VisWiz app allows blind users to crowdsource visual descriptions in real time

VisWiz app allows blind users to crowdsource visual descriptions in real time
Originally posted to the MacVisionaries mailing list; more links after the article extract.

New Scientist article
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2011/05/smartphone-app-lets-the-blind.html

block quote start
Designing a computer program that can reliably recognize text and distinguish objects in the real world has proven to be a massive challenge for artificial
intelligence researchers. To get around this, the researchers behind VizWiz - a team consisting of computer scientists from several universities, including
the University of Rochester - decided to outsource the task of problem-solving to people: specifically, to Amazon Mechanical Turk's masses of online workers.

To make sure users get answers as quickly as possible, the researchers programmed an intelligent queuing system they call Quik Turkit to speed things up.
Quik Turkit recruits Mechanical Turk workers even as a VizWiz user is taking a picture, so someone is always ready to answer an incoming query.

Eleven blind iPhone users tested out VizWiz, asking questions like: "What denomination is this bill?", "Do you see picnic tables across the parking lot?",
and "What temperature is my oven set to?"

They received an average of three responses per query and waited an average of 133.3 seconds for the first answer. The first answer received was accurate
or helpful in 71 of 82 cases. By the third answer, all questions were correctly answered.

In a second test, the volunteers got to use VizWiz 2.0, which includes improved image processing techniques. Their response time was cut to an average
of 27 seconds.
block quote end

WisWiz app at Apple store (available in U.S. and UK)
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/vizwiz/id439686043?mt=8

VisWizweb site
http://vizwiz.org/

Vizwiz tutorial (helpful to read through first, since the app just opens with the camera)
http://vizwiz.org/tutorial.html

Research project at the University of Rochester
http://hci.cs.rochester.edu/currentprojects.php?proj=vw

Colors on the wing

I'm planning on doing some tie-dying soon, and two effects I'm interested in reproducing are dragonflies and peacock feathers. No joy on finding a description of how to get a tie-dye dragonfly (although it seems to have a basic cross shape which should be easy to produce), but along the way, I ran across these various articles which I thought had some yummy science in them:

1. a fascinating page on dragonflies of the Southwest
http://www.desertusa.com/mag98/nov/papr/drangonflies.html
"They come not only in red, fuchsia, orange, pink, blue, gold, saffron, black, emerald, maroon, earth tones, and more, but also in metallic colors. Some have colored, spotted or banded wings; others may have clear wings but clubbed abdomens or a spike on their tail."

2. an article which discusses how peacock feathers get their colors from structure rather than pigment
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/10/1016_031017_peacockcolors.html

3. a post from the blog Practical Thread Magic on what colors to use to get a peacock feather effect
http://practicalthreadmagic.blogspot.com/2011/02/in-search-of-peacock-colors-anatomy-of.html

Playing Bioshock for college credit

Kes: And the word of the day is "gamic text."

from
http://depts.washington.edu/chid/node/98

block quote start
CHID 496F
Title: CLOSE PLAYING, OR, BIOSHOCK AS PRACTICUM

As part of a continuing series on video games generated by the Critical Gaming Project at UW, will discuss, develop, and do close playing.  Like close reading, close playing requires careful and critical attention to how the game is played (or not played), to what kind of game it is, to what the game looks like or sounds like, to what the game world is like, to what choices are offered (or not offered) to the player, to what the goals of the game are, to how the game interacts with and addresses the player, to how the game fits into the real world, and so on.  To engage all of this, we will take 2K's critically-acclaimed
first-person shooter Bioshock (Xbox360, PS3, PC) as our central gamic text (though other supplemental games will be included as needed).  block quote end 

etext: The Maiden King in Iceland

Actually, this is a dissertation, but it looked intriguing enough that I wanted to post the URL for later reference
http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001199772