Ratchet Up

Guide To TV On The Net

The PVRblog points to this excellent listing of TV via Net resources from Jeff Pulver, of which he writes:

“During the past twelve months, as the momentum for Broadband TV has snowballed, an increasing number of media companies have decided to take their content and make it available for viewing on the Internet. In some cases, the content offered is ”re-runs“ of prime time content, in other cases the Internet is being used to channel ”vintage“ programming (re-runs of old programs) and there is an increasing number of cases in which new content is being developed by media companies for just the broadband Internet. By default, the viewing experience is being offered to people assuming a Windows desktop. It is the mobile users (Symbian and Windows Mobile) who are most ”content-viewing challenged“. Some of the content owners are using variations of Flash and others are using Quicktime and Windows Media to deliver their content.”

License Plate Tracking For The Rest Of Us

Luke O'Brien writes on an emerging technology that may soon allow anyone to track license plates to determine a car's movements:

“In recent years, police around the country have started to use powerful infrared cameras to read plates and catch carjackers and ticket scofflaws. But the technology will soon migrate into the private sector, and morph into a tool for tracking individual motorists' movements, says former policeman Andy Bucholz, who's on the board of Virginia-based G2 Tactics, a manufacturer of the technology. [...]

Giant data-tracking firms such as ChoicePoint, Accurint and Acxiom already collect detailed personal and financial information on millions of Americans. Once they discover how lucrative it is to know where a person goes between the supermarket, for example, and the strip club, the LPR industry could explode. Private detectives would want the information. So would repo men or bail bondsmen. And the government, which often contracts out personal data collection -- in part, so it doesn't have to deal with Freedom of Information Act requests -- might encourage it. [...]

Current laws don't constrain much. Just as it's legal for the paparazzi to take pictures of celebrities in public, it's legal for anyone to photograph your license plate on the street. Still, there aren't enough LPR units in service yet to follow your car everywhere. [...]

Police in cities such as Los Angeles use them to hunt down stolen cars and felony vehicles like getaway cars. And parking-enforcement officers use LPR to collect money -- lots of it. In the first 12 hours after New Haven, Connecticut, deployed a G2 Tactics LPR to crack down on parking violations, the city towed or booted 119 cars, resulting in a $40,000 windfall, according to Bucholz.

LPR cameras, which are usually around the size of a can of tomato sauce, can be mounted on police cruisers and powered by cigarette lighters. As the car moves, the camera bounces infrared light off other vehicles' license plates. The camera reads the plates and feeds them to a laptop in real time, where information from an FBI or local database can tell an officer if the car is hot. Some systems can read up to 60 plates per second, and they work at highway speeds and acute angles.

The next step is connecting the technology to databases that will tell cops whether a sexual offender has failed to register in the state or is loitering too close to a school, or whether a driver has an outstanding warrant. It could also snag you if you're uninsured, if your license expired last week or even if your library books are overdue.”

The only downside is that you apparently need to operate it with a hat small by a couple of sizes.
[Wired]

Xcavator: Search For Images By Visual Content

Here's an interesting visual demo of Xcavator, a search engine based on visual content.

It's currently a search utility that utilizes the massive image global image base that is Flickr. But future releases apparently will not be necessarily linked to Flickr.

Basically all you have to do is to select a series of points that become your search criteria, and then Xcavator does its work. It can search through thousands of images for matches.

“To provide your visual search clues you first select a reference image, and then identify within it visual elements that you want to become your visual search query specifications. You do this by clicking one or more individual points on the reference image while excavator samples them and their surrounding are to determine the unique traits, characteristics and visual patterns present in each of the reference points. Then in real-time Xcavator displays as many ”matching“ images to your visual specifications as possible.

To note is the fact that you can progressively add new specs and eliminate them while you see corresponding visual matches being displayed on-screen in real-time. This allows the user to quickly learn and understand excavator sensitivity and abilities, making the learning curve rather flat.”

Elvis Camera

Devoutly to be wished for, yet no longer a dream.

A camera which puts every portrait you take next to Elvis.

For eternity. On a bridge over the dark, churning, troubled waters of longing.

Video In The Air

Helio Display is a you-can-buy-it-now technology for displaying video images in the air. Here's a video report on the product from a tech reporter in San Francisco. And here's a link to a short Quicktime from the company itself.

Very cool the way that you can move your finger through the air in such a way that it displaces the air currents on which the image is produced making it appear as though you are moving the image with your hand. Which you are, I guess.

Social Networks Are The New Media

obert Young: “...Social networking is a micro-phenomenon of a much larger macro-trend that the Internet has spawned since its birth… digital self-expression. And today’s social networks (along with other forms of social media, like blogging and online video-sharing) are just the tip of iceberg when it comes to the long-term potential of digital self-expression.

Much like corporations leveraged Internet 1.0 by creating digital storefronts and giving rise to ecommerce, people around the world are now learning how to leverage the incredible power inherent in the URL to create what is essentially a parallel universe of digital identities. And just like all things Internet, digital identities are not subject to the boundaries of geography, or the laws of physics, or any of the other limitations of being a carbon-based life-form. As such, the extensibility and scale of the ”digital you“ is far-reaching, as are the strategic implications to the media industry. In many ways, the art-form of self-expression has become the ”new media“, and social networks are their distribution channels.

It’s crucial to understand that social networks are architected to help scale self-expression to new heights, both in terms of the extent of self-expression as well as the reach of distribution (e.g. number of ”friends“ and the effects of the whole six degrees of separation thing). [...]

To some extent, self-expression should be viewed as a new industry, one that will co-exist alongside other traditional media industries like movies, TV, radio, newspapers and magazines. But in this new industry, the raw materials for the ”products“ are the people…or as Marshall McLuhan might say, ”the people are the message“ when it comes to social networks. So for any player who seeks to enter this industry and become the next social networking phenom, the key is to look at self-expression and social networks as a new medium and to view the audience itself as a new generation of ”cultural products“.

In the past century, the creation of cultural products was centered in Hollywood. Now, social networks are broadening the scope of cultural media to include ”identity production“ (a very appropriate term coined by danah boyd), all the while decentralizing the ecosystem out to the edges. For traditional media companies that are seeking to enter this space (e.g. MTV, Martha Stewart, etc.), it’s critical to follow the audience into the development of this new market by re-focusing core assets that have the capability to deepen the level, and heighten the production value, of self-expression.”

[Source]

Put It On YouTube And Kiss It Goodbye

he web has been buzzing this week with the news that video uploading site YouTube now serves up 100 million videos a day. [Mostly, it seems, of guys thrash-dancing in their office cubicles.] That fact is the best snapshot of the personal media revolution I've seen.

But there's a downside for anyone eager to upload and share their work on places like YouTube. This post from Wired News [via BoingBoing] offers a big caution based on reading YouTube's new Terms & Conditions language:

“'…by submitting the User Submissions to YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the User Submissions in connection with the YouTube Website and YouTube's (and its successor's) business… in any media formats and through any media channels.'

Among other things, this means they could strip the audio portion of any track and sell it on a CD. Or, they could sell your video to an ad firm looking to get ”edgy“; suddenly your indie reggae tune could be the soundtrack to a new ad for SUVs. The sky's still the limit, when it comes to the rights you surrender to YouTube when you upload your video. Perhaps even scarier is the idea that anyone who might eventually buy YouTube would automatically obtain these same rights. Since YouTube is so popular, with 100 million videos shown each day, it's an attractive acquisition target for any number of companies.”

I have been dismayed by how quickly YouTube and GoogleVideo have eclipsed other venues like the excellent OurMedia for uploading and distributing personal media work. Thing is, even in the world of “little media” eyeballs gravitate to venues that quickly become “big media.”

There is value in getting your stuff seen via YouTube. But there is now even more reason to put your work out there in the context of a Creative Commons license, too.

Google 3D: Searching With Your Camera

Designed by a young UK designer, Pei Kang Ng, Google3D is meant as a viable business proposal for Google, five to ten years from now. With Google3D, the idea is literally, to bring the conveniences of the search engine to your fingertips. Now, you can find out things on the move - wherever and whenever you want to - just by taking a picture. You don’t even have to type! Considering the technological advances in search, wireless technology and flexible screens, it should be a matter of time before the concept becomes feasible in technical terms. This handy partner brings the Google search bar into your world of real, tangible objects - you do not have to sit in front of your computer anymore. Armed with a camera, it allows you to search live! with a simple snapshot.

Scenario 1) Looking for a bargain? Take a picture of the product and Google will tell you where to buy it cheaper.
Scenario 2) Lost? Take a picture of the nearest road sign or any landmarks, and Google tells you where you are.
Scenario 3) Looking for a good restaurant? Simply take a picture of the restaurant’s signage and Google will tell you its customers’ ratings.“

[Cool Hunter]

Sign Of The Times: MC THIS' Mobile VJ Mixing and Projecting System

“MC This is the only artist in the world who has brought visual projection from the interior to the streets, rooftops, forests and deserts in one step. MC This can project live images from 4 or more video sources, mix them, add effects to them and project them anywhere he goes on a number of unique screen surfaces.” [MAKE Magazine]

Identify Images With A Brain-Computer Interface

A new brain-computer-interface technology could turn our brains into automatic image-identifying machines that operate faster than human consciousness. Researchers at Columbia University are combining the processing power of the human brain with computer vision to develop a novel device that will allow people to search through images ten times faster than they can on their own. [...]

The system harnesses the brain's well-known ability to recognize an image much faster than the person can identify it. [...]

The brain emits a signal as soon as it sees something interesting, and that “aha” signal can be detected by an electroencephalogram, or EEG cap. While users sift through streaming images or video footage, the technology tags the images that elicit a signal, and ranks them in order of the strength of the neural signatures. Afterwards, the user can examine only the information that their brains identified as important, instead of wading through thousands of images.

No existing computer vision systems connect with the human brain, and computers on their own don't do well at identifying unusual events or specific targets. [...]

The new system's advantage lies in combining the strengths of traditional computer vision with human cortical vision.

For example, when a computer searches for vehicles, it will identify and discard parts of the image that contain water. The human user, who is more likely to easily spot oddities, can then look only at the parts of the image that matter. This could allow time-sensitive searches to be performed in real time. [...]

“Conceivably, the proposed solution could be applied in quasi-real-time to allow a single human to monitor ten times as many sites as he or she would otherwise monitor,” says Gordon.“

[Wired]