SmileDetection
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Share Happy vending machine dispenses ice cream for a smile (and your soul)
We thought the Let's Pizza machine was wild, but this next item is downright scary... and delicious! The brainchild of Unilever (the company that owns Ben & Jerry's, Good Humor, Breyers, Klondike, and Wall's), Share Happy is a $20,000 Sapient-built ice cream vending machine that takes your picture, using facial recognition to determine if you're smiling and Photo Booth-esque features (superimposing "funny hats, a mustache, glasses, bow tie, afro hair, things like that," on your mug) to coax you into smiling. And once it determines that you are smiling, it gives you a free ice cream treat -- but not before collecting valuable demographic information by analyzing the image for things like gender and approximate age and asking you to sign away your likeness for promotional use. The images are sent to Unilever HQ a few times an hour, using either Ethernet, WiFi, or 3G. Camera shy? Don't worry, you'll still be able to pay for your junk food the old fashioned way. Currently being tested in Singapore, Lisbon, and Paris, with a UK test planned "soonish." Check the thing out on video by hitting the source link.
AgfaPhoto DC-1338sT touch screen digital camera
Let's hope Agfa brings more to Photokina than the 1338sT, because otherwise it's going to be a pretty lonely booth. The 10 megapixel camera isn't quite the top of the line, even with the 3-inch touchscreen: smile detection, face tracking, and a low-res YouTube video mode aren't exactly huge selling points -- especially for €179 ($265). The non-touchscreen DC-1338i version has been available in the States for a while now, so the morbidly curious can expect to see this bad boy at a Walgreens sometime in the future.
Olympus FE-300 gets reviewed
While its smile-detection feature alone may be enough to entice some buyers, the folks at PhotographyBLOG decided to dig a little deeper into Olympus' new FE-300, and they've now churned out a full review of the camera. That feature aside, however, it seems that the camera is a decidedly unimpressive affair, with it boasting some decent specs on paper that unfortunately don't all add up to a top-notch camera. On the upside, the camera is apparently easy to use for novices, and it's said to be "reasonably swift" in operation, but its overall image quality seems to leave quite a bit to be desired. As is often the case, things get particularly bad when you start to move up the ISO settings, with camera shake posing some problems as well. So, unless you're really having trouble capturing the slightest of smiles on your subjects, it seems that you can likely do better elsewhere.
Sony's Cyber-shot T200 gets its first review
You may remember Sony's new Cyber-shot T200 from way back at IFA, where we had the great and terrible pleasure of getting our grubby mitts all over it. Well, CNET Asia has gotten their mitts on the device for a thorough review, and we thought we'd bring you the many, many highlights. Overall, they seem to like the design, but aren't crazy about the loss of some buttons, which they say makes the camera feel a little cramped, though the large, 3.5-inch touchscreen display makes up for it. The camera's smile detection -- which is one of its more novel features -- is reported to be inaccurate and touchy, and the speed of startup and first shot on the T200 apparently leaves something to be desired. CNET says that the camera's image quality is "decent," but that they detected noise at ISO 400, and anything past ISO 800 was a nasty mess. Overall, they're not in love, but they do seem to be feeling a strong "like." Browse on over and catch the whole review.[Thanks, emuROM]
