Revision3 Blog: tekzilla tag

It’s dueling launchpad show week here in California, with the venerable Demo show rolling out a fall slate of nearly 100 cool new companies here in San Diego, while another group are on display in San Francisco’s aging Design Center at the Tech Crunch 50.

Revision3’s David Prager is covering TC50, while I’ve been scouring the floor of Demo. David’s update will be up soon, but here’s my look at the best of Demo.

RealDVD: Although the geeks among us have been ripping DVDs into our computers for years (albeit illegally since the DMCA passed), it’s never been as easy as digitizing music. Not anymore. RealNetworks (the company that brought you RealAudio) showed its RealDVD software here for the first time. Using it is as simple as inserting a DVD into your PC – it’s designed to store all your DVDs on either an internal or external hard drive, and includes an easy-to-navigate interface to let you easily find and watch a movie.

How can they do it without breaking the law? Do they have the implied or explicit endorsement of the movie world? To the latter, the answer is no: they just informed the powers that be about the product a few weeks ago and are “working through the issues”. As for the former question, Real claims they are on solid ground. RealDVD does not break encryption. Instead, it creates a complete ISO – or disc image – of the movie DVD, and stores that file on your hard drive. It’s essentially a legal piece of DVD playback software, but instead of streaming the bits off of a plastic platter, it streams them off of your PC’s hard drive.

I can’t imagine that Netflix or Blockbuster will be too happy about this solution, as the $20 piece of software lets anyone with enough disk space copy rented DVDs along with store bought ones. And the required disk space is enormous – at 9 gigabytes for modern dual-layer DVDs.

It’s also a PC-only, and a single computer solution. It’s not designed to be shared across multiple systems. Want to share? Store the DVD ISOs on a USB flash/hard drive, and then plug it into different computers. You’ll have to pay $20 for each machine, though, in that scenario. Speaking of hardware, the company is talking with NAS vendors, like Drobo, to build DVD ripping appliances. It’s a brilliant, albeit shocking development that’ll definitely be controversial. But at just $20, it’s certainly alluring.

Imagine a Kindle, stretched out to 8×11, slimmed down to the thickness of a newspaper, with a full-sized screen stretching from corner to corner. That’s what Plastic Logic plans to release in early 2009. It uses the same digital ink display found on the Kindle and Sony’s reader, but sized up to the dimensions of a standard magazine. The device should cost about as much as a Kindle, should store as many pages, includes built in wireless (although they were cagey about EVDO vs WiFi) and will last for days on a single battery charge. It’s far closer to electronic paper than anything I’ve seen. It’s annotatable, which makes it ideal for textbooks, business documents, and reading magazines and journals. It’s all plastic, so it ought to be relatively rugged as well. I want one!

EchoNest: Run by ex professional drummer and reformed lawyer Jim Luccchesi, this company provides audio pattern matching software for developers that make it easy to roll your own Pandora, and build all sorts of creative audio weblets. The company showed off an applet it built for iMeem that plays a lengthy list of “more like this” songs, and even demonstrated an eerie “duet” feature, where they combined Michael Jackson and Estelle to produce a weird, mostly unlistenable mashup of two of their songs that was surprisingly note and key pure. The company also has a more cowbell example on their website that adds cowbells to, well, just about any song. Definitely worth playing with!

WebDiet: Want to lose weight? Eat better? Here’s a cool new web service that installs on your iPhone (or other smartphone), and helps you keep track of everything you eat. It uses GPS to find healthy restaurants,and will even recommend smart dining choices at your favorite eatery, depending on what you like, and what you’ve already eaten that day.  WebDiet will be out soon, although you can apply for the private beta today.

Maverick Secure Mobile:  The motto of this company:  “Payback’s a Bitch”, or maybe “To Annoy a Thief”.  For a dollar a month, these guys ensure that if your cellphone gets stolen, the thief will get the worse end of the deal.  Here’s how it works:

Load the Maverick Mobile software on your phone, and pay the company a dollar a month.  When it gets stolen, the fun begins. From your new phone (or a friends), you can remotely trigger your old phone to send you everything that happens on it: who it calls, what text messages are sent and received - you can even download the complete address book.  Tired of spying?  then simply send a “stop thief” alert to the phone, and it’ll display a bright red “stolen phone” screen, and play an incredibly loud and annoying siren sound through the speaker.  The only way to reset it is to remove the battery - but you can do it again, and again, and again.  You may not get your phone back, but at least you’ll have the satisfaction of really annoying the thief.

FFWD:  If you’re a fan of Revision3, you know that it’s often hard to find other web video shows that you like.  There were a few discovery engines rolled out at Demo, but FFWD was clearly the best - and the only one designed specifically for the new world of internet video.

OK, maybe I was biased - when the company demonstrated FFWD on stage, a SYSTM logo appeared on the home page.  And as I was using the software, Diggnation, Wine Library Reserve and Internet Superstar kept popping up too.  But this is a great tool for finding, watching and sharing all the great Internet video out there, including shows from Revision3 and elsewhere.    You can start using it today!

TikiTag:  Oh, one bonus - near field communications tags that cost about a dollar each and let you turn anything into an internet connected device.  Roll your own Webkins with Tikitag!

UPDATE - Unfortunately, we’re going to have to reschedule tomorrow’s live streaming from the Revision3 studio during Tekzilla’s taping. We apologize for the short notice - the new date will be next week, July 1st 2008 at 5:30 PM Eastern/2:30 PM Pacific. We hope you all can join us next week. thanks.

One of the exciting things about Revision3 is the opportunity to do ground breaking and innovative things in the world of Internet Television and we’re psyched to to be challenging ourselves to do this day-in-and-day-out and today, we’ve got something very cool we hope you all will take part in.

As you know, we’ve built a state of the art studio ideal for for our needs in producing great shows like Tekzilla. The wizards in our engineering department have recently made it possible for us to stream live from the studio and we thought what would be cooler than inviting you all into the studio, virtually, to watch a taping of Tekzilla?

Mark your calendars - June 24, 2008 at 5:30 PM (eastern), Veronica Belmont, Patrick Norton and the rest of the Tekzilla crew will be taping the episode of Tekzilla which will be released on June 27th and you’re invited to come watch! Just go to revision3.com/watch to tune into the live stream and chat with other Tekzilla fans. Who knows, maybe Patrick and Veronica will take a break from the show and jump into the chatroom too! When we’re live, anything can happen!

Now, this won’t be a live run through of Tekzilla, rather the raw taping of the show which is then edited into the show that comes out on Fridays, so there will be lots of unfiltered moments behind the scenes. The entire taping will last a few hours, so plan to stick around if you can. I know Patrick and Veronica are excited to share this taping experience with all of you, so we hope you will join us on June 24th!

The Webby awards have been around for a long time, not as long as the Internet, but long enough. In fact, this year is the 12th year for the celebrated Internet awards. You can imagine how excited we were to hear that not only were we nominated/honored once, but three times!

Diggnation was nominated in the Online Film & Video > Technology category and the Totally Rad Show was nominated in the Online Film & Video > Variety category. In addition to that, Tekzilla was an honoree in the Online Film & Video > Technology category.

Of course what fun would be these awards be if you couldn’t get involved? Luckily you can!. Just head over to the Webby’s People Voice site and you can let your voice be heard. Voting is so much fun, don’t stop just at voting, but be sure to tell your friends to go vote!

We’re honored to be nominated and we’d be even more honored if you would take the time to vote for us. Best of luck to all the other nominees and we look forward to seeing who wins!

thanks.

Great news, world! I’m very pleased to announce that Veronica Belmont has joined the Revision3 family as Patrick Norton’s co-host on our tech-centric show Tekzilla, and we couldn’t be happier to have her on board.

Not only does Veronica fit in well here because she’s got the brains (oh, the brains!), but she’s just an all-around cool person, too. We’re honored to have her with us, and I hope you’ll join me in welcoming her to the Revision3 team.

Check out the official press release on Tekzilla’s latest great addition here.

This is shaping up to be a great April, everyone!

-Sarah

photo credit: lanbui.com

San Francisco, CA — Revision3 Corporation, the TV Network for the Internet generation, has announced today that they will be participating in breakthrough experiments to do science and other cool stuff.

“Here at Revision3, we have always taken a keen interest in science, and all the great stuff it’s given us over the years- everything from these cool computers we use for making our videos, to its vaunted ability to blind Thomas Dolby,” says Revision3 CTO Jeff Rizzo. “We wanted to find a way to give back to a scientific community that has given us so much occasionally-useful crap.”

When the technical department of Revision3 heard of the groundbreaking research of the Brain Information Group of the Kansai Advanced Research Center in Japan into the effects of wearing perception-altering goggles for extended periods of time, Rizzo knew that they had an opportunity to contribute to Science. “Since we have videos, people have to see them in order to view, and by altering our videos, we’ve altered people’s perception of these videos. We can clearly do good science, except for the whole part about having degrees, and laboratories, and scientific training. This science thing is neat!” Look around the Revision3 Website today, particularly the videos, for clues how you can participate.

What does the future hold for this new “Science and Stuff” initiative at the pioneering company? Rizzo says, “The Koreans have some pretty advanced glow-in-the-dark cat technology that we could conceivably extend to provide some interesting mods for Systm, for example. The world is our oyster, and we at Revision3 have never let little things like training or talent stand in the way of getting what we want.”

Hey, I’m Damon Berger, the Director of Business Development here at Revision3, and this is the first blog post of many I will write talking about all of the different ways that you can watch Revision3 shows. Our biggest goal is to put the power in your hands, giving you as many options as possible for you to experience your favorite Revision3 shows. We’re all about spreading the love..in a totally disease-free kind of way.

We are very excited to announce the latest and greatest way to watch Revision3–the downloadable Miro player! By clicking here you can download the Revision3 Miro player, which automatically downloads all your Revision3 shows and keeps you up to date every time a new episode or show is released. It even comes with the coolest desktop icon ever made. Check it out and let us know what you think!

- Damon Berger

One of the great things I enjoy about working at Revision3 is the feedback we get from the audience. Be it our shows, the website or anything in general, our audience always has great feedback, both positive and negative. We spend a lot of time reviewing that feedback and try to utilize it when making decisions about what to work on.

Many of you have been enjoying the daily editions of Tekzilla, Internet Superstar, and the new daily videos of iFanboy and have been outspoken about the fact that the daily episodes were included in the feed for the show. Some of you love it, getting Patrick Norton and the Tekzilla fix on a daily basis is exactly what you want. While others of you hated it, that you didn’t like having to download every episode of Lil’ Internet Superstar, just to get to the big Internet Superstar show. Believe it or not, we got some very vocal feedback from both sides of the topic.

So after a lot of work and a few heated meetings at Revision3 HQ, we’ve rolled out our updated solution for everyone to be able to get the shows they want, how they want them. Now when you’re on the page for a show, like Tekzilla, click on “Subscription Options” and you’ll see we’ve created individual feeds for the following:

• Combined Feeds - get both daily episodes and weekly episodes in one feed
• Daily Feeds - if you would like to subscribe to daily episodes separately
• Weekly Feeds - If you would like just the longer/weekly show

So now, you can pick the kind of feed you’d like and have the shows delivered when and how you prefer! If you’d like to change your subscription preference, you’ll just have to unsubscribe from your current RSS feed and re-subscribe with one of the feeds available on the site.

We’ve also made it easier to distinguish the daily episodes from the weekly episodes as we’ve added the daily episodes to the previous episodes listings for each show. We’ve also enabled filtering when browsing the previous episodes, so you can find the episodes you want.

Now this change only affects our shows with daily episodes, so other shows like Diggnation and popSiren, nothing changes for them, just continue watching and enjoying as you have.

We hope you enjoy this simple, yet impactful (so we think) change to our feeds and please keep the feedback coming. Comment here or in the forums and feel free to email us at support AT revision3 DOT com.

thanks.

With the launch of our 13th weekly show (popSiren), along with our two daily showlets (Tekzilla Daily and Lil’ Internet Superstar), we’re pumping out more than eight hours of quality entertainment and information each week.

For those of you out there watching it all, I love you to death, but you can stop reading now. This announcement is not for you. But for everyone else who might have one or two favorite programs, and always wanted to watch more, I’m happy to announce a cool new feature here at Revision3.

It’s called “Best of..” and it’s our very own collection of the best clips from each of our shows. Every day we’ll be selecting the choicest segments from the previous day’s releases, and putting them into a special place here at Revision3.com. Even better, you can also subscribe to our Best Of just as if it were an actual show. That way you’ll automatically get our best clips delivered to your PC, your AppleTV, your Zune, or really anywhere.

There’s always something cool and new in our Best Of.. area here on the web, so make sure you stop back every day. And if you find something you really like, then watch the whole show. And don’t forget to subscribe to the ones that really catch your fancy, then you’ll never miss a single episode.

– Jim Louderback

At Revision3, we believe that you should be able to watch our great programming on any device, anywhere, at any time. Today I’m proud to announce that we’ve finally delivered on the promise: you can now watch our shows on your mobile phone, along with iPods, Zunes, computers and TVs.

Through our landmark deal with Transpera, not only can you stream and download shows (network and device permitting), you can share them with a friend’s phone too.

While, our new mobile site works with every mobile provider, it may not work with every phone. Most smartphones and the iPhone are supported. You’ll also need some sort of high-speed data plan, because we are talking video, after all.

Head here for more details on our new mobilized Transpera site. If you want to check it out yourself, point your phone to http://m.revision3.com/.

Just a few words on Transpera: This is a very cool company. They are really breaking new ground in mobile deliver of video, and we couldn’t have found a better partner to mobilize Revision3 video. Enjoy the service, and let us know how it works for you. Remember that we’re just at the beginning of the mobile video revolution, so you might see a hiccup or two here and there.

– Jim Louderback

OK, let’s cut right to the chase: I’m pleased to announce the launch of our newest show here on Revision3, popSiren!

Sitting at the intersection of culture, science, technology and lifehacks, popSiren presents a decidedly personal view of the world we’re all living in. Inside you’ll learn how to make amazing new things, pick up tips for optimizing your daily grind, discover new technologies and websites that will make you more efficient, and be fascinated by the amazing world around us. It’s a heady, exciting, and ultimately practical immersion into the worlds of science, the web, technology and DIY projects.

But I’m even more excited about the amazing collection of experts who will be sharing their passions with you. popSiren signals the return of Sarah Lane to regular show hosting – she’ll be uncovering useful new internet sites and services, along with co-hosting the show with Revision3 fixture Jessica Corbin. But even though getting Sarah and Jessica to host popSiren is epic, I’m even more excited about the addition of Dr. Kirsten Sanford to popSiren and Revision3. I’ve been a fan of Kirsten’s audio podcast, This Week in Science, for ages, and I’ve been equally entranced with her show Food Science. So I’m overjoyed to announce that she’ll be bringing her passion, genius and engaging personality to Revision3, via a weekly segment called Rad Science.

Neha Tiwari and Heather Frank round out our star-studded lineup. Neha’s our resident geek, and will bring the show a collection of DIY projects, cool gear, and basic nerdiness. Heather Frank, who also produces the show, will be contributing a weekly segment from the fringe.

Along with our five popSirens, expect a steady stream of amazing guests, bringing you practical advice on getting more out of life, both in webspace and in meatspace. Our first guest, Jen Trolio, comes from the amazing magazine ReadyMade, and she shows us how to make stationary and envelopes out of your favorite comics.

WOW. I know you’re going to love this show! Give it a watch, and let me know what you think. The first episode debuts today, Monday March 10th. Even better, you’ll get a new episode on Thursday – and another new one every Thursday from now on.

Welcome popSirens! We couldn’t be happier to have you join our stellar Revision3 show lineup!

– Jim Louderback