Tonight’s the night… It’s the 101st anniversary of the ball drop to ring in the New Year at Times Square. At 11:59pm on December 31, 2008, the countdown begins for the biggest ball to ever be unveiled….At 12′ in diameter, the new ball was built by Hudson Scenic, with 2,600 Waterford crystal panels, thousands of Philips LEDs, and lighting design and control by Focus Lighting. It’s more energy efficient, and more

IESNYC has announced its January events, including:

Tuesday, January 6th, 6:30pm to 8:30pm: Solid State Lighting

Greenbaum & Gilhooley’s, 1379 Route 9, Wappingers Falls, NY

Programs North Committee presents an evening of LED lighting description, function and components:

Topics: What is LED or Solid State Lighting?… How does it operate?… What is thermal management?… What are circuit board arrays, optics, and controls? Some key challenges of LED lighting will also be discussed, more

The Comcast Center in Philadelphia (my home town FYI) has made quite a spash in the news…. it has great visuals and an interesting show control system—in fact show control guru John Huntington stopped off to see it as part of his recent travels:

John Huntington’s controlgeek blog

related articles: Comcast Supersizes Santa For Holiday Spectacular

Out of the Woodwork

From VJ duo Additive TV comes another viral movie trailer, this time to promote Slumdog Millionaire, making London-based film company Pathé the first producers outside the US to commission a viral mash-up of a film. This is just one in a string of many movie remixes the VJs have done in the last year. Others included Iron Man for Paramount and Max Payne for 20th Century Fox.

Addictive TV more

Lighting Designers love their tech toys, so what is at the top of your Christmas wish list?

In the spirit of the holidays, I finally broke down and bought myself an iPhone. It is awesome! One of the first Apps I downloaded of course was Wybron’s Gel Swatch Library for the low price of $9.99. (FYI: The App got updated yesterday.) Everyone more