Tilt: a Firefox Addon for Viewing, Debugging and Editing Webpages in 3D

Are you a web developer and is Firefox your main browser? Then I suggest taking a look at Tilt: an addon that enables you to view the structure of a webpage in 3D. Not only does this look truly awesome but it is also very helpful and educating when used to view existing websites.

You can even use it with Firebug and Style Editor at the same time. Here is a quote from Mozilla blog post, which is linked below:

Because Tilt is able to detect when a webpage’s DOM structure changes or when a repaint is necessary, integration is seamless with existing Developer Tools. Using Tilt and Firebug or Style Editor at the same time is easy. One can enable or disable CSS properties, changing the style of a node, and the visualization changes accordingly.

Tilt can be extremely useful for solving nesting problems:

Tilt is useful when searching problems in the HTML structure (like finding unclosed DIV elements for example) by providing the extra third dimension, layering each node based on nesting in the DOM tree. Stacks of elements visually represent branches in the DOM, and each node can be inspected for the inner HTML contents, its computed CSS style and the attributes.

For a detailed explanation of the addon and a couple of cool videos that demonstrate it, click the link below.

Link : hacks.mozilla.org – Debugging and editing webpages in 3D

Hacking Away with the Kinect Hardware

Some time ago a couple of guys were able to hack the Kinect so it is possible to use the camera on a regular PC or even a Mac. It was only a matter of time before people would start to show off on YouTube what can be done with the Kinect was some added self-written code. Here are (only) two examples of those videos. The beginning of a whole new scene of Kinect wizardry?

You can watch the videos after the jump.

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“Star Wars” Movies Start 3D Rollout in 2012

There is only one word for this news: Awesome!!!

I am a big fan of the Star Wars movies but mainly the first three movies with the second one (The Empire Strikes Back) as the highlight of the series. Considering that it will take about a year to convert a movie to 3D, I will have to wait until 2016 to see it in the movie theater. That’s more than 35 years after its first release.

Time flies!

3-D Movies: a Blessing or a Curse to the Movie Industrie?

In the last few weeks I have read quite a few opinion pieces and news posts on the decline in visitor numbers of 3-D movies.

Jeffrey Katzenberg, the DreamWorks Animation chief, spoke at the third annual 3-D Entertainment Summit last Wednesday and he said: “It is up to the film industry to maintain the audience’s trust and only put out films that look good in 3-D.” Katzenberg added that moviegoers must love 3-D, since six of the top 10 movies at the box office so far this year were 3-D releases.

What is your opinion? Is 3-D here to stay or not?

Jeffrey Katzenberg’s desperation plea: Movie biz needs to make movies that look good in 3-D

Reporters have been taking potshots at the medium for months now, with my colleague Ben Fritz pointing out that most of Hollywood’s revenue gains this year were from the sky-high prices people have to pay for 3-D films. The Wrap’s Daniel Frankel recently ran a story arguing that a decreasing amount of box-office dough was coming from 3-D screens. And I keep hearing from regular folks who have bailed out on taking their kids to see 3-D films, saying that the kids–especially the young ‘uns–hate wearing the glasses, which are irritating and give them headaches.

Link : LA Times Blogs – The Big Picture

An Impression of the IFA 2010 Trade Show in Berlin

Last weekend I went to the 50th edition of the IFA trade show which took place at the Messe in Berlin. This is one of the biggest trade shows (if not, the biggest) in Europe for consumer electronics and home appliance. Spanning over 160,000 m2 and an interlinked network of 26 fair halls there is an awful lot to see and check out. Needless to say I was able to fill up the better part of two days walking around at the IFA and still did not see everything that was going on at the Messe. In this post I will discuss my highlights of these two days.

Visually Stunning Exhibition

The big and most influential brands of course had the biggest booths. Some of these companies even had a complete hall at their disposal. Among them were Samsung, Sony, LG, Phillips and Panasonic. No expense was spared by these big companies to show off their trade in visually stunning ways. I have included a few pictures at the bottom of this post to give you an idea, although I realize they cannot get across what I have seen with my own eyes.

Continue reading An Impression of the IFA 2010 Trade Show in Berlin