Thursday, March 28, 2013

Blackberry 10′s 100,000 Apps Includes 20k with Android Origin

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One way to get people hooked on to a new platform is to ensure there are lots of apps that are compatible with it. Towards that, Blackberry did the right thing by luring in developers to port Android apps to the Blackberry 10 operating system. This ensured BB10 could quickly reach the 100k app figure mark, something that could have been pretty much impossible if the company had only focused on developing native apps for the new platform.

So what the Blackberry folks essentially did was devise an emulation engine that allowed Android apps to run on the Blackberry 10 OS. This resulted in about 20 percent (20,000 apps) of the 100,000 Blackberry 10 apps to be directly modified Android apps that can now run in a Blackberry environment.

"We give them a very nice on-ramp to get onto the platform," said Martyn Mallick, Vice President for Global Alliances and Business Development for Blackberry. "Our users deserve to have great content. If that is the fastest way we can get some of that content, that's great."

Blackberry has been going all out to woo developers into writing codes for Blackberry apps. This included a $10k guarantee to developers to convince them they will have enough returns in this venture. "Overall we're excited by what we are seeing in the marketplace," Mallick said. "We have a high level of confidence we will continue to see more of the application partners come on board."

However, not all seem to be convinced and among those who aren’t on BB10 yet include Netflix and Instagram. But most of the major apps are present, with companies like Amazon who devised a native Kindle app for the new Blackberry OS.

Right now, it’s only the Z10 smartphone that runs the BB10 operating system, though there obviously are a few more in the pipeline due to launch later in the year. Then there also is a new PlayBook tablet that is also rumored to be in development.

Blackberry 10′s 100,000 Apps Includes 20k with Android Origin is a post from: E-Reader News

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

New PressReader App Released for BB10

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PressReader has had a storied relationship with Blackberry, with the entire line of Playbook tablets having the newspaper app bundled on all units. NewspaperDirect has been fairly supportive of the entire Blackberry ecosystem and has debuted a new native app for BB10.

PressReader for BB10 allows customers to have replica editions synced to Blackberry HUB, to give you notifications on when new issues are available. BlackBerry 10 customers can download the re-engineered PressReader app from BlackBerry World and their favorite publications from a growing list of more than 2,300 digital replicas of newspapers and magazines from 100 countries and in 56 languages, including the International Herald Tribune, The Australian, The Globe and Mail, and Le Monde.

Replica newspapers are something PressReader specializes in. The app provides an exact mirror of the printed version, including classifieds, obituaries, Sunday funnies, and localized advertising. The BB10 version allows you to click on the article name and get a pure text version of it, stripping away all of the superfluous images and CSS data.

"NewspaperDirect is delighted to release a new optimized version of PressReader for BlackBerry 10 smartphones," said Alex Kroogman, CEO of NewspaperDirect. "Not only will BlackBerry 10 owners be amazed at the vast selection of magazines and newspapers suddenly at their fingertips, our publishing partners will benefit from having their content instantly available to all BlackBerry 10 users."

New PressReader App Released for BB10 is a post from: E-Reader News

Google Play Movie App Update Now Offers Info Card

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Google Play Movies has come up with an innovative pop-up option that can provide you with all sorts of great movie trivia. Thanks to a new update, the Google Play Movie app now features an info card which provides you with a short breakdown of the actor who is presently on the screen. The way it works is this: you are watching a video, but can't exactly remember who the actor is or any other information pertaining to him or her. A tap on the actor's face is all that’s needed, and an info card will pop up alongside containing the actor's name along with other bits of information that might be relevant to the movie or video currently being viewed.

The update also brings along a few cool features which include the ability to search through the Google Play Store or one's own library at the same time. Plus the overflow menu also gets a new refresh button with the update, while the app will also provide you with notifications for new episodes of the TV shows you’ve bought.

The feature is now available on all Android tablets running Android 4.0 ICS and higher. Also, hundreds of movies and videos work with the pop up information update, and more movies are being added every day. Google has also stated that though the feature is now limited to just tablets, more devices will soon be brought on board, and in more countries.

Google Play Movie App Update Now Offers Info Card is a post from: E-Reader News

UK Government Releases New Report on Library eBook Lending

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Digital ebook lending for libraries in the United Kingdom has yet to really take off like it has in North America. There are many barriers in place that prevent a wider adoption, such as the current politics of publishers and technology. In September 2012, the UK government commissioned a task force to look into the viability of digital lending for libraries and suggestions on how a unified strategy can be employed. Today, the new report was issued.

The first recommendation made was that libraries lending digital books to their members should be a service that is provided free of charge, and should be an essential function of the library service.

The second recommendation is that library members should be able to borrow digital books from their libraries remotely. In other words, members of libraries should be able to download digital books from the library's website without having to visit the library in question. Although some constituencies from the writing and publishing communities in their written evidence to the advisory panel expressed concerns about remote downloading; worrying that the technology would lack the necessary "friction" that a library visit provides when borrowing a printed book, it would be counter-intuitive not to recognize the technological ease of remote downloading and the likely consumer demand for it.

The third recommendation is that each copy of a digital book should only be loaned to one reader at a time, just as with a physical book. This would eradicate concerns that many publishers have about the impact on their revenues from successful digital lending. If a digital copy of a book can only be loaned to one reader at a time and for a limited period only, then there are a limited number of loans that that copy can have in a particular period of time.

For similar reasons, the fourth recommendation of this review is that digital copies of books should “deteriorate,” ensuring libraries repurchase after a certain number of loans. The reason for that is because printed counterparts naturally deteriorate, forcing popular books to be repurchased. This principal therefore should be applied to digital books, otherwise publishers may lose revenue.

It seems that the UK Government is taking digital ebooks in the library very seriously. The essence of this report really says that customers shouldn’t have to pay anything extra to download ebooks and that they should be able to do it remotely. The rest of the report dives into the semantics of audio and video delivery and how that plays a part in the traditional library experience. You can read the full report HERE.

UK Government Releases New Report on Library eBook Lending is a post from: E-Reader News

Penguin Revises Digital Library eBook Terms – New Titles Available Immediately

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Penguin was one of the last companies to launch a program to allow their eBooks to be available through services like 3M and Axis 360. Today, Penguin announced that they were revising the terms of their agreements to allow new book titles to be available immediately. The new eBooks will be available for libraries to purchase on April 2nd and should give a dramatic boost in the sheer amount of great new reads for patrons.

When Penguin first got involved with major digital library distribution companies last year, the books had a six month embargo. This means, that when a new book is released, in digital and tangible form, it would not be made available to libraries for a solid six months. The revised terms will instead offer libraries the digital edition, the day the book comes out. This should boost revenue, because of the fees involved in buying new books and the one-year expiration date. Libraries can only loan a book out for a year, before they are forced to buy the digital book once more.

The American Library Association issued a statement that said “The ALA will continue to work with publishers in the future to explore win-win business solutions. In April, ALA President Maureen Sullivan will lead a library delegation to meet with Penguin and other publishers in New York City to discuss ways to make ebook titles more accessible for libraries. While there is much more to do, we are hopeful with some of the recent signs of progress such as this latest change at Penguin, the new pilot at Macmillan, and the ongoing pilot at Hachette. And we acknowledge Random House and HarperCollins for their consistent participation in the library ebook market. Now if only Simon & Schuster would see the light.”

Penguin Revises Digital Library eBook Terms – New Titles Available Immediately is a post from: E-Reader News

EU Approves Random House and Penguin Merger

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The merger between Pearson and Bertelsmann is right on track with the summer 2013 timeline established when it was first announced last  year. The companies have received the quintessential OK from Australia, New Zealand, US, and now the European Union, leaving only Canada and China to approve everything.

The upcoming merger between two of the largest publishing companies in the world will account for 1/4 of all books currently being published. The main reason they decided to band together was to join forces for a more cohesive digital publishing strategy and have more leverage to iron out distribution deals with Amazon.

Random House, the biggest book publisher in the United States and Britain, has been buoyed by the success of the “Fifty Shades” trilogy of novels. Penguin is the No. 2 player in the United States and third in Britain.

EU Approves Random House and Penguin Merger is a post from: E-Reader News

New Software Updates for Kindle Fire HD and 2nd Gen Kindle Fire

Amazon has just issued a series of firmware updates for their latest line of Kindle Fire Tablets, including both the 7-inch and 8.9-inch HD models as well as the 2nd generation Kindle Fire (the one that sells for $159). The update adds some new features. The 7-inch Kindles now support X-Ray for Textbooks (the 8.9″ [...]

Tablet PCs Predicted to Outsell Notebooks by 2014

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Tablet PCs are all the rage these days and none are more aware of this fact than desktop PCs and netbook devices. While the former is already predicted to be over shadowed by the tablets within this year itself, research firm IDC is claiming netbook PCs will be outsold by tablets in 2014. Of course, these are estimates and are based on the growth rate the tablet segment has been experiencing over the years. The tablet growth story can be pegged at 78 percent over the previous years and a record 128 million plus tablet devices were sold in 2012. IDC is predicting the year 2013 could end with sales of more than 190 million tablet devices, which will mark a growth of 48.7 percent. It is interesting that the entire notebook segment itself seems to be in the midst of a transformation, what with smart new hybrid tablets coming on to the scene. These are essentially tablet PCs but with attachable keypads that transforms them into notebook devices. The segment has already been galvanized with the emergence of the Windows 8 platform.

The entire smart connected device market grew 29.1 percent over 2012, while the entire segment now is worth a staggering $576.9 billion. The tablet market share, as per IDC is likely to grow to around 16 percent by 2017, up from 10.7 percent in 2012.

In another interesting development, Apple has managed to close the gap with its arch rival Samsung on account of strong demand for its iPhone 5 and the iPad Mini. While Samsung still leads the smart connected device market with a share of 21.6 percent, the same for Apple now stands at 20.3.

Tablet PCs Predicted to Outsell Notebooks by 2014 is a post from: E-Reader News

Obligatory Nook News Post

Barnes and Noble’s marketing department is trying extra hard to get everyone’s attention this past week. In such cases I usually ignore them because I find it excruciatingly annoying when every tech website keeps posting the exact same stories regurgitating whatever a company’s marketing department tells them to like mindless parrots. But things like this [...]

PiUi – control your Pi with your phone

David Singleton has been laid up with a broken leg, and has taken the downtime to do some work on PiUi. PiUi enables you to add a mobile phone user interface to a Raspberry Pi project when a screen and keyboard aren’t a practical solution. It’s magic: PiUi makes your Pi behave like a wireless access point, and connecting your phone is as easy as…[restrains self from making obvious bad pun].

This is a really, really useful piece of software; I’ve already had about ten ideas for ways I can usefully deploy PiUi in the house. We’re finally replacing our wobbly green 1970s nightmare of a kitchen this year, and I’m hoping to have a Pi controlling some of the lighting, the coffee machine, the heating and some of the cooking hardware when we do. Using a phone rather than the touchscreen I’d been intending to mount on a wall is a no-brainer. You can find everything you need at GitHub, including lots of documentation. (Note to developers: we love it when you include lots of documentation.) David also has a post about the project on his blog.

This is something I expect we’re going to see a lot of people here using in future Pi projects; it’s simple, elegant and very nicely implemented. Do you have plans for PiUi? Let us know in the comments.

CourseSmart: “Connecting Content, Curriculum, and Delivery”

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While some sectors of the education industry are still waiting for the explosion of digital textbooks that can provide budget-friendly solutions with immediate updates to new information, e-textbook providers are already making improvements to the design concept of an academic ebook. It’s no longer enough to create a digital edition of a standard academic textbook; today’s learners and educators want all-in-one solutions that allow access anywhere, while also providing self-evaluation and feedback on curriculum engagement.

CourseSmart, a leading provider of digital educational content, already provides over 40,000 titles from fifty publishers and is at work in over 100 institutions. However, it’s not simply the ebook files that have students and educators clamoring for digital solutions, so much so that Simba Research predicts digital textbooks will make up 14% of the academic publishing market by next year. Instead, it’s the full use of technology that has encouraged users to seek out digital opportunities.

"CourseSmart has been a welcome addition to our campus," said Randy L. Bullis, J.D., Director of Online Education for Career Point College, in a press release.  "Our students have responded positively to the convenience of digital course materials, and faculty and administrators are enthusiastic about the potential of CourseSmart Analytics, which we hope will be instrumental in helping us address key issues such as retention and improving learning outcomes."

"We appreciate CourseSmart's technology innovation, especially in the mobile arena, which is vital for our online student population," continued Ann Jenkins, Instructional Designer and Training Specialist at Iowa Community College Online Consortium.  "We have gotten a lot of positive feedback on CourseSmart's Universal Reader, which offers students a choice between page fidelity and reflowable text views online and offline, on a wide variety of mobile devices from iPads, to iPhones and Android devices."

The analytics, anywhere access, and user-determined readability are just a few of the features that are sparking a greater interest in digital adoption from a wide variety of ebook suppliers. While price is–and always will be–a major factor in determining title adoption, students have demonstrated that they will pay for quality content that meets their academic and technological needs.

CourseSmart: “Connecting Content, Curriculum, and Delivery” is a post from: E-Reader News

eBook Review: The Sunset Western Garden Book

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Verdict: 5 Stars

2013 has been predicted to be the year of the enhanced ebook, despite the fact that fully interactive app books with embedded video, hyperlinks, and narration are not new. The predictions for the newer appreciation of enhanced content are really focused on the understanding that digital publishers have finally gotten it right when it comes to these bells-and-whistles approaches to reading. Rather than just incorporating multi-media features because they have the capability, publishers and app developers are targeting the technology to areas of need in reading.

One specific title that fully utilizes the capacity of the technology is The New Sunset Western Garden Book, a well-known gardening bible recreated by Inkling for tablet consumption. With alphabetical chapters by flower type, full-color high-resolution photos, an easy-to-search index, and even planning guides for creating gardens by region, the book has left its bestselling print format behind and taken complete advantage of all that an iPad can do.

“Specific features include:

  • Slideshows: Tap through more than 100 high-res photo slideshows, organized by plant, garden trend, and growing features like native plants, low-water gardens, and more.
  • More than 30 interactive images: There are approximately 30 interactive images, including 15 Climate Zone Maps with tappable poptips to help with climate zone identification and key characteristics of each zone.
  • Navigation grids: Jump straight to the content you want at a tap—and without flipping to the index
  • Gardening notes: Document your personal gardening successes—and challenges. Notes sync between devices, so you can access them whether you're on your iPad or iPhone.
  • Social sharing: Find advice from other gardeners, or share what you're reading directly to your Facebook and Twitter feeds. Your friends can instantly access whatever you've shared—for free!
  • Inkling Platform: Every title on Inkling comes equipped with features for improving how you use your book. Search for a word or phrase instantly, even looking it up in Google and Wikipedia. Sync bookmarks, create highlights and notes, and seamlessly share those notes with friends within the book itself.”

While still categorized as a useful reference for gardeners, the image quality and photos also put the Sunset book in the realm of a coffee table book with its stunning photos and slideshow feature. The Sunset book is available at full-book price or in individual chapters, just in time for spring planting from Inkling.

eBook Review: The Sunset Western Garden Book is a post from: E-Reader News

DW radio on coding in schools and Pi

DW Radio in Germany (which is broadcast in the English language) broadcast a short piece on coding in schools in the UK, with emphasis on the Pi. You can listen to it here; it’s well worth six minutes of your time, and it’s just the sort of thing we think parents and educators, here and outside the UK, should be made aware of.

Amazon Updates Kindle Touch Firmware – Mirrors Paperwhite UI

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The Amazon Kindle Touch has had some updated firmware today, that heavily borrows UI elements from the Kindle Paperwhite e-Reader. The main homescreen has been revised and personalized book recommendations are now available.

The latest Kindle Touch firmware update updates the way collections are viewed and stored on your main screen. The Cover View feature will give you large book icons, that show off the cover art. Books not stored on your Kindle will now show up under “Cloud” and are easily synced to your reader.

When you are reading an eBook you can click on the menu and get a sense on how much longer the book is. If you are reading a particularly riveting tome, you can learn more about the author, with the new author biography system. The one thing Amazon does really well, is offer a few chapters out of books that are classified as samples. If you read a few pages, and decide you want to buy it, when the full version is downloaded, you will pick up where you left off in the sample version.

Comic Book lovers now have the guided view technology that the Kindle Paperwhite has enjoyed for the last six months. There is a huge selection of graphic novels available to buy. The guided view makes each comic panel take off the entire screen, making it easier to read the text.

The Kindle Touch was discontinued last year and the Paperwhite is the only dedicated e-Reader the company is currently marketing. It is solid to see older products get the proper loving, and all owners should check out the 5.3.2.1 update. 

Amazon Updates Kindle Touch Firmware – Mirrors Paperwhite UI is a post from: E-Reader News

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Book.ish Suspends eBook Sales

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Book.ish has announced they are putting the kibosh on eBook sales and will suspend them completely on June 30th. The company has acknowledged Readings, Fullers, Avid Reader, Mary Ryan's, Imprints, Books for Cooks and Gleebooks as being valued partners. Any eBooks that customers have purchased will still be available to read, for the near future. Book.ish was sold to Overdrive last year, and the company will focus on its HTML5 reading technologies for the future of online digital reading.

Book.ish Suspends eBook Sales is a post from: E-Reader News

Flipboard for iOS Updated – Users Can Assemble Their Own Digital Magazines

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Flipboard has made one of the biggest updates in their two year history to their official iOS app. The new 2.0 edition  there is more content than ever to enjoy, including a new partnership with Etsy.  For the first time, you can collect and save articles, photos, audio and video by organizing them into beautiful magazines. These can be private, or if you want to connect with like-minded enthusiasts, you can make them public and share them on Flipboard and beyond.  This is a huge boon for users who want to assemble their own personal collection of a wide array of multimedia content.

But Wait! These aren’t the only new features enabled on Flipboard 2.0. You can now comment on articles,  tap the source's avatar in the lower left-hand corner, to reveal Flipboard Comments. Draw in other Flipboard users with @mentions, via Twitter. There is now subsections in partner magazines, newspapers and websites. On the second page of tablet editions, you'll find new sidebars listing subsections for easier navigation.

This is seriously, the hugest update Flipboard has ever brought and is available right now for iOS. There is no word yet if an Android update will be available soon, but we should see something fairly quickly. Now that Google Reader is abolished, services like Flipboard, Pulse, Pocket, Evernote and a myriad of others are all vying for alienated news readers.


Flipboard for iOS Updated – Users Can Assemble Their Own Digital Magazines is a post from: E-Reader News

Celebrate National Poetry Month with eBooks

   

April is National Poetry Month, sponsored annually by the Academy of American Poets. Here at OverDrive, we're always game for celebrating the written word, and Content Reserve offers a number of classic and contemporary titles to enrich your poetry collection year-round. Here are a few eBooks to whet your users' appetites for verse:

 
"Why I Wake Early" by Mary Oliver
One of America's most popular living poets, Mary Oliver is known for her reflective, reverent poems inspired by nature walks around her rural New England home. This beloved 2004 collection is just one of Oliver's many works available in Content Reserve.

 
"You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense" by Charles Bukowski
Charles Bukowski was a prolific writer and a people's poet, writing in a distinctive, sometimes profane, always frank voice about life, sex, work, and the streets of Los Angeles. In this title, published when Bukowski was in his sixties, the author takes a slightly softer look at childhood memories, along with his usual themes.

 
"The Essential Rumi" translated by Coleman Barks et al.
This title is a perennial classic by the 13th-century mystic Rumi, one of the best-selling poets of all time. The poems in this collection were translated from the original Persian by experts and then interpreted by Coleman Barks, an American poet who, though he knows no Persian himself, has been hugely successful in popularizing Rumi for a modern Western audience.

 
"Time You Let Me In: 25 Poets Under 25" selected by Naomi Shibab Nye
This vibrant collection, selected by renowned Palestinian-American poet Naomi Shibab Nye, showcases the work of 26 (not 25) of today's promising young poets.

 
"Original Fire" by Louise Erdrich
Louise Erdrich is best known for her novels—her latest, "The Round House," won the 2012 National Book Award for fiction—but she is also an accomplished poet. "Original Fire: Selected and New Poems" collects Erdrich's best poetic work, much of which is inspired by her Native American heritage.

 
If you're looking for more ways to promote National Poetry Month to your patrons, the Academy of American Poets suggest 30 ways to celebrate and also offers a tip sheet for librarians.

 
 Carrie Smith is a Technical Writer at OverDrive.

 

Hyundai T10 Tablet Under Development

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Hyundai seems to be in for the long haul with tablets. Reports about the company’s plans to launch a 10 inch tablet have been revealed. The Hyundai T10 will be a followup to the T7 that the company had launched a few weeks ago.

Specs wise, the T10 can be considered to be quite attractive, what with the device featuring a 1.4 GHz Samsung Exynos 4412 quad core chip, Mali 400 graphics processor, and  2 GB of RAM. The 10.1 inch display will have a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels, which isn’t so impressive in this age of high pixel counts. Hyundai has also stated the tablet will come pre-installed with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, though the update to Jelly Bean will be launched in just a month’s time. These apart, the T10 tablet will come equipped with Bluetooth, GPS, and Wi-Fi features.

However, what will be more interesting to know at this point is what the tablet will be priced. While no cost information has been made public as of now, there is no reason to believe it won’t have the same price competitiveness of the 7 inch Hyundai T7 tablet.

Hyundai T10 Tablet Under Development is a post from: E-Reader News

Samsung Lunches ATIV Smart PC Pro Win 8 Tablet

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Samsung has launched a new enhanced version of its Ativ Smart PC Pro 700 that now comes equipped with LTE 4G radio for enhanced connectivity. Needless to say, the added functionality comes at a price. Quite a hefty one at that, with it being around $400 more than its Wi-Fi only version. The Ativ Smart PC Pro 700 in its non LTE avatar commands a price tag of around $1,199.99, though the same with LTE radio built in goes for $1,600.

Everything else with the hybrid tablet remains much the same. This includes an Intel Core i5-3317U processor with Intel 4000 graphics, 4 GB of RAM, and 128 GB of flash memory. The 11.6-inch touchscreen display offers a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels. The tablet runs Windows 8 with Samsung claiming the tablet is able to support 8 hours of operation on a single charge. Also, of course, the tablet comes with a keyboard dock that allows the tablet to be used as a netbook device as well.

Samsung Lunches ATIV Smart PC Pro Win 8 Tablet is a post from: E-Reader News

Camera competition winners!

After a lot of swearing and arguing, we have managed to boil down nearly 700 entries to just ten winners. It was a very hard decision, and if you didn’t win please don’t feel too disheartened; we had some really exceptional entries for this competition and found it really hard to come to a final decision.

As you’ll remember if you entered, we were looking for camera projects which would involve the winners in writing some software and doing something interesting with the cameras. The winners, who will receive a rare-as-hen’s-teeth pre-production Raspberry Pi camera board, are (in no particular order):

Brian Pratt

Brian’s was one of several cat-thwarting project ideas we were sent, but we liked his best. Brian’s cat has a habit of bringing half-dead things home for his master through the catflap, and he’s been trying to deal with the problem by using a webcam/Arduino/PC solution with some custom Python code to detect feline mouthfuls of rat. He wants to replace the setup with a Pi and a camera module so he can get better framerate and better resolution at lower cost and lower power. (You’re right, Brian. Using an Arduino just to control a relay is overkill.)

We liked your Nerf gun idea, Brian, but we also felt sorry for your cat, so it’s the rat-detecting catflap we’d like to see developed, please!

Matthew Mittler

We had several outstanding entries from younger contestants. Matthew’s was one of them. He’s 12, and has an idea for using the camera as a communication tool – we got very excited about this, because we can think of all kinds of useful applications for what Matthew’s planning to build. He says:

Some of my recent builds are a cleaning robot, and a arcade machine. However my most recent build was a morse code key. The key is hooked up to three blue LEDs. I would like to get the Raspberry Pi camera to read those flashes of light so I can communicate with my Raspberry Pi via morse code.

Matthew says he also has some ideas about using the camera in a one-player chess board. We’re really looking forward to seeing what he develops.

Ross Corriden

Ross is a postdoctoral fellow in a microbiology lab, who studies novel ways of combating antibiotic-resistant bacteria. He tests compounds to investigate their effect on bacterial growth, and their ability to enhance the body's own defences against pathogens. One of the tests he uses on a daily basis involves exposing bacteria with white blood cells that are isolated from healthy volunteers. White blood cells represent the main line of defence against pathogens and will kill most bacteria they are exposed to, though by adding drugs Ross can either enhance or inhibit their bactericidal capacity.

The tedious part of these experiments involves counting the tiny colonies bacteria form on petri dishes after overnight incubation. Counting visually is time-consuming and prone to error. Ross’s winning project idea is to use a Raspberry Pi with a camera to count the colonies using ImageJ image analysis software with a custom colony-counting module. He says the small size of the colonies will make this type of analysis a challenge, but says that if he can get the system to work it would save his lab massive amounts of time, freeing up attention for more experimental work.

Sebastian Lieberknecht

Sebastian’s working on an augmented reality project. He’s developing a cross-platform SDK that can recover the location and orientation of a camera relative to a known piece of the environment. The camera can be “taught” about local 3D objects, or “taught” to recognise 2D patterns. He wants to integrate the video stream from the camera into the SDK, then track a 2D planar pattern and display a virtual character on it, using the HDMI output to display the scene on an external monitor. He got our attention when he proposed doing this with a virtual model of a Raspberry Pi on the Raspberry logo.

Steven Daglish

Stephen works for a charity designing and implementing medical engineering training courses for developing countries. He specialises in medical devices, with a particular interest in equipment related to premature babies – such as incubators, monitors, and jaundice detection. He says:

One of the potential issues with pre-term babies in incubators (used to keep them warm) is jaundice. A very cheap and effective method to cure this is by using a series of blue LEDs [blue light phototherapy]. However, within Uganda (where are main project is running), there aren’t enough LED devices (mainly because the current medical grade ones are expensive), and the staff aren’t trained well enough to know when to use the device and when to switch it off (and what light levels to use).

 

If I was to win the camera, I would use it, connected to the Pi and the LEDs, to image the baby, looking for jaundice. If it finds evidence of jaundice, the LEDs will come on, and as the jaundice reduces, so does the LED brightness, until the jaundice is gone, at which point the user is made aware and the device switches off the lights.

Matt Wherry

Matt had a fantastic idea when researching building a theramin. A regular theramin gives you control of pitch and volume only, with two hands and two aerials. His competition entry was an idea for a camera theremin, where, using a camera and some machine vision instead of an aerial, both pitch and volume can be controlled with one hand, leaving the other one free to fiddle with synth parameters.

I’m thinking a camera, a bit of blob detection and separation, and control of pitch, volume in xy, and filter cutoff by blob area…and for a first cut, probably using some distastefully coloured gloves to make the image processing easy on the Pi.

I did a little dance around the room when I read this one. Thanks Matt!

Amy Appler

Amy is 11, and she has a really excellent blog that we’ve been enjoying at http://appler.net/amy/. She’s already a seasoned Pi hacker. She says:

I have a house on a lake, and my mom loves it when birds come in the cove near our house. I want to connect a camera to my Raspberry Pi and have it detect when there are birds in our cove. When it detects that there are birds in our cove, I want the Raspberry Pi to notify my mom by sending her a text message or email so she can come outside and look at the birds.

 

This would definitely be a challenging project to do, but I'm excited to give it a try!

We have a feeling that Amy will complete her project with flying colours. (And we’re hoping for some great pictures too!)

Andy Grove

Andy’s project involves a life-sized robotic Dalek which he’s already built. Gordon was open-mouthed with awe and fear at the photo which Andy sent in:

Andy sent us the code for the Arduino-based Dalek voice modulator he’s been working on to demonstrate his chops; you can download it at GitHub. His camera application will use OpenCV to do facial recognition on the Pi, which will then drive two motors in the head to rotate the dome so that the Dalek can keep eye contact with a person while talking to them. (I can only think of one thing the Dalek is likely to say, but Andy promises us a much larger vocabulary than the usual “Exterminate!”) He plans to open source the results.

Adam Farah

Adam’s entry made us laugh, but it’s got serious potential as a useful addition to everybody’s living room (and promises to build healthy relationships everywhere).

Me and my girlfriend argue. She is the calmest person I know and such a sweetheart, but when I get home from work you can guarantee she’s pinched the best spot in the living room for watching TV so I have to sit at the other end of the room, and it just ain’t as good!

 

So what I’ve been putting together is a little unit that sits between the TV and the stand, and moves the TV to the best position for everyone in the room – ahhh peace!

But how do I do this? Well so far I’ve been reliant on a webcam that sits on top of the telly to take an image of whoever is sat there, be it 1 or however many people. It then uses OpenCV to detect all the faces, workout the midpoint for all the people sat there and using wiringpi, move the TV degrees to the left or right and settle on a great angle for all to be happy with where jubilation will forth ensue.

 

At the minute I’m activating the code using a web front end so I can hit ‘Track’ from any device. I’ve also got SiriProxy running on the Pi so I can nicely ask my iPhone and iPad to track us and move the TV.

 

The problem with the webcam is it takes a long time to get the image, take the image, check the image and work out the details.

 

What I’d love is to be able to utilise realtime-ish video, plug that into OpenCV and display this on the TV through picture in picture over HDMI so I can make the final decision on who should get the best angle, and also through a streamed link to my iDevice.

We’d love it too, Adam. And if you can now come up with something that outsources the argument about whether you watch Grand Designs or allow your partner to flick wildly between music TV channels for the next hour, we’d be even happier.

David Crawley (and the HackerDojo robotics team)

David is heading up a robot project at Hacker Dojo in Silicon Valley, which he describes as “a makerspace filled with free thinkers”. (I’ve never met a constrained thinker in a hackspace/makerspace. There’s something curiously liberating about milling machines.)

Hercules, Hacker Dojo’s Pi-powered robot, is newly under development, and is working through 12 challenges that David has set the team of volunteers, ranging from seeing and following a person, to delivering a cooler of beer (the prize for the team that accomplishes this is that they get to keep the cooler of beer), or driving around the Hacker Dojo for a week saying hello to known people, and finding and identifying a persona non-grata (this requires algorithms to efficiently move around the Dojo and find people who might be trying to hide, as well as doing all the person detection/ face detection/face recognition work). He says:

We already have developed the capability for our robot to do simple face tracking and face following using the Raspberry Pi with a USB camera. However, the performance is very, very slow and the latency is extraordinarily high. There are several reasons for this:

 

1) We are running our face detection and face recognition algorithms on the processor only (not using the GPU)

2) We haven’t optimized the code yet

3) The USB interface with our camera seems to be raising a lot of interrupts for the processor that take time away from face detection

 

So we plan to:

 

1) Write a shader for the face detection and face recognition so that we can get face detection functioning on the GPU

2) Optimize our code and the camera interface for smooth performance, introduce PID control etc.

3) Test a camera that has a better interface to the Pi

We’ll be watching to see how Hercules gets on with the tasks he’s been set once he’s equipped with his new eyeball!

Thank you so much to everyone who entered. We were pretty overwhelmed by the quality and number of entries; this is an amazing community packed with some amazingly smart people. We’re looking forward to hearing from all the winners when they’re further along with their projects, and learning how the camera coped in these very different applications.