distortion
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Google bought a company to improve Hangouts call quality
Google is taking the acquisition approach to solving audio quality problems with Hangouts and other communications apps. It acquired Limes Audio, a Swedish company with technology that can reduce speech quality issues caused by a poor environment or slow internet speeds. "Limes audio has been building solutions that remove distracting noise, distortion and echoes that can affect online video and telephony meetings," Google Cloud Product Management Director Serge Lachapelle wrote in a blog post.
Olloclip brings distortion-correcting camera app to its three-in-one iPhone lens
As our debut Insert Coin project, the Olloclip will always be near and dear to our hearts, but the handy three-in-one iPhone lens is not without its niggles -- like significant distortion produced by the the wide-angle and fish-eye attachments, for one. Luckily, Olloclip now has a remedy for that in the form of an iPhone camera app that'll correct or enhance such aberrations, depending on which way you want to take your artistry. You'll also get video and macro modes, spot focus and exposure adjustments and a photo library -- all the better to stay footloose and DSLR-free on the road. You can grab it for free at the source.
Harvard makes distortion-free lens from gold and silicon, aims for the perfect image (or signal)
Imaging has been defined by glass lenses for centuries, and even fiber optics haven't entirely escaped the material's clutch. Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences might have just found a way to buck those old (and not-so-old) traditions. A new 60-nanometer thick silicon lens, layered with legions of gold nanoantennas, can catch and refocus light without the distortion or other artifacts that come with having to use the thick, curved pieces of glass we're used to -- it's so accurate that it nearly challenges the laws of diffraction. The lens isn't trapped to bending one slice of the light spectrum, either. It can range from near-infrared to terahertz ranges, suiting it both to photography and to shuttling data. We don't know what obstacles might be in the way to production, which leads us to think that we won't be finding a gold-and-silicon lens attached to a camera or inside a network connection anytime soon. If the technology holds up under scrutiny, though, it could ultimately spare us from the big, complicated optics we often need to get just the right shot.
