Posts Tagged ‘Disney’

Eisner gets behind into cinema with Universal deal

Tuesday, November 13th, 2012

LOS ANGELES —

Former Disney CEO Michael Eisner is removing behind in a film business.

The 70-year-old pronounced Tuesday that a media association he founded, The Tornante Company, will financial films that will be distributed by Comcast Corp.’s Universal Pictures.

The placement understanding will expected assistance Tornante lift outward financing.

There is no set series of films in a multi-year deal. Universal has identical arrangements with several prolongation companies, including writer Joel Silver’s Silver Pictures. This year, those arrangements resulted in only one film, “Pitch Perfect,” that came out in Sep and grossed $62.6 million worldwide.

Eisner built a repute during Disney, and during Paramount Pictures before that, for subsidy mid-budget films with tangible actors and well-written scripts such as “Terms of Endearment” (1983), “Saturday Night Fever” (1977) and “Ruthless People” (1986).

He was CEO of The Walt Disney Co. from 1984 to 2005.

“Michael Eisner has been a absolute artistic force behind some of a world’s biggest films and we’re assured that with Tornante, he’ll continue that tradition,” pronounced Universal’s co-chairs, Adam Fogelson and Donna Langley, in a statement.

Another Eisner company, Vuguru, has done shows for audiences online and overseas, including “The Booth during a End,” a play about a puzzling wish-granting male who sits in a diner. It plays on online video use Hulu.

Article source: http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2019673746_apusuniversalpictureseisner.html

Video: Disney’s 3-D Facial Scruff Technology Reconstructs Beards Down to a …

Tuesday, August 14th, 2012

Face constraint record has come a prolonged way, generally as 3-D stereoscopic imaging and a like have done leaps brazen in new years. It’s now comparatively easy to constraint a face in 3-D and refurbish it digitally for applications such as a extraordinary CGI we see in cinema like The Avengers (Ruffalo-Hulk was flattering visually awesome, no?). But facial hair is another story altogether. Current face constraint systems don’t constraint it well, and a skin that it obscures on a face afterwards becomes an emanate as well. Disney Research is changing that.

Facial hair “plays an critical purpose in particular expression,” Disney researchers write in a epitome for a paper patrician Coupled 3D Reconstruction of Sparse Facial Hair and Skin (the full paper in PDF is here). In it, they report an proceed to facial reformation that captures facial hair and facial skin together, in a joined conform that recognizes particular hairs on a face and digitally traces them as such (this doesn’t particularly request to men’s beards and mustaches, though also to eyebrows, sideburns, etc.). From that data, a algorithms can also establish where a hair is obscuring facial skin in a imagery so underlying skin aspect can be reconstructed accurately.

You can see how this works in a video below. By regulating a joined algorithm that detects and annals skin and hair information during a same time (but can also compute between them) a researchers denote a ability to refurbish a person’s facial stylings–be it sketchy stubble or a full beard–down to a hair.

[Disney Research]

Article source: http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-08/video-disneys-3-d-facial-scruff-technology-reconstructs-beards-down-individual-hair

Your Couch, Bed Or Floor May Soon Be Intelligently Touch-Sensitive With Touché …

Sunday, May 6th, 2012

A breakthrough investigate culminating in a record being called Touché is paving a approach for all around us to turn cleverly touch-sensitive.

The Touché record was grown by a group from Disney and Carnegie Mellon University and it endows vital and non-living things comparison with hold sensitivity: not usually elementary hold attraction though intelligent hold sensitivity.

Touché paves a approach not usually for things to clarity possibly they are being touched. That’s comparatively elementary adequate given a record we have nowadays. What’s allege about Touché is that it endows things with a capability to clarity how and what is touching them.

And a record can be practical to anything, competence they be your seat or any partial of your home (or anywhere one can imagine. Demonstrated on a video posted on a Disney Research site, Touché can capacitate hold intuiting in conductive and nonconductive materials.

Touché 1 Your Couch, Bed Or Floor May Soon Be Intelligently Touch Sensitive With Touché Technology To get a clarity of how a Touché record works, let’s explain initial how hold attraction is implemented on a capacitive hold shade like those on your smartphone, inscription or touch-screen monitor.

A capacitive aspect is coated with a pure conductor that afterwards passes on an electric vigilance when for instance a finger touches it. However, this record usually senses within a singular frequency.

Touché record also works in a same approach – a technique called capacitive coupling – though it adds another dimension by sampling a operation of frequencies building a capacitive profile. Hence, a new record can establish possibly for instance an intent is being grasped, hold by dual hands, overwhelmed by many fingers, pinched, put down and a like.

The tellurian physique is explained by a researchers as carrying opposite capacitive properties so it is probable to detect opposite tools of a physique such as a hands, a elbows, a feet, limbs or torso regulating this technology.

Touché creates use of what is called Swept Frequency Capacitive Sensing (SFCS) and usually a singular intuiting electrode connected to an intent possibly by a singular hoop or wirelessly over existent technologies like Bluetooth or Wi-Fi.

“Signal magnitude sweeps have been used for decades in wireless communication, though as distant as we know, nobody formerly has attempted to request this technique to hold interaction,” Ivan Poupyrev pronounced in a statement.

“Yet, in a laboratory experiments, we were means to raise a extended accumulation of objects with high-fidelity hold sensitivity. When total with gesticulate approval techniques, Touché demonstrated approval rates coming 100 percent. That suggests it could immediately be used to emanate new and sparkling ways for people to correlate with objects and a universe during large,” a Disney Research, Pittsburgh comparison investigate scientist explained further.

However, given there is some-more information to investigate with SFCS, you’ll also need some-more computing energy though thankfully, there’s an overabundance of absolute applications processors that can hoop this task. Take a demeanour for instance during a latest smartphone that are tiny though container a energy of early desktop computers.

We also remember a Cortex-M0+ that was recently announced by ARM. With enrichment of processors like this – that arguably will usually continue going brazen – we suppose a group that grown Touché will not have a tough time creation a tiny device that enables their record to be integrated into roughly anything they can consider of.

It seems that integrating this new record to smaller inclination is accurately one of a goals of a team.

“Devices keep removing smaller and increasingly are embedded via a environment, that has done it required for us to find ways to control or correlate with them, and that is where Touché could unequivocally shine,” a team’s Chris Harrison said.

The group is also envisioning an illusory unfolding where normal submit inclination for a computers competence be re-imagined or done archaic altogether. “This competence capacitate us to one day do divided with keyboards, mice and maybe even required touchscreens for many applications,” a team’s Munehiko Sato said.

Touché 2 Your Couch, Bed Or Floor May Soon Be Intelligently Touch Sensitive With Touché Technology

Poupyrev is assimilated by Chris Harrison, a Ph.D. tyro in Carnegie Mellon’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute, and Munehiko Sato, a Disney novice and a Ph.D. tyro in engineering during a University of Tokyo as members of a team.

Their paper detailing Touché record will be presented by a group during a Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems to be hold this Monday in Austin Texas. Their investigate has been decider a Best Paper during a conference.

In a proof-of-concept video posted by a team, they combined formidable hold and gesticulate attraction to computing devices, bland objects and even a tellurian physique and liquids. With Touché, a group says they have achieved gesticulate sequence (detecting how an intent is touched) with 99% accuracy.

Touché is arguably still in a early stages though basing from a video posted by a team, it is really earnest and competence lead to some insubordinate things that competence good change a approach we correlate with a sourroundings in a bland lives.

Here’s a demeanour during Touché:

Images 1 2 from seanbonner and chinnian  on Flickr (CC)


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Article source: http://socialbarrel.com/your-couch-bed-or-floor-may-soon-be-intelligently-touch-sensitive-with-touche-technology/37144/

Palm readers might ID kids

Wednesday, April 4th, 2012

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About 15 U.S. propagandize districts, including Pinellas County, implement a module by Fujitsu Frontech North America in Foothill Ranch, Calif. Several banking and medical comforts also use a system.

Pinellas’ food dialect executive Art Dunham, whose district has 101,000 students, pronounced a module embellished cafeteria wait times from 15 mins to seven. It also posted a 98 percent lunch formula correctness rate, a 30 percent improvement.

“The primary drivers for us are a students, confidence and adhering to a budgets,” Dunham said. “Palm Secure Technology and MCS Software addressed a priorities.”

Lee County primogenitor Amy Turner, whose son is in a eighth grade, would have no problem if a propagandize house authorized a new system.

“Do we consider it’s invasive? No,” Turner said. “When we get federally saved income to compensate for food, we consider we should be grateful. I’m certain a propagandize district would make certain it’s safe.”

Turner compared a palm reader complement to Disney World’s fingerprint scan. Disney uses a biometric finger indicate complement to forestall consumers from offered or pity a ticket.

“If Disney can do it, afterwards schools can do it on a smaller scale,” Turner said.

Article source: http://www.news-press.com/article/20120404/NEWS0104/304040021/1002/NEWS01/Palm-readers-may-ID-kids?odyssey=nav%7Chead

Univision, Disney demeanour during English news channel – Austin American

Tuesday, February 7th, 2012


By LAURA WIDES-MUNOZ

The Associated Press

— Univision and Disney are in talks to emanate a 24-hour news channel for Latinos in English, dual sources tighten to a negotiations pronounced Monday.

Both sources declined to go on a record since they were not certified to speak.

The idea would be to start broadcasting before a Nov presidential election. That would give a network copiousness of time to yield domestic coverage to Hispanics, who are deliberate a poignant pitch voting confederation in states like Florida, New Mexico and Colorado.

Univision is a nation’s largest Spanish-language media company, and it has prolonged prided itself on a Spanish-language content. In new years, officials have concurred that in sequence to say and enhance viewership, they need to yield calm to second- and third-generation Latinos who pronounce English as their initial language.

The pierce comes in response to a 2010 census, that showed U.S. innate Latinos were a fastest flourishing shred of a nation’s Hispanic population. They done adult scarcely 60 percent of a expansion in a nation’s Latino population.

The due understanding also reflects a flourishing efforts of mainstream media companies to aim Latinos. Last year, Fox News combined a Fox News Latino website and and Huffington Post now has an online Huffpost LatinoVoices site. Meanwhile, NBC Universal has been ramping adult a partnership between a NBC News multiplication and a Spanish denunciation network, Telemundo.

Jorge Plasencia, clamp chair of a National Council of La Raza and CEO of a Hispanic selling organisation Republica, that includes Univision among a clients, pronounced he believes that a news channel in English would perform a niche.

“There’s scarcely 50 million Latinos in a U.S., they do wish to know what’s going on in Mexico, Puerto Rico and all over Latin America. The vital networks don’t cover that news,” he said. “It’s tough for those networks to go into those issues in abyss since they’re perplexing strech all of America.”

Univision and other Spanish-language networks have supposing poignant coverage of Latin America for their viewers. Plasencia believes second- and third-generation Latinos are still meddlesome in that coverage, though they wish it in English.

“That’s since we consider this and Huffpost LatinoVoices exist, since there’s an appetite,” he said.

For Latinos who live in cities like Los Angeles, New York and Miami that have vast Hispanic populations, internal broadcasts mostly have Latino anchors and cover stories that are quite applicable to a Hispanic community. But a inhabitant broadcasts are lagging in that form of coverage, he said.

“At a same time, this network will take the issues and make them mainstream since many other people besides Latinos might be watching,” he said.

___

February 06, 2012 08:47 PM EST

Copyright 2012, The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This element might not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Article source: http://www.statesman.com/news/texas/univision-disney-look-at-english-news-channel-2155159.html

Disney won’t be a partial of Apple’s cloud-computing launch on Monday

Saturday, June 4th, 2011

When Apple announces a new iCloud beginning on Monday, one distinguished calm provider won’t be partial of a iHoopla.

In an talk during a D9 digital discussion final week in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., Disney CEO Bob Iger pronounced his association will not be partial of Apple’s cloud-computing launch.

Apple’s beginning is rumored to be a streaming song use that would offer users a ability to store all their media in a cloud and have it done permitted to all of their devices.

It’s a judgment that a lot of companies are anticipating appealing and presumably essential as consumers increasingly pattern to have their media permitted during all times and on as many inclination as they competence own.

In observant that Disney won’t be partial of Apple’s project, Iger did tell discussion observers that cloud computing is something that Disney sees as increasingly important.

“Ability to have your calm online, permitted all in one place, that’s a improved user experience,” he said, adding that “impediments to people shopping things embody storage: You don’t have room on your tough expostulate to store all this stuff, and we don’t wish to chuck it out.”

Iger went on to contend that cloud-computing “makes some-more sense” if it is something that can be used opposite platforms and devices, adding that Disney is “focused on interoperability” for any intensity deals it competence make with cloud-computing services.

But Iger also hinted during maybe a biggest reason because Disney competence not be committed to Apple’s plan now. Disney’s website, Disney.com, is being redesigned to offer consumers a ability to acquire Disney media, from TV shows to cinema and music, true from a company’s possess site. Iger pronounced he couldn’t give a date on when those changes would be finished though pronounced that users could see “elements of a relaunch within a year.”

The digital storage locker judgment isn’t a new one. Google and Amazon have introduced their possess versions. But Apple’s use potentially could change a personification margin again, given a company’s pattern cultured and a palliate of use of a inclination and software.

After all: Remember how good and entire a smartphone marketplace was before a iPhone? No, we don’t either. But Apple came along and, only as it did with a iPod and with iTunes and with a iPad tablets, it altered a landscape considerably. Now a association appears to be on a verge of announcing something equally trendsetting and market-shifting, this time in a cloud.

Reports have suggested that Apple has sealed deals with 4 vital lables: EMI, Warner Music, Universal Music and Sony. Although many of a pre-release rumors have staid on a use being one that is essentially for music, many observers contend Apple presumably will offer cinema and TV shows, too, though those offerings competence not come until later. For all of Apple’s successes of late, it has faced substantial hurdles in appropriation a deals indispensable for it to yield cinema and radio shows.

Also unused is how much, if during all, Apple will assign for a cloud services.

Regardless of how a sum about a use come out Monday, it’s many positively news that will means waves. After all, a Cupertino, Calif.-based association recently non-stop a $1 billion dollar information core in Maiden, N.C., and that site’s 500,000-square-foot building will be a essential component of Apple’s cloud-computing initiatives.

Given a recognition of Apple’s code and a distance of a infrastructure it is formulating for this latest iCreation, Monday’s news promises a intensity of being big.

Just don’t demeanour for Disney to be partial of a cloud-high excitement.

 

Article source: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/the-daily-disney/digital-disney/os-disney-wont-be-a-part-of-apple-icloud-launch-on-monday-20110603,0,7333372.story