Your's Web Tech Power Blog's: Mar 26, 2012

Monday, March 26, 2012

Latest Posts on Coolest Gadgets

Troika delivers LED chandelier, the Thixotropes

Posted: 25 Mar 2012 08:45 AM PDT

You know that the colonial masters of old love to live it up, living in huge bungalows with sprawling grounds, not to mention having plenty of servants to dote on them with each step that they take, enjoying some time off for afternoon tea while chit chatting with their family and friends as the world goes by. For those who have a ballroom, something even better and more opulent is affixed – the chandelier, and if walls (and other fixtures in a home) could talk, I can just imagine the kinds of conversations that the aged chandelier has recorded over the years.

Modern day mansions, too, do have chandeliers of their own. The question that owners of such cribs should ask themselves is this – do you need a chandelier in your home, and if you have answered “Yes”, is it going to be green? I suppose that is a valid question, considering the amount of environmental awareness that we are bombarded with each day in this age. Well, for folks who want an environmentally friendly chandelier (relatively speaking, of course), design firm Troika might have just the thing for you – the LED chandelier known as Thixotropes.

Yes, it can be quite a mouthful to pronounce, but it is not only easier on your wallet where your monthly power bill is concerned, it is also a joy to behold as well. The Thixotropes from Trokia is a mechanized, kinetic wonder of its own, delivering a beautiful vision of the lighting of the future. If you want to get all technical, the Thixotropes is not actually a singular entity, but rather, is comprised of eight “mechanized systems” which include carbon, steel banding and LEDs that have been combined into chandeliers under two meters (around 6.5 feet) in diameter.

The designers say that, “each of them [is] shaped as a composition of intersecting angular and geometric forms that are made of thin tensed steel banding lined with rows of LEDs. The constructions continuously revolve around their own axis thereby materializing the path of the light and dissolving the spinning structures into compositions of aerial cones, spheres and ribbons of warm and cold light while giving life and shape to an immaterial construct.”

Would you get one of these for your home?

Source

Coolest Gadgets UK – For all your UK centric tech and gadget news.
[ Troika delivers LED chandelier, the Thixotropes copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

Surveillance camera checks out 36 million faces in a single second

Posted: 25 Mar 2012 08:26 AM PDT

When it comes to attaching a name to a face, I am really, really bad at that. However, when you get a computer to do so, you can be sure that the sophisticated algorithms used these days (especially those in the movies) are more than capable of detecting just the face you were looking for in a jiffy. I do have a question though – how come the software that government agencies and intelligence outfits use in the movies tend to be out of this world? From afar, they are able to capture a face, blow it up a gazillion times and even add more information to the pixels already there for a crystal clear mugshot.

Try asking the authorities to do that in real life when it comes to CCTV footage of a thief from a hundred yards or so, and they will say that it is nigh impossible, as all you will get is a blurred picture of a face that could very well resembles a million other people out there on the streets. Well, here is a snippet of good news for you – there might be hope just yet, although this is just a small step. Hitachi Kokusai Electric has come up with a surveillance camera system that is capable of searching through data on 36 million faces – and the kicker is this, it is capable of doing so in a single second.

This particular system will be able to automatically detect a face from either surveillance footage or a regular photo, and search for it. All search results will be instantaneously displayed, showing off thumbnail images of potential candidates. Whenever a thumbnail is chosen, the associated recorded surveillance footage can be viewed for one to go through the person’s actions prior to and after the image was taken.

According to Hitachi, “This high speed is achieved by detecting faces through image recognition when the footage from the camera is recorded, and also by grouping similar faces.” It will assume that faces are turning within around 30 degrees in the horizontal and vertical directions from the camera, and the faces are at least 40 x 40 pixels in size.

Source

Conference Calendar – The global conference and expo finder.
[ Surveillance camera checks out 36 million faces in a single second copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]