I liked this book because it made things seem like reality that I've always dreamed about having. For example, when I was 9 I read an article about a new car that would drive itself, traveling down the road at 180 MPH. I wondered about this and then saw an example on Minority Report, I thought it was pretty cool. But Norman does a good job of telling me that not everything that glitters is gold; there are problems.
He also did a good job of letting us know of interesting ideas that will be more annoying than good, such as the automatic house. If the house sees you going to bed, it will turn off the light, turn the air down etc. But this isn't always good; what if I were just laying down and not going to sleep? What if I wanted to read a book? And if I were making eggs for a friend (and you KNOW it would deny me eggs), it wouldn't let me get eggs because my weight is not good. I always thought these futuristic devices were good, but the book did a good job of letting me know it ISN'T all good. Also, it gave me good insight about automation, and not to use too much.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Video Annotations, Navigations, and Video-Still Composition
Videos use all kinds of technology today to make viewing more enjoyable. Annotations, Navigation, and Video-Still Composites are some of the most enjoyed luxuries. Dr. Dan Goldman proposes ways to improve all of them.
Video Annotations
Annotations are what make viewing easier and understandable. You see it every day: When watching a sporting telecaster draw motion, on youtube when a bubble pops up to describe what's going on, when you see thought bubbles on TV. John Madden made famous the idea of drawing routes receivers run, where a runningback goes, where a blocker takes his angle. Now, everyone uses it. You see it in tennis matches tracking the path of the ball, basketball, everything. On youtube, the video annotator allows the uploader of a video to add subtitles, speech bubbles, and other things.
Video Navigation
If you use VLC Media Player, Real Player, Windows Media Player, ANYTHING, you see a line that is start to finish. There is a timeline going through the movie with a marker letting the user know where they are in relation to the start and end of the video. They can drag the marker to a point on the timeline and the movie will jump to that point, as happens on any youtube video.
Video-Still Composition
We think of videos as compositions of many different frames which, when put together one after the other, form a seemless video. The problem comes when we take one still image; we can see tons of motion. Nowadays, cameras come with a burst function which take 2 to 10 images in a row, great technology.
Particle Grouping Approach
The approach of Dr. Goldman is particle grouping approach of Sand and Teller. It takes still images, and makes different particle groups based on what's in the picture, and is able to do many things with the particles, such as annotations of motions, graffiti, etc.
In this picture, as you can tell, it is divided into sections of particles which separate the two kids walking through the woods, and the woods themselves. Using some very complicated algorithms that I didn't really understand, we can do things such as annotate images with motions of the paths they take. For example, take the picture below:
If we make number 37 based on his particles, the video will automatically draw the path of motion he takes when we play it. There are other video annotations and navigations we can use such as graffiti where we would change his number from 37 to 3 and then can play the video, using the particles, as him being number 3, not 37. And we can navigate based on when he is at a certain point in the video. We can choose when number 37 is around the line of scrimmage and it will skip to that point in the movie, not when he is receiving the handoff 4 yards deep.
Video Annotations
Annotations are what make viewing easier and understandable. You see it every day: When watching a sporting telecaster draw motion, on youtube when a bubble pops up to describe what's going on, when you see thought bubbles on TV. John Madden made famous the idea of drawing routes receivers run, where a runningback goes, where a blocker takes his angle. Now, everyone uses it. You see it in tennis matches tracking the path of the ball, basketball, everything. On youtube, the video annotator allows the uploader of a video to add subtitles, speech bubbles, and other things.
Video Navigation
If you use VLC Media Player, Real Player, Windows Media Player, ANYTHING, you see a line that is start to finish. There is a timeline going through the movie with a marker letting the user know where they are in relation to the start and end of the video. They can drag the marker to a point on the timeline and the movie will jump to that point, as happens on any youtube video.
Video-Still Composition
We think of videos as compositions of many different frames which, when put together one after the other, form a seemless video. The problem comes when we take one still image; we can see tons of motion. Nowadays, cameras come with a burst function which take 2 to 10 images in a row, great technology.
Particle Grouping Approach
The approach of Dr. Goldman is particle grouping approach of Sand and Teller. It takes still images, and makes different particle groups based on what's in the picture, and is able to do many things with the particles, such as annotations of motions, graffiti, etc.
In this picture, as you can tell, it is divided into sections of particles which separate the two kids walking through the woods, and the woods themselves. Using some very complicated algorithms that I didn't really understand, we can do things such as annotate images with motions of the paths they take. For example, take the picture below:
If we make number 37 based on his particles, the video will automatically draw the path of motion he takes when we play it. There are other video annotations and navigations we can use such as graffiti where we would change his number from 37 to 3 and then can play the video, using the particles, as him being number 3, not 37. And we can navigate based on when he is at a certain point in the video. We can choose when number 37 is around the line of scrimmage and it will skip to that point in the movie, not when he is receiving the handoff 4 yards deep.
Monday, February 16, 2009
The Mole People
The Mole People was an interesting book to say the least. I thought it would be about the people who use the subways and how they act. My ethnography was about people riding the bus on the A&M campus. I thought this would be about those riding subways, not those living in old abandoned tunnels.
The stories were interesting yet exciting at some points. They were depressing at points, but not always. It was interesting to think that these people who are very smart and could be engineers are living down in the tunnels. It also makes me feel a little safer that we don't have subways as there are in New York City. I would feel frightened to go down there due to fear of muggings, being on a train that sees someone get run over, etc. It was also interesting to compare and contrast those who live in subways to homeless who live in San Antonio for instance. They just duck into entryways of stores for the most part.
I really liked the book, although it was a completely different ethnography than I was expecting, and different from what I did. This was more quality while mine was quantitative.
The stories were interesting yet exciting at some points. They were depressing at points, but not always. It was interesting to think that these people who are very smart and could be engineers are living down in the tunnels. It also makes me feel a little safer that we don't have subways as there are in New York City. I would feel frightened to go down there due to fear of muggings, being on a train that sees someone get run over, etc. It was also interesting to compare and contrast those who live in subways to homeless who live in San Antonio for instance. They just duck into entryways of stores for the most part.
I really liked the book, although it was a completely different ethnography than I was expecting, and different from what I did. This was more quality while mine was quantitative.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
The Media Equation
I read the book, and it was very interesting. For the most part, they took everyday actions and emotions of people how they react to other people. Then they took these and found out if humans treated media (mainly computers) the same way. For the most part, they did. It was very interesting because I think I knew this, but never really considered testing it.
The book was easy to read and made perfect sense. When I thought about what the book was saying, I found that I was the same way as the people in the tests. I would curse the computer and not the programmer. When I read a book recently, Wilt, 1962, there was criticism on the front cover from H.G. "Buzz" Bissinger, the author of Friday Night Lights. It wasn't from someone who knows nothing about sports, it was from an author who supposedly knows a lot about sports. The tests were good, but sometimes I wondered about the sample size and if the tests were really good. But for the most part, they were, and things like gender wouldn't matter.
The book was easy to read and made perfect sense. When I thought about what the book was saying, I found that I was the same way as the people in the tests. I would curse the computer and not the programmer. When I read a book recently, Wilt, 1962, there was criticism on the front cover from H.G. "Buzz" Bissinger, the author of Friday Night Lights. It wasn't from someone who knows nothing about sports, it was from an author who supposedly knows a lot about sports. The tests were good, but sometimes I wondered about the sample size and if the tests were really good. But for the most part, they were, and things like gender wouldn't matter.
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