New PS 3 controller

check this out:

New user interface for PS 3, i think it kinda challenges project natal of XBOX 360

Video Games | PlayStation 3 | Motion Blog Part III

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

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Stanford Report, August 31, 2009

Open-source camera could revolutionize digital photography

Stanford scientists' open-source camera could change photography by giving programmers anywhere the power to change camera features and create new possibilities.

Stanford photo scientists are teaching the camera new tricks

Jack Hubbard

Stanford professor Marc Levoy plans to develop and manufacture the "Frankencamera" as a platform that will first be available at minimal cost to fellow computational photography researchers.

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BY DAVID ORENSTEIN

Stanford photo scientists are out to reinvent digital photography with the introduction of an open-source digital camera, which will give programmers around the world the chance to create software that will teach cameras new tricks.

L.A. Cicero

Marc Levoy, professor of Computer Science and of Electrical Engineering and graduate student Andrew Adams with the open source camera.

If the technology catches on, camera performance will be no longer be limited by the software that comes pre-installed by the manufacturer. Virtually all the features of the Stanford camera – focus, exposure, shutter speed, flash, etc. – are at the command of software that can be created by inspired programmers anywhere. “The premise of the project is to build a camera that is open source,” said computer science professor Marc Levoy.

Computer science graduate student Andrew Adams, who helped design the prototype of theStanford camera (dubbed Frankencamera,) imagines a future where consumers download applications to their open-platform cameras the way Apple apps are downloaded to iPhones today. When the camera’s operating software is made available publicly, perhaps a year from now, users will be able to continuously improve it, along the open-source model of the Linux operating system for computers or the Mozilla Firefox web browser.

From there, the sky’s the limit. Programmers will have the freedom to experiment with new ways of tuning the camera’s response to light and motion, adding their own algorithms to process the raw images in innovative ways.

Frankencamera at minimal cost

Levoy’s plan is to develop and manufacture the “Frankencamera” as a platform that will first be available at minimal cost to fellow computational photography researchers. In the young field of computational photography, which Levoy helped establish, researchers use optics benches, imaging chips, computers and software to develop techniques and algorithms to enhance and extend photography. This work, however, is bound to the lab. Frankencamera would give researchers the means to take their experiments into the studios, the landscapes, and the stadiums.

Animation demonstrating one example of how the Frankencamera extends and enhances photography.

For example, among the most mature ideas in the field of computational photography is the idea of extending a camera’s “dynamic range,” or its ability to handle a wide range of lighting in a single frame. The process of high-dynamic-range imaging is to capture pictures of the same scene with different exposures and then to combine them into a composite image in which every pixel is optimally lit. Until now, this trick could be done only with images in computers. Levoy wants cameras to do this right at the scene, on demand. Although the algorithms are very well understood, no commercial cameras do this today. But Frankencamera does.

Another algorithm that researchers have achieved in the lab, but no commercial camera allows, is enhancing the resolution of videos with high-resolution still photographs. While a camera is gathering low-resolution video at 30 frames a second, it could also periodically take a high-resolution still image. The extra information in the still could then be recombined by an algorithm into each video frame. Levoy and his students plan to implement that on Frankencamera, too.

Yet another idea is to have the camera communicate with computers on a network, such as a photo-hosting service on the Web. Imagine, Levoy says, if the camera could analyze highly-rated pictures of a subject in an online gallery before snapping the shutter for another portrait of the same subject. The camera could then offer advice (or just automatically decide) on the settings that will best replicate the same skin tone or shading. By communicating with the network, the camera could avoid taking a ghastly picture.

Of course users with Frankencameras would not be constrained by what is already known. They’d be free to discover and experiment with all kinds of other operations that might yield innovative results because they’d have total control.

"Some cameras have software development kits that let you hook up a camera with a USB cable and tell it to set the exposure to this, the shutter speed to that, and take a picture, but that’s not what we’re talking about," says Levoy. "What we’re talking about is, tell it what to do on the next microsecond in a metering algorithm or an autofocusing algorithm, or fire the flash, focus a little differently and then fire the flash again — things you can’t program a commercial camera to do."

Behind the lens cap

To create an open-source camera, Levoy and the group cobbled together a number of different parts: the motherboard, per se, is a Texas Instruments "system on a chip" running Linux with image and general processors and a small LCD screen. The imaging chip is taken from a Nokia N95 cell phone, and the lenses are off-the-shelf Canon lenses, but they are combined with actuators to give the camera its fine-tuned software control. The body is custom made at Stanford. The project has benefited from the support of Nokia, Adobe Systems, Kodak, and Hewlett-Packard. HP recently gave graduate student David Jacobs a three-year fellowship to support his work on the project. Kodak, meanwhile, supports student Eddy Talvala.

Within about a year, after the camera is developed to his satisfaction, Levoy hopes to have to have the funding and the arrangements in place for an outside manufacturer to produce them in quantity, ideally for less than $1,000. Levoy would then provide them at cost to colleagues and their students at other universities.

The son, grandson, and great-grandson of opticians, Levoy sees his mission as not only advancing research in computational photography, but also imbuing new students with enthusiasm for technology. This spring he launched a course in digital photography in which he integrated the science of optics and algorithms and the history of photography’s social significance with lessons in photographic technique.

As many ideas as Levoy’s team may want to implement on the camera, the real goal is to enable the broader community of photography researchers and enthusiasts to contribute ideas the Stanford group has not imagined. The success of Camera 2.0 will be measured by how many new capabilities the community can add to collective understanding of what’s possible in photography.

David Orenstein is the associate communications director for the School of Engineering.

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Citizen's guide to handle Police encounters

This is quite an interesting video that might be useful in case needed.

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Evolution and Creation in The Family

A little girl asked her mother: 'How did the human race appear?' The mother answered, 'God made Adam and Eve; they had children; and so was all mankind made.' Two days later the girl asked her father the same question. The father answered, 'Many years ago there were monkeys from which the human race evolved.'  The confused girl returned to her mother and said,   'Mum, how is it possible that you told me the human race was created by God, and Dad said they developed from monkeys?'  The mother answered, 'Well, Dear, it is very simple. I told you about my side of the family, and your father told you about his.' 

Not satisfied, the little went back to his father and said:  “Dad, Mom said  she was created by God,  while you descended from monkeys”.

The father held his breath for a few seconds and said: “Sweetie, if you think long and hard about it, all creatures, including monkeys and humans, are created by God, so your Mom is partially correct about that. The thing is that Mom thinks she was created from the 13^th rib, so you can understand she is no “Prime Rib” , and that she may at times behave and think like a bone-head”

 

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From: Haliman

How families tackle the divide between Evolution and Creation....

 

 A little girl asked her mother: 'How did the human race appear?' The mother answered, 'God made Adam and Eve; they had children; and so was all mankind made.' Two days later the girl asked her father the same question. The father answered, 'Many years ago there were monkeys from which the human race evolved.'

The confused girl returned to her mother and said,

'Mum, how is it possible that you told me the human race was created by God, and Dad said they developed from monkeys?'

The mother answered, 'Well, Dear, it is very simple. I told you about my side of the family, and your father told you about his.'     

 

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Una Paloma Blanca!

When the sun shines on the mountains and the night is on the run, it´s a new day,it´s a new way,and I fly up to the sun.I can feel the morning sunlight.I can smell the new-morn hay.I can hear God´s voices callingof my golden skylight way.

O la paloma blanca, I´m just a bird in the sky.O la paloma blanca, over the mountains I fly. Yes, no one can take my freedom away....

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Why Islam?

Here is another post about Islam, perhaps this video would clearly explain it well.

have a good day! cheers

Sorry I can't post much these days because uni assignments are overwhelming. so good luck for everyone.

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Getting to know Islam

Hey guys,

Hope everyone is having a great and peaceful day. I would like to share some thoughts. Even though I was raised as a muslim in an Islamic environment, I haven't really dig through its teachings. It was just recently I realized that my knowledge of Islam is quite shallow when I started studying in Australia and met many atheist people. A 2 hour debate with an atheist colleague at uni awakened me of how much I've been ignoring my own religion's valuable teaching.

So I started digging out lots of sources about Islam's teaching that is easy to understand, and found these links that you guys should check it out:

http://www.shareislam.com/

http://islamnewsroom.com/

and checkout this show:

http://apps.facebook.com/youtube_plus/play.php?album_id=31631#share_buttons

one of the episodes:

That's all for now, must get back to work, Have a wonderful day guys and girls! =)

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