Here come the drones: Hacks/Hackers takes to the skies (not quite yet)

Journalists are often called on to report on events where a view from above would be useful. And local TV news shows have long had their own eyes in the sky with helicopters reporting on traffic or car chases. 

With the costs of remote-controlled aircraft dropping, along with smaller cameras and better wireless technology, the idea of using drones for journalism has become an emerging topic among the future of journalism crowd -- and was the hot button issue at the latest Hacks/Hackers Bay Area event Thursday evening at Storify's offices.

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Drone Journalism: Reporting from above (with Wired's Chris ...

Drones aren't just for the military anymore. ... Hacks and Hackers ... Chris Anderson, Editor in Chief, Wired magazine: Anderson to...

Not a thing. RT @MJ_Coren: Drones can fly over people with new permits. What could possibly go wrong. @mattwaite. #hackshackers

One of the most well-known remote aircraft is the Parrot AR drone, which has a camera and can be controlled from an iPhone. 

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But that's just a novelty, for now, and a small hint of what's to come. The key to the rapidly evolving field is that the technology that had previously been available only to the military is now going open source, meaning anyone can assemble their own devices, said Chris Anderson, the editor in chief of Wired magazine who is also a drone expert and creator of the DIYDrones community.

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DIY Drones

The largest amateur Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) community on the web. Quadcopters, robot planes and more!

Diydrones

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"We're open-sourcing the military-industrial complex." @chr1sa at @HacksHackers on DIY drones.

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Chris Anderson (@chr1sa) on drone development: "Game changer is open source. The technology is commoditized & democratized; cheap and easy"

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Still, that doesn't mean progress with the technology will come so fast. Making drones feasible will require advances in materials and batteries, said Tyler Brown, who is working on the Occucopter project. On the software side, drones aren't aware of their environment and can't fly well autonomously, which requires advanced sensors and learning algorithms. Because of the difficulty in flying accurately, drones are involved in frequent crashes and require constant repairs.

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One safer option for getting aerial views cheaply and easily for the moment is to simply to use a camera tethered to a weather balloon.

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"Want to document a protest? Attach a camera to a balloon. The rules are changed when you have a string attached." - @chr1sa #hackshackers

"if you want to monitor a protest, tether a balloon. Takes care of *all* the problems...it's safe, it's legal"

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Drone multicopter #hackshackers journo discussion @ Storify HQ instagr.am/p/IyNa0BMd2Y/

'BrowserQuest' Shows HTML5 Could Slay Flash

Mozilla's "Browser Quest" online game may look crude by cutting-edge, hardcore gaming standards, but it's intended as a simple showcase for how technologies like HTML5 can be used to create cross-platform games and apps. The growing sophistication of HTML5 could spell trouble for Adobe Flash.

The Mozilla Foundation on Wednesday released BrowserQuest, a massively multiplayer online (MMO) game written in HTML5, JavaScript and other open source languages. [*Correction - March 29, 2012]

"BrowserQuest"

"BrowserQuest is a showcase of how open Web technologies like HTML5, JavaScript, CSS (cascading style sheets) and WebSockets can be used to create a multiplayer game that scales up to thousands of users," Christian Heilmann, principal developer evangelist at Mozilla, told TechNewsWorld.
"Its main purpose is to prove that the Web is a platform for gaming as much as it is a platform for apps and documents," Heilmann continued. "It also shows that JavaScript can be used server-side with node.js to allow for scalable architectures without resorting to non-Web technologies and plugins."

Node.js is a platform built on Chrome's JavaScript runtime for building fast, scalable network applications. It uses an event-driven, non-blocking input/out model that makes it both lightweight and efficient. This is suitable for running data-intensive real-time applications running across distributed devices such as MMO games. 

HTML5 vs Adobe Flash

"It will take time for HTML5 to improve in many aspects," Lewis Ward, a research manager at IDC, told TechNewsWorld.
Audio is one of the weakest parts of HTML5, Ward pointed out. "Some of the HTML5 applications out there still use the Flash Player plugin behind the scenes to handle the audio because the audio pieces of HTML5 aren't robust enough to really do quality audio," he added.
However, HTML5 may continue to gain ground as a development platform in the wake of Adobe's (Nasdaq: ADBE) introduction of new premium features for Flash Player that developers and publishers will have to pay for if their net revenues from the games, minus taxes and fees, add up to more than $50,000.
That's for the lifetime of the game, Adobe spokesperson Alex Dewey told TechNewsWorld.
Having to pay may prove unpopular among many game makers.
"Adobe has a strong position, and there's a large market for Flash-based applications, but without more effective strategies to gain ground on alternatives such as HTML5, the future for Flash and the premium player strategy is not terribly bright," Eric Leland, a partner at FivePaths, told TechNewsWorld.
"We honestly cannot see a model whereby developers are consciously choosing a pay model when they have perfectly viable tools like HTML5," Mike Ricci, vice president of Webtrends' digital solutions group, told TechNewsWorld. "This seems like more of a matter of putting a thumb in the large hole that has sprung in the Adobe dike and trying to salvage some of the games developers who have continued to use Flash."

Is this the future of Windows 8 ultrabooks?

Intel thinks the Windows 8 hybrid ultra book is the way to go. Is it?

Intel showed off the latest hybrid ultrabook concept at company confab this week. But it's been preaching this best-of-both-worlds religion for a while now. 

Intel's new PC business chief, Kirk Skaugen, is making the case for hybrids this week in Beijing at an Intel conference. But CEO Paul Otellini has been proselytizing the hybrid experience since last fall and other Intel executives, like Erik Reid, have been chiming in at every opportunity too.

Here's the pitch: in "consumption" mode, it's a tablet (see photos) and in productivity mode it's a standard laptop. And throw in the fact that hybrids use the latest high-performance Intel Ivy Bridge processors and run the Windows 8 Metro interface.

The linchpin is Windows 8. The hybrid experience won't work on Windows 7. Just ask Dell. Its Inspiron Duo hybrid was not a success, mostly because it was burdened with Windows 7 (and ran that demanding operating system on top of a underpowered Intel Atom processor).
The should change with Windows 8 on Ivy Bridge. Mark Skaugen's words. When showing off the Lenovo Yoga hybrid running on that processor, he said: "[It has] the Windows 8 experience and all of the responsiveness of that." Translation: it's a much better touch interface than Windows 7.
So, is this a viable future for the Windows 8 laptop? Or is better to go with more purist tablet and ultrabook designs?