Category: Emerging Innovations

September 5, 2014

Emerging Innovations

014. [Infrastructure, Culture, Processes] iCloud, Cloud Storage, Privacy and Consumer Imaging

Disclaimer: this article discusses the usage of cloud storage in consumer imaging in relation to the recent leak of a batch private images of public figures. The article focuses on this from a technological perspective – examining the shift from data stored personally to the cloud. I have not reviewed the images myself and refer…
September 2, 2014

Emerging Innovations

013. [Technology, Infrastructure, Processes] Imagga Automatic Image Tagging API

Bulgarian start-up Imagga has developed what it describes as “Powerful image recognition APIs for automated categorizations & annotation of visual content.” Using the APIs a user can upload an image and then be instantly presented with a series of relevant “tags” that can then be attached to the image metadata through clicking on a series…
August 21, 2014

Emerging Innovations

012. [Technology, Infrastructure, Process] Lytro Light-Field Photography Web Player Goes Open Source

What is it? The Lytro Illum (alongside their eponymous first generation camera) are best understood as the first iterations of presenting plenscopic imaging to consumer photographers. In plain English, Lytro have created two “light-field” cameras – these (unlike traditional cameras) capture light information for the whole focal plane within an image, rather than a single…
August 17, 2014

Emerging Innovations

011. [Culture, Goals, Infrastructure] The Lomo’Instant Camera

What is it? The Lomo’Instant camera is a new model of camera devised by Russian film revivalists Lomography. Previously Lomography’s camera models (especially the “Diana”) have been found themselves at the fore of renewed interest in film photography – and particularly the use of toy cameras that produce unique images. The images produced by these…
August 14, 2014

Emerging Innovations

010. [Culture, Goals, People, Process, Infrastructure] “20 Day Stranger” app by MIT Media Lab & “Rando”

What is it? 20 Day Stranger is an app for iPhone that has been developed by MIT Media Lab’s Playful Systems working group. The app is a peer-to-peer sharing app which partners you with a stranger for 20 days, allowing you to share information with each other about your life. Over this time period the…
August 12, 2014

Emerging Innovations, Uncategorized

009. [Culture/Technology,Process] (Paper) Transient Attributes for High-Level Understanding and Editing of Outdoor Scenes

Apologies for the long-winded title on this one – it’s a really good one ~! What is it? A research paper has been released by researchers at Brown University detailing an algorithm they have created which allows users to navigate collections of outdoor images on the basis of a set of “transient attributes”. These attributes include the time…
August 10, 2014

Emerging Innovations

008: [Tech/Infrastructure/Goals] “FRAMED” and “ELECTRONIC OBJECTS” Digital Frames

Firstly I would like to apologise to those of you – aside from myself – who read this research blog for the lack of activity over the course of the past few months. Whilst this blog is primarily a means for me to record what I see as significant emerging innovations in image-sharing. Over this…
May 27, 2014

Emerging Innovations

7. [Tech/Goals/Infra] Tunepics iOS Photo-Music Sharing App

What is it? Tunepics is a new smartphone application that has been garnering a lot of attention from the press this week. It has been designed by the Innovate7 UK consultancy firm, lead by CEO Justin Cooke. The premise of the app is that users are able to share images with each other in conjunction with 30…
May 19, 2014

Emerging Innovations

6. [Tech/Infra/Culture] Kickstarter: Otto Raspberry Pi-GIF Camera

Introducing the Raspberry Pi-powered OTTO GIF camera What is it? The Otto camera is a Raspberry Pi powered “GIF camera” which began seeking $60,000 in funding from the 15th of May 2014. As of writing the call for funding has been online for 4 days and has received $27,000 of this amount. As a…
May 14, 2014

Emerging Innovations

5. [Tech/Culture] Apple Patent OIS “Super-Resolution” Technology

What is it? A recent Apple patent application proposes a unique technique using optical stabilization technology (OIS) to increase the output resolution of a smartphone camera. This is to be achieved by first capturing additional information about an image subject through multiple optical sampling instances, coinciding with the systematic movement of the OIS mechanism. Secondly, the varying information from…