Video: See the Google Pixel's electronic image stabilization

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

The new Google Pixel and Pixel XL boast the best cameras on any smartphone and while they have a notable 12.3 megapixel camera, these phones omitted optical image stabilization in favour of a computational solution that uses the built-in gyroscope to at 200 times a second to determine exactly how the camera is moving, even accounting for the rolling shutter and even avoiding the jello effect and rolling shutter seen in other forms of stabilization.

I was very impressed at what the Pixel XL could do in terms of grabbing stable video. You can see I shot video from a moving car, which is usually a nightmare scenario for any type of camera and often means it isn't even worth shooting video. I also shot video while walking and moving around in various conditions and as you can see the video isn't just usable, it is clear and generally vibration free. During the October 4 launch of the Pixel and Pixel XL, Google's VP Product Management Brian Rakowski mentioned the company's imaging and photography engineers spent a whole year working on the camera stack and the result is impressive.

Apple’s newest hire looks to address Siri’s shortcomings

Looks like Apple want to make sure Siri keeps up with its competition. The tech company has hired Carnegie Mellon University Professor Russ Salakhutdinov to head its team working on artificial intelligence, which is considered a big part of the industry’s future. And if this is your line of work, Salakhutdinov is even hiring people for his team. He’ll also remain as a professor at Carnegie Mellon. One of latest researches involve work on how to better derive context behind the questions people pose. If applied to Apple’s tech, that can come quite handy and perhaps put them back in the running in the virtual assistant space.

Excited about joining Apple as a director of AI research in addition to my work at CMU. Apply to work with my teamhttps://t.co/U2hQl2GdhA

— Russ Salakhutdinov (@rsalakhu) October 17, 2016

 

Source: Recode

Fitbit releases fix for Charge 2 distance tracking issue

Fitbit has admitted to two software issues with the Charge 2 that cause it to incorrectly display the distance it tracks. According to Fitbit one of the issues is related to the Connected GPS and when it’s used with a few modes like wall, hike, or interval. The other is when using multi-sport tracking for run and treadmill activities. The company says they have already fixed the issue through a free software upgrade.

"These software errors caused the tracker to occasionally calculate stats like pace and distance with less precision than we expect from our products," a spokesperson for Fitbit told The Verge via email. 

Kickstarter for Dyslexie font hopes to help out people with dyslexia

It’s impossible to put yourself in the shoes of someone else. So if you don’t understand what it must be like for dyslexics, then we can’t blamed you. But that doesn’t mean you can’t help them out. Christian Boer, a dyslexia sufferer and the man behind Dyslexie, hopes to make it easier for dyslexics to navigate the digital world. He created the typeface Dyslexie and designed the letters in a way that makes it difficult for people to flip or twist them while reading. He used things like letter weights, making them bolder at the base; larger capital letters; and bigger spaces between words. The font is available for Mac and PC users.

But Boer takes this a step further with a Kickstarter campaign for things like creating a PDF converter to change any document typeface into the Dyslexie font and a web browser extension to do the same for web pages. The campaign has around 34 days to go and a bit far from its 35,000 euros (around CA$50,500) target. But if this is something you’d like to get involved in, you can do so here.

Source: Digital Trends