film

Hipstamatic is an extremely popular app that turns your iPhone's digital camera into an old-school single-shot camera of the past to give your images that grainy, washed-out (in a good way) retro look. The interface is a bit confusing at first, but you'll soon figure out how to switch between different types of retro film, different types of lenses, and even effects for different kinds of flashes. You can switch between each of the different variables with a swipe of your finger, with dramatically different results depending on the combination you choose before taking your snapshot.

We've … Read more

Thin-film solar company Nanosolar said today it has secured sizable customer orders and it expects to match solar industry cost leaders in a few years.

Nanosolar, one of dozens of companies founded last decade to use thin-film cells to lower the cost of solar, said it has customer orders that could be as much as 1 gigawatt worth of solar panels over six years if the company meets technical milestones and ramps up volume as it projects. The panels are designed for utility-scale solar projects over 1 megawatt in size.

The contracts are a boost to San Jose, Calif.-based … Read more

What a week for video game news! As PSN outages continue to plague PlayStation 3s, Sony has finally declared the incident a "compromise of personal information" and a "malicious act." Does this mean our credit card info has been tossed into the Internet void? Nevermind that, we just want to be able to play Mortal Kombat online again.

Last night's Tribeca Film Festival screening of L.A. Noire marked the first time a video game was spotlighted at the big event. Jeff was there for the screening and Q&A that preceded; plus he'll give us some thoughts on an entire case he played a few weeks ago.

Since Nintendo has confirmed that the successor to the Wii will debut at E3 2011 and go on sale next year, we'll play an interesting voicemail that speculates on how players will interact with the new console.… Read more

With all the hype over the quality of smartphone cameras, one app doesn't mind a little dust and scratches. Silent Film Director, from Macphun, gives people the ability to drop old-school effects on their video clips, add old-time music, and cut together a perfect silent film.

Formally Vintage Video Maker, this app has undergone a major upgrade for version 2.0, including a number of performance and stability upgrades, user interface enhancements, faster rendering, and new video effects.

Video clip effects include black and white, '20s movie, '60s home video, sepia, sepia vintage, and '70s home video. These are … Read more

Independent films have always been a valuable source of content for Netflix, but rarely was it more important than during a public relations crisis two weeks ago.

Showtime and Starz, two-high profile pay-TV services that supply Netflix, the Web's top video-rental service, with popular TV shows and films, announced that once their contracts ended they would reduce the amount of content they provide for Netflix's streaming service. Netflix's Watch Instantly service is seeing white-hot growth and managers are trying to stoke interest by acquiring more material to stream. Some Hollywood bosses have said they aren't comfortable … Read more

Amazon's new cloud service has generated a lot less angst in Hollywood than it has at the major music labels.

On Monday evening, Amazon announced the Cloud Drive, which enables users to upload e-books, songs, films, and any other digital media to Amazon's servers. Users can then access their content from any Web-connected devices. Among the major Internet companies delivering digital entertainment, Amazon is first to make good on the promise of ubiquitous access to content.

Amazon gave very little notice to the major film studios or record labels that it planned to handle their content this way, … Read more

Do you have a great idea for an interactive storytelling project that focuses on vital social issues, but can't figure out how to fund it? You may very well be in luck.

The Tribeca Film Institute (TFI) is launching a New Media Fund aimed at supporting projects that go beyond normal filmmaking and which tackle crucial social issues. For 2011, the fund will award $750,000 in grants, and $1 million a year for five years afterward. The fund is a partnership between TFI and the Ford Foundation's JustFilms initiative.

According to TFI executive director Beth Janson, the … Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--Duncan Jones has only made two films, but he's already developing a reputation as quite the science fiction auteur.

With 2009's "Moon," starring Sam Rockwell, and now "Source Code," starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Jones is becoming the kind of director that actors say they seek out because they want to share in his vision.

In "Source Code," which seems to be one part "Groundhog Day" and one part "Speed" with a heavy degree of sci-fi and technology thrown in, Jones created a world in which Gyllenhaal "wakes … Read more

It's now becoming increasingly clear that the global supply chain for electronics is going to be far more affected by the earthquake-tsunami-nuclear crisis still unfolding in Japan than previously thought.

Take for example the attention today on lithium ion batteries used in notebook PCs. Demand right now is not terribly high--it's a time of the year when consumers are buying fewer PCs--but consider what happens if the crisis persists. As Taiwan's Digitimes observes, a good bit of the world's production ecosystem for lithium ion batteries used in notebooks are not only located in Japan, but many … Read more