Apple's All-Seeing Screen 447
Based on a recent patent we may be seeing a new kind of display coming from the Apple store in the near future, one that can capture images as well as display them. From the article: "The clever idea is to insert thousands of microscopic image sensors in-between the liquid crystal display cells in the screen. Each sensor captures its own small image, but software stitches these together to create a single, larger picture."
Obligatory: Facecrime (Score:5, Interesting)
Found it here: http://www.newspeakdictionary.com/ns-dict.html [newspeakdictionary.com]
Workaround (Score:3, Interesting)
I wonder if a picture of an older person with the red eyes in would fool such a sampling.
Re:details? (Score:1, Interesting)
Touch screen, not camera! (Score:5, Interesting)
Incorporating sensing elements within the display will permit sensing multiple simultaneous points of contact of arbitrary size/shape in a tablet form-factor. Neat!
Apple's been patenting lots of touch-interface concepts recently, too. Vide. [uspto.gov]
This patent is probably more about touch-screens than screen as scanner (that'd be a neat trick too, but probably would require too much resolution) or camera (would require a different but perfectly calibrated refractive element at each sensor - probably impractical).
-Isaac
No one else has said it yet (Score:3, Interesting)
When does a camscreen become mandatory? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not kidding here. After all, if I'd told you ten years ago that by 2005, all cell phones would have a mandatory GPS tracker broadcasting your location to the phone company as you move about, with a nominal abilty to be switched off (ha), would you have believed me?
I see no outrage over Homeland Security, your phone company, Scientology, and any random corporation with a legal staff being capable of tracking your movements for the rest of your lives. Where is the outrage?
I see no problem with camscreens becoming mandatory in the next 15 years. Even the techiest of the techies have no problem with the tracking devices in their phones, cameras on the streets, and eventually mandatory trackers in our cars, so letting Mr. X watch you as you all watch your computer screens is not a biggie. I can see an infinite number of excuses to make it required by law. Hell, even the emergency health care bit that they used for the cell phones could be re-rigged for this one.
And the generation of kids coming up through school have been seen drug tests, dog searches, RFID trackers, and lie detectors. They've been told they have no rights as minors, and I doubt they'll be any more rebellious as adults. They're also convinced they are surrounded by enemies wanting the kill them in their schoolbuses and office buildings, so the fear excuse is a big Go.
Such a neat device, a camscreen. Here's what I'd like: separate power circuits for the screen and the camera element array. So I *know* that the thing cannot operate without my permission. But I wanted that for my cell phone's tracking device, and so far the phone salesmen look at me like I'm bin Laden or a specially-abled adult who left his house without his nurse. (big thought: look overseas for a phone capable of giving me the option of being untracked, import the damned thing. Maybe I am a little slow).
What's with all the big brother jokes? (Score:3, Interesting)
With that in mind, I'd be interested in knowing how such a microsensor would work without a focusing element...
Re:Lenses? (Score:3, Interesting)
You can take pictures with a scanner. A guy did it and put the pictures up on his webpage. They were amazingly good for not even having been made using any kind of jig, he just held the scanner up and rotated his viewpoint (and thus, its as well) while the scanning element moved.
If you pointed all the elements in the same direction (perpendicular to the display of course) then you could get a fairly high-resolution image of anything directly in front of the monitor, and with infinite depth of field without sacrificing quality as you do with infinite-DOF systems using a CCD and a lens.
Re:Shades of 1984 (Score:3, Interesting)
So did Orwell's original telescreen- Winston Smith took advantage of the shape of his apartment (a rectangular shoe box) and put the telescreen on the long wall, so that he could put his writing desk beside it and not be spied upon while writing in his diary.
Unfortunately quicktime has taken ownership of whatever format the patent images are in, and is drawing only the top few percent of 'em, so I have no way to find out. The advantage is that it will have infinite depth of field, and not require focusing, which could only reasonably be done (as TFA suggests) by switching between sensor elements with different focal lengths.
Yep- that and the ironic nature of the Apple commercial during the 1984 Superbowl.....
Predator like invisibility? (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes I know it wouldn't be perfect but it could be very cool.
Enough w/ the creepy stalker stuff, and "on" LEDs (Score:5, Interesting)
I'll also point out a relative of mine had this happen to her. She's a pretty, vivacious, young woman, married, was then working in a public relations firm. The IT fellow was always a little too attentive for her comfort, to the degree she actively avoided calling him for issues.
Eventually she needed her speakers for a project, but rather then call in creepy IT guy she asked office clever guy to take a look, it was probably just a loose wire or something. That was indeed the issue, however he also discovered an additional cable, running to a camera, mounted under her desk staring into her crotch, feeding into a nearby cabinet with a VCR.
Much hullaballoo ensued, everyone in the building heard of it within a few minutes, much to the ire of the police. There were fingerprints, and all of the fellas in the office but for creepy IT guy offered theirs for comparison. none of the supplied prints matched, IT guy quit, relative had her desk replaced with a table.
That's who you sound like when you post stuff like that.
The good news is Steve Jobs has been here before. I remember NeXT bringing around one of their boxes to demo at my local http://www.acm.org/ [acm.org]">ACM chapter. It came with a nifty built-in microphone, to which someone immediately noted "great for spying!" The NeXT rep gave a smile and pointed to the red LED next to the microphone, hardwired to light up whenever the microphone was active.
This practice continues to this day at Apple, putting in hardwired signal LEDs to indicate when a camera is active. My expectation is that this will continue. Indeed I wouldn't be surprised if Apple were to even include a camera-active screen mode to brighten it for a better picture when the camera is active, possibly swapping in a white background.
This has lots of applications (Score:4, Interesting)
Slashdot user Isaac mentions the idea of using this for a touch sensitive display. I couldn't find this mentioned in the patent application, so the race is on to file a follow-on patent!
But you wouldn't actually have to touch the screen. Years ago, MIT built a user interface called "put that there" that did gaze tracking and voice recognition, so that the "mouse pointer" was pointing at whatever object you happened to be looking at on the display. No need to touch a mouse, you just use your gaze. That might be possible with this technology. It could also be used to interpret hand gestures and facial expressions, and use them as input.
I personally think it would be cool to build a software-programmable mirror. Think of a bathroom mirror with zoom functionality, image enhancement functions, etc. The extra functions are activated by hand gestures, and face recognition is used to determine the centre of zoom (because in a bathroom, you normally want to zoom in on your face).
Doug Moen
Re:Lenses? (Score:3, Interesting)
for example, we can measure the phase of radio waves directly without having to do interferometry, and that's why we can do neat things like synthetic aperture radar. so, your idea was very sound; you essentially proposed optical synthetic aperture imaging. unfortunately, we just don't have the technology to coherently measure optical waves (i.e. measure the phase of the electric field instead of just the integrated intensity) and i don't think we ever will in any general case.
Re:Apple has been a leader in addressing this prob (Score:3, Interesting)
Apple's biggest innovation over any of the other technology companies is that they hired an advertising company that's worth a damn.
And yes, I dig that the iSight is firewire. But what I really want is a firewire keyboard that has a built in charging cradle for a wireless Mighty Mouse. There's no sense in a wireless keyboard, and there's no sense in replacing batteries.
Cloaking Device (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:When does a camscreen become mandatory? (Score:3, Interesting)
So you're saying that if I took this phone [nokia.co.uk] to some part of deepest Africa or Wyoming where there are no cellphone masts in the vicinity, and I turned it on, then although I wouldn't get a phone signal, the phone would still know exactly where I was in the world (subject to usual GPS accuracy limits)?
Or are you talking about cell triangulation systems?
Re:When does a camscreen become mandatory? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:When does a camscreen become mandatory? (Score:3, Interesting)
It doesn't work when you're off the cellular network, but the whole point of gpsOne is to provide your location for cellular services like emergency calls.
Re:When does a camscreen become mandatory? (Score:1, Interesting)
Some phones implement E911 based on tower-triangulation, some on GPS, and some on handicapped hybridization of the two. So short answer: it's possible that you could go to no-signal land with some phones and still be able to get a GPS reading.
If you want to be really paranoid, you could worry about your phone keeping a timestamped index of your travels in-no cellphone signal land. tab in onboard flash, or the position when you turned your phone off and back on again), and transmitting it to a central database when it got signal again. Alternatively, you could send the location heartbeat back to the central server intermittently.
Short solution is turn off your phone, or if paranoid remove battery. Or if really really paranoid, carry it arround in lead bag, without battery.
Re:When does a camscreen become mandatory? (Score:3, Interesting)
You are missing the point.
Currently, your neighbor can watch your house 24/7/365 and keep logs of when you leave and when you go. Then they can turn those logs over to the police upon request. The thing is, nobody does this. Your neighbor might have a vague idea of when you leave and show up, particularly if their daily routine puts them in a position to notice, but only the most demented of us would keep a real log.
Now picture the government mandating such a log. They mandate all people on your block to check out and in as they leave and log it all up to the minute in case the government should need it in order to "help you" in an "emergency."
The first case is like your post. The technology to track has always existed, but nobody actually used it. The second case is what actually happened. The government decided to mandate both the logging and easy up-to-the-minute access to the tracking that has always been there.
It's not the existance of techology that's the problem. It's the way our govenment chooses to use it.
TW
AT&T Patented something like this ages ago... (Score:3, Interesting)