Tuesday, April 29, 2003

Possibly new idea department: in my next column I mention the idea of integrating a laser pointer with a camera or lens's nodal point, so that when you want to shoot a panorama, the laser light is activated -- and illuminates the center of rotation point on the ground. In the uber-version, the laser is a rangefinder which gives you continual feedback on what elevation to hold the camera steady at. There might be less need for a bubble level as well (if the beam was guaranteed to always point perpendicular to the central barrel of the lens). Two side-effects of this "laserpod": if you are not careful, you get new air conditioning portholes installed in your shoes; and passersby might be very impressed or curious about a camera that shoots a laser into the ground to operate. I don't know if this is a new idea. In a way, it is a high-tech derivation of the "Philopod". 9:00:00 PM

Apple's QuickTime v6.2 and iTunes 4 contains a Digital Rights Management (DRM) layer, which implements the modest restrictions (compared to the music company subscription systems) on re-recording/playback of downloaded songs. There's almost no information on Apple's DRM out there (yet). I'm curious if it could be used to manage VR content. 6:30:38 AM

Here's a multimedia player I never heard of: VLC. Runs on an amazing number of platforms, but unclear if it can play back VRs. Update: a reader reports that it cannot play VRs. 6:00:00 AM

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