Air-fueled batteries

As I’d already written I think the battery life is the key to adoption of high-performance mobile devices, strong enough for advanced image processing and real-time augmented reality.
Here are some news – Technologyreview report it seems there are some advances in lithium-air batteries. Air-fueled batteries is something similar to fuel-air explosives Like FAE air-fueled batteries are not storing oxidizer in themselves, but use oxidizer from the air. AFB should allow ten times energy density of the common batteries.
Lithium AFB are developed by IBM, Hitachi and could use not only lithium but zinc and aluminium

Nokia consider Maemo Linux as alternative to Symbian ?

As cnet point out Symbian is not mentioned in the joint Intel-Nokia press release about 3G and Open Source Software collaboration. Only Maemo and Moblin are mentioned. Symbian, though also open sourced is left out. It could be that Nokia is less enthusiastic about Symbain OS now. Existing Symbain OS UIs are inferior to iPhone UI, Symbian OS third party applications are not getting enough traction and most of Symbian users are not even aware they exist. Symbian Signed restrictions are not helping either. BTW most of Symbian users are not even aware they are Symbian users.
So Nokia seems hedging its bets with Maemo linux. Cnet think Nokia could switch to Maemo for high-end devices and leave Symbian for mid-range.

Sand Animation

Just discovered for myself another new media – sand animation
Here is a great example – Russian artist performance about memories of WWII

Bing vs Google for augmented reality and computer vision

I’m using Google a lot for my work, looking for articles, unknown to me definitions and techniques and so on. So I’ve decided to check Microsoft Bing too.
First test – augmented reality
Google – definition in the first line, links give pretty comprehensive coverage for beginner
Bing – four obscure links with job and phd references

Second test – MSER definition
Google – give definition in the first line
Bing – unrelated garbage

Third test – preserving symmetry in cholesky decomposition
Google result
Bing result
Similar results. Both engines relay on the wikipedia heavily

Forth test: “multiscale segmentation”
Google result
Bing result
Surprisingly I like Bing results better.

Conclusion:
Google engine seems have more “common sense” and more useful for introduction into subject. Could be because of bigger indexed base.
Bing could be actually useful in specific searches.

Open Source programmable camera for image processing

Interesting product – camera for computer vision applications, with open sourced DSP

From sci.image.processing:
“The entire camera (hardware as well as software) is open source. It features a 752×480 pixel CMOS sensor, 64MB of SDRAM and 4MB of flash, Ethernet and div. IOs.
The camera runs a uClinux and comes with an image processing framework.”
Datasheet is here