Daily Roundup: Pebble Time, GTA V delays and more!

In today’s Daily Roundup, Pebble turns to Kickstarter to announce its new watch. Meanwhile, Grand Theft Auto V on the PC has been delayed again, Google is working on a new Chromebook Pixel and Apple’s latest iOS and OS X betas include more diverse emoji. Catch up on all these stories and more, past the break.

Pebble returns to Kickstarter for its next-gen color smartwatch

Pebble is an amazing Kickstarter success story raising over $10 million dollars for its first e-ink smartwatch. Now, the company is back for another go with the Pebble Time, its latest wearable that features a color e-ink display.

The PC version of ‘Grand Theft Auto V’ is delayed… again

Grand Theft Auto V on the PC was originally slated to come out on January 27th. Then it was pushed back to March 24th. Now, it’s been pushed back to March 24th. The good news? Folks who preordered the game will get some extra in-game cash to reward them for their patience.

Google employee reveals a new Chromebook Pixel’s due out soon

The first Chromebook Pixel wasn’t exactly a huge seller, what with its hefty price tag and all, but Google’s apparently still preparing to release a second version. OMG! Chrome! spotted a video of Renee Niemi, who’s in charge of Android and Chrome for Work and Education, at the recent Google Teamwork event, where she revealed that the company’s working on the next-gen Pixel that will soon be slated for release.

Apple’s newest iOS and Mac betas let you use diverse emoji

If you’re disappointed that current emoji characters don’t reflect your skin tone, don’t worry: Apple is getting ready to accommodate you. Both the latest betas of iOS 8.3 and OS X 10.10.3 include modifiers that let you choose the skin color of some icons.

AP: Lawmaker’s Instagram account proves he’s misusing taxpayer money

Republication Rep. Aaron Schock from Illinois has been spending taxpayer money on renting private jets, getting massages and taking his staff to sold out concerts, according to The Associated Press. And, get this: AP says it has confirmed all those times he rented a private jet, thanks in part to his Instagram posts.

Ad outlet tries using drones to track your phone’s location

Irked that advertisers are already trying to pinpoint your phone’s location? It might be even harder to escape their grasp if AdNear is successful. The ad intelligence group is experimenting with location-tracking drones that profile audiences in harder-to-reach areas by triangulating cellular and WiFi signals.

Google’s banning sexually explicit content from its blogging platform

Many X-rated Blogger accounts might cease to exist in the near future, as Google will no longer allow anyone to post sexually explicit or nude videos and images starting on March 23rd, 2015. It doesn’t end there, though: Mountain View also wants old account owners to delete any content that violates that rule.

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Art, Instagram and digital disintegration

Traditional photographs inevitably incur some physical wear and tear, while their digital counterparts are seemingly immune to such damage. When repeatedly shared over social channels, though, digital files can suffer a similar fate as they’re repeatedly copied and compressed. Artist and photographer Pete Ashton has sped up this gradual disintegration process in his recent project entitled “I am sitting in stagram.” He began with a single photo, uploaded it to Instagram, took an unfiltered screenshot and reposted the resulting image, repeating the process 90 times to produce an effect akin to the real-life aging process. That specific count also allowed him to fit a 6fps time-lapse video of the project into the service’s 15-second limit to animate the transmutation.

The core concept of Ashton’s work (and its title) was inspired by an audio experiment from 1969 called “I am sitting in a room” by composer Alvin Lucier. That version began as a spoken word recording that was played back and re-recorded through a repeated process. Like Ashton’s images, the sound became a haunting departure from the original after multiple iterations. It’s not the first time that Lucier’s pioneering work inspired a new generation of artists: William Basinski used a similar method to create his 2002 expimental album called “The Disintegration Loop” and YouTube’s emergence spawned a video variation in 2010.

The topic of digital image degradation stemming from re-use was even explored earlier this year in an article for The Awl, leading its author to declare the trend of less-than-crisp photos as “shitpics.” While that seemingly pejorative term is more about the online community adding some rough edges to an all-too-perfect digital landscape and Ashton’s take on the phenomenon is more conceptual, they both seem to find something compelling in all that noise.

Filed under: Cameras

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Via: Gawker

Source: Art Pete