interlude

two short pieces of very visual music for your enjoyment
4flies
7dots

indtv hiring

from boing-boing:

"INdTV, the media company founded by former Vice President Al Gore and entrepreneur Joel Hyatt, is hiring talent. It looks like they're specifically trying to recruit "young adults" with or without any experience -- but with an affinity for low-budget digital production, and a desire to learn. Video-bloggers or would-be correspondents comfortable with the idea of indie soup-to-nuts newsmaking will write, shoot, and edit their own segments."

from their site:
"Last May we acquired an existing television network that is currently available in almost 20 million U.S. homes. In 2005, we will debut a new network, a network featuring programming created by and for young adults INdTV is seeking emerging creative, journalistic, and production talent to join the network as Digital Correspondents (DCs). DCs will think, write, shoot, edit and potentially appear on-air. They will work in a fast-paced, competitive environment, alone and in teams, out in the field and traveling the world. They will work with some of the best programmers, producers and editors in the business. And some of the content they produce will become a part of our network programming."

whats interesting is that on thurs night from 7-8 in lucas 201, they are doing a recruitment event. not sure i can make it (presidental debate), but im tempted to hear what they have to say.

court rules against unlicensed sampling

already breaking my 'let's not repost stories' rule (but going along with discussions tonight), from /.:
An anonymous reader writes "Looks like there is no room at all for *any* sampling of "commercially protected" music. According to the open and future-looking judges, 'Get a license or do not sample. We do not see this as stifling creativity in any significant way.'" As the article puts it, this includes "minor, unrecognisable snippets of music." The decision was in the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals.

POV video

Similar to DARPA's Lifelog , Microsoft's MyLIfeBits, and Tripp's Thesis Project, now NASA's also interested in the videoblogging area:

NASA is interested in being able to take a device (i.e., a wearable computer) out into the field that, if there is a problem, video footage or photos could be taken and automatically uploaded to a server so that customers or managers could view it immediately. Lets say I have a problem out in the field and I'm two or three miles from my office. I have a camcorder or digital camera, and I have to go out there, take some footage or pictures, go back to my office, transfer it to my computer and then put it on the server where I can get to it, and finally go down to the conference room to show to my mangers. Instead, why not put something in the field that can take the video and automatically upload it to a server where it can be streamed out to a Web page, conference room, etc. Theoretically "in real time or near real time" a technician could be in the field working and a manager could see what's going on at the same time. The device we're working on would be able to accomplish this task.

(via arforum)

"Making Stories"

Interesting review from the Guardian with relevance to lifelog research:

"According to the distinguished psychologist and psychiatrist Jerry Bruner, "self is a perpetually rewritten story". We are all constantly engaged in "self-making narrative" and "in the end we become the autobiographical narratives by which we 'tell about' our lives"."
The idea of the self as something wholly constructed out of the narratives we create about our lives has become a staple across the humanities. But it's utter nonsense, says Galen Strawson, considering Making Stories by Jerome Bruner.

Life archive

"Camera specs take candid snaps"
Story from BBC NEWS:

Soon your sunglasses could help you capture all the important moments of your life. A prototype pair of sunglasses with a camera built in to them has been created by Hewlett Packard researchers. "It means you now have a wearable camera which nobody will notice and can take pictures while being involved in events," said Huw Robson from Hewlett Packard. But experts say there could be privacy implications if this sort of technology becomes part of everyday life.

Frame your shots

The sunglasses developed at the Hewlett Packard labs in Bristol in the west of England sport a camera that constantly takes images of what a wearer sees. The camera also has an off-switch to preserve privacy.

This is part of the story of electronics becoming smaller and embedded in everything and cheap enough so that people can afford it
Huw Robson, HP Digital Media Lab
"If you are capturing your life as you walk around and you can simply and easily filter through that when you get home and get the important shots, that is going to be of great value to people," said Mr Robson, manager of the Bristol Digital Media Lab.
"Clearly that means that you get a lot of images and part of the problem that we are solving is how do you sort through those images to find the good images among all the junk," he told the BBC programme Go Digital.

To tackle image overload, the HP system captures information about images, called metadata, too.

This extra data keeps track of how and where a picture was taken and can spot if a subject was walking or turning.

The system also inspects images to see if people are smiling or looking directly at the camera lens.

"That sort of information can help us with the image processing," said Mr Robson, "to look at pictures and qualify them."

"This lets us judge whether they are good pictures in terms of composition and how well are they framed, but also in terms of the timing," he said, "is it the right sequence of images?"

The images can be processed in a handheld computer attached to the sunglasses or on a conventional home computer.

Disturbing trend

The camera glasses have already been tested in the real world. One triallist used them to take images of their children playing catch, while another wore a pair while playing football.

"This is part of the story of electronics becoming smaller and embedded in everything and cheap enough so that people can afford it," said Mr Robson.

But some are concerned about the notion of people being able to secretly take candid snapshots of the world around them.

"It's a cool piece of technology but frankly the idea of people wandering around wearing sunglasses photographing me all the time is really disturbing," said technology analyst Bill Thompson.

"HP need to look at the implications on privacy and stuff like that before they flood the market with these."

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/technology/3111004.stm

LifeLog

LifeLog is interested in three major data categories: physical data, transactional data, and context or media data. “Anywhere/anytime” capture of physical data might be provided by hardware worn by the LifeLog user. Visual, aural, and possibly even haptic sensors capture what the user sees, hears, and feels. GPS, digital compass, and inertial sensors capture the user’s orientation and movements. Biomedical sensors capture the user’s physical state. LifeLog also captures the user’s computer-based interactions and transactions throughout the day from email, calendar, instant messaging, web-based transactions, as well as other common computer applications, and stores the data (or, in some cases, pointers to the data) in appropriate formats. Voice transactions can be captured through recording of telephone calls and voice mail, with the called and calling numbers as metadata. FAX and hardcopy written material (such as postal mail) can be scanned. Finally, LifeLog also captures (or at least captures pointers to) the tremendous amounts of context data the user is exposed to every day from diverse media sources, including broadcast television and radio, hardcopy newspapers, magazines, books and other documents, and softcopy electronic books, web sites, and database access.

LifeLog can be used as a stand-alone system to serve as a powerful automated multimedia diary and scrapbook. By using a search engine interface, the user can easily retrieve a specific thread of past transactions, or recall an experience from a few seconds ago or from many years earlier in as much detail as is desired, including imagery, audio, or video replay of the event. In addition to operating in this stand-alone mode, LifeLog can also serve as a subsystem to support a wide variety of other applications, including personal, medical, financial, and other types of assistants, and various teaching and training tools. As increasing numbers of people acquire LifeLogs, collaborative tasks could be facilitated by the interaction of LifeLogs, and properly anonymized access to LifeLog data might support medical research and the early detection of an emerging epidemic. Application of the LifeLog abstraction structure in a synthesizing mode will eventually allow synthetic game characters and humanoid robots to lead more "realistic" lives. However, the initial LifeLog development is tightly focused on the stand-alone system capabilities, and does not include the broader class of assistive, training, and other applications that may ultimately be supported.

Super Diary Worries Privacy Activists

DARPA RFP