faces

How Bluetooth can be a fashion statement

If something like "Budclicks" can be marketed to tart up earbuds, then certainly a similar concept can be valid for mobile headsets. That seems to be the working assumption held by Sony Ericsson, which is offering swappable fashion face plates for its HBH-PV712 Bluetooth headset. Chip Chick says the three colors--red, black, and purple--can be interchanged according to "match the outfit of your choice that day." Given our own shopping habits, we'll have to take their word for it.

CNN tracks Ashley Dupre's social networking activity and provides full report

For most people, updating your MySpace or Facebook profile is not news. Sure, it might appear in your news feed on the site, but that's just about as far as the story is likely to travel. For Ashley Alexandra Dupre, the woman who reportedly worked as an escort and whose clients included former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, not only has her social networking become a significant news item, but it's even possible that her life-long dream of becoming a professional singer may turn into a reality as a result of getting caught in the prostitution ring that brought down a New York Governor.

In a CNN article that's been updated on at least one occasion, Mallory Simon details the activity on Dupre's profiles at both MySpace and Facebook since the time her identity was publicized by the New York Times earlier in the week. According to Simon, "It seemed she was trying to stay one step ahead of journalists, attempting to limit what information they could access."

The damage control was not limited to deleting scantily clad photographs and embarrassing comments from the past but also involved deleting contacts in her network as well. Simon points out that both Facebook and My Space are used by journalists to gleam background information on their subjects and suggests that, "She was seemingly aware that the press would have access to her friends and every word, photo and comment on her profiles, so she began by deleting connections between her friends on Facebook."… Read more

SkiTech review: The North Face jackets (Free Thinker, Sedition II, and more)

The North Face Free Thinker, Foil Thermal, and Sedition II jackets are so cool looking that it almost doesn't matter how well they perform in the cold. But they do. Ah, they do.

I will admit that when I started to do these ski technology reviews, I figured it would be hard to distinguish between the different manufacturers. A coat is a coat, right? Wrong. That's like saying Macs and PCs are the same because both use processors and hard drives. It's very easy to pick out a North Face jacket from other brands, and it has nothing to do with the logo.

We evaluated several jackets from the North Face: Free Thinker, Foil Thermal (women's), Sedition II, and Wavy Triclimate (women's). The four jackets are very different from each other, and highly distinguished from anything else we tried.

Take the North Face Free Thinker jacket, for example, which was my favorite of the bunch.… Read more

Tessera buys camera detection software firm

LAS VEGAS--Tessera Technologies has agreed to acquire FotoNation, a start-up that sells software cameras can use for tasks such as detecting and tracking faces, fixing flash-induced red-eye, and triggering the shutter only when subjects are smiling and not blinking.

Tessera, a San Jose, Calif.-based electronics miniaturization company, will pay $29 million in net cash and another $10 million if specific milestones within the next year are met.

The companies announced the deal Thursday during the Photo Marketing Association trade show here.

FotoNation, based in Burlingame, Calif., has 80 employees. Its software is used in more than two-thirds of digital … Read more

SkiTech review: North Face ski gloves (Patrol Glove)

My final ski glove review is also of my favorite. The North Face calls its Patrol Glove "an instant favorite of ski patrollers, because it's the warmest and driest glove around." I can't speak for whether it's ski patrollers' favorite glove, though I've seen plenty wearing it. But I can say that this was the warmest glove that I've ever worn.

Ironically, the North Face Patrol Glove is also the least outwardly "technology-driven" glove we reviewed. The other gloves we reviewed were excellent and made good use of technology. This glove? The technology is all in its materials.

Leather on the outside with padded knuckles (which came in handy when skiing the trees). The shell is made from Gore-Tex XCR. This means it's windproof and waterproof, yet is breathable so your hands stay dry. The insulation is PrimaLoft. It's very soft, lightweight, and water repellent. PrimaLoft synthetic insulation absorbs three times less water, is 15% warmer when dry, and is 24% warmer when wet than other insulation. At least, that's the claim.… Read more

Gizmoz rolls out new face-mapping video service

We're total suckers for video products that let us use our face. A few months back, Caroline put my head on a woman's body with the launch of JibJab's Starring You service, and shortly before that, Rafe played around with Fix8, which lets you overlay live video with avatar and object overlays. Both are vastly different technologies, but the idea is the same: quick entertainment with very little effort on the part of the end user. Along the same lines, Gizmoz, which has been providing 3-D face-mapping technology to the masses since late May, is launching a … Read more

Up next: Cameras that know who you photographed

MONTEREY, Calif.--Get ready for a new era in which your camera knows not just when you took a picture but who's in it, too.

Many cameras today can detect the faces of those being photographed, which is handy for guiding the camera to set its exposure, focus, and color balance properly. But the more difficult challenge of face recognition is more useful after the photo has been taken.

That's because of a concept called autotagging, one of a number of technologies that make digital photography qualitatively different from the film photography of the past.

Tags of descriptive … Read more

Lenovo 3000 Y410 tiptoes into the U.S. market

The eagle-eyed crew over at NotebookReview tipped us off to the appearance of a new laptop on Lenovo's U.S. site. Part of the Lenovo 3000 family, the 14.1-inch Y410 was announced in the Asia markets earlier this year, but it arrived in the States without even a press release. Curious, considering the Y410 represents the company's first foray into the consumer--also known as "home/home office"--market here.

Though its boxy silver case is hardly a departure from the conservative look of the Lenovo 3000 line, the Y410 includes entertainment-oriented features you wouldn't … Read more

Ahhh! Mutating faces!

Big on Digg yesterday was a face mutations site called Mutating Pictures that would let you rate how much a randomly thrown together pile of geometric objects looked like a human face. Voting up a picture would in turn create more "offspring," or similar variants of the chosen picture, while simultaneously "killing off" the lower ranked faces. The result is a user-controlled evolutionary system at a very basic level.

Today, almost ironically, we've got a mutation of the site called Face Maker that attempts to solve the same problem using an either-or model. Instead of … Read more