Capitalogix

Can A Beautiful Mind Create a Beautiful Face?

A team of scientists recently developed software that, using a carefully tested and proven understanding of facial proportion, greatly improves the attractiveness of your face without damaging your defining features or whether people will recognize that the picture is of you.

Ever seen a picture of yourself that was a little too good? You’re still you, just a tiny bit better than the real-life you. That’s what this software supposedly does. 

The inventor says this technology could become a product or web service where people upload their photographs and have them enhanced or beautified by the software. 

So, if there was an “optimize portrait” button on Facebook, would a lot of people use it? Probably.

Here is a short video.

Here is a direct link to the video.

Related Articles:

• Examples of Digital Beautification.
• Reuters Article.
• Is Face Improvement Ethical?
• Researchers Promise to Make a More Attractive You.

"Stand By Me" Music Video from the Playing for Change: Peace Through Music Project

I saw this and thought it was worth sharing.  It is a video of different musicians, around the globe, combining their talents to create a worthwhile version of of the classic "Stand By Me". 

Here is the direct link to the video.

"Playing for Change: Peace Through Music" isn't really a documentary as much as a global concert film, recorded on the streets of New Orleans, Barcelona, South Africa, Tibet and elsewhere.  The filmmakers (Mark Johnson and Jonathan Walls) traveled across the globe, finding musicians to record versions of "Stand By Me" and Bob Marley's "One World" by themselves, and without any of the individual musicians ever having met each other. The finished project combines these performances to create an a "music video" of these artists playing together on these inspirational songs, as well as playing their own music.

The purpose of the project is to help impoverished people in the areas visited, and to show how music brings people together regardless of their cultural differences.  Find out more at Playing For Change.

Turn Talking Into Typing, Automatically

Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 gets it right.  Finally speech recognition that is surprisingly accurate, even with little or no training.  Here is a 20-second video of me talking - and it typing.

I wrote about using dictation before.  This is different, because it gets smarter as you use it. There are easy ways to edit results, and the program learns from each correction.

For me, I know it works because I find myself using it to create drafts of many things.  And if it wasn't easier and more convenient than typing ... I wouldn't use it.  Instead, I often wait to create the draft at the computer with Dragon NaturallySpeaking.  The writing ends-up sounding more natural if the first draft was spoken.

This program has matured nicely.  Earlier versions were temperamental and took a long time to train.  This one worked out-of-the-box.  I use it with a simple usb microphone (not even the noise-canceling headset they include). It also works with my handheld Olympus voice recorder.

Give it a try.

"Now" Widget

I saw this and spent some time watching the items change. 

It's got lots of tickers and content that change as you watch.  You just weren't aware that you would enjoy knowing how many emails are being sent or spam emails being received.  There are also recent news updates from The New York Times, CNN, Newsvine, top Google searches of the day, and lots more.

Here are some tidbits from the background audio patter.

• "Welcome to Now," the computer says.
• "How about a big bowl of Now?"
• "Please keep your hands inside the moment."
• "Your hair has grown 5 millionths of centimeter in the last second."
• "It is Now in all timezones."

Very clever and well-done.

Below is a limited version.  The link to the complete version is below. 

Click to play with the full widget.  Here is a screenshot of it - and, yes, that is me in the middle.

Seemingly Endless Elections

The election is finally over.

Did you take the Red Pill or the Blue Pill?  No, not that blue pill.

Regardless, it seemed to take forever.  Didn't it?

Here is a political cartoon that sums it up well.

from Boston Globe.

Also, here is a skit from Saturday Night Live.  This provides an interesting commentary on how elections are changing.  John McCain appears live, the weekend before election day, and participates in what I took to be gallows humor.  Was it a Maverick move?

Here is a link to a description of the jokes. (CSMonitor Blog)

Since I indulging in a little election humor, here is one more that made me smile.

from USAToday

Staying Informed and Up-To-Date

 Last week I went to visit my son, Ben, at a Duke University parents weekend. This April, I will return for my 25th reunion. A lot has changed since I was in college.

One of the biggest changes I noticed was how much information the Internet puts at each person's fingertips, regardless of where they are on campus. Doing research no longer means a trip to the library. And books, magazines or newspapers are a distant second-place to online research and news items.

Staying informed is a big part of my business as well. I used to receive several newspapers daily; and my morning routine started by scanning them cover-to-cover and clipping items that might be of interest to me are someone I knew. I rarely read a newspaper anymore, except when I'm on airplanes.

Now, my daily routine uses news-feed readers and web sites to access a wide variety online content. This is a great way to sort, sift, filter, and act on relevant information.

So, this week, I want to share some of the news sites that I find useful.

News Aggregators:

These are sites that combine news from many sources and create an updated mash up of information it gives me a quick view into what's happening each day.

The Basics: There are no surprises here; still Google News and Yahoo! News are so good that I have to list them anyway.

Next Generation: Some of the newer aggregation sites are quite clever.  Here are a few that I really enjoy:

• NewsCred: Easily personalized to pick sources and rank by credibility.
• Topix: Comprehensive and well categorized. Has a nice look and feel. Uses RSS well.
• Newser: Nice summaries and related links. Uses pictures well, too.
• Daylife: an example of an intelligent content service platform (read: little human editing).
• Newsvine: well done; with social-sourced news flagging.
• Regator: Specialty is organizing and finding blog posts.
• Slate: A little different than the others; more editorial content.

Slate has a number of interesting features.  Today's Papers summarizes current newspaper coverage.  Another summarizes current magazine stories.  And a third, called Today's Business Press, does just what you'd expect. 

All three are quick to read and well done.

Also worth checking: Digg, Technorati, and Techmeme.

Tune-Up Your iTunes Music Collection, Automatically

For years I took my music collection for granted. I ripped many of my old CDs to disk, and simply allowed the computer to save the information anyway it chose to. Over time, it became clear that there were mistakes, missing information and, in general ... a mess.

After several limited attempts to clean my collection manually, I started looking for a better way. I certainly found something that worked for me. It's called Tune-Up.

Tune-up is a software add-on designed to clean your iTunes music collection. For me, that means fixing and standardizing the artist, album, song titles, and other data that helps me find the right music for my mood. I also appreciate how well it finds and updates cover art for songs and albums.

Tune-Up accomplishes a lot of its magic by connecting to various data services (like Gracenote's MusicID).  While Tune-Up does most of the heavy lifting, I appreciate that it allows me to have the final say. It's very easy to accept its suggestions; yet, I still have the ability to ignore or override it based on how I want my music categorized.

There's also feature that recognizes the song you're playing and displays other relevant information, like related concert dates in your area, links to videos by the artist, and recommendations about other songs or albums you might like.

Bottom line:  This tool saved me a lot of time and works better than the other tools I've tried.

If you don't use iTunes, or just want to check-out another good alternative, you can also look at MediaMonkey. And if you want a clean your music collection by finding duplicate tracks or to clean-out entries where you deleted or moved the actual music file, I recommend looking at Marklesoft's Dupe Eliminator.

Tough Week?

Last week I wrote that trading is often stressful; and learning how to handle the emotional and physiological response patterns is an important step toward long-term success.

This week the markets were at their manic-depressive best, which can be tough for traders.  Investors were like hyperactive first graders playing musical chairs.

Here are some funny videos of how some people handle their tough week.

The first video shows a man beating his computer.  There is something primal about it that makes it memorable.  I saw this many years ago.  Yet I find myself thinking about this one from time-to-time.  So, I put it first.

Here is the direct link.

I saw this one on on the Huffington Post.  It has a lot going on; way too much to describe.  It is more fun to just watch, anyway.

Here is the direct link.

Finally, this one shows a man in a coffee shop freaking-out after his computer hangs, apparently he has a presentation to give in ten-minutes, so getting arrested seemed like a good idea.

Here is the direct link.  (Hat-Tip to Gelflog)

Before He Trades Video

This tongue-in-cheek music video, called "Before He Trades," re-makes a popular Carrie Underwood song as a trading reminder.

Here is the direct link.  From John Carter.

New Imaging Tools Will Change How You Access Information

Photosynth is a new technology from Microsoft.  It is software that could transform the way we look at digital images. Using still photos (and more), Photosynth builds a breathtaking new form of composite image, and lets us navigate them.  This service turns multiple photos of a scene or site -- say, an art gallery or a building -- into a 3-D scene you can virtually "walk" through on the Web.

Ten-years ago I saw something like this; it was the interface to a game called Myst.  It was ground-breaking at the time.

In the early phase of adoption for Photosynth, I expect to see things like the 3-D rendering of the Canals in Venice.  It is an easily accessible way to explore the concept.  Soon, however, this could evolve into a new way to hyper-link a wide range of data, meta-data, and business information.

To get a better idea of what this can do, watch this video from the Ted Conference introducing Photosynth.

Think about how much the web has already changed how you do research?  Also, because it is so easy to do now, think how much more research you do.  For example, I'm amazed at how often I search Google or Wikipedia. Similarly, I use sites like Digg, Technorati, Regator, and various blogs to find relevant information - even if I didn't know I was looking for it.

Photosynth is different, and in some ways a step beyond, those research tools.  It is graphics-centric instead of text-centric.  And I can imagine a new type of front-end (a new framework) for accessing information stored virtually anywhere.  Consequently, I expect to see a lot more of this, and things like it.

Click here to explore some interesting Synths.  You can make your own, too.  For example, here is a link to a Photosynth of, my son, Ben's dorm room at Duke.  It took him about a half-hour to make it.

Note: you can use arrows on the screen to navigate a Photosynth image; and the "Space Bar" is helpful, too, because it jumps to the next cluster of 3-D images.