Google's Picasa : Spooky Facial Recognition

By Doug Grant on September 7, 2008 3:19 PM | | Comments (0)
Google recently introduced new Picasa web album functionality that scans your images and finds face patterns, allowing you to tag them by person name. I tried it today and it is indeed effective, with spooky overtones.

The scary part isn't Google, whose service is option, but the potential for abuse of this technology for surveillance, government sanctioned or otherwise.

Look at the job it did finding all the facial variants of my daughter Avery. I noticed it was also very good at finding the facial similarities between the Grant or the Hammerslag side of my family - even linking facial patterns on that side of the family between adults and their related   preschool pictures.


picasa name recognition.png


Windsurfing Lake Michigan Today

By Doug Grant on September 7, 2008 2:50 PM | | Comments (0)
Daughter Skylar is windsurfing today in Muskegon. Here's a map of the windsurfing launches near the pier which make it an ideal spot in all kinds of wind and wave conditions.

The three spots, all conveniently very close to each other, are the main Lake Michigan beaches, the south harbor launch just inside the pier walk, and the small public beach on Lake Muskegon just beyond the Harbortowne Marina facility. The Muskegon Harbor.pdf download has the locations marked.

Muskegon Launch.png



SAP Design Guild -- Information Dashboard Design Tips

By Doug Grant on September 6, 2008 7:44 PM | | Comments (0)
A condensed and effective UX summary. 

Stephen Few provides a selection of twelve state-of-the-art dashboards, and gives a short history of dashboards, from executive information systems (EIS) in the 1980s to modern business performance management tools.

MMS for iPhone - MobileChat News Release

By Doug Grant on September 3, 2008 6:56 AM | | Comments (0)
http://tumblr.twenty08.com/post/48490814/mobilechat-status-update

MobileChat Status Update We’ve spoken to a number of consultants who specialize in large scale enterprise IM installations and have issued an RFP to everyone we could possibly find. (If we missed your company, be sure to contact me!) We expect a solution to be in place at about the time that MobileChat 3.1 is approved by Apple and shows up on the AppStore. It seems as though our hopes of a “speedy” review were swiftly denied. However, I think our estimates of friday/the beginning of next week are still on target. This worked out in our favor as we have some “down-time” to work on our server setup, while we wait for an approval.

Tweetstats: Making Your Social Graph

By Doug Grant on September 3, 2008 6:04 AM | | Comments (1)
Tweetstats - Make Your Social Graph

Data visualization gets personal with Tweetstats, a free service that gives a nifty chart based on your (or anyone else's) Twitter posts.

Here's mine:

grantdoug_tweetstats.png

How about the effervescent blogger / microblogger Craig Cmehil of SAP?

cmehil-graph.png

You even get analysis charting:

cmehil_graph2.png






West Michigan Strategic Alliance and Wired West Michigan

By Doug Grant on September 2, 2008 9:01 AM | | Comments (0)

West Michigan Strategic Alliance

Projects include projects with Wired West Michigan,  which hired Steelcase colleague Phil Rios.

WMSA goals:

Create a Regional Mindset

  • Foster a Prosperous Economy
  • Strengthen Community Through Diversity
  • Ensure a Sustainable Environment
  • Revitalize Our Urban Centers
  • Develop a Tri-Plex Growth Strategy

    •  

    Recent news....
    WIRED West Michigan Catches Washington's Eye

    www.wiredwestmi.org

    Brent Orrell, Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment & Training Administration, visited West Michigan on Monday, August 4, 2008 for an in-depth briefing concerning two of WIRED West Michigan’s Innovations, West Michigan TEAM and NCRC/WorkKeys.  These Innovations caught the attention of the U.S. DOL as best practices for a potential national model!  Mr. Orrell also spent his day meeting with some of the employers involved in these two outstanding programs. 

    Both are excellent examples of how WIRED West Michigan is a catalyst for new ideas, change and collaboration. We continue to receive validation for our Innovations here in West Michigan; it is quite an honor to be recognized nationally as well.  

    Google Gears Beta Released for OS/X

    By Doug Grant on August 31, 2008 10:25 AM | | Comments (0)
    http://groups.google.com/group/gears-users/browse_thread/thread/36537d4f47c5495c


    From Gears Group LIst, August 2008

    We are excited to share a beta version of Gears for Safari with you!!  We 
    would love for you to install it and test it and file bug reports so we can 
    polish it and find all the corner cases. 

    Please note a few important points before you download: 

    1. This is BETA, it is not an official release, it might break your browser. 
    Chances are it will break your browser. Please proceed with caution. 

    2. Please do not forward the download, since it's still in beta, we would 
    like to make sure we patch up any issues before we officially release it. 

    3. Minimum system requirements: Safari 3.1.1 on Tiger 10.4.11 or Leopard 
    10.5.3. 

    4. Make sure you have Gears 0.4.16.0 before you file bugs. You can check 
    your version on http://gears.google.com. 

    5. You can see a list of known bugs at: 
    http://code.google.com/p/gears/issues/list?can=2&q=Safari 
    <http://code.google.com/p/gears/issues/list?can=2&q=Safari%20> 
                             New bugs can be filed on our public tracker at: 
    http://code.google.com/p/gears/issues/list 

    6. This version will autoupdate, so once you have it installed you'll 
    automagically get new versions as we release them. 

    I want to reiterate that you are likely to have bugs and/or instability so 
    please be aware of this before you install. 

    You can download here: http://dl.google.com/gears/current/gears-osx-opt.dmg 

    Thank you and we look forward to your feedback!! 
    Archives