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Phone app detects eye disease in kids through photos
It might soon be possible to catch eye diseases using just the phone in your pocket. Researchers have developed a CRADLE app (Computer Assisted Detector of Leukoria) for Android and iOS that uses machine learning to look for early signs of "white eye" reflections in photos, hinting at possible retinoblastoma, cataracts and other conditions. It works regardless of device, and is frequently prescient -- to the point where it can beat doctors.
Pupil for Retina display Macs makes it easy to switch screen resolutions
Pupil (US$5.00) is an app specifically designed for Macs with Retina displays, specifically Apple's Retina-equipped MacBook Pro range (rMBP). Although Mac OS X gives users five screen resolution options, they are cumbersome to access and change, with users having to enter System Preferences any time they want to change the screen's resolution. Most users of a rMBP will be happy with the native Retina display resolution of 2,880 x 1,800, but more demanding (or adventurous) users may wish to regularly change their Mac's screen resolution to take advantage of the greater screen real estate rMBPs have to offer. Pupil is a simple utility app that gives you access to varying screen resolutions (including 1:1 native pixel resolution for Retina displays) directly from the Mac OS X menu bar. Two clicks will change your screen's resolution, instead of forcing you to dig into System Preferences. Pupil also lets you customize your favorite six resolutions and label them. %Gallery-186236% Some of the resolutions are extreme and impractical, like 3,840 x 2,400 or 720 x 450, and it's no wonder Apple doesn't give direct access to them -- though you may be an advanced user who might use them for testing purposes. Resolutions like 1,920 x 1,200 or 1,680 x 1,050 (which appear as Mac OS X's More Space and second from More Space options in System Preferences) can be really beneficial, so it's very convenient to have on-the-fly, two-click access to them through Pupil. Pupil is available through the Pupil website. It's not available on the Mac App Store, but it's fully compatible with Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion. An alternative to Pupil is SwitchRes 4, which you can check out here.
Utechzone Spring eye-tracking system hands-on (video)
In the midst of fiddling with tablets and laptops at Computex, we haven't been thinking much of eye-tracking technologies until we saw Utechzone's booth. What we have here is the Spring, a TW$240,000 (US$8,380) eye-tracking rig that was launched in March 2010 and is aimed at users with limited mobility. The package consists of an LCD monitor, a computer, and an external sensor that utilizes infrared to track our pupils. Also included is an eye-friendly software suite that lets users play games, browse the web and media files, send emails, communicate with caretakers, and read PDF or TXT files. We had a go on the Spring and quickly learned how to control it with our eyes: much like the Xbox Kinect, in order to make a click we had to hover the cursor over (or fix our eyes on) a desired button until the former completes a spin. The tracking was surprisingly accurate, except we had to take off our glasses for it to work; that said, the other glasses didn't exhibit the same issue, so the culprit could be just some coating on our lenses. Another problem we found was that it only took a quick jiggle with our eyes to cancel the spinning countdown, so full concentration is required to use the Spring. This shouldn't be a problem outside a noisy event like Computex, anyway, and if you need more convincing, we were told that a disabled Taiwanese professor managed to hit 100,000 Chinese characters within three months using phonetic input on the the same rig -- he's planning on releasing a new book soon. Have a look at our eyes-on video after the break for a better idea on how the Spring works. %Gallery-125350%
