The hype around Virtual Reality has been building steadily, hitting a new highs this week after Facebook’s earnings report. We’ll take a look back at the previous VR boom of the early 90s & ask if history is repeating itself.
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The World’s Email Encryption Software Relies on One Guy, Who is Going Broke – ProPublica
The man who built the free email encryption software used by whistleblower Edward Snowden, as well as hundreds of thousands of journalists, dissidents and security-minded people around the world, is running out of money to keep his project alive.
Werner Koch wrote the software, known as Gnu Privacy Guard, in 1997, and since then has been almost single-handedly keeping it alive with patches and updates from his home in Erkrath, Germany. Now 53, he is running out of money and patience with being underfunded.
Update, Feb. 5, 2015, 8:10 p.m.: After this article appeared, Werner Koch informed us that last week he was awarded a one-time grant of $60,000 from Linux Foundation’s Core Infrastructure Initiative. Werner told us he only received permission to disclose it after our article published. Meanwhile, since our story was posted, donations flooded Werner’s website donation page and he reached his funding goal of $137,000. In addition, Facebook and the online payment processor Stripe each pledged to donate $50,000 a year to Koch’s project.
Late last year, Keurig announced a new machine, the 2.0, calling it the “future of brewing” and touting its ability to make both small cups and large carafes. But another, less-publicized feature has been getting most of the attention: the brewer’s advanced scanning system that locks out any coffee pods not bearing a special mark. It’s essentially a digital rights management system, but for coffee, and it’s proving to be the brewer’s downfall.
On an _earnings call Wednesday_the company announced that brewer sales fell 12 percent last quarter, the first full quarter for which the 2.0 was on sale. “Quite simply our 2.0 launch got off to a slower start than we planned,” said CEO Brian Kelley. _He said_the company had been too slow to get 2.0-compatible cups onto retail shelves and “confusion among consumers as to whether the 2.0 would still brew all of their favorite brands.”
2 New Samsung Gear VR Ads Introduce VR to the Masses (video)
The ad uses actual content from the Gear VR headset which is a smart choice, though, curiously, no games are featured. Instead, the ad focuses on 360 video—clips from a helicopter over a city, elephants roaming in their natural habitat, a CGI Pacific Rim experience, and a moment from Cirque du Soleil.
What Facebook’s Oculus Rift movies means for ads | The Drum
Facebook is out to prove that virtual reality is more real than its detractors think, erecting an in-house studio to create fully immersive films on its Oculus Rift platform. If the medium is to be widely accepted by advertisers then the social network needs to show how the learnings can convey a more tangible form of the brand experience.
Virtual Reality : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive
Virtual reality started out as a science fiction concept in the early 1950s. Now, VR has become a kind of holy grail – lots of promises and claims, few results delivered. This program looks at the state of virtual reality. Demonstrations include the Talking Glove, AutoDesk’s Cyberspace project, the Virtual Hand, GestureGlove, CyberGlove, CyberCAD, Virtus Corporation’s WalkThrough. Also a visit to the Virtual Reality Showcase at the Software Development Conference in Santa Clara, California. Originally broadcast in 1992.