoy it — you must comment, share, discuss, parse, tweet.

Does anyone remember when you read something cool and just kept it to yourself?

Forget it, pal! It is a full-information society now and you better get on board and start poking your friends about every little thing.

(Personally, I plan on becoming a hermit in 3 … 2 … 1.)

11:18 am: Now Tim Parsey, who is Yahoo’s design head. He is hands down the most delightful exec the company has had in a while, mostly because he loves to smirk adorkably.

He shows off Yahoo’s first original design, which was a dull list. And then another really bad logo. But Parsey loves it! It’s kitschy!

Smirk attack!

Parsey moves into what has to happen now, which is to deliver a much more emotional experience and a much better designed one. He uses words like “humanism.”

Say what? He is right — Yahoo has for too long completely ignored design as an important part of the experience.

That’s why Flipboard was so quickly touted — it was pretty and fun. And it is why everyone is simply forced to love Apple products.

11:22 am: Parsey even has a code for it, called REM — for rational, emotional and meaningful.

He shows off a weather app. People take photos and they can be used in the app. Then Yahoo Mail for the iPad, whic is also handsome with photos and video. Livestand, also pretty.

“Great way to differentiate,” says Parsey. He calls it “one Yahoo!” Indeed.

11:35 am: I’ll admit it. After Parsey-fest, I zoned out for a sec when IntoNow dude, Adam Cahan, comes up.

Donut emergency!

Back to IntoNow, it’s the television indexing service that Yahoo bought in April.

Essentially, more ways to watch the media — in this case, video — and do 53 other things at the very same time. Memo to humanity: We will all be paying continuous partial attention for the rest of eternity.

Like I said: Hermitage!

11:41 am: Product dude Irving is back, making a point that, despite all the public mishegas, Yahoo has been busy at innovating.

A redo of email, better search, social “Facebar” with Facebook, Flickr for Google Android.

Irving is correct — Yahoo’s engineers have been hard at work and deserve kudos for doing so, even with attrition issues, stock declines and questions about the company’s very future being debated daily.

The problem is that too many of these improvements are mostly incremental and essentially table stakes for tech companies, most of whom have introed many more significant innovations in the same time frame as Yahoo has.

Google did Android, Google+ (as well as some notable failures). Microsoft did Kinect, Windows Phone, Windows 8. Amazon did Kindle Fire. Facebook did a range of major updates, as it has grown like a weed.

And there’s Apple. You might have heard of the iPhone and the iPad.

You get my point. Yahoo’s Product Runway today is well done, but what it really needs to be is just the beginning of a take-off.

11:48 am: Now Q&A time.

The first question is what took so long to get Livestand out, the second is why should people use Livestand since Flipboard and others have already been around for a dog’s age.

I ask about design — mostly because I want Parsey to use the word “delicious” a lot — and also about all the turmoil around the company and its impact on product creation. (I decide not to mention that Yahoo blew its acquisition of the bookmarking site, Delicious, and then sold it.)

Parsey delivers on the delicious scale, noting that Yahoo must have one design experience and yet has a lot of different interfaces. In other words, it cannot be Apple, but it can feel a lot more cohesive.

Irving talks a little bit around the obvious elephant in the room — the future of Yahoo — noting that the product staff was trying to focus and forget the storm going on outside.

“We have dreams about what this company can be,” says Irving.

You and me both, brother.

12:04 pm: More questions that are too detailed for my tastes, since they have delivered lunch and I can see it and I am ravenous.

As Parsey might say: It looks deliiiiiccccious.

Now, let’s hope Yahoo can do even more tasty stuff.

Cameras Act Like a Pro, but Are as Easy as Pie

Geoffrey A. Fowler — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 23:30:32 +0000

Digital cameras are a pain in the neck — literally.

Every time I lug around my camera, which tips the scale at three pounds with its zoom lens, I feel as if I am swinging a fragile barbell on a strap around my neck.

[ See post to watch video ]

For years, hobbyist digital photographers had two options: heavy SLR cameras that can capture creative effects, and pocket-sized point-and-shoots that take pedestrian photos. Now, camera makers are exploring a genre of cameras that seeks a happy medium between size and capability. Necks can relax now.

Nikon and Sony recently have introduced new models in this emerging category: the Nikon J1 and Sony NEX-5N. The devices offer many of the features of much larger cameras in a form that might slip into a purse or cargo pants pocket. Sony and Nikon make a range of small detachable lenses for these cameras so users can switch between zoom and wider-angle shots, just like those on full-sized SLR cameras. Even with the biggest lenses attached, they weigh only slightly more than a pound.

Coming in at about $700 each for packages that include a lens, these marvels of miniaturization cost $100 more than an entry-level digital SLR kit. But after testing them, I liked the Sony NEX-5N enough to contemplate making it my new walk-about camera. The Nikon J1 took some great photos, but offered less creative control.

An apple pie as seen in a photo taken by the Nikon J1.

The same pie as seen in a photo taken by the Sony NEX-5N, which has a simple way to make only the pie appear in focus, for example.

Both cameras dispense with the internal mirror and the old-fashioned viewfinder that SLRs use. Instead, they show you what you’re photographing via large LCD screens. (Sony sells a $350 viewfinder add-on if you like to squint.)

One reason these cameras take better photos than point-and-shoots is that they have much larger sensors, which record more light. Nikon created a whole new kind of midrange sensor for its new “1″ line, which are similar to what other camera makers call “micro four-thirds.” Sony managed to stuff a midsize SLR sensor into the small NEX-5N.

The image quality of both cameras was excellent. Though the Sony’s photos had a higher resolution, the Nikon’s had slightly richer tones. Both can take stunning, Blu-ray-quality video.

Larger sensors allow the cameras to tap the creative capabilities of lenses. They can take photos in low light without a flash or let users select which elements are in sharp focus and which are blurry (known as “depth of field”).

The differences between the two are in the controls. The Sony NEX-5N comes with a large touch screen to access settings and controls, including a main screen to select the focus point of the image. The intuitive interface offers a simple way to manipulate the depth of field — without having to know the science of aperture (involving the amount of light that reaches a sensor) and shutter speed, which is required on most digital SLRs.

I took a photo of an apple pie in sharp focus with the background blurry by moving a slider on the touch screen to “background defocus” and then clicking on the part of the pie I wanted in focus.

The Nikon J1 doesn’t have a touch screen, requiring users to control the camera through a series of hard buttons. Adjusting depth of field requires the user to understand aperture, and even if you do, the settings to adjust the specific focus point are buried inside several menus, and aren’t turned on by default.

Nikon’s philosophy is that users stepping up from a point-and-shoot would prefer to trust its software. One feature is called “smart photo selector,” which takes advantage of the camera’s ultra-fast focus and shutter speed to take a series of photos and then selects what it thinks are the best shot and four possible best-shot candidates, based on composition, facial recognition and motion. This feature is appealing if you don’t want to think about your photo settings, but want to know what other options might have looked like.

The Sony NEX-5N has a set-it-and-forget-it, “intelligent auto” shooting mode, and also a host of features that solve common photo frustrations. An “anti-motion blur” option keeps dinner-party photos from looking fuzzy or being filled with film noise by quickly taking six photos and merging them into one better photo.

Another mode merges several shots into what’s known as an HDR (high-dynamic range) photo that can merge the most interesting bits from the foreground and background when they are of different brightness levels. The NEX-5N even has a simple panorama option that automates taking very wide shots both for print and in 3-D (for compatible TVs).

The Nikon J1′s most interesting artistic option creates a “motion snapshot,” which blends a still image and about one second of movie footage into a slow-motion video accompanied by music. It is cute, but not useful enough to make the J1 a top choice.

Neither camera came with two features that should now be standard in such expensive gadgets: automatic tagging the GPS location where photos are taken, and the ability to wirelessly upload images.

While the Nikon J1, which features a clean retro-style design, won the most oohs and ahhs from friends, the Sony NEX-5N, whose larger sensor requires slightly larger and clunkier lenses, made it easier to figure out how to make photos more interesting.

Walt Mossberg and Mossberg’s Mailbox will return next week. Write to Geoffrey Fowler at geoffrey.fowler@wsj.com.

Quick Snapshot

Nikon J1

• Price: $650, including10-30 mm lens

• Sensor: 13.2 mm x 8.8 mm

• Resolution: 10.1 megapixels

• Flash: Built-in

• Weight: 9.8 oz

Sony NEX-5N

• Price: $700, including18-55 mm lens

• Sensor: 23.5 mm x 15.6 mm

• Resolution: 16.1 megapixels

• Flash: Add-on comes with camera

• Weight: 9.5 oz

Lytro Light Field Camera Revealed

Drake Martinet — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 17:59:27 +0000

Today in San Francisco, digital camera and imaging start-up Lytro is unveiling a consumer digital camera that it claims will be the biggest technological jump since we started talking megapixels over 20 years ago.

In case you haven’t been following along, here’s a quick rundown of what’s expected today:

Lytro, founded by Ren Ng in 2006, is an outgrowth of his Stanford University PhD research into what is called “light field photography.”

Without getting too technical, a light field camera captures light all throughout the scene in front of the lens, as opposed to the cameras consumers are used to, which bring a particular thing into focus first.

The result is an image that can be focused after it is taken, and, Lytro claims, a camera that is faster from power-up to capture, and has exceptional performance in low light, even without a flash.

Lytro claims it has spent the last five years and nearly $50 million from several of Silicon Valley’s heaviest-weight VC firms working to pack all that technology into a camera small enough to compete with the myriad point-and-shoots currently available.

Join us as we see for the first time if Lytro has gotten the picture.

View the slideshow

Liveblog:

11:17 am: They’ve let us into the event. No action yet, just a bunch of tech reporters tweeting away.

11:32 am: We’re underway. CEO and founder of Lytro Ren Ng is coming up now.

11:33 am: Lytro grew out of Ng’s Stanford PhD work in light field imaging.

11:33 am: Ng starts with some stats on digital cameras.

He says that at the end of the day, both film and regular digital cameras record the same data — a flat image.

11:34 am: “The light field is all the light traveling in all directions at every point in space,” says Ng.

11:35 am: Still on the tech, Ng says his focus at Stanford was on miniaturizing the camera technology. At the time, the only light field cameras were huge arrays of cameras in labs.

11:37 am: We’re on the history of his research now — Ng says the first camera he built was a one-off medium format camera.

11:39 am: The important takeaway here is that this camera is as much about the computer science behind it as it is about the optics and the hardware.

11:41 am: Ng moves on to the features of this technology for the user.

11:42 am: 1. Shoot first, focus after. 2. Ability for third parties to interact with the picture after it is put online.

11:43 am: Ng shows what appears to be a screenshot of his Facebook page, with a Lytro interactive image embedded.

11:44 am: Ng says that all Lytro images can also be viewed in an “immersive 3-D.”

11:45 am: Now we get to see the camera. It’s called the “Lytro.”

11:45 am: 8x optical zoom, with an f 2.0 aperture.

11:47 am: It’s an 11 “megaray” camera — which means it captures 11 million rays of light, says Ng.

11:49 am: It’s a metal rectangular tube, maybe 4 inches long. The lens is at one end and the small touch screen at the other. It’s unlike any camera design I’ve ever seen.

11:50 am: Ng says another benefit of the camera is how fast it turns on.

11:51 am: The camera doesn’t need to focus before it shoots, so time from activation to capture seems pretty instant.

11:52 am: Now he’s going to take a picture of the room — we’re being posed, no joke.

11:52 am: They will come in 3 colors — redish, blueish and grayish.

11:53 am: Ng is plugging in the camera, showcasing the software that comes with it. The camera uses micro USB.

11:54 am: Liveblogging solo here, but there are a few pictures I’m putting up on twitter (@withdrake).

11:55 am: Software seems to be pretty snappy. All the pictures are square format.

11:56 am: Ng says you can refocus the image on the camera, in the computer software, or on the web, wherever you embed the image.

He says you can post to Facebook from inside the Lytro computer software.

11:58 am: Ng just posted something to Facebook from the software. Facebook friends can zoom and refocus the image right in Facebook.

11:59 am: The camera will come in 8GB and 16GB versions.

11:59 am: 8GB version can capture 350 light field images.

12:00 pm: Ng says that the camera will ship in early 2012.

12:01 pm: Now he’s dancing around price.

12:02 pm: It will be $399 for the 8GB version.

We’re wrapped up. Moving on to the demo station. … See gallery of pictures above.

Apple Helps Devices Get Their Heads in the Cloud

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 01:00:59 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

Apple devices can be addictive: People buy one tiny iPod, fall in love, and end up with three or four other Apple products. Now if only they could see all their data on all those devices simultaneously.

Starting today, they can.

ICloud is designed to store and replicate documents, music, apps and 1,000 photos on PCs, the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. It also syncs contacts, calendars and email so all your machines and devices have the same data and content. It will back up five gigabytes of data, but certain types aren’t counted against that total. The best part: It’s free.

Thanks to iCloud, the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch all have the same document with no work on the user’s part.

I’ve been testing iCloud’s sync ability between a MacBook Pro, iPhone 4S and iPad 3G. I also accessed and added content using iCloud.com. At first, I ran into a few hiccups with syncing photos, but an Apple spokesman explained that the company’s servers were occasionally down while they were being prepared for Wednesday’s iCloud launch. After that, iCloud worked without a hitch—well enough that I stopped thinking about which device held what since they were all updated with the same content.

Over the weekend, I imported 300 photos my parents took on a recent trip to Italy, forgetting that my computer was set up with iCloud. When I picked up my iPhone later, the Grand Canal in Venice and the Duomo in Florence were staring back at me in Photos. Same with my iPad.

On the downside, iCloud doesn’t automatically sync videos to other devices. In WiFi, it won’t sync edited photos if edits are made on a device after its camera app is closed. (This includes removing red eye, cropping and auto-enhancing images.) And document sharing on iCloud is focused on sharing with oneself, not with other people, unlike the document-sharing solutions from Google and Microsoft.

I found iCloud’s most useful feature to be Photo Stream, which automatically sends images captured by an iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch up to iCloud and replicates them on all other iCloud devices, one by one. Watching these photos pop onto the screen of my computer, iPad or iPhone was nothing short of delightful.

Photos are pushed via iCloud to the Mac and PC in their full resolution and sent to the iPad, iPod Touch or iPhone in a resolution that’s optimized for those displays.

Photo Stream sends images captured by mobile devices, such as the iPhone and iPad, up to iCloud and replicates them on all other iCloud devices.

By default, any images imported to a PC or Mac are automatically sent into Photo Stream, though this setting can be turned off. Devices need only be powered on and in WiFi to receive images from Photo Stream.

Each photo remains in Photo Stream for 30 days, and only the last 1,000 are saved there. Photos moved into albums on devices will be kept permanently, while Macs and Windows PCs have no photo limit because of their larger storage capacities.

A WiFi network is also required for Backup in iCloud, which backs up purchased music, TV shows, apps, books, device settings, app data, messages, ringtones and images in Photo Stream. Only documents and email count against a person’s five gigabytes of free iCloud storage.

Higher storage capacities are available for an annual fee: $20 for 10 gigabytes, $40 for 20 gigabytes or $100 for 50 gigabytes.

Not Just Photos

Documents can be synced to all devices through iCloud using iWork apps. These include Pages, Keynote and Numbers, and each costs $10 in the App Store. I tested this with ease, creating documents—like a flyer I made using a photo of a church that I took with my iPhone camera—that synced with my iPad and vice versa. Changes to documents appeared the same across all devices and at icloud.com almost instantly.

To get an iCloud account, you’ll need either a Mac that’s running OS X Lion, Apple’s latest operating system, or a mobile device with iOS 5.

Starting Wednesday, when users can install the newest software on one of these machines, they will be prompted to set up iCloud. Once you have this account, iCloud will work with a Windows PC running Vista or Windows 7; instructions explain how to set up and use iCloud on Macs or Windows PCs. ICloud is also accessible via Web browser at icloud.com.

If you have an account with Apple’s MobileMe email and storage service, the company will offer to integrate it with your iCloud account. (MobileMe will be discontinued after June.) If you don’t have a MobileMe account, on-screen prompts will walk you through setting up a free me.com email address from any iOS device or computer. I did this in seconds using my MacBook, and noticed that my Mail and Notes were immediately replicated on all devices through iCloud.

Match That Tune

ITunes Match, an important piece of iCloud, wasn’t available for testing yet. To make sure your music library has a high-quality recording of each song, iTunes Match will scan your library for anything not purchased from Apple and then give you access to the high-quality iTunes track in the cloud and on all other devices. Match will be available at the end of this month for $25 a year and will work with up to 25,000 tracks.

Another interesting feature that wasn’t available for testing was Find My Friends, a free app that works with iCloud and is Apple’s answer to Foursquare. It will let iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch users find another user’s location—in list or map view—as long as they accept an invitation. Temporary location sharing will be possible with this app, enabling sharing with a specific number of people for a specific amount of time. This might come in handy during a family vacation or at a day-long music festival with friends.

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Full Apple Coverage »

Email Katie at katie.boehret@wsj.com.

It's Called Google Propeller and It's Aimed at Flipboard (and Facebook, Too, Natch)

Kara Swisher — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 00:25:10 +0000

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Earlier today, well-known digerati dude Robert Scoble posted on his social feed on Google+ that the search giant was working on a social and news reader.

“I heard from someone working with Google that Google is working on a Flipboard competitor for both Android and iPad,” posted Scoble. “My source says that the versions he’s seen so far are mind-blowing good.”

If blowing the minds of hot Silicon Valley start-up Flipboard and Facebook is the goal, then Scooby-Don’t's rumor is pretty spot-on.

According to numerous sources close to the situation, Google is indeed working on rolling out the new product, which is currently called Propeller.

Sources said Propeller is apparently one of a number of new socially focused announcements Google is prepping, including new apps. But the timing for their launch is unclear.

Here’s what is: Propeller is a souped-up version of similar reader apps such as Flipboard, AOL’s Editions, Yahoo’s Livestand, Zite (which was just bought by Time Warner’s CNN) and Pulse.

Facebook is also making social versions of publications available within its site. So, instead of just seeing a sidebar on a news site of what stories your friends liked, you’ll get a personalized and reformatted version of the latest news when you visit that publication’s page within Facebook.

All these apps are part of the drastically changing habits of media consumers, helping them better navigate numerous social and media feeds — such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as news sites and more — using handsome interfaces and touch technologies.

Flipboard is the most prominent and elegant of these offerings, available only on the Apple iPad. The company is working on an iPhone version, too.

Flipboard’s traction among elite users, along with its high-level design ethos and strong reviews, is why Google tried to buy the well-funded company last year, sources said.

But Flipboard — which is backed by some of tech’s biggest venture players, who have invested more than $60 million at a $200 million valuation — declined the kind offer.

At the time, sources said, Google told Flipboard execs that if it did not buy the start-up, it planned to do a version of its own.

Hence, after I heard about the product earlier this year, I dubbed it the Flipinator.

Propeller is probably a better name, I will admit.

It’s not clear what Google’s Propeller will include in the product, such as Facebook integration, since the pair of Silicon Valley behemoths have not been able to partner over data exchange.

Which is an understatement, I know.

But sources said it would be available on both Apple’s iPad and Google’s Android tablets.

In any case, stay tuned and thanks to Scoobs for the tip!

[Photo credit: This Noogler Propeller Hat -- which is given to all new Googlers -- is in the collection at the Computer History Museum, the gift of Marcin Wichary; the image is by Mark Richards.]

A Tablet With Office

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 01:00:52 +0000

I am looking for a tablet that can run Outlook and all Microsoft Office programs, and connect to Microsoft server-based business programs. Is there anything now or in the near future with this functionality?

Yes. While Windows 7 wasn’t designed primarily as a tablet operating system, it does support touch, and thus a number of companies sell tablets that run Windows 7, and therefore, presumably, the Windows software you mention. These companies include Acer, Asus, and ViewSonic. I haven’t tested any of these, because Microsoft’s true tablet operating system will be Windows 8, which is expected to be out next year.

I use Gmail. When I type the name of a correspondent, the email address shows up. However, if the correspondent has given me a new email address, the old one still shows up, which is totally confusing. How can I get rid of the old address?

One way to do it is to either enter the person’s correct address in your Gmail contacts list, or edit the old one if that’s in the contact list.

You can get to the contacts list by clicking on “Contacts” in the left sidebar of Gmail. More information about Google contacts is here.

My wife and I love the simple photography-editing application on my Mac. Are there any apps that offer good basic photo-editing features for the iPad?

There are many iPad apps that let you make simple edits to photos, though none that I know of with the editing power of a PC or Mac photo-editing program. One iPad app in this category that I have used and like is Adobe Photoshop Express. This app is free, though a package of extra features costs $5.

Write to Walt at walt.mossberg@wsj.com

New Jobs Bio Cover Is All Apple With Pub Date of November 21

Kara Swisher — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 15:34:16 +0000

Walter Isaacson’s new biography of tech legend Steve Jobs certainly looks like an Apple product — at least the simple and elegant cover does, as you can see here:

It is actually an old and well known, if striking, photo of Jobs, which has been much used by Apple over the years.

The new publication date for the much anticipated book from Simon & Schuster has also been moved up to November 21.

“Steve Jobs,” which is 448 pages long and is based on dozens of interviews, including the legendary Apple CEO himself, was originally set for March 12, 2012.

All Things Digital can say for certain this time: The iPhone 5 will launch before the book.

A Face Launches 1,000 Apps

Emily Steel — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 12:00:33 +0000

Long the realm of science fiction, advanced technologies that identify faces now are emerging as the hottest entertainment gimmick, despite the potential for privacy concerns.

One of the latest is SceneTap, a free application for iPhone and Android smartphones released in recent weeks that displays real-time stats on the local bar scene. Based on information collected via face-detection cameras installed at participating bars, the app shows the number of people at the bar, the male-to-female ratio and the average age of patrons.

Another application called SocialCamera allows users to snap a picture with their Android phone, instantly recognize their Facebook friends in the frame, tag the photos and post them to the Web. In other games, the technology detects which celebrity a person most resembles or whether they have the genetic traits of a vampire.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Viral Photos: Playboy's Hef and the Playmates Planking on Twitter

Kara Swisher — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 07:59:34 +0000

Maybe it’s only because it is a Friday in August, but this seems to be exactly the kind of thing that Twitter was created for:

Hugh Hefner and a passel of Playmates deciding to post photos of themselves “planking” on the table of the dining room at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles.

And, better still, using the hashtag: #plankingplaymates.

For those who have been in Outer Mongolia for a while, planking is a craze on the Web of posting a photo of yourself facedown in an unusual place.

And, as you will see below, Hef’s results are definitely odd:

The Atlantic Launches a Video Aggregator With a Twist

Peter Kafka — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 14:13:51 +0000

The Atlantic, which added a photo section to its brainy Web site earlier this year, has taken the next logical step: A digital nook dedicated to moving pictures.

The site’s new section joins many other sites’ video verticals which bring you clips from around the Web. But unlike some competitors — see: Gawker, Mediaite and others — the Atlantic is taking a relatively old-fashioned approach to aggregation: It’s asking permission from copyright owners to run their stuff.

TheAtlantic.com edit boss Bob Cohn says his site will get a signed licensing agreement from every owner whose stuff gets featured on TheAtlantic.com’s proprietary video player. (The Atlantic will also feature clips from other sites using their own embeddable players — in those cases, it won’t need to ask for permission.)

That doesn’t mean video makers will get paid — compensation will come in the form of links — but the olde-timey practice highlights the different tack the site is taking here. If you want clips of TV news readers saying embarrassing things, or media magnates getting a pie to the face, there are plenty of places to get those. The Atlantic will instead focus on higher-brow, higher-minded stuff that you probably haven’t seen.

Atlantic editor Kasia Cieplak-Mayr von Baldegg, a former producer at Current TV who Cohn describes as “an embed in the video-generating community,” is in charge of picking the stuff and will also interview some of the creators.

Here’s a sample of what she’s looking for: An excerpt from “California is a Place,” a slice-o-life documentary series:

Aquadettes from California is a place on Vimeo.

Pixazza Changes Name to Luminate, Launches Image Apps Platform

Kara Swisher — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 10:00:14 +0000

Pixazza is dead. Long live Luminate.

Well, from a brand perspective, at least, as the image advertising start-up changes to an easier-to-say name and also launches a new platform for image applications.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based start-up — which is backed by Google Ventures, CMEA Ventures, August Capital, Foundation Capital and Shasta Ventures, as well as by angel investors Ron Conway, Gideon Yu and Maynard Webb — aims to do for Web photos what the search giant did for text.

The new name for the company that called itself “AdSense for images” pretty much speaks for itself.

In addition to Luminate’s previous sharing, commerce and advertising apps, the company will offer information, navigation and public service apps, which you can see below

Luminate says its interactive images are viewed three billion times per month.

Here’s the official press release for the name change, as well as the image app platform:

PIXAZZA, INC. REBRANDS ITSELF AS LUMINATE, INC.

New Name Better Reflects Vision For Making All Online Images Interactive

Company Enables Images at Rate of 30 Billion Image Views per Year

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA — July 27, 2011 — Pixazza Inc., the worldwide leader in making images interactive, today announced its new company name — Luminate, Inc. With its new services and the introduction of a groundbreaking new platform (see separate release: Luminate Launches World’s First Platform for Image Apps), the company opted to rebrand itself with a name that better reflects its bold vision of making every image interactive.

“We started the company to change the web by offering information relevant to online images, engaging consumers in a novel way while offering advertisers and publishers additional revenue streams,” said Bob Lisbonne, CEO of Luminate. “We’ve since developed the technology and scale to enable images to do even more. Moving forward as Luminate, we will continue to elevate the role of the image and dramatically improve the web experience.”

Rapidly scaling to accommodate the new demand for interactive images, Luminate now reaches more than 150 million unique visitors per month.

Its publisher network also has grown to more than 4,000 publishers, and the company enables images at a rate of 30 billion image views per year. This is significant because just as page views are commonly used to measure web site traffic, Luminate tracks image views, which count the number of times a web publisher serves up a Luminate-enabled image. It is a clear marker of audience interest.

The name change and announcement of the Luminate™ platform for image apps, comes on the heels of an innovative partnership with Hearst Digital Media. The company’s explosive momentum has also been a draw for top talent including CRO and head of publisher development, Chas Edwards, formerly of Digg; Terry Murphy, CFO, formerly of LiveOps. Luminate also added Elliot Schrage, the Vice President of Global Communications, Marketing and Public Policy at Facebook, as a strategic advisor to the Luminate Board.

Please visit www.luminate.com to learn more about how Luminate is changing the way consumers, publishers and advertisers use and interact with online images.

LUMINATE UNVEILS WORLD’S FIRST PLATFORM FOR IMAGE APPLICATIONS

Company Brings Images to Life with Image Apps Designed to Create Rich Consumer Experience

Luminate Transforms Images Into a Canvas to Shop, Share, Comment, Examine, Curate, Search and Socialize

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA — July 27, 2011, Luminate, Inc., formerly known as Pixazza, Inc., today unveiled a groundbreaking new platform for image applications. For the first time ever, consumers can launch applications within the individual images on their favorite websites.

With this exciting new platform, Luminate opens a new world of image apps, breaking down a wall and bringing flat, static images to life. Online images become more than visual stimuli — they become a gateway for accessing rich and relevant content across the web. The apps available on the Luminate™ platform will allow consumers not only to conduct their favorite everyday online activities such as shopping, sharing, commenting and navigating directly from the images, but can also facilitate entirely new services made possible by the development of apps specifically for images.

“Image apps transform images from static pixels into interactive experiences,” said Luminate CEO Bob Lisbonne. “Just as phones evolved from merely voice calls to smartphones with apps, now consumers can enjoy relevant apps inside every online image. The explosive use of images fueled by mobile, social, and cloud computing trends sets the stage for Luminate’s pioneering new image apps platform.”

How It Works:

When a consumer sees the Luminate icon in the corner of an image, it indicates that the image is interactive. Consumers simply mouse into the image and choose from a variety of image apps. They can easily share an image or specific points within an image with their friends, discover statistics about their favorite athletes, see where to purchase similar products to those featured in a photo, uncover the latest information about a particular event, reveal geo tag or Wikipedia information, read more content about the people or places featured in an image, listen to music or see a movie trailer related to an image.

Image Applications:

Image applications will span a number of key categories including: Commerce, Information, Social, Organization, Advertising, Navigation, Public Service, and Presentation. Luminate’s platform currently offers such applications as: unique Twitter Share, Facebook Share, and Email Share apps that give consumers the power to select precisely what they want inside an image and share it with others; an information app called Annotation that allows publishers to quickly and easily tag any spot within an image and add information relevant to that image; a commerce app called Products, which enables consumers to mouse over the image and interact with tags on the picture; and an Advertising app that offers publishers a seamless way to place relevant advertisements within an image.

Luminate plans to roll out new applications frequently to address the varying needs of consumers, publishers and advertisers. Its platform is designed to ultimately enable the development of any conceivable app that is relevant to a particular image. It is this capability that will help define the future of web images.

This cutting edge platform for image apps comes from the company that pioneered the use of images as real estate for delivering ecommerce and advertising three years ago as Pixazza, Inc. With the introduction of the new platform, the company has been rebranded as Luminate, Inc. (see separate release: Pixazza, Inc. Rebrands itself as Luminate, Inc.) as it takes the next step in executing its vision to make every image on the web interactive.

The Luminate Approach:

What makes the Luminate platform so compelling is its breakthrough ability to link images with applications and content beyond the website where the image is viewed. To create the best possible consumer experience, Luminate focuses on all of the data relevant to a particular image or part of an image. Luminate has long employed a unique recognition system that combines visual algorithms with human crowdsourcing. With its new platform, the company has multiplied the sources and ways to uncover information about images. In addition to the data derived from its team of experts, the company can avail itself of information from end users and publishers with the goal of creating a richer, more immersive experience for the end user. Luminate has the most sophisticated system in the industry for tagging relevant content.

“The reason images remained stagnant for so long is because it is remarkably difficult to contextualize their composition and link them to other pieces of relevant content across the Internet,” said James Everingham, CTO of Luminate.

“We were the first to develop the technology to overcome these complexities, turning images into an even more valuable asset. With our platform and the introduction of image apps, we believe that the entire Internet can become connected in a more meaningful way.”

To learn more about how Luminate is changing the way consumers interact with images, please visit www.luminate.com.

AOL's HuffPost Enters Crowded Online Arena With HuffPost Celebrity Site

Kara Swisher — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 11:26:15 +0000

The Huffington Post Media Group, AOL’s fast-moving content unit, is launching a celebrity site called HuffPost Celebrity today, as well as another called HuffPost Culture.

HuffPost Celebrity, which ate AOL’s former celeb-focused site PopEater, is described as “an insider-y look at entertainment and celebrity, with the latest news, original reporting and scoops from our team of reporters.”

While the Huffington Post has always had a huge dollop of celebrity news and blogs, it puts the much more focused site into a very crowded arena online, with competitors such as Yahoo’s omg!, Time Warner’s People magazine Web site, as well as AOL-owned TMZ.com.

That means a major focus on the news site’s mix of short and juicy items, blogs of the famous (and infamous) and lots and lot of videos and photos.

And, indeed, the new site, which can be viewed here, has that. The main feature now is a big photo with the title, “PHOTOS: Gaga Arrives Down Under” and blogs by Jon Favreau and Tracey Ullman and slide shows of “Kardashian Bikini Show & Tell” and “Child Stars That Avoided ‘The Curse.’”

The move is another of a series of them in an aggressive expansion of AOL’s content offerings under its chief, Arianna Huffington (pictured right), who now has the money and staff she has obviously long wanted to blow her online media empire out.

And it is clearly yet another sign of the reliance AOL now has on the media group’s platform, since it bought the Huffington Post for $315 million in January.

She recently launched a U.K. edition of the site, for example, and has pushed out a number of new categories as the HuffPost has subsumed all of AOL’s previous content efforts.

Here’s the official press release on the latest launches:

AOL HUFFINGTON POST MEDIA GROUP ANNOUNCES LAUNCH OF TWO SITES: HUFFPOST CELEBRITY AND HUFFPOST CULTURE

Entertainment News Site Goes Live Today, Arts Destination on Wednesday;

Both With HuffPost’s Real-Time News and Opinion, and Leading Edge User Engagement

“HuffPost Celebrity Network” Syndication Feed Launches Today

New York, NY (July 11, 2011) — The AOL Huffington Post Media Group, a leading source of news, opinion, entertainment, community and digital information, announces today the launch of two destination sites: HuffPost Celebrity (huffingtonpost.com/celebrity), a lively mix of real-time entertainment news, opinion and gossip, and HuffPost Culture (huffingtonpost.com/culture), covering a wide span of the arts, from theatre and film to music and dance. HuffPost Celebrity goes live today and HuffPost Culture launches Wednesday.

Both sites offer The Huffington Post’s unique combination of real-time news and opinion, and a passionate and engaged community powered by the latest social engagement tools. HuffPost Celebrity also features a syndication platform offering the latest entertainment news and blog posts to partner sites. HuffPost Celebrity is edited by Katy Hall, Managing Editor of Entertainment of AOL Huffington Post Media Group; HuffPost Culture is edited by Gazelle Emami, Culture Editor of AOL Huffington Post Media Group; and both sites are being overseen by John Montorio, Editorial Director, Entertainment, Culture & Lifestyle of AOL Huffington Post Media Group. Arianna Huffington, President and Editor-in-Chief of AOL Huffington Post Media Group, made the announcement.

“We’ve always offered a take on celebrity and culture that is a fun, high/low mix that reflects our users’ diverse range of interests and desire for comprehensive entertainment news delivered in real-time. Creating these two new destination sites will allow us to both expand and deepen our coverage,” said Arianna Huffington. “Our goal is to give our readers everything from buzzy items to thought-provoking opinion pieces delivered with a style and a voice that’s uniquely HuffPost. We want to inform and entertain, while engaging our community around these subjects and serving as a starting point for compelling ‘digital watercooler’ conversations.”

HuffPost Celebrity is an insider-y look at entertainment and celebrity, with the latest news, original reporting and scoops from our team of reporters. The site is accessible, fresh, and filled with the kinds of stories our readers love to share. HuffPost Celebrity encourages users to engage with stories and features the most up-to-the-minute photos, videos, slide shows, and blog posts from industry executives to celebrities, all weighing in in real-time. Among the talent that has blogged on The Huffington Post are Alec Baldwin, Scarlett Johansson, George Clooney, Madonna, Ryan Reynolds, Larry David, Bill Maher, Rob Lowe, Russell Simmons, Natalie Portman and more.

HuffPost Culture will complement our entertainment coverage, delivering a one-stop-shop for all that’s happening in the performing arts, visual and broadcast arts, including dance, opera, music, architecture, film, TV, photography and more. The site will have visually arresting images of performances and art pieces with HuffPost’s singular style of coverage, including original reporting, artist profiles, reviews, interactive infographics, sneak peeks, slide shows, videos and more. HuffPost Culture will be a forum for discussion of arts and culture, and serves as a guide for users wanting to stay abreast of cultural news and events.

The site will offer a number of ongoing features meant to explore the arts from all angles. For example, as part of a “Strange Bedfellows” series — following unexpected collaborations between artists — HuffPost Culture will offer an exclusive video collaboration between David Lynch and the band Interpol; “On Our Radar” will highlight emerging talent; and profiles of artists include an “Architects in America” series. HuffPost Culture will feature exclusive playlists from musicians and DJs, starting off with a summer playlist from Chromeo. The weekly “Culture Forecast” will serve as a handy guide to what’s happening in arts and culture. At launch, HuffPost Culture will offer different best-of-the-year-so-far picks, from music to art exhibitions. In addition, HuffPost Culture will present curated content from AOL sites such as Moviefone and HuffPost Celebrity, as well as the best arts coverage from around the web.

The launch of the HuffPost Celebrity Network today offers media partners syndicated, constantly updating entertainment content available for use across a wide variety of platforms. Participating partners include SFGate, Tribune’s Zap2It, and Russell Simmons’ Global Grind. “HuffPost Celebrity demonstrates our ability to combine compelling content with a platform centered around user engagement, while our new feed, the HuffPost Celebrity Network, shows how we can most effectively leverage our unique assets,” said Kerry Trainor, Senior Vice President/General Manager, AOL Entertainment. “We make it turnkey for our partners to offer their users the highest quality entertainment news, whether it’s for the latest tablet or a long-standing website. We want to offer a vibrant distribution feed that reaches a wide audience for our content, while enabling our partners to engage their users around it as well –- it’s a classic win-win.”

G5 Idled? Check! Name Tags On? Check! Weeklong Mogul Fest in Sun Valley Will End With Zuckerberg-Gates Chit-Chat.

Kara Swisher — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 00:47:57 +0000

In case you haven’t heard, the tech and media moguls have jetted their private planes to Sun Valley, Idaho, for the exclusive annual Allen & Company confab and are probably easing into the cocktail hour just about now.

Break out the Kistler Chardonnay and name tags!

(I secretly love that the 300 moguls all wear name tags, even though they are all so fabulously famous.)

Among the highlights for the weeklong confab beginning today will be an interview of Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg by Microsoft CEO Bill Gates, in which I assume they will fall all over themselves in a race of mutual admiration.

To be fair, it seems genuine and Sun Valley is not for unpleasantries anyway.

While Allen & Company — in its investment banker mode — likes to keep the schedule a state secret, it never is, so I am here to tell those planning their time in Sun Valley that the chit-chat will be Saturday.

Also sure to get a lot of ink, since all the owners and possible marks, um, potential buyers, will be there: Whither Hulu?

The premium online video service is famously for sale, and the moneybags at Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Yahoo (smaller bags!) are all taking a gander.

It will not be sold by week’s end, of course, although there will be all kinds of breathy media coverage as the powerful players shuttle to and fro from their gratis luxe condos in noisy hush-hushery.

Who will then come over to the bar to tell the gathered and increasingly drunken reporters — press is not invited in, but they’re there like kudzu all week — all about it.

Of course, there will be some cute anecdotes about the rich and famous — one year, it was News Corp. head Rupert Murdoch losing some item of his wife’s in said bar with everyone scurrying around to find it.

If Us Weekly were covering Sun Valley, that section would be called “Moguls Are Just Like Us!”

Actually, they’re not at all — mostly, they are meaner and more aggressive and greedier, although endlessly riveting.

That’s why the most awkward part of the event will be all the Sun Valley photos that appear without fail of these powermongers in shorts and fleece.

(Note to newcomers: Very few look good in shorts and fleece.)

Lastly, it would not be a modern Allen & Company Sun Valley gathering without continued fretting and fixating on the digital onslaught, even though there are scads of those invited techies competitively mountain biking the pretty mountains there.

This year’s focus will be the IPO gang from Zynga, Groupon and, of course, Facebook, whose insane market valuations are the envy of the media gang, who are mostly older and continually grumpy about it all.

But, the kids love this Internet thing and so the moguls will cope with the change, even as what happens in Sun Valley — power playing, but with a better view — never ever changes.

Mining Facebook to Make a Real Photo Album

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 17 May 2011 22:34:52 +0000

As kids, we’re taught to share and share alike, and nowhere is this more clear than on Facebook, where some 600 million users share private details about their lives—and a lot of that sharing involves photos. People who once shared digital albums via photo-sharing websites now simply post those on Facebook for friends to see.

[ See post to watch video ]

This week, I tested an effort by photo-sharing sites to win back users’ attention: by importing photos from none other than Facebook, itself. With your permission, these sites access your Facebook page’s photos, as well as the pages of any friends who share their Facebook photos with you, and use these images to make photo albums—for online or for the coffee table.

I tested Shutterfly Inc.’s new Custom Path for making photo books, which produced a handsome book but didn’t link as smoothly as it should with Facebook. I also tried a beautiful new website called ZangZing that grabs and organizes images from a variety of social networks to create digital albums.

Shutterfly’s Custom Path lets users make pages their own by adding stickers and images.

There are ups and downs to using photos from Facebook in this manner. The major advantage is you can access several people’s photos rather than relying on just your own photos to create an album or project. This means if you forgot a camera at your parents’ 40th anniversary party, you may be able to use a friend’s photos to create a digital album or a photo book. And because photos shared on Facebook are often captured using smartphones and shared nowhere else but Facebook, they are then unique memories of the event.

On the negative side, Facebook downsizes photos before storing them on its website, so the quality isn’t that of the original digital file. This factors in when creating photo books. I planned to make a large photo book but had to choose a smaller one because the photos were too low resolution to be used as large, full-bleed images spread across a page; images from Facebook couldn’t be larger than 4-by-6-inches. If the photos imported from Facebook were captured on smartphones, the quality is already lower than that of a digital camera, though smartphone-camera technology is improving steadily.

I checked in with Google’s Picasa, Kodak Gallery, and Yahoo’s Flickr services to see if they were considering the idea of importing photos from Facebook. Each of these photo-sharing services already shares its albums out to Facebook—table stakes in the social-networking world. Of the three, only Kodak disclosed imminent plans to import photos from Facebook to its Kodak Gallery website; it will start this in late June. Kodak already lets people use in-store kiosks, like those in Target stores, to import images to albums from Facebook.

The end result is an album book.

Shutterfly’s Custom Path photo-book-making process automatically places photos onto book pages while allowing the book’s creator to tweak and adjust the book to a high degree. The books come in five options ranging from $13 for a 5-by-5-inch softcover book to $55 for a 12-by-12-inch hardcover book. Prices are currently marked at 20 percent off; adding pages will increase the price. I chose a 20-page, 8-by-8-inch book with a padded photo cover that cost $28 by the time I was finished with it (prices for this size book start at $20).

I skimmed through nine categories of book styles and several options within each category before deciding to create a photo-filled wedding guest book. Photos for the book can be added from one’s computer, a Shutterfly account, other people’s shared Shutterfly photos or Facebook. I chose photos from all of these sources and they dropped into a digital bin, showing me what I already had in the book so as not to grab the same photo twice from two sources.

I used Facebook Connect, a one-click option to enable my Shutterfly account to access my Facebook content and that of my friends, but it took me several tries to see the photos from Facebook. Shutterfly couldn’t replicate my problem and a spokeswoman thought it might be an issue with Facebook. It was fixed later in the day, but photos from Facebook still seemed sluggish to display on the screen.

Custom Path is easy to use but not easy enough. Text boxes are difficult to maneuver, and while some items can be taken away when you press Delete, others must be dragged off the screen. But once I figured out how to customize images and added stickers on pages, I could really make the page my own—not just another cookie-cutter pattern from Shutterfly.

ZangZing is a sharing site with a clean and easy-to-use user interface. It’s focused on the idea of creating digital albums by getting photos from all sorts of sources, including Facebook, Flickr, Instagram, Kodak Gallery, Picasa Web, Shutterfly, Photobucket, SmugMug or your own PC. I created albums with photos from five sources, and I enjoyed watching the elegant animations that illustrated the step of adding an image to an album. One click will add all photos from an album, or individual ones can be selected, and the images appear in a tray at the bottom of the screen. The site walks users through six steps to build an album, making the procedure feel transparent and uncomplicated.

The simplest part of using ZangZing was setting an album’s privacy permissions. I selected from Public, Hidden (anyone who knows the link to the album can see it), or Password. Too often, the process of sharing a digital photo album feels nerve-wracking because it’s hard to know if it will be shared with hundreds of people or too difficult for anyone to view. ZangZing’s emphasis on clarity shines here and throughout this sharing site.

Thanks to Shutterfly, ZangZing and other sites, creating a book or album to share doesn’t need to be restricted to your own photos. Rather than putting everything into your social networks, these sites let you take something out.

Write to Katherine Boehret at katherine.boehret@wsj.com

Camera Has an Eye for Photos, Brain for Wi-Fi

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 12 May 2011 01:02:31 +0000

The pocket-size, point-and-shoot digital camera was once a standard part of many consumers’ electronic tool kit. But it has been challenged by smartphones with better and better built-in cameras and photo apps. While they lack some photographic capabilities, like physical zoom lenses, phones are carried everywhere all the time. Plus, they are wirelessly connected to email and the Web, where digital pictures often wind up.

[ See post to watch video ]

Now, Samsung has introduced a pocket camera that aims to erode the advantages of smartphones—even though the company also produces phones. This new camera, the SH100, has Wi-Fi built in. This isn’t the first camera with built-in Wi-Fi, but Samsung hopes to better capitalize on it. It also competes with the add-on memory card called Eye-Fi, that brings Wi-Fi abilities to almost any camera. It has easy, preconfigured uploading to Facebook, YouTube, Picasa, email and other online destinations, plus a bunch of added wireless features, including cordless transfer of photos to a PC.

I’ve been testing the SH100. It carries a list price of $200 without a memory card but can be found at various merchants for as little as $150. Its wireless capability requires no contract or monthly payment.

My verdict is that the SH100 pretty much does what it promises as a wireless device, and takes very good photos and videos. Unlike on a cellphone, its wireless functions don’t work almost everywhere. Still, for those who would like some of the wireless ease of a phone in a better camera, it might be tempting.

The SH100 is a good-looking, pocket camera with a resolution of 14.2 megapixels, a 5x optical zoom and a wide-angle lens. Smartphones typically have much lower resolution and lack optical zoom lenses.

It has a large, 3-inch touch screen on the back, for framing and viewing shots, and for controlling its many functions. There are only four physical buttons—a home button, a power button, a playback button, and a combination shutter and zoom controller. Everything else is controlled by tapping on icons and menus on the screen.

The SH100 has zoom and wide-angle lenses.

The user interface has been designed to resemble the array of apps on a smartphone. Unfortunately, the SH100 uses a less expensive, and much less responsive, type of touch screen than is typically found on smartphones. So, tapping on icons, scrolling through menus and, especially, typing email addresses and wireless login details, can be a frustrating process for people trained now to use sensitive phone and tablet screens.

This was my biggest gripe about the SH100. In my tests, using its screen required extra pressure, multiple presses and corrections. Samsung implicitly acknowledges this by including a plastic stylus with the camera. Using the stylus makes things easier, but it’s another thing to carry and seems easy to lose.

Samsung says the SH100 is mainly about connectivity, and its photographic capabilities and features aren’t significantly different from those on its other point-and-shoot models. In my tests, it took sharp, vivid photos and videos, indoors and out. It has all the standard settings and effects I’ve seen in other point-and-shoot cameras, including auto and more manual modes, and various preconfigured settings for scenarios such as sunsets or beach photos.

One of its nicer features is something called Magic Frame, which merges a photo you take with a background. For instance, it can place your photo in a poster on the side of a bus-stop shelter, or on the screen of an old black-and-white TV. It also has a 3-D carousel view for browsing through your photos, and another mode where you can flip through pictures by tilting the camera.

The SH100 has a touch screen on the back for viewing photos and controlling functions.

But I mainly tested the camera as a wireless device, with mixed results. I was able to connect almost every time to noncommercial Wi-Fi networks in my home and office, and was easily able to post pictures to my accounts on Facebook and Picasa, and videos to my YouTube account. I also was easily able to email photos. This required a one-time setup process for each online account.

But there were some issues. In one instance, during a meeting with Samsung officials to show me the camera, it wouldn’t work with my office Wi-Fi, though my test unit later did fine in the office. Also, when uploading to Facebook, the camera installs a Facebook app called MashupSocial, which you may or may not want.

More important, the camera’s Wi-Fi won’t work with many commercial Wi-Fi hot spots, such as those in coffee shops or airports, that require a login process via a browser, because it lacks a browser. To compensate, Samsung includes a free three-month trial subscription to Boingo, a service that automates logins to some of these services. After the trial ends, Boingo costs $8 a month, but it is optional.

Also, the camera can’t automatically send any photo you snap. You can only choose to send photos when you are in playback mode. And this is a manual process. You also can’t queue up photos you take outside of W-Fi range for later instant uploading when you get near a compatible Wi-Fi network.

To save battery life, the camera doesn’t remain connected to Wi-Fi. It connects only when you choose to transmit, and then disconnects. This is a relatively slow process. Samsung says the SH100′s battery can shoot more than 200 pictures on a single charge, but that battery life degrades if you use Wi-Fi a lot.

I also successfully tested a couple of other wireless features. I was able to wirelessly transmit photos from the camera to a Windows PC using a special Samsung computer program called Auto Backup. (This doesn’t work on Macs.) I also was able to use a feature called Remote Viewfinder that lets you control the camera remotely from a Samsung smartphone. The camera can also wirelessly beam photos to a compatible TV, but I wasn’t able to test this.

If you’re willing to accept the wireless limitations of the SH100, and value its photographic advantages compared to a phone’s camera, it might offer the right balance for you.

Find all Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos at the All Things Digital website, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

Exclusive: Flipboard Confirms $50 Million Funding at $200 Million Valuation

Kara Swisher — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 20:23:12 +0000

Late last month, BoomTown posted about a huge venture funding effort by the high-profile and even more highly designed social media reading app for the Apple iPad, Flipboard.

Today, its co-founder and CEO Mike McCue confirmed the $50 million round at an eye-popping $200 million valuation, in a wide-ranging interview at the start-up’s Palo Alto, Calif., HQ.

“We’re obviously thrilled, because we think it confirms our focus that people want a beautifully designed way to interact with content and to share it,” he said. “And there is a lot more to come–on a scale of one to 10, we’re just at a two or three.”

The bulk of the new second round of funding–Flipboard had previously raised $10.5 million–came from New York-based Insight Venture Partners.

Insight’s Jerry Murdock said in an interview that he was excited about the idea of “social endorsement” that Flipboard was pioneering.

“We back great entrepreneurs and Flipboard is that and also in an obviously unique position to solve a problem of media consumption in the digital age,” he said. “The sky is the limit. Or more precisely it is the best environment to consume curated real-time content for Twitter and Facebook, because of the user experience and social endorsement integration with the content.”

Insight is also an investor in Twitter.

Also stepping up in the new Flipboard round is Comcast’s venture arm, as well as previous investors, including Kleiner Perkins, Index Ventures and a spate of well known angels, such as Twitter co-founder and product guru Jack Dorsey, Facebook co-founder and Asana dude Dustin Moskovitz, the ubiquitous Ron Conway, actor Ashton Kutcher and the investment company of former News Corp. exec Peter Chernin.

“From a Comcast perspective, we’re intrigued with Mike and what he’s doing with content aggregation,” said Amy Banse, Comcast Interactive Capital’s new head. “We think we can learn from him and he from us.”

Co-founded by longtime entrepreneur McCue (Netscape, Tellme) and former Apple iPhone engineer Evan Doll in January, Flipboard launched to much attention in July.

The elegant Flipboard–which McCue recently told me in an onstage interview at the South by Southwest conference in Austin had zero revenues thus far–has changed the game on the consumption of social media.

Its innovative social magazine concept is attempting to make the social networking universe more accessible, consumable and, perhaps most importantly, visually arresting via its rich app.

Essentially, Flipboard pulls information from media RSS feeds and sites such as Twitter and Facebook data streams and then reassembles it in an easy-to-navigate, personalized format in a mobile tablet touchscreen environment.

In its current offering, there are pull-quotes, photos, videos, status updates and even the first paragraphs of linked-out content. There is also the ability to comment and share, as if one were on a social networking or microblogging site.

McCue said the new giant pile of cash will be used to increase its 32-person staff to about 50, international expansion, small acquisitions and more product development on more platforms.

The next in the arena will be the iPhone version of Flipboard, said McCue, followed by one for the Google Android mobile operating system eventually.

Left unsaid, of course, was the need for funding to fight the likelihood of increased competition in the hot space for delivering both professional and social content to consumers on a wide range of devices.

Rivals are varied, such as Silicon Valley’s most adorable news reader start-up Pulse and also Zite, a news reader which was recently sued for copyright infringement by a group of major publishers.

There are bigger potential players, such as Google, which is trying to find various ways to move into the social space.

In fact, said several sources, Google and others have made acquisition approaches to Flipboard, which has instead opted for raising more funding and staying independent for now.

McCue declined to talk about that, but did note that he is not surprised by publisher interest, especially of the worried and wary kind, in the arena.

“Anyone not respectful of others’ content is going to get in that kind of trouble,” he said, noting Flipboard has struck deals with 17 big publishers so far, including this morning’s announcement about a partnership with Oprah Winfrey’s and Discovery’s OWN cable network. “There is not one half to this equation.”

Right now, the Flipboard app is free and the business plan is advertising and some possible subscription scenarios.

McCue said advertising will be the key to Flipboard’s business plan in the future, although it’s not clear if the company will ever sell advertising itself.

Rather, it will partner with publishers seeking better distribution in the explosive tablet and smartphone market, where Flipboard has been gaining traction quickly.

But until that is sorted out, there is now $50 million more in the Flipboard kitty to figure it all out.

“With this funding, we can grow at the right pace and have a lot of flexibility to get the product right,” said McCue. “And, that’s the most important thing.”

Facebook Communications Kingpin Joins Pixazza as Strategic Adviser and Board Observer

Kara Swisher — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 16:02:41 +0000

Yesterday, BoomTown posted a video interview with Pixazza CEO Bob Lisbonne about the photo tagging service that has nicknamed itself “AdSense for images.”

Now, the Mountain View, CA, start-up has added someone who might know a thing or two about it. Former Googler Elliot Schrage–who is now Facebook’s global communications, marketing and public policy head–is joining Pixazza’s board as a strategic adviser and observer.

Before joining both the Silicon Valley search giant and social networking powerhouse, Schrage had another thing in common with Pixazza–he also worked at retail behemoth The Gap, one of the companies that uses Pixazza’s technology tools.

“I’m impressed by Bob, Jim and the Pixazza team and delighted to have the chance to work with them,” said Schrage in an email to me.

The Pixazza network now reaches about 85 million unique visitors per month, according to Quantcast.

Essentially, the company lets publishers match and link images of products or places with its network of advertisers, via a single line of code.

When users on that site mouse over the photos, they get rich information about pricing and more, as well as a clickable way to purchase the items.

Here is Lisbonne’s blog post on the Schrage appointment, as well as the video of the interview I did with him recently:

Pixazza Is Now Friends with Elliot Schrage

One of many favorite lines I remember from Netscape’s CEO Jim Barksdale was “smart isn’t what you know, but how fast you learn.” The history of Silicon Valley demonstrates the wisdom of that adage when you consider that no company starts life with perfect knowledge; they all experiment, discover, and iterate rapidly. The best startups not only harness the knowledge of their employees, but look to their investors, advisors, and supporters as well.

Today, we feel particularly fortunate to welcome someone new to the Pixazza fold, a world class executive responsible for helping to expand the reach of two of the Internet’s premier companies. Elliot Schrage has agreed to join our board as a strategic advisor and observer.

Elliot’s current role as vice president of global communications, marketing and public policy at Facebook, coupled with his previous experience as vice president of communications and public affairs at Google, make him an ideal resource as we work to change the way consumers interact with images on the Internet. In an auspicious coincidence, Elliot previously served as the senior vice president of global affairs at The Gap–one of Pixazza’s long time advertisers.

Pixazza is pioneering the use of images as a new canvas for delivering to consumers relevant information, ecommerce, and advertising. We look forward to collaborating with and learning from our new “friend” Elliot.

[ See post to watch video ]

Liveblog: Is Yahoo Still in Search? Indeed and It's Answers Not Links!

Kara Swisher — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 17:20:14 +0000

At least once a day, BoomTown gets a call from investors, analysts or other troublemaking types–you know who you are!–wondering why Yahoo is still plugging away in search.

With a declining market share in the arena and a search technology outsourcing deal with Microsoft, it’s not a bad question to ask.

But Yahoo begs to differ, introducing a new feature called Yahoo Search Direct at a press event in San Francisco today.

I liveblogged it, natch.

10:14 am: I was late, as per usual, but walked in just as the session was getting started.

Yahoo’s Chief Product Officer Blake Irving–looking fetching in a purple cashmere sweater–was talking about search.

He immediately turned it over to Shashi Seth, Yahoo’s head search dude, who immediately said: “Answers not links.”

Huh?

Actually, the product is pretty nifty, showing a lightning-speed box that shows more robust search results, although not unlike offerings from both Microsoft’s Bing and, of course, Google Instant.

While both have different takes, it is essentially a direction in which search brings in maps, photos, and–of course–advertising.

You can see a movie times example here (click to make the image larger):

10:23 am: Wait, it was over before it started! Whoa. No more bells and whistles?

And I still was enjoying Irving’s sweater and I wanted to touch it, but that would have been wrong.*

Seth then took questions from the reporters.

“We believe the next generation of search…people are looking for answers,” he said.

Very true, but perhaps not so much from Yahoo anymore.

Still, Yahoo Search Direct is a laudable try and it’s also nice to see some innovation from the long-troubled company.

“We are the premier digital media company,” said Seth, parroting a new description of Yahoo that the Silicon Valley company is now using since its recent sales meeting in San Antonio.

I asked a question about whether there is a dedicated app for the tablet of Yahoo Direct Search, which sources had also told me was shown to the troops in Texas.

Yep! It will be ready later this year.

I also asked about how much all this search innovation was costing compared to return on the investment.

No answers from either Irving or Seth.

Someone then asked if there would be a lift in market share from the feature.

That’s the plan, Stan!

10:41 am: More questions about the comparisons to Google Instant. Of course, it’s the same type of thing, in the contest to win the King of Relevancy crown among consumers.

Google Instant. Yahoo Search Direct. Quora. My dentist, who seems to know everything. In case you didn’t know, dentists are very erudite.

Seth noted that even though Yahoo has only 15 categories covered in Yahoo Search Direct, there will be hundreds to come, as well as more features on top of this feature.

Personally, I want my search delivered to me on a silver tray by a man in a purple cashmere sweater.

Speaking of purple, the demo dude kept putting Elizabeth Taylor into the query box, which depressed me. Violet eyes now closed forever.

That was the real story today.

As if to round out the event, someone asked whether critics are right about whether Yahoo should still be in search.

“We’re in this for good,” said Irving firmly.

“Look, we are not focused on the past,” added Seth, who was not here in this very room at a similar Yahoo search event years ago, when similar promises were made about search going away from a page of blue links. “I don’t even know if you’d call it search in three years.”

What would you call it then?

“Find,” joked Irving. And later, “It’s actually ‘found.’”

Apparently, Yahoo was lost and now is found via Yahoo Search Direct.

*By the way, I touched the sweater, which was–in fact, Blake–periwinkle, which is a twee version of purple.

(You can see a video interview I did with Seth after the demo here.)