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BigStage.com to make you a star in the digital universe

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Media technology company Big Stage Entertainment has concluded its beta program and launched BigStage.com, where anyone can create a free, animated 3-D “Digital You” for instant projection into the online landscape.

On BigStage.com, anyone can easily create a sophisticated, animated, 3-D model of their face for free by using only one to three photos taken with a digital camera. Big Stage Entertainment’s proprietary software allows users to upload these photos to BigStage.com, where the Company’s patented technology maps the contours of the face to produce a high-fidelity 3-D model in minutes. Invisible to users, the complex 3-D data is then processed to develop a highly accurate and animated personal digital clone. Users can create an unlimited number of literal and fantasy @ctors on BigStage.com.

To create and view @ctors in action, users need to install the Big Stage Media Player. Once the player is installed, @ctors can be styled instantly with accessories including hair, eyeglasses, hats and clothing, and can be projected into a variety of digital media experiences, including social networks, online communities, video clips, backgrounds, still images, greetings and more. Friends’ @ctors can also be placed into content, which is shareable via email forwarding and Web site embeds, in addition to saving to social networks and porting to YouTube by video capture.

Big Stage Entertainment’s life-like 3-D @ctors are based on advanced stereo reconstruction technology funded by CIA and other government grants, as a research project at the University of Southern California (USC) under the direction of Professor Gerard Medioni, Ph.D. Company founder Jonathan Strietzel first saw the potential for the technology while meeting with the project’s Chief Scientist, Doug Fidaleo, Ph.D., at USC. Strietzel then assembled co-founders Jon Kraft and Jon Snoddy, who assisted in refining the technology for consumer applications through extensive research and development at Big Stage Entertainment.

Originally posted on November 5, 2008 @ 4:33 pm

Filed Under: Web

Peperonity.com gets its own web interface

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The world’s largest mobile site building community peperonity.com now officially presents a completely refurbished version of its web presence to the public, making mobile social content available to the broad mass of fixed-line PC users even better.

Users can now navigate through the pages and content very easily. The current features and menu items from the mobile experience have been preserved in full, however were emphasised even more with new buttons. This makes the service more apt to the needs of the ever-growing mobile social networking area.

The site peperonity.com is completely user-centric. Categories like “Newest pics” and “Newest videos” show what content has just been uploaded by users. The home page also features an area from which the “Most visited pages”, the “Site of the week” and “Recently modified” can be invoked as well.

Originally posted on November 5, 2008 @ 11:31 am

The Washington Post, washingtonpost.com to offer comprehensive election day package

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The Washington Post and washingtonpost.com will be offering a comprehensive package for the 2008 elections, including in-depth political news and analysis from the paper’s award-winning political team and groundbreaking news aggregation and video technology.

The Post’s political team will go behind Tuesday night’s results in the races for the White House, Congress and the nation’s statehouses, providing in-depth reporting and analysis on where the country stands after Election 2008. Our correspondents, anchored by veteran political reporter Dan Balz, will report from Washington and around the nation on the history-making contest between Barack Obama and John McCain and tell us where the victor will lead the country beginning in January.

“washingtonpost.com will bring together The Post’s unbeatable political reporting with the innovations we’ve made throughout the year to create a suite of features and products that allow people to customize their election night experience,” said Jim Brady, Executive Editor, washingtonpost.com. “Whether it’s through live video coverage, an interactive election map, or a mobile phone, we will provide the source for users get national and state-by-state election coverage in the format that works for them.”

Originally posted on October 30, 2008 @ 4:28 am

GrindTV launches new blog platform

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GrindTV.com, the action sports channel on Yahoo! Sports, has launched a new blog platform to promote amateur and professional journalists. GrindTV’s new blogging tool rounds out its robust user profile pages.

“This new blogging platform will encourage communication between industry, athletes and fans, and will allow us to promote the most active and knowledgeable writers to an audience of more than 20 million sports fans,” said Greg “TripleG” Morrow, CEO of GrindTV.

Select bloggers will earn “Kind Of A Big Deal” status, which will automatically elevate their posts directly to the sport homepages, and the best blogs will be featured on the GrindTV.com homepage and promoted across
Yahoo!

Originally posted on October 29, 2008 @ 9:05 pm

eBay to offer holiday shopping deals starting Nov. 3

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Holiday shoppers will find exceptional deals on eBay this year, thanks to a series of new initiatives debuting on Nov. 3 intended to help eBay be the destination for the best prices on the gifts people want most. Of course, this is obviously geared towards attracting buyers at this time when everyone is worried to even go shopping.

Information on all of eBay’s holiday deals will be featured on an eBay deals page debuting on Nov.3. Among the featured offers are:

Daily Deal: Beginning Nov. 3 for 45 days, a different product – from categories including electronics, sporting goods, video game accessories, DVD movies and home and garden – will be available each day at a fixed-price and deep discount off MSRP with free shipping. These limited-quantity items will be available daily by 3 p.m. EST.

Bid From $1: Shoppers can bid on some of the hottest electronics all starting at $1 on eBay, by taking part in “Bid From $1” auction format series. From Nov. 3 to Dec. 17, thousands of new items such as MP3 players, GPS devices, cameras, video game consoles and video games will be offered in auction-style listings with $1 starting bids, no minimum final-price reserves and with free shipping.

$1 Holiday Doorbuster: Each day from Nov. 24 to Dec. 8, the eBay site will offer $1 Doorbuster deals – limited quantities of two different items at a fixed-price of $1 and one surprise luxury item, also at a fixed-price of $1. Items will include popular toys and games, fashion accessories, sporting goods and electronics.

Microsoft Live Search cashback: Shoppers who arrive at eBay through Microsoft Live Search (www.live.com) can receive up to 30 percent cash back on the purchase of any eligible fixed-price item when using a PayPal account through the Microsoft Live Search cashback program.2 That cash back, on top of eBay’s already low prices, can generate savings up to 60 percent total on many of the hot gift items available for sale across the site.3

Originally posted on October 28, 2008 @ 7:01 pm