MEDIA ON THE CUTTING EDGE
By Evelyn Nussenbaum

(FORTUNE Magazine) – If you're looking for the new face of technological change, consider King Kong. In director Peter Jackson's remake of the classic big-ape movie, the wizards at Weta Digital have created computer graphics that are astonishingly lifelike. For four more meteoric areas of media change, open the foldout pages that follow.

DIGITAL REALISM Technology: Digital animation that has mesmeric, flesh-and-blood verisimilitude Where you'll see it: In the movies King Kong and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, both of which open in December Who's behind it: FX houses such as Weta Digital (Kong) of New Zealand and Rhythm & Hues (Narnia) of Los Angeles What makes it possible: Weta's ape-face algorithm and Rhythm & Hues' Cube Camera, which captures light from six angles

IF YOU'VE ALWAYS WANTED TO DIRECT Technology: Do-it-yourself video on the web What makes it possible: A new breed of user-friendly video-centric sites and video software Where you can find it: At sites such as Blip.tv, Clipshack, Google Video, Phanfare, Revver, VideoEgg, Vimeo, and YouTube When it's available: Now Why it'll be big business: From video personal ads to video auctions, the options are endless.

Move over, blogging: Here comes "vlogging." In the past 18 months, the world of web video has moved from a simmer to a boil. And thanks to a new breed of free or low-cost, easy-to-use video-sharing websites--and the ubiquity of affordable digital videocameras--the average nongeek can now painlessly record, edit, and post videoclips to the web for the world to see. "Up to a year ago, if you wanted to put video on the web, you had to do everything yourself," says Jakob Lodwick, founder of Vimeo.com. "Compressing the video," he says by way of example, "was just one of several major steps. And with each of those steps, you lost people." Not anymore. Startups like Vimeo (not to mention Google Video) have attracted hordes of cyber-Spielbergs eager to share their work. "The uptick is larger than even the optimists predicted," says Kevin Sladek, the 25-year-old co-founder of VideoEgg. Part of the motivation is economic. Sladek claims that in a recent VideoEgg study on eBay, used items that were sold using videoclips went for 70% more than similar items sold without video. Roll cameras.

COMING SOON TO A TINY SCREEN NEAR YOU Technology: Mobile digital video What makes it possible: New mobile broadband digital video broadcast infrastructure and video-ready mobile phones Where it's already up and running: South Korea, Japan, and Europe When it's coming to the U.S.: In the next couple of years, depending on the amount of legal wrangling Who's behind it: KT and Samsung in South Korea, Nokia and O2 in Europe, Texas Instruments and Qualcomm in the U.S.

A new generation of mobile phones, equipped with digital television receivers and larger-than-usual color screens, holds the promise of putting TVs in the pockets of hundreds of millions of consumers by the end of the decade. Beamed directly from satellites or relayed through repeaters from terrestrial broadcast stations, the mobile video signals can be viewed on laptop screens, dashboard-mounted LCD displays, handheld computers, and of course cellphones. In South Korea earlier this year a trial run revealed surprisingly good video and sound quality on handheld phones in cars traveling 75 miles per hour, and even in subways. Deployment of mobile video services in the U.S. is lagging behind Asia and Europe, in part because of industry politics, wrangling over spectrum allocation, and technical standards. But America's appetite for television is so great that mobile video is an inevitable part of our future. Let's just hope it's not while we're driving.

DID THAT MAGAZINE JUST WINK AT ME? Technology: Digital paper What makes it possible: Breakthroughs such as electrochromatic polymers that allow flexible, paperlike electronic displays Where you'll see it: First in retail packaging, later in the form of books and magazines When you'll see it: Now in Japan, U.S. in 2006

Digital paper has a long history of unfulfilled promise. But the wait for "electronic ink" may be coming to an end. E Ink, a spinout from MIT's Media Lab, announced in October that it has, together with LG Philips LCD, built a new flexible 10.1-inch display that is about the thickness of construction paper and has the resolution of a standard desktop monitor. Already last spring Microsoft used a color version of E Ink's technology to light up the packaging of Xbox game Jade Empire. And Sony is selling an E Ink--enabled book reader in Japan. Potentially even more promising is an advance by German tech giant Siemens. Using an entirely different technology--electrochromatic polymers--it has developed "wafer thin" color displays that can deliver video, something the slightly higher-resolution E Ink technology can't yet manage. And the Siemens material may prove inexpensive enough to be viable as packaging for low-cost, everyday products. "I've gotten a lot of interest from advertising agencies," says Norbert Aschenbrenner of Siemens. So, long before Tolstoy fans get a one-page, foldable version of War and Peace, grocery shoppers should see Tony the Tiger waving madly at them from the Frosted Flakes box on aisle four.