digitization

Want the house of your dreams? Soon, it may be possible to design it on your computer and have it delivered to you in customized, Lego-like pieces.

That's the idea behind a collaboration between Bell Travers Willson Architects and Facit. The concept was showcased at the 1:1 Making the Digital House exhibition at The Architecture Foundation in London.

Using 3D modeling programs, an entire home or building can be designed on a computer. All the dimensions and screw-hole placements for the building materials are then relayed to a Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machine that cuts out the customized … Read more

Time Inc. announced yesterday that it will stop printing its Life magazine newspaper supplement after the April 20, 2007 issue. The brand will live on through its various other ventures, such as its well-known hardcover and soft cover books, and a new Web site.

Describing the Web site as a "major portal," Time Inc. plans to offer Life's entire collection of photos, approximately 10 million images, on the Web site for free personal use. It is still unclear how Time will make the images available for commercial use, and the company will not disclose the URL for … Read more

The release of Apple TV is imminent--the first hands-on review has appeared, pre-orders have already begun shipping, and it should be popping up in Apple Stores by the end of the week. It's fair to say that Apple's first living room entertainment device is going to cause some major waves in the industry. At the same time, though, it's neither the first nor only product of its kind. Plenty of others--known as digital media adapters or network media devices--are capable of streaming digital media from networked PCs. And iTunes isn't the only show in town when it comes to digitally delivering premium movies and TV shows. So, as the Apple TV rocket leaves the launchpad, we thought it only fair to present a look at the alternatives.… Read more

What did we tell you? Yesterday we whining characteristically about a preponderance of digital photo frames on the market. And now we find that yet another one is being hawked, this one by Philips.

But here's the rub: The latest "Digital PhotoFrame" seen on MobileWhack doesn't seem to feature much of anything new over previous models and is apparently being marketed solely for Mother's Day, available with an "exquisite new floral design."

That, in our humble opinion, is more evidence that this business is way overcrowded. Companies typically mount a big push on … Read more

A panel named Reinventing Payment Models for Digital Music sounds pretty boring, doesn't it? In fact, the SXSW panel was infinitely more entertaining than the Ultimate Music Recommendation Smackdown. Shocking, I know. But the entire audience was cracking up for the majority of the session. It's rather hard to get the comedic interactions of the panelists across in this medium, so you'll just have to bear with my relative lack of humor as I try to relay the meat of the information.

The gist is that the majority of artists make very little from music downloads because … Read more

Well, the music offerings at South by Southwest are heating up, and we'll keep you posted on the good ones. I mentioned BurnLounge in a Hoooka, which is a start-up that lets you sell music through a MySpace widget. BurnLounge, which has been around for a while longer, has a similar model: create your own music store, choose the music in it (WMA format), add your own reviews and recommendations, and (optimally) profit. But until this point, it had been just that--standalone personalized music stores, lacking additional functionality that most people think of when they think of new Web … Read more

If you're reading this, chances are you don't really need a $40 coupon to help pay for a converter box that'll allow you to watch over-the-air (OTA) digital television on your standard TV. But for those who happen to depend on that old TV and "free" analog television--not cable or satellite--and want to continue watching TV beyond February 18, 2009, the coupon should be a big deal. Under the new program, every household in the country will be able to apply for as many as two coupons, each worth $40 toward the price of a … Read more

The radio revolution we've been harping about has officially gone global.

The "DRM Radio" from Scottish electronics maker Morphy Richards supports the new Digital Radio Mondiale standard (a different kind of DRM, not digital rights management). That, according to Electronista, means that "short-, middle-, and long-wave radio transmissions from around the world are translated into digital broadcasts, producing FM-quality audio streams regardless of where the listener happens to be."

If you can't find anything worth listening to on those frequencies, you can always use it to get local broadcasts in digital and analog form. … Read more

Back in January, Westinghouse announced at the Consumer Electronics Show that it would be putting out a new line of digital photo frames in early 2007. Now the company is getting ready to make good on its promise.

I got a quick look at the final production samples, and they do appear to be significantly better than last year's frames, which were fairly lackluster. As the LCD factories in the Far East rev next-gen panels, the themes this year for digital photo frames are higher resolutions, better interfaces, and just plain big. In a few weeks, Westinghouse will begin … Read more