Mar 28
Fantasizing about an old flame? Lusting over a celebrity instead of your current squeeze? Watch out: scientists can reconstruct the faces you’re thinking about from a brain scan alone.
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Jan 26
NameTag is a pretty cool-sounding app on paper, but it could quickly turn into the stuff of nightmares in reality. It’s essentially an app that can match people’s mugs to their social media profiles.
NameTag essentially uses facial recognition to match people with their accounts on social networks and even dating profiles. All users will have to do is take a picture of the person. The app will then send the image wirelessly to a server, which will compare the image to online records. When a match is found, that person’s name, photos, and links to social media accounts will be displayed.
The app is being developed by FacialNetwork, who is also working on a technology that will let users take things one step further by allowing them to scan the pics to determine the person’s dating history or find their profiles on dating sites. Just imagine what potential stalkers might be able to do with this app.
In addition to smartphone apps, the company is working on a version for Google Glass as well, though if the beta demo below is any indication, the database lookups aren’t exactly instantaneous at this point:
FacialNetwork’s Kevin Alan Tussy explained: “I believe that this will make online dating and offline social interactions much safer and give us a far better understanding of the people around us.”
On privacy, he adds: “People will soon be able to login to www.nameyag.ws and choose whether or not they want their name and information displayed to others… It’s not about invading anyone’s privacy; it’s about connecting people that want to be connected. We will even allow users to have one profile that is seen during business hours and another that is only seen in social situations.”
What do you think?
[via C|NET]
Jan 07
When it comes to imaging microscopic objects, you have to make a decision: do you want high resolution images of stationary objects, or coarse images of moving ones? Fortunately, X-ray holography means that may not be the case much longer.
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Nov 18
Nokia may be the first to have delivered RAW photography in a smartphone, but there’s evidence to suggest that Google isn’t too far behind. A month-old batch of code, recently spotted by app developer Josh Brown, reveals that work has been underway on a new Android camera API that could allow smartphones to store uncompressed images alongside JPEG ones, drastically increasing the amount of correction and manipulation that can be accomplished after an image has been captured.
A second snippet from the API suggests that Android may get some level of stock support for modular or external cameras, perhaps like Sony’s QX10 and QX100, although the meaning of the words is slightly ambiguous:
The camera device is removable and has been disconnected from the Android device, or the camera service has shut down the connection due to a higher-priority access request for the camera device.
Ars Technica has pointed out some other potential changes that are buried in the documentation, and rightly suggests that any imaging-related improvements would be a good thing for Android right now. Even with Sony’s Xperia Z1, which contains one of the most powerful sensors currently found in an Android phone, it’s the software that holds things back more than anything else, so extra features in the underlying OS could provide manufacturers with just the nudge they need.
Filed under: Cellphones, Cameras, Mobile, Google
Via: Ars Technica
Source: Google Git, Josh Brown (Google+)
Oct 21
Imagine creating a 3D digital archive of 500 of the world’s most at-risk heritage sites, preserved in virtual reality so that future generations can explore them in detail for centuries to come. That’s exactly what the CyArk 500 Challenge hopes to achieve—and it’s set itself the ambitious target of doing it in just five years.
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Oct 07
Scientists have developed a new technique which allows them to visualize gene activity in thousands of cell, simultaneously. That will allow them to understand how our cells function like never before—and it looks damn pretty, too.
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Sep 13
Back in March, Canon showed off an in-development video sensor
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Sep 03
After a year and a half of trials and tribulations, Kodak is finally in the clear — it just exited Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Now that the company has finished offloading its document and personal imaging groups, it’s free to pursue a recently court-approved reorganization plan that focuses solely on business products like movie film and packaging. The resulting firm is a far cry from the camera giant that we once knew, but we may hear about its work in the future. Kodak promises more details of “what’s next,” and it tells the AP that it’s working on technology like printable touchscreen layers and smart packaging.
Filed under: Cameras
Via: Wall Street Journal
Source: Kodak
Aug 28
Data compression isn’t the sexiest of subjects, but after Facebook pledged to slim down its digital footprint, it’s suddenly hot news. You might be interested to know, then, that Apple has reportedly snapped up Swedish startup AlgoTrim, which specializes in lossless compression algorithms. TechCrunch believes that AlgoTrim’s know-how will slim down iOS device data usage — as the outfit’s JPEG files are apparently six times smaller than the average. CultOfMac, however, believes that the deal may hint at a move towards computational photography — hinting that we may see Apple’s version of Nokia’s pixel oversampling tech pop up in future devices. While the thought of a PureView iPhone would set plenty of hearts aflutter, there’s probably more chance that Elon Musk will build you your own private Hyperloop.
Update: Yup, an Apple spokesperson has confirmed the deal to AllThingsD.
Filed under: Cellphones, Cameras, Software, Mobile, Apple
Via: TechCrunch
Source: Rapidus
Aug 26
Canon USA’s brand-new Long Island headquarters doesn’t just house boardrooms, cubicles, and water coolers. It’s also where the venerable camera company maintains its giant showroom, in which every current Canon product—plus a plethora of other imaging technology tidbits—is on prominent display. We took a trip out there last week; here’s a taste of what we found.
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