Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) has designed software called Mobicast. Mobicast has the ability to stitch together cell phone videos. Mobicast was developed by Microsoft’s Research Labs in Egypt. The Mobicast software requires installation on mobile devices and on the server receiving the footage.
When two or more mobile devices are recording footage in similar areas, the software synchronizes the footage based on the clocks of the phone and ensures that the framing is aligned correctly. Mobicast has the ability to stitch the videos together in real-time too. There are still several kinks to be worked out, but this is one of the coolest projects to have come out of Redmond.
Logic Wireless has started to sell a phone called the 150LGW and it is now available in Skymall, you know… the catalog that is available in the form of a magazine on airlines. The 150LGW is Logic Wireless’ first attempt at having a phone with built in projector. Other specs of the phone include twin SIM card slots, dual cameras, Office file viewer, Bluetooth, quad-band GSM radio, and the Symbian operating system. The phone costs $499 and can be bought from here [Skymall link].
Sangyup Lee is the designer of the 2010 Chevrolet Camaro. He has resigned from General Motors in order to accept a position at Volkswagen/Audi as the Chief Designer of Exterior in California. Lee will be starting this job at mid-2010 and will report to Jens Manske.
Lee worked at GM for about 10 years. He was responsible for the 2010 Camaro and the design of the 2004 Buick Velite Concept. He also provided input for the design of the Stingray. The C6 Corvette was also partially designed by Lee.
Siemens, Bombardier, and Alstom have partnered to build the world’s fastest high speed train in China. The train averages 217MPH (350km/h) and links Wuhan to Guangzhou. The distance between the two is about 663 miles. Normally the travel time between the two cities is 6 hours, but the high speed rail will make the travel time 2 hours and 45 minutes.
Ann Arbor based pizza corporation Domino’s Pizza is getting ready to revamp their website’s ordering system. The company will be hiring about 30 technology employees around Ann Arbor as a result. The ordering system on the Domino’s Pizza website accounts for about 20% of all sales.
Domino’s previously outsourced IT development to several firms in Illinois and California, but now the company is in-sourcing talent. “We’re bringing this in house,” stated Domino’s CIO Christopher McGlothlin in an interview with AnnArbor.com. “We’re offering Silicon Valley jobs in Ann Arbor.”
Domino’s has also revamped its pizza recipe in order to attract new customers. Domino’s has been using different sauce ingredients and bread ingredients.
So far Domino’s has about 150 IT employees and the company will be hiring the additional 20-30 from the schools from around the area. Ann Arbor is the home of the University of Michigan and is a few miles from Eastern Michigan University and Michigan State University. Domino’s e-commerce director Jim Vitek has already been networking at local tech events such as the Ann Arbor New Tech Meetup.
Domino’s Pizza has an annual revenue of $1.37 billion and runs about 8,700 stores across the globe. The company caters to different toppings based on the location of the restaurants.
The Pantless Knights are a music group that puts together spoofs of popular songs. The group has just put together a music video that does a spoof of the song “I’m On A Boat” by The Lonely Island featuring T-Pain. The name of The Pantless Knights’ song is “I’m On A Mac.” So far there are over 500,000 views of this video on YouTube and it was released about a week ago.
LiveMocha.com is a language learning service that has just raised $8 million in Series B funding. The funding was provided by August Capital and previous investor Maveron.
LiveMocha currently has 4.8 million registered users and offers learning courses across about 30 languages. This round of funding puts LiveMocha at about $14 million in total funding. The first round of funding was $6 million back in January 2008.
“Closing a significant round of funding is acknowledgement of our progress and underscores the large, disruptive potential of Livemocha,” stated LiveMocha CEO and co-founder Shirish Nadkarni in a press release. “We are excited and well-positioned to realize a very ambitious vision for the future of language learning.” LiveMocha is based in Bellevue, Washington.
Toshiba has developed an application for mobile phone users in Asia to be able to translate voices on-the-fly. The mobile phone service supports voice recognition and has trilingual capabilities.
The software is similar to a desktop application that Toshiba has developed in Japan and can translate between Japanese, English, and Chinese. However the application is not flawless. It tends to misidentify certain words.
The application is not available for the public in Asia as of yet. Toshiba’s research department is patching up certain errors for now and it should be available sometime in the near future.