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Oil Canvas, an iPhone app released Wednesday, is a neat piece of image-editing software that enables virtual finger painting.

The app allows users to choose a photo from their album to brush and paint with their fingers. You simply need to rub over the image, as the software automatically detects the colors from the base picture, treating it as a canvas.

Different brush sizes are available — from an extra small stroke to add finesse to an extra large one to smudge over the boring parts (e.g., solid backgrounds). After finishing your painting, you can share it with others in Oil Canvas’s PhotoShare community.

In its video demo, the software’s developer Big Canvas makes painting on the iPhone look extremely easy. Being a non-artist, I didn’t produce very good results; the photo to the right is the best I could do. But it’s a free app, so why not give it a dab?

Download Link [iTunes] (Thanks, Nate!)

We have seen a robot play the flute, violin and other musical instruments. Now a Japanese play is using robots to act alongside human actors.

The play called Hataraku Watashi (I, Worker) premiered at Osaka University and is being considered as one of the few examples of robot-human interaction on stage.

The robots were programmed to speak their lines as they moved about on stage. The robot in the play is the ‘Wakamaru’ from Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.

The Wakamaru was designed primarily to provide care for the disabled and elderly. It runs Linux operating system, has limited speech and speech recognition abilities.

The play itself has a very interesting premise. It’s about a young couple with two housekeeping robots. One of the robots complains about its "demeaning" work and that leads to a discussion about the role of robots in human lives.

It’s an interesting question and one that is likely to come up more often as use of homes robots become more widespread.

[via BBC]

Photo: The Wakamaru Robot

Scott Forman’s ShutterVoice brings your Canon DSLR a little closer to Star Trek. The Windows-only application provides a voice-control front-end to Canon’s own EOS utility, which allows remote control of many Canon DSLR functions.

Shuttervoice let’s you switch on live view, focus the camera, take a shot — in short, pretty much everything you can do with the EOS utility itself, only you can do it without lifting a finger. In the video, it looks pretty accurate, although Forman has told photographer and blogger Rob Galbraith that he’s still tweaking it to play nice with Vista.

The best part? First, you need to say "computer" to get it to listen for a command — just like Jean-Luc Picard! Second, it speaks back to you.

Mac users should be able to cobble something like this together themselves using the built-in Speech Commands, the Image Capture utility and some Applescript, but given my experience with the Mac’s speech recognition features, this is likely to leave you screaming abuse at your machine instead of issuing relaxed commands.

ShutterVoice will be available in early December for $30.

Sign up page [ShutterVoice via Rob Galbraith]

DxO Labs, a French company with deep experience measuring cameras’ technical performance, has launched a Web site called DxOMark.com that features detailed information on the performance of the image sensor at the heart of many higher-end digital cameras.

Many Web sites and magazines measure camera image quality with varying …

Originally posted at Underexposed

Appearing to cave to Hollywood demands, Apple has quietly added a restrictive copyright
protection mechanism to its new MacBooks that is preventing customers from watching movies on external displays.

Apple has secretly included a copy protection scheme called High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) in the external display ports on the latest models of it MacBooks, released in the middle of October.

Apple has not disclosed the new anti-copying mechanism, and now increasing numbers of customers are discovering that they cannot play movies bought from the iTunes online store on many external monitors, TVs or projectors. 

"I tried all the movies that I have purchased from the iTunes Store
with the same result," said "Maxyourmacs," who
complained about the issue on Apple’s support forums. "None of them
will play on anything but the MacBook’s small 13-inch screen. This is
crazy unacceptable."

Released by Intel in 2001, HDCP is designed to prevent digital
pirates from outputting movies to copying devices, such as digital video recorders. In industry parlance, the technology plugs the "analog hole" — the security hole created by analog devices like TVs and monitors.

By definition, the technology also prevents movies from playing on non-compliant devices like older computer monitors or flat-screen TVs, which many Apple customers are just now discovering. Even TVs a couple of years old may not be HDCP compliant.

The issue is complicated by obsessive secrecy surrounding the technology. HDCP has been added to many models of Blu-Ray players and other entertainment devices, and several laptops from a range of PC manufacturers. However, it is unclear how many devices are HDCP-compliant: Manufacturers
don’t explicitly label which products are and aren’t. Even industry analysts don’t know how widely the technology has been adopted.

Intel declined to comment, and Apple did not respond to several requests for comment.

However, the surging popularity of Apple’s laptops and its iTunes online store is bringing the issue to the fore.

The copyright mechanism is posing problems for some customers, who are complaining
in Apple’s support forum that they had no idea their viewing devices were not compliant with the HDCP standard,
forcing them to watch movies purchased from the iTunes Store on their
small laptop screens.

"You really shouldn’t be expected to know whether your video devices are compliant," said James McQuivey, a
technology and media analyst at Forrester Research. "It’s not your job. To require that burden on them is an unfair thing to do."

Apple’s new MacBooks (including the MacBook Pro and
MacBook Air) are the first
Macs to include HDCP. McQuivey said Apple is clearly giving in to pressure from its studio partners.

McQuivey said studios are reluctant to deal with iTunes since its
movie-purchasing model involves downloading content straight
to a hard drive, where it is vulnerable to copying. Movies are easily
copied and shared with friends on DVDs or thumbdrives (as long as the sharer also provides their password).

Movies from services like Vudu and
Netflix, on the other
hand, which stream movies over the internet, are much more
difficult to copy and easier to
police, he said.

McQuivey noted that iTunes’ movie offerings (about 1,500 movies) pale in comparison to Vudu (5,000 movies) and Netflix (15,000 movies) because studios are distrustful of customers downloading movies to their hard drives.

Michael Cai, director of digital media at Parks Associates, a digital
market research firm, said the headaches caused by HDCP is largely a result of poor communication between manufacturers.

"The industry hasn’t done a very good job
in coordinating with each other to make sure their devices are
compatible with each other so you won’t feel this issue," Cai said.
"And they haven’t done a very good job in terms of educating consumers
with these issues."

Cai, himself, experienced the pains of HDCP.
He recently tried to plug his Blu-ray equipped Sony VAIO laptop into
his Sharp high-definition TV, and the image wouldn’t show up.

McQuivey
added that the HDCP restriction might be counterproductive for both
Apple and movie studios: It could encourage MacBook owners to resort to
illegal means of downloading, such as BitTorrent.

In the Apple support
forums, this already seems to be the case.

"Apple will be out of
luck, because we will, as of today, buy no more movies from the iTunes
Store," writes a new MacBook Pro customer, who said he couldn’t play an iTunes-purchased copy of Terminator 2 on his TV. "If this starts hitting the TV shows and the music videos, too, then
we’ll stop buying them from the iTunes Store as well."

Intel declined to comment. Apple did not respond to several requests for comment.

After some months of saving my pennies, I blew them this week on a Nikon D700. Remember our post about buying old, full frame lenses and using them on your small-sensor DSLR? There was a reason for it — those cheap old lenses will last you until you move up to full-frame.

There are plenty of reviews and incredibly detailed spec-sheets for the D700 already online, so here I’ll just cover a few of the quirks and delights I have found so far. In short, though, the D700 kicks ass. It’s easy to use, and takes an incredible picture, even in the dark.

That Sensor

The headline feature of the D700 is its full-frame sensor, which is the same one you’ll find in the flagship D3. You only get 12 megapixels, but they’re big pixels, and their light-gathering ability is extraordinary. The top ISO available on the D700 is a staggering 25,600, a full eight stops faster than ISO 100. At that setting, though, the pictures are terrible. Convert them to black and white and they look exactly like they have been through a photocopier. A photocopier that is running out of toner. That said, even this is better than the results that the Canon G9 gives at just ISO 1600.

Drop just one stop, to ISO 12,800, and things are a lot better. The pictures are still noisy but Nikon has tweaked its noise reduction algorithms to mimic film grain, or so it seems. The EXPEED processor has no mercy with color noise, but is a little easier on the luminance noise. What does that mean? It means that the nasty stuff is cleared out, leaving a grainy but pleasing result.

Drop the ISO to 6400, the highest setting with an actual number (Nikon uses names like H0.3 for the more sensitive settings) and you’d never know you were shooting at more than 800. This, combined with a fast lens (a 50mm ƒ1.8, for example) means you can shoot in ambient light, handheld, at night. And coupled with the heavy body, which steadies things, you can handhold to some pretty slow shutter speeds, too. If you were to add a shake-reducing lens into the mix, you’d likely have no trouble with shooting 2001’s monolith in a black hole. At midnight.

The Knobs and The Aperture Ring

About that heavy body. The weight is reassuring (body only and without the battery it weighs 995g, or 2.2 lbs.) but the feel in your hand is what counts. I used to own a couple of Nikon F100 bodies and the feel is similar, if a bit chunkier. The biggest change for anyone moving up from a cheaper DSLR is the manual controls. Instead of all the functionality being hidden away in menus, most of the important functions get their own knobs, dials and switches.

Those of you who remember our post “History’s 5 Best Interface Designs” will know I’m a big fan of knobs:

Its strength is its simplicity. Once you have twisted one knob, you know how every other knob works. If it is marked, its position provides visual feedback. If not, our brains easily associate the amount of twist with the level of the knob’s effect. And best of all, it’s the only controller we know of which can go up to 11.

Better still, many of the knobs can be customized to do different things. Part of the fun is digging through the custom settings inside the menus to figure out just what you can tweak. The short answer is “almost everything.”

But the one thing I really love, the discovery of which actually brought a small tear to the corner of my emotionally suppressed eye (hey, I’m English. We don’t do emotions) is the aperture control. You can choose to use the aperture ring around the lens to set the size of the hole, shifting it away from the finger-dial on the grip (custom function f9, page 326 in the manual).

For someone who has this muscle memory baked in since childhood, this is huge. You lose the fine grained control of the 1/3 stop adjustments available with the command dial, but the shutter speed takes care of this. You also lose the Live View function, but you can always switch back temporarily (and quickly).

Live View

It works, and the high resolution screen means it looks great, but the live view is janky as hell. Here’s how you use it: Turn the dial on the top to the LV setting (it’s the same dial that chooses between self timer, single and continuous shooting). Then press the shutter release all the way down. The mirror flips up and live view is on. To refocus, press the shutter half way. The mirror flips down, the camera focusses, and the mirror flips up again. And when you actually take a picture, the mirror flips again.

You can choose the “tripod mode”, which uses contrast detection like a compact camera, but it is slow as molasses. To me, Live View is little more than a gimmick. You can, however, zoom in on the live view image to see a 100% rendering for easy manual focussing (if holding a two pound camera plus lens at arms’ length and twisting the focus ring is your thing) and there’s a semi-useful level that can be superimposed on the image, but still: Gimmicky.

Built-in Flash

Really. Why? C’mon, Nikon.

Full Frame

The full frame sensor means that all your DX lenses are useless. If you were hoping that you could use your 18-55mm DX zoom as an ultrawide objective, you’re out of luck. You can force the camera to treat the lens as a full frame one, but you’ll get heavy vignetting at the wide end and a drop in image quality away from the center at all focal lengths.

The D700 defaults to reading just the central part of the image area, which means that an 18mm lens will act just like it does on a DX camera and give the equivalent view of a 27mm lens. The rub is that you are then shooting at just 5 megapixels. Even my D60 doubles that. For Lomo-style fun and frolics, though, those extreme angles, low-definition edges and black corners can be useful.

Auto Focus

The D700 has 51 focus points, all of which can be individually selected, and 15 of which are cross-type sensors which are faster and more accurate. There are several modes, from single point AF to a 3D tracking mode which remembers the color of the thing you first focus on and then locks onto it like a junkyard dog on a schoolkid as it moves around the picture.

But all you really need to do is to set it to auto and forget about it. The D700’s autofocus is uncanny. It seems to know what you are taking a picture of and it locks on almost instantly. If you ever saw the Clint Eastwood movie “Firefox” (or read Craig Thomas’ book), you’ll remember the thought controlled weapon system in the plane. I believe Nikon took this and built it in to the D700. It really is that good.

Should You Buy One?

There’s so much more to this camera that we have no chance of covering it here. But if you’re thinking of buying a D700 (and especially if you are weighing it up against the more expensive D3), go ahead. I haven’t had this much fun taking photos since I sprung for a Leica M6 some years ago (yes, I saved long and hard for that one, too. I then sold it to pay the rent). Bonus: Stick the 472 page manual in the bathroom and you’ll have your morning reading taken care of for weeks. $3000, or thereabouts.

Product page [Nikon]

Review [DP Review]

Review [Imaging Resource]

Review [Ken Rockwell]

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Those MAKE kids sure love their Arduino, and today’s creation has a fun musical bent. The Image Scanning Sequencer — a portable followup to the similarly-dubbed Image Scanning Sequencer — has a strip of photo cells that can trigger MIDI notes based on what they’re picking up. The darkness of the detected “note” sets the velocity of the note, and the location sets the pitch. The Arduino sits in between, making all the magic happen. If this all sounds completely meaningless and pointless, you’re probably right, but check out the video after a break for chance at making sense of it all. And simulated whale noises.

[Via MAKE, thanks Manny]

Continue reading Image Scanning Sequencer goes portable, turns light table doodles into creepy murmurs

Image Scanning Sequencer goes portable, turns light table doodles into creepy murmurs originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 14 Nov 2008 05:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This is not a review of the SanDisk Extreme IV 4GB Compact Flash card. If you do want to know the real-world performance of this card vs. its rated 40MB/sec write speed, it is 26.187MB/sec in a Nikon D700 when writing RAW files (for more, see Rob Galbraith’s breathtakingly extensive set of memory card tests).

No, this is a review of the card’s packaging, a ridiculously elaborate and frankly huge set of interlocking parts which do nothing so much as take up valuable space in a shipping container.

First, we must note that the Extreme IV series is at the top end of SanDisk’s range. This card, the 4GB model, cost €53, or $67. It seems that, for that kind of money, SanDisk feels the need to pad the package so the buyer will have something substantial to fill his or her shopping bag.

So, how bad is it? Using my computer’s handy on-screen ruler, I checked the dimensions. The box measures approximately 6″ x 6″ x 0.75″, or 27 cubic inches. My maths is terrible, but I can imagine that you could fit a lot of unpacked CF cards in that space, even if they were housed in their little plastic protective cases.

Onto the unboxing. First, we see the actual box itself, with a few common household items in the photograph to give a sense of scale: a 2G iPod Nano, a standard disposable lighter and a small, cute rubber dinosaur.

Even at this stage we get an idea of the waste. The picture on the front of the box is life-size. If it was to curl up its tail, the dinosaur could fit comfortably on top. Next, the second stage of this Matryoshka-style odyssey.

Here we get our first glimpse of the card, whilst doubling the amount of cardboard on display. Could we just reach in and pluck the card from its nest, slot it into our camera and go out shooting? The answer, predictably, is no, as you can see below:

Onto stage three and we can see that the card is still covered by a plastic lid, with some vacuum formed pits to make sure it lines up and cannot slip, even for a second. That, apparently, is an important feature of plastic packaging inserts. To its credit, SanDisk has made these plastic sections without any sharp edges, so no blood will mar the beautiful matt and gloss black outer sleeve, nor the embossed gold lettering. That is attention to detail.

Here we jump a few stages to arrive at the full glory of the SanDisk Extreme Experience. At bottom left, below the dinosaur, is the plastic lid. At right we see the lifetime warranty and, ironically, the environmentally-friendly disposal instructions therein. This paper pamphlet folds out to nine times its original size. Joining the dead tree is a CD which contains data recovery software. Useful, and also downloadable.

You can also see the card itself, and the little plastic box it comes in. Finally, at the bottom is a “complementary travel case”, presumably to be used by the pampered card when it goes on vacation without you. Here’s a close-up:

And another:

And one more, folded:

The little key-ring is fairly sturdy, and held in place by a thickish cord. There is also a small ribbon that can be seen in the picture above, which reads only “Made in China”. The build quality of the case is satisfactory, but the feel of the foam from which it is made is quite off-putting — when you squeeze it, you are reminded of a styrofoam egg-carton. Hardly the image SanDisk is trying to project.

In conclusion, the SanDisk box is perfectly qualified to offer an excellent on-shelf presence, whilst simultaneously swimming upstream against the packaging-reduction trend in the rest of the consumer electronics industry. Would I recommend it? If you need the card inside, then this packaging certainly does its protective job on the way from store to home.

Would I prefer a smaller pack, less wasteful of both fuel and materials? Undoubtedly. And did I just write seven hundred words about a box? Yes. Yes I did. 709, in fact.

Product page [SanDisk]

The consumer electronics industry, like every other industry, is worried about its prospects for 2009. A shrinking economy, vanishing jobs and an imploding financial system cast long shadows over the coming year. But there are few bright spots on the horizon for CE manufacturers, according the Consumer Electronics Association, mainly involving green technology, next-generation input methods such as multi-touch screens and motion sensors and embedded internet access.

Consumer electronics claims to be "the only industry that has a growth rate of over seven percent" despite the economic climate, possibly because some of its products can replace other, more expensive entertainment options. If the economy continues to decline, CE manufacturers harbor a hope that consumers will react by "cocooning" in their homes, surrounding themselves with electronic comforts like HDTVs, Blu Ray players and videogame consoles. While it can be expensive initially, the homebody lifestyle pays dividends by cutting down on activities outside the home (movies, restaurants, bars, travel, concerts and so on).

So, what new gear will you be willing to plunk down your hard-earned (or -saved) money for, come 2009? We scoped out a some of next year’s hottest products on Tuesday night at a New York preview for the Consumer Electronics Show. Here’s what we liked:

MainGear Axess HD

This Windows Vista Media Center PC ($1500) is the first to feature D2’s high-end digital signal processor, which allows it to pump out cleaner, louder audio to surround sound speakers than any of the competition, according to a company spokesman. Relevant sound specs include a signal-to-noise ratio of 105 dB and a total harmonic distortion of 0.1 percent. The MainGear Axess HD accepts a standard cable card, so it can be used with your cable or satellite provider, while its ability to function as a normal computer lets you mix in a healthy amount of web content. Windows-phobes will be happy to know that it works with Linux media center platforms including MythTV. The 93-percent-energy-efficient Class D amplifier should help out with your electricity bill if you’re upgrading from a system with a traditional Class AB amplifier.

Optoma Pico Projector PK-101

Optoma has "the first" digital light processing (DLP) pico projector for projecting the photos and videos stored on iPods and other devices onto the nearest white surface. The "DLP" part of the equation means Optoma’s model manages a higher contrast ratio (2,000:1) than the competition and more vibrant colors. From what we saw, the image quality from the device’s LED light source was decent enough at about two feet wide, with the projector about four feet from the miniature projection screen. An iPod adapter kit will be optional at $30; otherwise, the Optoma Pico Projector PK-101 ($400) takes a standard composite video input. The device comes with two batteries, each of which lasts 2 hours in slideshow mode or 1.5 hours in video mode using the half-brightness setting. Halve those times for the full-brightness battery life estimates (now do you see why it comes with two batteries?) Bonus: you can mount it on a standard camera tripod using an included adapter.

Lenovo ThinkPad USB Portable Secure Hard Drive

Lenovo’s ThinkPad USB Portable Secure Hard Drive ($180 for base model) lets you carry around data secured by 128-bit encryption and a 6-12 digit password. The shock-mounted 2.5-inch SATA hard drive (160GB or 320GB) helps this "mobile data vault" keep data safe from jolts in addition to thieves or snoops, while a USB 2.0 cable can be stored within the device’s housing for easy travel. It’s not for everyone, but with ongoing concerns of identity and data theft sure to be with us next year, you can’t be too careful.

Newber Beta iPhone App

As its name sort of suggests, Newber gives you a phone number that follows you around during your day. When someone calls, you can tap a button on your iPhone to route the call to the nearest landline — friends’ houses, offices or wherever — using the iPhone’s GPS function. You can choose to accept incoming calls on your iPhone or the nearest known landline, potentially saving you money on your wireless plan, preserving your iPhone’s battery and impressing your friends. If you choose to sign up for $5 per month, Newber will assign you a new number. But that should change; as a fully-licensed telco, Newber says it’s working on adding the ability to port current phone numbers into the system.

Dish Network DTVPal DVR

Only 12 percent of Americans plan to scale back on their cable costs in response to the economy, according to the Consumer Electronics Association, but that number might escalate if the economy continues to sputter. If you’re thinking of cutting the cable or satellite cord in favor of free over-the-air digital broadcasts and you still watch — or have downgraded to — a television that only has analog inputs, Dish Network has you covered with the DTVPal DVR ($250 after government rebate), the first digital-to-analog converter box with a built-in DVR. Previously, the best option for this scenario was TiVo, which requires a monthly fee. And yes, it records over-the-air high-definition channels in high definition. For what could be a thrifty 2009, the DTVPal’s lack of any monthly fee could help trim the budget while allowing you to record digital and HD signals to its hard drive (150 hours of standard definition or 30 hours of high definition). It was announced in January, but with the February 27 digital TV switchover approaching, Dish Network is understandably excited about moving more of these in 2009.

Zoombak Universal A-GPS Locator

Like that UPS package you’ve been chasing after, the Zoombak Universal A-GPS Locator ($200) alerts you whenever it enters certain geographical zones. But rather than coffee and binoculars, all it needs is a good battery charge (five days in standby mode) for its GPS and communication system. Clearly, these devices could be used to infringe privacy, but a company spokesman assured us that Zoombak "does not condone or recommend that the device be used for those things." Problem solved! Recommended uses include dropping one of these in your teenager’s car so that you know whether or not they drove to school and, if so, when they arrived. Whenever one of these tiny modules enters a specified GPS area, a text message and e-mail let you know the good news (or bad news, as the case may be).