Seeing Digital

"the world's first open online video marketplace"

2006-01-10T08:29:00.000-08:00

Yes, Google video. Here now. In the new image economy the marketplace for still and moving images continues to expand and grow in both content and sophistication.
http://video.google.com/

You can also buy TV shows and other video afor your iPod at http://www.apple.com/itunes/videos/

The Non-Prison House of Sight

2006-01-07T15:28:00.000-08:00

It’s a terrific culmination of everything written about so far in this BLOG: I kid you not, but there are now special services for prisoners and their families that will Photoshop the prisoner into a photo of a vacation hot spot. Now the kin of the incarcerated can decorate their offices with pictures of their jailed family members without shame. Johnny’s not in jail—he’s in the Caribbean!

I know you don’t believe me, but I just read about it in the Wall Street Journal. It has to be true if it’s the journal, no?? [Jan 7, 2006, p. 1] You need a subscription to read the journal online, but you can visit some of the companies doing the images for free. The Journal article doesn’t bother with links, which is too bad; do you know how many photography studios are called “Point of View Photography”?? Many many. Here is the link for the one doing these non-prison photos: http://www.povphoto05.com/. The image-editing work is, uhmm, rudimentary. A different background for your photo is $3. A change of shirt color is also $3. Buy both for $5… A higher-image-quality service is available for more ($17) at http://www.friendsbeyondthewall.com/pbtw/photos.html. The level of Photoshop expertise is also pretty basic, but better. Both of these efforts, the WSJ points out, were started by spouses of men in jail.

http://www.friendsbeyondthewall.com/pbtw/bef_aft/html_photos/sample10.html

If a poorly done Photoshop image can bring happiness and pride back to anyone, then digital photography has already claimed its place as an important visual thinking and communications medium.

This service draws on many of the themes discussed so far: Who are? Where are you? What is real? This is also a great (arguable much more meaningful example) of the reality tokens discussion from the last posting.

It also supports my ongoing claim that family photo album of the future will bear little resemblance to the ones of the past. While previously I had thought more about Photoshopping out ex-spouses or removing a few pounds here and there, now I realize there can be entire services (yes, it’s the image economy again) doing things like mailing you back pictures of a vacation you never took. Been to St. Barthes? Sure, why not…

In a "before" picture, the 53-year-old Mr. Bethune, who is serving a sentence for aggravated sexual assault, is wearing gray prison clothes in the prison's visiting room. In the "after" photos done by Friends Beyond the Wall, he's pictured in four different settings: in a Manhattan loft, a sprawling hotel suite, on a patio, and next to a black sports car. The license plate says "Stan."
So far, Mr. Bethune says, no one has responded to his ad. He worries that the problem might be the text of his message, which began: "Lonely." Marlton Cansler had been estranged from his family for a decade.
One afternoon in the winter of 2003, Mr. Cansler's mother, Donna Jones, entered his name into an Internet search engine and suddenly saw her son's face on the screen. Reading on, she saw the words "anticipated release date." She had stumbled on a prison pen-pal site run by Friends Beyond the Wall, and this was how she learned her son was in prison.
Ms. Jones wrote him the next day and about two months later visited him at the prison. Ms. Jones, who worried that she would never see her son again, decided to order the composite photos from Friends Beyond the Wall.
Mr. Cansler sent her a photograph of himself from prison. In the "before" picture inscribed with his Washington state inmate number, Mr. Cansler stands somberly alone. In the "after" pictures, he's with family members in a series of different backgrounds.
Mr. Cansler says he was touched by the final photograph. "I'm not one to cry in prison, but it almost got me," he said in a telephone interview from prison.
Mr. Cansler is due to be released in August, according to the state corrections department. "I'm looking forward to Marlton being released," says Ms. Jones. "Then we'll do real pictures."
[Bandler, James, “Escapist Software: Prisoners Turn Up In Vacation
Photos,” The Wall Street Journal, January 7, 2006, p.A1]

Reality Tokens

2006-01-07T13:10:00.000-08:00

I just got back from seeing the movie of the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. When my six-year-old daughter asked me what my favorite part of the movie was (hers was the sound of the stone table cracking), I said I thought it was incredible the way the animals looked so real.

“What do you mean? The animals were real!” she insisted. We had a short discussion about Aslan’s being computer-generated and she refused to believe that it was not a real lion. Do lions talk, I asked? (She is almost 7 after all.) “No, stupid,” she said, but this did not convince her that somehow, the physical “lion” was not flesh and blood. I tried to explain that the lion was made in a computer, but, trying to see the problem from her point of view, I began to get a little image of lion running around inside the space of the CRT and then being mysteriously released into the real world. It wasn’t getting any clearer so I changed topics to the possibility of reading the books, which suddenly seemed a much more straightforward proposition.

Although I’ve been involved with and thinking about computer graphics technology for a long time now (relatively speaking—over 10 years), and the assumption that real-time realistic graphics would become available has never been questioned, I was still amazed at the impact of such real-looking beavers talking, and even though Aslan was a little blurry for my tastes—too much filtering?—he moved and had a fur and eyes and teeth as ‘real”-looking as any lion I’ve seen in real life. More real, in a way, since fortunately I have never been that close to a lion before. In Studio Daily the Director, Andrew Adamson, discusses the impact of lion and relates that an earlier version was extremely photorealistic, to the point where people thought it *was* a real lion. He says they decided to make it a more humanized character. An interesting note, they gave Aslan eyelids, which apparently real lions don’t have, to help create more human expressions.
[http://www.studiodaily.com/main/technique/tprojects/5811.html]

So you could see a “making of” DVD show just how Aslan was modeled, jointed, rendered, etc., and, true, you cannot meet them in “real life,” but there remains the experience, the perception of seeing something that one’s brain thinks is real, even if you’re telling it, “no, stupid.”

The willing suspension of disbelieve is nothing new, but this was more like the unwilling suspension of belief, instead of mentally editing out strings and tin foil hat on aliens, one is mentally agog, trying to find fault with the way the fur moved in the wind or the way the animals “interacted” with the human actors. There were faults if you knew where to look, but you really had to concentrate on it, instead of ignoring it.

So, as if for the first time, I was struck by the changes that would take place if real-time photorealistic graphics do become a reality—or should I say when. Even though we might not intellectually mistake computer graphics for reality (although that could happen under the right circumstances), still the perceptual “truth” of these creatures could not be dismissed. To explain this I’ve come up with the idea of a “reality tokens”—things that don’t have currency in the real world, but do have currency in a particular, limited situation.

First, consider dreaming: in a dream, if you see something, it looks real. When you’re dreaming, you are experiencing a perceptually convincing reality. When you wake up, you discount that reality –note the financial metaphor!—because it doesn’t mesh with waking reality. Does that mean dreams are meaningless? No—it just means they aren’t real—or as some philosophies would say, are not part of the same reality that you experience when waking (which may in turn be a dream, there’s no way to tell…). In a similar way, Aslan was real to my daughter. Perceptually, she knew it was a movie, she didn’t think a lion was in the theater, but she thought she was seeing footage of a real lion—and really has had no evidence to the contrary.

Tokens are a constrained form of currency—they have a value that applies in a specific circumstance or event—a subway token, a poker chip… They are particular to the language and needs of subgroup of people, often for a limited time in a prescribed space. They are related to the more widely accepted currency but not identical to it. Some are worth a certain amount of real money, even though they can’t be generally used as money. Sometimes a token’s value is so widely shared among so many people that it can be used instead of real currency. For example, buying a newspaper using a Triboro bridge token in NYC. Of course this isn’t guaranteed to work and wouldn’t work at all outside of Manhattan.

Tokens can also operate completely separately from real currency, as in Monopoly money or its houses and hotels, which only have meaning during an active game of monopoly

Some token-based systems begin to form their own sub-economy and interrelate more tightly with accepted currency. Take frequent flier miles, for example, which can be exchanged, traded and assigned to others. It is money in a way, so long as what you want to buy is a plane flight. Sometimes it’s more general, as in American Express’ “awards” program, where “token” points can be realized as a wide variety of goods and services.

In online gaming, points can be exchanged and there is even a black market in levels and points for gamers who need an edge.

So there is a continuum between “play” tokens and those with highly circumscribed meaning, and tokens that begin to merge with our concept of practical currency. Currency itself, once made of precious metals, then tied them, and now highly abstract, is only meaningful because of societal consensus.

In my daughter’s world, the Narnia movie animals had real currency. To me, they did not, but did have convincing reality within the movie. They were, for me reality tokens—real within their realm. Ever more perceptually realistic computer graphics in many venues are creating other “reality tokens” : real for the moment, real within a given context, real for some people but not for others. These tokens change their value depending on their context, but in some world are a form of valid visual ‘reality” currency.

Philips 6" Digital Frame

2006-01-05T19:53:00.000-08:00

In the Nov 25th posting: “It’s a Digital Visual Christmas, Hanukkah, etc” I describe some cool new visual digital gadgetry that I was lusting after. Then I thought, well, it’s really all part of my research to investigate these things more thoroughly, and how can I do that when I don’t personally own any of them? So I had to get some of them, of course, although I doubt I can charge them to my grant…

But now I’ve spent the many hundreds of dollars so you don’t have to. Here’s the low down on the Philips 6” digital photo frame. Mostly, this thing is terrific! It has a beautiful screen (higher res than yr computer monitor), with nice color and good contrast and brightness. You can see the image clearly in the day and it’s spectacular at night. The controls are OK (once I got the hang of it they were easy) and it’s been reliable too. You can view thumbnails, image cycles, or randomized sequences. You can keep it plugged in or charge it up and then move it around w/o the cord. It can also be set to change brightness levels or turn off completely at different times—great for bedside frames.

The only technical downside I’ve experienced is its lack of storage space. I guess I have to go out and buy a memory stick to hold the photos and then keep it in the camera. Not a big deal, really as these have gotten quite reasonable in price.

There is an unanticipated psychological downside, however. Whereas a still photo in a frame might be in your house for days, weeks, month, even years before you feel the need to change it, pictures in your digital frame get “old” amazingly quickly. I feel the need to completely replace them at least once a week. Why is this? Is it because of having many images in one frame? Is it because we interpret the lit up “frame” as a monitor and expect new data all the time? The cause is not clear to me, but the effect is definitely there. As a result it’s a lot more work than a regular frame!

I also got the "photo book" but haven't loaded it up yet. Will that have the same psychological issues? perhaps not because it can store so many photos... stay tuned.

The Family Frame: Networked, Personalized, and with Mobile-Access

2006-01-05T19:35:00.000-08:00

Here’s a must-see item that I did not find at the local mall (we don’t have great shopping, I live in Rhode Island for heaven’s sake) but which I heard about and had to check out (online). It’s the Ceiva “receiver” photo frame, a genius combination of the digital visual and the mobile. I had to get it, right? Yes. And one for my parents and brother, who now lives in Wisconsin.

It’s not every day that you see something new that you think might really change the way people communicate—but this is one of those things. It doesn’t use cutting edge new technology but it combines several recent technologies in a very clever way.

You get a frame/receiver that connects to the phone line (or broadband port). You send your frame pictures from your computer and after pressing a button (or automatically overnight) presto! They appear in your frame. “So what?” you say, it’s a just small networkable monitor remarketed under the world “frame.” But no, this is really cool because in addition to loading your images on the thing, you give out your frame’s “address” and all your “buddies” (anyone to whom you have given the address) can send you their pictures. So you wake up in the morning and there’s NEW pictures on the thing—ones that other people have taken and sent to your frame. It’s kind of like a mailbox for digital visual images with the immediacy of email and the viewing format of traditional photographs.

Just as you might email someone you would hesitate to call, people will send you images (and you might send them to other people’s frames) even in situations when you would not have sent that person a letter with a photo inside it. Thus it not only makes certain types of communication easier (as email does) but it actually changes when and what you choose to visually communicate with people. Unlike video phones or web-cams, the “frame” offers privacy and control for both parties.

The immediacy also offers new types of visual “messages” because you can send (and caption, btw) images that are timely—so your relatives can see what gadgets you got for Christmas that very same day. Thus it has a “news” aspect as well. This aspect is enhanced by the option to send cell phone camera images directly to your Ceiva frame (or other people’s). So I can be out of town and send a picture to my house through my phone. It’s like living with the Jetsons. The images are still “photos” or whatever you choose to send, but they can also act as real-time (or close to) updates that come to you (vs. going to a Web page and viewing someone’s images or even opening them in an email msg). Immediate but non-obtrusive.

Of course, one can imagine downsides as well—people sending you dozens of pictures of their vacation or children’s dance performances that you don’t really care to see more than once (if that). Fortunately there’s a “delete” button… You can also “recycle” old images that have been pushed out of your screen’s memory. The Web site saves 2000 of your images before you run out of space.

The Web site for managing images and receivers is pretty easy to use and because the frame can work over the phone you can give one of these to someone who doesn’t even have a computer. I thought it was good value and a truly inventive take on digital photo frames. The only negative so far is that the screen is not very high quality. I also got a Philips 6” digital photo frame and it has much higher resolution and brightness. But it cost more... Perhaps they could offer a choice of screen quality levels for those of us willing to shell out a bit more for a higher quality image.

In any case, I think the family photo album has new competition.

Image Passwords/Private "logos": Bank of America's Visual Site Key

2005-12-19T10:41:00.000-08:00

I just had to choose an image as part of my "password"/login procedure for online banking. You can't upload your own images but you do get to choose from a random-looking selection that they offer. So now, in addition to recognizing the official bank logo, I have my own private "logo" by which to recognize my true bank and distinguish it from shysters.

This is now necessary in part because, ironically, the image recognition aspect of corporate identity can also work against a company. I have received phishing Barclays email that contains the bank's logo (which, of course, anyone can copy off of the bank's actual web site) which made it look quite official.
[image here]

Now I have the assurance of the official public logo/identity as well as a cusotmized/more private face of the institution.

I'm not sure how sitekey (created by PassMark Security) is really any more secure than an alphanumeric password (and the Bank's Website doesn't explain in any detail). The one technical detail offered is that the new system uses a "secure cookie." I have no idea what this is but it does bring up a great mental image of a padlocked cookie jar.

Slashdot users were unipressed (see http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/20/0346204&from=rss) and the best defense against fraud may be continued education and commonsense: real companies like your bank do not send out daily email requests for account validation requiring you to input sensitive data.

A related approach (which is more readibly understandable) is the use of "image words" that take advantage of the enormous power of human visual processing and pattern recognition. You may have encountered these on web sites such as Ticketmaster--you have to type in the letters shown in the "image word." A person can do this easily, for a computer it's still a demanding task.

What Do You and Elvis Have in Common?

2005-11-28T19:57:00.000-08:00

We all knew at least half the country had a weird obession with Elvis, what with the Graceland phenomenon and the sightings and all, but he was truly canonized when his image appeared on US postage.

Now, you probably never thought that YOUR face would appear on a stamp, but, due to the advent of computer graphics, the Web, and the creativity of the US Postal Service, you can now design your own real live postage.

I tried this and it was great fun. It's good for birthday presents, ego gratification, and more.

Check out the Web site at http://photo.stamps.com/

An assignment based on PhotoStamps could be quite interesting, drawing on computer graphics concepts (pixels, resolution, etc.) as well as design concepts and cultural issues.

My daughter already believes she is internationally famous so she was non-plussed by seeing her face arrive on sheets of stamps in the mail, sigh...

Andy's wife Debbie is studying Ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arranging. Two of her creations are featured in the bottom stamp design.

Next stop--the $1 bill (just kidding).

Visual Fraud: The Simulacrum is Everywhere

2005-11-28T16:48:00.000-08:00

When Baudrillard wrote of the simulacrum [precession of simulacra--full text at http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/
Baudrillard/Baudrillard_Simulacra.html] he had an abstract point to make, but some of the ideas are being literally brought to life by computers and computer graphics technology.

Apparently Baudrillard was uninterested in the Matrix and perhaps he finds virtual reality and its near-term potential dull too. Regardless of his engagement with the strange practical venues in which his ideas can be applied, modern citizens do need to become engaged in the dialog among technologists, consumers, computer users, and designers of concerning reality and images.

For example, phishing emails are starting to look pretty convincing. They use more likely type, bank logos, a bank's color scheme, and other graphical signals to look authentic. (See Barclay's example above.)

Another case in point, counterfeit bills. What better topic to merge the abstract and the deeply practical but money? It stands for something, but throughout history has become ever more abstract and inherently worthless. From barter to gold to a gold standard, to paper to digits seen on one's on-line banking screen, money is about place-keeping rather than objects. As such, it is a fitting venue for hackery and since the image IS the worth, a draw for creative criminals everywhere.

To dissuade home printing operations, color copier and printers are now equipped with anti-counterfeiting measures. Your ink jet printer, on which you might make a decent-looking $20 bill unbeknownst to you prints tiny yellow identifying marks on every page.

Last week, the foundation announced it had cracked the code on a document generated by a Xerox printer. By reading the yellow dots, staff members were able to identify the serial number of the very machine that had produced the printout.

No big deal, unless you're a counterfeiter. ''Ten years ago, 1percent of counterfeit currency was produced by copiers and printers; now it's 56 percent," said Eric Zahren, spokesman for the US Secret Service, the government agency that battles the funny-money trade. So the Secret Service and other security agencies persuaded printer makers to embed subtle markers into their machines. And not just printers, said Edward Delp, a professor of electrical engineering at Purdue University. ''Color copiers have done this for a long time,” said Delp. [Hiawatha Bray October 24, 2005]

Obviously, this brings up some serious privacy issues. But the fight is only just beginning. As USA Today remarked:

As home computers become just as common as telephones, U.S. officials are being stretched to catch counterfeiters in the USA. One out of three homes had an ink jet or other high-quality printer in 2002, according to data from Massachusetts-based IDC, a technology research firm. In fiscal 2002, which ended Sept. 30, 39% of the fake currency in circulation in the USA was made using a computer, up from 8% in 1992.

"Most every household has the basic tools to produce it," says Chapa of the Secret Service. [http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/banking/2003-05-12-newmoney_x.htm]

This is not to suggest a lesson plan on how to increase one's net worth instantaneously with color computer graphics, but to show the power of images and the new relationship between amateur image makers and the "professionals." The message remains: do not try this at home.

Target--Design For All

2005-11-28T16:21:00.000-08:00

Target is a dream come true for shoppers interested in well designed products that don't cost a fortune. Their mission and scope have not only drawn in crowds of design-conscious customers but have served to create a new awareness and marketplace for design.

I have to confess right up front that I love Target. When we renovated our house I went there to get wastebaskets, soap dishes, towels, cups, linens, other basic things and the young man at the check-out counter actually made of fun of me for buying so much stuff. (Not a great customer-service move, thank you very much.)

What other store has such well designed objects that even their gifts cards are desirable for their "look"? (see picture at top)

A testament to the seriousness of their vision was the mid-August New Yorker issue in which target had purchased ALL of the ad space (for over $1 million). The move was much commented upon (see the Gothamist blog at http://www.gothamist.com/archives/2005/08/16/the_new_yorkers_target_audience.php)

The ever-more powerful role of visual design in creating desirable products is a trend with no end in sight. Entire countries (e.g., Korea) have made design part of their economic policy see http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_28/b3942426.htm I mean, once you've experienced good design, you just can't go home again (or at least not without making a few purchases).

Digital X-Rays (Dental, Mammography)

2005-11-28T15:53:00.000-08:00

Your friendly neighborhood dentist has crossed over the digital divide (in Tuscon anyway). Digital dental x-rays are faster, cheaper, and more useful than traditional ones:

"The digital dental X-ray system is more sensitive than dental X-ray film systems, so your exposure to X-rays is cut by as much as 90 percent. The large and color-enhanced images let you see what your dentist sees, so it's easier for you to understand how your dentist will treat your teeth. Your fees don't include payment for photo chemicals, film, processing or film storage. Used photo chemicals and film are not polluting the environment. Your dental checkups take less time, and it's fun to watch this system work! Most patients are amazed." http://www.tucsonsmile.com/cosmetic-dentist/xrays.html

In amore life-and-death application area, recent research has shown that digital mammography is superior for certain groups of women. There's a terrific interview with a scientist/doctor at http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/8.30/helthrpt/stories/s11998.htm that discusses some ways in which digital mammogrpahy is more helpful than regular x-rays. For instance:

EmilyConant: ...The digital pictures are here. We can change some of the characteristics after they've been obtained so that we can enhance certain areas of her breast, and by changing this, we can better see this mass here, which is actually quite large. It was about a 1.5 centimetre cancer.

NormanSwan: Which before you couldn't see it at all, and it suddenly emerges?

EmilyConant: It's much more evident now, and there's also a second small area here which she was not aware of. She could not feel it, but it was a second site of cancer within that same breast. So the digital technology actually made these areas more conspicuous and very importantly in her, we were able to find a second site of cancer, which really changed her surgical management.

This topic should be of interest to all women especially young women. Some of this work is being done at Brown (see http://www.brown.edu/Administration/News_Bureau/2005-06/05-029.html)

A landmark breast cancer screening trial shows that digital mammography detected more cancers – up to 28 percent more – than screen film mammography in women 50 and younger, premenopausal and perimenopausal women, and women with dense breasts.

The digital version of this screening works better for reasons only the those with DVL can really understand. All the concepts covered in the computer graphics lectures come up in these discussions: magnification (remember filtering and zooming in?), enhancing contrast (also a type of filtering/image processing), 3D reconstruction (draws on 3D graphics), etc.

There are also interesting issues of seeing inside the body without cutting it open that are relevant here and in many other medical imaging projects.

The ease-of-use factor is also important for image economy purposes. An image you can crop, magnify, and share over a secure medical information system with your colleagues is already worth more in some senses. There are interesting business aspects here as well as cultural ones, for example involving privacy.

It's Visual Visual Christmas [Hanukah, Kwanzaa, etc.]

2005-11-25T13:10:00.000-08:00

I went to the mall to get a caller ID globe (yes, my new high-end phone system doesn’t save caller ID numbers, who knew?) and I got distracted by an influx of new digital visual technology on display for holiday shoppers. Let me tell you, the traditional photo and its photo frame are definitely on their way out. It’s been a slow transition (in Internet years anyway) from transparent film to pixels and digital prints but I think we’re finally cresting.

The first piece of evidence: digital cameras are now relatively inexpensive and easy to use. Way back in 1888 the new "Kodak" camera was released with the slogan "You press the button - we do the rest." Digital cameras have lacked the “point-and-click” easy of use of traditional film cameras, but the gap is narrowing even as I write this. Today light-weight, (relatively) affordable digital cameras use standardized memory cards, have clearly labeled controls (not black on black as they were a few years ago—they were like cameras designed for the blind), and store plenty of high-res images that are not hard to get onto your computer. Hey, you can buy a key-chain digital camera for $20.

$19.99 [Mini Digital KeyChain Camera “Smallest Digital Camera in the WorldThis fully functioning digital camera is absolutely tiny! The Mini Digital KeyChain Camera lives on the end of a key-ring chain and is smaller than a matchbox!’ Even makes very very short movies.]

The second piece of evidence: Getting the digi-pics onto your computer is becoming a thing of the past. One area that still causes consumer frustration is one’s having to transfer one’s images to a computer to work with and store them. Some companies have introduced printers that mate directly with their cameras (Canon, Kodak), letting you run your own one hour print shop at home. The problem with these are that they do not solve the storage problem (unless you want to just prints and delete the digital files) and the printers have limited page sizes.

I applaud the move toward never having to put images on your computer if you don’t want to. I already bought one extra backup drive and it’s really hard to find a place for all those digital files and organize them, etc. Plus, who wants to bother with cords and device drivers and the fact that you have to wait to get home to empty your camera because your friend has a different type of connection, etc. Also, your personal computer screen is not the best viewing place for people interested in your snapshots. Sure, you can share them over the web, but it is time-consuming and the image quality is poor for previews on all the online services.

Now you can put the images right into frames and “albums” or “image notebooks.” Digital photo frames have been around for a while but have not taken off. They are hampered first of all by a steep price tag (~$300): I mean, you can buy a good camera for less than your frame? It’s hard to adjust to that… Anyway, in addition to the price, which will surely drop soon, the viewing options are bizarrely limited. A high school student programmer could have come up with some more creative viewing ideas. The ones available this year in store like Sharper Image or Brookstone, let you show, in order, images in a “folder” or other directory metaphor. You can’t show them in randomized order on the Brookstone model (which makes viewing them much much more fun) or by key words or time of day or year or anything even remotely interesting. (You can show random images on the Philips model, sold at Sharper Image.) There will surely be more viewing options in the future, but it’s pretty frustrating to be so limited in something one is paying so much for. Despite their current limitation and high process, these “frames” and “books” can store more photos than you could ever fit into a traditional photo album.

This modern-looking frame stores 80 photos.

The digital “notebook” stores all one’s photos (they claim 10,000) on a 20GB hard drive. (See top picture.) The tabletop picture frame has been redefined, folks. Hopefully it will be more aesthetic-looking in the very near future; this had a kludgey proto-type look to it.
I can only hope and pray that photography basics becomes a required course at all high schools with a follow-on courses in college because these images will be everywhere: on “digital frames” on “TV”s, on phones, on jewelry, on 3-ring binders, etc. A constant flow of images will enhance communications between family members, friends, and in the business world.

In another breakthrough for people who enjoy using digital visual technology but not the struggle to transfer and convert, digital video motion cameras are now recording onto hard drives and memory sticks. No mini-tapes that play in nothing else or unreliable, hard-to-use dvd systems. The only problem is that no-one is taught how to shoot or edit video in school. Bad photography is painful enough, but extended periods of enforced bad video is cruel and unusual. The need for editing and the basic conceptual and physical tools must become part of the next generation’s vocabulary. I recommend the Little Digital Video Book, by Michael Rubin for beginners given these powerful tools for the holidays.

Soon every moment will be a Kodak moment.

Where Am I?

2005-11-17T09:16:00.000-08:00

This map is part of the http://www.mapquest.com/ results for driving directions (40hours and 23 minutes) from my office at Brown University in RI to Mesa Community College in Mesa, AZ.

Visual information about where you are, where you were, or where you want to be, is increasingly mediated by the computer. Unlike a bulky atlas, computer-based maps give you only what you need and provide interactive zooming, panning, trip planning, and more. Also unlike traditional paper-based maps, digital maps can be visually integrated with all kinds of additional information. Google maps (http://maps.google.com/, http://earth.google.com/) provides an interface so that users can create their own visual location information sites, letting other know where crime is the highest, food the best, and how to get to the nearest gas station and more (see http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2005/07/17/thinking_maps/.)

Brown co-PI's house from space

Here is the Google Earth view of my house from space. Actually, it's simulating a view from about 358 feet up in the air. I can also "spy" (the original name for this software was "keyhole") on other people from space and see what kind of area they live in. Here is the grant's PI's house from space. (You're not seeing the interactive "flying" between our houses which was REALLY cool.)

The PI's house from space

Visual way-finding with the computer is also part of using a car's GPS navigation system (one of the greatest marriage savers ever invented and cheaper than couples' therapy), and it is essential to "seeing" things in outer space, from the surface of Mars to ancient/distant galaxies and nebulae. The Hubble telescope images are some of the most beautiful natural science images every created, see http://hubblesite.org/gallery/.

You don't have to be in an expensive vehicle to use a visual naviagtion system these days. You can bring your own into any car and there are even portable battery-run models for the intrepid adventurers (and chronically disoriented) among us.

(The Navstar Global Positioning System is based on 27 geostationary satellites. A receiver's position is determined by the time it takes a signal to travel from several different satellites. GPS was developed by the military and first used in Desert Storm in 1991. It is now maintained by the air force for both civilian and, with a more precise version, military use.)

There are countless Web site showing places and discussing them, which can help one find locations and prepare for getting to them and being at them. For example, www.virtualtourist.com, lets adventure travelers show where they have been and where they are soon going. I can see all three of the exterior security cameras around my house in full color via a Web page, in real time. Am I learning more than I wanted to know about my mailman? Perhaps.

Where are My Loved Ones? My Enemies?
Issues of surveillance and privacy come immediately to mind when one reads about GPS and visual map combinations. GPS-driven technologies are multiplying right and left, especially now that all cell phone are GPS-chipped. You can also chip your dog, your cat, your store inventory, AND YOUR CHILD and then view them, on an interactive, visual, computer-based map and know where they are. (See a full line of products at http://www.verichipcorp.com/.) Ongoing research is working to increase the accuracy of GPS to within a few centimeters.

“Europe's largest amusement park, Legoland in Denmark, uses active RFID tags contained in bracelets and Wi-Fi networks to help parents track their children through the park. And if the child leaves the park, a message is sent to the parent's mobile phone, as well as to the security guards at all the park entrances and exits.” http://www.epic.org/privacy/rfid/ftc-comts-070904.pdf

Some efforts have been made to implant sex offenders and other criminals so that their whereabouts and records can be easily monitored and accessed, and chipped bracelets are currently in use in prison systems. Foucault wrote about the Panopticon (a prison designed with a central tower permitting the guards to view every cell and its inmates) and the idea of punishment as being eternally visible in Discipline and Punish (see http://foucault.info/documents/disciplineAndPunish/foucault.disciplineAndPunish.panOpticism.html). Specifically, he described the Panopticon’s goal as inducing “in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power. …[] the perfection of power should tend to render its actual exercise unnecessary.” Which may lead one to wonder whether we are creating prisons for ourselves with the relinquishing of locational anonymity. Perhaps hell is not, as Sartre claimed, dealing with “other people” but rather merely the state of being constantly visible to them.

But what are we really seeing?

What are you really seeing when you use all these virtual tools? The paper map is a well-known entity (although a PhD in origami is required to fold it back up correctly), but what is the nature of the computer-based visual maps and how does one know what one is seeing (or not seeing)?

There is never confusion when using a standard road map from the gas station about whether you are looking at the map or out your window at the actual scenery. And, although you may think you know where you are on the map (we all look for the "you are here" arrow when consulting, say, a subway map), you rarely lose sight of the abstract nature of the 2D, paper-based spatial information. You also know just how much you can ask of your paper map--not much. You expect it to be colored wisely (actually a whole field of study) and I was shocked when I realized that road atlas I had acquired had huge Wal-Mart icons showing the locations of every Wal-mart throughout the USA. But in general, surprises are few and far between. It's relatively straightforward to use--once you used one map you can use all other similar style road maps. Gas station maps are great, but you can't ask them a question and you can't zoom or pan or "fly" through it or have hotels appear on it one moment but be hidden the next. Such a map won't show you the best route to your destination or provide phone numbers of restaurants on the way.

As we become more dependent on computer-based maps and visualizations of where we are and where we are going, it becomes more and more important to understand what we are seeing and thus doing. I once spent a good half hour driving around in circles because my navigation system did not know about some construction that had taken place in Warwick, RI. When you get used to following the pleasant "nav voice", you can forget that it is not a person who knows anything about you but merely a voice and visual interface to a possibly quite outdated CD of map data. Of course a paper map can be outdated too, but a map that is interacting with your real-time changing location seems much more authoritative.

With a car navigation system you are seeing a low resolution (compared with paper) and very small (compared with paper) map and you are getting directions about how best to get from one point to another based on complex calculations done as best as possible in a limited period of time. Optimal route finding is a whole field of research and it is not actually all that easy to determine the optimal route along a complex series of roads (or "graph” as computer scientist would say) in a very short period of time (which is all consumer will wait). So sometimes the route given is not the best. And, if your antenna can't see the sky, then it can't see the GPS satellites, and the system won't work well either. This makes car navigation systems much less useful in major cities (skyscrapers) or mountainous regions.

Furthermore, although this is less obvious than with the paper map, you are not "seeing" anything but data. You are interacting with a representation of roads and landmarks, etc. and their accuracy is only as good as the quality and types of data they are based on. Future users of these systems will have to judge when it is best to request photographic, diagrammatic, or 3D data representations (or combinations thereof). In addition to driving school, advanced courses in computer graphics maybe required to get a license. (Maybe it will just be easier to pull over and ask for directions.)

The Map as the Territory
As car navigation system maps become more detailed and as perhaps come to include photographic data as Google maps do, it is harder and harder to distinguish between the properties of the map or spatial representation and the actual places. This is, of course, already true with visual maps of such places as the surface of Mars which most of us will never see in person. It is also true for drivers like myself who follow the “Nav’s” voice directions blindly, gaining no internal sense of the layout of places I have driven though.

Is good design becoming as desirable as a longer, fuller male organ?

2005-11-17T08:16:00.000-08:00

One of the greatest testaments to the increasing awareness and power of visual design is the fact that I now receive design spam. In addition to enticements for body part enhancements, vicodin, and a mortgage (even if I have bad credit), I can now get a logo, letterhead, business card or even an entire identity package from unknown purveyors.

For example:

Perfect logo & identity is a key to your success

Thinking of breathing new life into your business? Start from revamping its
front-end - logo and visuaI identity.

Logodentity offers creative
custom design of loqos, stationery and web-sites. Under our careful hand
these
powerfuI marketinq tools
wilI bring a breath of fresh air into
your business
and make you stand out among the competitors.

You are just a cIick away from your
future success. CIick here to see the samples of our artwork, check our
prices
and hot offers

Alas, the link no longer exists. Perhaps they were selling BAD design and got caught. Perhaps it looked real but was a fake, like a Rolex knockoff sold for a few dollars on the streets of Chinatown. Perhaps their designs were plagiarized, stolen from the letterheads and websites designed by tax-paying design firms.

A site offering apparently real services also recently spammed me:

My portfolio

Hi,
My name is Ernie, I may not have the right email address,
if notplease excuse my intrusion. If you are interestedin some web design
work
for your company.
Please click the link below to see my
portfolio:http://www.webdesigntexasco.com/Thanks,Ernie

This link leads to a web site of entirely acceptable design templates. Perhaps it is secretly installing spyware on machine or something, though, because no contact information is given.
Some of the Web sites/services appear to come from China.

A Google search for “logo design” brings up page after page of sites offering logo design services. From LogoDesignGuru to pixellogo and LogoBob. Some offer designs for as little as $10 a piece. I tried to order one but never got a response. Most starter logo packages seem to be the $100 range. The examples on most of the Web sites are really quite nice. Will traditional designers be put out of business? Who is doing the design work? Are there programs automating logo design? Logo templates? Stock logos one can alter like clip art? Or are there sweatshops with under-age Asian children creating fabulous “look and feel” for American capitalist institutions?

A random, unscientific survey of logo design Web sites suggests that most are completely valid enterprises. A company called ExecuLogo, chosen at random from Google, offered live chat. I asked about outsourcing and pricing and the business model and learned that most of their business comes from the Web. They pay to be highlighted in Google (worked on me), they don’t send spam, and their designers are in–house. I ordered a $25 starter package logo for the DVL project. This low-end option give you a low-res image—“web-ready”, which probably means color-safe as well. The next higher-end option get you a “printer-ready” (high-res, still raster) version, and the next level is vector art that you can modify. The two higher levels also offer increasingly more designers creating options for you and more revisions. Basic gets you 2 designers, 4 logo concepts, 3 revisions, delivered in 4 days. Includes letterhead and business card designs. “Professional” gets you 6 original logo concepts turned around in 24 hours.

So my question is—what’s the business model here? Surely it takes more than one person-hour to do this. How are they hiring designers so cheaply? It doesn’t add up for me. Even if each designer gets paid only, say $20/hr, this still wouldn’t cover any costs of running a business (space, equipment, etc). Maybe all these logo things are loss-leaders. But for what? The company doesn’t appear to offer any other services. It’s not clear to me how traditional design houses can compete with this.

Another interesting factor is the psychological threshold of comfort. Just as many people feel ill at ease stepping into an art gallery or going to see their doctor, so many people would probably never think of hiring a design firm. They would assume it’s too expensive and might well feel intimidated or that such services are not really necessary for a small company or project.
The Web format removes many (if not all) of these barriers. Prices are known in advance (instead of an hourly rate), examples are given, you don’t have to meet with anyone, and this site used Paypal, so financial security issues were taken care off. Who *wouldnt’* want a good logo for $25? For their kid's little league team, a birthday party, a small company, a garage band, etc. Maybe even a personal logo?

I ordered one for the Digital Visual Literacy project, requesting only that no hands, eyes or little pixellated squares be used in the design. A week later I got two OK logos. I sent the better one out to the grant PIs who unanimously voted it down. Well, what do you want for $25… maybe design still requires a bit more outlay than that, but the ceiling is lowered and looking good is becoming as common an email inbox filler as feeling good.