Fabrice Epelboin

Not really revolutionary though is it. Just an increase in 'resolution'. - mattpovey

are u kidding? Look at the detail in expressions and movement -it is unbelievable. - Zee from WeDoCreative

uncanny :) - MLx

Great-great-great! It's insanely detailed. Of course it has a lot of quirks (and if you try to look at this head as a person you notice instantly that she's abusing her botox injections and cosmetic surgery didn't do much good for her), but at the same time there're enough details to make her look believable. Strange, yes, but alive, not “generated”. Great times of emotional and live AI-characters being all around us are ahead. Thanks for the link! - Urbansheep

No I'm not kidding. They have just increased the number of data points in movement detection - congrats for the advance, but not revolutionary. Bear in mind, that it was necessary to video an actress in order to generate this - in other words, you still need the human. The 'revolution' comes when you can generate CGI of this quality without having to video a human first. - mattpovey

but surely things such as eye movement have little to do with 'resolution' - Zee from WeDoCreative

Resolution of motion capture. i.e. the number of points on the face and eye whose motion is being monitored and replicated in CGI. If you're only capturing the movement of one point on the eyeball, it's not very impressive. Capture twenty points around the eye as well as the eyeball itself and life gets a lot less botoxy :). - mattpovey

Right, i get cha...but i didn't realise you could add motion sensors to eyeballs! :) - Zee from WeDoCreative

Yes, why yes they are, been hanging out at CC Mixter and Opscom which do "free" music (unknown bands) more than anything else lately, even though I have ITunes. - dan

They have been digging it for the last 10 years... must be really deep because many many people must fit in it. - Fabrice Epelboin via twhirl

They have been for a long time. Ever since someone decided they were more important than the customer. - Brandon Titus

duh - Baratunde Thurston via twhirl

i'm happy band section still work in muxtape, would be the damn bad if it was not working for us (buzzworkers) - Ben Borges

That one is an easy answer. The crazy thing is, I still see artists spew the same tired RIAA line about down sales = piracy while real innovators are creating their own marketing hype. Many, such as hiphop artists, are moving to labels such as Koch where they press the records/CD's/publish downloads online and let the artist take care of marketing and promotion. This way the artist keeps more money, so they don't have to sell 100K to 500K to break even with the label. What are you paying for anyway? A video no one will see? Payola to radio that no one listens to? When an artist knows how to create buzz, (concerts, you tube, web) they can afford to bypass the ineffective promotion provided by these labels. - Eric @ CS Techcast

protectionism is everywhere ... does it work? seems to ... at least for awhile - Gregory Lent

If the artist is doing their own promotion, what is the point of the record company again? - stretta via twhirl

Interesting post about Pandora on the edge of closeing due to increased royalty fees. http://arstechnica.com/news.ar... - Bryan Thatcher via twhirl

The point of a record company can still be a central distribution point. Some could maybe handle it themselves, but I would image distributing CDs and setting up with digital distributors is still logistical nightmare for a single artist to handle on their own. - Eric @ CS Techcast

Matthew - If the artist is able to produce and master their own music with professional quality, there's little need for the record company since you can always start your own. Many smart artists have done this because it funnel's the bulk of the CD sales into their pockets. - Jim McCusker

Exactly. I was responding to Erics comment. - stretta via twhirl

Eric - there are options for artists. cdbaby will set up digital distribution with dozens of companies. There is no need for a record company between the artist and fans. - stretta via twhirl

Matthew, that's pretty cool, but can they still get you stocked at Target and Best Buy? If they can then cool, but I didn't see anything on their website about that. A label like Koch can. This is why some will still want to go with a label with established ties to retail and distribution. - Eric @ CS Techcast

Eric, getting stocked at Best Buy and Target only make sense if you're undertaking a nation wide promotional campaign, and if you're doing that, you're talking about a huge investment that is way, WAY beyond the scope of the independent artist. If you want to sell a physical product to a nationwide audience, the amazon advantage program is where it is at. - stretta via twhirl

It's quickly becoming a management-based industry, with managers replacing record labels. As artists are able to control their own production, distribution, promotion, etc there becomes the need for someone to help organize and run these aspects. The manager steps in to focus on the business and mechanics, freeing the artist to be 'creative' and/or tour ... which, of course, used to be a purpose the record label served. - M. Donaldson

More simply, getting stocked at Best Buy isn't the issue. Creating the demand that merits getting stocked at Best Buy is, and if you've done that, you don't need Koch. - stretta via twhirl

Having sat on the sidelines and about to embark on my own music career, I'm both excited and scared at the serious flailing about the music industry is doing. I'm confident I can get myself out there without the help/harm of a large record label -- either as an independent or on my own. There is *so much* opportunity to get real music out there that I'm not too worried about the distractions of the RIAA... - Tracy Ruggles

Tracy, this is the best time in history to be an independent musician IMO. I've done a major label stint as well as time on assorted indies and I'm personally having more fun (and making a more consistent living at it) now that I'm on my own. The advantage nowadays goes to the most creative rather than the one with the biggest marketing budget, and that's really exciting. - M. Donaldson

Please tell me that is a rhetorical question right? - John via twhirl

What's a music industry? - Pascal

The recent Bloc Party release is another example of the compromise model that will work for a portion of artists, labels, and consumers... release quality digital format at low cost (not free) ahead of leaks. Release compelling physical product shortly after including extras for top fans. - Amir Gharaat

Bogus! --- "However, it's worth noting that in this particular study "social media" includes text messaging. Combined with blogging and social networking, these three technologies are used by 50% of U.S. adults for communication purposes." - David Knight

I'd be very wary of these numbers. I tried to contact a few hundred old friends/acquaintances (age 38-48) and only saw about 5-7% on Facebook. LinkedIn is by far the non-e-mail system they use the most often: 25-30%. However, a HUGE percentage of those people abandoned their accounts and/or are VERY light users, so that contaminates the numbers. - Mitchell Tsai

From comments: "I think it is inappropriate to claim Facebook is being “FriendFeedized” when FriendFeed’s entire business is a direct rip of Facebook’s News Feed concept. Those guys should really expect nothing less than seeing all of their innovations integrated into Facebook. As long as Facebook continues to innovate in the newsfeed segment, Friend Feed will remain a marginal player for nerds." - Chris White

As opposed to all the super cool people on Facebook. :) - Chris White

there is ONE thing Facebook cannot replicate from Friendfeed. Speed of execution. FriendFeed will always be better and will always be one step ahead - ouriel

facebook who? - Fred Grott

That would be the site with 60m monthly visitors Fred. - Jamie

Coming from the other side, I’d like to see the Facebookization of Friendfeed (without sucking that is). FF is a great place for content and discussion, but not so much for community and social networking. - Hao Chen

Facebook's largely self-contained, immersive "social" and "fun" walled garden works especially well for interpersonal relations, and the upcoming facelift improves on those same principles. I'm impressed. That said, it's too heavyweight for active group conversations. FF has far and away the most effective implementation of group discussions, especially around "the rest of the web". It's great to have both FB and FF, each optimized around their use cases. - Amir Gharaat

The only thing I'm sure of is that Facebook will be unable to recommend the same 9 persons to add as friends to everyone - so hopefully we will still be able to choose exactly who we want to talk to. - Svetlana Gladkova

Friendfeed = open; facebook = closed; this would be an area i'd be happy to see facebook copy - Alex Gawley

Facebook is boring as hell. - Thomas Hawk

@Thomas, LOL... I always crack up when I see, in any FB thread your "Facebook is boring". - Juan Pablo González

Friendfeed lays it all out as a stream of posts and comments. It's like reading a newspaper. Just my style. - david

Facebook has lost its mojo really fast, I winder if the same will happen to FriendFeed - João Almeida via twhirl

@Joao lost its mojo with who? The twittersphere? Facebook was doing just fine before and after they jumped on and off the bandwagon. According to FB, UUs and engagement are up every month. - Jamie

Almeida: yeah, Facebook is growing as fast as ever and tons of "normal people" swear by it. Just because us early-adopter-inside-the-techie-bubble are over here playing on FriendFeed, don't assume that everyone else is. 110 million are on Facebook, maybe more by now. When I went to Israel all I heard was "Facebook, Facebook, Facebook." Same with my niece and lots of others here in Silicon Valley. Also, its event calendar brings tons more people than others. - Robert Scoble

Communities are communities. - Andrew Feinberg

Typical conversation with Real World Friends: "So I saw this post on Friend Feed..." "What's that?" "It's this website where it aggregates everything you do on various social networks" "Social Networks? Like..." "Flickr, Twitter, Yelp..." (Blank Stares) "Websites like Facebook are social.." "OHHH FACEBOOK.. That's the best site ever. *blah blah blah" - George Smith

Alex Gawley: Seems that Facebook no longer will be closed. "This week facebook will also launch their Facebook Connect product, which is designed to let users get that data back out of Facebook." http://www.techcrunch.com/2008... - Alex Sauceda

but do you think the average FB user is going to use the "comment on news feed" feature? a quick scan of some of my heavy-user FB friends last week showed no comments on any news feed items, and then a couple days ago i noticed someone's status message was "I hate all these comment tags on facebook now"... - Trent Olson

LOL @ Friendfeedization - Bwana

I love FF but all my non geeks friends and family are on Facebook. Seems that it works better for them. - Alex Sauceda

Keep in mind, that 18 months ago you could not have had this conversation with anyone who was not 1) in the SV echo chamber or 2) in college. Web services start small and some inflect to a larger community and some don't. - Christopher Sacca

My friends on FB go to Flickr for conversation. None of them are on FF. I add FF contacts in FB to view their bios. - Russellreno

good point, Trent. I figure that people will use it more for photo comments than anything else. - Jim Ierley

Louis - Agreed but I think the reason is more that they're trying to do an even better job with targeted ads (to keep the price in check) ... ala GMail. I find my Facebook list growing from my activity on Friendfeed. Hmm - Charlie Anzman

Was the FriendFeed mini-feed on Facebook axed: no summary, just a note showing something was added? It's doing that for Feedheads too. Is this happening with others folks? - Stagekid

Blake, if I understand what you're saying, it wasn't axed. They just defaulted the display to a "One-line" view. You can manually change each item to "Short" descriptions by clicking the little "Edit" link to the right, but that's really unworkable. They need to let us choose whether to let apps default to "Short", or else many apps will be useless. - Jim Ierley

Jim: Thanks! Does that mean that my friends would need to change this on their end to see more than 1 line? I have a lot of my friends who will stick to the default (i.e. will be overwhelmed by process for changing) and most likely will not see the content of my Google Reader Shared Items and FriendFeed activity. Sucks if that's the case. Thanks again. - Stagekid

I found a configuration that change get the default from "One-line" to "Short" on the FF app. Go here: http://www.new.facebook.com/ed... and click on the Edit icon. You'll have an option to set it right again. - Jim Ierley

Jim: This is great, thanks! - Stagekid