Disclaimer: Somewhere on this blog are multiple grammatical mistakes, spelling errors and obscure Star Wars references.

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Review: LG Optimus 3D - Aesthetics & Features

For my final review on the LG Optimus 3D, I’m going to focus on the usable 3D elements and the look & feel of the phone itself. As mentioned earlier, the LG Optimus 3D comes with a 3D Hot Key in the same location where traditionally you would find a dedicated Camera button on other smartphones The hot key allows users to switch from 2D to 3D on the fly and switch back. Hold it for a couple of seconds and it takes you into the 3D Guide, which is your portal to all the 3D stuff in the phone; Games, Apps, YouTube 3D, the 3D gallery and the 3D camera.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Review: LG Optimus 3D - Real Time 2D - 3D Conversion!

The first time I was exposed to 2D – 3D conversion, I was on a 42-inch TV and I was watching The Dark Knight. So I was fairly impressed when I saw Nolan’s movie in 3D, knowing that it was a traditionally shot 2D movie. It was no Avatar, but it was cool nonetheless. I even remember Ashraf Ghori’s reaction when he discovered that you could just 3D something, with the flick of a button. From all the gimmicks in the 3D world, 2D – 3D real-time conversion is probably one of my favourites. It allows me to see in 3D things I’d actually want to. I want to insert an inappropriate joke here, but that’s for a later time.

The trick with 2D – 3D conversion is creating the second layer of image (which one eye perceives differently than the other) where it doesn’t already exist. Conventional 3D has 2 layers. Conversion involves creating an illusion of a layer, because the second layer does not exist. How it works, is by create a sharp contrast on-screen – between a large and small object, through overlapping objects, or through differing levels of brightness or clarity – which then forces the right and left eye to analyze things differently.

In continuing my review of the LG Optimus 3D, one of its features is real-time 2D – 3D conversion. Any video that you play on the phone, even those you take with its cameras can be converted, at the touch of an on-screen button, into 3D. First, let’s discuss regular videos: Any video that you see on the phone, be it something that you shot using the phone’s HD camera or a video downloaded into your phone. Once you start playing it, you have the on-screen option to convert the video into 3D. Converting takes about a millisecond as the screen spurts out the video in 3D within a fraction of selecting the option. Real time conversion, it definitely is. The results are not bad either! Bearing in mind that the video was shot in 2D and that conversion takes place on the fly, the results are comparable to that big TV that I saw conversion in. However, there’s the slight difference, that due to LG’s Parallax Barrier screen, you don’t even need those annoying glasses. So switch to 3D on a whim, switch back when you feel like it. All that, without having to put on or take off a pair of oversized glasses.

The cameras at the back of the phone also offer visual delights. Firstly, they look cool. They’re like little eyes at the back of your phone. Incidentally, I’ve decided to name this phone Leonard.
Look into my bulbous bug eyes..
Leonard’s cameras are capable of full HDMI recording, in 2D and 3D. While in 2D its output sits pretty at 1080p. Switch to 3D means you sacrifice a little bit of the quality (you now record in 780p) but you’re carrying around a little James Cameron in your pocket. Switching between 2D and 3D shooting modes is again done at the flick of an on-screen button, activating the second camera to give you a dual perception on whatever it is you’re shooting. As an experiment, I shot 2 videos, both of the same items on my desk, one in 2D (1080p) and the other in 3D (780p). Then I played the 2D one and converted it to 3D with the on-screen feature. Both videos displayed very good quality, however the video shot in 3D was better at depth perception (obviously) than the one that was converted to 3D, which still wasn’t far behind. The depth perception was not as strong in the converted video, but it was there. Interestingly enough, while watching the 3D video, I was given the option to ‘2D’ it. Upon checking what it was, the screen splits in two and you have 2 video feeds, one from each camera. So it actually shows you the 2 individual perspectives, which if you then flick the option again, becomes one video, with depth.

The video below gives a fairly well-marketed impression of the 3D camera. It's pretty sweet..







Wednesday, October 05, 2011

Review: LG Optimus 3D - Tiny Little 3D Monster!

What a movie..
I remember when Titan A.E. released (back in 2000) as the first animated movie to feature Digital 3D. And what an awesome movie that was. Sure it flopped, but hey, the movie is still legendary. I still have the OST cd. Best movie soundtrack EVER. But I digress..

We’ve come a long way since then with 3D accomplishments like Shrek, Avatar etc.. What started as a ‘gimmick’ has stuck around for a while now and earlier when big budget 3D movies would release, it would say, “3D in select cinemas!” We’ve now moved on to a point where I see “Releasing in 2D in select cinemas.” The gimmick is here to stay.

Thursday, September 08, 2011

Review: LG Optimus 3D's Tri-Dual Technology

Let’s face it, everyone loves their own smartphones and likes to believe that theirs is the best. I personally am a bit of an Android buff, mainly because I enjoy the flexibility I get from one of them, so for me, the best smartphone is usually the best Android you can get. I recently got my hands on the LG Optimus 3D which boasts, amongst other things, something they call Tri-Dual technology. Before I explore the ‘depth’ of LG’s latest venture into mobile 3D, I’ll talk about this first.

LG Optimus 3D

Monday, August 15, 2011

AMD's VISION - The APU. (And why you should vote for me!)

I'm not usually one to enter this sort of competition, but when the good people at AMD approached me during an event that I held for them, I could hardly say no. I need votes to win, but before I get into that, let me run you through AMD's VISION..

Beyond all the computer jargon and fancy talk, it's all very simple. The folks at AMD had a vision that everyone and their uncles should be able to have a supercomputer. Simple things like full time HD, a battery life of over 8 hours, across the board 3D capabilities and much more were desired. So they built an APU - Accelerated Processing Unit. This is what AMD had to say about their APU:


"Information inside a computer flows between two critical areas: the GPU (for creative and visual tasks) and the CPU (for analytical and logic-based functions). Traditional PCs have separate CPUs and GPUs which leads to a communication bottleneck. This often results in extensive slowdowns for consumers.

Introducing the innovative AMD Fusion Accelerated Processing Unit (APU):
Powerful AMD processor technology and discrete-class, DirectX® 11–capable graphics combined on a single chip. It’s the perfect combination of beauty and brawn—delivering smooth HD video, powerful multitasking and energy efficiency. AMD's new APU features up to 4 x86 cores combined with up to 400 Radeon™ graphics cores in a single microchip."

That's how they describe it. In simpler terms they took, what has always been the more capable chip in a computer the GPU, and built it into the CPU, thereby increasing the processing power by at least 80%! Smart move, eh? You know have a simple chip that has tons of more processing power, making things like extended battery life, full time HD and 3D child's play. All of this is rooted in AMD's VISION engine. I'll let them explain that to you:


"AMD VISION Engine — The foundation of VISION Technology from AMD that enables vivid HD
entertainment, blazing-fast Internet browsing and accelerated media applications."

Pretty sweet, huh? My request now is to get you guys over to their website and vote! Each of the challengers, yours truly included, has to gather votes and the challenger with the most votes gets to go to the Austin City Limits Music Festival to see, amongst others, Arcade Fire, Coldplay Kanye West etc. live!

Help a brother out? Click here to start voting for your friendly, neighbourhood smartass!


M

Saturday, April 30, 2011

Review: Crysis 2 (360, PS3, PC)


Here's my review of Crysis 2, that was originally featured on LochalArchade.com. You can find the original post here.
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How do you top a game that has since become a benchmark for performance? How many times has the quote, “Yeah, my new rig can run Crysis on full steam, no problem,” been used to gain brownie points in the gaming community? When you create a game that becomes the label by which a computer’s performance is quantified against, making a sequel to a game like that, is not something easily accomplished. I mean, ask the guys at 3D Realms how their sequel to Duke Nukem came along.


Sunday, April 10, 2011

Review: The Samsung Smart TV. How Smart is Smart?

About a week before their launch on 6 April, I was invited by the folk at Samsung to have a look at their new product the Samsung Smart TV. Alongside me were a bunch of other technology related bloggers, like Paul ‘DaddyBird’ Castle, Magnus Nystedt of PCWorld, Mohammed Al Huraiz of Lochal Archade, Saurabh Chabra, the young chap from EMR8.com and the legendary Ashraf Ghori, creator of the Xero Error series



Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Review: BulletStorm (360, PS3, PC)

Now, when someone tells me, "hey dude, remember Cliff Bleszinksi? Yeah, he made a new game," the bar is already pretty darn high. Bleszinski happens to be part of the Epic Games team. Remember them? They made Gears of War.

Thanks to the wonderful folk at EA Middle East, I got my hands on a sweet little copy of Bulletstorm. And man, it was good. BS (lol) follows the story of a crew of former assassins - turned - mercenaries out to get back at their former boss who betrayed them. A simple story line, so not much you can do wrong with that. 

KTM X-Bow - An affordable supercar?





As reblogged from Left Lane News:

Austrian motorcycle builder KTM first revealed its new X-Bow (read as: Crossbow) roadster in 2007, but sales didn't begin until 2008. The 1500-pound car has a four-cylinder Audi engine offering 237 horsepower at 6000 rpm and 228 pound-feet of torque between 2200 and 4000 rpm. Audi reportedly considered selling a version of the X-Bow under its own brand, but later dropped the idea.

Hot Hatches

When I first got my license, my first car was a '93 Honda Civic coupe. Suffice to say it's a nice car to rough up your elbows in. Eventually, I spent a lot of time in a Peugeout 206 which I still have parked outside the house even today. In this time, I managed to get my hands on both an older Peugeot 205 GTi and the newer 206 RC.

Suffice to say, this made me fall in love with hot hatches. There's nothing quite like driving a car with almost no bonnet. Have a look at how Best Motoring does it:





Gotta love hatches..

M

Review: Killzone3 (PS3)

Killzone 3 starts off somewhere which would probable leave you pretty confused; inside the visor of a Helghast. Eventually though, things get back to normal and once again you’re good ol’ Sgt. Sevchenko fighting the good fight against the Helghans.

Initially rumoured to, ‘break the PS3,’ it turns out to be true. Simple things, that aren’t so simple to create, make all the difference. While every strand of grass glints of the mist gathered and with some of the best fire effects I’ve seen, this is the best looking Killzone yet. Unfortunately, this is also one of its drawbacks.

While playing I noticed amateur mistakes. Things going wrong that you wouldn’t expect in a title of Killzone’s caliber. Gun sprites freezing when you reload, confusing the hell outta the player. There were also repeated times where the cutscenes would have the speech all mistimed and messed up. Subtitles were repeatedly incorrect, so while it read something, Sev was really saying something else.

There was a continuity issue that bothered me too. [Warning: Here be spoilers] When Sev destroys Stahl’s cruiser with the nuke, the resulting outbreak, kills everyone in space, around Stahl. How did Sev and Rico survive?

All in all, Killzone 3 delivers quite well, except for a few bugs.

Visual: 8.5/10
Audio: 8.5/10
Gameplay: 9/10
Story: 7.5/10


M

Friday, February 11, 2011

Personal sans Professional

Working in the world of social media, there's often a dilemma that I feel is something worth discussing. Social Networks allow customers and clients exist on the same terrain, so it becomes quite simple to overlap the two. What this means is, that if I were a customer of Mercedes Benz and I found something on their Facebook page that I liked, I could very easily share it on my own personal space (wall).

The conflict that arises is, what about when they're your clients? How often do you plug your client's campaigns, apps, pages, etc. on your own personal space. I'm not saying, you shouldn't like their status updates or re-tweet any of their offer. What I'm specifically leaning towards is doing things like blatanlty tweeting, "check out this brand's awesome page xxxx wow!" (or the like) or tagging them in a Facebook status update "You guys should head on over to xxxx now!" (or the like)

So I went ahead and asked this on the Digital Media UAE Facebook page. In retrospect, I should have probably phrased my question a bit better, but in the words of Alexander McNabb, the internet is self - correcting, so my point was found out and debated. One of the sentiments agreed upon was that while it's nice if you do plug your clients, overdoing reduces your credibility. The most prevalent thought, the one many agreed with, is the only reason you should plug your clients is because you actually like the products or services that they have to offer. In fact, Wassim Moumneh went further to say that, "you'll not only look like a tard bumping [product] on your personal property, but will lose all credibility to do so when you're lucky enough to get the chance to work with something that you do believe in and want to support."

Nagham Akileh also shared her input saying, "you lose credibility if you plug 'em in posts unless you truly believe in the product/service/cause regardless of the work you do for it." However, my favourite answer to the thread was by Nora Bakhsh, a recent graduate from the American University in Sharjah, who said, "the whole point of handling a client's page is making it seem like they're doing it themselves."

I have to agree that, you should be able to successfully separate a personal social network account from any work that you happen to do on social networks. Suffice to say, you will rarely see me plugging my clients in my Twitter, my blog or my Facebook page. :)



Tuesday, February 08, 2011

Brand Bowl & a midget Darth Vader

As is the tradition, every time the Super Bowl comes around you have a huge bunch of corporates running around creating various TVCs that they want to air during that time, seeing as almost the entire North American populace is watching the telly. Not including Canada of course. Or Alaska.

Brands usually spend the around the same as the GDP of an African nation to secure a spot during the Super Bowl. Suffice to say, getting a spot is quite the pinch to the wallet, so much so that even the Super Bowl organizers do their own bit to track overall sentiment and who basically wins the Brand Bowl. Many iconic TVCs have been conceived, produced, aired and made popular by the Super Bowl. In fact, PepsiCo has been notorious for creating some of their most popular ads for the Super Bowl spots, including the celebrity gladiator match with Beyonce, Pink, Britney Spears or the Pepsi Stuff ad with Justin Timberlake.

Come Super Bowl 2011, companies release their ads to the hungry eyes of the world to see. At the time however, young Mali was asleep. The following morning finds young Mali sitting at his terminal at work, clicking and typing away furiously, social media guru that he is. (Yes, Mali occasionally refers to himself in third person). His good friend Arun linked him to something. He said it was a Super Bowl ad. He said I'd like it.

One minute and two seconds later, total productivity = zilch. Amazement = +infinity. Star Wars fanboy = +500 Force.




What I liked about this ad, besides a bite sized Darth Vader, was that the parent played along and boosted the child's imagination. It also represented VW in a more relaxed fashion, playing along consumer passion points. T'was refreshing!

My bid goes to VW for this year's superbowl. Have you guys seen their Beetle ad yet?



Sunday, February 06, 2011

Oh dear, I've fallen into it again..

Well it's true, after spending a lot of time contemplating my return to the blogosphere, I did give in and will resume blogging, effective immediately! My initial concern was that I will not have enough to blog about or any specific things I may want to write about. However, what I did discover is I do have things I want to talk and blog about.

I will hereby turn this blog right around and you can expect to see me blog about the following topics:
  1. Motorsports. I've recently joined my company's racing team. This adds to my previous track experience, so I guess it's about time I start talking cars as much as I love driving them.

  2. Paintball. Cuz it's awesome. And now that I have all my gear, it's time to terrorize the office.

  3. Video Games. I play a lot of them. It's time to take it a bit seriously.

  4. Campus Radio ME. Along with Ritesh, I started this almost a year ago. Here, I will talk about recent news, updates etc.

  5. Movies. I spend a lot of nights burning through DVDs. Why not share my views? :)

By any means, this list is not exhaustive. But possibly a teaser of things to come.

See you guys around!


M