Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Like a photo studio in your pocket

Good article here.

iPhone X Cameras


Swift Kitura 2.0 wth Codable Routing

Better back end APIs for Mobile Camera Apps

Why are we writing a coding post on best Camera? It's because the open source programming language by Apple is becoming a universal language for both mobile as well as a preferred language for  backend webserivices.  This means that builders of Camera Apps, Drones, AI solutions, Visualization and more have better tools. And this in turn will result in better Apps.

And IBM has jumped on the band wagon to produce a framework for server side Swift solutions called Kitura

Kitura 2,0 announcement

Now with the advent of Swift 4.0 and Kitura 2.0 a new technology has emerged called Codable Routing  This is cool!

"Traditionally web frameworks require you to think in terms of web requests and responses, with HTTP headers and status codes, and dealing with parsing body data which is typically encoded as JavaScript Object Notation (JSON)."

But now coders just create asynchronous functions with completion handlers and they automatically become server side APIs.  So App developers can develop backend APIs for their mobile clients in Swift, and they can do it in 1/10th of the code.

But then to make it even easier for Swift clients like IOS Apps, IBM created KituraKitmaking it very easy to share Swift types between the client and server in the form of a Client/Server Contract. 

Here's an example on GitHub 






Monday, October 30, 2017

Home security system with camera app, AI and 3D monitoring

No more false alerts. The new lighthouse camera has 3D monitoring and machine learning. Tell the system what you are interested in. No need to scan hours of recorded video,



Light house web site to preorder 




Friday, October 27, 2017

Photo Apps adding Artificial Intelligence for Help Guides

This App is for personalized photo books, and all kinds of photo gifts like mugs and t-shirts. Below is a quick video on how to create a personalized photo book and print it for same day pickup at Walgreens.

But something we noticed of interest is a help system that includes IBM Watson. Not kidding. It looks like they have just started implementing this feature. On the main menu, just tap the ? button and it takes you to a Watson screen with voice recognition and Watson's voice. It's interesting and fun. Lets hope they keep improving the Watson integration because it has so many possibilities. We will be scouting out other Apps like this.

Here's the 2 minute HD video tutorial and a link to the App in the App Store.  At the time of this review, they were on version 3.5. It's a good App.  Besides Photo Books, it has Gift Printing with Fujifilm for home delivery. It's a snap to create and order your prints.









Why Not Camera Apps For Voting?

So the computer changes the world 36 years ago. News tried to spread fear. It turned out that computers did not take over. They are tools, like bicycles, just as Steve Jobs said. But for some incredibly inexplicable reason, we still cannot vote with our computers or with our mobile phones. That's because we could accurately track every single vote with redundancy. We would know exactly who voted when, where and how. Our Camera Apps for voting could identify us in real time. The vote would not be isolated in some obscure box for local manipulation by crooks and Russians. No need for recounts because all the votes can be re-tallied again in seconds by redundant systems. And so on... America would become a real Democracy. We cannot have that. Everyone voting! That would not be fair to the corrupt politicians. But the truth is that we need.





Thursday, October 26, 2017

AI Session @ Mobile Photo Connect Off Target

Sitting silently in the audience, I was surprised at the direction of the conversation by industry leaders on AI. This was a great conference, but this session became unwrapped.

In an effort to offload what they were calling Pure AI to local devices, they called things like speech recognition, gesture recognition and computer vision Artificial Intelligence. These are just front end user interface elements. It is our position that this attempt to call everything Artificial Intelligence is for marketing purposes only.

IBM just purchased 1 billion medical photos to be scanned with Watson. Watson would not have won the Jeopardy game with "Pure AI" on a local computer. The relationship between AI and Big Data cannot be unwrapped by redefining the meaning of AI. The technology needs to become more advanced with machine learning and collaborative data not simply redefined to include new user interface elements from traditional computing for marketing purposes.

The Apps we will be looking for in the field of AI will be much different than what was presented. The great mobile Apps of the future will Tap Into Artificial Intelligence in the Cloud as needed. The vast knowledge of humanity and cognitive understanding cannot be offloaded or redefined. There is a fundamental difference between AI and User Interface Elements. We will be looking for the real deal.


 only made easier to access.

Tuesday, October 24, 2017

We are headed to Mobile Photo Connect in San Francisco

This is a big event, so we are going there to cover it. One of the interesting sessions will be on how Artificial Intelligence is shaking up the photo and video industry.

Panelists on this session are:
  • Ramzi Rizk, Co-Founder & CTO, EyeEm
  • Josh Weisberg, Principal PM, Computational Photography, Microsoft
  • Borui Wang, Founder & CEO, Polarr
  • Argam DerHartunian, VP Product, PicsArt
With visual AI solutions ranging from photo capture, to image enhancement, to curation, and even to robotics, things are picking up.  We will be looking for the next gen of Photo Apps using AI.

"In a fireside chat session with conference co-Hosts Hans Hartman and Alexis Gerard, Google's Photo Lead for Content and Community, Anna Dickson, will discuss the issue of curation in an age of mixed human and AI assets."

Check back here on Best Camera for a complete first hand report. 


Thursday, October 5, 2017

Robots with Cameras

Sci-Fi writer Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics are worth a real world look. Robot cops are emerging. They are basically Camera Apps. 
  1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
  2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
  3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.