A u d i o [ By: N i c k ] . com

In this video spliced together by AllThingsD, you’ll see Steve Jobs and Andy Rubin talk about location privacy and their platform’s philosophy on privacy. It’s very interesting to look back on these interviews given what has happened given the iSpy conspiracy. More »

Convergence! Its the best, right? My phone replaced my camera, GPS, and the need to throw birds at pigs in real life. Ditching superfluous gear is great. Photosmith will lighten your photographic load, iPad-loading pics straight from your camera. More »

Looks like Verizon is going to roll out 4G services to 30 NFL-bound cities before the end of 2010.  Lucky Verizon football fans

More here… http://wwwery.com/8020-verizon-4g-lte-service-30-u-s-cities-by-end-of-2010-elsewhere-2013.html

Nokia and its mapping division Navteq are developing a rival to Street View, one that offers full three-dimensional computer models of villages, towns and cities, and could one day allow those urban centers to form the backdrop to realistic games.

Street View (pictured) was launched in 2007 and has transformed online mapping by providing panoramic views from many of the world’s streets. But although it nods towards the third dimension, Street View falls short of a true 3D experience, says Ville-Veikko Mattila at the Nokia Research Centre in Tampere, Finland.

Street View presents the viewer with a series of 2D panoramic photos. “What we’re developing is a full 3D rendering of our locations and environments,” says Mattila. “That’s a big difference.”

Objects rendered in Nokia’s system will resemble their 3D originals better than they do in Street View, says Mattila. But perhaps the most noticeable way in which Nokia’s service will differ from Google’s is that users will be able to move smoothly through urban environments, almost as if they were in a photorealistic driving game, suggesting the firm could license its 3D cityscapes to games companies that want cheap but realistic 3D urban models. Navigating through Google Street View, by contrast, simply involves hopping between panoramas photographed from a series of set locations.

The accurate 3D rendering of buildings in the new system will make it easy to generate a set of 3D coordinates for a particular building, or even a particular floor in an office building occupied by a business – information that could help companies augment the virtual world with location-specific adverts, says Nokia.

Nokia’s proposed service relies on two technologies: one to construct a virtual cityscape, the other to clothe it in images taken from life. The 3D models that make up virtual streets and buildings are built with data from Navteq’s nascent Journey View system, a dataset of mapping measurements made by the laser-radar technique known as lidar. These models are then decorated by City Scene, software written by Mattila’s group that projects and accurately stitches photographs onto the 3D cityscape.

Navteq already uses GPS-equipped cars to create digital maps of the world’s roads, which it sells to satnav makers like Garmin. But in November a new type of Navteq car will take to the roads: the Truecar. “As well as higher-resolution panoramic cameras, the Truecars will also include laser radar,” says a Navteq spokesman. “The cars will be coming to London in November and then major cities around Europe, and the data will turn up in navigation products in 2011.”

It remains to be seen whether Truecars are viewed any more favourably than Google’s camera-equipped cars have been.

The Truecar data could go into a variety of navigation products, says Robert Hanke of Navteq’s office in Berlin, Germany. Satnav makers may integrate the virtual environments into their in-car devices to allow users to preview a journey before they set off. Because Nokia’s maps are based on real 3D measurements, the technology could accurately highlight the height of obstacles, such as low bridges, that might require some vehicles to take a detour.

Google also acquired lidar data as its cars swept through our streets – the information is used in Google Maps Mobile to correct the exaggerated angles between buildings when a Street View panoramic photo is rendered on a small screen.

The search giant declined to comment when asked if it, too, plans to use its lidar data to construct 3D models of towns and cities. Nevertheless, Google says it welcomes Nokia’s move into 3D mapping. “The more products and services that exist, the greater the rate of innovation, which ultimately benefits consumers and provides them with even greater choice,” a Google spokesperson told New Scientist.

Navteq’s Journey View dataset will also lead to a range of novel 3D location and navigation applications over and above Street View, predicts Tony King-Smith, a vice-president of UK-based Imagination Technologies, which designs the powerful graphics processors in iPhones and many other smartphones.

At the Future World Symposium in London yesterday, King-Smith demonstrated one such work-in-progress application to New Scientist: an iPhone 4 app written by French software house Visio Globe which overlaid high-resolution computer graphics – rather than photographs – onto the Journey View lidar data to create a convincing 3D fly-through model of Singapore. The smooth motion promised by Nokia was readily apparent, even on a phone.

“Location-based services are going to become incredibly rich and broad,” says King-Smith. “Navteq’s 3D technology will help drive some next-generation apps that look like being fun and engaging, and also very useful.”

Mattila demonstrated an early version of the Street View rival at Nokia World in London this week.

New Scientist reports, explores and interprets the results of human endeavour set in the context of society and culture, providing comprehensive coverage of science and technology news.

If we all start reading ebooks instead of plain ol’ printed books, then we’ll one day find ourselves wondering what to do with our old non-digital tomes. Not this man though, because he already knows what we’ll do and got a head start.

Unlike that guy though, I think I’ll turn some of my books into a pedestal for my iPad before I start working on a desk. [Recycle Art via Boing Boing]

So this past July, Duane Woods, James Maras, and myself from Pyramix Studios, worked with seven really talented musicians in a band dubbed, “Captain Squeegee” (http://www.captainsqueegee.com). This group of guys are able to conjure up some crazy and progressive music for the soul! As we were working on the production of “Your Own Invention” I asked them what they would classify their music as, GENREly speaking (hehe)… Danny says that that he always explains to people that they are a “metaphysical ska-rock band with horns!” Think Queen and the Blues Brothers… I know right? Danny Torgerson is the mastermind behind this single, along with most of Captain Squeegee’s music. But don’t let that statement devalue the importance of the rest of the guys! Most of the instrumentalists in this ska-rock septet are MULTI-instrumentalists, and when I say they play multiple instruments, they are well versed and fluent on several instrumental platforms! I could go on and on for days about these guys, because not only are they talented, but their message is cryptic in many ways, and the more you listen to it the more you start to hear, and understand. So, if you’re tired of all of these half-bit poser metaphysical ska-rock bands out there, maybe it’s time that you take a trip over to Captain Squeegee’s website.

If that’s not enough, they were recently recognized by the Phoenix New Times in this short blog article.

This article was released only HOURS after the release of their “making of” documentary video, produced by Sean Oliver and Danny Torgerson from III Productions and can be watched here or below this post as you are reading this

If you have not yet heard the final release of “Your Own Invention” you can download your free copy from their official download site here.

Well, the time has come folks! I decided to make the move back to Arizona in search for the valleys most talented, and driven musicians! I’ve teamed up with a recording studio along with with some fun and talented guys at Pyramix Studios in Glendale, AZ. Pyramix is in the Northwest Phoenix Metropolitan area. It’s a very unique environment which I think just about any artist or musician could appreciate. I’ll be updating this post with progress reports as time passes.

Until then check out: Http://www.pyramixstudios.com