scanning
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Google no longer mining student Gmail accounts for targeted ads (updated)
Google makes no bones about scanning our emails for advertising purposes, but the company has suddenly become a bit more timid when it comes prying into students' messages. According to the WSJ, Google has stopped scanning the 30 million accounts that are registered under its free-of-charge Google Apps for Education program. These users -- including students, teachers and administrators -- were never actually shown ads, but their personal information was still collected so that Google could make use of it for targeted advertising elsewhere on the web. The decision to stop collecting this data could well have something to do with a lawsuit started in California last year, in which students claimed Google's monitoring violated wiretap laws. Even if the search giant isn't too worried about that specific case, it may well fear the bad PR that has started to stem from it. Update: Google reached out to clarify that the information was not collected to be used elsewhere on the web: Prior to our turning ads-related scanning off, automated scanning that was done in Gmail was not used to target ads to Education users outside of Gmail or in other Google products (e.g. YouTube, Google Search, etc.).
EVE's Rubicon 1.3 patch updating directional scanning
CCP's latest EVE Online dev blog focuses on some UI changes headed your way in the March 12 Rubicon 1.3 update. Tweaks include word filtering and chat highlighting, Neocom blink settings, and updates to the game's directional scanner functionality. "As of Rubicon 1.3, you will have three ways to enter the scan range: one slider and two input fields (one in km and another one in AU)," CCP explains. "Those three input options will be interconnected. That means that when you enter 100,000 in the km field, the AU input field will display the corresponding distance in AU and the slider, which is linear, will also update."
Pic Scanner has been improved and the price lowered
I last looked at Pic Scanner last summer, and found it barely better than snapping a picture with Apple's camera app. Pic Scanner could do multiple photos but there weren't too many features, and the free version wasn't very flexible. If you wanted to share an image, you had to make a in-app purchase of US$2.99. Here's what the app does: Put some photos down on the table, and group them close together. The app takes a photo, then auto-crops so you have each photo as a separate file. There are filters, like sepia, black and white and others, and there are enhancement tools like sharpen and tonal balance. Thing are much better in this new version. The app is still free, but still limited in saving and sharing pics. You can now scan 10 photos or groups of photos, up to four at a time, and share three times. Then you need to buy the app, which for March only is $0.99, a much better deal. This new version makes higher resolution scans on the iPhone 5 and 5s, and there is a sharpen filter. Four photos can now be auto cropped instead of three, and the app integrates with Google + and Dropbox. The app offers a new spirit level to reduce distortion in your photos, and the whole app has had a pleasant re-design for iOS 7. I tried the app on some really old, low-resolution photos I had taken in college with a crummy film camera. The app accurately cropped each photo, and the enhance option did balance the color a little better, and sharpened things up. The developers suggest placing your existing images on a white background before snapping them with Pic Scanner, and that's good advice. On a wooden desk the app had problems cropping and auto selecting the photos, so I just put everything on a piece of white printer paper and everything worked well. Pic Scanner isn't as effective as a hardware photo scanner. I used my inexpensive Epson XP-400 scanner/printer and got a better quality scan, but then I needed to get that scan into Photoshop to clean it up and color balance it. It did a better job, but at a much higher software/hardware expense. Pic Scanner works as advertised. The universal free version will let you see if it will work for you, and I think for many casual users it will be just fine. The free version gives you a little more latitude to experiment, and if you have to buy it's a much better deal at $0.99.
PDF Scanner will get you clear scans of pages and create PDFs
iPads and iPhones do so many things. Scanning documents is another task iOS has taken on, and an app called PDF Scanner (US$2.99, universal) does the job quite well. To get started, just point your iPhone's or iPad's camera at a document or book, and the app focuses and creates a clear scan of the text. What's nice is that PDF Scanner can recognize a book open to two pages, get both sides and create two separate PDF files ready for export. Without that feature, you would do a lot of cropping to get everything just right. You can tell the app to scan in color or black-and-white. In my tests, I was just doing text so I opted for monochrome. The results were very sharp. Once the scan is done, you can open the file in any app that supports PDF format. I had no problem using iBooks or the Kindle app. You can also send the file to various cloud-based servers like Google Drive. You also get an option to mail the file, send it to Dropbox, move or rename the file and print it. On my laser printer, the scans were tack sharp. I would have liked to see the app do character recognition so I could turn the document into editable text, but the developers say the resources needed to do a reliable job just aren't present on iDevices. There is consideration of sending the files to remote servers for character recognition, but that's a feature we may or may not see in the future. I tend to agree with this conclusion. The OCR software I've tried in iOS has a very high error rate. What the app does very well, using some complex algorithms, is adjust for distortions from a curved page in an open book. I verified that this worked quite well. PDF Scanner is a solid app, and is on sale for a short time for US$2.99, 50 percent off the regular price. If you need to quickly turn documents into PDFs, PDF Scanner is worth serious consideration. The app is universal and should be used with the rear camera of your iDevice, which has the best resolution. The app requires iOS 6.0 or greater.
EVE Evolved: Ghost Sites and PvE goals
PvE in most MMOs revolves around killing hordes of NPCs for currency, XP, tokens, or loot, and EVE Online is no exception. Players can hunt for rare pirate ships in nullsec asteroid belts, farm Sansha incursions for ISK and loyalty points, or team up against Sleeper ships in dangerous wormhole space, but most prefer the safe and steady income of mission-running. Missions are essentially repeatable quests that can be spawned on request, providing an endless stream of bad guys to blow up in the comfort of high-security space. Completing a mission will earn you some ISK and a few hundred or thousand loyalty points, but most of the ISK in mission-running comes from the bounties on the NPCs spawned in the mission sites. Similar deadspace sites with better loot are also distributed randomly throughout the galaxy and can be tracked down using scanner probes. But what would happen if the NPCs in these sites were a dangerous and unexpected interference that could get you killed, rather than space piñatas ready to explode in a shower of ISK? This is a question CCP plans to test with the Rubicon expansion's upcoming Ghost Sites feature, which promises to introduce a whole new form of high-risk, high-reward PvE. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at EVE's upcoming ghost sites and explain why I think its goal-oriented approach to PvE should be adopted in other areas of the game.
Daily iPhone App: SharpScan for iOS quickly and effortlessly scans your documents
SharpScan is a free (with in-app purchase options) iOS app that makes document scanning a snap. Select your camera to snap a document or choose an image with text already saved in your camera roll, and you'll quickly get a sharp image of your document. The app helps knock out noise, shadows and those inevitable distortions that arise from shooting at a slightly off-center angle. The image can be cropped manually or automatically. Scanned documents are then shareable as an image file or a PDF. The free version is ad-supported, and it also adds an unobtrusive watermark to your scanned images. You can upgrade to the pro version for US$2.99. I ran SharpScan through a variety of tasks, and it worked quite well. I even scanned an address and turned it into a label that I printed and attached to an envelope. Text was sharp, and the app focused quickly on the documents I was scanning. Help is built-in, and there are video tutorials available, but I think most users will never need them. In my opinion, the only negative thing about SharpScan is that there is no optical character recognition (OCR) capability. You're always going to wind up with an image, not editable text. For many users, that will be enough. For those who want more, I suggest a look at Image to Text (free), a clever app that scans documents and performs recognition to convert those images to editable text. I've also been impressed with Prizmo, a $4.99 app that scans, does OCR and can even read a document to you aloud. If you want quick scans, SharpScan is very useful. I didn't mind the small ad or watermark in the free version. If your scanning needs are more ambitious, you will find many alternatives at the App Store. The app requires iOS 6 and is optimized for the iPhone 5. It also ran fine under iOS 7 beta 6.
LIDAR reveals ancient city remnants beneath Cambodian jungle
LIDAR scanning has recently become cost-effective enough for archaeologists to use on large historical sites, and they're taking full advantage. A helicopter jaunt last year has revealed a massive urban site below the jungles near Angkor Wat in Cambodia that likely housed thousands of people. New canals, temples and other man-made structures were discovered during a two-day scan, which emitted up to 200,000 laser pulses per second and would have taken years if done by traditional excavation methods. The technique can scope out features as small as a footprint, and is also being used in cities around the Egyptian pyramids and other archaeologically interesting regions -- marking another way that Indy-style archeologists are becoming obsolete.
EVE Fanfest 2013 day two: World of Darkness, Odyssey, and EVE Virtual Reality with the Oculus Rift
EVE Online's tenth anniversary Fanfest promised to be its biggest yet, with over 1,400 players packed into Iceland's Harpa convention centre to find out the latest on EVE Online, DUST 514, and World of Darkness. The first day focused mainly on DUST and its link with the EVE universe, but today the focus largely switched back to internet spaceships. There were plenty of roundtable discussions, and the CSM and Alliance panels were as awesome as ever, but it was the EVE Keynote that really blew the crowd away. The day got off to a good start with the highly anticipated World of Darkness talk. Most fans were probably expecting to see more airy game design ideas and another shiny trailer, but this year CCP just came out and put all its cards on the table. We saw that the game is still firmly in pre-production, with much of the previous work going into developing the engine and cool content creation tools and shaders. While I was initially disappointed at the lack of gameplay progress or shiny cinematics, I found this approach of being open and direct with fans very refreshing. As I told WoD art director Thomas Holt, honest beats shiny every time. Read on for a full run-down of the EVE reveals from the second day of EVE's tenth anniversary Fanfest, including in-depth details of the Odyssey expansion's features.
Kodak tentatively sells its scanning business to Brother for $210 million
Kodak as we once knew it has been shedding its identity piece by piece, and today it's selling off key elements of a more familiar cornerstone. The one-time photography legend has made an initial deal to offload assets of its Document Imaging division to Brother for $210 million through a stalking horse bid. If no one else makes a sweeter offer, Brother is likely to take partial control of Kodak's scanning hardware and software in an agreement that's expected to receive bankruptcy court approval by June. It's almost the end of an era for a company that's all too familiar with ending eras -- let's just hope it gets around to starting one of them in the near future.
EVE Evolved: EVE's Odyssey expansion could be incredible
When EVE Online's upcoming Odyssey expansion was officially announced last week at PAX East, the anticipation from players was almost palpable. Odyssey aims to follow in the footsteps of 2009's blockbuster Apocrypha expansion by revamping the exploration system and filling the void of space with thousands of new hidden treasures. We've been promised new ships, a new scanner mechanic with sleek new UI and additional functionality, and a rebalancing of industrial resources across the game. Though CCP is saving most of the expansion reveals for next month's EVE Fanfest and beyond, we can make some fairly educated guesses on what the expansion will contain from the press release and teaser site. It's pretty much a given that we'll get some kind of new exploration ship, and there's pretty strong evidence that moon minerals will be changing somehow. We're also almost guaranteed to get new faction battlecruisers, and the evidence is mounting that Jove space may finally be about to open for exploration. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at the evidence for Jove space finally opening, explain why we desperately need a new scanning system, and make some educated guesses on what else the Odyssey expansion might contain.
Cut the barcode scanning cord with CLZ Barry for iPhone
Did you have a New Year's resolution to organize your book collection (again)? It's definitely on the list in our household, but it's a daunting job; we have thousands of books (literally and literarily) scattered across many shelves, basement boxes and a home office, plus another whole library at my wife's office in desperate need of some database love. A bit of luck, though: bibliophiles have a leg up on most other varieties of packrat, as almost all modern books have an ISBN, a number that purports to uniquely identify them. Capturing that ISBN may be a manual process for older titles, but for anything published in the last few decades there's almost certainly a UPC or EAN barcode on the cover with the ISBN encoded in it. Getting serious about cataloging might prompt you to consider a Bluetooth hardware barcode scanner like the US$149 Intelliscanner mini, which can be used with its own bundled media database or with powerful software tools like Readerware, Book Collector or Bookpedia. One well-known Mac app lets you scan UPC barcodes with your Mac's iSight camera alone. But you've already got a powerful camera attached to your touch and voice-activated pocket computer. Why not scan barcodes with your iPhone, and use them to populate your desktop catalog app? That's where the special talents of CLZ Barry ($7.99 for iPhone, also for Android) come into play. CLZ Barry, made by the same folks behind the Collectorz.com Book Collector and other media database apps, is a barcode scanning app with a twist. The core functionality for scanning codes in Barry is built atop the RedLaser SDK, so it scans quickly and accurately. You can keep a running list of codes locally in Barry, and share them out via email, text message or iTunes download. The magic is in the fourth sharing mode for scans: Barry cleverly pairs with a buddy application running on your Mac or PC. If both the iPhone and the computer are on the same WiFi network, your scans from Buddy instantly appear in the active text field of the foreground app, just as if you had typed the ISBN on the keyboard. Assuming your catalog app has a quick entry or multiple entry mode (all the ones listed above do), you can blithely scan away as you climb the ladders/dig in the boxes/roam the stacks, and have all the cataloging done by the time you get back to your desk. (Bruji's $3.99 Pocketpedia can do a similar trick, but only with the company's own desktop apps.) This sounds a bit Rube Goldberg, but in practice it works extremely well. The iPhone's camera is plenty accurate for scanning, and the Barry app supports older hardware down to the iPhone 3GS and the fourth-gen iPod touch. You get clear audible and visual feedback on a successful scan, so you don't have to glance at your computer to see if the code made it over. I've tested Barry with both Bookpedia and Delicious Library, and it works great; a trifle slower than a dedicated USB handheld scanner, but more than adequate for the task. Now, you could manage your entire book collection on your iPhone, but the biggest source of book catalog information won't necessarily be available. Back in 2009, Amazon began enforcing a restrictive clause in its API agreement that forbade licensees from using "Product Advertising Content" -- book images and descriptions -- on any mobile device app. This immediately put an end to popular iPhone apps like the iOS version of Delicious Library and Bruji's original Pocketpedia. Pocketpedia 2 actually made it back to the store for about two months before Amazon sank it again; it was more than two years before Pocketpedia 3 arrived (with a new model for Amazon search that skirts the earlier issues), and it's coming up on its first anniversary this April.
Prizmo is a powerful OS X scanning app
Prizmo 2 is a scanning application with Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and several unique features that will attract those who do moderate scanning. Additional options are available from the Pro-pack via in-app purchase. Prizmo 2 is currently available from the App Store for US$24.99, which is a limited half-price sale. Prizmo recognizes most scanners, and also works with digital images and PDF files. To get started, select New from the File Menu, then drag-and-drop your file onto a target. If you have a scanner, you can initiate a scan on that hardware. Press the recognize button and you are on your way. %Gallery-170414% Prizmo 2 can recognize business cards and differentiate between text, images and numbers. You can output your capture as JPEG, PNG, TIFF, PDF, RTF or plain text. You can also export to Evernote, Dropbox, Google Drive and WebDAV services. In addition, the system recognizes 40 languages, can translate 23 languages on the fly and read documents aloud via text-to-speech. I tested Prizmo 2 with PDF files, screen captures and my Epson XP-400 printer/scanner. The results were highly accurate and the OCR speed was very fast. The app took about 1.5 seconds to recognize the text in a single document. The text-to-speech was easy to understand. As it reads, the software highlights the words it is reading on-screen. If you are a more heavy duty OCR user, there is a $24.99 in-app purchase that adds batch document processing, Automator actions and some custom export scripts. The basic version will be fine for most general users. The only thing I would improve is the use of the non-intuitive File>Open command. Since I'm not much of a documentation reader, I scanned a file into a JPEG, and used File>Open to import it. That's not what you do. Instead, you choose File>New to import files. It was easy when I figured it out, but a bit non-intuitive. Other than that, Prizmo 2 is powerful and reliable. If you need its features, I can recommend it without reservation. You can find a detailed feature list and video demos at the Prizmo website. The company also has an iOS scanning app which I reviewed in 2010. It was also useful and reliable.
Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300i delivers scans to Android or iOS, spreads a little cloud love as well
Fujitsu's original ScanSnap S1300 earned a soft spot in our hearts -- no mean feat for a scanner -- so it's with piqued interest that we catch word of a direct upgrade. The S1300i is all about serving those of us who might never send scan results to a printer. Android and iOS aficionados now only have to send the results to a relevant mobile app, skipping the usual computer-to-phone shuffle. That stack of receipts can also go skip devices entirely and go straight to the cloud, whether it's Dropbox, Evernote, Google Docs, Salesforce Chatter or SugarSync. However that paper gets converted to digital, it'll be accomplished about 50 percent faster, or 12 double-sided, color pages every minute. All the extras lift the price price even higher, though: $295 is a lot to ask for a scanner. Even so, if that stack of bills is high enough to trigger an avalanche, it might be worth the premium to avoid being snowed in.
Use iConvert to scan documents directly to your iPad
I saw quite a few document scanners for iOS devices at CES last week, but this is about as elegant as they come. Brookstone is offering a scanner called iConvert, which uses your iPad as the receptable for anything you scan with it. Not only does it scan your documents with a 300 dpi scanner, but it even does a very nifty graphical representation of the document showing up on the screen. The iConvert is US$50 cheaper than the popular Doxie Go at $149, but of course this scanner is specifically built for the iPad or iPad 2 and offers fewer features than other scanners. There are also a few apps out there (including Scanner Pro) that will let you use the iPad's camera to pull in documents without extra hardware. Those don't work nearly as well, though. If often bring drawings or forms into a digital format, you'll want something more reliable. The iConvert seems like a solid option, and the fact that it's completely based on the iPad means it should be simple to port around. Brookstone is offering it for purchase next month. [via Dvice]
Scientists scan damaged audio discs, resurrect fresh beats
Digitizing your analog archives? Vinyl to CD / MP3 / iPod turntables might do well enough for your old 45s, but the folks at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory prefer to listen to their old beats by taking pictures of them. More specifically, restoration specialists are using a system called IRENE/3D to snap high resolution images of damaged media. The cracked discs -- often made of wax on brass or composition board -- are then repaired digitally, letting researchers play the digitized discs with an emulated stylus. So far, the team has recovered a handful of 125 year old recordings from a team in Alexander Graham Bell's Volta laboratory. The all digital system gives researchers a hands-off way to recover audio from relic recordings without running the risk of damaging them in the process -- and no, they probably won't let you use it to listen to that beat up copy of the White Album you've had in your closet since eighth grade. Hit the source link to hear what they've recovered.
Researcher brings modified Touchpad into the MRI room, breakthrough ensues
Yes, the Touchpad is officially dead, but that hasn't stopped Stanford researcher Andrew B. Holbrook from using HP's tablet in a somewhat unexpected setting: the MRI lab. Holbrook, it turns out, has been developing a new, webOS-based system that could make it a lot easier for doctors to conduct interventional MRI procedures. Unlike its diagnostic counterpart, this brand of MRI can only operate within highly magnetic fields, thereby posing a threat to many electronic devices. Holbrook, however, may have found a way around this barrier, thanks to a modified Touchpad. With the help of HP engineers, the researcher stripped his tablet of metallic components, including its speakers and vibration motor, resulting in what the manufacturer calls a "minimally metallic device that could be used almost anywhere within the magnet room." With his Touchpad primed and loaded with apps for data manipulation, Holbrook went on to successfully integrate the device within an MRI system. He also developed a series of apps that allow technicians to monitor and manipulate an MRI procedure on their devices, regardless of whether they're in the magnet room itself, or outside. Holbrook says he's already started applying the same approach to webOS phones, in the hopes of providing doctors and researchers with an even more compact way to keep track of their patients. For more details on the system and future developments, check out the source link below. [Thanks, Mina]
Doxie Go portable scanner creates searchable PDFs without a PC, syncs to almost anything
As far as scanners go, Doxie makes some of the more interesting products on the market. There's one problem though... the bright trail of hot pint hearts splashed across the front. Thankfully, the upcoming Doxie Go dons a more conservative shell that will look just as at home in a CEO's office as it would in a 16-year-old girl's bedroom. The Go is a portable scanner with built-in memory for up to 6,000 pages, and you can even add on more storage through the USB port or SD slot. All scans are automatically fed through OCR software and turned into searchable PDFs. To get the scans on your PC you actually sync the Doxie Go to your Mac or Windows machine. You can also sync with your iPhone, iPad or send your documents straight to Dropbox, Evernote or Google Docs from the Doxie 2.0 desktop app. You can pre-order the Go now for $199 and it'll start shipping in late November. Check out the gallery below and PR after the break. %Gallery-136890%
Researchers demo 3D face scanning breakthroughs at SIGGRAPH, Kinect crowd squarely targeted
Lookin' to get your Grown Nerd on? Look no further. We just sat through 1.5 hours of high-brow technobabble here at SIGGRAPH 2011, where a gaggle of gurus with IQs far, far higher than ours explained in detail what the future of 3D face scanning would hold. Scientists from ETH Zürich, Texas A&M, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon University as well as a variety of folks from Microsoft Research and Disney Research labs were on hand, with each subset revealing a slightly different technique to solving an all-too-similar problem: painfully accurate 3D face tracking. Haoda Huang et al. revealed a highly technical new method that involved the combination of marker-based motion capture with 3D scanning in an effort to overcome drift, while Thabo Beeler et al. took a drastically different approach. Those folks relied on a markerless system that used a well-lit, multi-camera system to overcome occlusion, with anchor frames acting as staples in the success of its capture abilities. J. Rafael Tena et al. developed "a method that not only translates the motions of actors into a three-dimensional face model, but also subdivides it into facial regions that enable animators to intuitively create the poses they need." Naturally, this one's most useful for animators and designers, but the first system detailed is obviously gunning to work on lower-cost devices -- Microsoft's Kinect was specifically mentioned, and it doesn't take a seasoned imagination to see how in-home facial scanning could lead to far more interactive games and augmented reality sessions. The full shebang can be grokked by diving into the links below, but we'd advise you to set aside a few hours (and rest up beforehand). %Gallery-130390%
Visualized: 3D3 Solutions scans our face in two seconds flat
See that bloke? That's Darren Murph. Well, a digital representation of the human version, anyway. That image was captured in two painless seconds at the hands of 3D3 Solutions, which was on-hand here at SIGGRAPH to demonstrate its newest FlexScan setups. The rig that snapped our face rings up at around $10,000, and relies on a Canon DSLR (strictly for capturing textures), a projector and a secondary camera. As you've likely picked up on, this is hardly designed for average DIYers, but these solutions are also far more detailed and flexible than using Microsoft's Kinect. We're told that the company recently started to support Nikon cameras as well, and for those who'd prefer to use their existing cameras / PJs, a hobbyist-centric software package will allow you to do just that. The only problem? Figuring out where the $2,700 (for software) is going to come from. Head on past the break for a demonstration vid, or peruse the gallery below if you're feeling extra creepy. %Gallery-130289%
IBM rig doesn't look like much, scans 10 billion files in 43 minutes
Someone ought to gift these IBM researchers a better camera, because their latest General Parallel File System is a back-slapping 37 times faster than their last effort back in 2007. The rig combines ten IBM System xSeries servers with Violin Memory SSDs that hold 6.5 terabytes of metadata relating to 10 billion separate files. Every single one of those files can be analyzed and managed using policy-guided rules in under three quarters of an hour. That kind of performance might seem like overkill, but it's only just barely in step with what IBM's Doug Balog describes as a "rapidly growing, multi-zettabyte world." No prizes for guessing who their top customer is likely to be. Full details in the PR after the break.
