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.

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.

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.

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….

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 .

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 .

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.

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

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!

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…

Dacă în trecut reclamele prezentau consumatori absolut fascinaţi de experienţa cu un anumit produs, chiar dacă realitatea era alta, noile norme îi obligă pe publicitari să comunice adevaratele efecte pe care consumatorii le pot aştepta de la diverse produse.

De asemenea, vor trebui publicate “legăturile materiale” dintre publicitari şi endorser-i – legături la care consumatorii nu s-ar aştepta.  Referire directă la blogger-i sau la alte categorii de persoane care generează word-of-mouth în interes comercial. Prin urmare,  post-ul unui blogger care primeşte bani, produse ori alte beneficii materiale pentru a-l realiza va fi considerat reclamă.

În mod similar, o companie care prezintă într-o reclamă rezultatele unei cercetări sponsorizate va trebui să precizeze în acelaşi material legatura comercială cu firma care a efectuat cercetarea.

Nici celebrităţile nu au fost ocolite de incidenţa noilor reglementări. De la 1 decembrie, VIP-urile vor da socoteală pentru afirmaţiile false sau înşelătoare comunicate în cadrul reclamelor, precum şi pentru omiterea informaţiilor legate de conexiunile de ordin material pe care le-au stabilit cu publicitarii. Decizia se aplică şi în afara tiparelor publicitare clasice, aşa cum sunt talk-show-urile sau interacţiunea prin intermediul reţelelor sociale.

Sunt nerăbdătoare să văd noile producţii publicitare de peste ocean. Nu-mi pot imagina decat un text de disclaimer în stilul celor pentru medicamente. “Aceasta este o reclama pentru care protagonistul a primit 100.000 de dolari”  rostit pe fast-forward astfel încât să numărăm o serie minimă de zerouri.

În echipă de doi, am aterizat în ziua premergătoare deschiderii oficiale a târgului, la conferinţa PlayStation de la E-Werk, o sală foarte cool pentru o întâlnire la nivel înalt cu jurnalişti de gaming din toate ţările jocuri-pe-console-friendly. Echipa de PR PlayStation din Londra ne-a dat gata, adunând peste 500 de entuziaşti din presa mondială, într-un singur loc, plus oficiali din mai toată lumea.

Varianta europeană a E3-ului american, Gamescom-ul de anul acesta a numărat peste 245.000 devizitatori, în 284.000 de m2 de expoziţie, în Koelnmesse. Numai “standul” PlayStation – zic stand între ghilimele pentru că PlayStation a avut 6 zone de interacţiune cu publicul, din aproximaţiile noastre 5.000 de m2 în total – a atras un număr impresionant de vizitatori, de peste tot. În cele trei zile de perindări pe la cele aproape 60 de standuri ale companiilor, zona PlayStation s-a remarcat de la depărtare ca cea mai animată: mai mult de 50 de tineri promoteri întreţineau atmosfera – atât în prima zi, cu cei 4.000 de reprezentanţi ai presei, cât şi în restul zilelor, când era practic imposibil să prinzi un loc în scaunul şoferilor de Gran Turismo.

PS3 Slim, în premieră, PSP-uri colorate, PSP Go – au fost integrate în sute de soluţii demo, nu doar în zona PlayStation, ci şi la standurile dezvoltatorilor.

Formatul nou de expoziţie a adoptat o abordare mai altfel a evenimentului faţă de ediţiile trecute ale târgului de la Lepizig (de fapt acum la Koln este vorba de un eveniment cu totul nou, în principal datorită organizatorilor şi locului de desfăşurare). Se pare că în Leipzig numai jocurile online îşi vor găsi spaţiu de prezentare pe viitor.

Koln-ul a fost, pe durata evenimentului, “vopsit” în culorile Gamescom-ului, întămpinând vizitatorii cu scene de concert, cu programe de petrecere a timpului, cu bere multă şi wurşti la discreţie. Şi bonus din partea oraşului, ghid turistic la preţ de o plimbare de 10 euro cu taxiul.

Dar de ce? Şi unde şi-ar găsi locul relaţiile publice în acest context? Că persoanele angajate în interacţiunea socială facilitată de platforma 2.0 creează o audienţă importantă pentru companii nu mai trebuie demonstrat. Ar trebui stabilit, mai degrabă, care sunt cerinţele şi nevoile publicului şi apoi care ar trebui să fie abordarea companiilor. Deirdre Breakenridge, unul dintre iniţiatorii noii abordări în relaţii publice, identifică care sunt pretenţiile publicului în spaţiul web 2.0 (în una dintre primele lucrări dedicate domeniului – “PR 2.0:New Media, New Tools, New Audiences”, FT Press, 2008, p. 190):

• Comunicare directă din partea brandului
• Să aibă acces rapid si facil la orice informaţie legata de brand, produse sau servicii
• Să poată pune întrebări despre produse si/sau servicii
• Să primească rapid un răspuns atunci când are o nedumerire, întrebare
• Să cunoască poziţia companiei pe anumite chestiuni care privesc industria în care îşi desfăşoară activitatea
• Să poată avea încredere în oamenii din spatele brandului
• Să poate iniţia si să poată avea controlul conversaţiei
• Să vadă ce păreri au alţi oameni despre companie, produsele sau serviciile ei
• Să interacţioneze cu oameni care împărtăşesc aceleaşi puncte de vedere
• Să distribuie/împărtăşească informaţiile cu alţii – foto, video, podcast, bloguri
• Să discute pe o varietate de subiecte (filme, literatură, arta, tehnologie) în comunităţile în care activează
• Să contribuie cu informaţii si să creeze conţinut

De modul cum audienţa interacţionează şi pretinde informaţii depinde şi rolul relaţiilor publice. În acest context, relaţiile publice ar trebui să formuleze abordarea potrivită şi să se angajeze în interacţiune pe picior de egalitate cu audienţa.