Wired:

This is amazing. Zdenek Kalal, a student at University of Surrey, England, has developed an object-tracking software named ‘Predator’. It is uncanny. As a biomedical engineer, I am familiar with the development of these algorithms and the difficulties that they entail. Kalal’s solution works flawlessly in a number of tricky scenarios that really show the power of his software:

After telling it what to look for (by dragging a box over the onscreen image) the Predator gets to work. Within seconds it can recognize patterns, objects and faces and track them as they shrink, grow and rotate. When Kalal hides from the camera and holds up a sheet of paper with his photo among a patchwork of thumbnails, Predator picks his face out immediately.

This technology could help a great deal in the development of many exciting new applications. The possibilities are endless.

Seeing it work, it’s almost scary. Certainly, the name ‘Predator’ seems appropriate, though it does very little to ease my concerns. I swear, the day that someone decides to launch a new product named ‘Skynet)’ I will retreat to the North Pole with nothing but a fishing rod and a bottle of vodka.

Via @LettersOfNote.

Anyone can be an idealist. Anyone can be a cynic. The hard part lies somewhere in the middle i.e. being human.

Hugh Macleod, How To Be Creative: 29, 08-22-04

The fifth version of Rands in Repose has been a long time coming, but it’s close. The design is done and the migration of content is mostly complete. The process of learning an entirely new publishing platform is underway and mostly painless. What remains is an ever-growing list of details supplied by the act of starting.

Rands finally started updating his blog (not that there was anything wrong with it), and shares some valuable insight on the intricacies of getting started. This article is easily one of my favorites, with great tips on how to trigger our own creativity engines and save the day.

There’s also a bit of news on the technical front, but nothing too surprising at this point:

More importantly, there hasn’t been a driving need to update the site - just the increasing stench of death emanating from the MovableType platform.

Yes, Rands finally bids farewell to MovableType. This is understandable, since its parent company, Six Apart, is being sold around more or less every two days. Not exactly a great way to portray confidence in a product.

I’m eager to know what his new publishing platform of choice will be. If I were a betting man my money would be on Wordpress, since in my experience it would probably be the easiest platform to migrate to. However, I’m secretly hoping for him to come out with something really geeky, new and unexpected. In any case, he definitely knows a great deal more about this stuff than I do, so we’ll see.

Passion and emotion have always been my motivation for writing. I am a passionate person — we all are — and writing is one of the ways I’ve found to express those emotions. I’d like to get better at it, and slowly I am learning a little bit more every day.

Brave, honest, and charming the way we know him. Good luck, Shawn.

Onward!

It’s that time of year again when we look back at those who inflicted mental cruelty and suffering on us over the last 12 months, shake our fists at the heavens, and cry “WHYYYYYYYYYYY?!”

Great top-ten list of the most bizarre Apple coverage of the year. As usual, brought to you by our brown, furry friend, The Macalope.

After testing a feature and evaluating its merits, if we learn it doesn’t improve the user experience or serve our mission, we’ll remove that feature. Rather than continue to make changes to the QuickBar as it exists, we removed the bar from the update appearing in the App Store today.

Interesting move, even if it’s heavily PR-motivated. It takes guts to recognize a mistake. At least this shows two things: 1) Twitter still listens to its users; and 2) they are not nearly as dumb as people thought lately.

Via @asymco.

John Gruber:

So here’s the Android bait-and-switch laid bare. Android was “open” only until it became popular and handset makers dependent upon it. Now that Google has the handset makers by the balls, Android is no longer open and Google starts asserting control. Andy Rubin, Vic Gundotra, all of them: shameless, lying hypocrites.

Uauh. Strong words. I know it’s not exactly protocol to link to a link, but this one is warranted.

Nice idea. Now, those of you who can actually read “Google” there, raise your hand.

Feel the fear and do it anyway.

Susan Jeffers, Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, 1988

These are so full of WIN. Especially this one. Not the nerdiest one, I’ll admit. But then again, The Son of Man) by René Magritte is my favorite painting of all time.

Big thanks and a Via to @gedeon for pointing these out.