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Source: C|Net
Kodak shows that, despite the virtual replacement of film cameras with digital cameras, they are far from dead in the water. They have entered the challenging market of inkjet printers with an "All-in-one" printer, capable of producing colour documents and photos far cheaper than those currently on the market. The new system uses Kodak proprietary ink; however, that ink is $10(US) for black-and-white and only $15(US) for colour. This means that a 4x6 print can be generated for as little as 10 cents. The printers themselves are relatively inexpensive, ranging from a $150(US) base model to a $300(US) model with duplexer and fax machine.

Source: New York Times
The Oneida Indian Nation in New York State are upgrading their story-telling big-time. They plan to use 3D animation to tell their traditional stories. The tribe created a multimedia company, Four Directions Media, Inc., four years ago for purpose like this, as well as for creating CDs of music by native artists.

Source: New Scientist
Scientists have learned how to use optical flow (rate of change of the contents of a sequence of images) to land a miniature helicopter using a very simple software system. Optical flow is believed to be used by insects to control their height above a surface, a task that requires massive computational power for robots. They trick, they discovered, was to keep the optical flow rate constant. They were able to control the height and speed of the helicopter gracefully using a simple feed-back network and no special hardware or software to determine height or speed. The system may be adapted to commercial helicopters to improve their maneuvering.

Source: Technology Review
Zink Imaging has developed a new way to generate photos without using ink. The key is a special photopaper that changes colour when heated. Specifically, the paper consists of a plastic base covered with a thin layers of thermally-activated dye crystals. Heat causes the crystals to amorphous glass, releasing the dye. by controlling the temperature and heating time, they can control which colour crystal (yellow, magenta or cyan) is affected. This may allow them to make ultra-portable printers for the next generation of Polaroid-like cameras. Not surprising, given the company is a spin-off from Polaroid. They hope to get the cost of paper down such that photos could be generated for less that 25-cents each.

Source: Sci-Fi Tech
Iris On the Move (IOM) takes 30 pictures per second of people from various angles to obtain sufficient information to reconstruct the patterns of your iris. Unlike current systems, not only do you not have to stop to have the scan taken, you don't even need to know that it is there. Expect to see these things in airports to screen for suspected terrorists or people wanted for criminal offenses. The system is even undeterred by sunglasses or other eye-covers. Essentially, if you can see out, it can see in. The only deterrent may be semi-silvered mirrors as glasses.

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