SMART POINT – Blog


Cele mai frumoase cadouri de Craciun de la Asociatia Prietenia

11-12-11 / Octav

De sarbatori, putem sa oferim o sansa copiilor si tinerilor cu dizabiliati de a se integra mai bine in societate, de a lua parte la viata sociala si de a beneficia de fonduri in schimbul muncii lor.

Hai sa le intindem o mana si sa ii ajutam ….. sa munceasca!

Te gandesti sa oferi felicitari de Craciun?

Vrei sa faci un cadou special, cu suflet?

Podoabele pentru brad s-au invechit si vrei sa cumperi altele?

Le putem acorda suportul nostru cumparand toate aceste lucruri de la Asociatia Prietenia. Produsele sunt  lucrate manual de catre persoane cu dizabilitati ce au un potential extraordinar si o vointa de invidiat.

Oferta de iarna si cadourile le puteti vedea mai jos:

  • felicitare – 8 lei buc
  • decoratiune pentru ghiveci – 9 lei buc
  • decoratiune cap de urs – 10 lei buc
  • decoratiune stea, glob din lana – 6 lei buc
  • decoratiune stea din lemn – 7 lei buc
  • decoratiune clopotel din fimo – 7 lei buc
  • om de zapada din lana - 20 lei buc
  • saculet pentru cadou – 9 lei buc
  • suport din lemn plus lumanare – 10 lei buc
  • set pentru ceai – 20 lei setul

Contact Asociatie:

Mircea Savu – Director Executiv

Tel – 0730 032 770

Email -  mirceasavu_prietenia@yahoo.com

http://www.prietenia.org/desprenoi.php

Daca cunosti si alte persoane ca ar putea fi interesate, te rog nu ezita sa dai de veste mai departe.

Despre asociatie:

“Asociatia “Prietenia” a luat fiinta in 1996 si este o organizatie non-guvernamentala, romaneasca, apolitica, fara scop lucrativ, avand ca obiect asistarea, sustinerea si ingrijirea copiilor si adultilor cu nevoi speciale folosind pedagogia curativa si terapia sociala initiate de Rudolf Steiner, ca metoda de lucru. Membrii Asociatiei sunt parinti, cadre didactice si alte persoane dornice sa ajute copiii, tinerii si adultii cu dizabilitati de care Asociatia “Prietenia” se preocupa. In proportie de 80% dintre copiii si tinerii asistati sufera de afectiuni mentale severe si profunde, deficiente neuromotorii si asociate (Sindrom Down, autism, epilepsie, retard mintal, absenta limbajului, tulburari de comportament, pareza spastica) si nu au putut fi integrati in nici un alt sistem de invatamant si munca din Romania. Pentru a ajuta acesti copii, tineri si adulti, Asociatia “Prietenia” si-a propus si a realizat urmatoarele: • infiiintarea unei scoli si sustinerea activitatii scolare – in 1996 a infiintat CPCTS Corabia in parteneriat cu Ministerul Invatamantului si Sonnhalde Gempen Elvetia • continuarea cu o scoala profesionala – in 1998 a fost infiintata si scoala profesionala cu profil tamplarie –tapiterie in cadrul CPCTS Corabia • integrarea ulterioara a adultilor cu dizabiliati in societate – in 2006 a fost infiintat CST Pantelimon.”

Otaku – sau despre dragostea de Orient

30-05-11 / Dana

Cuvântul Otaku descrie pasiunea unor oameni, în general destul de tineri, pentru câteva elemente specifice ale culturii japoneze – anime-uri, manga şi/sau jocuri video.

Festivalul Otaku, în schimb, este cât se poate de românesc şi oamenii din spatele lui îşi propun în fiecare ediţie o misiune grea, dar ambiţioasă: să promoveze cultura comunităţii strânse în jurul unor cuvinte precum: j-pop, cosplay, j-culture, j-fashion, unde, desigur “J” stands for the Japanese version of the universe.

Anul acesta, la cea de 5-a ediţie a festivalului, la mijloc de mai, peste 800 de vizitatori s-au perindat pe la Casa de Cultură a Studenţilor şi şi-au etalat fie costumele personajelor preferate din comics-uri, din jocuri video sau din anime-uri în concursul de cosplay, fie talentele. O lume colorată, orişicât – sketch-uri, concursuri de fighting games pe Playstation 3 (combo-uri peste combo-uri în Mortal Kombat) sau workshop-uri de animaţie, desen sau make-up şi hairstyle caracteristic.

Am descoperit în spatele Otakului o echipă tânără şi plină de entuziasm, dar şi o parte din cultura urbană japoneză apreciată de tineri din toată lumea care vor să se apropie de această manifestare şi altfel decât online. Este ceea ce Otaku a reuşit să facă, să aducă Japonia mai aproape de România. :)

SmartPoint Internship Challenge

11-05-11 / Octav


Provocarea

Daca vrei sa fii “One step ahead” şi daca ştii să pui punctul pe “I” într-o manieră SMART, te provocăm să participi la concursul de internship-uri. Alătură-te pentru o lună echipei SmartPoint, pentru a acumula experienţă în domeniul comunicării şi pentru a fi cu un pas mai aproape de îndemul nostru: “Exceed your dream”.

Ce trebuie să faci?

Imaginează-ţi viitorul şi realizează un plan de comunicare pentru promovarea televiziunii cu hologramare. Astepăm propunerile tale pe adresa roxana.firoiu@smartpoint.ro până la data de 01.06.2011.

Asociatia Prietenia are nevoie de o brutarie

25-11-10 / Octav

Avem nevoie de ajutorul vostru inca o data intr-un proiect de suflet:

Despre Asociatie:

Asociatia “Prietenia”, infiintata in 1996, este o organizatie non-guvernamentala, care are ca scop asistarea, sustinerea si ingrijirea copiilor si adultilor cu nevoi speciale.

Organizatia foloseste pedagogia curativa si terapia sociala initiate de Rudolf Steiner, ca metoda de lucru pentru a-i ajuta pe adultii cu dizabilitati sa se integreze in societate si sa duca o viata mai buna. 80% dintre copiii si tinerii asistati sufera de afectiuni mentale severe si profunde, deficiente neuromotorii si asociate (Sindrom Down, autism, epilepsie, retard mintal, absenta limbajului, tulburari de comportament, pareza spastica) si nu au putut fi integrati in niciun alt sistem de invatamant si munca din Romania.

Pentru a veni in sprijinul acestor persoane si a familiilor lor, a fost infiintata Asociatia Prietenia, ale carei initiative s-au concretizat initial intr-o scoala speciala, urmata de o scoala profesionala, respectiv de deschiderea unui Centru de zi (activitati si terapie pentru 27 de beneficiari, in intervalul 9.00 – 17.00) si a unei Locuinte Protejate (asistenta non-stop pentru 10 dintre cei 27 beneficiari, care sufera de afectiuni mai grave).

Astfel, in urma eforturilor continue din ultimii ani, membrii Asociatiei au reusit sa construiasca si sa amenajeze, in localitatea Pantelimon, un spatiu optim pentru sustinerea si desfasurarea activitatilor persoanelor cu dizabilitati. Un loc in care acestea se simt cu adevarat “acasa”.

Proiectul despre care vorbim:

Proiectele si eforturile continua si se indreapta acum spre infiintarea unei intreprinderi sociale – BIOHRANA. Pentru inceput, proiectul vizeaza deschiderea unei brutarii, urmand ca, in viitor, Asociatia Prietenia sa poata produce si alte alimente bio – legume, zarzavat si fructe,  cu scopul ca, prin productia si vanzarea de produse alimentare, sa fie asigurate nu numai sustenabilitatea financiara a Asociatiei Prietenia, ci si un mediu propice de lucru pentru toti beneficiarii ei.

Inainte insa ca acest lucru sa devina o realitate, Asociatia Prietenia are nevoie inca de sustinere din partea sponsorilor, pentru constructia, dotarea si deschiderea brutariei BIOHRANA.

Banca Unicredit Tiriac a pus la dispozitie un cont bancar pentru donatii (cont RO81BACX0000000544756000) cu angajamentul ca suma obtinuta din donatii pana la data de 26 noiembrie sa fie dublata.

Suma necesara pentru infiintarea brutariei este de 43.000 euro. Au ramas mai putin de 2 zile pana la dead-line, iar in contul Asociatiei Prietenia se afla doar 20.000 lei. In situatia in care aceasta suma va fi dublata conform angajamentului  Unicredit Tiriac Bank, donatia totala s-ar ridica la 40.000 lei. Mai putin, deci, de 25% din suma necesara.

Rugamintea Asociatiei Prietenia, prin intermediul nostru, este de a-i ajuta sa stranga suma de 20.000 euro pentru infiintarea brutariei.

In masura in care credeti ca ati putea contribui la acest proiect, va stam la dispozitie pentru orice alte detalii.

Stereoscopic history, the situation at the moment (Part III)

05-11-10 / Anton

Last time we finished with the trends that were forming at CES 2010 and after that, about the new wave of 3D HDTVs becoming available, and the start of adoption of the HDMI 1.4(a) as a standard for stereoscopic 3D transmission for consumer electronic devices with 3D capabilities. But in the last few months a lot of things have happened that are worth mentioning…

Let’s start with the 3D HDTVs, as they are now widely available on a worldwide scale and are being offered by all major makers of TVs such as LG, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, Panasonic, Philips etc. however the user’s interest is not that big. The reason for that is of course the higher prices of the 3D hardware, but considering most of these are also high-end television sets in general with all the top features it is expected for them to be more expensive. The need for glasses is also a setting back factor for some people to go into 3D, but we are still at least five years away from the autostereoscopic technology to be good enough and affordable to be implemented on a larges scale in TVs that will not require glasses. However the most serious problem in the adoption rate of the new 3D-capable TVs is the general lack of content to view on them. Still not that many movies available on Blu-ray 3D discs, and at least half of them bundled with specific hardware from one or another brand and with the biggest 3D blockbuster that has sparkled the big interest into 3D technology – the movie Avatar, is still not available, although it will soon be, but as an exclusive bundle for Panasonic only. The 3D TV channels are still just a few and limited to only specific regions, so not everyone can have access to them, and even if you do, there is still not that much interesting and different content to watch on them – they still mostly focus on sports event. The Playstation 3 console is now capable of being used not only for gaming in stereo 3D, although still very few titles are available, but also to be utilized as a Blu-ray 3D player, which brings a lot of potential for its future. One thing that has changed in the last few months however is the bridging of the gap between the 3D HDTV and the 3D-capable desktop or mobile computer you have at home.

The first stereoscopic 3D technology supporting 3D HDTVs was introduced by NVIDIA, allowing you to connect your computer to a 3D HDTV and play games or other content from the computer on the big-screen television set and in stereo 3D mode; and just recently AMD has also introduced their own stereo 3D solution. NVIDIA’s 3DTV Play is currently available as a free upgrade for all owners of the 3D Vision kit and will soon be available as a standalone product. With both solutions supporting not only 3D HDTVs, but also 3D LCD monitors, 3D AIO PCs and of course 3D laptops. So now, no matter what kind of graphics processor (designed for gaming) you have inside your computer, you will be able to play hundreds of computer games on a 3D HDTV in stereo 3D mode getting a completely new experience of immersion on the big screen. Hopefully being able to play games in stereo 3D and the large number of titles that are already available can be converted to stereo 3D mode – pretty much every 3D game using DirectX and released in the last few years is Ok with just a very small number of unsuitable games. Hopefully the big abundance of games will be able to keep your attention while the other types of 3D content catches up, as some researches say that 3D HDTVs will become mainstream sometime around the year 2015. Just as an example the total number of 3D HDTVs shipped in the United States through September was 655,000 according to figures from the Consumer Electronics Association with an expectation that number to reach 1 million by the end of the year.

But it is not all about 3D HDTVs, although most of the attention is targeted at them at the moment. There are also the 3D LCD monitors for desktop computers, the 3D-capable laptops even All-in-One multimedia computers and HTPCs with stereo 3D capabilities. However these are still not so mainstream products, like a 3D HDTV for example and the numbers here are of course lower than the ones mentioned regarding the television sets, although the interest in these products is also growing as more and more models become available. For example according to the makers of 3D notebooks the number of units sold for 2010 will be somewhere around 150,000 to 200,000 which is a little bit of disappointing number for them, because they’ve expected higher numbers. However the demand is there and although with a 3D-capable PCs being more focused on the multimedia and gaming in stereo 3D, here we also have some lack of content, besides the abundance of games we can play. The same problem with a lack of enough Blu-ray 3D titles to watch and not a lot of options for the users themselves to create their own 3D content in the form of videos and photos. The later one however is starting to change bit by bit with companies like Fujifilm that already have two digital cameras capable of taking photos and movies in 3D, as well as Sony adding some 3D capabilities to some of their 2D consumer digital cameras, and Panasonic also joining in with 3D lens for digital cameras and camcorders. Other companies like Aiptek and Viewsonic are trying to also present more affordable solutions for the consumers to allow them to create their own 3D content to view on their 3D-capable computer or television set, but of course being able to have more options is desirable. However still most of the enthusiasts that shoot and share their own 3D videos and photos do use two digital cameras or camcorders in custom developed stereo 3D camera rigs.

3D cinema is another big thing, because Hollywood and not only they are starting to pay more and more attention to making 3D movies, not only because of the big interest and the associated higher revenue, but also due to the fact that pirating 3D movies is very hard to impossible at the moment. And due to the early bad experiences with 2D to 3D conversions for movies like “Clash of the Titans” now most of the movie studios are careful not to leave viewers unsatisfied with some rushed in and crappy conversion just to say that a movie is in 3D, when it was not actually shot with 3D cameras. They are starting to realize that conversion can be a great tool to re-release and older and classical movie, when properly done taking enough time to make everything look good, instead of just rushing things to make a new movie and convert it in the post production with maybe not so good results. An example for that is the upcoming Harry Potter movie that was first announced to be shot in 2D and then later converted to 3D, but recently the movie studio behind it decided to cancel the idea of converting it to 3D, because they don’t want to rush things and make a crappy conversion. On the other hand big names like James Cameron and George Lucas have announced their plans for re-releasing old classic movies that will be converted in 3D like Titanic and the Star Wars saga. For new movies however, are probably going to start seeing more and more titles coming out that will be shot in 3D and thus provide better user experience, however one thing you should be well aware of is that when talking about movies and not only movies actually, adding stereo 3D to the media at all costs is not the best choice, as 3D is just a tool whose main purpose should be to contribute to the user experience in the movie or a game, making the story and the world more realistic and believable.

So keep watching what is going to happen, because we have a lot of interesting times ahead of us regarding stereo 3D technology…

Stereoscopic history, the last 10 years (Part II)

03-05-10 / Anton

Nowadays everyone is talking about stereo 3D and it seems that finally it is about time for the technology to become mainstream and everybody to have some sort of 3D products available at home, and not to see 3D just at the cinema anymore. Of course it will take at least a few more years in order for the 3D to become widely adopted and become mainstream, but the good thing is that we are seeing a lot of efforts being put to promote the technology. And although we already have quite a lot of products on the market and more are soon to become available, we still have some issues regarding interoperability and of course the lack of a lot of content in 3D. But in order for you to better understand what problems we are currently facing in 3D technology and the already available implementations we should go back at the beginning of this century and take a look at what happened in the last 10 years. If you haven’t read the first part of the post about stereoscopic history, starting from its beginning probably sometime around 300th year B.C. up until its recent development at around the end of the last century you should do so…

old-nvidia-stereo-3d-driver
Last time we finished talking about NVIDIA starting to develop interest in Stereo 3D technology and especially for PC gaming and of course acquiring some of the team that worked on the Wicked3D product over at Metabyte. And probably somewhere around 2001 NVIDIA already had an additional stereo 3D driver to go along with the Forceware drivers designed for the company’s GPUs. The stereo 3D driver had to be additionally installed after the GPU driver in order for the functionality to support anaglyph and page flipping stereo 3D support to be added as an option. These drivers worked for the TNT, TNT2 and Vanta as well as GeForce, GeForce 2 and 3 and of course the professional Quadro graphic solutions being made by NVIDIA back at that time. It is interesting to note that even back then NVIDIA was thinking about the use of stereo 3D not only for gaming, but also in the professional field for users that need to have more realistic 3D visualizations in their workflow. And now years later that way of thinking still haven’t changed as with its new 3D Vision product NVIDIA still supports both the consumer GeForce and the professional Quadro users in their need for stereo 3D visualization. In time NVIDIA continued to improve the support of their drivers and even added support for additional hardware like HMD devices (Head Mounted Displays) and in the following few years the NVIDIA Stereo 3D driver became the most used and relied on solution for different type of products that support 3D visualization. So you could not only use the cheap paper anaglyph red-cyan glasses on your normal monitor (CRT displays at that time) or a pair of more expensive LC shutter glasses that also worked with CRT monitors, but required higher refresh rate models to work without noticeable flickering. At that time NVIDIA had no competition in the area of stereo 3D for gaming and the PC gaming was booming with a lot of interest in further development of the immersion while playing games. But then again stereo 3D was still far from becoming a mainstream technology and was still more like an enthusiasts and early adopters thing.

crt-vs-lcd-monitors
Now if you think back about displays and how they developed in the last 10 years or so you’ll immediately think of the evolution of going from the big and bulky CRT monitors to the more compact LCD displays. You can say that on the desktop segment this has started somewhere around 2001, but at first the prices of the LCD monitors were quite high and they had some issues and were not performing as good as CRTs in a lot of aspects. But in just one year the LCD display prices have dropped in half and while still they were still quite expensive, they were getting more and more attention from the customers. The technology behind LCD monitors was also quickly catching up while the prices were going down, so in just a few years the LCD monitors were starting to replace more and more the old CRT technology. And if you are wondering why that is important, then you should be aware of the fact that the first major push of having better stereo 3D experience (better than the anaglyph solutions that were available for years) using liquid crystal shutter glasses has relied heavily on the technology behind the way CRT monitors have worked and especially their ability to function with higher refresh rates like 100Hz or even more. With the LCDs running at 60Hz this has become a problem that lasted for a few years and just recently we had the first 120Hz LCD monitor on the market by Samsung and after that followed by ViewSonic, Acer and Alienware with more to soon follow.

nvidia-geforce-3d-vision
But because of the LCD monitor invasion in around 2004-2007 NVIDIA kind of left behind a bit the support for stereo 3D as the interest in the technology has also gone down, or so it seemed to the normal users. There were no updates for the stereo 3D drivers for quite some time and the new GPUs and technologies like multi-core CPUs were not supported by the old drivers. That kind of disappointed a lot of the enthusiasts that had a bit more specific and quite expensive hardware like 3D-capable HMDs that cost them hundreds and even thousands of dollars to buy as they were no longer usable in 3D mode. But in reality NVIDIA was kind of busy working on alternative solution to offer stereoscopic 3D gaming with the new hardware available and on an LCD monitor and the result in 2008 was the introduction of their partnership with Zalman and their Trimon series of passive polarized 3D monitors. But at about that time (around 2007) other companies also started working on providing the users with stereoscopic 3D solutions mainly targeted at gaming, but also supporting videos and photos in 3D format and these are iZ3D and DDD or Dynamic Digital Depth. iZ3D has introduced their own unique approach by creating a specific dual LCD panel monitor with stereo 3D support and the software to go with it, but after that their driver was even further developed to offer support for other 3D solutions too. DDD and their TriDef solution was more targeted at passive polarized solutions, but has also been expanded to support other stereo 3D solutions. And later in 2008 NVIDIA has surprised us yet again with the announcement of their new product called GeForce 3D Vision that was actually a pair of LC shutter glasses that were capable of working with the new 120Hz LCD monitor announced by Samsung and also of course with CRT displays and 3D-capable 120Hz DLP projectors and 3D-ready DLP TVs. It seemed again that Nvidia foresaw the growing interest in stereo 3D and was starting to push the technology more seriously yet again and that happened even before Avatar made its huge success. In 2009 even AMD (ATI) has started talking more seriously about stereo 3D, although they were partnering more silently with companies like iZ3D even before that. You should know that the NVIDIA stereo 3D solutions are designed to work only on the company’s GPUs, whereas the solutions provided by iZ3D and DDD are multifunctional, meaning that then can work on both NVIDIA and AMD (ATI) hardware and why not even others.

sony_bravia_3d-hdtv
In 2009 everyone was beginning to talk a lot about the bright future of stereo 3D technology, more and more companies were starting to get interested in it and were working hard to prepare different products. On the 3D-capable TV market the company Mitsubishi has been the pioneer already offering a big portfolio of 3D-ready DLP HDTVs and continuing to improve and develop their product line with other brands like Samsung for example just kind of trying out with one or two products to test the market. But the real boom in the interest about everything 3D was going on around the 3D movie by James Cameron called Avatar and when it finally premiered in cinema in December 2009 it immediately became a huge hit. Then after that during CES 2010 at the beginning of this year it was almost all about 3D technology with a lot of companies showing their upcoming next generation of 3D-capable TV sets, talking about the future of in-home 3D with Blu-ray 3D and so one. And now, with some of the first 3D HDTV and Blu-ray 3D products already on the market and more expected in the summer we are finally facing one serious issue that was kind of expected all along. We already have 3D-capable hardware and more is soon to come, but we are still lacking the more important component and that one is the 3D content to see on this new hardware. This is the reason why some companies like Sony are not in a hurry to have their 3D-ready BRAVIA HDTVs on the market as they say they want to not only give you the hardware, but to also provide some content to watch on it in 3D. But let me get back to the PC and the games available for it as they are actually a quite important factor when we are talking about 3D content. You see, actually on the PC we do have a lot of 3D content already available – almost all of the games are actually capable to be displayed quite well in stereo 3D mode with the right software solution like 3D Vision, iZ3D or DDD TriDef. And on a computer that has some sort of a stereo 3D setup you do have a lot of content already available in terms of games and you can enjoy it even at this very moment, so the question that rises here is why not play the same content on the 3D HDTV? Well, here comes the other issue, although the new wave of 3D-capable TV sets relies on the HDMI 1.4(a) specification and more specifically the stereo 3D features defined in it, there are still a lot of things left non-standardized. So at this time you cannot easily connect your PC to the new 3D-ready TV and play 3D content on it from the PC and this kind of sounds stupid, right? I mean you would expect to be able to take advantage of the most widely available stereo 3D content you currently have (the computer games), but in the end you still can’t. Now, NVIDIA is working on a solution called 3DTV Play that will allow people to connect their PCs with their new 3D TV sets and play games on the big screen in stereo 3D pretty soon….

Familia no.2

22-04-10 / Daniela Ghimpeteanu

Conţine note personale şi cuvinte alese, adevărate, despre lumea mea de la 9:00 la 18:00 (de obicei)

Am tot discutat în ultima vreme despre motivaţiile mele profesionale. Desigur, invariabil, unul dintre răspunsurile mele s-a legat de frumuseţea conturilor pe care le îngrijesc – iar îngrijesc nu este un cuvânt aleator :) .

22.04.2010Echipa SMP

Dar primul motiv de care mă leg întotdeauna se învârte în jurul colegilor, al echipei din care fac parte, familia adoptivă sau familia de-a doua, cum mai zic câteodată.

O să fac în curând 2 ani de viaţă piaristică, născută şi crescută aici. Am plecat timidă la drum, dar de la început cu ei în spate. [O să mă refer la ei de-acum încolo – departamentul de PR, dar şi la oamenii din celelalte departamente, cu foşti şi actuali colegi: nu vreau să îi numesc, se ştiu, îmi sunt prieteni toţi].

Am avut momente bune şi momente mai grele, de la prima mea conferinţă de presă până la primul plâns la telefon, work-related, cu colegi care nu erau fizic lângă mine. Sunt oamenii pe care mă bazez să vină la 4:30 la birou să mă ajute să realizăm un sistem, oameni pe care îi sun la 23:00 când mă macină gândurile. Sunt colegii pe care îi deranjez în concediu, că ştiu că nu se supără, să ma ajute să completez un excel mai deosebit. Sunt colegii vechi, cu care mi-am făcut junioratul şi colegii noi, în care mă văd pe mine la început.

Am trecut de mult de imaginea pe care o aveam în general despre lumea care lucrează în domeniu: fete cochete, cu tocuri şi tone de fard şi băieţi.. mai rar. Colegele mele sunt fetele din balerini, zâmbăreţe din suflet, care se plimbă prin oraş – dar nu la shopping, ci în vizită la redacţii, cu un GPS la teste sau un proiector de 16 kg, doar să le arate băieţilor de la reviste IT ce ecran mişto sau ce luminozitate „superioară” au produsele lor. Sunt fetele frumoase, dar care nu fac un caz din asta, pentru că un jurnalist nu poate fi convins nicioadata de acest argument… la telefon :) .

SMP Team

Iar colegii mei băieţi – vă mulţumesc, băieţi!, pe lângă toate cunoştinţele tehnice la care fac share fără să strâmbe din nas, sunt şi prieteni de nădejde.

Le-am promis colegilor la cel mai recent eveniment (Universul Sony 3D), că le dau o bere pentru ajutor, dar cred mai bine că le mulţumesc în felul ăsta. Mă înclin, vorba unui domn de la TV.

Coolhunting

09-04-10 / Otilia

Coolhunting

În contextul intensificării eforturilor de comunicare canalizate către diversele publicuri, din ce în ce mai mulţi specialişti în promovare cultivă provocarea de a descoperi şi (re)inventa surse de inspiraţie pentru activitatea de zi cu zi.

Acesta este, în linii mari, fondul pe care a apărut termenul coolhunting, o creaţie de sorginte americană lansată în anii ‘90 de către coolhunter-i. Este vorba despre un grup de profesionişti în marketing a căror sarcină constă în efectuarea de observaţii şi predicţii asupra trend-urilor culturale prezente şi viitoare. Lesne de înţeles, termenul derivă din zonă estetică, unde “cool” înseamnă frumos, la modă, în tendinţe

Ce face un coolhunter? Adună informaţii din diverse surse, predilecte fiind adolescenţii şi tinerii – “generaţia încăpăţânată”, care nu reacţionează la eforturile clasice de comunicare publicitară şi pentru care, inevitabil, se impune aplicarea unor tehnici alternative.

Dacă termenul vă sună cunoscut şi/sau intenţionaţi să aflaţi mai multe informaţii, veţi găsi mai jos câteva surse relevante:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cool_hunting

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/cool/etc/hunting.html

http://www.gladwell.com/1997/1997_03_17_a_cool.htm

http://www.macslater.com.au/

Ain’t that cool to be a coolhunter?! J

Dana a invins in lupta cu cancerul

25-02-10 / Octav

Dana

Astazi Dana a invins in lupta cu cancerul: operatia a reusit, medicii sunt multumiti (au reusit sa scoata tumora din organism) iar prognozele sunt bune. Noi abia asteptam sa o vedem. Multumim tuturor celor care au dat o mana de ajutor: datorita voua am reusit sa strangem intr-o singura saptamana cei 50.000 de euro necesari  pentru operatia de care avea nevoie si care i-a salvat viata.

Vom reveni cat de curand cu vesti noi!

Stereoscopic history, at the beginning (Part I)

06-01-10 / Anton

The beginning, well you can say that the beginning of stereoscopy dates back to about the 300th year B.C. (hard to say exactly when) when the Greek mathematician Euclid found out how we humans achieve the depth perception of the world around us. His findings revealed that the depth we perceive is being achieved by our eyes simultaneously receiving two almost exact images, but with a little bit of difference in the perspective. But this was just the beginning, understanding how our eyes work, then during the Renaissance there was also a lot of development about the illusion of depth and how it can be achieved with the help of drawings and paintings. But until the year 1838-39 and the work of the English scientist Charles Wheatstone you can say that things were developing quite slowly, as then he patented and demonstrated his work in the stereoscopic 3D field. Wheatstone has started working a few years before that on a device that he called a reflecting stereoscope or just a stereoscope – a device that allowed two different drawings to be simultaneously viewed by each eye and thus the illusion of real depth was being achieved. Back at that time they still used two drawings with a little bit different perspective and two mirrors to reflect them and position the two images so that the viewer can simultaneously see them.

old-s3d-camera-anaglyph

Some years later, still in the 19-th century, the stereoscope was further developed and with the photography starting to gain a lot of interest among the general public, the first stereoscopic cameras were being made. Around 1850 was the first period in time when the stereoscopic photography has gained a lot of interest and thanks to that a lot of people had stereoscopes to view such photographs at home. Around that time the anaglyph stereoscopic process has also been discovered and in the 1850s the first anaglyph images and anaglyph glasses (red-green filters at first) using different color filters were developed. And you probably thought that the anaglyph stereoscopic 3D is a fairly new technology? We skip a few more years in the history until the 1890s when the interest in stereoscopy has yet again started to boom thanks to the appearance of the first anaglyphic stereo 3D movies (black and white of course, yet too early for color) and that has continued into the early 20th century. The next big moment for stereoscopy, we are still talking about movies as they were the main driving force for stereoscopic development at that time, was in 1950s. New and improved stereoscopic cameras were being developed for stereo photography at that time, and the first solutions using polarization filters (thank Polaroid for that) allowed full color reproduction with depth perception, thus becoming the preferred method, instead of using the older anaglyph method (still anaglyph did not die). Then another comeback in the 80s and with IMAX introducing its first 3D system things for stereoscopic 3D yet again started to heat up, but still not a lot of hit movies were produced in stereoscopic format which was a serious problem.

You can say that the next big thing about stereoscopic 3D started in the mid 90s of the 20th century, a time when personal computers started to get a lot of attention especially for gaming and the 3D graphics they offered was getting better and better. Back at that time everyone was talking about virtual reality and there were some companies interested in making stereoscopic 3D games, allowing the games to actually have the perception of true depth while they play. This however proved to be a hard task for everyone, but things started to change at the end of 1998, when a company called Metabyte has announced their first stereoscopic 3D gaming solution called Wicked3D. What they did was to provide not only a hardware in the form of active shutter glasses (allowing the user to see different frames with each of the eyes), but also to release an universal so to say driver that could turn hundreds of normal 3D games into stereoscopic 3D games. Prior to that every game developer had to work out some sort of a stereoscopic 3D support for his own game and with the Wicked3D that was no longer needed. Originally all 3D games do have all the needed information for being displayed in stereoscopic 3D, as there is all the needed depth information, what was lacking was the software that will allow the graphics in the game to be rendered twice with a little difference in the perspective so that when perceived by the user the depth effect will be present. At that time you had to use CRT display with a high refresh rate, because by using active shutter glasses you to have to show twice as much frames on the screen as you’d normally do and the job of the glasses is to separate them for each eye. A monitor capable of at least 85Hz, preferably 100Hz was required in order to have 40-50 frames per eye with no noticeable flickering as this is a side effect when quickly making one lens of the glasses dark and then switching it to the other. This is the exact principle that the shutter glasses use in order to achieve stereoscopic 3D depth effect with a single display and not with two separate small displays as most advanced head mounted display solutions use. The things continued to develop further three years later when NVIDIA has developed a serious interest into stereoscopic 3D gaming and has acquired the team responsible for Wicked3D at Metabyte. But we’ll talk about NVIDIA and what happened in the lets say last 10 years of quite active stereoscopic 3D development in the next article when we continue the stereoscopic story…

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