David Lidsky's Blog, page 4757

Google Buys U.K. Start-Up Plink, a Shazam for Art

Google has just announced it's buying up Plink, a nifty little U.K. start-up that calls itself a visual search engine developer. The plan is to apply its algorithms to Google's visual search platform, Goggles. Launched just four months ago by a pair of British PhD students, Mark Cummins and James Philbin, Plink's app, PlinkArt, allows users to take photos of paintings with their smartphones before analyzing and identifying them. Think Shazam, but for images, rather than sounds.

Cummins and...

MIT Unveils "Surround Vision," Turns TV into Augmented Reality

The new technology could easily translated into an iPhone app.

"If you're watching TV and you
hear a helicopter in your surround sound," says Santiago
Alfaro, a grad student at MIT's media lab. "Wouldn't it
be cool to just turn around and be able to see that
helicopter as it goes into the screen?" Sure would. And Alfaro has realized that idea, in his thesis project, Surround Vision.

 

The set-up was actually fairly simple. The basic components were a...

Infographic of the Day: Chasing the News Across the Globe

News Globe, by the BBC, offerings an intriguing way to see where the news is happening.

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The BBC has just unveiled News Globe, a web app for browsing the news by geography.

When you open up the app, you can search by topic--for example, "climate change"--and all the stories about that subject pop-up in the geographic spots where they happened.* Mousing over gives you a summary of the article, and clicking again takes you to the full story.

It's kinda fun to play with: You can spin the globe...

Google Buys UK Start-Up Plink, a Shazam for Art

Google has just announced it's buying up Plink, a nifty little UK start-up that calls itself a visual search engine developer. The plan is to apply its algorithms to Google's visual search platform, Goggles. Launched just four months ago by a pair of British PhD students, Mark Cummins and James Philbin, Plink's app, PlinkArt, allows users to take photos of paintings with their smartphones before analyzing and identifying them. Think Shazam, but for images, rather than sounds.

Cummins and...

Meet T.J. Pluhacek, the Youngest iPad App Developer

The 16-year-old developer from Oregon has already landed his first iPad-specific program in the App Store--NoteLook. This is not a game.

Tyler Jordan Pluhacek--but he goes by the name of TJ--is a 16-year-old high-school student from Lake Oswego, just south of Portland, Oregon. His favorite subjects are Math and Spanish, and he's an accomplished guitarist and harmonica player with a passion for Blues and Ragtime from the '20s and '30s. He lives at home with his Mom and younger sister. Oh, and...

How to Rent Movies in a Video Service War

You may have noticed lots of deal-making recently between movie studios and their post-box-office money makers, Blockbuster and Netflix. Just this morning Netflix announced its movies would be streamed to members Wii consoles, for example. Shares of both companies have fluttered with each new deal, and Blockbuster even filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection a few weeks ago as their stock-price plummeted as low as 24 cents. Yet the store-based rental chain is far from gasping its last...

Work Smart: 3 Useful Things You Didn't Know Your Cameraphone Could Do

Having a camera built into your phone isn't a big deal anymore. But when you combine that camera with the rich software applications that run on devices like the iPhone and Android, you get lots of cool new ways to put your cameraphone to good use.

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Cameraphones are becoming a form of digital photographic memory, helping you remember what level you parked on or the label on that fantastic bottle of wine. Now, with the right apps, you can also use your phone to...

Make Your Own Version of Google's Adorable "Parisian Love" Super Bowl Ad

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It's a pretty fun little tool to tell a short story, as long as it's extremely short and can be told through the medium of the various Google search mechanisms. You get seven search boxes (really, seven lines in the story), which can bring up Search, Maps, News, Blogs, Images, Products, or Books as their result. The final entry wraps up the whole story with an "I'm Feeling Lucky" search. Then you pick your music (from a selection, unfortunately; I really wanted to upload Andrew W.K., but no...

Google CEO's Surprising Comment Of The Day: Newspapers Will Thrive

When reading about developments in the ailing printed news industry, we tend to hear arguments presented from the old media side of the fence. Now Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, has stepped up, and he thinks the industry will survive, in a different form.

Schmidt's company is regularly the target of disparaging comments from old media moguls like Rupert Murdoch--it faces accusations that vary from outright content stealing (under the "aggregator" or "hot news" banner, depending on what the...

HTC May Buy (and Save) Palm

According to Bloomberg sources, Palm has quietly put itself up for sale and is seeking official bids as early as this week. HTC and Lenovo have both "looked at the company and may make offers," and if that's true, Palm's new WebOS operating system may just survive.

Palm has been struggling, badly. Despite having one of only three modern, consumer smartphone OSes (the others being Apple's iPhone OS and Google's Android), as well as two well-received smartphones, Palm has been sinking fast...