iToon 2.0 is coming...

iToon 2.0 has been sent to Apple for over a week now. We in Babs2Go are expecting the approval from the App Store for the next few days. If everything goes as planned and Apple requires no modification iToon 2.0 should be available at some time between later this week and earlier next week.

We will keep you posted. Until then, feel free to take a look at the new iToon 2.0 User Guide available here and check the upcoming features.

-Luciano

iToon is growing up !!

Hi Folks

I'm glad to share with you that iToon 2.0 has been sent to Apple for approval. I have added major updates on this release and I really hope that you will enjoy it. Here are the major enhancements of the upcoming release:

- iToon Camera - Grid : The camera got enhanced with a Grid in order to make the picture composition easier. If you are not familiar with "The Rule of Third", take a look at this link and you will see how useful the grid is.
- iToon Camera - Digital Zoom : Because I would not like you to spend a lot of money with additional iPhone Apps, I have decided to add the digital zoom feature to iToon as well. You will be able to zoom in your pictures up to 5 times in real time.
- iToon Sessions - On the new version you will be able to save your unfinished sessions and get back to them on a later time. No need to rush anymore in order to get the work done at once. You can take the picture, do some editing, close it and get back to it when you have time.
- iToon User Interface - iToon 2.0 has a completely new user interface. I have minimized the number of items on the work area in order to get more space to what really matter, you pictures.
- This version User Interface is available only in US English.

Because of these changes (specially on the camera), iToon 2.0 will be available only for IPhone OS 3.1 or later.

Here are some early screen-shots. Hopefully, the App will be available on the App Store in a couple weeks.

-Luciano

10th Assignment: Write a review about the Windowed Fourier Transform. What are the most common windows? How is the Brillouin plane of this transform?

On this assignment, I will write a little bit about the Windowed Fourier Transform. As powerful as the Fourier transform may be, it has a major issue. Because it is originally designed to quantify the energy of all frequencies on a signal, it always takes under consideration the entire signal. It means that the results do not allow us to take any conclusion on when the frequencies have reached the peak or any other time-related information.All one can find by using Fourier Transform to analyze a signal is what frequencies are present on the signal and how much of each frequency was found. Windowed Fourier Transform adds a new constraint to the Fourier Transform in order to try reaching a certain level of  time-related information for each frequency.

The core idea of the Windowed Fourier Transform is the addition of a window function to the traditional Fourier Transform. This Time Window function will segment the signal and will turn into 0 (zero) all values that do not belong to the specified time-window. From the notation perspective, this is what one will have:

As T is the time windows that one wants to study:

                         +T/2                     + ∞
X(w) =               ∫    x(t)e-jwt dt = ∫    w(t) x(t) e-jwt dt
                          -T/2                     - ∞

with

w(t) = 1 when  |t|<=T/2
and
w(t) = 0 when  |t| > T/2

There are ups and downs about this method. By using time windows instead of the entire signal, the local maximum not necessarily represents the signal maximum. However, assuming that for the specific study, knowing only the local frequencies would be enough, this could be an interesting and effective way to locate the studied frequencies inside a time period.

How you choose your time-window is also important. Different time-windows will have different impacts on your results. Many different window functions have been proposed over time, each with its own advantages and disadvantages relative to the others. Here is a list with the most common time window functions:

Window              Best with                Frequency                  Amplitude
                           Signal Types           Resolution                  Accuracy

Barlett                Random                  Good                           Fair
Blackman           Random/Mixed      Poor                           Good
Flat top               Sinusoids               Poor                            Best
Hanning             Random                  Good                          Fair
Hamming           Random                  Good                          Fair
Kaiser-Bessel     Random                  Fair                            Good
None(boxcar)    Transient&              Best                           Poor
                          Synchronous  
Tukey                Random                   Good                         Poor
Welch                Random                   Good                         Fair

OBS: I could not find any information about the Brilloin Information Plan. Any tips would be appreciated.

1st Assignment : Review text : "Wavelets: seeing the forest and the trees", by Dana Mackienzie, 2003

I wish all assignments were this nice. Particularly for a non-mathematician guy like me, this text provides a very useful description on why wavelet theory is important and why I'm exchanging my free time to learn about it. You may want take a look on the full paper here.

The author goes by several interesting examples in order to show a concise history of the wavelet theory and applications. The main highlight of her paper is the comparison of the wavelet analysis with the Human perception of its surroundings. Revisiting the author's example, the Human perception allows us to go from a wide-scale overview perspective up to a very fine-grained detailed perspective. When we are overlooking a forest from a jet flying over 2000 feet above the ground, we can barely see any trees, we just see a very long green "carpet". As we get closer, we realize that such "carpet" is made of tress and if we go even closer we will see branches, leaves, etc. This means that the Human perception allows us to visit whatever granularity we need. However, cameras and/or computers do not have such capability. Digital images only represent one perspective at a time. Getting closer to a digital picture will not give you more than a blurred view of the picture.

According to the author, wavelet is one attempt of representing such different levels of granularities on mathematical models. This is the kind of theory that has been so useful that people all around the world have been using variations of it for a very long time way before it got formalized and known as wavelets.

It is very likely that you have been using wavelets for quite a long time without even knowing it. The jpeg2000 (very popular picture format on many digital camera brands) uses wavelets as one of the steps to compress the image files. On the specific case of jpeg2000, wavelets have the capability of splitting what we consider to be the objects on the scene (face, car, etc) of the background information (usually blur or fuzzy image). By doing that, it generates two stream of numbers (pixel values and variation) that can be compressed in up to 200:1 scale.

As a relatively new concept, the wavelet theories are growing in number and complexity in a very fast pace. Several different areas are still evaluating the best way to take advantage of the wavelet features. The most important is that in the case of wavelets, the theory and the practical applications seems to be evolving together. Not only evolving the mathematical foundations but also the several applications that certainly will bring major breakthroughs to several areas of science.

-Luciano

Getting back to Classes

Hi Folks

I have spent a lot of time writing mostly about my IPhone Apps. It is time to go back to school and start writing about a few assignments again. I have enrolled to two very interesting courses this period. I will be working on "Theory of Intelligent Control" and "Introduction to Wavelet theory".

Stay tuned because I already have quite a few assignments that I will make available on the blog over the next couple weeks.

-Luciano

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