ross millar » technology

Pixlr – image editing webapp that works… well.

ross millar — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 17:24:13 +0000

Remember all the hype about Adobe’s Photoshop web app? Pixlr kicks its ass all over the interwebs. It’s free, no need to set up an account, runs fast, and it even has Layers. Pretty advanced for a webapp, it won’t do your RAW processing, but well worth checking out for simple jpg edits for the web. They’re adding new features all the time, so it’ll will likely get much better.

I Love Moore’s Law

ross millar — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 14:22:40 +0000

Last week my wife and I went out to get her a new cell phone. She has always liked my Sony Ericsson K790i with the 3.2MP camera. I like it too, while not a good camera, it makes for a pretty good cameraphone. I’ve never seen the logic in almost unusable 1.3MP cameraphones. To my surprise, the vendor had displayed front, center and shiny the 5MP Sony Ericsson K850i.

Nuts! Now my wife has a better cameraphone than I do.

“Are you jealous that I have a better phone than you?” She asks with a smirk,
“No, Moore’s Law dictates when it comes time for my phone replacement, I’ll be getting a better camera than you.” I said, concealing my gadget envy.

Turns out I didn’t have to deal with the envy for long, here’s my next cameraphone, well the sensor at least, Samsung has announced a 8MP CMOS sensor that is the worlds smallest, specifically designed for cell phones. Due for production this fall. Moore’s Law, I love you.

The new module, which is 10% more compact than current solutions, will have an ISO 1600 sensitivity, anti-shake capability, face detection technology, 1-cm macro and an automated shoot mode that is activated by silly, smiling faces.

via Gizmodo

Google in Space

ross millar — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 13:30:53 +0000

Ok, ok, so I like Google, I often have a hard time with it given my disdain for corporations, but who can deny the innovation coming out of the ‘plex?

sky.google.com, mars.google.com, moon.google.com

overloaded?

ross millar — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 13:23:16 +0000

Find yourself overloaded trying to keep up with the latest interwebs? Check out Alltop it’s an ultra clean aggregator that was inspired by Popurls.

lens reviews at dpreview.com

ross millar — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 22:37:20 +0000

I’ve been a fan of dpreview ever since a friend introduced me to the site. Yesterday they launched a lens review section, well needed in my opinion, with 4 reviews at the time of writing. You can read about the technical end of the lens review process, as well as the development of the new section here. Here’s an excerpt:

At the heart of the reviews is a unique interactive ‘widget’ has been designed to present the test results in a way that allows visitors to experiment visually with variables such as focal length and aperture and see immediately the effect such changes have on overall image quality, and to compare the performance of different lenses. The user-friendly presentation ensures that even those with limited technical knowledge of optics or digital imaging will be able to use the reviews.

Tagged In Motion

ross millar — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 00:58:15 +0000

Tagged in Motion – a very cool 3D graffiti project:

Via Core77

fine technical writing

ross millar — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 03:34:40 +0000

So my current employer bought a HP Pavilion laptop for the shop floor today, mostly for CNC/DNC communications and part program management. This is a photo of step six in the quick start poster, after the mostly obvious: insert battery, plug in power supply, turn device on etc. The first two of the seven items in the photo sound like fun, as does the fourth. The third is arguable (I don’t enjoy setting up networks, but I know some who might), but the last two? “Creating recovery disks” and “Protecting the computer from viruses”. I can’t think of anything I’d rather be doing, can you?

Who comes up with this stuff? The people who bring you reality TV? Here’s an idea, leave out step six – it is a “quick start” guide after all.

laser tag is cool

ross millar — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 00:24:38 +0000

Graffiti Research Lab (GRL) is a project of Eyebeam OpenLab. This is a video of GRL in Rotterdam with their Laser Tag, basically, a crazy powerful laser pointer and a laptop running their open source software linked to a camera and a projector:

Wanna build one over the winter? read more