Friday, June 19, 2009

3D is all the rage -- at nerdy tech conferences

In the past month I have attend three major display industry trade shows, SID, ProjectionSummit, and InfoCOMM. As is typical with these types of tech shows, the new, cool thing gets a lot of attention, and more and more, it's 3-Dimensional displays. (and, ahem, picoprojectors).


I see 3D people


In between people throwing out big fancy concepts like anaglyph, psychovisual, and switching polarizers - I got to see these things in action, and they are AWESOME! Samsung had one that the glasses had a sensor, and as I moved, the 3D plane on the screen moved too. A lot of fun, and makes me look at my fancy HDTV as downright mundane.

The holy grail of this world is a glasses-free 3D display, just like we saw in the first Star Wars. I think it's telling that even in the visionary world of Star Wars, the image is low-def. This stuff isn't easy to do, but it's cool!

Friday, June 12, 2009

Widetronix Wins Again!

Last year I wrote a note about Ithaca company Widetronix winning the $250K DFJ Venture Challenge. This year they did it again by winning the MDA Creative Core $100,000 Emerging Business Competition!


The Force is strong with this Widetronix


This marks the third year in a row that an Ithaca/Cornell company has won this competition. e2e won in 2007, and Mezmeriz in 2008. It's a nice hat trick for the community, but it's not really a surprise to anyone here. That's because of the strong supportive environment fostered in the community. Of the 10 semifinalists, 5 were from Ithaca, and three of them were in the same building!

Well done Widetronix! Now, who wants to be next year's winner from Ithaca?