iPhoto

iPhoto has been updated with two features called “Faces” and “Places.” Faces, as you may have guessed, lets you tag photos by subjects’ faces, similar to what Facebook and Picasa have done. iPhoto makes its best guess as to the identity of a subject based on previous tags and asks for confirmation. Of course, Phil called it “..the best technology we’ve found for face detection.”

Places allows for geotagging of photos. Some cameras and the 3G iPhone will use GPS information to tag photos on longitude and latitude. iPhoto then organizes those photos by location, or “place.” Also, Flickr and Facebook support are built-in. Those without GPS access can retro-tag photos by hand.

Other iPhoto features include enhanced slideshows and travel books.

Source: TUAW

This presentation gives a great overview of the company’s overall strategy and the reasons it has become what it is today.

The ad was created for Toshiba’s new low-definition to high-definition upscaling tech built into its LCD TVs, DVD machines and laptops. But it’s amazing all by itself: whereas the Wachowski-brothers’ technique used static images in Bullet-Time, this new style uses looped video clips, digitally compiled together for the final result. Apparently the 200-cam 14-meter diameter filming rig used “the highest number of moving image cameras ever used in a film sequence” and took three days to just focus up and align. All 200 cameras were triggered by a single remote, and it took four weeks to process the image data. Four weeks! The $4.7million ad’s showing in Europe currently.

Did you know there are 42 good things you can do with the Samsung Omnia mobile phone? You can discover each one of them by watching 42 short videos on the dedicated website. Yes, I know, at first sight the idea of watching 42 videos sounds a bit boring and frustrating, but if you give it a try, probably you will change your mind, as I did.

There is a new application in AppStore. It costs only 99 cents but it can rescue us from many disasters! How many times did we want to have a call from someone in order to leave a place, a meeting or a difficult situation? With the new App Fake Calls, you can create your own fake call and you are done! As you see in the picture, you put the name or the number of the fake caller and the time of the call.

Finally! We are free!

New software developed by scientists at UC San Diego allows anyone to make duplicate keys from a single photograph. Keys can be cloned from any type of photograph, like a cell phone’s camera, and even from pictures taken over distances of hundreds of feet away. The pictures are scanned into a computer, and the software (called Sneakey) detects the exact contours of the key to create a duplicate, no matter the angle or distance at which the photos were taken.

This actually doesn’t really surprise me. I’ve been interested in bump keys and lock picking for a long time, and a guy I once worked with showed me his method of copying a key just by looking at it. All he needs is a key blank and a hand-file. It’s just a matter of understanding that there are only a few different settings for each pin in a lock, and each bump on a key represents one of those settings. The software does the same thing, although with much greater accuracy.

In one demonstration of the software, researchers managed to copy a key sitting on a table from a picture taken from the roof of a building 200ft away.

The researchers who developed the software have pledged not to release the code, but they did say that it wouldn’t be hard for some tech savvy bad guys to develop similar software. Stefan Savage, the UCSD computer science professor who led the research, says that you should treat your keys like a credit card, and “keep it in your pocket unless you need to use it.”

Photography technology is growing by leaps and bounds, right now, it’s not implausible to think the US government has satellites capable of reading license plates. Automotive key technology will undoubtedly grow with these other technologies. We already have keys with computer chips in them and other systems built in to defeat thieves. Hopefully one day we won’t need actual metal keys at all.

Source: Ridelust

This morning, all the employees of Yahoo had a surprise email from their boss. Jerry Yang, CEO amd co-founder of Yahoo, sent an email to all the Yahoo’s employees worldwide.

In the email Jerry Yang explained the reasons of his decision According to his words, Yahoo has to eliminate its costs by $400 millions!

The big economic crisis affects also Silicon Valley, the place that US invests its 70%!

Nakheel announced that they will build the tallest skyscraper in the world. Nakheel Tower,will be built in Dubai, and its height will be 1200 meters!!! Responsible for the construction will be an Australian company (Woods Bagot) and the total cost will be $61 billions! The tower will be ready in 10 years!

Besides this tower there will be 40 buildings with a height of 20-90 floors. Totally there will be 55,000 residents and 45,000 employees!

Google and T-Mobile finally took the wraps off the T-Mobile G1, the first phone to use the Internet giant’s Android operating system.

The phone, the first of several to come, crystallizes Google’s ambition to create an open mobile environment that gives users access to a wide variety of applications and the mobile Internet, which Google hopes to capitalize on through advertising.

It also provides a boost to T-Mobile, giving it a flagship handset that embodies its belief in the power of the mobile Internet.

“We haven’t been able to rely on the integration of the Internet and mobile phone to bring us together,” said Cole Brodman, chief technology and innovation officer for T-Mobile USA. “We’re here to change that.”

The device, built by HTC of Taiwan, takes the shape of the Apple iPhone but offers a slide-out keyboard similar to T-Mobile’s Sidekick. It will go on sale Oct. 22 for $179 with a two-year contract and will be offered with a monthly $25 unlimited data plan with some messaging, or $35 for unlimited data and messaging – plus the monthly fee for telephone service.

Source: SFGate