JoostTeam

This is really cool new technology.

What if you could draw some stick figures on a screen and somehow magically create a beautiful image montage?

Well, it’s possible.

A group of students in China have created PhotoSketch, a project that does exactly what I just described: it takes a rough, hand-drawn sketch, scours the web for photos that match, and runs them through an algorithm, stitching it all together. Watch this video presentation, you will not regret it:

PhotoSketch: Internet Image Montage from tao chen on Vimeo.

via PhotoSketch: better than sliced bread, Photoshop | The Web Life | ZDNet.com.

Vladimir Bulovic a Electrical Engineering & Computer from Mit are showing a interesting video how OLED Displays work with using a glowing pickle.

OLEDs are nothing more than an electrically active organic material sandwiched between an anode (a electron-expelling electrode) and a cathode (an electron-receiving electrode). When an electric current runs through the system, the anode sends electrons to the cathode, creating a current through the organic material. This charges the organic material, and when positive and negative charges hit the same molecule, it releases a photon, which we perceive as glowing.

via How OLED Displays work using a Glowing Pickle.

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[Nick Nichols] set out to take a photograph of a full redwood tree. Here’s the catch, these redwoods are over 300 feet tall and they’re not just standing in the middle of a vast desert. If the photo is taken from a distance, you will only capture the top part of these majestic beauties. How can you take the shot from close up? Build a custom rig to take multiple shots and stitch them together for a composite photo.

[Nichols] built the rig to hold three cameras focused to the left, middle, and right of the tree. The frame includes a gyroscope to keep the cameras steady. By lowering the cameras from the top to the bottom of the redwood they were able to capture 84 pictures to assemble the final shot. The result is featured in the October edition of National Geographic magazine.

via Multi-camera rig makes trees say cheese – Hack a Day.

When your smartphone drops from $249 to $79 over a summer, you have to wonder what’s going on. Two rumors are circulating this AM, one that Palm is laying off folks, perhaps in the Windows Mobile team.

The estimated sales for the Pre topped out at 375,000 at the end of August and they went from $299 ($199 after rebate) to about $79 in about eleven weeks. While this might be normal for a feature phone – the subsidy kicks in once they’re sure that the early adopters who simply must have the LG Chocolate have had their fix – this isn’t good for a smartphone that was supposed to be the lead invasion force for a new WebOS smartphone renaissance.

Finally, Palm has finally backed off over iTunes Syncing. The latest WebOS update doesn’t sync with iTunes and won’t be syncing with iTunes any time soon. After using brute force and then running to the USB standards body, the company may have finally given up.

via Pre faltering, Palm laying off employees?.

It may look a little precarious and uncomfortable to ride, but Honda believe their new ‘personal mobility‘ device could one day be zipping up and down our streets.

The vehicle looks like a very modern unicycle and to ride it you simply lean your weight in the direction you want to go, whether that’s forward, backwards or even sideways. It maintains its own balance travelling up to 3.7MPH.

The U3-X, which was given a test-run by reporters in Japan today, was designed to be small, safe and unobtrusive enough to mingle with pedestrians or use indoors, according to Honda Motors.

Enlarge

via Honda unveils ‘Segway-style’ unicycle that travels in any direction you want | Mail Online.

People hate IE6; they’ve made that abundantly clear on the web. Unfortunately, plenty of people are still stuck using it for reasons such as their work not letting them upgrade. So Google is doing something about it.

Chrome Frame is a new browser plug-in developed by Google to give you a Chrome browsing experience inside of Internet Explorer. Let me restate that slightly to make it more clear: Chrome Frame turns IE into Chrome.

Yes, it’s both hilarious and awesome or hilariously awesome, if you will that Google seems to dislike IE so much that it has spent its own time improving it. Google claims its goals are noble. Talking to Group Product Manager Mike Smith and Software Engineer Alex Russell, they tell us that they simply want to make a more seamless web experience for both web users and developers. That said, they are only targeting one browser, IE, right now.

via Google Has A Solution For Internet Explorer: Turn It Into Chrome.

Livestation have released an app on the App Store a few days ago in partnership with Five and UEFA to allow purchasers to watch the Europa League matches shown live on Five in the UK on their iPhone/iPod touch devices.

The app retails for a one-off fee of £3.99 and it will give access to all the games up to the final on the 12 May 2010. Additionally, highlights from all the games are also made available on the app a few hours after the end of the games.

If you have iTunes installed and live in the UK, click here http://tinyurl.com/lx233z

The Skype-eBay plot thickens. Joost and Joltid, both companies owned by Skype’s founders, have filed a lawsuit against former Joost chairman and CEO, Mike Volpi. The suit also names Index Ventures, the VC firm where Volpi is a partner. We’ve embedded the legal document that appears to have been filed this morning, below.

According to a press release issued this morning:

The lawsuit alleges breach of fiduciary duty against Volpi, aiding and abetting breach of fiduciary duty against Index, interference with prospective business advantage, misappropriation of trade secrets, breach of contract against Index, breach of confidence, and civil conspiracy. The suit seeks an injunction requiring the defendants to return to the plaintiffs all documents and files containing confidential information that the lawsuit alleges was misappropriated from Joost, and enjoining the defendants from making any use of the alleged misappropriated trade secrets, among other things.

read more via The Plot Thickens: Skype Founders And Joost Sue Former Chairman And CEO Mike Volpi.

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weComm, the leader in interactive mobile data solutions, today announced that it has partnered with Livestation to deliver live TV news to mobile handsets including Android and BlackBerry devices.

Livestation already delivers high quality live TV streaming services on iPhone for world class news partners such as BBC World News and Al Jazeera. weComm wave On-Demand Mobile Application Platform™,will enable Livestation to deliver live broadcasts from Livestation’s global news TV partners to all leading mobile operating systems. Live TV content will be available for a monthly subscription and the service will provide access to other news formats from the same providers. The companies will distribute the service in a number of easy-to-subscribe methods including through the major mobile handset-manufacturers’ application stores.

weComm’s wave platform uses a client-server infrastructure to deliver high-quality, interactive mobile data services optimized to all major mobile operating systems. The technology delivers content and applications to handsets on-demand, giving the richness and interactivity of an on-device application combined with the flexibility and freshness of an online service.

Matteo Berlucchi, Livestation CEO, said of the partnership: “Time to market is key for us. By partnering with weComm we can now deliver a high-quality, live TV experience very quickly to the market across the broadest possible range of smartphone devices.”

weComm CEO Graham Summers: “Livestation has an extremely well targeted proposition which has clearly excited the world’s leading news channels. weComm is delighted to have been chosen as the mobile partner to help Livestation exploit their fantastic service on a wider range of platforms.”

As an experiment with Google appengine I started playing around with reverse proxy software written in python located at netputing.appspot.com.

To my surprise it appear as if Google think that all users of my proxy application are chineese as can be seen below:

Google think I am Chinese

OK, I ate Dim Sum with some family members this past Saturday but I somehow doubt that Google is picking up on this

Maybe it has to do with untold Google support for the Chinese cause and is helping them obtain free speech information access via it’s appengine service? And as a curtsy they are presenting ads in Chinese?