NYU professor unsurprisingly removes camera from the back of his head, citing pain and the malaise of lifecasting

By Laura June posted Feb 10th 2011 2:34PM Well, this one is not really a surprise. NYU Professor / artist Wafaa Bilal had a removable camera installed into the back of his head via a surgically implanted titanium plate to assist him with his lifecasting. Turns out that the camera caused a decent amount of pain as his body rejected the foreign object -- again, no big surprise there. Bilal, however, seems pretty unfazed, and vows to continue on with the project which he says is a "comment on the inaccessibility of time, and the inability to capture memory." Whatever, we suspect he just wanted to be known as the guy who had a camera implanted in the back of his head, and that's alright by us.

[Photo by Brad Farwell]

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Pelican Imaging's prototype array camera could make your pictures better, phones thinner (video)

Pelican Imaging Unveils Revolutionary Approach to Smartphone Cameras, Announces Three Technical Advisory Board Members

Company Attracts Renowned Experts in Development of Computational Array Cameras
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Feb. 9, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Pelican Imaging Corporation, a venture-backed pioneer in computational imaging, today announced that it has developed the first prototype array camera for mobile devices. In addition, the company has announced its Technical Advisory Board comprised of three leading experts in computational imaging. The members are Professor Marc Levoy, Professor Shree K. Nayar and Dr. Bedabrata Pain.
The Technical Advisory Board leverages several decades of experience in helping guide Pelican Imaging's pioneering work building the industry's thinnest high-resolution camera, targeting smartphones and tablets.
"We are excited about attracting some of the foremost experts to Pelican's Technical Advisory Board. This relationship gives us a collaborative forum that leverages their unique insights and maximizes the potential of our architecture," said Kartik Venkataraman, CTO and co-founder of Pelican Imaging.
Pelican Imaging has developed a computational camera array architecture and fundamental intellectual property with 12 pending patent applications in array optics, sensors and image reconstruction algorithms. Pelican's camera improves upon image and video quality while allowing for thinner smartphones. New applications are also enabled by introducing features such as 3-D depth, gesture control, and the ability for users to interact with the image before and after capturing the shot.
"What Pelican has developed represents a paradigm shift in imaging and video that has the potential to overcome many of the inherent limitations of mobile cameras," said Professor Shree Nayar of Columbia University. "Pelican's expertise in optics, architecture and software algorithms uniquely positions the company to bring computational imaging applications to the mass market."
Professor Marc Levoy, of Stanford University commented, "Pelican's technology has the potential to upset the traditional tradeoff between the sensitivity and resolution of a camera and its thickness. It also brings new capabilities to cameras, including post-capture focusing, foveal imaging and programmable frame rates. We have been investigating these aspects of computational photography in our laboratory at Stanford for a number of years, through the Stanford Multi-Camera Array, which is big, slow and expensive. Pelican's solution is small, fast and inexpensive – which makes it a very exciting technology."
"Pelican's architecture relaxes key pixel design constraints, thereby enhancing pixel performance beyond those in legacy cameras. I am equally excited about its potential for early and cost-effective adoption of new sensor technologies. The next generation of mini- and micro-cameras is upon us," said Dr. Bedabrata Pain, CEO of Edict Inc.
Technical Advisory Board Members Bio
Dr. Marc Levoy – Currently a professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, Dr. Levoy co-designed the Google book scanner and launched Google's Street View project. In the 1970s, he worked on computer animation, developing a cartoon animation system that was used to make The Flintstones, Scooby Doo and other shows. His current activities include computational imaging techniques that extend the capabilities of digital photography. Dr. Levoy has been awarded the National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator (1991), ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award (1996) and Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Fellow (2007).
Dr. Shree Nayar – Currently the T. C. Chang Professor of Computer Science at Columbia University, he co-directs the Columbia Vision and Graphics Center and heads the Columbia Computer Vision Laboratory (CAVE), which is dedicated to the development of computational cameras and vision systems. In 2008, Dr. Nayar was elected to the National Academy of Engineering.
Dr. Bedabrata Pain – Currently the CEO of Edict Inc., a technology consulting firm, he was previously a senior research scientist at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Caltech. Dr. Pain is a co-inventor of the active pixel sensor technology that resulted in the development of the world's smallest camera in 1995 at NASA, and subsequently sparked the explosion in cameraphones. In 1997, Dr. Pain was inducted to the U.S. Space Technology Hall of Fame.
About Pelican Imaging
Headquartered in Mountain View, California, and founded in 2008, Pelican Imaging Corporation is a venture-backed software and IP start-up in the business of commercializing computational array cameras for the mobile market. Pelican's array camera directly addresses the challenges posed by conventional camera design and small pixels. Investors include Globespan Capital Partners, Granite Ventures, InterWest Partners and IQT. For more information, go to www.pelicanimaging.com.
Pelican Imaging and Pelican are trademarks of Pelican Imaging Corporation. All other brands or product names are the property of their respective holders.
SOURCE Pelican Imaging Corporation

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Why the camera isn't the culprit for the white iPhone 4's delay (update: Woz responds)

Unless you've been away from the Internet over the last few days, you would've no doubt heard about Woz's special appearance at the Engadget Show on Sunday. Unsurprisingly, a few websites ran with some quotes that they pulled from our interview -- specifically, the highlight was Woz "confirming" that the white iPhone 4 was indeed delayed due to camera issues. Well, I don't think this is the case at all. In fact, I'm sure there are plenty of other good reasons for why Apple's been delaying the much anticipated flavor of its flagship smartphone, but the camera just isn't one of them. Head right past the break and all will be explained.

Update: Our man Woz has just responded in the comments:

I said plenty to make it clear that I know nothing of Apple's reasons for rejecting anything ever. I told how when I got my white iPhone 4 assembled I tested the flash photos and they did indeed have problems. I spoke of testing flash photos versus non-flash ones and comparing flash photos between my white and black iPhones. I don't recall saying that it was a 'reason' Apple rejected the parts although I had read that.

For the last part, we were referring to 0:55 in the interview video after the break, but now that Woz has spoken, it could've been a joke at the time that got misinterpreted by some websites. They tend to do that with Woz. Read on!

As we all know, Woz was basing his analysis on the white parts he obtained from the notorious New York iPhone kid -- you may recall him making the headlines a few months back because some lawyers threatened to sue him for selling "stolen goods." So here's the problem: a lot of reports claimed that the kid sourced the parts directly from Foxconn, which is probably why Woz deduced that the parts he got were genuine rejects, ergo his aforementioned statement. As much as I love Woz, I don't think he got the right story there. In fact, no one has.

Let's start off with the kid. In a conversation I had with him a little while back, he wouldn't give me even the slightest hint of where he sourced the parts from, but I'm absolutely certain that it couldn't have been Foxconn, and not even via a third party. How so? Because I, too, have obtained white iPhone 4 parts that produced the same camera problems; but then I managed to track down some genuine Foxconn lens covers and got rid of the problem. The former in Hong Kong, and the latter in Shenzhen.

What happened was I shattered my original white back cover -- which I had since July, before the market was flooded with KIRFs -- back in December, so I looked around in Hong Kong for a replacement. I was super cautious, because prior to returning to Hong Kong I had done white iPhone 4 conversions for a couple of friends, but I noticed that the parts I received were of lower quality -- some were more yellow than mine and they were definitely thinner as well. Most notably, the front covers were missing the iconic silver foil over the proximity sensor -- we've heard from early adopters that the sensor didn't work at all, so my guess is that the parts they had were fake, and the KIRF factories just couldn't replicate the same effect as the one on the real deal, so now they all come without the foil. Anyway, so yeah, I basically got screwed over by the same seller who first sold me the legit parts back in July.

There was a short supply of white parts back in December, but eventually I managed to track down a white back cover in Sin Tak (the infamous mobile phone shopping mall that we've featured before). The guys almost sold it to me for HK$100 (US$13), but then realized that they got it mixed up with the blatantly fake ones that they also sold, so they wanted HK$380 (US$49) instead. Frankly, it looked very legit back in the shop, plus I didn't have my shattered cover with me for comparison, so I coughed up HK$380 which still wasn't bad compared to what some online sellers charge.

It was certainly nice to have an operational iPhone 4 again, but soon I started to notice the problems here and there. Firstly, the "iPhone" stamp on the back was slightly thinner than what my shattered cover had. Flip to the other side and you'd see its metallic overlay had a rougher finish pattern. Oh, and guess what? Camera problems! Not all photos were affected, but whenever I aimed at bright objects (like fluorescent tube lighting or any white object), I got a strong halo effect around them. Obviously, this poor transmittance also affected some of my close-up shots when flash was enabled. Upon a much closer inspection, I noticed that the back of this offending lens cover -- as in its black sleeve for the glue -- had a linear brush pattern instead of a circular one that the real ones have, plus the inner black circle was thicker. These telltale signs have now become a handy way for me to verify the authenticity of iPhone 4 parts that I come across. I wasn't planning on asking for a refund from the shop, but I had to go back to Sin Tak to hunt down more parts on behalf of a few friends anyway. Obviously, some of the shops weren't so keen on letting me do my visual inspection before making a purchase decision, but all I needed to ask was this: do their white front covers have the silver foil over the proximity sensor? All I got back from those idiots was a blank stare, as if I had just said the most ridiculous thing in the world. Eventually, they sarcastically told me to get the parts from Apple, not realizing that the real thing does indeed have the silver bit. Fools.

A couple of test shots at the Shenzhen shop using the new lens cover.
So what was a Chinaman to do? Go north, as we always say. Luckily for me, I just so happened to be in Shenzhen to cover the Meizu M9 launch, so afterwards, Stone (Hong Kong editor) and I went into a shady looking building where we were told would have the white iPhone 4 parts. It took us a while to scan through the hundreds of little shops there, but about half an hour later we came across a shop that had exactly what I was looking for. Well, almost -- from our visual inspection, the ¥120 ($18) white cover itself had all the ticks except for the lens cover, which had a linear brush pattern instead of a circular one on the back. I pointed this out to the boss and boom, he pulled out a bag that had what appeared to be an internal Foxconn label stuck on it, and inside were a stash of lens covers neatly lined up on a sticky sheet. And yes, they all had the right pattern on the back. All he needed was half an hour before we went back to pick up our made-to-order white iPhone 4 back cover. Alas, after learning about the water droplet test on a Hong Kong forum, it turned out that my new white cover isn't genuine, either. The idea of the test is that the oleophobic coating on genuine iPhone 4s holds the surface tension of water droplets, so this makes a good litmus test for spotting fake parts. As you can see above, both our new cover and the bad KIRF couldn't hold up water droplets, whereas my shattered piece could. On the bright side, our front cover passed this test, and all I care about right now is that I have genuine-looking white covers that don't ruin my photos. Regardless, the argument still holds: all the rumors that have been going around about how the white iPhone 4 is delayed are untrue -- the KIRF lens covers are the real culprit of the crappy photos that people have been seeing, ergo the culprit of the erroneous rumor. The real reason for the delay? We still think it's to do with the paint job. Fret not, though, as the shop owner in Shenzhen told us that Foxconn was starting to mass produce white iPhone 4s in mid-January, but only time will tell whether his source was right.

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Chicken-based camera stabilization more effective than the human head mount (video)

As you're undoubtedly well aware, the chicken's vestibulo-ocular reflex and gaze stabilizing function (Google it!) is highly evolved, making it just the thing for steadying your camera. Of course, you need access to live poultry, a tiny camera, some sort of rubber band, and the patience and skill to befriend a rooster and bring him to your film shoots. You've already seen one loyal Engadget reader's fledgling attempts at the Chicken Powered Steadicam™, but you can rest assured that this fowl gadget (groan) is constantly in development. Check out our friend Jeremiah's video after the break to see comparison shots between a rooster cam, a handheld camera, and one just sort of strapped to Jeremiah's head.

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