Archive for August, 2011

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Elvis Remembered

Wednesday, August 31st, 2011

Elvis Presley Died 34 Years Ago

Fans Remember The King’s Life, Mourn His Death

This photo, which was scanned to digital by the Los Angeles Times, was taken on the set of the 1957 film “Loving You,” the second film to star music legend Elvis Presley. The film is a loose retelling of Elvis’s own rise to the rock ‘n roll throne. Last week marked the 34th anniversary of Elvis’s death, yet the King’s fame and fan-base continue to grow. A new generation of Elvis fans were born when “American Idol,” the popular singing competition TV show on Fox, used computer generated imaging to bring Elvis back to life for a duet with Celine Dion.

Last week more than 20,000 visitors paid their respects at a massive candlelight vigil at the Graceland mansion in Memphis, where Elvis is buried. Many who attended are hardcore Elvis fans who remember seeing the King perform live, and who continue to celebrate him not just as a performer or celebrity, but as a cultural icon whose importance has no limits. One such fan was 60-year-old Joe Makowski, who told a Los Angeles Times reporter that he saw Elvis perform in concert 81 times before the King’s tragic death on August 16, 1977. Makowski, who says he tries to attend the memorial vigil every year, says the most rewarding part of the experience is “seeing the young fans that weren’t even born until years after he passed away.” In Southern California, thousands paid tribute at Elvis’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Elvis’s enduring popularity places him alongside the Beatles as one of the biggest and most influential artists of all time. Forbes recently ranked Elvis as number 2 in a list of top-earning deceased celebrities, as his estate made upwards of $60 million last year. Only Michael Jackson’s estate raked in more. 2011 promises to be a big year for Elvis, as it marks the 55th anniversary of his first album release. On September 27th, a five-CD boxed set called “Young Man With the Big Beat” will be released, containing Elvis’s first two albums, various interviews and live recordings, and an 80-page booklet.

To see more classic Elvis photos that have been scanned to digital, visit Los Angeles Times.

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Google Buys Motorola

Monday, August 29th, 2011

Search Giant Google Buys Motorola’s Mobile Tech Division

Google Expected To Create A Mobile Tech Brand To Take On Apple

Just  few years go, phones were used for phone calls. If you were a business person, you may have had a Blackberry for mobile access to work email, but your phone was a phone, used for getting in touch and not much else. These days smartphones are expected to do everything, from playing videogames and digital video transfers to GPS navigation, web browsing, and more. In one corner of the battle for world smartphone domination is Apple, with its mighty iPhone. In the other corner, Google’s Android operating system is made available (for free) to a variety of hardware brands, such as Samsung, HTC, and Motorola, who use Google’s software to power their devices. Apple has always claimed to have a leg up on the competition (first Microsoft, now Google) because Apple makes both the hardware and the software for its devices, and that complete control allows for unique levels of design integration.

Last week, Google took what appears to be the first step down the Apple path, purchasing Motorola’s mobile products division for an impressive $12.5 billion. Industry insiders suggest that Google plans to use Motorola (makers of the first Droid-branded smartphone) to build its own device brand to compete with Apple. If Google were able to build and market its own smartphone and tablet devices rather than leaving the hardware design up to consumer electronics companies, Google could potentially become the world leader in mobile technology. The move is also seen as a way to protect Google (and various partners) from potential lawsuits over the Android operating system.

The purchase of Motorola Mobility is the single largest acquisition in Google’s 13-year history of purchasing other companies, many of them smaller technology startups. This purchase could go beyond the mobile technology world for Google, allowing the company to expand its empire into market segments far beyond its core offerings of search and mobile OS. For example, Motorola Mobility is also responsible for making cable and satellite TV set-top boxes used all over the world. Google may take this opportunity to incorporate its nascent Google TV product into Motorola’s set top boxes, making the Google TV experience the new standard for millions of viewers throughout the United States. Google TV allows the viewer to search for live TV streams and on-demand digital video transfer content on cable/satellite services, DVRs, and Internet sites (such as YouTube) all at the same time. Google has not yet announced what its exact plans are for the Motorola Mobility brand, or whether it intends to allow Motorola to continue operating as a self-sufficient company.

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New Version Of iTunes Coming In September

Wednesday, August 24th, 2011

Apple Expected To Focus On Software At September Music Event

iTunes 11 To Feature New Look, Cloud Interoperability

Every autumn, Apple holds an annual music event during which new versions of the world-dominating iPod mp3 players are unveiled. Traditionally, this event has also been used to introduce new versions of Apple’s free iTunes software. Last September, the company announced the current generation of iTunes, version 10, offering new features such as HDTV show rentals and support for a feature called AirPlay. The AirPlay feature, which allows iOS devices (the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch) to stream music files and digital video transfers over WiFi to other devices such as the Apple TV, has been widely embraced by the home entertainment electronics community. Pioneer, Denon, Sony, and other makers of the A/V receivers used for surround sound home theater have licensed the technology, allowing users to stream content directly to their living room TVs and sound systems. Other notable features of iTunes 10 included the soon-forgotten integrated social-networking service called Ping, and a new logo.

This September, version 11 of iTunes is expected to steal the show at Apple’s music event. Some analysts suggest that Apple will not announce any new or updated iPod models, for the first year in a decade of annual releases. Although the iPod (together with the all-in-one iMac computer) helped launch Apple from its financial problems in the 1990s to the one of the most profitable companies in the world in 2011, Apple is once again showing a shift in focus, this time toward iPhone and iPad products. The iPhone and iPad are now Apple’s most popular products, and the company feels more pressure to stay ahead of the quickly growing competition in the smartphone and tablet computer markets than to advance in the multimedia player market, where it reigns supreme with less serious threats from competing manufacturers.

According to rumors, the release of iTunes 11 will coincide with the launch of Apple’s new cloud-based media service called iCoud. This service will allow for cloud-based backups, syncing, and file-moving among multiple iOS devices and computers. Users of iCloud will enjoy seamless syncing of everything from music and digital video transfers to applications, documents, calendars, and even videogame progress. The new version of iTunes is believed to be tailored around the iCloud service, sporting a new interface, better integration with the iTunes music store, and automatic data syncing inside apps. For example, if you change a setting in an app, or advance to a new level in a videogame, that information will be automatically communicated to and stored in your iTunes library. The new version of iTunes is also expected to add support for books purchased from Apple’s iBookstore.

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Berlin Wall Turns 50

Monday, August 22nd, 2011

Germany Commemorates 50th Anniversary Of Wall’s Construction

Ceremony Held To Honor Lives Lost Under Communist East German Rule

This photo, which has been scanned to digital and restored, shows four American soldiers stationed in West Berlin, keeping watch over the Berlin Wall in 1965. Last Saturday marked the 50th anniversary of the Wall’s construction – one of the largest and most severe construction projects of all time. When the wall was raised, streets were severed overnight. Rail lines were left useless, and families were separated. In commemoration of this brutal event, Germany held memorial events throughout the weekend, including a wreath-laying ceremony to honor all those who lost their lives under the communist rule of the former East German government.

Germany has a unique way of honoring its history. While most nations concentrate on celebrating historical triumphs and shining light on periods of prosperity,

Germany takes commendable responsibility for the dark times the country’s past. In front of government buildings in Berlin, large photos of the wall have been on display for the last several months. These photos were from the government’s own archives, which scanned them to digital and printed them for display to commemorate the 50th birthday of the Berlin Wall.

For nearly three decades, the Berlin Wall represented a number of very different things. For the Soviet Union, it was a reminder of a great military victory against the Nazis, and a hand of communism reaching into the West. For the West, it provided a stark comparison between the prosperity of democracy and the austerity of communism. Some historians now view the Wall as something of a blessing in disguise.

Although the Cold War was a relatively stable era, leaders on both sides feared atomic war. Because the wall was in place for so long, the superpowers on either side of it felt stable, and tensions gradually relaxed. Instead of nuclear war, the world saw the slow, peaceful downfall of communism in Russia. President Kennedy summed it up best, saying “It’s not a very nice solution, but a wall is a hell of a lot better than a war.”

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Early Hitchcock Film Discovered In New Zealand Film Archive

Wednesday, August 17th, 2011

Hitchcock’s Earliest Credit Was On “The White Shadow”

Legendary Filmmaker Was Just 24 When He Wrote The 1923 Film

Last Wednesday, the National Film Preservation Foundation and the New Zealand Film Archive announced that the first 30 minutes of a 1923 silent film entitled “The White Shadow” had been discovered in a collection of unidentified American nitrate prints at a New Zealand film archive. What’s the big deal? The film is considered to be the earliest feature in which Alfred Hitchcock has a credit. The 24-year-old future Master of Suspense didn’t direct the melodrama, but he was the film’s writer, assistant director, editor, and production designer. The photo seen here, which has been scanned to digital from an original film cell, shows actress Betty Compson portraying her two roles in the film – twin sisters, one good and one wicked. Clive Brook co-starred.

Unbeknownst to the world, the film had apparently been sitting inside the New Zealand Film Archive for more than 22 years. It had been deposited there as part of a collection donated in 1989 by Tony Osborne, the grandson of a film collector and projectionist named Jack Murtagh. “The White Shadow” will have a premier of sorts at Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Samuel Goldwyn Theater on September 22nd. The film will remain in the academy’s vast Hitchcock collection, which includes a number of original and rare film prints, as well as Hitchcock’s own papers.

The discovery came as an indirect result of a grant given in 2010 by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to the National Film Preservation Foundation (NFPF), the nonprofit charitable affiliate of the National Film Preservation Board of the Library of Congress, which allowed the foundation to send an expert to the New Zealand archive to analyze its collection of American films. The trip resulted in the discovery of some more than 75 features, shorts, newsreels, and fragments, including the 1927 John Ford film “Upstream,” which was screened last year at the academy. In the wake of this successful investigation, the NFPF received more funds earlier this year, and a second trip to the New Zealand archive yielded “The White Shadow.”

To see more images of the “The White Shadow” that have been scanned to digital, visit Los Angeles Times.

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