How to create GIFs of live events in seconds. Creating high quality GIFs in seconds is a great way to make live video shareable on Twitter, but many people don’t know how to do it. A perfect example of when this might be useful is for when events are unfolding live; be it a police chase, the State of the Union or a gadget unveiling. By being able to stream a video and quickly create GIFs from that video, it means there’s a shareable moment that others can join in with.
By creating GIFs as the llama chase unfolded, it let everyone participate in the live stream and re-share the best parts with their friends. Creating these GIFs is actually shockingly easy for OS X users through a free a piece of software called GIFGrabber. This lightweight app provides a target zone for your captures and makes it as easy as resizing that zone and hitting ‘capture’ to grab a high-quality GIF. When you’re watching a live stream or video, you just need to position it over the top of what you’re watching and keep your trigger finger ready for capturing. The 5 most important announcements from CES today. LAS VEGAS— The International CES doesn't officially kick off until Tuesday, but Monday was filled with some of the biggest announcements from the show's top names. Samsung, LG, Sony and dozens of others all showed off an array of impressive gadgetry filled with the latest cutting edge tech. Mashable's team was on the ground in Vegas to hit all the press conferences and find the best new products on display.
We've rounded up the five most important announcements that came out of CES today. Samsung's bendable TV and SmartThings Hub As expected, Samsung released several new 4K televisions Monday but the coolest was its massive 105-inch set that bends on command. Samsung hasn't set a release date or price, but the last bendable set we saw from them was $260,000. The company also expanded its Milk platform beyond Galaxy devices. It opened up Milk Music and Milk Video apps to new platforms beyond Galaxy smartphones, too. LG's curved smartphone Image: Mashable, Chris Taylor Sharp's '8K' television. #CES2015 Day 0: 4K, Ultra HD, SUHD - What's the Difference?
Since CES technically begins tomorrow and today is just Press Day here in Las Vegas, Day Zero has officially come to an end at the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show. This year, your intrepid TNW reporters on the scene are Roberto Baldwin, Napier Lopez and yours truly. With so much happening in Vegas and only three of us on the ground, we’ll be doing daily recaps of our journey through the show floors to bring you news, updates, sights and sceneries here in Sin City. Samsung’s big day Samsung is a company that creates a diverse range of products, and based on its press conference today, it aimed to showcase nearly all of it at CES.
From curved PC monitors and Tizen-powered SUHD TV lineups to Milk VR and yes, even washing machines, there’s just about everything for everyone. What exactly does SUHD mean and is it different than Ultra HD? Well, yes and no. More TV news! The company also unveiled the 4K Joey, a set-top box that will deliver 4K content to any Ultra HD television. Smartphones. 40 Free Resources Every Designer Should Know. Ever wondered where designers get their resources to help them succeed with a project? Here is a list of great resources including sites, PSD. files, actions, UI elements, mock ups et cetera and best of all, they are totally free and available for you to download. Just click on the title or image and it will bring you to the resource. Bookmark this post so that you can always look back at this great list that can help you succeed. Icons for your website, an iPhone mock up or PSD’s for your landing page, Fribbble is the place to be.
Many of us struggle when posting a project at Behance. How do we get it to make it look right? First of all, read this article and then download this nifty background template. Another great site to get free PSD files, blurred background or UI elements. Struggling to get the perfect colour combination? A great site where you can download free stock images.
In need of some high quality patterns? Lets you design a website, for free, without code. Love this site! Citymapper Quietly Launches In Mexico City, Previews Tokyo. Microsoft Said To Be Close To Purchasing Minecraft’s Parent Company For Around $2B. It appears that Microsoft is prepping to follow Facebook into the YOLO territory of gaming acquisitions. The Wall Street Journal reported today that the software giant will buy the gaming company behind the mega-hit Minecraft for around $2 billion, perhaps as early as this week. The deal, which Microsoft can well afford with its nearly $86 billion in cash and equivalents, would bring a popular title into the company’s software domain. The purchase would be massively ironic given that Markus Persson, Minecraft’s founder, has been hailed by some in the gaming community for his criticisms of Microsoft, especially its Windows 8.x operating system.
Microsoft has several irons in the gaming fire: Its Xbox line of games, Xbox on Windows Phone, and, of course, games sold through its several applications stores that are part of its operating system platform. You can imagine a few synergies: Bundling Minecraft with new devices, adding exclusive content for Windows users, and the like.
UX - Interaction Design - Multimedia System. Social Good. Mashable. As all things Halo are creatively consolidated, fans should expect more: better acting, writing and production for the new digital series, more depth and characters in the books — and of course a totally blown-out gaming experience when Master Chief Collection brings the first four numbered Halo under one title. Bonnie Ross, head of game studio 343 Industries, said Halo has already established itself as a leading genre in transmedia. Its continued growth will help push the Xbox One, and the entire universe, forward. "It was incredibly important to me that all things Halo be under 343: books, novels, action figures, toys, movies, and TV shows," Ross said to a small group of journalists at E3 last week.
"We want to be the right steward for the Halo universe, because that universe is one of the biggest characters in the series. 343 Industries also supervised the first digital series, Forward Unto Dawn, which debuted as a five-part series on Machinima in 2012. Image: 343 Industries/Microsoft. Everything Apple Announced at WWDC 2014. It’s a wrap! Here’s a handy recap of all the announcements Apple made at its Worldwide Developers Conference this year. OS X Yosemite Apple announced its latest version OS X Yosemite (OS X 10.10) which features the flat design first unveiled with iOS 7 last fall. Also new: a Dark Mode that changes the menu bar to a translucent black hue and new dock icons.
Search via Spotlight now also integrate results from a variety of resources, such as the iTunes store and Apple Maps locations. OS X Yosemite also features a slew updates to its Mail and Safari apps. AirDrop also now works between iOS and OS X using its proximity awareness technology called Continuity. Apple also unveiled Family Sharing which allows up to six family members using the same credit card to access the same purchased item. ➤ Apple announces OS X Yosemite with flat design, tight iPhone integration and more iCloud Drive With OS X Yosemite comes Apple’s iCloud Drive, a cloud-based storage system that works from within the Finder.
Mashable. Google and Apple have been fighting for the title of the world's most valuable brand for years now, but last year Apple has been dominating the lists as number one. Now, according to Millward Brown’s annual BrandZ study, Google is back on top, with its brand value estimated at $158,843,000, compared to Apple's $147,880,000. The study, which was released Wednesday, has IBM in third place, followed by Microsoft, McDonald's, CocaCola, Visa, AT&T, Marlboro with another online giant, Amazon, rounding up the top ten.
Facebook had a huge rank change — it was bumped 10 places and it now sits at number 21, while Samsung has risen one place to number 29. An interesting new addition to the list is LinkedIn, whose brand value is estimated at $12,407,000, and is listed at the 78th place. All in all, Millward Brown estimates the total value of the 100 most important brands in the world at $2.9 trillion. Have something to add to this story? 3 Helpful Startups that Fulfill the Leap Motion's Potential. The hand-tracking Leap Motion hasn’t sparked the interest of the average person. But, in the hands of savvy startups with an eye on improving the lives and safety of others, it looks like it’s found its calling. The startups presented at the first Leap Axlr8r demo day, during which each of the teams used the Leap Motion hardware for their apps. The accelerator is put together by Founders Fund and SOSventures and based on the what was presented, we should expect more demo days from Leap Axlr8r by companies powered by the Leap Motion.
The technology behind the Leap Motion is impressive. From translating American Sign Language to keeping troops out of harms way, these startups are doing more than just creating a one-trick pony apps with the hopes of being purchased by Google, Yahoo or Facebook. Mirror Training The remote control robots the armed forces use that diffuse bombs are great at getting to a bomb. Motion Savvy Ryan Hait-Campbell demos Motion Savvy Diplopia.
GoPro Files For $100M IPO With 2013 Revenue Of $985.7M, Up 87.4% From The Year Prior. This afternoon GoPro filed its S-1 document with the SEC, detailing its financial performance as it looks to go public. The company states that it will raise up to $100 million in the offering, trading on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol ‘GPRO.’ The company’s revenue expansion has been impressive, with top line in 2011 of $234.23 million leading to 2012 top line of $526.01 million and finally, in 2013, revenue of $985.73 million. The company is GAAP profitable to boot, reporting $60.57 million in profit in 2013, up from a more modest $32.26 million in 2012. The company’s adjusted EBITDA — a very, very non-GAAP number — for 2013 totaled $133.72 million. How many cameras does the maker ship each year?
In 2013 that figure was 3,849 (net of returns), up from 2,316 in 2012, and 1,145 in 2011. Given that sunny set of facts, what’s the rub? Whatever the case, with GAAP profits and nearly 10 figure revenue, GoPro is a big, and valuable company. Want some vanity metrics? Circle Launches Its Bitcoin-Based Banking Platform. Digital currency startup Circle today emerged from stealth with the launch of its banking service that it believes will take Bitcoin mainstream. The company made the announcement at the Bitcoin 2014 conference in Amsterdam. Circle bills itself as doing for virtual currency what Skype did for Voice over IP by building a consumer-ready product to supplant paid services (long-distance calls) with technology that made calling free. In a similar way, Circle is utilizing the benefits of Bitcoin – instant, secure, global and free – to help customers store money and make payments.
The core Circle product is completely free. The company is a registered financial institution, keeps full reserve on its Bitcoins, and offers full insurance on customer accounts. “There have been a lot of barriers and friction and complexity to digital money formats over the past year or so,” Circle co-founder Jeremy Allaire told TNW. “What we’ve tried to do with the service is remove a great deal of the complexity.” Mashable. Nintendo is working on its own plastic figurines that work with its first-party games, a la billion-dollar Skylanders franchise, according to reports from its investors meeting in Japan Thursday morning. According to tweets from research analyst David Gibbons, who was attending Nintendo's presentation to investors following its quarterly earnings report, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata discussed NFC-enabled figurines of characters like Mario that could transfer data between several games.
Nintendo also posted the official transcript of Iwata's talk in Japanese, and it contains some renderings of Mario figures. Image: Nintendo The slides also show an IR reader that works with the 3DS handheld system. Nintendo posted disastrous earnings Wednesday morning for its quarterly earnings report Wednesday, and said the Wii U had failed to miss its sales targets by significant numbers. NFC figures could be a strategy to revive the flagging sales.
Mashable. Alibaba filed paperwork on Tuesday for a $1 billion public offering. It is expected to increase significantly and could become the largest tech IPO of all time. If your first thought reading that is "What the heck is Alibaba? ", you're probably not alone. Alibaba is a household name in China and well-known among certain tech industry watchers and investors abroad, but it doesn't exactly have mainstream recognition among consumers in the United States. That might change after its IPO. To help you get a head start learning about this fast-growing tech company, we've put together a primer on what Alibaba does, how it got so big and what impact it might have on other U.S. businesses. What exactly is Alibaba? The Alibaba Group is the largest ecommerce company in China and, according to some reports, the largest in the world. So basically it's just China's version of Amazon?
Not quite. Even that user experience is notably different. Just how big is it? Have something to add to this story? Mashable. MIT's Bitcoin club is launching a new project that will give each undergrad $100 in Bitcoin, beginning in the Fall semester. The club has already raised $500,000 in Bitcoin to fund the project and hopes it will help encourage students and local businesses to not only adopt the currency but use it in new and innovative ways.
The two students who have spearheaded the project, Jeremy Rubin and Dan Elitzer, liken it to giving students Internet access 20 years ago. "It's easy for people who haven't actually looked at the technology and started to understand it — they can grasp he scary things like Mt. Gox disappearing but really understanding the powers to do good is a lot harder," Dan Elitzer, the club's founder and president told Mashable. "This is not a completely risk-free endeavor but there's so much potential. " "This is not a completely risk-free endeavor but there's so much potential. " BONUS: Everything You Need to Know About Bitcoin in 2 Minutes Have something to add to this story? Mashable. Mashups of bleeding-edge technology are the lifeblood of innovation, and one team of experimenters may have outdone themselves by combining the Oculus Rift with a flying drone.
Using a DJI Phantom 2 and the hottest virtual-reality headgear on the market, a group from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology created a mechanism that gives wearers a real-time, first-person view from the drone's perspective. The team mounted a pair of cameras to the drone, which allows wearers to look around in any direction, while it hovers in the sky.
The drone is controlled by servomotors that move the cameras in the direction that wearers turn their head. The effect is a stereoscopic aerial view independent of the direction that the drone is facing. A demonstration video of the dynamic, above, shows the combination in action. It seems to give wearers what might be the closest perspective to a truly "bird's-eye view" of independent flight that a human can have. Microsoft Boosts OneDrive Storage For Corporate Clients From 25GB To 1TB Per User. Google and NASA Team Up For Autonomous Space Robots. Neil Young's PonoPlayer Shatters Kickstarter Goal, Raises $6.2m.
Microsoft's Support Ends for Windows XP and Office 2003. Microsoft Build 2014: Everything Announced on Day 1. Who Is the Average Gmail User? Google+ Pages Show Total Profile, Post and Photo Views. China's Xiaomi Shipped 11M Smartphones In Q1 2014. Facebook Building Drones, Satellites to Deliver Internet Access. Silicon Valley Can’t Keep Up With Korea’s Financial Revolution. Silicon Valley Can’t Keep Up With Korea’s Financial Revolution. LinkedIn's Jeff Weiner Beats Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg as CEO of 2014. World Wide Web Inventor: I Wasn't Expecting Kittens. U.S. Adults Spend 11 Hours Per Day With Digital Media [CHART]
14 Movies Every Tech Geek Will Love. Google Maps Dives Into World Oceans for Underwater Street Views. Visualizing 15 Years Of Acquisitions By Apple, Google, Yahoo, Amazon, And Facebook. MWC 2014: The Future Is Cheaper, Wearable and Invisibly Secure. The 10 Highest Rated Tech Companies for Internships. Twitter Highlights the Top-Tweeted Olympic Photos From Sochi.
A Complete, Interactive History of Bitcoin. Apple Fans: This is you Watching an Apple Keynote. Google Acquires Artificial Intelligence Firm DeepMind. South Korea Reveals Plans for 5G. Baboom is a Music Stream Service From Kim Dotcom. Top 15 Recipients of U.S. Patents in 2013 [CHART] Yahoo's Comeback Is All Smoke and Mirrors.
Why Google Bought Nest and What It Could Mean for Your Home. Phil Defranco: Why YouTubers Are Scared of 4K. Run from Zombies with the Race Yourself Google Glass App. HBO's 'Girls' Is Now on Snapchat. 10 Must-Attend Tech Conferences in 2014. Acoustic Levitation Is Science's Coolest Phenomenon. Mobile. Higgs Boson in Plain English, and Why it's So Important. Is This the Smartest Google Doodle Yet? How Green Is Your iPad? [INFOGRAPHIC] Toray unveils new self-repairing film for devices, fixes scratches in under 10 seconds. How Tech Helps You Make Sweet Music. How Apple Got a Retina Display in the New iPad.
7 Disruptive Innovations That Turned Their Markets Upside Down [INFOGRAPHIC] 5 Amazing Eco-Friendly Office Buildings From the Future. Apps. Startups.