Vincenzo Carabillo' » Digital Imaging

Human computation

Vincenzo Carabillo' — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 08:01:30 +0000

This is a very interesting video in which you will find many of the new aspects of Web2.0. The point is that a cooperative effort of humans can solve some of the greatest problems of Artificial Intelligence. Think about captcha: these are small problems created by computers, that the computer itself is not able to solve, but relatively easy for an average human.

Speaking to "think out of boxes", the video reported below can give some insights and interesting point of views about the new cooperative way to rewrite the web.

Google Street View

Vincenzo Carabillo' — Thu, 31 May 2007 06:15:35 +0000

A few days ago Google launched a new feature for the already marvelous Google Maps : Street View.
Have a look to this YouTube presentation:

The "walkable" cities are at the moment San Francisco, New York, Las Vegas, Denver and Miami, but the list will be extended soon. Take a look at this page, and start walking in Vegas!

Canon S3

Vincenzo Carabillo' — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 22:28:08 +0000

This is a quick summary/review of my Canon Powershot S3 IS, pointing out the positive and negative sides of it. I bought this camera in August, and I’m very happy with it. The money value is very good, and at the moment the best compromise for a good camera without the cost (and volume) of digital SLR cameras and with huge and expensive objectives.

what is POSITIVE:
- picture quality: sharp pictures and good tonalities
- tilting monitor to take pictures from every angle
- 12x zoom opens new horizons to creativity
- amazing battery life
- uses normal AAA batteries
- many manual controls ans settings, but also superb "auto" mode
- strong enough flash light
- user friendly menu, easy to learn
- best camera in this price range
- very fast OFF<->ON time, fast continuos shots
- small enough to fit in a small bag
- silent during operation and zoom (very low noise)
- very good microphone sensitivity and sound recorder mode
- good plastic quality (shock resistant), black color
- 6 megapixels is enough for sharp A3 pictures… need more?

what is NEGATIVE:
- purple fringing at big zoom, can’t be better in such cameras
- some noise in dark pictures without flash
- MJPG video compression: takes a lot of memory space

CONCLUSION:
After using it extensively, I recommend it without dubts for amateur photographers. Other competitors with similar cameras deliver worse picture quality. Amazon delivered in a shock-proof packaging in two days. Very professional. I recommend a fast SD-card. I took a 2-gig Sandisk Extreme III card, and I’m satisfied to have such a fast response from my camera.