Now, keyboard that shocks you out of your Facebook addiction

Two doctoral candidates from MIT have created a new keyboard device that is capable of shocking users overindulging online.

Robert R Morris and Dan McDuff calculated that they were wasting about 50 hours a week on Facebook so to stop that from happening again they turned to Pavlovian
method, Discovery News reported.

McDuff said that the keyboard is able to monitors application usage and if it senses that too much time is being spent on a particular website or application it give a shock to its users, asserting that the shock is just unpleasand and not dangerous.

The system that they have devised uses a Mac's UI Inspector for monitoring application usage and a processing code, which routes on-screen alert signals to an Arduino board that activates a relay and initiates a shock circuit.

That current is then passed on to conductive metal strips that is embedded in a keyboard rest pad.

 

-HT

Facebook kills physical Gifts in favor of digital redemption codes

Not even a year after its inception, Facebook is killing physical Gifts. According to TechCrunch, the social media giant is ending its intermediary role for sending teddy bears, wine and chocolate (sounds romantic, no?) from its partners. Instead, it's focusing on its own gift card, as well as redemption codes for iTunes credits and the like. Why? Well, aside from the cash the company will save, users simply weren't buying physical Gifts all that much. The new Gift page will begin rolling out to ten percent of the site's US userbase over the weekend, and the entire stateside population should see it within two weeks. It's a little less personal, sure, but at least you won't have to worry about getting your loved ones gift receipts.

 

-Engadget

Fujifilm Instax mini 90 keeps instant film alive with retro look, new photo modes

Fujifilm is the torch bearer for retro camera design, but you wouldn't know it from looking at the boring, blob-like bodies of its recent instant film cameras. The company is aiming for more consistency with its new Instax mini 90: the shooter matches its older photo format with the vintage (and far more stylish) look we've seen in Fujfilm's X-series cameras.

Not that the mini 90 is abandoning modern luxuries in the process, mind you. The new Instax more intelligently adjusts to shooting conditions, captures double exposures and brightens backgrounds in a party mode. Fujifilm ships the Instax mini 90 to analog photographers in Japan on September 20th, and should bring the camera to the US sometime next spring.

 

-Engadget

A phone you can literally plug into the wall

Gone are the days of bizarre phones with some special practical use, but not all hope is lost. Earlier today, this author stumbled upon a shanzhai Android 4.0.1 phone with a built-in power plug! It's a bit awkward, though, as you have to take off the back cover to flip up the Type A plug -- we're assuming it has a world-friendly voltage rating, but we'll double check. Should you wish to juice the phone up the old-fashioned way, the micro-USB port is still there.

Externally, this Daxian N100i seems to be very much "inspired" by the Xiaomi Phone 2 or 2S. Given the HK$599 (about US$80) price point (or about US$40 each in bulk), don't expect too many goodies from this outlandish candy bar: there's a dual-core 1GHz MT6517 chipset, a 4.3-inch 800 x 480 TN display, 4GB of storage, a microSD slot, an 1,800mAh cell (plus a spare in the box) and dual-SIM slots -- but for GSM 900/1800 only. The front and back cameras both have a resolution of just 3.1 megapixels, and it was hard to judge the picture quality on that horrible screen.

-Engadget

Emojify Turns Your Photos Into a Collage of Emoji

It can be hard to think of emoticons as art. On one end of the emoji spectrum you have a technically precise, surprisingly appetizing slice of pepperoni pizza, and on the other … a smiling pile of poop. Viewed individually, the icons’ quality and beauty vary wildly, but taken as a set, your emoji can actually become an interesting artistic medium. A new app by VoidWorks, a Singapore-based app development studio, allows users to transform boring photos into pop art pieces by replacing pixels with colorful emoticons. “It really started out as a thought experiment on image representation,” says Kwok Pan, founder VoidWorks. “Like what if the pixels which made up an image are not just dots of colors but have something more to it?”

“We know that there is something there beyond their immediate entertainment value.”

Emojify’s process is closely related to ASCII art, which explained most basically, uses typed text to form a shape. To do this, first Emojify figures the average pixel value and brightness of each emoji icon and arranges them in an ascending ordered list. Then the image you choose is uploaded and divided into a grid where each pixel’s average brightness is calculated. From there each pixel is assigned an emoji based on its corresponding brightness and color.

So, Pan explains, “If the average brightness value in a section is 234, you pick the icon number 234 in the [emoji] list to replace the section.” Pan says he chose to keep the icons as-is, so the integrity of the emoji set remained intact. “This means that I am limited to the range of brightness and colors which the emoji icons offer, and you can see that they are mostly yellow, blue or red,” he explains. Both the contrast and algorithm can be tweaked to increase definition and pixelation.

Solitary images like close-up portraits that have high contrast between light and shadows work particularly well, while photos of landscapes or ill-defined subjects tend to turn into an unrecognizable flurry of emoji. So are the resulting images really art? That depends on your definition. But Pan believes like video games, emoji could eventually evolve from cultural phenomenon to legitimate contemporary art. “Emoji are so accessible and readily available that we don’t see the icons in that artistic light,” he says. “But we know that there is something there beyond their immediate entertainment value, and we are only starting to acknowledge that.”

Have a photo you’d like to Emojify? Buy the app for $.99 at the iTunes app store.

-Wired