Tech news: The new Zune HD and UW's digital landmarks

Earlier this year, when Microsoft was announcing layoffs and hunkering down, there was speculation that Redmond would give up and discontinue production of its Zune media player. Earlier versions failed to stop the iPod's march to market share domination.

Fast forward to this week, and the official launch of Zune HD. The third time may indeed be the charm for Microsoft.

The reviews on the blogosphere have been mostly positive. Everybody seems to like the design and the touch-screen. And like the name implies, you can watch 720p high definition video and the FM receiver will bring in HD radio.

Remember the big deal about Zune in the first place? The device's Wi-Fi feature meant you if actually ever did run into another Zune user at your favorite hot spot, you could send each other songs and other media. Microsoft called this practice "squirting."

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But Microsoft got smart and now plays up the ability to wirelessly stream millions of songs and other media like movies to your HD from the Zune marketplace, provided you buy a monthly subscription.

Wireless will also enable downloading of apps like games and forthcoming social media apps for Facebook and Twitter, but some reviewers are wondering why there weren't more apps ready to go at launch. I guess best not to ask too much with a Zune that people might actually want to buy. And they are, at least in the Seattle area. My quick survey of Best Buys, Fry's and other electronics stores in the city and on the eastside turned up sellouts. Granted, this is Microsoft's backyard, but the Best Buy in Tukwila told me it sold 200 in about five hours Wednesday. The Best Buy in Northgate moved its entire inventory through pre-orders. The Best Buy in Bellevue sold out Wednesday afternoon.

A Microsoft spokesman say many of the Zune HD's sold to date were through pre-order, and those have been delivered. Retailers will get restocked as soon as possible.

Rome built in a day

University of Washington researchers are using computer software to build their own digital versions of some of the world's best-known landmarks, and they're using tourist snapshots to do it.

A new algorithm developed at UW took some 150,000 photographs that were uploaded to the photo sharing Web site Flickr by visitors to Rome's famous coliseum and built a 3D flyover model to demonstrate the power of the new software. This took 21 hours to do. An earlier version of the software took days.

They did the same thing with photos of the Trevi Fountain as well as other worldwide landmarks.

The software combines with the use of many computer processors. It uses the same technology that UW called photo-tourism, which it licensed three years ago to Microsoft, which now calls it Photosynth.

You could see this technology showing up soon in better online maps, better and cooler videogames and digital preservation of ancient, historic cities.

Eastside social media seminar

Small businesses and entrepreneurs on the eastside who want to know more about social media and how it might help their businesses can check out an all-day social media 101 seminar sponsored by the group Eastside Entrepreneurs. It's set for Friday, September 25, on the Microsoft campus at Redmond.

Find out if your business needs a blog or a Twitter account. There will also be a workshop on whether social media can help you find your dream job.

New tech-enabled classrooms increase affordability

UNH’s new technology-enabled classrooms will allow classes to be more interactive, geared towards student participation and away from the traditional one-dimensional learning of the past.

Currently there are 89 of the scheduled 100 technology-enable classrooms installed, according to the Director for Academic Technology Terri Winters.

A “technology-enabled classroom” has the ability to use devices such as live video, podcasts, projection screens, and einstruction, more commonly known as clickers.

The extent of technology varies from class to class. However, many professors are using electronics to further enhance their classes as well as to prepare students to keep up-to-date in a technological world.

In addition to the 89 classrooms, there are also three classrooms with a computer- per-seat, also referred to as “hands-on” classrooms, because they are specifically for classes where students need to use a computer.

The business department is leading the technology expansion in classrooms around campus. Ross Gittell, professor of an Intro to Business class, uses live stream video, blackboard, and podcasts to relay information to students and is the only classroom on campus that uses iTunes University, a program that allows students to access lectures from iTunes.

This new technology is inexpensive, as students in Gittell’s class are able to download the lecture right to their iPods for future viewing for free and are not required to buy the $80 textbook. The “etextbook” enables them to view course material online free of charge.

“I believe the technology used in my classroom is very effective for students as they can have access to the information at any time,” Gittell said. “Each year we take advantage of the new technology that comes out and we apply it to education of the business world.”

The importance of technology and the ability to use it properly is undeniable in today’s age. If a student is looking for more face-to-face learning, there are also recitation classes, which allow students have questions answered, incorporating what Gittell refers to as the “innovative hybrid model.”

WSBE now has its own server, allowing professors, like Gittell, to design their own videos for classes.

Though it is a work in progress, technology-enabled classrooms are taking hold across campus at many different levels and students are impressed at what they’ve seen so far.

“I like using clickers because it’s nice to be involved in class and to have your grade boosted for answering a few questions,” said sophomore Gretchen Sjulander. “It’s nice because it keeps me from getting bored.”

Senior Jenna Vadala agrees that clickers help her be more productive in a classroom.

“Having technology such as the clicker really makes me pay attention and think about what I am learning,” Vadala said.

Technology changes the face of productions

In the theater, technology has been a boon and a bane. Since the introduction of science to the stage three decades ago, it has transformed the way shows are put together. "It pervades everything," says Alys Holden, director of production for Center Theatre Group. "Lighting, video -- which is its own subset -- sound and scenery, where automation is huge."

Progress on the artistic side has been more erratic. There have been plenty of breakthroughs, such as the blending of media and genres to create new art forms or the use of virtual gaming to redefine "audience participation." There have been missteps too, especially when people have become overly enamored of new toys and tools. "I've developed a deep suspicion of those who turn to technology in lieu of good ideas," says David Sefton, executive and artistic director of UCLA Live, which presents adventurous programming from around the world. "Technology works best when it's a means to an end, rather than an end in itself."

This fall we have a chance to see how far tech-performance has come -- and where it may be going -- in productions by three local companies at different spots on the evolutionary scale. California Institute of the Arts, a leader in artistic-scientific R&D, is pushing the edges with "an interactive opera no-opera" called "AH!" The tradition-steeped Los Angeles Opera is plunging headlong into technology to mount a wildy untraditional version of Wagner's "Siegfried." And the tiny indie multimedia group Cloud Eye Control mixes tech high and low to tell the fanciful tale "Under Polaris."

'AH!' CalArts

Its title may be the only simple thing about "AH!," an audio-visual exploration of language and music -- inspired by Buddhism's Diamond Sutra -- which opens Wednesday at REDCAT, CalArts' downtown theater.

"I wanted to do something related to the state of the world but didn't want it to be too topical," says David Rosenboom, dean of UCLA's Herb Alpert School of Music, which is presenting the piece along with the college's Center for New Performance and Idyllwild Arts. "I hit on the idea of using the sutra's structural impulses, like its malleable narrative, then I realized the text is about cutting through illusion, which is one of the world's biggest problems."

Rosenboom and poet Martine Bellen developed 13 interlinking stories about perception and reality arranged in circular fashion like a mandala, the wheel-like Eastern symbol of the universe. A trove of high-tech devices -- many of which were designed at CalArts -- will help performers and the public transform the stories into new narratives and "sound-word bites."

"We've created what we call an opera generator," Rosenboom says, "an interactive template for producing many possible operas." (The word "opera," he adds, refers to "the work's dimensions" and not anything resembling "Rigoletto.")

"AH!" tries to redefine what a performance is and where it begins and ends -- do you, for instance, need to attend a show to experience it? The staged piece forms the middle of a "bell curve" that includes a webcast and possible video game. A website allows visitors to sample the mandala and add poems and sound files. Those who do go to REDCAT will see and hear some of these responses as they enter the lobby, where a computerized table -- Rosenboom likens it to a giant iPhone -- will display cascading letters that, when touched, morph into words and stories.

For the first time, the black-box theater will be stripped of its seats and risers, creating what "AH!" director Travis Preston calls a "chastened space." Live video will be projected onto the floor. The 13 stories will be told through movement, music and narration that incorporates nearly 20 languages. The cast will include a robotic percussionist as well as Rosenboom and 10 fellow composer-musicians. They will play and sing a score that ranges from rock to "Zen hip-hop" on acoustic and electronic instruments, including laptops, and will use a laser-beaming "diamond tetrahedron" and other devices that let them modulate sound with the wave of a hand.

How to keep all this from seeming too abstract? "The impact of the music and the text is quite visceral," Preston says. "The audience will be challenged to let go of their expectations and go with the flow."

'Siegfried' Los Angeles Opera

Just down the block but a world away from REDCAT, the Los Angeles Opera is preparing the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion for the Sept. 26 opening of "Siegfried," the third part of Wagner's "Ring" cycle as interpreted by audacious auteur Achim Freyer.

"Achim painted a picture of what he wants to see onstage and left us to show him how we might achieve this," says Christopher Koelsch, vice president of artistic planning. The German director-designer's otherworldly vision requires what Koelsch calls "enormous amounts of technology, more than in any other production."

Trained as a painter, Freyer loves to play with perspective and light. "The scenery allows us to reinvent the space over and over," says Koelsch, citing as examples the severely raked deck and hinged turntable made famous in last season's "Das Rheingold" and "Die Walküre." "It's like a Swiss Army knife."

L.A. Opera has installed a 3-D flying system that moves people and props up, down and all around. "It's one of a kind for a proscenium," Koelsch says. For "Siegfried," the company is introducing its Versa tubes, light-color-video modules more often seen in arena shows. High-definition video projected onto two scrims, one at the rear and one outside the proscenium, gives Freyer the freedom to "paint" the stage with blood or water.

The custom-made LED tubes that reminded many "Ring"-goers of "Star Wars" light-sabers are back, arrayed on the stage in a grid-like pattern representing "the long lines of time." When the hero forges his fabled sword, Koelsch explains, "the world literally shifts as the turntable moves and all the lines of time break up." What results is an iconic image -- and a big headache for technical director Jeff Kleeman, who must figure out how to cut up the tubes while keeping them powered.

L.A. Opera regards much of the equipment designed or acquired for this $32-million "Ring" as a long-term investment. For starters, everything will be used again in "Götterdämmerung" in April and when the entire cycle is presented in May and June.

"It's a tricky balance -- one requiring inventiveness," Koelsch says, describing the difficulties of addressing Freyer's desires while keeping an eye on the budget and "the peculiar needs of an opera singer."

For instance, Freyer wants to fill his world with fog and smoke, but he ran afoul of the singers union's long-standing concerns about health risks. The company finally found an option -- a liquid-nitrogen system -- that met with union approval. "As a result," says Koelsch, "we will be reintroducing fog to the opera stage."

'Under Polaris' Cloud Eye Control

By its own admission, Cloud Eye Control uses technology "in a backwards way" -- combining animation, video and puppets made of cardboard and llama hair.

"Maybe it's generational," says Chi-wang Yang, a theater director who started the multimedia performance ensemble in 2004 with animator Miwa Matreyek and composer-musician Anna Oxygen. "In our daily lives we see a lot of strange interactions between humans and technology."

"Under Polaris," which will open Oct. 14 at REDCAT, grew out of a proposal by Oregon arts patron Leslie B. Durst, who offered to commission a piece about one of her favorite subjects: the North Pole. REDCAT and the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art signed on as co-commissioners.

In "Polaris," a scientist (played by Oxygen) invents a process that distills the essence of humanity into a seed and sets off to deposit her creation in a vault modeled on a real-life Arctic doomsday chamber designed to preserve the world's plant species. Along the way, she seeks shelter from the cold in a musk ox's stomach and imagines herself becoming the Arctic Queen.

"It's a pretty epic story," says Yang, who like his colleagues is a former CalArts grad student. "To tell it we use very high-tech tools" (collaging projected images to form an ice cave), "old-school theatrical techniques" (Oxygen in a dance-off with a polar bear -- well, Matreyek in a bear costume) and "a mix of cinema, theater and rock concert." In fact, "Polaris" will open with a fantasy metal overture performed by the disbanded indie-rock duo the Need.

While some artists hide the smoke and mirrors, Cloud Eye Control wants everything -- projectors, puppeteers -- in the open. "We like you to see how we create the illusions we do," Yang says. "That way the audience really can participate."