October 31, 2006, 7:25 PM CT

Download Soundflavor DJ

Windows only: Freeware application Soundflavor DJ is an iTunes companion designed primarily as a playlist generator.

We've been seeing a lot of playlist generators for iTunes lately, but so far Soundflavor has impressed me the most. Like the rest, Soundflavor fingerprints your music and builds playlists based on similarity of fingerprints (with the option to populate playlists with more or less similar music); by now this whole things become fairly old hat, but Soundflavor has still managed to impress me with innovative extras, like concert notifications when artists in your library are playing in your area (free registration with Soundflavor required) and the ability to integrate songs from other shared iTunes libraries on your network (!).

My only complaint with Soundflavor is that its interface is a bit stutter-y on my computer (it's also got around a 40MB memory footprint, which ain't terribly small). Then again, these are the kind of complaints I make when I'm especially interested in a software, so I certainly think it's worth a try. Soundflavor DJ is a free download, currently Windows only with the promise of a Mac version in the works. - Adam Pash.

Site........

Posted by: Gina      Permalink         Source

October 31, 2006, 7:12 PM CT

Business Innovation Is Not Dependent On Creative People

American companies continue to grapple with staying competitive in the global economy. Increasingly, companies and business gurus are citing innovation as the key to sustaining American business' strength. What's not clear is what it means for a company to be innovative. How can firms foster innovation? Can organizations cope with the changes necessary to produce advancements?.

"It's important for Western companies to compete on innovation since they can't successfully compete with the East on price," said Panos Kouvelis, professor of operations and manufacturing management at the Olin School of Business. "The best way to infuse innovation into your company is not by hiring creative people. That's not effective. Organizations need to manage innovation in a systematic way to get employees to think outside the box."

There are methods for inspiring non-traditional thinking, Kouvelis said. It starts with encouraging experimentation, which elicits learning. Experimentation means prototyping in product-service developments, and development systems and technologies that maximize learning.

New, Not Trendy

Glenn MacDonald, professor of economics and strategy at Washington University's business school, concurred and added that the key to successful innovation is being able to go beyond the theory.........

Posted by: Tom      Permalink         Source

October 31, 2006, 4:27 AM CT

Technique Harnesses 3-D Game Engines

Student scientists working with Beth Coleman, assistant professor in comparative media studies and in the Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies, are exploring machinima, one branch of the rapidly evolving world of computer animation. As members of the Machinima Work Group, they are experimenting in the medium to find new modes of cinematic expression.

Machinima (pronounced "machine-ima," the word is coined from "machine" and "cinema") is animation that is made by harnessing 3-D game engines, such as those used in Xbox or PlayStation games, and adding original content--dialogue, dramatic situations, and new or modified characters. Relative to traditional computer-generated imagery (CGI), in which animators must create the characters, scenes (levels) and action from scratch, machinima is fast and cheap--though still enormously time-consuming. The most well-known work of machinima to date is "Red vs. Blue," a comic sci-fi series based on the popular Xbox games Halo and Marathon. But a number of, including Coleman's group, are working to expand the medium above and beyond the genre of parody and to gauge its potential for artistic and cinematic expression.

Coleman explained in a recent interview that the medium has really exploded in the past five years, to the point where you now see ads on television that are made in machinima.........

Posted by: Gina      Permalink         Source

October 29, 2006, 8:01 PM CT

See What A Three-legged Tortoise Got

Tina the tortoise has been given a lift after being fitted with a suspension system and a pneumatic tyre to help her cope with muddy terrain.

The three-legged reptile can now go off-road after the 4-4-style system was attached to her shell.

Tina was fitted with a plastic wheel four years ago to replace her rear right leg.

But our increasingly warmer autumns mean Tina hibernates later in the year, leaving her battling to cope with muddy grass and slopes and dead leaves.

So the rudimentary wheel has now been replaced with an air-filled tyre and a spring suspension system with shock absorber.

From Metro.co.uk.........

Posted by: Ashley      Permalink         Source

October 27, 2006, 9:13 PM CT

Profiles Of Serial Killers Have Limitations

Dennis Rader, the notorious BTK murderer who eluded capture for more than 30 years until his arrest in 2005, did not fit precisely into the FBI's method for profiling serial killers on the basis of crime scenes.

And Aileen Wuornos, the Florida prostitute executed in 2002 for slaying seven men over a two-year period in the early part of 1990s, didn't fit at all because the database of convicted serial killers used by the FBI in developing their profiling method did not include women.

The cases of Rader and Wuornos are among the topics to be explored during a panel discussion led by Dr. Charles L. Scott, a forensic psychiatry expert at UC Davis Health System, at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law Friday at the Marriott Hotel in downtown Chicago. Scott will examine the way the bureau develops the personality profiles used by researchers in serial murder cases. He also will look at alternative profiling methods, such as one developed by a crime writer that uses motive to sketch a female offender's likely character traits.

"The FBI profiling method has a number of positive attributes. But it also has some inherent limitations," Scott said.

Scott, associate professor of clinical psychiatry with the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science, will be one of four panelists in the talk, dubbed "Serial Killers: From Cradle to Grave." It is one of a number of events slated at the meeting, which began Thursday and runs through Sunday. The annual conference seeks to cover the major issues facing forensic psychiatry experts.........

Posted by: Tom      Permalink         Source

October 25, 2006, 4:56 AM CT

Let's Hack This Beck

Who knew that a megalo-uber-etoile like Beck Hansen would entertain just a few hundred geekerati this past weekend (the likes of dotben and Joyce Parks) at Yahoo Hack Day 2006, but alas, it's true. To the amazed delight of childlike adults dressed in all manner of t-shirt and jean combos, one of the best musicians around (and Scientology's finest gift to mankind so far) put on a full stage show at the annual geekfest, including on-stage-maneuvered puppets, bear costumes and even a custom-filmed mini-movie about hacking, Yahoo! and puppet porn.

Hard as GETV tried to climb into the Yahoo! workout room, where Beck met with the Yahoo! fancy-pants, we could not (Eddie wanted to get some beer, mostly.) Finally, as Beck graced the hacking area (aka, Yahoo! cafeteria) we grabbed the band members and asked them as a number of questions as we could, despite having no brain cells left in the presence of actual and non-Internet rock stars.........

Posted by: Gina      Permalink         Source

October 24, 2006, 6:24 PM CT

Skin Tone Influences Perception Of Beauty

A new study is revealing that wrinkles aren't the only cue the human eye looks for to evaluate age. Facial skin color distribution, or tone, can add 10-12 years to a woman's perceived age.

The study, published in the latest issue of the journal Evolution and Human Behavior, used three-dimensional imaging and morphing software to remove wrinkles and furrows from pictures of women, leaving skin tone as the only variable. Researchers were then able to determine exactly what impact facial skin tone has on how young, healthy and attractive people perceive the women to be. Faces with more even skin tone were judged to be younger.

"Until now, behavioral scientists have mostly ignored the overall homogeneity and color saturation of a person's skin," says lead researcher Dr. Karl Grammer. "This study points out that wrinkles aren't the only visual cue to a woman's age.

"Skin tone and luminosity may be a major signal to suitors of a woman's attractiveness, as well as of her assumed age," said Grammer, who is founder and scientific director of the Ludwig-Boltzmann-Institute for Urban Ethology at the University of Vienna, Austria.

The researchers took digital photographs of 169 Caucasian women between the ages of 10 and 70. Then they used specialized morphing software to "drape" each subject's facial skin over a standardized model, in effect, taking 169 different skin tones and applying them to a common canvas.........

Posted by: Tom      Permalink         Source

October 22, 2006, 10:33 PM CT

Shorts October 2006

"Humanism" is the key word in both Kristi Mitsuda and Michael Koresky's reviews of Hans-Christian Schmid's Requiem. Only two takes from the Reverse Shot team this time around at indieWIRE, but they're embracing ones.

Also: indieWIRE's interview with Doug Block as his moving 51 Birch Street begins its trek across the country and a dispatch from the Pusan International Film Festival from Brian Brooks.

For SF360, Michael Fox talks with Joseph McBride about his new book, What Ever Happened to Orson Welles? A Portrait of an Independent Career, in which he "catalogs Welles' amazing output in the last 15 years of his life, demolishing the widely held perception of Welles as a debauched clown."

"[W]hat makes Reign of Terror great isn't necessarily how well it adheres to, or shakes up, various genre conventions," writes Bilge Ebiri at ScreenGrab. "It is, quite simply, an incredibly well-put-together, gripping film - a true showcase for the visual and narrative expertise that would serve [Anthony] Mann so well in his later career."

Matthew Clayfield ruminates on Susan Shineberg's recent profile of Peter Greenaway in the Age: "Greenaway seems to me to be the perfect excuse for distinguishing auteurism, which is about films, not directors, from dead-end fascination with authorial rhetoric, which is an entirely different, far more limiting, thing."........

Posted by: Gina      Permalink         Source

October 22, 2006, 9:57 PM CT

Marie Antoinette Reviews

The early Marie Antoinette reviews are coming in, and they don't look too bad. Not fantastic, but pretty solid. I've got to admit I haven't had one shred of interest in this film ever since I saw the first trailer for it a few months ago. The fact that Sofia Coppola is directing it gets my attention, but nothing I've seen so far has solidified that. Looks like it might be worth watching after all.

Here is what some of the critics are saying about Marie Antoinette reviews:

Highly theatrical and yet also intimate and informal, Marie Antoinette lets its story slink almost casually through its lovingly composed and rendered images.

A.O. Scott - New York Times.

The work of a mature filmmaker who has identified and developed a new cinematic vocabulary to describe a new breed of post-postpostfeminist woman.

Lisa Schwarzbaum - Entertainment Weekly.

Let them have eye candy pretty much sums up Sofia Coppola's approach to her revisionist and modernist take on the famous royal airhead who in the end lost her head.

Todd McCarthy - Variety.

If Sofia Coppola isn't the queen of slow, she's the princess of bore. Despite its sumptuous production design and cinematography, this is grotesquely superficial, slow, and boring.........

Posted by: Gina      Permalink         Source

October 22, 2006, 9:51 PM CT

The Prestige Reviews

Early The Prestige reviews are coming out, and they don't look great. As a matter of fact, I'm really disappointed in what I'm reading. The Prestige has been one of the films I've most been looking forward to seeing ever since watching the trailer a few months back. but so far no one I've talked to who has seen it is raving about it. A bunch of people like it. but didn't love it. Damn!!

Here is what some of the critics are saying in their "The Prestige" reviews:

"Pic insists on a depth of human emotion that isn't developed -- protags emerge as one-dimensional, despite the efforts of two of our best leading actors -- amid increasingly elaborate, uninvolving plot mechanizations".

Dennis Harvey - Variety.

The Prestige isn't art, but it reaps a lot of fun out of the question, How did they do that?

Owen Gleiberman - Entertainment Weekly.

A dazzlingly complicated narrative; indeed, it might prove a little too complicated for a number of viewers.

Andy Klein - Los Angeles CityBeat.

Audiences might enjoy this cinematic sleight of hand, but the key characters are such single-minded, calculating individuals that the real magic would be to find any heart in this tale.

Kirk Honeycutt - Hollywood Reporter.........

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