iToon 1.1 Upgrade

Hello Folks

Due to the great i-Toon success, I have speed-up the implementation of i-Toon 1.1. This is going to be a free upgrade for everyone who already bought i-Toon 1.0.

Here are the main enhancements for i-Toon 1.1:

- single tap at ballon rotates it (no longer attached to the center of the picture)
- double tap on picture resizes it
- Added Resize Slider for handling small balloons
- resize picture and ballon with pinch gesture
- automatically resizes text to fit ballon
- prevents missing balloons by keeping them inside picture boundaries
- save space in your device (iToon App binary has reduced its size in ~30%)
- prevents saving duplicated cartoons by checking if there were any modifications before saving it.

Here are the new User Guides:

i-Toon 1.1 User`s Guide
i-Toon 1.1 Manual do Usuário

This release was submitted to Apple on August 11th. Hopefully it will be available on App Store in a couple weeks.

Thanks

-Luciano

i-Toon, available this weekend (08/08/2009)

Hello Everyone

i-Toon está totalmente traduzido para Inglês e Português. Acesse o Manual do Usuário aqui.
i-Toon is completly localized for English and Portuguese. Check User Manual here.

I'm glad to share that our new App will be available starting this weekend on the App Store.

As we continue experiencing all different App categories, this time we bring to you i-Toon. It is a mix of Entertainment and Photography App. We will position it inside Photography but I get to say that I may change its category to Entertainment based on the users feedback.

On this tool, I got engaged into reshape the code for the very first App I designed. Back then I was going to build a cartoon generator that would automatically build a cartoon based on a picture. I found several constraints to build such application, specially because of storage and memory space.

This time, I have restructured the idea a little bit and made it more interactive. For this first release, here are the main features:

- Acquire Image from your camera or from our picture library;
- Apply "Border" filter;
- Paint image with Cartoon Colors
- Paint picture as Vivid Colors
- Add Ballon titles
- Save i-Toon pictures to your Photo Library
- Send i-Toon pictures via e-mail

Next release(free upgrade), with new features expected for early September. Feel free to send me a message with your i-Toon wish-list. I might very well decide to implement the suggested features if they fit into my planned schedulle.

-Luciano

i-Dig is Ready for Sale !!

Hello Everyone

I'm glad to share with you that Apple has finally approved "I-Dig-The Recycle Challenge" and it is available on the App Store.

As our technology matures, we are adding quite a few features to our games. This time the game is available in English and Portuguese. We have also added support to three of the main OS 3.0 features : IPod Sound as background music, Multiplayer mode and Voice Chat.

Right now, I'm brainstorming in order to get ready to start working on the next release. Here is my current wish-list:

- Add earthquakes (mess up the user tunnels)

- Add at least one big “Boss” in order to complete each phase
- Shake the iPhone to change background music
- improve visual effects
- minimize App footprint
- fix any possible bugs that Users report

My windows for defining new feature should be closed by the end of this month. Let me know if you have any suggestions.

I hope you enjoy the game!

-Luciano

iDig will be sent to Apple Store today !!

Hello everyone

I'm glad to share with you that i-Dig is about to be sent to apple for entering on the App Store.

Here is its description and a few screenshots. If you are interested on writing a review or becoming a beta tester of our future Apps, let me know.

By this weekend, I intend posting a quick demonstration video of the game on You-Tube. Stay tunned, more news to come.

-Luciano

I-Dig : The Recycling Challenge is an ecological adventure. On this first release, I-Dig uses the full potential of IPhone OS 3 and mixes a fun game with an ecological story.

On the single player mode, the game objective is helping out a little worm to collect as much recycle material as possible. By bringing the cargo to the Recycling Center, the user gets Worm$ that can be used to buy upgrades. If a worm were as tall as a human, each game map would allow it to dig into about 650 feet under the ground. The random map generator is capable of generating up to 1000 different maps to make each new campaign unique. As the user goes deeper he/she will find garbage and obstacles. Natural obstacles such as gas pockets will slow the worm down while drag its life away. Snakes are moving around and they may fall on you if you dig under them. Be specially careful about spiders, they can follow you around and keep dragging your life away; they will not stop until you terminate them. Use your bombs to terminate spiders and snakes. Do not forget that your ethanol tank may go out of fuel as you dig in, remember to go back and refill it from time to time.

The multiplayer mode is the greatest part! The same rules of the single player game apply to the multi-player mode. However, on the multiplayer mode you have to deal with a much smarter adversary that will control a second Worm. After the multi-player campaign starts, the users also have the option to start the Voice Chat tool and tease each other while playing. The game will keep track of both user's scores and it will assume that the highest score is the winner. However, blowing up your opponent will make you feel better in case you got a lower score :-) .

Well, help the worm, learn more about the environment and have fun !

-BABs 2Go Team

Another crazy idea...

Some times I get myself thinking about things that are totally unrelated. I do not know why, but I guess that my brain likes it. During one of my divagations trying to find a theme for my theses, I was thinking about the concept of a time capsule.

A time capsule is used when one generation wants to pass information to another generation. It is not more than a chest with a bunch of letters, drawings, written messages, prety much anything that people would like to share with their kids, grand-kids, and so on.

The time capsule is fine, however, as usual, I think it is too simplistic. As a good scientist, I could not see something simple, working perfectly and let it be. On that case, I was trying to find other uses to a time capsule. That was what leaded me to a few strange but accurate thoughts.

OK, the initial idea is sending a time capsule to your relatives in the future. Moving on, I though, "Why couldn't I sent a time-capsule to myself?". All right, that concept alone could be interesting but not new; it would be just like "I will buy an Apple Stock today and leave it on the closet until I retire". Simple and not fun at all.

When I was about to give-up, I though "Well, what about reincarnation? Would it be totally unthinkable to leave something for me when I get back to life?".

Well, if you are still reading this post is because you are not too upset with me by merging science and religion. Fine, I will keep this way because I'm talking only science here.

Even that reincarnation is most of the times linked to a second life, or something mystical. I have been thinking that it is in fact a mathematical possibility. I mean, all your memories would start fresh but as long as there are human beings around, you have the chance to be born again, even at the same time! From the scientific perspective, at least as far as the current state of the science goes, your body is defined by a set of DNA molecules. Those sets of molecules have been around and mixing and matching together ever since the first Human being was born. Several mutations have created pretty much every single individual that we see today.

Even on the worst case scenario, assuming that the DNA molecules are arranging themselves in total random ways, it only means that there is a very small probability that they will ever get together again in the exact same formation that you are composed today. However, if we take another well accepted truth of these days, we know that the universe is infinite on time. Considering that the Human species will last for at least another X billion of years, that small probability that you have to be reborn becomes a possibility. Yes, you may have a really terrible luck and never be born again but you could be also be a lottery winner and be born twice at the same time (identical twins).

Of course that people can argue that those are two different individuals and that is perfectly acceptable. However, they share the very same project design. I'm not really trying to sell anything here, I sure respects other people's opinions. My point is that, just for fun, wouldn't it be nice if you could share information with yourself whenever you/him is reborn?

Imagine the impacts of this if you embrace this possibility. Ecologists could say "Save the planet for yourself" and really mean it! Anything that we do here will not only affect our children but now it could also impact your very own next life. Those Apple stocks would be even more valuable if you think you could cash them in 100.000 years from now.

Well, getting back to the time-capsule idea: Imagine if we could digitalize you life. Just create a log that would be saved on the network (I assume that Internet will survive until them) and it would be encrypted with a DNA-based key. In X thousand years from now, the other young version of "you" would get to a website, use his DNA to unlock the information and learn about an entire life that he/she had several hundreds of years before.

Well, I'm not sure if this would be a nice PhD project (the most of the technology to build this is already available), however, I'd buy a ticket to see a movie about it.

-Luciano

Ideas for a PhD Student

Many people will call me crazy because I'm making this available before getting engaged on the actual project. Well, I guess this is the good part about not being a full time PhD student yet. Because my professional future is a mess right now, I have no idea what trend I will follow. May be I will implement one of these ideas, may be I will implement none of them, may be I will implement all of them. In the mean time, I'm just having fun. As such, thinking about this would not be as fun if I could not share with however is interested on reading it.

1)Computer Feelings – Because I wrote a short paper about this before (just browse http://labtricks.blogspot.com and check it out) I will not go into many details. The basic idea here is mixing several AI techniques in order to enable feelings on a computer. The procedure to accomplish (or having a starting point on) this would be by creating a frozen neural network “hard-wired” into emotion sensors. The purpose of such network would be interfering on the normal function of the emotion sensors just like Human Feelings do with the human “sensors” (tired, hungry, anger, etc). Similar to someone who loose track of time because it is reading something that he/she likes. Adding this “like” type of feeling to a machine would enable it to find a purpose to itself. A “common-sense” knowledge base would be used by them in order to balance whatever the computer “likes” to do versus what is best to its society. The common-sense plus the “like” feeling would enable the computer to guide itself during its learning activities. Always trying to perfect his leaning on whatever it likes most.

2)Ryodoraku temporal analysis – Ryodoraku is part of the traditional Chinese Medicine. It is a diagnose/treatment tool that allows the practitioner to have an energetic picture of his/her patient. The method is based on the evaluation of 24 acupuncture points. The practitioner uses an equipment similar to a multimeter in order to collect measures from each point. Those measures are plotted into a Ryodoraku chart. Based on the evaluation of the chart, the practitioner is able to diagnose the patient and know exactly what acupuncture points should be used on his/her treatment. I have already developed an Expert System that assist practitioner on this technique some time ago (available on the Apple App Store, i-Ryodoraku). My idea for a PhD degree would be composed by two parts. The first part would be running a detailed analysis on the temporal behavior of the Ryodoraku points. I'd collect and run data mining techniques in order to understand the cross-relationship between all Ryodoraku points over time. This initial analysis would provide resources to identify the behavior of health individuals and also the progression of states that bring a health individual to a sick state. On the second phase, assuming that there is enough evidence and understanding of the progression of states, I'd build a neural network which could be used to interpolate the several different Ryodoraku states of a single individual in order to predict the upcoming health state. This research would target the prediction of disturbing health symptoms into a currently health individual. Deploying such system into a Cell phone, PDA, or smart closes would allow people to prevent health problems before they happen.

3)Neural Network and/or Membrane Computing runtime deployed on a Cell Phone network. Neural networks and Membrane computing share at least one behavior. They both can be deployed on a highly parallel architecture. Membrane computing maps computer instructions into genetic cellular functions. I really do not think it is a good idea to write about this here. I promise I will write a more introductory paper about Membrane Computing at some point in the future. Right now, I know that Nei Soma has been researching a bit into this area in his lab at ITA (Air force Institute of Technology, in Brazil) – at least he was the one who introduced me into this topic. From the neural network perspective, the neurones are the smallest computing nodes of the system. I'm not sure if most people will agree but by now, Neural networks are, for me, a really clever way to build a mathematical functions. Specifically, it is possible to build mathematical functions that map anything into anything. You could map a digital representation of your face to your Social Security number. Your could map the digital representation of a flower smell into a description of the flower. It kind enhances the traditional mathematical functions into functions that map whatever you want into any other thing you want. The way the Neural networks operate is based on a lot of training. There are special algorithms that receive several (some times thousands or millions) of input x output pairs and train the network to do the mapping. This training is a very exhaustive process. However, after the network is trained, the actual execution of the “function”(neural network) is very fast. The PhD work here would be building a runtime and training environment that could be deployed on Cellular phones. The reason for using mobile devices is basically because there are millions of them widely available in the world and because the operation of a single node in a neural network requires low enough computer power that a mobile phone would be more than enough to execute it. Several problems would have to be solved; here is an interesting one: The neural network training requires lots of communication among the nodes, one way to mitigate this issue would be by using wifi-enabled or blue-tooth enabled devices closely located in order to train the network (a good scenario for this would be using the traditional high-school building to train all the nearby devices – imagine that it would be a cell phone high school as well). After the training is completed, the nodes could be activated from anywhere via SMS messages or the internet. This would not be a good solution for a problem that requires low processing power. However, for complex problems, the time to get a solution would only depend on how long it would take to send a message to the cell phones and receiving the reply from all of them. Tens of millions of nodes could be activated simultaneously. This has the potential to bit any super-computer available today.

Well, three is my lucky number. These are the ideas I have for now. I have to find a final candidate until the end of this year. So, do not be surprised if new posts like this come up soon.

-Luciano

Fuzzy Logic and the "Brazilian Way"

Fuzzy is all about uncertainty. There is a common "street-smart" expression that I could not forget to mention here. Because Brazilians are, by nature, very flexible regarding their rules. We have an expression that people use every time that they are on the middle of "adapting" our rules to our needs :-). We say that there is always the "Jeitinho brasileiro" (Brazilian way... it is said in a kind and fun manner :-) ).

Anyway, I got back to this expression because it has everything to do with the Fuzzy Logic. I'd say that Fuzzy logic is the "Jeitinho Brasileiro" for logical expressions.

For Example:

One could say : "I like that girl, she is 1.62 meters tall, 56.5 kilos, her eyes are 78% black".

This would be the traditional mathematical/straight way of saying it. It is a precise description that lets no doubts. Any normal person would hear that and laugh because only a complete geek would describe a girl like that.

With Fuzzy logic, the description would be more like: "I like that girl, she is about one and a half meters tall, a little more than 50 Kilos, her eyes are light gray".

As it might be noticed, the fuzzy description is a lot more human friendly than the first one. Humans are imprecise by nature. Fuzzy logic fits on situations that precision is not required or when it is impossible to have it.

I could go forward and explain the Fuzzy Sets but today is Friday night and I'm not desperate to keep updating the blog. I may get back to this subject next week :-)

-Luciano