"What do these rules mean for me, the filmmaker?"

Most of the Academy's Award categories allow for eligibility for award consideration by means of digital presentation, as outlined in "Rule Two—Eligibility" in the Academy's "Rules for Distinguished Achievements During 2008".
Here is the language (in bold type) in Rule Two (section 2, paragraph b) that applies to digital presentation: "All eligible motion pictures, unless otherwise noted, must be publicly exhibited by means of 35mm or 70mm film, or in a 24- or 48- frame progressive scan Digital Cinema format with a minimum projector resolution of 2048 by 1080 pixels, source image format conforming to SMPTE 428-1-2006 D-Cinema—Image Characteristics; image compression (if used) conforming to ISO/IEC 15444-1 (JPEG 2000), and image and sound file formats suitable for exhibition in commercial Digital Cinema sites..."

What does choosing a Digital Cinema format mean for filmmakers?
The first thing that you, the filmmaker, will need is what is now called a Digital Cinema Package, commonly abbreviated as DCP. The SMPTE and ISO/IEC documents mentioned in the general rule are in fact international standards that define the technical characteristics of the DCP. As a practical matter, you can rely on specialized digital cinema mastering facilities to provide you with a DCP that will comply with these your original Image capture can be whatever you want (film, digital video, CGi and so on}, 6~uf ultimately you will need individual, "one per frame" digital image files for the compression step of the mastering process. Once you choose a mastering facility, you may discuss with them the most efficient and cost-effective method of conversion for your project. Your finished DCP will be provided to you on a computer •HDD (hard disk drive)—typically a USB drive or a universal CRU drive.