Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have developed Face Alive Icons, a software that can manipulate the picture of someone's face to show a range of emotions. Associated to an instant messenger like Skype or Windows Live Messenger, the smileys allow to change the chatter's face!

Once the user has uploaded a picture of himself with a neutral expression, he can warp the facial features by typing in common text symbols in his conversation ;)
Indeed, the picture is not sent with every smiley but a profile is stored the recipient device. This profile consists of a decomposition of the original photo. Every time the user sends an emoticon, the face is reassembled on the recipient's device in such a way as to show the appropriate expression.

To create the software, Li developed computational models for each type of expression using a learning program that analyzes the expressions stored in a database to identify features unique to each one.

At the moment, Face Alive Icons has been only incorporated into an application used for distance learning but we hope to use it also one day. More especially as Xin Li now works for Google. So what ? Google Talk ?


Source: TechnologyReview, tuesday.

3 employees of Google analyzed and summarized the behavior of more than 100,000 hard disks within their park. The study lasted nearly 5 years, from 2001 to 2006. The discs have a capacity from 80 to 400 Gb, assembled in parallel or serial, running from 5400 to 7200 RPM.

We learned, among others things, that there is no correlation between failure and a frequent use or a too high temperature.

The intensive use is an influential factor only during the first 6 months or after 5 years, whiwh is the average longevity of a hard disk. Oddly, a lower temperature can lead to a breakdown. Or of course a torrid heat...If a disc is in trouble, there is more chance that it will die sooner.

Source: Failure trends in a large disk drive population, last month.
For those who do not know: Revolutions per minute (abbreviated rpm, RPM, r/min, or r·min−1) is a unit of frequency, commonly used to measure rotational speed, in particular in the case of rotation around a fixed axis. It represents the number of full rotations something makes in one minute. The International System of Units (SI) unit for rotational velocity is the radian per second (rad·s−1).

Computer scientists at the University of Washington and Microsoft are developing software for organizing digital photos. OK, nothing new. But overall, it can compile images from common scenes to create 3D virtual environments.

Photo Tourism could be used for creating virtual tours, recreating events or even developing a map from all the photos from the Internet.

"You might look at a photo and say I wonder what's just to the left of it, or I wonder what's just to the right of it, or I wish I could expand the field of view," says Noah Snavely, explaining the frustration when searching photo on classical tools as Flickr.

Photo Tourism examines details shared by images and can tell if they're representing the same scene. If yes, it fuses them together in a 3D model. For a better description of the software, please see the video and for a trial, there is a java applet here (chose live demo).

Paul Thurrot explains that on the website Windows IT Pro. Despite the fact that he hasn't tested yet, and then maybe all this stuff is totally wrong, he seems to be well informed.

According to him and Microsoft's internal documents, it would be possible to install Windows Vista from an update DVD, and without having any other OS previously installed. That's about 3 times less expensive.

Here is the procedure. Quite easy:

1. Boot with the Windows Vista Upgrade DVD.
2. Click "Install Now."
3. Do not enter a Product Key When prompted.
4. When prompted, select the Vista product edition that you do have.
5. Install Vista normally.
6. Once the install is complete, restart the DVD-based Setup from within Windows Vista. Perform an in-place upgrade.
7. Enter your Product Key when prompted.

Source: Windows IT Pro, this monday.

The Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the company Cray announced a $200 million deal in June to complete the world’s most powerful computer in 2008.

This supercomputer, that Cray already nicknames Baker, is gonna use AMD Opteron dual-core to reach a peak speed of 1 peta-FLOPS.
1 FLOPS is a speed measure for computers: an Floating Point Operation Per Second.
1 peta-FLOPS, this is a million of billions of FLOPS.

For comparison, this computer, on which you read this article, can execute about 100 millions FLOPS, i.e. 10 millions times less than Baker!

Baker will be 3 times quicker than Blue Gene, the most powerful according to Top500, the official list of the most quick supercomputers.

update, this wednesday 23/08/2006: one can read on this pagethat Japanese researchers have already broken the petaFLOPS barrier. But not officialy because it cannot run the software required by the official rankings. Nevertheless, it's a computer emerging from the biotechnology that has cost $9 million and which is already asked by pharmaceutical companies to test the thousands of chemical compounds that could become the next miracle drug, as well as the ways that each will interact with the trillions of proteins in the human body.

Source: FCW.com, last week.

For those who do not know:

• Cray Inc. is a supercomputer manufacturer based in Seattle, Washington. The company's predecessor, Cray Research, Inc. (CRI), was founded in 1972 by computer designer Seymour Cray.

• Supercomputers introduced in the 1960s were designed primarily by Seymour Cray at Control Data Corporation (CDC), and led the market into the 1970s until Cray left to form his own company, Cray Research. He then took over the supercomputer market with his new designs, holding the top spot in supercomputing for 5 years (1985–1990).

• A multi-core microprocessor is one which combines two or more independent processors into a single package, often a single integrated circuit (IC). A dual-core device contains only two independent microprocessors.
  

Chip PC presents Jack PC, a wall socket of 3.4 inches² with 4 USB and a connector for a screen (VGA or DVI-I). Great for industry, for companies: everybody does not need a desktop.

Obviously, it's a terminal, not a complete workstation, and it's necessary to have a big centralized server behind this. Nevertheless, this terminal includes:

• processor AMD Alchemy AU1550 with a maximal frequency of 500 MHz. It's a RISC microprocessor, often used in the embedded world. Even the frequency is smaller than the processors we used to work with, it's a processor that has the same capacities than an Intel running at 1 GHz.
• max. 64 Mb FLASH memory (same type than USB memory-sticks)
• max. 128 Mb RAM

• max. 8 Mb video memory
• audio I/O
• 5 W of power consumption
• connection to current and LAN network via the wall, directly
• Operating System: Windows CE .Net + Internet Explorer 6
• Price: between 400 and 650 USD ...
  

Source: 01net, 3 days ago (even if this products exists since 7 months ;)

For those who do not know:
- An embedded system is a special-purpose system in which the computer is completely encapsulated by the device it controls. Unlike a general-purpose computer, such as a personal computer, an embedded system performs pre-defined tasks, usually with very specific requirements. Since the system is dedicated to a specific task, design engineers can optimize it, reducing the size and cost of the product. Embedded systems are often mass-produced, so the cost savings may be multipled by millions of items. Examples: routers, navigation systems, mobile phones, etc.
- Reduced Instruction Set Computer, or RISC, is a microprocessor CPU design philosophy that favors a simpler set of instructions that all take about the same amount of time to execute. The most common RISC microprocessors are AVR, PIC, ARM, DEC Alpha, PA-RISC, SPARC, MIPS, and IBM's PowerPC. RISC is often compared to CISC microprocessors (x86, ...)

While researchers of the Harvard university try to demonstrate that nanowire tranistors can reach speeds 4 times higher than the traditional silicone components, the University of Bath takes part in a study which could accelerate from 200 to 500 times the speed of the computers!

This study in 3 years aims at using the technique of Inverse Electron Spin Resonance to transmit electric signals without physical support. This process uses the magnetic field to guide the electrons and to modify their magnetic direction. That creates an oscillation of the electrons, which then start to produce their own energy microwave. This energy can then be used to broadcast electric signals without attenuation due to wires.

Anyway. It's about a wireless communication between small components: the semiconductors.
If this is successful, the Dr Alain Nogaret has good reasons to believe that such computers, based on such semiconductors, could be largely used until 5 to 10 years.

This could bring the Moore's Law back on business...

Something else. A good tip for an operation that we'll all do, one day or another: recovering pictures from a memory card trampled by a German shepherd of 32 kilos. For example ;)

The software Smart Recovery from PC Inspector is the ideal solution. A free software, therefore without limitation, clear, simple and powerful.

No, we aren't (yet) payed to say this, we just tested it with an SD card of which the two parts were not well any more stuck together. Not readable by any camera, by several computers under Windows2000 or XP or by a Pocket PC: no file on the drive.
Smart Recovery does a first scan, announces that the card is very damaged and that a meticulous scan has to be done. After confirmation, it perfectly recovers 72% of the pictures, and partially 16% (that could be easily reworked by Paint Shop Pro or Picasa). It's more that we expected.

Smart Recovery exists in many languages, no spyware or that kind of stuff, it runs on any version of Windows and can recover pictures of many formats on many types of cards: Flash Card, Smart Media, SONY Memory Stick, IBM Micro Drive, Multimedia Card, Secure Digital Card and others...

Anand Agarawala, a student of the Toronto's university, introduce this 3D desktop on his blog.
Presented at the CHI 2006 of Montreal and at a Demo Camp, it caused a true wave of enthusiasm. Now, Anand seeks a framing to develop this desktop on a machine running on Windows.

Now that we broke the prophetic myth around this law, let's continue… In 1975, ten years after this article, his statement underwent a small face lift (18 months instead of 2 years) but it was still correct ... until now.

End of year 2003, Intel wrote an article announcing that they could not decrease indefinitely the size of the components and that, around 2018, this particular point of the Moore's law won't be applicable anymore. And, end of year 2004, it was realized that the speed of processors does not really increase anymore. It's a long time we run at 4 GHz, Intel or not.

Obviously, the frequency is not an end: more components (transistors) during about 15 years and multi-core processors with a better distribution of the tasks.

And ya, let's note that the Moore's article described a future where everybody would have his own home-computer and where we would wear electronic watches!
1965...