Matt

Member since: Jul 13th, 2005

Matt's Latest Comments

Blog Activity

Blog	# of Comments
TUAW.com	13 Comments
AOL TV	10 Comments
Download Squad	1 Comment

Recent Comments:

History 3D brings the Civil War to life (TUAW.com)

Apr 12th 2011 12:16PM @rufinatti: I'm the creator of the app, and I have to tell you that that's very much not true, and I would appreciate clearing up untrue statements that would be very damaging to me.

The true story about how I created the app:

Last summer, I bought a cool iPad app that let you take your own photos and convert them into 3D (take two essentially identical photos a few inches apart and it converts them to anaglyph).

Last November (at the time, I worked at the Library of Congress), I was watching a documentary about the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. They used a photo that I recalled as coming from the Library of Congress's collections. I found it online and learned that it was actually part of a stereograph.

I put two and two together and thought, "Wouldn't it be cool to do the same thing for 3D photos that the app was doing in a rather primitive way?" I created one anaglyph and emailed it to my colleagues, suggesting it as an official Library app.

There wasn't a whole lot of progress because of other priorities. Meanwhile, I decided to leave the Library not long after that (and left on March 11), so I decided to develop such an app for myself.

I knew the Library had the world's best and most important collection of Civil War stereos. I was also very much involved in helping plan the Library's own Civil War anniversary activities, including their unrelated photo exhibit that opened today. Starting the app with Civil War images was a no-brainer.

Every single anaglyph I'm creating is done from scratch, made by me. I wanted to research if there was anyone else out there who is doing a similar thing. I started with the App Store to see if I could market this as unique. Then I went to the Internet to see if anyone was doing anything there.

The work that had been done was very limited, and Bob Zeller's work at the site you inked above is clearly the best example of that so far. Among about 20 books I bought to learn more about the Civil War in general and Civil War photography in particular, two books were by Mr. Zeller. His work has definitely been an inspiration to me. But it was only until I was far down this road that I learned that his organization's interests were similar to my own.

We are offering the app for dirt cheap. I have easily put hundreds of hours into this, as has my programmer. We are also taking part in Apple's program that offers discounts to educational institutions.

Most important of all, the high-rez versions of every anaglyph I create (roughly 25-30MB TIFFs of each), I am donating copyright-free, for the public domain. That's virtually unheard of in a private donation to the Library.

So yes, people will be able to get them for free, as soon as the Library is able to make them available. The app adds value to images with the page turner, the historical context I worked hard to give them, etc. The success of the app will also allow me to keep cranking out the high-rez free versions for the public.

While I'm sure your comment was well-intentioned, and I can see how you might have come to your conclusion, you came very close to accusing me of stealing someone else's intellectual property. I'd suggest you talk with an app's creator before making damaging, unfounded comments on blogs.

Matt Raymond
www.history3d.us

More rumored details on The Daily (TUAW.com)

Jan 18th 2011 1:52PM Yes, the Wall Street Journal became the highest-circulation newspaper in the United States, with the most sought-after readership by advertisers and a stellar journalistic reputation, by being a "rag."

More rumored details on The Daily (TUAW.com)

Jan 18th 2011 1:46PM Do you often make updates to the body of a post? I almost missed the update at the end and was about to fire off a scathing comment about a "newspaper" that costs twice as much as major daily newspapers in print form, and which STILL has ads.

Hands-on with Magic Cube Bluetooth portable laser keyboard (TUAW.com)

Jan 13th 2011 5:01PM Summer Glau's character used a keyboard like that in this week's premiere of "The Cape"! I didn't know that actually existed.

Of course, she also had those "Minority Report"-type holographic monitors with gesture control hanging in the air in front of her, so I guess I lumped in the laser keyboard reality with the holo-monitor myth.

iPhone devteam releases browser-based 4.x jailbreak (TUAW.com)

Aug 2nd 2010 8:31PM I just jailbroke my iPhone 4 (for the first time) and installed MyWi. It told me it needed to reboot the phone, but now it just hangs on the black screen with the Apple logo. What gives??

TUAW review: Email while driving with Text'nDrive Pro for iPhone (TUAW.com)

Jul 21st 2010 4:57PM Ditto. I've spent the better part of some of my 2.5-hour drives to the beach in txt conversations using Dragon Dictation, and not once did I feel distracted -- certainly not in the way that typing yields.

Win a 16GB Wi-Fi iPad from TUAW (TUAW.com)

May 3rd 2010 4:33PM GIMME GIMME GIMME! :-)

'Saturday Night Live' Doesn't Think Gabourey Sidibe Is Too Fat (AOL TV)

Apr 2nd 2010 4:04PM I'm going to second what a lot of people have already said, because I'm not sure if I've seen such a wrong-headed blog post in all my life. Let me count the ways:

1) As has been stated, all the overweight women mentioned above have essentially had one noteworthy role, and no more.

2) You bash Howard Stern, but then you make almost the exact same point he was making by saying "You won't hear Howard Stern or anyone else saying Jonah Hill or 'Lost's' Jorge Garcia are going to have a hard time finding work in Hollywood because of their size. It's a gender-specific double-standard that has been around for a long time in Tinseltown [...] "

Howard has been pointing out the reality for actresses today. You call it a "double standard," but you acknowledge that same reality.

3) None of the actresses people are pointing to as having these supposedly prolific careers comes anywhere near Sidibe's level of obesity. She's not just fat, she's ENORMOUS. While she's suited for a role like Precious, she is uncomfortable and, frankly, a bit repulsive to look at.

There is a spectrum of overweight and obese actresses, and Sidibe is at an extreme end of that.

4) Not to sound overly dramatic, but this whole "fat is beautiful" attitude is DANGEROUS. Obesity and overweight recently overtook cigarette smoking as the No. 1 cause of death -- as many as 365,000 excess deaths per year in the United States alone. Hypertension, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, liver disease, arthritis -- obesity is a major contributor to ALL of these.

Morbid obesity like Sidibe's is estimated to reduce lifespan by at least 10 years. And women with a BMI of 32 and above have DOUBLE the mortality rate of thinner women.

Further, the obesity rate went up a staggering 37 percent between 1998 and 2006. So fat acceptance and this warped notion of "beauty" are killing millions of people!

Then there is the economic damage. The medical costs attributable to obesity in the U.S. are currently $147 billion, or 9.1 percent of ALL medical expenditures. In other words, you and I are paying for someone else's right to be fat and "beautiful" via higher health insurance premiums, Medicare, Medicaid and the like.

It is absurd that we're even having a debate over this!

5) And finally, you say "[t]he traditional views on women in Hollywood dictated that they be thin and beautiful! But those views aren't holding as much weight as they used to." Was that pun intentional or merely Freudian? :-)

By the way, where is your evidence to back that up? Hattie McDaniel was fat, and she won an Oscar 70 years ago, for goodness' sake. It's MORE acceptable now than it was then?

People should be thanking Howard Stern for contributing to the debate, regardless of his tone or choice of words. It's an issue that needs more than a little frankness.

Apple's 7 commandments of app sex? (TUAW.com)

Feb 22nd 2010 12:40PM I was ready to blast you for this post -- questioning the maturity level of those who like to see a little skin -- because apparently everyone except you seems to have an interest in that.

But then you redeemed yourself with the sensible suggestion that there be some rational mechanism to allow people to get whatever legal content they want. It's the marketplace, but Apple seems content to run the App Store like the Politburo.

Adobe speaks up about Flash on the iPad (TUAW.com)

Jan 29th 2010 1:13PM "As for Hulu and a few of the other specific sites mentioned in Adobe's rant, now that Apple is in the business of selling content, exactly how is it in the company's best interest to provide access to that same content, through another company's platform, for free?"

Because that's exactly the stuff of which antitrust suits are made.