Thinks

Oct
12th

Wed

Women who are on the pill when they pick a mate end up with longer-lasting relationships than those who are not. The downside? Less satisfaction in the sack, apparently.

—

From New Scientist article Pill helps women pick faithful mates, not sexy ones, quoting research by Dr Craig Roberts, Senior Lecturer in Evolution & Behaviour, social Psychology and Psychology at the University of Stirling.

As stated at the end of the summary in the paper, the use of oral contraception has implications for human reproductive behaviour, family cohesion and quality of life.

Oct
11th

Tue

iPhone App Sales, Exposed | TechCrunch

From article on 2010 iPhone development stats:

“Survey of sales data from 124 app developers with market applications ranging in price from 99 cents to $79.99”

“The average total number of units sold was 101,024 copies within an average period of 261 days. The average number of units sold per day was 387.”

“Average total development cost amounting to $6,453”

“on average here, iPhone developers are seeing a return of more than 15 times their initial, albeit small, development costs”

“However, when the top 10% of the most successful apps are removed from the data set, the numbers skew much lower, giving a far better impression of what the iPhone industry looks like for most developers. In this scenario, the average sales were 11,625 total units, averaging 44 copies/day.”

Digging a bit deeper:

This last statement is quite telling. Most developers sell closer to a 10th of the global average, making the statement “seeing a return of more than 15 times their initial, albeit small, development costs” look more like 1.5 times the initial development costs. Rather small margins for the average app developer.

The article states that the average cost of an app is $5.49 but admit that this is skewed by outliers. And the have not weighted the app costs by sales volumes. When you do this you get an average cost of $1.81. Alternatively, look at the median cost. They only provide details on 50 (not clear if these are random) so, looking at them, the median cost of an app is £1.99. These figures feel much closer to reality.

Anecdotally, a comment by Seligman Ventures Ltd developer in the article states that his suite of 35 apps make circa £160 per week, although I would not describe these as premium apps.

Oct
10th

Mon

Dart : Structured web programming

Google launches Dart, an open source web development language aimed to overcome Javascript’s failings. The code will run natively in a VM or cross-compile to Javascript.

Specifically, their design goals are:

Create a structured yet flexible programming language for the web.
Make Dart feel familiar and natural to programmers and thus easy to learn.
Ensure that all Dart language constructs allow high performance and fast application startup.
Make Dart appropriate for the full range of devices on the web—including phones, tablets, laptops, and servers.
Provide tools that make Dart run fast across all major modern browsers.

Oct
6th

Thu

Brain-machine-brain interface lets monkeys not only control a virtual arm but also get ‘tactile’ feedback.

I think the claim to ‘sensing texture’ could be misleading because although they are getting sensory feedback about the object, the sensory feedback is quite different to the sensation of feeling texture. Nevertheless, the potential to get any sensory information directly into the brain from an artificial limb is pretty amazing.

The published paper.

(via Monkeys Use Brain Interface to Move and Feel Virtual Objects - IEEE Spectrum)

Sep
26th

Mon

Fantastic video from Greg Tran, a recent graduate from Harvard Graduate School of Design. This is his thesis concept on augmented architecture, here is his presentation text entitled Mediating Mediums - The Digital 3D presentation

The way AR can change the way spaces operate is most interesting, although I suspect health and safety will have to get involved as soon as people start walking into walls or off balconies.

Following a Google Map into a busy road is the users’s responsibility; however, if the environment is being augmented then the publisher might have to take some responsibility.

(via Weekly Linkfest « Games Alfresco)

Sep
19th

Mon

More Kinect-based robotics development opportunities are opening as Microsoft’s beta Robotics Developer Studio launches, incorporating the full Kinect SDK with skeleton tracking, speech, and the raw Kinect data stream for creating 3D maps of your house (or anything else).

Two other Kinect-based robotics kits using ROS are BiliBot and TurtleBot. As yet, no Roomba-based Kinect mash-ups apart from the example below.

(via Microsoft Releases Robotics Developer Studio 4 Beta, New Robot Platform - IEEE Spectrum)

Sep
9th

Fri

Word Lens from Quest Visual is an excellent example of AR put to good use. It translates text on-the-fly in video streams, like a vision-based Babel fish.

It only provides simple dictionary translation but does it with great elegance. I love the way it translates in-situ; overlaying the translated text in matching colours. Maybe matching font style in the next version?

(via Quest Visual showcases Word Lens)

Sep
8th

Thu

Home 3D printing is more affordable and faster than ever. Currently the fastest is the Ultimaker (above) based on the MakerBot lineage; From the RepMan lineage there are other variations such as the RepMan Pro.

(via Incredibly fast 3D printing with the Ultimaker - Hack a Day)

Aug
8th

Mon

Brave Banana Flame have licensed Zugara’s Augmented Reality E-Commerce software “The Webcam Social Shopper” (WSS) so web shoppers can try on any and all of their clothes.

The system uses face-tracking (that I could not get to work too well) to get approximate position, then buttons for fine tuning the size and position. Once set-up is complete the user can flick through different clothes which are displayed as static 2D overlays (‘billboards’). There is no tracking at this stage.

I believe the use of printed marker would have been better for several reasons:

Tracking would have been reliable and automatic; the user could jump straight to the final viewing mode without the need for (sometimes unreliable) face-tracking followed by repositioning and scaling;
The sizes of the clothes could be shown correctly to scale because the marker would be of known size, adding practical application to the process;
The cloths would feel for more ‘real’ (even as 2D billboards) as they will move to the user’s body movements and orientation in real-time.

(via We Are Organized Chaos - An Interactive Marketing and Advertising Blog » Blog Archive » Launching Today: The 1st Online Retailer to Integrate Augmented Reality Throughout Entire Site)

Bloke who can’t stop bouncing up and down in a dress in his livingroom and at one point appears to be sporting virtual breasts. This lasting impression detracts from a reasonably interesting tech demo that uses a Kinect to help realistically map clothes onto your body.

(via Arbuzz – hompage » Wirtualna przymierzalnia)