Technology: January 2008 Archives
Geotagging promises to be a hot technology for photographers this year. The idea of attaching geographical coordinates to photos and connecting them to online maps is starting to reach the mainstream imagination as is evidenced by a story moved this weekend by Associated Press writer Anick Jesdanun.
"Devices that already support geotagging include some GPS-enabled camera phones from Sprint Nextel Corp. and a newly unveiled gadget from Pharos Science & Applications Inc.," Jesdanun writes. "High-end cameras from Nikon Corp. and Ricoh Co. can directly connect to GPS devices, while the upcoming PhotoFinder from ATP Electronics Inc. will write GPS information directly on a camera's memory card."
"And photo-sharing services like SmugMug [see photo above], Google Inc.'s Picasa and Panoramio and Yahoo Inc.'s Flickr let you manually add photos to a map," the reporter adds. "Zoom in to New York's Central Park, for instance, to find individual photos taken at Strawberry Fields and other landmarks."
Adobe software plug-in maker onOne Software, of Portland, Ore., announced today it's buying, for an undisclosed sum, the seam carving technology of Liquid Resize. The technology was developed by an Austrian-based couple, Ramin Sabet and Irmgard Sabet-Wasinger based on the research of Shai Avidan and Ariel Shamir (see video above). What seam carving allows you to do is resize photos in radical ways--turning a vertical into a horizontal, for example--with a minimum of distortion. According to onOne, a beta version of software incorporating the seam carving technology will be available at its Web site at the end of this month. A Photoshop plug-in using the tech has a release target of the middle of this year. If you can't wait until the end of the month to tinker with this stuff, you can try your hand at it at a Web site called Rsizr.
I must confess that I'm a bit curmudgeonly about digital camera technologies like face recognition and smile identification. They seem like tantalizing distractions that divert amateur shutterbugs from improving their photographic and social skills. But, admittedly, the latest offering from the outfit responsible for all this technological tomfoolery has an undeniable allure to it--especially if you're inclined to give the self-timer on your camera a workout. The technology called FaceTime, by FotoNation, takes face recognition technology to a new level. To take a photo with the shooter in it, all they need do is set their camera to FaceTime mode, situate themselves in the shot and wait to hear the shutter release. The technology won't snap the photo until it recognizes the photographer's face in the shot. If this technology becomes popular, I'll miss losing one of my best ploys for staying behind the lens and avoiding the front of it. FotoNation will be demonstrating the new technology at the PMA show at the end of the month.
