TechCrunch
Apple Working On Intelligent Brightness Control And Automated FaceTime Camera Selection
Ideally, your smart device of the future anticipates your needs and adjusts itself to suit them without requiring input on your behalf. Two newly published patent applications (spotted by AppleInsider) from Apple describe systems that could help do just that for future iPhones and iPads, via selective screen brightness control and auto camera switching during FaceTime video calls.
The first patent application describes a way for a user to selectively adjust brightness and contrast of different user interface elements independently of one another. Essentially, this could work in practice by doing things like selective lightboxing as you might see on a photo-focused website, foregrounding elements that contain active content and providing enhanced visibility as well as offering some battery savings.
This is something that some apps already offer, giving users control over what elements are darkened or made brighter within their specific software. Apple’s invention would have the advantage of making this a system-level feature, and one that works automatically in some cases, lightening the load on developer resources and making it so that users can reasonably predict how any given app will use it. This could have big impacts not only in general usability, but for specific accessibility advantage as well.
The other patent application new today describes a way in which Apple devices might be able to switch automatically between front and rear-facing cameras on the fly, based on cues from the user and what’s being captured by each camera lens. This would require devices to capture both streams at one time, but Apple says in the patent that advances in mobile processor tech have recently begun to make that possible without too much excess demand on system resources.
In practice, such a system would be able to work with live calls via services like FaceTime, so that when a participant says something like “Look what Bruno’s doing” and the rear-facing camera detects a dog-like shape in frame, it switches automatically to broadcasting that feed to the receiving party. This could also work for locally-recorded video, the patent application says, doing things like switching between front and back cameras depending on if it detects the person doing the filming is talking or not.
Both of these are the type of next-gen tech projects that likely won’t make it into hardware for the immediately incoming generation, but they’re logical enough additions to existing features that we could well see them in a couple of years’ time.
Zendrive Raises $1.5M From First Round, Jerry Yang, Max Levchin, Time Ferris And Others To Use Big Data To Fix Driving
Zendrive, a startup that aims to make driving better by using data from smartphone sensors, today announced that it has raised $1.5 million from a group of backers including First Round Capital, Max Levchin, Jerry Yang, Tim Ferriss and “many other tech founders and leading investors.” The company hasn’t launched its product yet, but as Zendrive co-founder Jonathan Matus told me, the company plans to use today’s funding round to get ready to launch within the next few months.
For the time being, Matus is keeping under wraps the exact details of what Zendrive will look like. What’s clear, though, is that Zendrive plans to use the data it gathers from your smartphone’s sensors and from drivers around you to “fix driving.” Matus and his co-founder Pankaj Risbood believe that data can revolutionize driving by providing drivers with more and smarter information and, at the same time, keep them safer and “take back the joy of driving.”
Some of the potential uses Matus walked me through sounded a bit like what Google already does with the massive amount of traffic data it gathers. For example, you could use Zendrive to figure out when to best leave for work in the morning based on traffic data it gathers. The twist here, Matus tells me, would be that the system could figure out when your neighbors leave for work and how much time it takes them to get to a location near your job, so Zendrive could suggest you leave 10 minutes earlier to shave some time off your commute.
The other idea Matus told me is to use the data gathered from your driving history to help you find better deals on auto insurance. Maybe you had a small accident in the past and your rates are high. With Zendrive you could show your insurance company — assuming it trusts Zendrive’s data — that you are now a mellow driver who never speeds or makes frequent emergency stops. Zendrive, Matus notes, could also reward safe drivers with discounts to local restaurants or other deals.
Parents could also use the system to track their teenagers’ driving habits and compare them to those of the average person in their town.
Unlike other companies that also aim to use data to monitor and change your driving habits, Zendrive isn’t interested in plugging into your car’s data port like Automatic or similar projects. Matus’ background is in mobile while his co-founder Risbood has been knee-deep in big data. They believe that the ubiquity of smartphones will allow them to get virtually the same kind of data (excluding fuel efficiency).
Image credit: Flickr user andjohan
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