Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Etronika demonstrated it at this week’s CTIA conference, where they showed a user paying a bill with it. When it was complete, the user held up his phone and waved his left hand, magically sending a copy of the bill to his phone. Well, that is a simple way to pay a bill, I have to admit.

Don’t hold your breath while waiting for this to be available though. Sadly, at the moment, Microsoft doesn’t permit companies to sell products based on Kinect technologies. Maybe they should. I’d like to see more like this one, even if it is another excuse to keep me in front of my console.

[via G4]

That’s where Print A Forest comes in.

So how does it work? Well, first you need to download a piece of software so you can start “printing forests.” Each document that you will print via the program will include a small sponsored ad at the bottom of each page you print. Print 100 pages, and you will have donated enough money to plant a tree. How about that?

The problem is, of course, on people’s willingness to have ads printed on their documents. It’s one thing to click on ads on a certain site to donate a few grains (or was it cups?) of rice to impoverished people in need (now that I think about it, were those sites for real? Or were they just scam sites to get people to click on ads?), but it’s another to have ads printed right on your documents.

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If you don’t mind and want to get in on the green movement, learn more about Print A Forest, or get the program, head on over to their site to get started.

[via PSFK via Oh Gizmo!]

Stone Cold Full Body Bicubic Resampling?  If I were an image file I think I’d rather be deleted than find out what that that filter does.

[via Words, Pictures, Humor via I Love Charts]

The idea of course is to reach out to people who can’t afford to shell out hundreds or thousands of dollars for Adobe’s software. For example, Photoshop CS5 currently costs $699 (USD), but with the subscription plan you can now use it for as low as $35 a month. Prices are better on a one-year plan, but you can go month-to-month for a little more. Below is a full list of prices:

Watch Adobe’s overview to learn more:

Check out the Creative Suite subscription page for more info including pricing specifics. It goes without saying that there are alternatives – both free and commercial – to Adobe’s software, but if you’re sold then head on to Adobe’s online store.

[via Pocket-lint]

I’m not sure if the example above is one of the software’s correct findings. In any case, Prof. Jain and his team still have a lot of tweaking to do. Currently they claim that out of a database of 10,000 mug shots, their software was able to make the correct match 45% of the time. They say that this is a significant improvement over current commercial facial recognition systems. I wish the whole MSU team luck, and I hope they manage to finish their software. If I had their software I’d probably spend my time searching for people that look like cartoon characters.

[via MSU via Geek]

The latter feature seems harmless – the fact that the data comes from a person’s social network account means he should know that other people can access it anyway. What concerns me is the automatic tagging bit. If this thing really works, people may will get tagged and caught on camera without them knowing. Sure, if they were doing something illegal then fine, they had it coming, but what if you don’t want to be tagged and identified?  I don’t know about other social networks but Facebook allows users to tag even people who don’t have a Facebook account, and can opt not to tell these people that they’ve been tagged. Who knows where photos with such essential metadata could end up once they’re sent online?

Once this thing gets released, be wary of anyone with a smartphone. So be wary of everyone.

[via Technology Review]

Nosedial is a $.99 app for your iPhone that makes your phone nose-friendly. Basically what it does is gives you very large icons for each of your contacts. You can scroll, and tap them with your nose. The unfortunate thing is that you’ll not only have to figure a way to unlock the phone, but also tap on the icon for this app. While interesting in theory, I don’t think it would be terribly practical.

[via Gizmodiva]

Unlike most readers which simply show a list of items from your RSS feeds, FLUD automatically selects images from feeds and displays them in a visually attractive format which suits fingertip interactions. Each story from your favorite sites is displayed as a thumbnail with its headline, and a simple finger swipe can be used to browse through stories quickly. Vertical swiping lets you browse multiple news sources, while horizontal swiping lets you browse individual posts from each feed. A tap on the thumbnail opens up the full story in a secondary pane.

Once opened up, you can easily toggle between an easy-to-read text view or see the full web page in the embedded web browser. It also works in both landscape and portrait modes, but I found the portrait mode to be more useful if you plan on viewing web pages while browsing feeds. And you can easily bookmark or share interesting posts from either the FLUD home page, or from individual posts.

Adding feeds is really easy, and you can either search through FLUD’s database of available feeds or sync up with your Google Reader account, selectively including feeds to show on the FLUD screen. You can also categorize feeds into high-level groups like “Technology” or “Business”. Now for someone like me – with over 1400 feeds in my reader – I wouldn’t want to display them all in this format, so it’s nice to be able to selectively grab only the ones I want on the FLUD home page. However, if they could come up with a format which would allow me to browse and favorite thousands of feeds quickly for interesting images, that would be a godsend for myself and countless other bloggers, I’m sure.

The video clip below gives you a nice look at FLUD’s user interface in action. Keep in mind that this video was shot on a pre-release version, and the developers have continued to refine the interface and smooth out performance since they shot this. The current version is incredibly fast and smooth on a Wi-Fi connection. Unfortunately, it doesn’t cache content for offline reading, but hopefully they’ll get that worked into a future version.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Overall, I’m very impressed by FLUD. It provides a really nice way to interact with your all your news on your iPad, converting RSS content into a format which is well suited to the iPad, while still allowing you to view the original web pages without leaving the app. You can grab FLUD over at the iTunes App Store now for just $3.99 (USD).

The app uses a webcam, which presumably means it is aimed at notebook users rather than those with smartphones. The webcam overlays the person trying on the swimsuits behind the picture of the suit on the screen. The user can then walk back and forth until the swimsuit is in the correct place to see what it would look like. Sorta.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

For now, the app is only for swimsuits, but this could be the perfect way for people to see what clothes look like on them when shopping online. I can only hope at some point in the not too distant future it can mean no more need for the guy chair in stores too, but I’m not holding my breath.

The UBIart framework allows animators the flexibility to create moving images simply by loading in any image, then adding a “skeleton” to the image to provide pivot points for animating movements.

According to the UBIsoft team, “The idea behind our animation system is to be able to animate any kind of image. The image may be a 3D rendering, an India ink drawing, a modeling clay background, an image drawn on a graphics tablet or a scanned image, and so on. In fact, any visual source can be used. We put the focus on freedom and simplicity, to make it easy to start a project and add content without much hassle.” From the looks of this video clip, it looks like they’ve achieved their goal.

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Here’s a clip that includes a sneak preview of the upcoming Rayman Origins, animated using the Ubi-Art framework:

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Now, it’s unclear if UBIsoft will ever release the framework for us amateurs to play with, but they’re most definitely using it in the studio to improve their own game animations.

If you didn’t know about this, then you should most definitely go and change your privacy settings. Anyone, from potential employers, coworkers, to your girlfriend’s dad can find out what you’ve been saying if you’re not careful enough.

Today also marked the day that Facebook introduced new and easy to use privacy settings. At least that’s what the press release said. But honestly, people should be more careful with what they post if they really are worried about people finding out their personal info.

[via This Isn't Happiness]

The new version of the software is designed to exercise the latest in DirectX 11 gaming technology featuring such challenges as volumetric lighting, tessellation, depth of field and lens effects in real time. From the looks of the “deep sea” demo reel below, you’ll definitely want to upgrade your video card before giving this bad boy a whirl.

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Expect 3DMark 11 to hit in Q3 2010. For more info, head on over to the Futuremark’s website.

[via CrunchGear]

If you’ve never heard of ArtRage, it’s really is a spectacular (and reasonably priced) art application. It provides beautiful digital simulation of oils, watercolors, markers, pencils and other natural media. And despite its tremendous depth (with features like layering, stencils, stickers and blending modes), the interface is easy enough for beginners to dive in right away and start creating art. To give you an example of what’s possible, here’s an image (far beyond my feeble talents) created by ArtRage community member BoxFree.

The Pro version includes support for wet blending of paints, and Photoshop filters among other things. Both versions of the app work great with Wacom or Adesso drawing tablets, but I’ve also really enjoyed using it with my HP Touchsmart, where I figured out you could paint with real brushes! If you really want to see how well it works, there’s a great gallery of creations made with ArtRage here. You can also grab a 30-day demo copy to play with. But you really want the full version, right?

So back to the contest….

We’ve got 10 copies of the full ArtRage 3 Studio ($40 value each) to give away – either PC or Mac version, and all you need to do for a chance to win is post a comment below, telling us what feature of ArtRage 3 you’re most excited about. To get you started, check out the features list here. To be considered for the drawing, you must provide a valid comment and e-mail address (Limit 1 submission per e-mail or IP address, junk/spam entries will be disqualified). We will pick 10 random winners from all valid entries. It’s that easy! The contest will end at 11:59pm Central time on 5/26/2010, so get your entries in now!

[ArtRage]

Even if your game or program is not officially supported, you can add it to the backup list using the “Custom GameSave” feature. One downside to GameSave Manager is that it only works on Windows; I’m not sure if you can port it to Linux or Mac using WINE, or if there’s any sense in doing so.

You can download GameSave Manager at its official website for free.  As RPG gamers say: Remember to save, and save often… and save your saves, and save your saves often.

[via Download Squad]

Inklet also has handwriting recognition and supports a variety of applications, including Pixelmator, Circus Ponies NoteBook, Photoshop CS3, CS4 and Elements, Corel Painter and even Word 2008. It also detects “unwanted” trackpad touches, say when your palm is resting on the trackpad.

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As great as it seems to be, Inklet doesn’t change the fact that the MacBook/MacBook Pro trackpad is quite small, so if you need a bigger area then you might find the Inklet too cumbersome. But if you’re strapped for cash or if you’re just starting to learn how to use graphics editing programs, Inklet may be just the thing for you. You can buy Inklet at Ten One Design for $25 (USD); a downloadable demo is also available at the website. Inklet is Mac-only, and it only works with the multitouch trackpads.

NEC claims that their technology has an astounding 96% average detection rate, and can even detect 2-second clips, yet generates a relatively small amount of data and can be operated by a lowly 3GHz single-core-equipped PC . From what I understand the program can’t snuff out torrents; I think it’s primarily aimed at videos hosted online in sites like YouTube or Megavideo. Check out NEC’s press release at Akihabara News. If you can explain in simple terms how the app works and what this means in the larger scheme of things, feel free to drop us a line (or ten) in the comments.

[Picture above contains original art by Roboworks]

Sarcasm aside, this feature alone may well justify OS 4. The set up isn’t as straightforward as conventional file sharing – you’ll have to open iTunes and head on to the Apps tab to shuttle files to and fro your iDevice – but it’s not overly complicated either. The screens below show some more of the new features, which really should have been included in the original OS. On the left you see the multitasking interface, making selecting and closing one of the currently running applications a snap. According to BGR, to access this interface all you need to do is press and hold the icon of any one of the apps you’re running.

The screen on the right shows the media widgets and portrait orientation lock buttons. To access these buttons, you’ll have go to the multitasking interface and then swipe to the left – kinda makes no sense to me, but then again I don’t own an iPhone. The buttons are self-explanatory and probably much-needed. Check out Boy Genius Report for more details.

Looks like that poor dog is confused by the feeds. I can’t test the program myself since I’m on a Mac (without Parallels), but I think that you’ll need to sweep your icons off of your desktop and use an application launcher instead if you want to use Feedling, otherwise you might have a hard time selecting both feeds and icons.

Feedling has been tested on Windows XP, Vista and 7, and is available at SourceForge. Check out MakeUseOf for detailed instructions on setting up Feedling.

[via Channel 10]

The same guys who sent me the picture of the new Mac Pro sent me the picture above. They swear it’s a screenshot of eSmart.

[via GoNintendo]

This app is by Chris Auyeung and Vijay Mathews and their BeardMe iPhone App (iTunes link) was made because they believe that everyone should have the option of having luxuriant, well-groomed facial hair. You have to admit it’s pretty funny when you add ‘staches to babies, coworkers, and naturally pets!

[via Swissmiss]