Concept camera features onboard Photoshop

It seems I am not the only person daydreaming of the day point-and-shoots will be shipped with Photoshop. This conceptual shooter seen on petitinvention.com is a vision of what shooters in the future should look like--great design with a full-fledged image-editing application installed.

According to the design, this camera can automatically detect and erase people from the shot, leaving only the scene. Other than landscape photographers, I really cannot think of any reason to use this feature. Imagine activating this while on vacation and you return home only to find that everyone has been erased. Well, there's always the next holiday.

I am still game for the idea of having even a scaled-down version of Photoshop in my camera. Of course, a touchscreen display would be nice, with full-frame sensor and more.

Via: Petitinvention

Are chemical elements falling off the periodic table?

If you thought crude oil was being depleted, due to ever-increasing demand, and some animals such as polar bears were on the verge of extinction because of climate changes, they aren't the only one. Chemical elements are also heading the same way.

Armin Reller, a material chemist at Germany's University of Augsburg, predicts (read: warning us) that some chemical elements will not last for more than 30 years.

For instance, gallium (atomic number 31 in the periodic table) will not last for more than a decade. It has a very low boiling point and unwillingness to oxidize, thus making it suitable for LCDs.

Indium (49) and hafnium (72), which are hard to find, are used mainly in computer chips and also the control rods for nuclear reactors. They could therefore be gone around 2017. Meanwhile, zinc (30) and copper (29) will disappear in two decades, although they are not rare.

Just like oil, we are using them up faster than we can find them. If elements start falling off the periodic table, that's a bad omen for the environment.

Credit: fermat.csci.unt.edu

Prominent videogame institute opens in Singapore

The new DigiPen campus in Singapore
DigiPen is not the name of some new tablet pointing device. It's the name of an institute that offers degree courses which relate directly to videogame design. The school has two campuses in the US, and today, it officially opened one more in Singapore. Founder and president of the institute, Claude Comair, was in town for the opening and gave an overview of the purpose of the school and what it hopes to achieve in the island-state. From the time it set up shop in Washington till today, the number of companies creating videogames around it has increased from below 10 to more than 100. Comair is hoping the same effect will occur with the Singapore campus.

In case you are wondering what the big deal is about this school, consider the work of some of its graduates. Portal, the award-winning game developed and published by Valve Corporation, was first conceived by some DigiPen students who were employed by the company upon graduation. Other famous games worked on by past graduates have included Mario vs Donkey Kong 2: March of the Minis (Nintendo) and Blood II: The Chosen (Monolith Productions). Imagine, the chance that a future hit game in 2011 may just come from your own backyard. The first line of the Portal theme song, Still Alive, truly describes its awesomeness: "This was a triumph."

A projector in your phone

Egads! Just had to say it since Korea Electronics Technology Institute (KETI)'s EGD module simply begs for it. That aside, this shouts geek appeal since it's a 110g device that can basically throw pictures off your mobile device to a 60-inch full-color SVGA image 2m away. What we know is that it can receive picture input signals like S-video, composite, component and analog RGB, and comes equipped with controller that can realize 3D images. Lest we get too excited about the potential waiting to be unleashed here--from billboard-type messages to sales pitches--the Eye Glass Display is still in gestation mode, folks. But at least it won't be long before we can turn our mobile phones into portable video projectors for impromptu movie marathons.

Via Ubergizmo

Printf("hello, world!"); Google Code Jam begins July 16

This one is for all you geeks out there.

The global Google Code Jam is back with a top prize of US$10,000. Registration has already begun and you could be a professional programmer, or just one who likes to write codes to annoy the hell out of others. If you meet the eligibility rules, you can take part.

The top 100 contestants from the local onsite rounds will be flown on an all-expenses-paid trip to Mountain View, California, for the finals. Of course, you'll have to make it through the qualification and online rounds first.

Now, before you click to register, here's what you should know from the Terms and Conditions. Although you'll retain the full intellectual and property rights to your codes, "Google shall have a perpetual, irrevocable, world-wide, royalty-free right to use, copy, distribute, modify and make publicly available the submission in connection with the operation, conduct, administration, and advertising and promotion of the Contest".

In addition, your source codes will be made available for all users to view and download at the end of the competition and you will allow other contestants to have a "world-wide, royalty-free right to use, copy, and modify all submitted source code".

And a little bit of background trivia just so you know what you are getting into. The previous global Code Jam was held in 2006 with finalists from China, Hong Kong, Korea and Japan in Asia slugging it out for top honors. The prize money? US$10,000 (guess they didn't factor in inflation).

Or if you are a wimp, you can choose to be a spectator and watch the true geeks battle it out. Now's the right time to get our Rock Band console out for a real jamming session.

Image is a screen grab from the Google Code Jam Web site.

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