Nikon D60 with new Eye-Fi.

Remember the Eye-Fi? That's the SD card that adds auto-uploading Wi-Fi capabilities to any digital camera. If you remember, I wrote about this in techblog on November 30 . Now the company has teamed with Nikon to add extended Eye-Fi functionality to the first camera on the market, Nikon's D60.

When the Eye-Fi is inserted into the D60, the D60 will "automatically adjust its power timer settings to ensure that photos upload effortlessly for sharing and storing." So it looks like camera manufacturers are getting a say in how to optimize the uploading from the camera, which can only be good for end users. The Eye-Fi service will also be adding another photo sharing partner, Nikon's my Picturetown.

Having major camera manufacturers working to support this third party device, even at these more rudimentary levels, is a big break for the Eye-Fi. It's sort of a "why not" device that can rid your life of USB cables - if you don't mind spending a little bit extra on an SD card.

About Nikon D60 : The D60 utilizes Nikon’s exclusive EXPEED technology to maximize image quality and processing speed. The camera also offers creative features that are designed to allow the optimisation and adjustment of images without the need for a computer. Image optimisation is achieved through functions like Active D-Lighting (which compensates for strong shadows), and the automatic correction of false eye colour when using the built-in flash. Creative features include the automated creation of stop-motion animation files from a sequence of images, and effects that simulate the use of optical filters to produce colour shading and sparkling highlights. It may be a low-end DSLR contender, but Nikon's D60 can still surprise. Seems Nikon and Eye-Fi are in cahoots as the D60 was just announced as the first shooter crowned "Eye-Fi Connected." The D60 recognizes the Eye-Fi wireless 2GB SD card when inserted.

Google's latest ideas - Search views

Google on Monday added three experimental views to its list of possible alternatives to the established vertical list of Web pages delivered as search results. The latest additions, which people are free to try out if they have a Google account, are available through the Google Labs site . The idea behind the experimental search page is to give Google fans a chance to try out the search engine's newest ideas.

The latest experiments include a "map view" in which locations related to search results are marked on a street map. Users also have the option of viewing the location on a satellite view. The map view could be helpful, for example, if a person was looking for all the musical performances around town or technology conferences happening in a state. Because traditional results are spread out over many sites and pages, they may be hard to visualize at once, so the map view is aimed at solving that problem by plotting some of the key locations.

Another experiment is the "timeline view," which is similar to the map view but for dates on the Web. Results on a search for Thomas Jefferson, the third U.S. president, would include a timeline on the top of the page with many dates related to Jefferson's life. The dates would be drawn from search results, and clicking on a date would reveal the related results. There's also a filter on the top right-hand corner of the page for setting a range of years, months, or days.

A third approach is the "info view," which is accessed through a control panel added to the right side of a traditional list of search results. The panel gives the option of rearranging results in order of importance related to dates, locations, measurements, or images. For example, if "dates" is chosen in a search for "space exploration," than the first result would be the date of Sputnik, the first successful orbital launch. The Soviet Union launched the satellite in 1957. "If you run a search and find many of your results are looking similar, try using info view," Andrew Hogue, technology lead for the project, said in the company's blog. "It may highlight the differences between results and help you select the best page for your needs."

Other facilities coming into Google are Keybord Short cuts, Keyword suggestions, contextual search navigation etc. Take a look at Google Labs site for the same.

Google and other search engines are constantly working on helping people find what they want in search results that can sometimes include thousands of pages. Imaginestics' VizSeek site, for example, lets a manufacturer draw the part it's looking for, as well as enter keywords, when looking for a supplier.

Swedish startup Polar Rose is working on technology that can search actual images on the Web, rather than just tags or text surrounding a photo. The site is in beta.

SSD - Solid State Drives

A Hard Drive Alternative Based On Flash Memory

One of the big items in the world of computers from the 2007 CES show in Las Vegas is the SSD or Solid State Drive. This is actually technology that has been around for many years, but only now is it actually set to become something that consumer may actually get to use within the next year.

What is a Solid State Drive?

Solid state is an electrical term that refers to electronic circuitry that is built entirely out of semiconductors. The term was originally used to define those electronics such as a transistor radio that used semiconductors rather than vacuum tubes in its construction. Most all electronics that we have today are built around semiconductors and chips.

In terms of a SSD, it refers to the fact that the primary storage medium is through semiconductors rather than a magnetic media such as a hard drive. Now, you might say that this type of storage already exists in the form of flash memory drives that plug into the USB port. This is partially true as solid state drives and USB flash drives both use the same type of non-volatile memory chips that retain their information even when they have no power. The difference is in the form factor and capacity of the drives. While a flash drive is designed to be external to the computer system, an SSD is designed to reside inside the computer in place of a more traditional hard drive.

So how exactly do they do this? Well, an SSD on the outside looks almost no different than a traditional hard drive. This design is to allow the SSD drive to put in a notebook or desktop computer in place of a hard drive. To do this, it needs to have the standard dimension as a 1.8, 2.5 or 3.5-inch hard drive. It also will use either the ATA or SATA drive interfaces so that there is a compatible interface.

Why Use a Solid State Drive?

Solid state drives have several advantages over the magnetic hard drives. The majority of this comes from the fact that the drive does not have any moving parts. While a traditional drive has drive motors to spin up the magnetic platters and the drive heads, all the storage on a solid state drive is handled by flash memory chips. This provides three distinct advantages:

• Less Power Usage
• Faster Data Access
• Higher Reliability

The power usage is a key role for the use of solid state drives in portable computers. Because there is no power draw for the motors, the drive uses far less energy than the regular hard drive. Now, the industry has taken steps to address this with drive spin downs and the development of hybrid hard drives, but both of these still use more power. The solid state drive will consistently draw less power then the traditional and hybrid hard drive.

Faster data access will make a number of people happy. Since the drive doesn't have to spin up the drive platter or move drive heads, the data can be read from the drive near instantly. In a recent demo of two similar equipped notebook computers, Fujitsu was able to demonstrate a roughly 20% speed increase in the booting of Windows XP on a SSD over a standard hard drive.

Reliability is also a key factor for portable drives. Hard drive platters are very fragile and sensitive materials. Even small jarring movements from an impact can cause the drive to be completely unreadable. Since the SSD stores all its data in memory chips, there are fewer moving parts to be damaged in any sort of impact.

Why Aren't SSDs Used For All PCs?

As with most computer technologies, the primary limiting factor of using the solid state drives in notebook and desktop computers is cost. These drives have actually been available for some time now, but the cost of the drives is roughly the same as the entire notebook they could be installed into. This is gradually changing as the number of companies producing the drives and the capacity for producing the flash memory chips grows. Drives announced at the 2007 CES were priced at less than half of the drives of the same capacity from the previous year.

The other problem affecting the adoption of the solid state drives is capacity. Current hard drive technology can allow for over 200GB of data in a small 2.5-inch notebook hard drive. Most SSD drives announced at the 2007 CES show are of the 64GB capacity. This means that not only are the drives much more expensive than a traditional hard drive, they only hold a fraction of the data.

All of this is set to change soon though. Several companies that specialize in flash memory have announced upcoming products that look to push the capacities of the solid state drives to be closer to that of a normal hard drive but at even lower prices than the current SSDs. This will have a huge impact for notebook data storage.

OLED - The New face of Display Technology

Organic Light Emitting Diodes (OLEDs) are on the cutting edge of next-generation technology for electronic displays. OLED displays offer life-like color reproduction with high contrast, ultra sharp images. In addition, the low power consumption and small size of OLED displays make them ideal for portable applications. Because of the wide viewing angle and high contrast of OLED displays, they provide a superior view.

Because an OLED display becomes self-emissive through organic material, its viewing angle is far wider than an LCD. This wide viewing angle can provide great improvements in a wide variety of product applications. It also offers new design concepts to industrial designers who were once limited by the constraints of traditional LCDs. OLED displays also have a very fast response time, which is crucial for supporting seamless animation. Backlights are not required for OLED displays, so their power consumption is far lower than LCD modules; this increases the lifetime of batteries for portable products. Also, without the need for a backlight, OLED displays are lightweight and extremely thin.

Thin organic layers serve these displays as a source of light, which offers significant advantages in relation to conventional technologies:

• brighter and more brilliant picture
• unlimited viewing angle
• low power consumption
• economic production
• fast "response time

Video wallpaper - just a millimeter thick - could transform your living room wall into a flat screen and electronic film as thin as a sheet of paper could serve as your screen for the internet, the news, images or games. In future, all of this will be possible thanks to organic light-emitting diodes, so-called OLEDs.

Track Flights in Google Maps

I do so love the internet. Anyone who has gone to pick someone up at the airport knows that planes don’t always land at their scheduled times. So nowadays, of course, you can check the web page for the appropriate airline and find out whether the plane is delayed or on time

But you know what would be even better? If you could call up a Google map that showed the flight plan and current location of the plane.

And now you can! At least, for Delta flights. Do any other airlines do this? And if not, why not

Wait, I answered my own question. Just go to Flightstats.com, where they will apparently give you a map of whatever flight you want. And if you’re bored, you can just pick a random flight! And then you will be, if not less bored, at least somewhat bemused.

Currently this facility is available only in US/Canada

Jobs Unveils 'World's Thinnest' Notebook, iTunes Movie Rentals

Apple chief executive Steve Jobs on Tuesday unveiled the "world's thinnest" sub-notebook and launched a video rental service on iTunes. In addition, Jobs introduced at the Macworld conference in San Francisco a backup appliance called Time Capsule, and software upgrades for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and Apple TV. "All of this in the first two weeks [of the year], and we've got 50 more weeks to go," Jobs said.

In unveiling the MacBook Air, Jobs has introduced a three-pound mini-notebook with a 13.3 inch light-emitting diode (LED) display, iSight Webcam, full-size keyboard, and 80-Gbyte hard-disk drive, which is standard. A 64-Gbyte solid-state drive is available as an option. "It's a little pricey, but it's super fast," Jobs said of the solid-state drive.

The notebook comes standard with 2-Gbytes of memory and an Intel Core 2 Duo 1.6-GHz processor, or an optional Core 2 Duo 1.8-GHz chip. It also supports Bluetooth and the fastest Wi-Fi standard of 802.11n, and has a battery life of five hours. "The MacBook Air was built to be a wireless machine," Jobs said.

The notebook's biggest innovation, however, is its size, tapering from three-quarters of an inch at the hinge to 0.16 of an inch at the other side, where the notebook has a magnetic latch. "It's the world's thinnest notebook," Jobs said. Apple also added features to the touchpad, such as the ability to tap twice and then move windows around or rotate photos, use three fingers to pan across pictures, or move a finger diagonally to zoom in and out of a photo, as in an iphone.

In reducing the thickness of the notebook, Apple worked with Intel, which reduced the size of its processor package by 60% to the width of a dime and the thickness of a nickel, Paul Otellini, Intel president and chief executive, said in joining Jobs on stage. "When we started this product, we didn't think it was possible," he said. "There were times when we sweated over it, but in time we did what we do best, which is innovate."

One item missing from the notebook is an optical DVD drive. Instead, Apple has added software called "remote disc" that can recognize an optical drive on a PC or Mac computer through a wireless network. Tapping into those machines, an Air user can install software from a CD or DVD. The Air is scheduled to ship in two weeks and will cost $1,799. On the green front, the machine has a recyclable aluminum case and a mercury-free display with arsenic-free glass.

In introducing a video rental service on iTunes, Jobs injected more content into a store that saw its inventory thin last year. With video rentals, however, Apple sign up all the major studios, including 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros., Disney, Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios, and Sony Pictures. The service launched Tuesday, and is expected to have more than 1,000 films by the end of February. New films would be available 30 days after the DVD release.

With Time Capsule, Jobs introduced a wireless back-up appliance for Mac notebooks and desktops. The device, which supports 802.11n, comes in a 500-Gbyte and a 1-Tbyte version, and costs $299 and $499, respectively. The appliance starts shipping in February.

The software upgrades for the iPhone and iPod Touch include a maps application that can locate the user, and provide directions to a location. The location software is provided by Skyhook Wireless, which triangulates a person's location based on nearby Wi-Fi hotspots. The iPhone also finds the user based on the cellular network through software from Google.

TV comes to life with gesture technology

The technology featured in the blockbuster movie Minority Report is coming real.The film showed Tom Cruise manipulating images on a large video screen by simply moving his hands around the display.

Reactrix, a Silicon Valley company allied with Samsung, has created a system that mimics those features. Think Wii without the remote, and you’ve got the idea. Stand within 15 feet of a Reactrix-equipped Samsung L.C.D, wave your hands in the air, and watch a cursor (or other object) move around the screen. This idea is exhibited at this year's CES (Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas).

Natural human interfaces, ones that involve human movement, for example, tend to be incredibly engaging. It's rarely more noticeable than at CES -the crowds nearly always gather around those exhibits that provide some kind of interactivity. One of the most popular has been the WAVEscape advertising platform, developed by Reactrix and exhibited in partnership with Samsung. WAVEscape is a stereo near-infrared vision system that sits above a television to enable interactions between viewer movement and content on the screen.

It uses a stereo 3D vision system to sense the distance of a person from the television. In the same way a person has two eyes to gauge proximity, the computer can get the full shape of everyone's body up to 15 feet away. At CES, Reactrix demonstrated how users could stand in front of a Samsung LCD and interact with several games and information sites using the movement of their limbs.

The technology is being used as a means of engaging people in a public space for interactive display advertising. Reactrix's first big customer is Hilton Hotels, which will provide the technology in its lobbies and other public spaces to both entertain and provide information on hotel services.

WAVEscape was developed by Matt Bell, Reactrix's chief scientist and founder. It is inspired by an earlier product he invented called the Stepscape--a 2x3 meter interactive floor-projected display deployed in shopping malls and other public spaces that can sense a person's presence as they walk over it.

Reactrix are using these technologies to reinvent out-of-home advertising. Most advertising outside of the home is billboards and digital signage. They describe this as glance media - you look at it for two seconds, if that, and then you move on, it will interact with you. They have fun and therefore the advertiser loves it because the user remembers the message, and the venue is happy because the venue is more interesting. Bell says users are 10 times as likely to recall the message of an interactive advertisement as a static one.

Beyond advertising, Bell sees applications in other verticals, such as education (pulling apart molecule diagrams on a classroom screen, for example) or as an attraction in a nightclub. Ultimately this could be baked into any display to optimize the experience for whoever is using it. Eventually, in the home.

It will take a few years to make its way to consumer. Right now it's relatively bulky, but all of this will be shrinking rapidly and will get it into the consumer market. In the home, you might be sitting on your couch and you gesture with your hand to change channel if you are sick of the program. Gestural interfaces are exciting because they are so natural. We communicate with body language. You get a display that's able to understand body language and that's very powerful.

Recognizing Text In Images - Google for patent

"Recognizing Text In Images"

is an application to patent a method of optical character recognition in digital images.

Digital images can include a wide variety of content, For example, digital images can illustrate landscapes, people, urban scenes, and other objects. Digital images often include text. Digital images can be captured, for example, using cameras or digital video recorders. Image text (i.e., text in an image) typically includes text of varying size, orientation, and typeface. Text in a digital image derived, for example, from an urban scene (e.g., a city street scene) often provides information about the displayed scene or location. A typical street scene includes, for example, text as part of street signs, building names, address numbers, and window signs.

The image database behind Google Maps Street View happens to contain many street scenes of with this sort of text. Being able to query for store names captured in Street View photos might be a useful way to conduct local searches. A spokesperson for Google said in an e-mail after filing a patent application with world Intellectual Property, "...We file patent applications on a variety of ideas that our employees come up with. Some of those ideas later mature into real products or services; some don't..."

The patent application envisions several possible advantages arising from the technology. "Candidate text regions within images can be enhanced to improve text recognition accuracy," the patent application states. "Extracted image text can also be used to improve image searching. The extracted text can be stored as associated with the particular image for use in generating search results in an image search. Additionally, the extracted image text can be combined with location data and indexed to improve and enhance location-based searching. The extracted text can provide keywords for identifying particular locations and presenting images of the identified locations to a user."

Google of course contemplates using the technology to add value to its search advertising business. "For example, a user enters a search for a McDonald's in a particular city or near a particular address," the patent application suggests. "The mapping application generates a map to the McDonald's as well as presents an image of the McDonald's. The McDonald's image is retrieved using the indexed text from the image identifying the McDonald's and location information associated with the image, which identifies the location of the particular McDonald's in the image."

But Google also imagines novel uses. Just as Google created Street View by having camera-equipped vehicles drive through urban areas to capture a series of images of the trip, the search giant imagines cruising the aisles of supermarkets with camera-equipped robots to create what might be called Google Product View. "In one implementation, a store (e.g., a grocery store or hardware store) is indexed," the patent application explains. "Images of items within the store are captured, for example, using a small motorized vehicle or robot. The aisles of the store are traversed and images of products are captured in a similar manner as discussed above. Additionally, as discussed above, location information is associated with each image. Text is extracted from the product images. In particular, extracted text can be filtered using a product name database in order to focus character recognition results on product names."

Such possibilities of course remain highly speculative, and may, like the non-existent but presumably longed-for Google Perp Locator or Google Babe/Stud Finder, never come to pass. The filing suggests that the privacy issues raised by Google Maps Street View will only get more complicated, that YouTube searchers may one day be able to conduct keyword searches for text captured on video, and that Google searches may one day return a list of products on local store shelves.