Visual Google?!

Ted Turner: "Are aces high or low?"
Peter: "They go both ways!"
Bill Gates: "Hah! He said they go both ways!"
*everybody laughs*
Ted: "Like a bisexual."
Mr. Pewterschmidt: "Yes Ted, that was the joke."

Today's post will be an amalgamation of randomness, like the Family Guy quote above. It turns out that USC is good for more things than pulverizing pompous football teams; their ISI has developed image-recognition technology and now the head of the lab is aiming to link the world together through a visual Google of sorts. Can you imagine seeing a car on the road, taking a picture of it, and then sending it to this "visual Google" on your cell to go to the website of the car?! That's the sort of thing he's trying to do, and the biggest challenge so far is going to be the searching itself. Unlike normal text-based searches, searching through images takes more time and so it'll have to be more finely tuned.

If you've ever wondered how audio compression works, check out this article. It's a very interesting explanation of compression, which I remember seeing in the movie Antitrust and wondering how they can create better codecs for that global network they were working on. It explains how audio is represented and all that good stuff.

I've got several movie tidbits today. AICN managed to nab a first review of The Ring 2. It sounds like it's just as good as the first movie, which apparantly only my friends and I actually liked! A lot of people mocked that it was stupid and more funny than scary, but other horror movies are much more ridiculous. At least The Ring had a plot!

I actually watched bits and pieces of TRL yesterday, which is worse than I remember it used to be, and they had a 20 second clip of the Fantastic Four trailer. Some fans captured it and so it's now online here. Word on the grapevine though is that this movie is gonna blow.

I've been reading Da Vinci Code recently (in the pretty illustrated edition) and was pleased to learn that Jean Reno, of Onimusha 3 and Mission: Impossible fame, will be portraying Detective Bezu Fache opposite Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon. My last movie item is this new Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy poster:



This poster was released last week, but I didn't mention it because it didn't look special. The movie should be cool though because it features Sam Rockwell, Mos Def, and John Malkovich.

Some of you may have noticed the Technorati search bar that I put on the right side bar. I like it because it allows you to search my blog in case there's an old post you liked with a good article in it and you can search Technorati's listing of the blogosphere. It's a great, great site to see what other people are saying about, well, anything! Lastly, here are my answers to the Friday Five meme, which is my favorite meme so far:

1) What is one thing about you that you hate?
My cluttering problem! :( It's almost as annoying as stuttering is, except that less people know about it. It sounds easy to just talk slow all the time, but it's hard! *sigh* Please pray that I someday get over it!

2) What is one thing about you that you love?
My study skills. I'm very proud that I can do work and get it done. I always do my homework early so I always feel comfortable in my free time and stress-free. If it weren't for those skills I would never have been able to keep up with classical guitar.

3) If you had to change one thing about you what would it be and why?
This should be obvious: my speech problem. I don't really have serious problems with any other aspect of me. Maybe I'm not a hot guy, but with the passion I have for classical guitar and computers I'll always be a nerd anyway =P I'd pick talking normally over looking more attractive any day.

4) One is one word that you would use to define yourself?
Passionate. When I like something, I get really excited and into it. I become very ardent, even if it's only for a little while. Especially movies! I'm still counting the day until Tarantino releases a Kill Bill special edition boxed set.

5) Imagine what you would look like in a perfect world.. what do you look like?
Uhh, I guess like this guy? I'd look a hell of a lot more muscular! And I guess I'd have a prettier face? I like my eye color and skin color though, so I wouldn't change that. But man, that would be shweet! Maybe then girls would stop screwing me over!

These are great questions so you can comment your answers or see others' answers here.