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Submission + - A Digital Gimbal for Drones? (fotonation.com)

Submitted by pcor
pcor writes: This company, Fotonation, is claiming to have a 'digital gimbal'; they are going to show "new hardware solutions that can process video at up to 60 FPS, delivering rock-steady video that is practically immune to platform motion and vibration. These solutions can be readily customized ... to distinguish between large, deliberate motions of the imaging platform and smaller vibrations and oscillations that ruin video quality and disrupt post-processing operations."

They also claim that "a mechanical gimbal is no longer a necessary part of your design ... whether you are designing drones, wearables, or a larger vehicular platform, learn how state-of-the-art, energy-efficient, GPU-free chipset solutions proven in the smartphone and action-camera markets can empower your video subsystems with real-time, high frame-rate, rock steady video, while also correcting for distortions created by wide-angle lenses."
If these claims are true this could be a really cool technology for a whole range of applications — does anyone know more about this?
They are going to be at the Embedded Vision Summit. If anyone is attending it would be good to have a 'hands-on' account of this technology!

Submission + - Yetu solves the SmartHome problem with open-source gateway (yetu.com)

Submitted by pcor
pcor writes: Yes the 30-year old vision of a Jetson's compatible smart-home is finally solved!
Recently launched, yetus open smart home platform provides a complete software eco-system for web-based smart home applications with a consistent user interface across PC, TV, tablet and smartphone irrespective of operating system. yetus platform connects everything including the TV set with just one gateway and comes with a remote control.
Key partnerships with major telco's will ensure wide dissemination of this key 'smart' tech.

Comment What about the "Midas Effect" ... ? (Score 4, Interesting) 22

by pcor (#45969127) Attached to: CES 2014: Danish Company Promises Low-Cost Eye Trackers For the Masses (Video)

There is research work from the 1980's & 90's on the use of eye tracking for UI. Eyes tend to naturally scan around a scene - when the user becomes conscious that their gaze will 'affect' control regions in the UI they try to restrict this natural eye movement and it yields an uncomfortable sensation known as the 'Midas Effect'. This is mentioned and cited in this more recent paper: Real-Time Eye Gaze Tracking for Gaming Design and Consumer Electronics Systems
Sorry I'm too lazy to extract the original citation ... but it is worth tracking down and reading about how eye-gaze have been well known as a UI technique going back to the 1980's!

Biotech

Fly Eyes Used For Solar Cells 73

Posted by samzenpus from the windows-to-the-power-pole dept.
disco_tracy writes "Researchers took corneas from blow flies, fixed them on a glass substrate, added a polymer to protect the shape and then coated nine-eye arrays in nickel within a vacuum chamber. The result was a master template that retained those useful nanoscale features and can be used to make solar cells."
Classic Games (Games)

36-Hour Lemmings Port Gets Sony Cease and Desist 268

Posted by Soulskill from the found-a-cliff-real-quick dept.
Zerocool3001 writes "The recently featured 36-hour port of the original Palm version of Lemmings to the iPhone and Palm Pre has received a cease and desist letter from Sony. Only one day after submitting the app for approval on the two app stores, the developer has put up a post stating that he 'did this as a tribute to the game — we can only hope that Sony actually does a conversion for platforms like iPhone and Palm Pre in the near future.' The text of the cease and desist letter is available from the developer's website."
Space

Supermassive Black Hole Is Thrown Out of Galaxy 167

Posted by samzenpus from the moving-to-better-quarters dept.
DarkKnightRadick writes "An undergrad student at the University of Utrecht, Marianne Heida, has found evidence of a supermassive black hole being tossed out of its galaxy. According to the article, the black hole — which has a mass equivalent to one billion suns — is possibly the culmination of two galaxies merging (or colliding, depending on how you like to look at it) and their black holes merging, creating one supermassive beast. The black hole was found using the Chandra Source Catalog (from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory). The direction of the expulsion is also possibly indicative of the direction of rotation of the two black holes as they circled each other before merging."
Businesses

Wii 2 Delay Is Hurting Nintendo 310

Posted by Soulskill from the hurting-all-the-way-to-the-bank dept.
BanjoTed writes "Michael Pachter's ongoing spat with Nintendo regarding the Wii 2 is well documented. Pachter is sure it's coming, Nintendo says it's not. Now the analyst has gone one further by claiming that the declining sales of the Wii documented in the platform holder's recent financial statements will only get worse unless it speeds up attempts to get its successor to market. He said, 'The reason for this is clear: the software being created is just not interesting enough or compelling enough to drive Wii owners to buy more than two [games] per year, and most of those purchases are first party software. We can blame the third party publishers for making shovelware, or for misjudging the Wii market, but the simple fact is that the publishers have to develop completely separate games for the Wii because its CPU is not powerful.'"
Image

Jordanian Mayor Angry Over "Alien Invasion" Prank 217

Posted by samzenpus from the war-of-the-worlds dept.
krou writes "Jordanian mayor Mohammed Mleihan has taken a dim view of local newspaper Al-Ghad's April Fools prank, which saw a front page story claiming that 'flying saucers flown by 3m (10ft) creatures had landed in the desert town of Jafr.' The paper claimed that communication networks had gone down, and people were fleeing the area. The mayor called the local security authorities, who combed the area, but they were unable to find any evidence of the aliens. Mr Mleihan is now considering suing because of the distress it caused to residents: 'Students didn't go to school, their parents were frightened and I almost evacuated the town's 13,000 residents. People were scared that aliens would attack them.'" I guess they've never heard of Orson Welles in Jordan.
Nintendo

New Super Mario Bros. Wii Tops 10 Million Sales 164

Posted by Soulskill from the it'sa-me-mario dept.
According to a report from Japanese publication Nikkei Net, Nintendo's New Super Mario Bros. Wii has now sold 10 million copies worldwide. The game needed only 45 days to pass the already impressive sales numbers of Super Mario Galaxy. Quoting Gamasutra: "NSMB Wii has sold 3 million units in Japan, where it launched on December 3; 3 million copies in Europe, where it launched November 20, and 4.5 million units in North America, where it launched November 15. Super Mario Galaxy has sold 4.1 million units in North America since 2007. The game's design hearkens back to the two-dimensional, side-scrolling style of earlier Mario titles ... The numbers would seem to suggest that these traits successfully generated more mass appeal for NSMB Wii than for the three-dimensional and far less familiar Super Mario Galaxy, which sent the plumber navigating more innovative spherical space environments."
Networking

Nmap 5.20 Released 36

Posted by Soulskill from the more-and-better dept.
ruphus13 writes "Nmap has a new release out, and it's a major one. It includes a GUI front-end called Zenmap, and, according to the post, 'Network admins will no doubt be excited to learn that Nmap is now ready to identify Snow Leopard systems, Android Linux smartphones, and Chumbies, among other OSes that Nmap can now identify. This release also brings an additional 31 Nmap Scripting Engine scripts, bringing the total collection up to 80 pre-written scripts for Nmap. The scripts include X11 access checks to see if X.org on a system allows remote access, a script to retrieve and print an SSL certificate, and a script designed to see whether a host is serving malware. Nmap also comes with netcat and Ndiff. Source code and binaries are available from the Nmap site, including RPMs for x86 and x86_64 systems, and binaries for Windows and Mac OS X. '"
Space

Space Photos Taken From Shed Stun Astronomers 149

Posted by timothy from the love-the-gold-mylar dept.
krou writes "Amateur astronomer Peter Shah has stunned astronomers around the world with amazing photos of the universe taken from his garden shed. Shah spent £20,000 on the equipment, hooking up a telescope in his shed to his home computer, and the results are being compared to images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. 'Most men like to putter about in their garden shed,' said Shah, 'but mine is a bit more high tech than most. I have fitted it with a sliding roof so I can sit in comfort and look at the heavens. I have a very modest set up, but it just goes to show that a window to the universe is there for all of us – even with the smallest budgets. I had to be patient and take the images over a period of several months because the skies in Britain are often clouded over and you need clear conditions.' His images include the Monkey's head nebula, M33 Pinwheel Galaxy, Andromeda Galaxy and the Flaming Star Nebula, and are being put together for a book."

Nanopillar Solar May Cost 10x Less Than Silicon 199

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the hot-off-the-presses dept.
Al writes "A team of researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, have developed a new kind of flexible solar cell that could be far cheaper to make than conventional silicon photovoltaics. The cells consist of an array of 500-nanometer-high cadmium sulfide pillars printed on top of an aluminum foil — the material surrounding the pillars absorbs light and releases electrons, while the pillars themselves transport the electrons to an electrical circuit. The closely packed pillars trap light between them, helping the surrounding material absorb more. This means the electrons also have a very short distance to travel through the pillars, so there are fewer chances of their getting trapped at defects and its possible to use low-quality, less expensive materials. '"You won't know the cost until you do this using a roll-to-roll process," says lead researchers Ali Javey. "But if you can do it, the cost could be 10 times less than what's used to make [crystalline] silicon panels."'"
Sci-Fi

David Tennant Stands Down From "Doctor Who" 245

Posted by timothy from the no-really-who dept.
Dave Knott writes "After winning the outstanding drama performance prize at the British National Television Awards, David Tennant announced that he will be quitting the iconic role of The Doctor. Quoting Tennant: 'When Doctor Who returns in 2010 it won't be with me. Now don't make me cry. I love this part, and I love this show so much that if I don't take a deep breath and move on now I never will, and you'll be wheeling me out of the Tardis in my bath chair.' Tennant will appear in a Christmas special, titled The Next Doctor, before filming four more specials in January. After that, the search will be on for the actor to play the 11th incarnation of The Doctor."
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft for Sale for just $1 Million (USD) (sol.sapo.pt)

Submitted by
dmsete
dmsete writes: "Microsoft a Portuguese Company (yes it's true) is selling it's Business for just $1 Million (USD) on eBay!!!

Microsoft (Portuguese Company) was establish in 1981, but when Microsoft Corporation (US) came to Portugal they could not use the name and opted to be called MSFT, Lda..

The cool thing about buying this company would be selling "Microsoft" Linux!!! Cool thing wouldn't it be?!"

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