Month: December 2013

Cheap smartphones

The high margins that Apple and Samsung get on the smartphones are going to be eaten away by companies like HTC, Huawei, and others to be named. They’re going to introduce smartphones that are almost as good and most people are not going to be able to tell the difference.

it’s getting time to stop being so attached to your jesusphone, because expensive smartphones will disappear in a few years. the Moto G is a harbinger of this trend. it is good enough for most people and < $200.

Automatic Stereotyping

The terms Biker, Punk, Hipster, Goth or Surfer often spark visual depictions of individuals with very distinct fashion styles. These visually salient styles can provide insight into the social identity of an individual. However, despite its potential usefulness, little work has been done to automatically classify images of people into social categories. We tackle this problem by analyzing pictures of groups of individuals and creating models to represent them. We capture the features that distinguish each subculture and show promising results for automatic classification. This work gives vision algorithms access to the social identity of an individual and helps improve the quality of socially motivated image search, relevance of advertisements, and recommendations of social groups.