Hasta La Gadget!

If things carry on like this, then soon cameras won’t even need human beings to take a photograph. We’ll be relegated to a means of transport, our soft meat-sacks merely following orders from the machine and pointing it in what ever direction it tells us. The Nadia camera, a device which rates you photos for you, even has a human name, all the better not to scare us.

Instead of an LCD screen to check your pictures, the Nadia judges them for you and assigns a percentage score using the automatic rating engine Acquine. It does this even before you press the shutter, allowing you to compose and recompose, with Nadia offering an electronic opinion every time. When you judge the number to be high enough, you press the shutter and take the snap.

Nadia doesn’t even contain a proper camera. Inside the black box is a Nokia N73 cellphone which talks to a nearby Mac via Bluetooth. The Mac sends the image off to Acquine’s “aesthetics inference engine” on the web and gets back a score, which it then displays on screen. Somewhat ironically, submitting the photo of the Nadia to Acquine gives a score of just 32.5%, while a screenshot of this article in draft scores a wondrous 45.5%.

The project, by Andrew Kupresanin, is clearly just an experiment but as we rely more and more on our cameras to automate the photography process, it’s not hard to see almost completely autonomous cameras in the near future.

Nadia [Andrew Kupresanin via Oh Gizmo]

Acquine [Acquine]

See Also:

• Sony Camera Robot: You'll Always Find Him On The Table at Parties …
• Eye in the Sky: Floating Camera Kit

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It’s getting to the point where it’s not terribly easy to keep track of all the in-car entertainment initiatives our wondrous connected future has in store, but here’s two names you’ll want to remember: GENIVI and MeeGo. The former is an industry alliance that now includes automakers GM, BMW, Hyundai and Peugeot Citroen alongside the likes of ARM, NVIDIA, Nokia and Intel, and MeeGo is the Linux-based OS that they’ve just decided will soon be powering our cars. Don’t expect this to affect your daily drive anytime soon, but in the long run we wouldn’t be surprised to hear that the Moblin-Maemo base underpins future revisions of Terminal Mode and OnStar.

MeeGo becomes infotainment operating system of choice for BMW, GM, Hyundai and more originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 26 Jul 2010 05:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Horse-racing has a reputation for being a sport enjoyed by only, well, old(er) men, right?

No doubt with this stereotype in mind, the Japan Racing Association has been trying to re-vamp its image since 2008 with a series of TV ads featuring popular and good-looking celebrities. Now it has also launched Keiba Cinema, a web 2.0 campaign that lets you try the racing and betting experience virtually.

Through the site you can watch and take part in the “Japan World Cup”. However, it’s not true to say that you will learn what makes up a typical day at the races. This is very tongue-in-cheek, with wildly incongruous animals (giraffe, zebra and more!) and some very unorthodox riding technique. The one I watched finished with a circus performer winning while standing on their steed. More Wacky Races than the Emperor’s Cup!

As if one expensive Flash site wasn’t enough, JRA has also recently launched “Love and Horse”, which lets you tweet just how much you adore equestrians. They’ve naturally enlisted plenty of comedians and celebrities, since apparently no advertising campaign in Japan is complete without at least a gaggle of TV personalities.

But do TV commercials with Yu Aoi and fun interactive websites actually make you want to go out and see a race?

[Via Kokoku Kagi.com]

The Wireless Power Consortium took a big step forward this past week with the confirmation that its precocious Qi interoperability standard has been finalized. Composed of three documents setting out the interface, performance and compliance requirements, the new dictum has set itself the not inconsiderable challenge of making wireless charging universal, so that any Qi-approved phone can soak up juice from any Qi-verified base station, dock or omnitool. This first spec is limited to devices requiring no more than 5 Watts, an appropriately humble early goal, though cauldrons are already bubbling with ideas for laptops and the like. We just hope the impressive list of big time companies on the Consortium will succeed in taking Qi into the mainstream — who here hasn’t dreamt of their phone being compatible with the Touchstone?

[Thanks, MrStringTheorist]

Qi wireless power standard finalized, universal contactless chargers look closer to reality than ever originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 26 Jul 2010 02:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Wooden computer cases? We’ve been there before, but few offer the simple elegance of this “Modern Danish-styled PC enclosure” photographed by slipperyskip at Collectors Weekly — who jokingly indicates it wouldn’t look out of place on the set of Mad Men. We think an integrated ash tray is a necessity before it could make the cut at Sterling Cooper, but it does appear to have plenty of room on top for scotch glasses. The case is said to be 85 percent complete, and hopefully some of that last 15 percent includes actually putting some hardware in the thing. Pretty as it is, an empty case won’t do you much good.

A modern, Danish case for your modern, Danish computer originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 26 Jul 2010 00:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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