New York City considering ridiculous law to force photographers to get a permit

A friend of mine brought this to my attention this morning:

"

Some tourists, amateur photographers, even would-be filmmakers hoping to make it big on YouTube could soon be forced to obtain a city permit and $1 million in liability insurance before taking pictures or filming on city property, including sidewalks.

New rules being considered by the Mayor’s Office of Film, Theater and Broadcasting would require any group of two or more people who want to use a camera in a single public location for more than a half hour to get a city permit and insurance.

The same requirements would apply to any group of five or more people who plan to use a tripod in a public location for more than 10 minutes, including the time it takes to set up the equipment.

Julianne Cho, assistant commissioner of the film office, said the rules were not intended to apply to families on vacation or amateur filmmakers or photographers.

Nevertheless, the New York Civil Liberties Union says the proposed rules, as strictly interpreted, could have that effect. The group also warns that the rules set the stage for selective and perhaps discriminatory enforcement by police.

“These rules will apply to a huge range of casual photography and filming, including tourists taking snapshots and people making short videos for YouTube,” said Christopher Dunn, the group’s associate legal director.

Mr. Dunn suggested that the city deliberately kept the language vague, and that as a result police would have broad discretion in enforcing the rules. In a letter sent to the film office this week, Mr. Dunn said the proposed rules would potentially apply to tourists in places like Times Square, Rockefeller Center or ground zero, “where people routinely congregate for more than half an hour and photograph or film.”

The rule could also apply to people waiting in line to enter the Empire State Building or other tourist attractions.

The rules define a “single site” as any area within 100 feet of where filming begins. Under the rules, the two or more people would not actually have to be filming, but could simply be holding an ordinary camera and talking to each other.

The rules are intended to set standards for professional filmmakers and photographers, said Ms. Cho, assistant commissioner of the film office, but the language of the draft makes no such distinction.

“While the permitting scheme does not distinguish between commercial and other types of filming, we anticipate that these rules will have minimal, if any, impact on tourists and recreational photographers, including those that use tripods,” Ms. Cho said in an e-mail response to questions.

Mr. Dunn said that the civil liberties union asked repeatedly for such a distinction in negotiations on the rules but that city officials refused, ostensibly to avoid creating loopholes that could be exploited by professional filmmakers and photographers.

City officials would not confirm that yesterday. But Mark W. Muschenheim, a lawyer with the city’s law department, which helped draft the rules, said, “There are few instances, if any, where the casual tourist would be affected.”

The film office held a public hearing on the proposed rules yesterday, but no one attended. The only written comments the department received were from the civil liberties group, Ms. Cho said.

Ms. Cho said the office expected to publish a final version of the rules at the end of July. They would go into effect a month later.

The permits would be free and applications could be obtained online, Ms. Cho said. The draft rules say the office could take up to 30 days to issue a permit, but Ms. Cho said she expected that most would be issued within 24 hours."

Yikes!!! Of course, if I travel by myself, I guess I would be safe since it says "two or more". This would set a really bad precedent though. Why do they think they can enforce something like that? Could they just pick any piece of equipment at random? Anyone using a cell phone in New York City...anyone using a laptop in New York City...anyone using an electric razor in New York City..the possibilities and ridiculousness of it could go on and on!

SnapVillage to offer hosting services for Amateur/Semi-pro stock photography

This article caught my attention. With my image archive growing to over 12,000 images, I am accumulating quite a large resource that has some commercial value. I license my images for free use for non-profit purposes but typically retain the commercial rights. I had written to Google urging them to roll out a service within Flickr that would enable those of us that wished to engage in commercial sales to sell commercial rights with built-in links to Paypal for payment but I hadn't heard anything back from them. Maybe Microsoft/Corbis' entry into the market will nudge them in that direction. In the meantime, I set up an account on SnapVillage and as an experiment uploaded five quality images to see how things work out with them.

Recognizing the growing market for inexpensive online photographs, Corbis, the online stock photo company founded and owned by Bill Gates, plans today to introduce a Web site that allows anyone to upload photographs for sale.

Images scheduled to be available beginning today on SnapVillage.

Called SnapVillage, the site is the latest entrant into the realm of so-called microstock agencies.

Microstock sites take advantage of a phenomenon known as crowd sourcing, whereby thousands of amateur and semiprofessional photographers submit pictures and charge as little as $1 an image. Unlike some other microstock sites, SnapVillage will allow its contributors to set their own prices, ranging from $1 to $50 an image.

Hollywood scrambles to get a handle on media for the iPhone

It looks like everyone is trying to figure out how to capitalize on the soon-to-be-released Apple iPhone. From a consumer perspective, though, I wonder if the pricing structure is going to be more accommodating. At present I think it is ridiculous to have to pay something like an additional $40 more a month to receive internet content on a cell phone service already commanding $40 per month. I think $40 per month ought to be all inclusive, especially considering that studios are also raking in PPV fees as well.

"For years, mobile phone carriers like AT&T, Verizon Wireless and Sprint have closely controlled what cellphone users watch, when they watch it, and on what kind of screen they watch it — much the way the networks did with television before new technologies loosened their grip. Many in Hollywood and Silicon Valley hope the iPhone’s multimedia features will make it easier for any mobile-crazed consumer to do the same things they do on the Web: watch their favorite television shows, download maps, send e-mail messages to friends and swap videos.

In what is the beginning of many attempts to make the cellphone more Web friendly, Apple has designed its own application so consumers can receive YouTube videos through a Wi-Fi network. Industry executives predict that as it becomes easier to get information via Wi-Fi networks, more consumers will bypass traditional wireless networks altogether. That prospect, while helpful for phone makers and media concerns, is frightening for service providers if consumers begin to regard them as irrelevant.

“Video, particularly, has largely been behind a wall,” said John Smelzer, the general manager of mobile operations for Fox Interactive Media, referring to the limited and clumsy access most consumers have to news, sports and entertainment on traditional cellphones. “It’s the antithesis of what’s happening on the Web. Any device that replicates the experience online is good for the entire industry. It will help us reach a mass audience,” he said.

Even Mr. Jobs’s competitors, who are quick to point out that the iPhone has limitations, like its sole availability through AT&T, say that it will nudge resistant wireless carriers to pay more attention to their customers’ wishes. “The iPhone is a fantastic device, but they don’t control the network,” said Craig Shapiro, head of content strategy and acquisition for Helio, the mobile phone maker and service company. “For these things to work, though, everyone has to get with the program.”

Second DISH DVR failure in three years

This was really my week for hard drives I guess. I had noticed that my DISH network DVR had suddenly displayed more recording time available even though I knew I was almost at capacity. I suspect DISH had downloaded an upgrade. I was reasonably pleased with the thought of having more storage capacity but then I noticed my recorded programs were disappearing. Soon I was down to only three episodes of The Tudors and all of my Rome season 2 had disappeared. I wasn't so upset about the Rome series disappearing because I had already preordered the set on DVD from Amazon and will receive it in August but I was really irritated about losing The Tudors since I had set two of the episodes to record while I was in Alaska and then New York. So I didn't get a chance to see episodes 8 and 10.

This same thing happened to me about a year and a half ago with my first DISH DVR. Ironically, I had just finished recording all of Rome Season 1 when it began disappearing. I was really peaved because at that time the DVD set had not been announced. (I have since bought it).

So, I called DISH to tell them the problem had happened again. The woman I talked to said I had to start paying $5.99 a month for a warranty agreement before they would replace the unit. I told her I was already paying $5.00 per month DVR service fee and a $5.99 per month DVR lease fee (since DISH will not let you buy the DVR unit outright) and I was NOT going to pay a monthly warranty fee for a unit I didn't even own. She said she would be right back. She came back on the line and said okay, but I would have to pay shipping and handling. Again I told her I was not going to pay shipping and handling on a unit they owned that was defective! She said she would be right back then came back on the line and said she would send a new receiver with a prepaid shipping label to return the defective one. I told her Thank You! I asked her if this was they length of time these units usually lasted and she insisted that many of her customers had units that lasted up to 8 or 9 years. I thought to myself, not likely since DVRs haven't even been around that long!

In just two days the new unit arrived. I placed it on top of the original unit and transferred the cables to their appropriate outlets (to avoid the spaghetti cords problem) then removed the old unit and turned on the new unit. I started the Check routine and it displayed a warning that it could only talk to one satellite. I called DISH tech support and was told to complete the setup then we would deal with the problem of not being able to receive signals from satellite 110. I completed the rest of the setup and got a selection of channels to appear but channels like History Channel International did not appear in the line up (and I live on History Channel International!). So we set about trying to get the receiver to recognize satellite 110. I tried different transponders but nothing seemed to work. The technician started to ask me about my dish alignment but I told them that it was working fine with my old unit I had just disconnected. Finally, the technician said I had better send the replacement unit back since it, too, was obviously defective, and hook back up my old unit for the time being since it receives all the channels but just can't record. By the time I finished all of that it was almost midnight and I had to go to work the next day!

Anyway, I have shipped the defective replacement back and am presently awaiting another replacement so I can go through all the setup again. I asked the rep if all of these DVRs only last about two years and he said he has had some customers that had DVRs last longer and some that also had DVRS that lasted no longer than mine. (At least he didn't say 8 years...)

I wonder if TIVOs have a better life span? I went up on the TIVO website and the services you get with a TIVO are much better than the one I get from DISH. The TIVO has a regular USB port on it so you can download content to an iPod or other portable device or computer. DISH's device uses a proprietary USB port that only works with their very expensive "PocketDISH" device. The TIVO site also mentions being able to work with video content downloads from Amazon. This would be great but I assume you have to have high-speed internet integrated with your receiver. I live out in the country so my high speed internet is delivered on a separate satellite from Wild Blue because DISH told me they did not have internet service available at this location. If I had integrated internet I would definitely try the TIVO device. It's certainly got to be better than the service I have had so far and it would be great to be able to download movies to my video iPod to help me endure long airline flights.

Are Critical Systems Hardware Contracts Really Worth It?

I had a very frustrating week last week from the viewpoint of a harried system adminstrator. For the first time in almost 20 years of operation, our primary adminstrative server lost a hard drive. Fortunately, we had the server configured in a Raid-5 array so the hot spare kicked in and took over for the failed drive. However, when we contacted Hewlett Packard to obtain a drive replacement under our 4-hour critical systems contract, we discovered that (1) the drive was not in stock in the regional warehouse even though it was only a little over a year old and (2) according to the fine print in the contract, the 4-hour service guarantee only applies if the part is available.

I asked the customer service agent if we were to be compensated for their failure to perform under the terms of the contract such as extending our contract for a year at no cost (which I thought was a reasonable solution) but they refused saying they had no responsibility for their failure since the part was not in stock.

Then, I was told they located the part and I should receive it by the next day. The next day came and I received no hard drive. The next morning I called customer service again and was told that they were doing the best they could to get it to me as fast as possible and after all it had only been a day (!!!) Then another day passed and still no hard drive - actually three days since it went over the weekend and I still had no hard drive on Monday. I obtained the UPS tracking number myself and went up on the UPS website to find out what happened to the drive. All it said was "billing information received". So I called HP back to ask what was going on. I was told they didn't know but would check into it and could I call back. I told them it was their responsibility and that they should call me back when they had an answer. I also told them I didn't care what happened to the original replacement drive, just get me a drive no later than the next day. Needless to say, I did not get a call back. So, I found a number on the web for the Higher Education Account Rep for Oregon and called it. The main rep was out but I reached Brian (I didn't get the last name). Brian tried very hard to get me connected to the right people. Finally I was told that someone from the Critical Systems group would get back to me shortly with an ETA for the part. Before long I got a call from a member of the group with an ETA of 4:59 p.m. that same day. I was skeptical because it was already 4:00 p.m. but the rep insisted it was coming by Sky Courier.

Anyway, I hung around the office until almost 5:30 p.m. but still no drive. I finally went on home. The next morning I was about to call HP AGAIN when I received a call from a man who said he had a package to deliver from UPS and he was down at the bookstore and needed to know where my office was. I was puzzled since UPS delivers here all the time. Anyway, I gave him directions and decided I better walk outside and intercept him just in case. (By this time I was desperate for the part anyway). So, I went outside but didn't see the usual brown UPS truck. Soon a rather well-worn red vehicle pulled up driven by an elderly man and I noticed he had some packages tossed in the back seat. I asked him if he was delivering a package from UPS and he said yes. I noticed he had a rather dog-eared label taped to his dashboard that said "Sky Courier". I signed for the package and took it inside. With bated breath I opened the box and compared the capacity, speed, etc. to make sure it was the correct part since it wasn't absolutely identical and had a different part number, but it did work.

So, after almost a week, I finally got the part I needed for a critical systems server. We were just very fortunate the server did not experience another drive failure while we were waiting for the replacement. Apparently, I was told HP had somehow gotten an incorrect address printed on the delivery label that contained a P.O. Box (I don't know where that came from since we don't have a P.O. Box and HP admits my customer record showed the physical address I had given them) so UPS kept returning it because they don't deliver to P.O. Boxes. However, I'm still of the opinion that if the service I received is indicative of the typical response to a critical systems failure, I don't think paying for 4-hour service is probably worth it.

The importance of lens stabilization in new digital cameras

I've always found David Pogue's technology articles interesting and have now had the pleasure of meeting him when I attended two of his workshops. At the photography workshop I attended he mentioned that image stabilization systems come in two flavors, in-camera, and in-lens, but he had no particular opinion about the value of one over the other except that in-lens systems increase the cost of removable lenses on DSLRs. However, in this article he points out what the digital camera producers say about each type:

"Canon and Nikon, which takes the same approach [in-lens stabilizers], argue, however, that in-body stabilizers are far less effective, because they can’t be tailored for the focal length of each individual lens. For example, you need more stabilization at long focal lengths (zoomed in) than short ones. Canon and Nikon say that with an in-lens stabilizer, you can make the aperture four stops smaller without changing the shutter speed, versus about two stops on an in-camera system. Furthermore, only lens-based systems show the stabilized image through the viewfinder."

I recently bought a new camera but opted for a Panasonic FZ-8, a so-called "point-and-shoot" model with a 12X optical zoom lens. I prefer to consider my lens-changing days in my film camera past. I'm more interested in concentrating on composition and the more creative aspects of digital photography than manhandling a lot of "gear". My photography needs are also a bit distinct as well. I am building an image archive of art, history, and science images for faculty to use in the classroom so I photograph thousands of museum exhibits in an environment where I am prohibited from using flash or tripod. For this reason, I use a Fujifilm F30 camera for low-light conditions because it produces excellent images in those conditions with minimal grain (even at ISO 3200) that can usually be practically excised using Photoshop's noise reduction and median functions.

The Panasonic gives me a versatile camera for outdoor detail work with its 12X zoom Also it gives me an Intelligent ISO mode for less than optimum lighting conditions With its excellent image stabilization, I can capture some indoor subjects (such as decently lit lighter-colored statues or reliefs) with more detail than the Fuji. I can almost hand-hold a shot at 1/15 shutterspeed with the Panasonic while I must set my minimum shutter speed on the Fuji to 1/60 because of its lack of image stabilization. The Panasonic, too, can be set up to an ISO of 3200 but I have found that anything above 400 with the Panasonic is too grainy for my taste.

Nonprofits stage virtual events in Second Life

Once again, the virtual world Second Life is the center of innovative ways to share information. I guess I'm going to have to get serious about exploring Second Life more intensely. The cost kind of turned me off. Second Life is advertised as free but the bottom line is if you want to be able to "do" anything in the virtual environment (like save information, create anything permanent, etc.) you need to pay at least $9.95 per month for a minimum account and "purchasing" virtual real estate gets really expensive fast.


"Charities and other nonprofit groups are also beginning to migrate into the so-called metaverse, seeking ways of attracting new donors and hoping to educate a broader audience about the issues they address.

Adventure Ecology, a British group, staged a virtual flood in Second Life to show what global warming might bring, and a psychiatry professor at the University of California, Davis, created a way for his students to experience in Second Life what a person with schizophrenic hallucinations experiences.

"It’s a wonderful awareness-building tool,” said Beth Kanter, a nonprofit consultant. "You can walk someone through an experience there or sit down with them to discuss the work you’re doing in a way that you can’t in the real world or on the Web."

Honda's "Minisodes" on My Space a glimpse of the future of broadcast programming?

"Honda will be the sole sponsor of what Sony Pictures Television is calling the Minisode Network, which is scheduled to begin next week. Visitors to the MySpace Web site (my space.com) will be able to watch episodes of 15 vintage Sony series like “Charlie’s Angels,” “The Facts of Life,” “Fantasy Island” and “Who’s the Boss,” edited from their original lengths of 30 or 60 minutes each to an Internet-friendly 4 to 6 minutes."

I thought this development is very interesting. Not only does it address the problem of many web viewers shortened attention span but their tolerance for extended ad space. I doubt that anyone is going to try to skip an 8-second ad. Shortening a 30-minute television episode is not really as daunting as it sounds anyway. If you remove all the advertising from a current 30-minute episode you are usually left with less than 12 minutes of programming. Subtract from that the intro and end credits and you're probably looking at 8 minutes of content. Remove a single scene or lead up dialogue and you've got your 6 minutes.

The one hour episode is a bit more of a challenge. But think about movie trailers. Many people complain that now days you see most of the main scenes of a movie (2.5 - 3 hrs) in the trailer anyway.

I also find it interesting that the amount of video time is geared toward the "YouTube" time limit. Furthermore, Honda has targeted the coveted youth demographic by introducing the new media in My Space.

I watched the example T.J. Hooker episode and noticed the intro credits were applied over the introductory scenes to the episode and the end credits popped by fast but were still readable.

Blog Move to Blogspot Easy and Seamless!

Today I moved my blog from the university's server to Blogspot just by choosing the "Move to Blogspot" option in Settings. It brought over all my posts and archive links and retained my image insertions as well!

I decided to move my blog so I could take advantage of the new Blogger customizable templates and web objects. It also gives me the freedom to link to products or books I would like to recommend without getting in trouble from the university's legal department.

Scammers target digital camera buyers

In preparation for my trip to New York in a couple of weeks I have been looking for a new camera that would enable me to shoot in “raw” format. After much deliberation I decided to stay with Panasonic, since I have been quite pleased with the results I obtained from the Panasonic FZ20. The latest Panasonic 12X super zoom, the Panasonic FZ-8, looks like it will fill the bill nicely so I began the search for a decent online price. The camera retails for $349 but my web search yielded a seller offering the camera for only $229 +shipping. The website looked like a regular shopping site and offered the usual secure transaction payment options so I went ahead and ordered the camera. I noticed that their prices for SD Memory Cards and auxiliary batteries were outrageous though so I just ordered the camera. Sunday afternoon I was awakened from my nap by a phone call from the camera vendor, http://www.thedigitalnerds.com/, telling me I obviously had forgotten to order any accessories for my nice new camera. I told the salesman I didn’t forget. I just wasn’t going to pay their prices for memory cards and batteries as I could obtain them elsewhere for a fraction of the price. He then proceeded to try to persuade me to buy extended warranty for something like $124 (for a $229 camera) and I told him I usually upgrade cameras before they ever wear out so I wasn’t interested. I asked if the camera had been shipped and he insisted that it had been shipped out right away. So I thanked him for checking with me and hung up. I got into work this morning and their was an email from DigitalNerds telling me that “unfortunately” the camera was out of stock for at least 6 to 8 weeks so my order was cancelled. (Interesting since the website said it was In stock and would ship in 2-3 days) They also told me not to place the order again.

So, I reran my search and this time I came up with a vendor, http://www.wisetronics.com/, offering the camera for $224. I didn’t want to go through all the hassle so I called their toll-free number this time to place my order over the phone. I began by asking if they would sell the camera alone for the price advertised. They asked me why I asked and as I explained my first attempt at ordering the camera, I noticed there wasn’t any background noise and looked down at my phone and found they had hung up on me. I also noticed their auxiliary batteries for the camera were priced at a whopping $143 each.

Not to be derailed from my goal, I went down the list of vendors to the third lowest vendor, http://www.stop4camera.com/, who offered the camera for $248. Once more I called them and explained that I wanted just the camera. I also noticed background noise that sounded like the person answering the phone was at home. I asked about it and the “salesman” said some guys behind him were just talking. He claimed he could sell me just the camera – no problem – but he would need to call me back in ten minutes - ???? Of course, no call back ever came.

All of these vendors are listed through a web portal, http://www.lowpricedigital.com/ prominently advertised as a sponsored link at the top of the Google results page. This afternoon, I see that both The Digital Nerds and Wisetronics have upped their price for the Panasonic to $299 (A price available from Amazon and just about everybody else.) Now the third dealer on the list, http://www.digitalsuperdeals.com/, is offering the camera for $229 (and the auxiliary high-capacity battery is offered for $149.99! This web portal and all of its so-called merchant links appears to be a huge scam operation attempting to lure people in with low camera prices so they can fleece them for exorbitantly priced accessories.

Finally, I noticed a Google sidebar sponsored link for B&H Professional Photography Supply had the camera listed for $269. Their spare batteries were only $27 and I got a couple of 2 Gb SD Memory Cards for only $26 each. Their shipping was only $6.95 (Everyone else was quoting from $15 - $20 for 5- 7 day shipping) I requested 3 – 5 day shipping for only $5 more. They were thoroughly professional and even spent quite a bit of time answering my questions about shooting in raw format, Panasonic vs. Canon, Super Zoom vs. DSLR, noise reduction strategies, etc. I got great service and still a good buy without getting taken to the cleaners for the extras.

Neutron diffraction offers non-destructive artifact analysis

I was doing some research on an image of a "killed" Greek helmet that I photographed at the Walters Art Museum several years ago and came across this article about a relatively new non-destructive technique for analyzing artifacts to see if they are a true antiquity or have been "tampered with".

"Neutron diffraction, an established diagnostic tool for materials analysis and non-destructive testing of engineering components, can also be used to characterise archaeological artefacts and museum objects. The phase and microstructural information obtained – without damaging an object of value – can help answer questions of authenticity, as recent investigations of 16th-century silver/copper coins and an obviously repaired 7th-century BC Greek bronze helmet show.

Neutron diffraction is a rather new diagnostic tool for studying archaeological materials. Neutrons easily penetrate through thick coatings or corrosion layers and provide information from the bulk rather than from surface areas; sampling techniques such as coring or even powdering for analysis some portion of a museum object can therefore be avoided. The large neutron beams generally used illuminate a considerable volume portion of the object and, as a result, average and representative structural information is obtained – the problems associated with the si0ngle-spot analysis of many conventional archaeometric techniques are therefore avoided. Neutron diffraction provides information on the mineral and metal phase compositions or corrosion products in objects, on the crystal structures of the constituent phases and on the microstructures. In the material sciences it is widely used for volume
texture analysis, i.e. determination of the orientations of the crystallites in polycrystalline material. Many
processes such as primary crystallisation or plastic deformations impose a characteristic texture on the
material which means that, for example, details of the production method may be imprinted in the
microstructure. Mapping grain orientation distributions – a technique called texture analysis –
reveals the creation and deformation history of an object. The crystallite distribution can be displayed
via ‘pole figures’, 2D projections of the spatial orientation distribution function that are obtained by
recording diffraction patterns for a multitude of sample orientations. The structure and texture
information can therefore provide clues on the type of material and the manufacturing techniques used
by the ancient craftsmen. " - Genuine or fake? Neutron diffraction for non-destructive testing of museum objects , Isis 2003 Science Highlights.

As for the helmet they analyzed, they discovered the nose piece had been replaced and, like the helmet I photographed at the Walters, had been ritually "killed".

"It was the custom for victorious Greek cities to dedicate tropaia, ‘trophies’ of armour from the defeated, in the sanctuary of one of the gods. When the trophy collapsed from age or when the sanctuary became too full the armour was buried, but first it was ‘killed’ as part of the process of offering it to the gods: the cheekpieces were bent
back and the noseguard turned up to render the helmet useless in this world. The finder of the helmet – probably in the 19th century and in order to sell it – straightened out the cheekpieces, which cracked at the edges and left a clear fold-line running across each of them. It is also clear that the noseguard had come off altogether, probably during
similar cosmetic straightening by the finder, for there is a clear overlapping join at the bridge of the nose."

I wonder if the Romans had any special rituals for disposing of war trophies?

Content "wraps" to replace blanket advertising

I do hope the networks make some headway in changing their advertising methods. I don't know if they qualify for "content wraps" but I, for one, find the new "Me and My Gang" ad music video I've seen on the Western Channel and the "I wanna be a rock star" video with scenes from The Tudors quite enjoyable. I would definitely vote for more of those over the interminable BowFlex and Nutrisystems ads that saturate the advertising time on a number of the satellite channels.

"ABC and the four other big broadcast networks are working on methods to hold the attention of TV viewers throughout the commercial breaks that interrupt the shows they want to see.

That is becoming increasingly important for two reasons. One is that more viewers are watching shows delayed rather than live, using TiVo and other DVRs. Research indicates those viewers are more likely to fast-forward through spots than those who watch live TV.

The other reason the networks need viewers to keep watching ads is that Nielsen Media Research, the ratings arbiter, intends soon to begin measuring viewership of commercials as well as programs.

One way that many networks hope to engage viewers during commercial breaks is by wedging original content into the blocks of advertising time, so that viewers will anticipate seeing something fun if they sit through a few ads.

Fox Broadcasting, for instance, tried out a series of clips for two weeks last month about an animated character named Oleg, a New York cab driver, who popped up in eight-second vignettes during commercial breaks in series like “24.” CW has been running “content wraps,” which mix sponsor products into program snippets.

Some experiments involve the cast of the shows in which the commercials appear, serving as hosts for the breaks. That is a throwback to an era when “cast commercials” proliferated with the stars of series like “I Love Lucy,” “The Beverly Hillbillies” and even “The Flintstones.”

Yahoo communications center with calendar looks promising!

Friday, I was attempting to set up an account for a developer's sandbox that required me to use one of my alternate email addresses. When I went into my Yahoo account to check for the confirmation email, I noticed Yahoo had rolled out a beta of a new communications interface that included a calendar program. I thought I would poke around the calendar system a bit and liked what I saw - task lists, recurring appointments, reminders, calendar sharing, public, private, and busy times only event settings - all with a very familiar (Outlookish) looking interface, AND an intellisync tool that you could install to not only update your PDA but update the Yahoo calendar from your preferred local client automatically. In other words, you just continue using your own client if you wish, and have the intellisync keep your yahoo calendar (that is shared at whatever level you wish) automatically updated sort of like a virtual PDA for the world. It apparently works with Outlook 2003, Outlook Express, Lotus Organizer 6.0 (yay for my admin people!), Act! 2000 and 6.0, and both Palm and Pocket PC handhelds. It appears to be a much more "ready for prime time" tool than Google's calendar at present.

Yahoo beta-testing integrated email and calendaring system

Friday, I was attempting to set up an account for a developer's sandbox that required me to use one of my alternate email addresses. When I went into my Yahoo account to check for the confirmation email, I noticed Yahoo had rolled out a beta of a new communications interface that included a calendar program. I thought I would poke around the calendar system a bit and liked what I saw - task lists, recurring appointments, reminders, calendar sharing, public, private, and busy times only event settings - all with a very familiar (Outlookish) looking interface, AND an intellisync tool that you could install to not only update your PDA but update the Yahoo calendar from your preferred local client automatically. In other words, you just continue using your own client if you wish, and have the intellisync keep your yahoo calendar (that is shared at whatever level you wish) automatically updated sort of like a virtual PDA for the world. It apparently works with Outlook 2003, Outlook Express, Lotus Organizer 6.0 (yay for my admin people!), Act! 2000 and 6.0, and both Palm and Pocket PC handhelds. It appears to be a much more "ready for prime time" tool than Google's calendar at present.

Adjusting color with human language commands

This is a terrific development. Hopefully, the technology will be transferred to image editing programs like Photoshop. I would rather tell Photoshop to make the yellow brighter than to hassle selecting all of the yellow in the image then tweaking the hue, saturation, tint, contrast, etc.



Kevin Rivoli for the Xerox Corporation

"Adjusting color on printers should be simpler," Geoffrey Woolfe says.

To the human eye, that flower in the photo is reddish orange, that sky is light blue, that sun shines brilliant yellow.

But when software tells a printer to reproduce that image, it uses a long, unwieldy set of numbers and letters to describe those colors — and a totally different set of characters to describe shades that are a tad lighter, or a bit darker, or a whole lot brighter. The upshot is that most laymen would have to attend the computer equivalent of Berlitz to learn how to get the shades they want.

But if Xerox has its way, that will not be true much longer. This week the company introduced the software equivalent of a translator that can turn plain color speech into fluent computerese. Type the command, “Make the sun a brighter yellow,” and the printer will read, “Go with color CIELAB[88, -3, 64].”

“You shouldn’t have to be a color expert to make the sky a deeper blue or add a bit of yellow to a sunset,” said Geoffrey Woolfe, a principal scientist in the Xerox Innovation Group, who is based in Webster, N.Y., near Rochester. “So we’re providing that middle layer that turns plain speech into mathematical code.”

Color experts are already impressed. “They’ve taken common words and modifiers and transformed them into mathematical directions,” said Roy S. Berns, a professor of color science at the Rochester Institute of Technology, which has just inaugurated a doctoral program in color science.

There are still problems to be ironed out, of course. For now, the software does not differentiate between colors in different parts of an image — in other words, it can tell the printer to make all the blues darker, but it cannot yet tell it to darken the sky but lighten the ocean and leave the blue dress alone. And it is still working on a lexicon of languages — after all, a “brighter” color to one person is a “crisper” color to another and a “sharper” color to a third.

“To understand what someone means when he says the pinks need to be brighter, the software must know what pink means and what brighter means.” Professor Berns said. “And there are individual, cultural and regional differences in the way people use those words.”

Mr. Woolfe readily acknowledges the problems, and he concedes that the product is a couple of years away from commercialization. He envisions the final version as having the capability to learn. Say particular users keep typing, “no, darker” when they ask for chartreuse. “The machine will respond with a color chart that shows what it views as chartreuse, and then will let the user show what he means by the word,” Mr. Woolfe said. If it turns out the user thinks chartreuse is forest green, the software will act accordingly from then on..."

Related

More on Color Language Research (xerox.com)

Trying to edit Wikipedia a frustrating process

Lately, I have been working with an arts foundation down in Oija, California that asked me to create an educational history website using historical figures created by artist/historian George S. Stuart as the basis for articles featured there. I was so impressed with the quality of the figures and the meticulous research that goes into their creation that I obtained permission from the foundation's photographer to upload 200X300pixel versions of the images to Wikicommons so they could be used to illustrate biographies in Wikipedia. The photographer, Mr. Peter D'Aprix, granted full rights for their use with the only requirement being attribution and share-alike for any derivatives.

However, when I attempted to include them in some of the biographical articles, I quickly discovered an apparent bias against the inclusion of contemporary art that is not widely known. This resulted in removal of the images within hours of inclusion. A guideline was posted to my talk page pointing out that external links to .com sources are not permitted (I had linked the artist's name to his website). I was not aware of this restriction so I removed the link and added the image back to the article. Then, I was told by another editor that he thought the images did not add anything to the article since the article already had pictures of contemporary portraits. I was aware of the contemporary portraits but many of them were highly stylized and did not provide a life-like representation like the figural images did. I added information about the year and age the portrait figure represented, consistent with the captions provided under the other portraits but again the other editor blew my edits away. I questioned his apparent censorship expressed by his rationale that the art was not widely known so had no basis for inclusion and told him I thought the internet was a place anyone could exercise their creativity without obtaining elitist-recognized status before their work could be placed before the public. But, apparently not, at least not on Wikipedia. I requested a third-party opinion and hoped my viewpoint would be shared by other editors. However, some responses to my request referred to the figures as "dolls" as did the editor I was having problems with. Despite the other reasons that were offered, I think the bias against what are perceived as "dolls" as an art form (Mr. Stuart would shudder at the description of his art form as "dolls") is the real nub of the issue. Art is ultimately in the eye of the beholder but apparently some of these editors don't wish to offer anyone else the chance to make that personal decision.

After reading a number of other contentious posts between editors arguing over points of view, relevance, etc. I realized that although Wikipedia sounds inviting (anyone can edit!) the reality is it is an environment frought with self-appointed experts who fiercely defend their fiefdoms and, in some cases, their extremely inflexible mindsets.

New standalone DVD recorders offer ease of use to the video conversion process

I was reading a review by David Pogue about a new standalone DVD recording unit from Sony and it reminded me to comment on my quite positive experience I have had with an even less expensive unit from Go-Video. First, David's review in a nutshell:

"we insist upon upgrading our recording technologies every few years, each time orphaning millions of disks, reels and cassettes in older formats. All over the world, VHS and camcorder tapes from the 1980s and ’90s are slowly turning to dust. And it’s becoming harder and harder to find the equipment you need to play back some of those videos.

Even the DVD will one day turn out to have been a temporary format, but at least it has advantages over tapes. The video quality is terrific. You can skip around without rewinding or fast-forwarding. And homemade DVDs may last 100 years, if you believe the vendors of those gold-coated blanks.

Now, the technologically savvy computer nut thinks nothing of connecting an old camcorder or VCR to a well-equipped Mac or PC; hitting Play; waiting two hours for each tape to transfer in real time; editing and touching up the result on the computer screen; and then waiting another two hours for the resulting video burn onto a DVD.

But in Sony’s opinion (and many other people’s), this is much too laborious, expensive and time-consuming. Enter the Sony DVDirect VRD-MC3, a $218 box that converts old (and new) videotapes into shiny new DVDs with an emphasis on two extremely important attributes: simplicity and reproduction quality.

Under the hood of the cleanly designed, black-and-white plastic case (12.7 by 4.9 by 10.6 inches) is a DVD burner that accepts almost any format of blank disc: DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, and dual-layer (extra-capacity) versions of each. (There is one exception: the DVDirect doesn’t accept the dual-layer DVD-RW variety.)"

I have had a similarly positive experience with a Go Video DVD recorder that I bought on sale for only $69. I had been in the market for a DVD recorder since my Dish Network DVR started reaching its capacity and, try as I might, I couldn't find anything on it I didn't want to keep!

Just before Christmas, I saw an ad from a local discount store offering a GoVideo DVD recorder for $89 with $20 rebate (and I am meticulous about sending in my rebate coupons!) I was a little dubious about quality but I remembered we had a GoVideo VCR/DVD recorder combo unit in our technology lab at work that seemed to work well so I thought I would give it a try. After all, $69 is not much to risk if I wasn't satisfied with the results.

But, I have been pleasantly surprised with the quality of the recording (selectable from HQ (1 hr per DVD) to 2 hr, 4 hr, and 6 hr/DVD recording settings) and the editing features that enable me to rename the titles, schedule a selectable range of chapter marking intervals, select the index image for the title segment, and finalize the disk - all from the remote control. It, too has both S-Video connections as well as RCA ( the standard yellow, white and red connectors). Only the purely automatic scanning feature to establish channel reception tripped me up. Unlike many other video devices I have owned in the past, the GoVideo DVD recorder did not have a switch for Channel 3 or Channel 4 reception. You had to select the AutoScan function from the audio/video menu option under the Setup menu for the device to detect a video signal coming in on channel 3 from my Dish DVR and lock onto it.

I wish the Dish DVR would let me connect a DVD recorder to the USB outlet and (to use David Pogue's expression) slurp content from the DVR directly without having to go back through the playback process but the DISH USB has been programmed to accept only the proprietary (and quite spendy) "Pocket Dish" device.

I found a website that discusses how to disassemble the DVR and connect it to a computer to download the data from it but it is a violation of Dish's equipment lease agreement and besides, I'm more of a software kind of gal than a hardware technician. Although I have actually installed hard drives, sound systems, extra memory, internal network cards, CD-Rom drives, etc. my hands always tremble because I find it very nerve wracking.

Adobe to take Photoshop online |

I see Google docs has got some Google competitors a bit jumpy! I just returned from a conference on Instructional Technology where a presenter discussed the use of Google docs as an alternative to installing and maintaining a wiki. Perhaps Adobe has good reason to be nervous!

Tech News on ZDNet: "Hoping to get a jump on Google and other competitors, Adobe Systems plans to release a hosted version of its popular Photoshop image-editing application within six months, the company's chief executive said Tuesday.

The online service is part of a larger move to introduce ad-supported online services to complement its existing products and broaden the company reach into the consumer market, Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen told CNET News.com.

Chizen said Adobe laid the foundation for a hosted Photoshop product with Adobe Remix, a Web-based video-editing tool it offers through the PhotoBucket media-sharing site.

Like Adobe Remix, the hosted Photoshop service is set to be free and marketed as an entry-level version of Adobe's more sophisticated image-editing tools, including Photoshop and Photoshop Elements. Chizen envisions revenue from the Photoshop service coming from online advertising.

'That is new (for Adobe). It's something we are sensitive to because we are watching folks like Google do it in different categories, and we want to make sure that we are there before they are, in areas of our franchises,' Chizen said.

Chizen described the introduction of Adobe Remix and the forthcoming hosted Photoshop as part of a larger move toward integrating hosted services into the company's product mix."

Windows VISTA features defnitely worth waiting for

I'm at the Instructional Technologies Strategies Conference in Portland, Oregon right now and enjoyed an excellent (and entertaining) preconference workshop on Windows VISTA yesterday presented by New York Times columnist David Pogue. I'd read a lot of rather negative press about the new operating system but hadn't really had a chance to explore its features. With David's help I was able to do that yesterday (we were all provided with a Vista-equipped laptop to use for the session by one of the conference supporters).

Some of the things I found most helpful about the new OS:

Search and Rescue - Users of workstations with ever increasing data storage capacities have begun to flounder in their local sea of data as much as they do in the oceans of data on the internet. So, Microsoft has taken one of the best developments of the Web 2.0 revolultion, folksonomy, and incorporated it into VISTA. A user now has the ability to tag documents to facilitate location and retrieval of data.

Along with this immensely useful feature, Microsoft incorporated a powerful search function that allows users to not only search file names, tags, and types but looks within document contents. It even offers a natural language search capability, although this feature is not enabled by default. You can tell a VISTA workstation to "find emails from Robin yesterday" and it will automatically understand the application, sender and date parameters of the search.

David demonstrated how much more quickly you can click the equivalent of the Start button (it's not called start anymore) and type "calc" into the search field to launch the calculator than to select Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> Calculator. I found myself using this feature almost intuitively as soon as he demonstrated it.

ALLOW or DENY - Despite the impression given by the currently running ad from Apple, the Security system built into VISTA was not as intrusive as I feared. When I turned on the laptop and initiated a connection to the hotel wireless system I was cautioned that the system was not secured (someting XP already did) then asked if the system was public or private. This new addition is actually quite welcome. If you select public, like you should when using any publicly provided hotspot, VISTA prevents your network activity from being seen by other users of the public service. David pointed out that you no longer have to worry about fellow coffee drinkers at Starbucks scanning your data or harvesting your passwords while you work away oblivious to their clandestine activities. You can also save the public setting for hotspot connections that you use regularly.

Windows VISTA also provides a built-in phishing filter. If you click on a link in an email message that is bogus, VISTA checks a database of known phishing sites and does not launch the linked webpage if it determines the site to be among the offenders.

VISTA also has parental controls that may seem Big Brotherish but will be welcomed by millions of concerned parents. The administrator account can enter a list of either forbidden websites or a list of approved websites by user of the system so as children grow, their parental filter can be adjusted accordingly. To accompany this feature VISTA provides a detailed logging system that can be activated to track the user activity. A parent can see not only which sites were visited but which sites the child attempted to access that were blocked (and perhaps have a meaningful discussion about them). VISTA even offers the parent the ability to monitor game usage. Not only can a parent specify that only games of a certain ESRB rating level can be played but individual game content can be filtered such as graphic violence, nudity, etc. The parent can even dictate that files cannot be downloaded (this may be a good security practice for the very young but would be too extremely limiting for adolescents).

Grouping and Stacking - David demonstrated another really useful feature called grouping and stacking. You can now group data by parameter into temporary folders with a few simple clicks. For example, if you have tagged a number of documents with a particular project name or keyword, you can instantly group them into a folder to use for batching operations. Music buffs could group music by genre or artist and instantly create temporary playlists.

Enhanced graphic tools - I was particularly excited by a new feature in graphics management. Whenever you edit an image in VISTA, it automatically creates a shadow document of the original image. Unlike Photoshop's revert to last saved feature, VISTA retains a copy of the original unedited document that can be retrieved at any time. I had been performing this type of file management for some time by always creating two copies of any downloaded images, placing one set in a folder marked original. VISTA now does it transparently. Very nice!

Well, it's time to get dressed for breakfast and prepare myself for another of David's workshops today on digital photography. I'll continue this discourse later this evening.

Web-based database system opens up Baltic museum collections

I see some of the museums in the Baltic states are banding together to create a public database of their collections. I wonder if they'll allow non-commerical use of the images for teaching and education, though.

More and more museums are providing online access to their collections, making it possible to visit great cultural and historic treasures from the comfort of your home or office. The key to simple use is well-structured information, data access and site architecture. The EUREKA E! 2918 ONLINE CATALOGUE project has developed a cost-effective and easily configurable database system, simplifying access to almost any type of museum collection.

This web-based approach was developed to widen and deepen cooperation between museums in the Baltic States by improving functionality and ease-of-use, enhancing research, education and training. The system is already providing Internet access to museum collections in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia for European and world citizens. The resulting open-architecture system will be marketed worldwide.

Robotics comes to the home front

Well, this holiday season I took a leap into robotics to actually save me time and perspiration with one of the more boring domestic chores, vacuuming. My husband and I were wandering around Sears and I lingered a while in the vacuum section since the old Kirby my husband found for me years ago weighs a bunch and as I grow older I find it more and more of a struggle to pack the old beast upstairs or from one room to another. As I walked past all the latest models I started daydreaming about the robotic vacuums I had heard about but thought to myself I would not find one of those in Sears. Lo and behold I turned a corner and there stacked up against a pillar was a shipment of Roombas - a robotic vacuum from iRobot. I was astounded to actually see one and the sales representative happily took out the rather battered looking demo and set it to the task of cleaning the rug. As I watched it swirling about, it's dirt detection light flashing like a miniature K-mart blue light special I resolved to give the little guy a try. So I shelled out the $299 (I took the more expensive Scheduler model that lets me program the time of its cleaning routines) and packed it home.

I followed the manual's recommendation to observe the Roomba in its first task to see if it had problems with any particular obstacle in the room or caught on rug fringe or draperies and found that it did have problems with some of my bedroom furniture with curved feet. However, they supply you with "virtual walls" to help the Roomba skirt these kinds of obstacles. The Roomba comes with two virtual wall units but I think I need two more so will try to snag a couple of them up on Ebay for less than the usual retail price of $29.95 each. My experiment with the Roomba in the living room went very well as did my trial in the kitchen and dining room. I thought to myself what I would really like is a Roomba that scrubs kitchen floors. I went up on the iRobot website and was thrilled to see that the Scooba does just that! I have resolved to get one of those too.

I now have worked the Roomba into my daily routine. I have it clean the living room one day then the kitchen and dining room the next day. When I rearrange the furniture in the bedroom I will add it to the Roomba queue. On Saturday I set the Roomba to the task of vacuuming my home office.

Overall, I'm very pleased with this technological inroad into the domestic front and I doubt that my Roomba will instigate any plots against me with my home theater system or my steam cleaner. I see that iRobot now offers a "Create-a-bot" programmable model for any budding robotics wannabees. Now that's what I call an interactive educational experience:

iRobot Unveils Programmable Robot

Developers and Students Can Now Create Useful Robots Quickly and Easily

2007 INTERNATIONAL CES, LAS VEGAS, Jan. 8, 2007 – iRobot Corp. (NASDAQ: IRBT) today unveiled iRobot® Create™, an affordable, programmable robot designed for aspiring roboticists, advanced high-school and college students, and serious robot developers. Create comes pre-assembled, so developers can design new robots without having to build a mobile robot from scratch. The latest robot is available at www.irobot.com and pricing starts at $129.99.

“Innovators dream of creating useful robots, but they often get bogged down with designing a mobile platform that works,” said Helen Greiner, co-founder and chairman of iRobot. “iRobot Create fills a need in the robot industry for a standard, durable hardware platform on which to rapidly develop new, innovative mobile robots.”

Create is based on the core technology of iRobot Roomba®, the vacuuming robot that is cleaning millions of homes worldwide, and is compatible with Roomba’s rechargeable batteries, remote control and other accessories.

With Create, developers can now begin designing new robot applications out of the box. This new platform provides access to robot sensors and actuators via an open interface. Create also features standard connections for electronics and threaded mounting holes that allow users to secure their inventions to the robot, streamlining the integration of third-party electronics such as sensors, cameras, arms and wireless connections.

A variety of methods and programming languages can be used to control Create. Beginners can observe the robot’s behavior in one of ten demonstration modes, or they can program the robot directly by downloading short scripts with any basic terminal program. More advanced users can write programs for completely autonomous robot behavior in C or C++ using the iRobot Command Module. Developers can also create custom software and interact with Create using a variety of methods including Microsoft Robotics Studio, a Windows-based development toolkit.

ReplayTV Returns (and It’s Not Just a Rerun) - New York Times

This definitely has potential! At present I cannot transfer my Dish satellite DVR recordings to my iPod because they equipped it with a proprietary USB connection that will only talk to their own pocket Dish. I also have no way to increase the capacity of the DISH DVR either. At $100 for the software and only $20 per year subscription thereafter, their price point is right too.

ReplayTV Returns (and It’s Not Just a Rerun) - New York Times: "The new incarnation of Replay requires a computer with Windows XP, a Pentium 4 chip that is 1.3 gigahertz or faster, and a fast graphics card with 128 megabytes of video RAM. You also need a video tuner card, which lets the computer receive TV signals from cable, satellite or over the air. (The Replay software is included with some Hauppauge tuner cards.)

As with the old Replay, the new version shows two weeks of TV listings as a grid, or you can search by title, director, actor, genre or special categories like “season premieres.” All navigation can be done by keyboard or with a remote control (not included).

For $100, you get the software and the first year’s subscription; the annual fee is $20 thereafter. The company plans to offer a free 30-day trial through www.replaytv.com starting today. "

For France, Video Games Are as Artful as Cinema - New York Times

I agree with the culture minister of France that video games do reflect substantial creativity and can reflect cultural value. I'm not sure I'd give a creative award to Donkey Kong, however. There are many other games with truly breathtaking graphics and far more intricate game play, often based on historical events, that would be much better candidates.

New York Times: "France is proud of its contribution to culture in such forms as existentialism, Impressionism and auteur films. Now the French culture minister wants to add Donkey Kong to his country’s pantheon of high art.

“Call me the minister of video games if you want — I am proud of this,” the minister, Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, said in an interview last month. “People have looked down on video games for far too long, overlooking their great creativity and cultural value.”

Mr. Donnedieu de Vabres is seeking to have video games recognized as a cultural industry eligible for tax breaks, similar to French cinema.

In March, he pinned medals from the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres — a prize awarded to acknowledge cultural accomplishments — on three prominent video game designers, including Shigeru Miyamoto, the Japanese creator of Donkey Kong. The game, popularized in the 1980s, stars an Italian plumber called Mario.

Video game creators should receive a tax break of 20 percent, up to a ceiling of 500,000 euros, Mr. Donnedieu de Vabres says.

“Video games are not a mere commercial product,” he insisted. “They are a form of artistic expression involving creation from script writers, designers and directors.”"

Mississippi State Develops Effective Campus-wide Podcasting System on a Shoestring

I'm at the national Educause Conference in Dallas, Texas, right now and of course I am looking for innovative web-based applications that we could implement to provide campus-wide services in a number of areas including e-portfolio development, learning object repositories, content publishing and collaboration, etc.

I went to an excellent presentation this afternoon given by the IT group at Mississippi State about their lowcost, automated podcasting system using existing polycom output routed through a relatively inexpensive device (about $350 per lectern) called a Barix instreamer that converts all audio produced during a class presentation to an MP3 format. The MS group wrote a web-based front end for faculty login and input of metadata as well as an automated RSS output that automatically publishes the file to the web through links into their CMS system (they use WebCT but it would probably adapt just as well to Blackboard. The MS folks sounded like they would be willing to share their software if we were interested in developing the service here. I couldn't hardly believe that they built the entire system and rolled it out campus-wide in less than three weeks!

A Chip That Can Transfer Data Using Laser Light

With this new technology, maybe those of us living in more remote locations will finally get high-speed internet at a reasonable cost!

New York Times: "Researchers plan to announce on Monday that they have created a silicon-based chip that can produce laser beams. The advance will make it possible to use laser light rather than wires to send data between chips, removing the most significant bottleneck in computer design.

As a result, chip makers may be able to put the high-speed data communications industry on the same curve of increased processing speed and diminishing costs — the phenomenon known as Moore’s law — that has driven the computer industry for the last four decades.

The development is a result of research at Intel, the world’s largest chip maker, and the University of California, Santa Barbara. Commercializing the new technology may not happen before the end of the decade, but the prospect of being able to place hundreds or thousands of data-carrying light beams on standard industry chips is certain to shake up both the communications and computer industries.

Lasers are already used to transmit high volumes of computer data over longer distances — for example, between offices, cities and across oceans — using fiber optic cables. But in computer chips, data moves at great speed over the wires inside, then slows to a snail’s pace when it is sent chip-to-chip inside a computer.

With the barrier removed, computer designers will be able to rethink computers, packing chips more densely both in home systems and in giant data centers. Moreover, the laser-silicon chips — composed of a spider’s web of laser light in addition to metal wires — portend a vastly more powerful and less expensive national computing infrastructure. For a few dollars apiece, such chips could transmit data at 100 times the speed of laser-based communications equipment, called optical transceivers, that typically cost several thousand dollars."

Where oh where has the RSS Link gone on Google?

I am working on a php driven website that displays information about historical figures contained in a Filemaker Pro database. One of the features desired on this website is a list of links to other resources on the web about the figure that is selected. I created a table to contain the links with various fields to relate the links to the figures individually and by group but as the compilation of links would be quite time consuming, I decided that it would be better to embed an RSS feed generated by one of the search engines based on a specifically defined search criteria instead. This would automatically update itself as new resources appear on the web.

I had used a Google-search generated RSS feed in the past so when I went up on Google and performed a search and looked for the RSS feed link I was baffled when I couldn’t find it anymore. Thinking it was just late in the day and I was just somehow overlooking the link, I called JQ and we both hunted all over for it. JQ finally found an article indicating that the feature was removed some time ago. Apparently, Google (and Yahoo) both decided that they didn’t want you to be able to easily create this time saving feature – I’m assuming it’s because RSS feeds do not contain advertising. So, JQ and I set about searching for a work around.

JQ found a blogpost about a tool developed by Ben Hammersley called Google to RSS. I found a tool developed by ResearchBuzz that will create a feed from several different search engines including special science and math search engines called Kebberfegg. Kebberfegg is a tool to help you generate large sets of keyword-based RSS feeds at one time..

With one search you can generate an RSS feed for:

Scientific and Medical: Hubmed, CiteuLike, Connotea, CounsellingResource.com

Multimedia: BigFeeder, Del.icio.us Audio, Del.icio.us Video, BlogDigger Audio, BlogDigger Video and Image, Buzznet, Flickr, Blinkx TV

News: BBC, NewsisFree, FeedsFarm, Google News, IceRocket News, NewsTrove News, RocketNews, Topix.net, FindArticles, Wired, Findory, Yahoo News, MSN News

Press Release Wires: MarketWire and PRWeb via FeedFindings, PR Newswire via Google News, Business Wire via Google News

Tags and Site Submissions: Digg, Del.Icio.Us, IceRocket Tags, Technorati Tags, RawSugar, Ma.gnolia

Technology: PHPDeveloper, Etamp

Web Search Engines: MSN, IceRocket

Weblog Search Engines: Blogdigger, Daypop, Feedster, Google Blog, IceRocket Blog, Findory Blog, RocketNews Blog, Blogpulse, Yahoo Blog Search, Sphere

Other: 43 Places

I decided to use the tool from ResearchBuzz then take the feed it generates and paste it into RSS to Javascript's tool:

http://www.rss-to-javascript.com/p/138.html

and paste the resulting snippet of code in a text field in my database. Then I assigned a Php variable to that text field and call it within my PhP page. Too bad I can't rely on people to have the newest browsers that can display RSS feeds directly but I think that would be too optimistic at this point.

3D Photo Tourism Project Showcased at SIGGRAPH

Several months ago I was contacted by researchers working on an immersive 3D Photo Tourism project at the Computer Science Department at the University of Washington.

"A central goal of image-based rendering is to evoke a visceral sense of presence based on a collection of photographs of a scene. The last several years have seen signicant progress towards this goal through view synthesis methods in the research community and in commercial products such as panorama tools. One of the dreams
is that these approaches will one day allow virtual tourism of the world's interesting and important sites.

During this same time, digital photography, together with the Internet, have combined to enable sharing of photographs on a truly massive scale. For example, a Google image search on “Notre Dame Cathedral” returns over 15,000 photos, capturing the scene from myriad viewpoints, levels of detail, lighting conditions, seasons, decades, and so forth. Unfortunately, the proliferation of shared photographs has outpaced the technology for browsing such
collections, as tools like Google (www.google.com) and Flickr (www.ickr.com) return pages and pages of thumbnails that the user must comb through.

We present a system for browsing and organizing large photo collections of popular sites which exploits the common 3D geometry of the underlying scene. Our approach is based on
computing, from the images themselves, the photographers' locations and orientations, along with a sparse 3D geometric representation of the scene, using a state-of-the-art image-based modeling system. Our system handles large collections of unorganized photographs
taken by different cameras in widely different conditions.

We show how the inferred camera and scene information enables the following capabilities:

Scene visualization. Fly around popular world sites in 3D by morphing between photos.

Object-based photo browsing. Show me more images that contain this object or part of the scene.

Where was I? Tell me where I was when I took this picture.

What am I looking at? Tell me about objects visible in this image by transferring annotations from similar images." - Photo Tourism: Exploring Photo Collections in 3D

The researchers requested permission to use some of my pictures of Trevi Fountain for a demonstration of their new system for creating an interactive environment for visual exploration of historical sites that have been photographed from many different angles at various times of the year by many different people. The demonstration was presented at Siggraph. You can view the system at:

http://phototour.cs.washington.edu/

I recommend watching the longer movie which explains the interactive features more in depth. I found it to be a fascinating learning environment and feel honored to have had some of my images selected for inclusion in such a cutting edge project. It really motivates me to continue to build my online archive for educational use.

Weighing a Switch to a Mac

I thought this comparison of the new Mac Intel-based platform with existing native Windows machines a thoughtful evaluation but was somewhat disturbed by the "switching experience" case study the article included.

New York Times: "The physical designs of Apple’s desktop and notebook computers are often innovative. The iMac, for example, is a space-saving desktop unit with an all-in-one enclosure that conceals the computer’s components behind the monitor. And the MacBook, a new notebook with a glossy screen, includes a new keyboard layout. This week, the company introduced the Mac Pro, a line of desktops replacing the Power Mac, completing its transition to Intel chips.

But while Apple’s selection covers much ground, it is less diverse than what is available from companies like Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Sony and Lenovo. For example, Apple does not offer ultraportable notebooks, a tablet design or as wide a choice in processor types and speeds. And when it comes to pricing, Apple no longer offers notebooks in the sub-$1,000 range, or desktop units in the sub-$500 range, as do other makers.

Consideration should also be given to the compatibility of any devices like printers, external hard drives and cellphones that may be connected to a computer. In some instances, only Windows may be supported."

The Switching Experience

Danielle Wang, 26, of Austin, Tex., bought her first Mac six weeks ago. She took the advice of a friend and decided to buy a MacBook to replace her Windows-based laptop, a Sony Vaio, which she said had been stolen.

Early in the transition, Ms. Wang said, it took time to get used to the Mac interface; the menus, the location of buttons and other items were different. “It was difficult,” she said. “The first three days, I was constantly thinking about returning it.”

Ms. Wang uses the MacBook mainly for applications like e-mail, Web browsing, digital music, games and instant messaging; so far, she has not encountered problems finding Mac software, and she still maintains access to Windows-based computers for other programs she prefers to use at home.

In comparing the MacBook and the Vaio, she said the graphics were clearer on the Sony.

“The Sony Vaio is more lively,” she said. But she prefers the look and design of the MacBook."

What I find primarily disturbing about this particular case study is that essentially Ms. Wang opted for a Mac for esthetic reasons not because of product functionality. It reminds me of Steve Jobs boast at Mac World several years ago when the I-Mac was introduced with its unusual shape and color combinations. He essentially said it didn't matter how powerful the machine really is but that it looks "cool". I would like to think computer users are not that shallow.

New Navigation systems do more than point the way

I found this article in the New York Times describing the latest developments in navigation systems very interesting. I had read that digital cameras would be coming out with built in GPS systems to record the location of photos. This article says navigation systems based on GPS are incorporating cameras so you can snap a picture of a location with no fixed address and your navigation system can then return you to that same place at a future time if you need to go there again.

"The iCN 750 from Navman not only lets users show photos but shoot them — and use them as a navigation aid. Press a button and it shoots a digital picture of the road ahead (it can detach quickly from its suction-cup bracket to shoot other views or even shoot outside the car). There is no zoom, and the camera’s 1.3-megapixel resolution is more like a camera phone’s than a digital camera’s. But the point is not image detail: it is the G.P.S. geocode data the Navman adds to each photo as a record of where it was shot. Store the image on the Navman’s hard drive and it shows a user on a map where it was shot or can navigate back there, which is especially useful for spots that have no street address. Navman users can share their geocoded Navpix via www.navman.com/navpix library, and use tools there to add location codes to other photos."

As someone who loves to travel abroad I was also very pleased to note the new language bank feauture:

"

These navigation systems also work abroad. The satellite network these systems use for positioning is available worldwide, and most cars have lighter sockets. Travelers will need new digital maps, of course, but the major manufacturers have them for Europe, at least, and sometimes other places.

Garmin’s nüvi 350 and 360 do even more for European travelers, with a world travel clock and foreign currency and measurement converters built in, and language and travel guides available on plug-in SD cards. The language guides, using data from Oxford University Press, include word and phrase banks and bilingual dictionaries for nine languages and dialects (including American and British English, European and Brazilian Portuguese, and European and Latin American Spanish) and will even demonstrate how words are pronounced.

The travel guides, with data from Marco Polo, include information on tourist attractions and reviews of restaurants for all of Western Europe or any of five European regions."

TiVo Is Watching When You Don’t Watch, and It Tattles

I thought it would only be a matter of time before DVR providers started capitalizing on datamining the information stored on all those Digital Video Recorders like Tivo that are rapidly becoming ubiquitous in the homes of the viewing public.

This article also mentions efforts to tailor ads to the viewer's interest profile as noted by the types of programming the viewer chooses to record - sort of like Amazon's personal suggestions based on past purchase history. This may not be a bad thing if it means I won't have to sit through the deluge of Bowflex, Levitra, or Enzyte ads any more. My DVR is presently over half full of such educational programs as "The Crusades: The Crescent and the Cross", "The First Chinese Emperor", "Rome: Engineering an Empire", HBO's "Rome" miniseries (which I can erase when my new DVD First Season set arrives August 16), OPB's "The Madness of Henry VIII", and "Command Decisions: Alesia".

I wonder if they have a way to tell if the DVR controller is a woman or a man?

New York Times: "AS the advertising and television industries debate how to measure viewers of shows watched on digital video recorders, the pioneering maker of the recorders, TiVo, is getting into the argument. It is starting a research division to sell data about how its 4.4 million users watch commercials — or, more often, skip them.

The service is based on an analysis of the second-by-second viewing patterns of a nightly sample of 20,000 TiVo users, whose recorders report back to TiVo on what was watched and when.

On average, TiVo has found that its users spend nearly half of their television time watching programs recorded earlier. And viewers of those recorded shows skip about 70 percent of the commercials, said Todd Juenger, TiVo’s vice president for audience research.

But TiVo says that at a more detailed level there are wide variations in the numbers. The new research service, which is intended mainly for advertisers, could help them understand how to get more people to watch recorded commercials, like changing the content of ads or running them during certain kinds of programming.

For example, one study for a consumer packaged goods company, which Mr. Juenger declined to identify, found that commercials featuring animal characters, when shown on animal-related programs, were skipped less often than usual."

Blurb's print on demand model offers low cost, no editing option

I've kept my eye on the "print-on-demand" developments for quite a while so found blurb.com's latest venture interesting. I downloaded the Booksmart software and, after a quick tour of the features, and a few minutes using the software, I found it to have good potential.

Although it appeals to the person looking for a way to produce a highly personalized gift, I think it would also provide the means for communities to acquire truly unique library offerings that reflect the diverse characters and interests of their inhabitants.

New York Times: "The print-on-demand business is gradually moving toward the center of the marketplace. What began as a way for publishers to reduce their inventory and stop wasting paper is becoming a tool for anyone who needs a bound document. Short-run presses can turn out books economically in small quantities or singly, and new software simplifies the process of designing a book.

As the technology becomes simpler, the market is expanding beyond the earliest adopters, the aspiring authors. The first companies like AuthorHouse, Xlibris, iUniverse and others pushed themselves as new models of publishing, with an eye on shaking up the dusty book business. They aimed at authors looking for someone to edit a manuscript, lay out the book and bring it to market.

The newer ventures also produce bound books, but they do not offer the same hand-holding or the same drive for the best-seller list. Blurb’s product will appeal to people searching for a publisher, but its business is aimed at anyone who needs a professional-looking book, from architects with plans to present to clients, to travelers looking to immortalize a trip.

Blurb.com’s design software, which is still in beta testing, comes with a number of templates for different genres like cookbooks, photo collections and poetry books. Once one is chosen, it automatically lays out the page and lets the designer fill in the photographs and text by cutting and pasting. If the designer wants to tweak some details of the template — say, the position of a page number or a background color — the changes affect all the pages.

The software is markedly easier to use — although less capable — than InDesign from Adobe or Quark XPress, professional publishing packages that cost around $700. It is also free because Blurb expects to make money from printing the book. Prices start at $29.95 for books of 1 tto 40 pages and rise to $79.95 for books of 301 to 440 pages."

Downloading Service to Allow Film Watching on TV Screens - New York Times

Downloading Service to Allow Film Watching on TV Screens - New York Times: "The movie industry has been experimenting with ways to rent and sell downloaded movies, but these efforts have been hampered because the movies generally had to be watched on computer screens. The new service allows the movies to be seen on any television set connected to a DVD player.

“People like to watch movies in their living rooms, and this solves their problem,” said Curt Marvis, chief executive of CinemaNow, which is offering the download-to-DVD service. The studios participating include Sony, Disney, Universal, MGM and Lions Gate, which is a major shareholder in CinemaNow.

CinemaNow has been selling downloaded movies since April from these and some other studios, but the movies were restricted to computer viewing, and the downloads included only the film. The new offering also includes the bonus material on DVD discs, like filmmakers’ commentary and extra scenes.

The picture quality of the discs made through the downloading will not be as high as those on commercial DVD’s because the files need to be compressed to reduce the downloading time. Even so, it will take about three hours to download and burn a movie, hardly allowing for impulse purchases.

Mr. Marvis said users would not be inconvenienced by the time. “I was testing the service over the weekend with my family,” he said. “We picked out a movie to see, launched the service, cooked dinner, ate and by the time we washed and put away the dishes, there was the movie.”

And the studios are not yet allowing new releases to be sold in a form that can be copied to DVD’s. Initially, CinemaNow will offer about 100 older titles, including “Scent of a Woman,” “Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle” and “Barbershop.” Prices will be about $9 to $15, the same as the films sold in versions that could be downloaded only to computers.

Mr. Marvis said the response to the initial offering had been tepid."

I guess response would be tepid! Why would I pay as much as $15 to wait three hours to download a movie (even with its extra features), that has less than optimum quality, then have to burn it to a DVD that I have paid for???!!! Unless you take extra effort to create a menu, you would also not have the interactive selection capabilities of a DVD either! Come on movie moguls! You can do better than that!!!

SirLook offers free webpage "Live Help" service

Today, I noticed that a company is offering a free online chat support service that can be pasted into any number of websites. Years ago I used to use a similar service called “Human Click” with my tech support website here at the college. It worked quite well but like many good things that start out as an open source project, the service was eventually acquired by a group of capitalists that started charging for the service so I discontinued using it.

I was naturally skeptical about this new service but I read through the user agreement and saw no blatant gotchas. I signed up for the service and was pleased to see that the chat interface is even free from glaring advertisements – just a simple statement Powered by SirLook. It is a totally web-based service so there is nothing to install on the client side and you can load the script on as many web pages as you wish. When you login to their chat management site, you have a window that lists any chat requests by URL of the website where the request was initiated so one person can respond to multiple sites. You can customize the interface and include as many visitor questions to the chat request dialog box as you wish, archive sessions, track visitors, build a library of canned responses for frequently asked questions, and refer visitors to your own contact forms. The full list of features can be seen here:

http://www.sirlook.com/live/features.php

I am testing the service on my Roman Times educational history site. You can try it out by clicking on the Roman Times link below.

http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/%7Emharrsch/romanwonders.html

Jobs out to sell downloadable movies for $9.99

This time I think Jobs has let the success of iTunes go to his head. I, for one, am not willing to spend $9.99 for a downloadable movie when I can order pay-per-view for $3.99, video-on-demand for $4.99, and sale DVDs for less than $7. You better reconsider your price point Steven!

New York Times: "Consumers have been willing to spend 99 cents to buy Shakira's 'Hips Don't Lie' or $1.99 for an episode of 'Desperate Housewives' from iTunes.

Now Steven P. Jobs is betting they will also pay $9.99 to download 'The Godfather' to play on their iPods.

For weeks, Apple Computer has been talking with executives at all the major studios — including the Walt Disney Company, 20th Century Fox, Warner Brothers and Universal Studios — about adding movies to its popular iTunes music store, several people involved in the negotiations said."