Sci-Verse: apps - tech, Gadgets review, Startups and Programming Hub

Google launches three new photography apps for testing experimental technology

Sunday, December 17, 2017 Unknown 0 Comments Category : android , apps

Google’s research team releases two new experimental photo apps for iOS

Tuesday, December 12, 2017 Unknown 0 Comments Category : apps , IOS , social

Inspired by the success of Motion Stills, Google is releasing more photography apps built on experimental technology. Today, Google is launching two new “appsperimentals” for iOS that take advantage of recent phone and computer vision advancements.

“Photography appsperiments” are “usable and useful mobile photography experiences built on experimental technology.” Motion Stills, which launched first on iOS, created cinemagraphs from short video using experimental stabilization and rendering technologies

The two new apps use such technologies like object recognition, person segmentation, stylization algorithms, and e 6fficient image encoding/decoding.

Google is researching this technology given the rise of next-generation phone cameras that will be able to blend hardware and computer vision algorithms. Specifically, the company is exploring “radically new creative mobile photo and video applications” as cameras will soon be able to understand the “semantic content” of a photo.

Selfissimo! (iOS, Android) is an automated selfie photographer that snaps a stylish black and white photo each time you pose. Tap the screen to start a photo shoot. The app encourages you to pose and captures a photo whenever you stop moving. Tap the screen to end the session and review the resulting contact sheet, saving individual images or the entire shoot.
Scrubbies (iOS) lets you easily manipulate the speed and direction of video playback to produce delightful video loops that highlight actions, capture funny faces, and replay moments. Shoot a video in the app and then remix it by scratching it like a DJ. Scrubbing with one finger plays the video. Scrubbing with two fingers captures the playback so you can save or share it.

A third app called Storyboard is only available for Android and it lets users turn videos into a single-page comic layout. Processed completely on-device, the app automatically selects interesting video frames, lays them out, and applies one of six visual styles.

Apple Shazam: Why Apple is buying the music app?

Monday, December 11, 2017 Unknown 0 Comments Category : apps , enterprise , Media

Scan your eyes over Apple's just-published list of the year's most popular iPhone apps, and there's one notable omission: Shazam.

In fact, it's been a while since the song-identifying software squeezed its way into the iOS App Store's top 10.

So, why has Apple confirmed it is "combining" its business with that of the smaller London company?

It has not revealed the price it is paying, but the sum is rumoured to be as much as $400m (£300m), which would make it one of Apple's most expensive takeovers to date.

The US technology giant also hasn't disclosed its motivations beyond saying that it has "exciting plans in store".

But there are several reasons the deal may have appealed.

Music discovery

Apple's smart assistant, Siri, already taps into Shazam, allowing users to verbally ask: "What song is playing?" and has done so for more than three years.

But with growing competition between Apple Music and Spotify - which also ties into Shazam - Apple may have felt the need to secure the service rather than risk its Swedish rival or some other company buying it first.

Apple has said that Shazam is a "natural fit" for its streaming music platform.

Some, however, believe that the real value of the acquisition isn't Shazam's technology - which Apple could presumably have developed a version of itself for a smaller sum - but rather the data Shazam has gathered for more than a decade about its millions of users.

"Spotify has made the discovery of new music front and centre of what makes it a compelling proposition," said Mark Mulligan, from the consultancy Midia Research.

"Apple just doesn't have the same amount of data about listening tastes as Spotify, meaning it can't drive recommendations with as high a degree of accuracy and precision.

"Shazam essentially gives it a shortcut to having a massive database."

Music forms a major pillar of Apple's business - not just its song subscription service, but also its:

Beats headphones division
Beats 1 radio station
iTunes store
Carpool Karaoke TV show (with other music-themed programming reportedly on the way)

So, locking in one of the key song-discovery services and potentially deepening the way Shazam ties into Apple's wider ecosystem has a certain logic.

Always-listening

Apple will be mindful that first Google Now and subsequently Google Assistant have used in-house technology to let Android users identify songs.

That helped the search giant add a clever feature to its recently released Pixel 2 phone: the handset proactively shows the name of songs it hears on its home screen without waiting to be asked.

Moreover, it does this without requiring an active internet connection thanks to it periodically updating an on-device database of tens of thousands of tracks, and carrying out the whole song-matching process on the phone.

To let Siri replicate the trick or add innovations of its own, Apple might have felt it needed to bring Shazam in-house.

Apple has long portrayed itself as a company that goes the extra mile to protect its users' privacy, so it would presumably reject the idea of allowing a third-party to run an always-listening service on its devices.

Homepod help

Apple's Homepod smart speaker - a rival to the Amazon Echo and Google Home - has had its release date delayed despite the hardware being unveiled back in June.

That points to the problem being with its software.

Perhaps some of Shazam's audio-recognition technology might provide a quick fix, or at the very least Apple might believe it could add extra capabilities in the future.

Augmented reality advertising

While Shazam is best known for its song-matching capabilities, the app has also been adding augmented reality features.

The technology superimposes graphics over real-world views captured by a smartphone's camera and is something Apple's chief executive, Tim Cook, is particularly keen on.

He has repeatedly called AR more "profound" than virtual reality, which limits users to computer-generated views.

Shazam has focused on offering its AR capabilities to brands.

Fanta has used it as a way to let users bring posters for its soft drinks to life, while if users held their phone over a bottle of Bombay Sapphire gin they could see images of its ingredients grow out of its sides before prompting them to explore cocktail recipes.

Another British start-up, Blippar, has already demonstrated that merging real-world object recognition and AR has uses beyond advertising - it offers a way to show information about people seen standing nearby.

Perhaps, Apple is keen to build on Shazam's efforts to develop killer features of its own for the launch of its much-rumoured AR glasses.

Google Maps will soon tell you when it’s time to get off your train or bus

Monday, December 11, 2017 Unknown 0 Comments Category : android , apps , software

Google Maps for Android adds ‘Motorcycle Mode’ in India, cuts time off of car routes

Wednesday, December 06, 2017 Unknown 0 Comments Category : android , apps

Instagram updating profiles with new Stories features, Archive and Highlights

Wednesday, December 06, 2017 Unknown 0 Comments Category : android , apps , social

Fake WhatsApp fools Android users

Monday, November 06, 2017 Unknown 0 Comments Category : apps , social-security

China Blocks WhatsApp, Broadening Online Censorship

Tuesday, September 26, 2017 Unknown 0 Comments Category : apps , asia , social

SHANGHAI — China has largely blocked the WhatsApp messaging app, the latest move by Beijing to step up surveillance ahead of a big Communist Party gathering next month.

The disabling in mainland China of the Facebook-owned app is a setback for the social media giant, whose chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, has been pushing to re-enter the Chinese market, and has been studying the Chinese language intensively. WhatsApp was the last of Facebook products to still be available in mainland China; the company’s main social media service has been blocked in China since 2009, and its Instagram image-sharing app is also unavailable.

In mid-July, Chinese censors began blocking video chats and the sending of photographs and other files using WhatsApp, and they stopped many voice chats, as well. But most text messages on the app continued to go through normally. The restrictions on video, audio chats and file sharing were at least temporarily lifted after a few weeks.

WhatsApp now appears to have been broadly disrupted in China, even for text messages, Nadim Kobeissi, an applied cryptographer at Symbolic Software, a Paris-based research start-up, said on Monday. The blocking of WhatsApp text messages suggests that China’s censors may have developed specialized software to interfere with such messages, which rely on an encryption technology that is used by few services other than WhatsApp, he said.

“This is not the typical technical method in which the Chinese government censors something,” Mr. Kobeissi said. He added that his company’s automated monitors had begun detecting disruptions of WhatsApp in China on Wednesday, and that by Monday the blocking efforts were comprehensive.

Facebook declined to comment, following past practice when asked about WhatsApp’s difficulties in China.

Lokman Tsui, an internet communications specialist at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said that WhatsApp seemed to have been severely disrupted starting on Sunday. But he said that some WhatsApp users might still be able to use the service.

The Chinese authorities have a history of mostly, but not entirely, blocking internet services, as well as slowing them down so much that they become useless. The censorship has prompted many in China to switch to communications methods that function smoothly and quickly but that are easily monitored by the Chinese authorities, like the WeChat app of the Chinese internet company Tencent, which is based in Shenzhen.

“If you’re only allowed to drive one mile per hour, you’re not going to drive on that road, even if it’s not technically blocked,” Mr. Tsui said.

The disruption of WhatsApp comes as Beijing prepares for the Communist Party’s congress, which starts Oct. 18. Held once every five years, the congress chooses the party’s leadership, which in turn runs the country. Next month’s meeting is expected to reconfirm President Xi Jinping’s nearly absolute grip on power, but considerable uncertainty remains over who will join him on the Standing Committee of the Politburo, the party’s highest-ranking group.

Over the past several years, China has not only stepped up censorship but also closed numerous churches and jailed large numbers of human rights activists, lawyers and advocates for ethnic minorities.

The shutdown of WhatsApp prompted considerable dismay on Chinese social media.

“Losing contact with my clients, forced back to the age of telephone and email for work now,” one user complained on Weibo, a Twitter-like microblogging site.

“Even WhatsApp is blocked now? I’m going to be out of business soon,” another Chinese social media user said on Weibo.

In China, even the use of email is fading as residents embrace the convenience of WeChat. The messaging service, which has 963 million active users, bears some similarities to WhatsApp but has a wider array of features and one crucial difference: close ties to the government. This month, WeChat sent a notice to users reminding them that it complied with official requests for information.

When China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, it agreed to open online data services and other enhanced telecommunications services to international competition. But it obtained the assent of other W.T.O. members to retain restrictions on the media. Technology multinationals, heavily dependent on the Chinese market, have been reluctant to accuse Beijing of falling short of its W.T.O. commitments.

The Office of the United States Trade Representative has opened a formal investigation into whether China is violating the intellectual property of American companies, but it has released few details. The trade office has not said whether the inquiry will include the blocking of products that rely on American intellectual property, or whether it will focus more narrowly on cases in which China has allegedly purloined or otherwise copied it.

WhatsApp has a strong reputation among cryptographers for security, which may have been what drew the attention of Chinese censors. The app provides so-called end-to-end encryption, which effectively means that even Facebook does not know what is being said in the text, voice and video conversations passing through its servers.

WhatsApp’s video, file sharing and other advanced features rely partly on broadly used internet data transfer protocols, and were disrupted over the summer. But its text messaging function relies on a different, heavily encrypted method for moving data that has seldom been used by companies.

The latest disruption of the WhatsApp messaging system suggests that China’s censorship apparatus may have figured out how to target the more uncommon and heavily encrypted data transport protocol as well, Mr. Kobeissi said.

Other services provided by American technology companies are available in mainland China. The country tolerates Microsoft’s Skype service for phone calls, which does not provide end-to-end encryption and as a result is easier for governments to monitor. Beijing also allows Apple’s FaceTime service, which has end-to-end encryption but does not have a WhatsApp-like feature allowing users to exchange secret codes — letting WhatsApp users combat what are known as “man in the middle” attacks.

By blocking the heavily encrypted WhatsApp service while making less secure applications like WeChat available to the public, the Chinese government has herded its internet users toward methods of communication that it can reliably monitor.

Residents of mainland China can still use services like WhatsApp if they first connect to virtual private networks that provide them with communications channels to servers outside the Chinese mainland. But the government has also been cracking down on virtual private networks in recent months — and even when those networks appear to be working, they sometimes do not allow access to services that the government is particularly targeting.

Clicking Addresses Numbers in Gmail Launches the Appropriate App

Tuesday, September 19, 2017 Unknown 0 Comments Category : apps

Saturday, September 16, 2017 Unknown 0 Comments Category : apps , Social news

AI-powered filter app Prisma wants to sell its tech to other companies

Monday, August 21, 2017 Unknown 0 Comments Category : apps , Artificial intelligence , enterprise

Prisma, the Russian company best known for its AI-powered photo filters, is shifting to B2B. The company won’t retire its popular app, but says in the future, it will focus on selling machine vision tools to other tech firms.

“We see big opportunities in deep learning and communication,” Prisma CEO and co-founder Alexey Moiseenkov told The Verge. “We feel that a lot of companies need expertise in this area. Even Google is buying companies for computer vision. We can help companies put machine vision in their app because we understand how to implement the technology.” The firm has launched a new website — prismalabs.ai — in order to promote these services.

Prisma will offer a number of off-the-shelf vision tools, including segmentation (separating the foreground of a photo from the background), face mapping, and both scene and object recognition. The company’s expertise is getting these sorts of systems — powered by neural networks — to run locally on-device. This can be a tricky task, but avoiding using the cloud to power these services can result in apps that are faster, more secure, and less of a drain on phone and tablet battery life.

Although Prisma’s painting-inspired filters were all the rage last year (the app itself was released in June 2015), they were soon copied by the likes of Facebook, which might account for the Russian company’s change in direction.

Moiseenkov denies this is the case, and says it wasn’t his intention to compete with bigger social networks. “We never thought we were a competitor of Facebook — we’re a small startup, with a small budget,” he said. But, he says, the popularity of these deep learning filters shows there are plenty of consumer applications for the latest machine vision tech.

Moiseenkov says his company will continue to support the Prisma app, and that it will act as a showcase for the firm’s latest experiments. He says the app still has between 5 million and 10 million monthly active users, most of which are based in the US. The company also started experimenting with selling sponsored filters on its main app last year, and says it will continue to do so. It also launched an app for turning selfies into chat stickers.

There have been rumors that Prisma would get bought out by a bigger company. Moiseenkov visited Facebook’s headquarters last year, and the US tech giant has made similar acquisitions in the past — buying Belarus facial filter startup MSQRD in March 2016. When asked if the company would consider a similar deal, co-founder Aram Airapetyan replied over email: “We want to go on doing what we do and what we can do best. The whole team is super motivated and passionately committed to what we do! So the rest doesn't matter (where, when, with whom).” Make of that what you will.

Try out New Google Allo for Web

Wednesday, August 16, 2017 Unknown 0 Comments Category : apps , social

Google Allo is now supported on the web, letting you carry on chats as you type away on your laptop or desktop without having to pick up your phone (a hassle, we know).

Web support for Allo was teased months ago, and now Google has made good on its promise, though there are a few important caveats.

First, you must have Allo on an Android phone in order to use the service on the web. iPhone support is "coming soon", but it's not available now. Second, Allo for web is supported by one browser at the moment: Google's own Chrome.

Amit Fulay, Allo's head of product, tweeted Google is "actively working on supporting more" browsers, though he didn't offer a timeline.

Allo for web is here! Try it on Chrome today. Get the latest Allo build on Android before giving it a spin https://t.co/OPn6Q5hdkg pic.twitter.com/awxr9wFvoD
— Amit Fulay (@amitfulay) August 15, 2017

Allo for web is paired with the Android app and needs the app in order to run, though a number of features are missing from the web.

These include the ability to connect/switch/remove Google accounts, add or remove members from an existing group, back up info, change privacy and notification settings, and take photos.

To fire up Allo for web, head to allo.google.com. You'll see a QR code on the page. On your phone, open the Allo app, then go to Menu > Allo for web > Scan QR code. Scan the QR code on your browser, and tada!

Google will no doubt flush out Allo for the web as time goes on, and with iPhone support on the way, more people will be able to use it soon.

This is a big move for Allo as it's struggled to catch on, especially compared to its companion app, the video chatting Google Duo. Duo currently has between 100,000,000 to 500,000,000 installs on Android, while Allo has between 10,000,000 to 50,000,000 on the platform.

Google's plan is to have Allo and Duo serve as its consumer chat services while Hangouts takes over the enterprise side's needs. Web support is an important piece to getting more people using Allo, but whether it's enough to win over users remains to be seen.

Instagram begins organizing comments into threads

Wednesday, August 16, 2017 Unknown 0 Comments Category : apps , social

Facebook announces News Feed interface changes with new camera features

Wednesday, August 16, 2017 Unknown 0 Comments Category : apps , Social news

Facebook today has announced a host of updates for both mobile and desktop users. Most notably, the company is making changes to how users go about navigating the News Feed on desktop and mobile, while the Camera functionality is also gaining a handful of new features.

First off, Facebook is gradually rolling out several changes to its iconic News Feed. For instance, the comment section is being dramatically overhauled to look more like chat bubbles. This change will also bring a new interface for replies that makes it a bit more apparent which posts are replies and which are original comments.

Furthermore, Facebook is working to make text a bit easier to read. The color contrast is being increased across the itnerface, while link preiews are getting bigger, profile pictures are becoming circular, and more:

Increased color contrast so that typography is more legible

Larger link previews so everything is easier to read

Updated icons and Like, Comment, and Share buttons that are larger and easier to tap

Circular profile pictures to show who’s posting or commenting

Finally, News Feed navigation is also being updated with more information about where links ultimately lead to and more:

See where a link will take you before clicking on it

See whose post you’re commenting on, reacting to, or reading while you’re in the post

Return to News Feed once you’ve finished reading via a more prominent back button

Image result for facebook announces newsfeed interface changes

In addition to the News Feed changes, the Facebook Camera interface is also undergoing a few enhancements of its own. For one, Facebook is officially rolling out the GIF creation feature that it started testing earlier this summer. This feature will allow users to record two-second GIFs and quickly share them via Facebook’s Story functionality, the News Feed, or via Messenger. It’s essentially Instagram’s Boomerang feature, but in Facebook.

Additionally, users can now start a live stream directly from the camera interface. Facebook hopes this will encourage more users to take advantage of their live platform. Finally, Camera gains support for creating text posts and sharing them in image form via Stories or the News Feed.

These updates are rolling out gradually to the Facebook mobile apps and desktop.

MIT Researchers designed an AI that coud detect food ingredients from photos

Monday, August 14, 2017 Unknown 0 Comments Category : apps , Artificial intelligence

Food doesn't always come with an ingredients label, but sometimes — when you've got an allergy, for instance, or if you're dying to make a restaurant dish at home — it sure would come in handy. MIT and QCRI researchers are trying to make that a possibility with Pic2Recipe, an artificial intelligence system designed to pick out a food's ingredients and recipe with just a photo.

Wow Right? But,

They're not the first to attempt such a feat. In 2014, Danish researchers used a dataset of 101,000 images to create an algorithm that eventually was able to identify food with 80 percent accuracy, but never got beyond that. Researchers at the City University of Hong Kong created such a system with 110,000 images and 65,000 recipes, and while it works fine, it's only Chinese cuisine.

Researchers from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) teamed up with the Qatar Computing Research institute to take this a little further. They used sites like Allrecipes.com and Food.com to amass a giant database of 800,000 images and more than 1 million recipes covering a wide range of dishes. Then they let a neural network loose on them to make connections between the recipes, their photos, and their ingredients lists.

Once it was done learning, Pic2Recipe could look at a picture of sugar cookies and successfully name eight out of its 11 ingredients. In fact, it did particularly well with baked goods, since the recipe sites had baking as a central focus. For more ambiguous dishes that could have a range of ingredients, like sushi rolls and smoothies, it didn't do as well, but the researchers are still working out the kinks. In the future, Pic2Recipe could start picking out nuances like preparation style (fresh vs. cooked tomatoes, for example) or certain variations on individual ingredients (white mushrooms vs. portabella). For now, the team has created an online version to let users try it on their own.

As systems like this get more advanced, the possibilities are huge. You could stealthily steal Susan's lasagna recipe at the potluck, sure, but you might also be able to know whether Evan's cookies have any allergens.

You could track the nutrition in your food with a snap of your camera, or even take a picture of the stuff in your fridge to get a customized recommendation for what to make for dinner tonight. Pic2Recipe is in its early stages right now, but researchers are working hard to make all of the those potentials a reality

This App Can Retouch Your Photos Before You Even Take Them

Friday, August 04, 2017 Unknown 0 Comments Category : apps , Media

Getty

The best camera you have is the camera you have on you, and more often than not that's probably your phone. A new machine learning system from MIT wants to help make phone pictures easier to take and better looking. It does this by automatically retouching any photo with the accuracy of a professional photographer, and it can run on a smartphone in real time, showing you what the best version of your picture would look like before you even take it.

"This technology has the potential to be very useful for real-time image enhancement on mobile platforms," says Jon Barron, a research scientist at Google who worked on the paper describing the system. "Using machine learning for computational photography is an exciting prospect but is limited by the severe computational and power constraints of mobile phones. This paper may provide us with a way to sidestep these issues and produce new, compelling, real-time photographic experiences without draining your battery or giving you a laggy viewfinder experience."

The algorithm looked at a data set of 5,000 photos taken with SLR cameras by various photographers. These photos included faces, buildings, locales, musical instruments, a wide variety. The researchers then hired five photography students in art school to adjust the photos for balancing color, tuning contrast, and other photographic metrics. After being comprehensively trained in Adobe Lightroom, the students created, as per the researchers request, "visually pleasing renditions" of the images.

After studying the images on pixel-level, the algorithm has gained a sense of what makes good photos pop, at least when it comes to things you could tweak in editing. The system could easily fit on a phone, Barron and his colleagues say it would take up the memory equivalent of a single photograph.

As far as machine learning photography systems go, getting nicer photos is a fairly timid goal. Many seem concerned with, inadvertently or on purpose, with creating nightmare fuel.

Older Posts