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Tag Archive: Pittsburgh

Google Street View Hits Six New U.S. Cities

Google Street View Hits Six New U.S. Cities

While its legal status in Canada may still be up in the air, Google Street View has expanded into six new U.S. cities without problems. Google announced the addition on Tuesday on its Lat Long Blog. Online pedestrians can now peruse Chicago, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland and Tucson.

Besides the added locations, Google has also improved the quality of Street View imagery. Views in Phoenix, Tucson and Chicago are all high resolution, offering five levels of zoom. In cities with skyscrapers, such as Chicago’s Sears Tower, viewers can also pan to the tops of the buildings.

What Does That Gravestone Say?

What Does That Gravestone Say?You’ve probably wandered through a graveyard and noticed that some older inscriptions are so worn that they’re illegible. Perhaps you’ve even wondered about the stories behind them,whose bones are lying there.   Thanks to a new project you might be able to find out one day. Scientists at the Ambient Intelligence Lab atCarnegie Mellon Cylab have developed a way to take hi-res scans of the tombstones that can reveal the carving. After that, the scans are matched against a database of carvings to show the words.  To date, the most advanced technique has been hand-tracing by archaeologists, which is hardly hi-tech.   “We have designed special filters of 3D data that can detect curvature orlinear features on a surface," Dr. Yung Cai, director of the AI Lab, told the BBC. "This is similar to the human visual experience – we usually see thegazed area in high resolution but the peripheral area in a blurred vision."   Researchers have been refining their technique at the graveyard at Old St. Luke’s Church in Pittsburgh.  Dr. Cai anticipates that the technology could be used to help unmanned vehicles map ruins, as well as aid doctors with tongue inspections, or possibly even predict tsunamis by examining oceansurface patterns.

YouTube Inks Deal With Local TV Giant

YouTube Inks Deal With Local TV GiantFollowing their breakthrough agreement with EMI, YouTube has signed a deal with Hearst-Argyle Television.Under the pact, Hearst-Argyle stations will receive a licensing fee whenever content from member stations is viewed on YouTube. It represents the first such deal involving local TV stations, andshows the way YouTube is being viewed by the media.   Hearst-Argyle is a major player in the local television market, owing 29 stations across the U.S., and reaching almost 20% of Americanhouseholds. Its stations are associated with all three of the major networks. Company stations from Boston, Sacramento, Pittsburgh and elsewhere will begin posting content on YouTube to dedicatedchannels on YouTube.   “We’d been looking for a way to expand our footprint online and rapidly expand into new markets,” said Terry Mackin of Hearst-Argyle. “With this deal,we’re really trying to say this station group is not your father’s Oldsmobile.”   YouTube and Hearst-Argyle will split revenue from the content, but the percentages haven’t beendisclosed, and the two companies have yet to decide when ads will be aired within the content.   It’s a major step as an old media force signs up to new media, and a sign that YouTube iseager to play ball with established media companies to increase its content.

Zune Goes to Market and Apple Responds with Vengeance

The Zune, Microsoft’s next combined hardware/software service has launched and is now available in an impressive 30,000 retail outlets, arguably the most aggressive attempt to take market share from Apple to date. Apple has responded by cutting deals with a number of airline carries to exclusively support iPods for in-flight entertainment. What makes this particularly interesting is that in both cases the two companies appear to be behaving more like the other firm than themselves.

Zune: iPod with a Twist

The Zune is a closed system/service offering much more similar to what Apple initially launched than what is typical from Microsoft. This ties the hardware to the service and while it assures ease-of-use and compatibility, it does so by sacrificing choice in hardware.

Yahoo and CBS Ink Local News Video Deal

If you think your quirky local TV anchor has the stuff to become an Internet celebrity…he or she might just have gotten their change. In an interesting move, Yahoo and CBS have inked a video syndication agreement to put local news video from 16 CBS-owned stations on the Internet via Yahoo’s enormous Internet presence. The agreement goes into effect October 17th, and is the first time network-owned stations have entered a video-sharing agreement with an Internet news outlet. The venture will be ad-supported, with CBS and Yahoo splitting the revenue; no other financial terms of the deal were disclosed.

TiVo Announces Top 10 Viewed Super Bowl Ads

TiVo’s annual post Super Bowl analysis of viewer reactions to the commercials today revealed that, of the dozens of multi-million dollar spots that aired, Ameriquest’s two ads landed at the top of the pack. Also revealed, according to user viewing data, was how a controversial call in the second quarter put actual Super Bowl viewing time on par with some of the commercials.

TiVo, the company said, did their annual analysis of viewing behavior by analyzing the replay and rewind features on a more than 10,000 household sample of anonymous information. Ameriquest’s two ads – “Friendly Skies” and “That Killed Him” – were first and second respectively among the top ten commercials, followed by Budweiser’s “Streaking Sheep”, Fed Ex’s “Caveman” and Michelob’s “Torch Football” to round out the top five.

What eBay Auctions Say About the Super Bowl

One way to measure the buzz around the upcoming Super Bowl seems to be auction related traffic going on over at eBay. The online auction giant yesterday released some interesting numbers regarding listings for

Sony Ships 1 Million Grand WEGAs

Sony today announced they’d shipped their 1 millionth Grand WEGA micro-display HDTV from its Pittsburgh production facility. They’ve been primarily manufacturing this line there since 2002.

Sony, through data produced by research firm NPD, said that Grand WEGA televisions have held the top market share in the overall micro-display television category since their inception, averaging approximately 40 percent weekly share and a 50 percent category market share during the latest holiday season.

Sony Grand WEGA televisions are characterized by such features as 3LCD technology and native 720p resolution. Sony also uses a technology called the WEGA engine to minimize the digital analog conversion process, which they say contributes to an exceptional picture quality and the overall popularity of the sets.

Clear Channel Radio Goes Podcast Happy

Radio giant Clear Channel Radio seems ready to fully embrace the podcast revolution as today they announced they were setting up multiple podcasts tied to various stations across their empire. This greater rollout is based on the successful podcast debut of WHTZ-FM Z100’s “Phone Tap

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