Ulead
Katz presented and demonstrated Ulead's Photo Impact, Photo Explorer, Cool-360, and Video Studio. Richard gave a click-by-click lecture on how to use these products and his speech mainly consisted of "click here, do this, and there you go." So discussing these product's capabilities in this summarization of his immensely energetic and humor-laden speech is going to be somewhat lackluster.

Digital imagery: There are three easy ways of bringing images into a computer for editing—digital cameras and scanners can have their images just sucked right into the computer, and film processors now give you an option to have your negatives transferred to image files on CD. Once the images are in the computer, Ulead's applications are among the best in the business to manipulate and manage them.

Do you need to buy a $600 program to do advanced graphics? Graphics professionals have needs that normal people can't even comprehend. Photo Impact v. 7, when compared to PhotoShop, still gives most users all they could ever need to manipulate their images. Photo Impact comes with an enormous amount of free textures, photo images, and graphics.

Users of Photo Impact v6 will be extremely pleased with v7's superior user interface and numerous enhanced capabilities. One such enhancement is "Visual Open." You select images for editing by picking them from a thumbnail preview pane. The sample images and project Richard used to demonstrate the features of Photo Impact involved creating a single image from several individual sources. "This application," according to Katz, "is object-based and not so much layer-based, although you are not completely without layering capabilities. Photo Impact just has a different philosophical point of view."

He used the "magic wand" to select the sky area, then used "fill" to make the sky pink and even rainbow colored. He also placed flowers in the sky. There are 99 levels of undo. With such ease of use, dinner guests suffering through the "after-dinner slideshow" are no longer as bored as they once were.

Photo Impact has the ability to re-scale a tall image that seems to fall away at the top. Use the "Transform, Adjust Perspective" function to make a tall building look like you took its picture from a very long distance away using a very powerful zoom lens. In other words, the building will be made to look square instead of looking like a pyramid.

He used a feature called "magic lighting," making the sky look like it was about to rain. Many other effects include a method to make it look like there's a lightning strike.

Photo Impact includes many ways to retouch photos, including correcting color, brightness, and contrast, cloning an area, red-eye removal, and scratch removal. (Although Richard's computer was giving him fits and the red-eye removal was misbehaving.)

The Photo Impact Album feature allows the user to create automated slideshows with an audio track that can be synchronized to the image wipes. The slideshow can be "packaged" as a stand-alone executable for delivery by CD-ROM or e-mail.

Ulead's Gif Animator, which comes with Photo Impact, allows you to create cool little 3-D action figures that you can then incorporate into your Web pages. With Gif Animator, you build an animated image by using frames of the same image just slightly changed from each other. This application is the first to have direct-to-Web editing capabilities.

Web editing gives the user numerous page themes, all optimized for Web browser display. Each theme includes backgrounds, graphics and templates. The "Component Designer" can build a Web page in minutes.

Photo Explorer is considered by Katz to be a dedicated navigational browser, similar to Windows Explorer, but on steroids with a lot of left brain thrown in. It's also dirt-cheap. The file browser has the ability to mass rename images to a user-specified pattern. It can also do an elementary slideshow.

Photo Explorer contains many essential editing functions that the user can quickly apply. No need to learn complicated procedures, Photo Explorer is simple and intuitive. A red-eye removal tool is included. The tool replaces the red tint with another tint of your choosing.

Printing images has become easier. Photo Explorer allows for one image per page or several per page. A question was asked if Photo Explorer can be told where specifically on a page (better expressed as which panel position) another image or images can be placed. The intent was to fill blank panels on pages that had images printed on them previously. (Photo-glossy paper is expensive.) Katz said he wasn't aware of Photo Explorer having that capability.

When printing, the user has numerous templates available, including calendars, certificates, cards, and banners. The user can also print to an e-mail address, which simply attaches the image to an automated outgoing e-mail. Prior to attaching, the user can specify a size and compression ratio appropriate to the intended recipient—large file size for high-speed or small for modem users.

Cool-360 is another small application included with the package. This program will stitch together several images into one scrollable panoramic image that automatically adjusts each stitched frame for perspective depending on how one is looking at it. Cool-360 can also make simple adjustments to color and brightness.

Katz then gave a short demonstration of Ulead's Video Studio. Two versions exist, one with a CD-DVD burner plug-in (seven to 20 minutes depending on quality — and not even DVD quality — which is a limitation of the consumer-based technologies).

When a digital video camera is attached, Video Studio can control where in the camera's memory to start and stop sucking in the data. The user can also dump the camera's contents into the library with an automatic split-by-scene. The program can detect where the camera operator had paused the recording and use that interruption as the split point.

Once the scenes are in the library, the user-editor drags and drops scene objects and adds wipes and a soundtrack. Again, the number of wipes and special effects available to the user is mind-boggling.

Video Studio can save the movie in any of several encodings and resolutions, as either PAL or NTSC video format.

Richard answered many questions on the technical side of using digital cameras, but none of those questions pertained directly to the products he was demonstrating.

Robotics
David Calkins, President of the San Francisco Robotics Society of America, introduced the audience to the world of small-scale robotics. The SFRSA was formed about 20 years ago to promote home-based robotics. They currently have several chapters and are aggressively pursuing establishing other chapters across the country. Mr. Calkins gave his presentation using a slide show and a couple of short clips showing competitive robots in action.

The SFRSA teaches a course in robotics that includes a standard kit of parts, costing just under $100. The kit has everything to build a complete, functioning sumo robot. The course focuses on what can be done to enhance the basic kit’s functionality—much like a basic computer and what can be added to it. The kit can have 5 to 13 additional input or output sensors. The courses provide the tools and rudimentary knowledge to customize and personalize your robot.

The range of robots explored by the SFRSA include the do-nothing toy level, the "help around the house" types, and sanctioned competition robots. The Society discusses, builds, and offers courses on robots—programmable sophisticated types and simple screw-together animated machine types.

SFRSA Exhibition Room

The SFRSA sponsors several annual shows in the San Francisco Bay area; the two biggest, offering thousand-dollar prizes, are at the end of March and September.

Mr. Calkins presented a slide show of their most recent robotics competition. The competition is open to all types of robots, all budgets, and the competition venue often features an exposition room—robots of all types are on display. The types of competition include: Aibo races, Sumo wrestling, and accuracy in tracking/navigation tasks.

Line Following

A LEGO Robot

One of the biggest revolutions in robotics today is LEGO Mindstorms (about $200). Not long ago, the Northern California LEGO Mindstorm Annual Competition was held in San Jose, sponsored by NASA-FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), designed to get junior-high and high school students more involved in science.

A real-world challenge was set up and competitors had to devise a rescue mission. A mock rescue ship is in Antarctica with stranded scientists and equipment. The robot must: retrieve the equipment and bring it back to the ship or deploy the equipment, deliver emergency supplies, recover the scientists, etc. Sixty-eight teams, fourth- to eighth-grade kids, started with the same kits but developed radically different solutions—very complex programs using the LEGO programming language. Programs are assembled using logic concept blocks.

There are three major televised robotic competitions: BattleBots (Comedy Central) at Treasure Island, Robotica (TLC) at Hollywood, and Robot Wars (TNN) held outside of London. Budgets for these robots extend into the tens of thousands of dollars, including resources such as metal-working tools. Such competitions are becoming full-time affairs, requiring sponsorships (e.g., PTC CAD-software, ICQ, IFI Robotics) and employed pit crews. In five to ten years, this sport may be on a par with the likes of NASCAR, replete with entrants such as the FRAM-bot, Colgate-bot, and Miller-bot.

There is no real "robot parts store." Robot builders must rely on finding off-the-shelf parts and using them creatively. Some builders exclusively haunt surplus parts stores, scavenging for promising components ripped from unlikely products—the CD player door eject motor, for example. A typical robot requires extensive research and development, trial and error. Also look at Robot Store.

The "sport" of robotics is a true "sportsman’s" activity. There are no "Tanya Hardings" in robotics. It’s just the opposite — stunning, heartening — competitors helping each other. The ratio of men to women involved in competitive robotics is about 60/40 — creativity being the key to a successful competitor.

Mark Tilden, a member of SFRSA, built—for about $10 each—palm-sized robots (they look like big cockroaches) whose sole purpose is to randomly run around his apartment sweeping the floor. They have a little brush at the front and he never has to vacuum his floor. They are photo-phobic — when the homeowner turns on the lights, they all scurry under the couch or bed.

Sony’s Aibo Dog

Aibo, Sony’s robot dog (retails for about $1500), is quite versatile. When equipped with a wireless LAN modem, the robot can interface with a Web-enabled control console. A small camera mounted in its nose provides real-time images.

Interactive Robot

Maxwell, the talking robot that listens and responds using free software from Microsoft (Microsoft Speech API).

Sumo Robot Competition

Sumo-robotics in Japan is bigger than football is in America. Every year in Kyoto, fans fill a 120-thousand seat stadium with 10 to 20 thousand competing robots. Budgets range from 10 to 40 thousand dollars per robot. The cash purse is one million yen (about $7,500). There are four categories: mini (10 x 10 cm, 0.5 kg), full-scale (20 x 20 cm, 3 kg), autonomous, and remotely controlled. Each bout has a three-minute time limit, but matches rarely go past 20 seconds. Techniques used include suction-based traction. As a demonstration of this technique, several matches are conducted with the area held aloft, up-side-down. Another demonstration involved a human (6’, 180 lbs.) against such a robot. The human lost.