Turn to Unsplash for Uncommon Free Photos
June 7, 2016
Stock photos can be so, well, stock. However, Killer Startups points to a solution in, “Today’s Killer Startup: Unsplash.” Reviewer Emma McGowan already enjoyed the site for its beautiful free photos, with new ones posted every day. She especially loves that their pictures do not resemble your typical stock photos. The site’s latest updates make it even more useful. She writes:
“The new version has expanded to include lovely, searchable collections. The themes range from conceptual (‘Pure Color’) to very specific (‘Coffee Shops’). All of the photos are free to use on whatever project you want. I can personally guarantee that all of your work will look so much better than if you went with the usual crappy free options.
“Now if you want to scroll through beautiful images a la old-school Unsplash, you can totally still do that too. The main page is still populated with a seemingly never ending roll of photos, and there’s also a ‘new’ tab where you can check out the latest and greatest additions to the collection. However, I really can’t get enough of the Collections, both as a way to browse beautiful artwork and to more easily locate images for blog posts.”
So, if you have a need for free images, avoid the problems found in your average stock photography, which can range from simple insipidness to reinforcing stereotypes and misconceptions. Go for something different at Unsplash. Based in Montreal, the site launched in 2013. As of this writing, they happen to be hiring (and will consider remote workers).
Cynthia Murrell, June 7, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Tumblr Has a GIF For You
June 30, 2015
Facebook recently enabled users to post GIF images on the social media platform. Reddit was in an uproar over the new GIF and celebrated by posting random moving images from celebrities making weird faces to the quintessential cute kitten. GIFs are an Internet phenomenon and are used by people to express their moods, opinions, or share their fandom. Another popular social medium platform, Tumblr, the microblogging site used to share photos, videos, quotes, and more, has added a GIF search, says PCMag in “Tumblr Adds New GIF Search Capabilities.”
The main point of Tumblr is the ability share content either a user creates or someone else creates. A user’s Tumblr page is a personal reflection of themselves and GIFs are one of the ultimate content pieces to share. Tumblr’s new search option for GIFs is very simple: a user picks the + button, clicks the GIF button, and then search for the GIF that suits your mood. A big thing on Tumblr is citing who created a piece and the new search option has that covered:
“Pick the GIF you want and it slinks right in, properly credited and everything,” the company said. “Whoever originally posted the GIF will be notified accordingly. On their dashboard, on their phone, all the regular places notifications go.”
GIFs are random bits of fun that litter the Internet and quickly achieve meme status. They are also easy to make, which appeals to people with vey little graphic background. They can make something creative and fun without much effort and now the can be easily found and shared on Tumblr.
Whitney Grace, June 30, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Juvenile Journal Behavior
May 5, 2015
Ah, more publisher excitement. Neuroskeptic, a blogger at Discover, weighs in on a spat between scientific journals in, “Academic Journals in Glass Houses….” The write-up begins by printing a charge lobbed at Frontiers in Psychology by the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease (JNMD), in which the latter accuses the former of essentially bribing peer reviewers. It goes on to explain the back story, and why the blogger feels the claim against Frontiers is baseless. See the article for those details, if you’re curious.
Here’s the part that struck me: Neuroskeptic supplies the example hinted at in his or her headline:
“For the JNMD to question the standards of Frontiers peer review process is a bit of a ‘in glass houses / throwing stones’ moment. Neuroskeptic readers may remember that it was JNMD who one year ago published a paper about a mysterious device called the ‘quantum resonance spectrometer’ (QRS). This paper claimed that QRS can detect a ‘special biological wave… released by the brain’ and thus accurately diagnose schizophrenia and other mental disorders – via a sensor held in the patient’s hand. The article provided virtually no details of what the ‘QRS’ device is, or how it works, or what the ‘special wave’ it is supposed to measure is. Since then, I’ve done some more research and as far as I can establish, ‘QRS’ is an entirely bogus technology. If JNMD are going to level accusations at another journal, they ought to make sure that their own house is in order first.”
This is more support for the conclusion that many of today’s “academic” journals cannot be trusted. Perhaps the profit-driven situation will be overhauled someday, but in the meantime, let the reader beware.
Cynthia Murrell, May 5, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
The Elusive Video Recognition
April 22, 2015
Pictures and video still remain a challenge for companies like Google, Facebook, Apple, and more. These companies want to be able to have an algorithm pick up on the video or picture’s content without relying on tags or a description. The reasons are that tags are sometimes vague or downright incorrect about the content. VentureBeat reports that Google has invested a lot of funds and energy in a deep learning AI. The article is called “Watch Google’s Latest Deep Learning System Recognize Sports In YouTube Clips.”
The AI is park of a neural network that is constantly fed data and programmed to make predictions off the received content. Google’s researchers fed their AI consists of a convolutional neural network and it was tasked with watching sports videos to learn how to recognize objects and motions.
The researchers learned something and wrote a paper about it:
“ ‘We conclude by observing that although very different in concept, the max-pooling and the recurrent neural network methods perform similarly when using both images and optical flow,’ Google software engineers George Toderici and Sudheendra Vijayanarasimhan wrote in a blog post today on their work, which will be presented at the Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition conference in Boston in June.”
In short, Google is on its way to making video and images recognizable with neural networks. Can it tell the differences between colors, animals, people, gender, and activities yet?
Whitney Grace, April 22, 2015
Stephen E Arnold, Publisher of CyberOSINT at www.xenky.com
Is Google Net Neutral?
March 31, 2015
When the FCC passed laws that protect net neutrality, the Internet rejoiced that its crazy antics would be safeguarded and content would not be as regulated when it comes to search retrieval and indexing. Big technology companies that make the bulk of the revenue from Internet related services and products are beginning to voice their opinions on the matter, including Google. Drew Crawford wrote on his blog Sealed Abstract a very heated post about Google’s stance in the entire net neutrality argument: “Google, Our Patron Saint Of The Closed Web.” The blog points out the Google is net neutral with the Droid open market and its employees’ blogs, but apparently Google is also out to destroy the free Web too.
Google plans to take control of all .dev domain addresses and possible others in an effort to have these extensions solely related to Google products and services. In short, if you want to use any domains with this ending, like a blog, you will be forced to use a Google service. It is reminiscent of when Google forced people to sign-up for Google Plus if users wanted to continue using YouTube.
“My point is that if you think Google is some kind of Patron Saint of the Open Web, shit son. Tim Cook on his best day could not conceive of a dastardly plan like this. This is a methodical, coordinated, long-running and well-planned attack on the open web that comes from the highest levels of Google leadership.”
The news is not surprising when you assemble the pieces, but it is disheartening that there do not seem to be any big companies on the little guy’s side. And I thought Google was committed to not being evil.
Whitney Grace, March 31, 2015
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