mardi 15 septembre 2009

Ecosystème du commerce électronique : en savoir plus

La nouvelle économie numérique, où l’utilisation de l’information actualisée a un rôle fondamental pour la prise de bonnes décisions et où dans beaucoup de cas nous voyons des processus décentralisés, mais interconnectés, a occasionné et il occasionnera des changements dans les structures organisationnelles, en les obligeant à s’adapter le plus vite possible pour pouvoir soutenir sa présence dans le marché. En ce moment, on peut différencier 3 types d’organisations de commerce électronique : dans un côté, les Bricks & Mortar qui sont des magasins qui n’ont qu’une présence physique; dans l’autre côté, les Pure Player qui sont des organisations purement virtuelles comme Google, Yahoo, Amazon.com ;et au le milieu, le mix des deux, appelées les Click & Brick comme Futurshop, Bestbuy, etc..

Les entreprises qui ont un modèle Click & Brick, elles s’agissent en général de celles qui ont commencé comme Brick et que à cause de la pression du marché et les avantages qu’impliquaient ouvrir leurs portes à l’internet, elles ont décidé d’élargir leurs affaires. Ce que ces entreprises font c’est de produire en gérer des synergies des deux modèles Click etBrick, de telle sorte que ça leur permet de maximiser les points de contacts avec les clients potentiels ou les acheteurs et par conséquent d’augmenter les ventes.

Ravi Kalakota et Marcia Robinson dans leur livre E-business 2.0 : Roadmap of success (page 82) font une brève liste des bénéfices offerts par des modèles Bricks & Mortar et Pure Player, en arrivant à la conclusion que la combinaison des deux (Click et Brick) est la meilleure stratégie pour certaines entreprises « … la tendance la plus récente dans les e-tails probablement ne sera pas d’être une Pure Player en vendant strictement à travers de l’Internet. La tendance sera vers une entreprise Click & Brick » en les qualifiant comme des « organisations hybrides ».

Bricks and Clicks

Bricks and Clicks

Ce modèle implique une intégration des processus internes de l’organisation de telle façon que, d’une part, pour le client il est complètement transparent, c’est-à-dire, c’est la même chose, d’acheter online ou d’acheter dans un magasin physique, en lui offrant les plus grandes opportunités de pouvoir acheter dans n’importe d’où et n’importe quand; et d’un autre part, l’organisation peut avoir un contrôle total de ses activités d’affaires en maximisant les bénéfices.

Mais quelle conséquence organisationnelle au niveau de ventes peut-il y avoir à l’intérieur d’une organisation Click & Brick ?

Paul J. Jackson et Reima Suomi dans son livre « eBusiness and worplace design » marquent que « … avoir une division de commerce électronique séparée permet à l’entreprise d’éviter des conflits entre des cultures retranchées existantes et la nouvelle mentalité “de connaissance” nécessaire pour le succès de commerce électronique…» alors les entreprises avec un modèle Click & Brick, tendent à réorganiser sa structure interne en créant une division totalement séparée en l’appelant dans plusieurs de cas le pointcom, comme lBorders.com, British Airways, etc. .. en produisant qu’ au niveau de ventes, les deux divisions risquent de concourir entre eux, en arrivant à se battre parfois le même marché, puisque à la fin, les deux canaux sont évalués par le même indicateur, sans doute le plus important, atteindre le but de ventes.

Il y a quelque jours, j’ai fait un achat par Internet dans un magasin d’appareils électroniques, au moment d’effectuer la transaction j’ai reçu un email en indiquant le nombre de commande, le détail de la commande et que dans un délai maximal de trois heures je pourrais savoir si le produit était disponible au magasin pour aller le chercher. Première question : pourquoi il faut attendre trois heures pour savoir si le produit est disponible au magasin? Avant de s’accomplir les trois heures, je suis allé au magasin pour vérifier s’il y avait du produit. J’ai expliqué mon cas au vendeur et il m’a emporté à l’endroit où se trouvait ce produit, il y en avait plus beaucoup et finalement il m’a dit que je devais aller avec le produit au service à la clientèle. Là-bas, la personne m’a dit que les commandes en ligne se sont placent par séparé, et malgré que ma commande n’était pas dans le système, je pouvais avoir le produit sans le nombre de l’ordre de commande que j’avais reçu. Deuxième question : Auquel canal appartient mon achat Click ou Brick ? La réponse était évidente : brick.

Après avoir payé et après avoir déjà eu le produit dans ma main, un courriel du magasinpointcom est arrivé qui disait que malheureusement le produit dont j’avais besoin n’était plus disponible au magasin et qu’il fallait choisir un autre magasin.

Apparemment, ou le système de stock de la point-com n’était pas actualisé ou le magasin a un système de stock qui n’est pas intégré à l’affaire point-com en empêchant d’avoir l’information réelle à temps, mais un grand magasin d’appareils électroniques peut-il s’offrir le luxe de perdre des ventes seulement parce que son système de stocks n’est pas intégré? Où est-ce que le magasin utilise un stock pour les ventes aux magasins et d’autre pour s’occuper des ventes pointcom ? Ou est-ce que les magasins Brick surveillent leur propre existence et leurs propres intérêts comme leur but de ventes, dans cette guerre de rentabilités et revenus entre Clicks vs Bricks ? C’est-à-dire, si les magasins Bricks s’occupent des commandes point-com avec son propre stock donc ils n’auraient pas de stock disponible atteindre les propres cibles de ventes.

J’ai commenté cette expérience à un ami qui a travaillé quelques années dans une ligne aérienne. Il m’a dit qu’ils ont eu le même problème de concurrence entre les canaux (virtuel et les bureaux), même s’ils travaillent au bénéfice d’une seule une entreprise, des rivalités existaient entre les deux canaux à un niveau de génération de revenus et de réduction de prix. Les bureaux devaient s’occuper des clients qui avaient commencé son processus d’achats dans le canal virtuel, mais qui pour de divers motifs n’arrivaient pas à finir, processus que n’apportait rein au bureau, mais si au canal virtuel.

Dans ce nouveau monde d’économie collaborative, appelé comme ç a par Don Tapscott dans son livre « Wikieconomics », il y a plusieurs de choses à faire pour améliorer les organisations Click & Brick. Il faut que les processus soient redessinés autour du client. L’économie digitale exige que les entreprises soient de plus en plus efficientes dans ses opérations et processus.

References:

1- Ravi Kalakota et Marcia Robinson : E-business 2.0 : Roadmap of success: Google Books

2.- Paul J. Jackson et Reima Suomi : eBusiness and worplace design: Google Books

3.- Laurent Gille: Les dilemmes de l’économie numérique: Google Books

4.- Don Tapscott: Wikieconomics

Source : http://www.economie-numerique.com/clicks-bricks-collaboration-ou-rivalite/

Fast news reading by Google, interesting and flipping

One problem with reading news online today is that browsing can be really slow. A media-rich page loads dozens of files and can take as much as 10 seconds to load over broadband, which can be frustrating. What we need instead is a way to flip through articles really fast without unnatural delays, just as we can in print. The flow should feel seamless and let you rapidly flip forward to the content you like, without the constant wait for things to load. Imagine taking 10 seconds to turn the page of a print magazine!

Today we're adding a new experiment to Google Labs: Google Fast Flip, accessible atfastflip.googlelabs.com. Fast Flip is a new reading experience that combines the best elements of print and online articles. Like a print magazine, Fast Flip lets you browse sequentially through bundles of recent news, headlines and popular topics, as well as feeds from individual top publishers. As the name suggests, flipping through content is very fast, so you can quickly look through a lot of pages until you find something interesting. At the same time, we provide aggregation and search over many top newspapers and magazines, and the ability to share content with your friends and community. Fast Flip also personalizes the experience for you, by taking cues from selections you make to show you more content from sources, topics and journalists that you seem to like. In short, you get fast browsing, natural magazine-style navigation, recommendations from friends and other members of the community and a selection of content that is serendipitous and personalized.


To build Google Fast Flip, we partnered with three dozen top publishers, including the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, Salon, Fast Company, ProPublica andNewsweek. These partners will share the revenue earned from contextually relevant ads. This gives publishers an opportunity to introduce new readers to their content. It also tests our theory that being able to read articles faster means people will read more of them, driving more ad revenue to publishers.

The publishing industry faces many challenges today, and there is no magic bullet. However, we believe that encouraging readers to read more news is a necessary part of the solution. We think Fast Flip could be one way to help, and we're looking to find other ways to help as well in the near future.

We've also made a mobile version of Fast Flip with tactile page flipping for Android-powered devices and the iPhone, so you can browse on the go. This is accessible at the same address.

mercredi 9 septembre 2009

OpenID in Gov 2.0

At the Gov 2.0 Summit, Federal Government CIO Vivek Kundra talked about data.gov and other governmental transparency initiatives, and made an announcement regarding the launch of a open identity initiative featuring the use of both OpenID andInfoCards in a special pilot program.

Make no mistake about it: this has the potential to change the way citizens participate in and communicate with the U.S. government.

The OpenID Foundation has recently published a letter from executive director Don Thibeauas well as a fairly detailed white paper (PDF) on the subject of open frameworks for open governments that you might want to read for background. While the ‘Participating Providers in the U.S. Government Pilot Program’ section on the OpenID Foundation’s website hasn’t gone live yet, the Information Card Foundation provides more details about the pilot program on its blog.

Google, Yahoo, PayPal, AOL, VeriSign, Citi, Equifax, Acxiom, Privo and Wave Systems will be the ten organizations to act as digital identity providers using OpenID and Information Card technologies in the first pilot programs designed for the American public to engage in open government. Representatives from the companies had met with government IT officials early August to engage in talks about the initiative, which ReadWriteWeb caught wind of at the time.

The programs are being conducted by the Center for Information Technology (CIT), National Institutes of Health (NIH), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and related agencies. The participating companies are said to be getting certification under non-discriminatory open trust frameworks developed under collaboration between the OpenID Foundation (OIDF) and the Information Card Foundation (ICF) and reviewed by the federal government.

As an example, we have learned that VeriSign – a founding member of the OpenID Foundation – will serve as an identity provider for a pilot program with the National Institutes of Health(NIH), an agency of the US Department of Health and Human Services and regarded as one of the world’s foremost medical research centers as well as the Federal focal point for health research. Thanks to this implementation, citizens will be able to more easily provide input on public policy and access their own tax and Social Security records with OpenID:

In essence, this initiative will help transform government websites from basic “brochureware” into interactive resources, saving individuals time and increasing their direct involvement in governmental decision making. OpenID and Information Card technologies make such interactive access simple and safe. For example, in the coming months the NIH intends to use OpenID and Information Cards to support a number of services including customized library searches, access to training resources, registration for conferences, and use of medical research wikis, all with strong privacy protections.

Dr. Jack Jones, NIH CIO and Acting Director, CIT, notes, “As a world leader in science and research, NIH is pleased to participate in this next step for promoting collaboration among Assurance Level 1 applications. Initially, the NIH Single Sign-on service will accept credentials as part of an “Open For Testing” phase, with full production expected within the next several weeks. At that time, OpenID credentials will join those currently in use from InCommon, the higher education identity management federation, as external credentials trusted by NIH.”

Likely, we’ll learn more from Vivek Kundra’s scheduled speech at the Gov 2.0 Summit later today, but one thing is crystal clear: this is a big win for both the OpenID Foundation and the Information Card Foundation.

Who would have predicted say, 5 years ago, that you would some day be able to use commercial identities on government websites? Evidently, this raises questions about privacy and security but if these initiatives can garner enough public support, government validation of open identity frameworks could be a boon for the ecosystem of the open, distributed web. Plus, it can make dealing with the government a lot easier for you, too.

P.S.: also read Tim O’Reilly’s guest post on Gov 2.0 as a platform.

Source : http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/09/us-government-to-embrace-openid-courtesy-of-google-yahoo-paypal-et-al/

What is Schlage LiNK?

You're home. Away from home

Simply put, Schlage LiNK is the answer to every busy family’s needs. The longer version of the story is that it’s a secure, web-based system that allows you to monitor and control your Z-Wave-enabled door locks, lights, Trane Remote Energy Management Thermostat, and even your Schlage camera from your Schlage LiNK web and mobile interface.

With Schlage LiNK, you get advanced Z-Wave® technology and time-tested Schlage construction working in unison to put you in control from anywhere you travel.

Experience Schlage LiNK

Schlage LiNK's online interface makes it simple to put your home in the palm of your hand. From the web and mobile application, you can check to see the status of your lock, grant entry to your home from afar, and turn your lights off and on.

Source : http://consumer.schlage.com/

mardi 8 septembre 2009

Code des marchés : décret publié le 4 septembre 2009

Le décret de "toilettage" tendant à assurer l'effet utile des directives 89/665/CEE et 92/13/CEE et modifiant certaines dispositions applicables aux marchés publics vient d'être au publié au JO du 4 septembre 2009. Ce texte, très attendu, corrige les "scories" issues de la réforme de décembre 2008 et clarifie, complète ou reformule un certain nombre de dispositions du Code des marchés publics.

Recours contre les marchés passés par certaines personnes non soumises au code

Conformément aux directives 89/665/CEE et 92/13/CEE, l'article 1441-1 du Code de procédure civile est modifié pour préciser que "le président de la juridiction compétente ou son délégué statue dans un délai de vingt jours sur les recours qui lui sont présentés en vertu du 1° de l'article 24 et du 1° de l'article 33 de l'ordonnance n° 2005-649 du 6 juin 2005 relative aux marchés passés par les personnes publiques ou privées non soumises au code des marchés publics".

Commission d'appel d'offre (CAO)

La suppression de la CAO pour les services de l'Etat a conduit à s'interroger sur la nécessité ou non de créer une CAO au sein d'un groupement de commandes constitué de services de l'Etat et de collectivités territoriales. Le décret tranche cette question en précisant que "lorsqu'une collectivité territoriale ou un établissement public local autre qu'un établissement public de santé ou un établissement public social ou médico-social participe au groupement et que le coordonnateur ne dispose pas d'une commission d'appel d'offres, il en constitue une pour les besoins du fonctionnement du groupement".
Le décret précise par ailleurs que les CAO des établissements publics locaux (autres que les établissements publics de coopération intercommunale ou les syndicats mixtes) ne doivent plus obligatoirement comporter "au moins un membre désigné par le conseil d'administration en son sein ou parmi des personnalités qualifiées proposées par le directeur".
Notons toutefois que la suppression du dernier alinéa du I de l'article 22 du CMP pourrait poser problème puisque c'est cet alinéa qui disposait que "chaque commission comporte un nombre impair de membres".

Jury de concours

Le décret exclut désormais du jury le représentant de la direction générale de la concurrence, de la consommation et de la répression des fraudes. Ce dernier disposait d'une voix consultative. Le décret précise par ailleurs que le jury des établissements publics de santé et des établissements publics sociaux et médico-sociaux "sont désignés selon les règles propres à chaque établissement".

Variantes

Les dispositions relatives aux variantes diffèrent désormais selon qu'il s'agit d'un marché formalisé ou d'un Mapa. Pour les marchés formalisés, la règle reste la même : "A défaut d'indication, les variantes ne sont pas admises." En revanche, pour les Mapa, les candidats peuvent désormais proposer des variantes "sauf si le pouvoir adjudicateur a mentionné dans les documents de la consultation qu'il s'oppose à l'exercice de cette faculté".

Capacité juridique

A l'avenir, le pouvoir adjudicateur peut "demander aux candidats n'ayant pas justifié de la capacité juridique leur permettant de déposer leur candidature de régulariser leur dossier".

L'enveloppe contenant la candidature et l'offre

Dans le cadre des marchés allotis, les candidats peuvent désormais "soit présenter un seul exemplaire des documents relatifs à leur candidature et scinder lot par lot les éléments relatifs à leurs offres, soit présenter pour chacun des lots les éléments relatifs à leurs candidatures et à leurs offres".
Pour tenir compte de la suppression de la double enveloppe, l'alinéa précisant que "les enveloppes contenant les offres des candidats éliminés leur sont rendues sans avoir été ouvertes" est supprimé. Les dispositions applicables aux entités adjudicatrices ont également été modifiées.

Marchés de conception-réalisation

Désormais, les marchés de conception-réalisation "sont passés par les pouvoirs adjudicateurs soumis aux dispositions de la loi du 12 juillet 1985 susmentionnée". Le décret précise également que le jury doit comporter "dans tous les cas" au moins un tiers de maîtres d'œuvre désignés par le président du jury.

Marchés à bons de commande

Les marchés à bons de commandes doivent dorénavant être attribués à plusieurs opérateurs économiques, "au moins au nombre de trois, sous réserve d'un nombre suffisant de candidats et d'offres". Le décret tient également compte du changement de statut et de nom de la Commission des marchés publics de l'Etat (désormais appelée Commission consultative des marchés publics). Il modifie par ailleurs certaines dispositions du CMP relatives au régime des avances ainsi que certaines dispositions du décret du 20 octobre 2005 relatif aux marchés passés par les entités adjudicatrices et du décret du 30 juillet 1985 relatif au statut et au fonctionnement de l'UGAP.


Source : L’Apasp

http://www.localtis.info/cs/ContentServer?pagename=Localtis/artVeille/artVeille&c=artVeille&cid=1250258781160

POWDER Fosters Trust on the Web

Today W3C takes steps toward building a Web of trust, and making it possible to discover relevant, quality content more efficiently. When content providers use POWDER, the Protocol for Web Description Resources, they help people with tasks such as seeking sound medical advice, looking for trustworthy retailers, or searching for content available under a particular license (for instance, a Creative Commons license). The POWDER Working Group published three W3C Recommendations : "Grouping of Resources," "Formal Semantics" , and "Description Resources." For more information about POWDER, including a "POWDER Primer" and a range of tools, see the group home page. Read the press release and learn more about the Semantic Web Activity.

http://www.w3.org/2007/powder/
http://www.w3.org/2007/powder/
http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/REC-powder-grouping-20090901/
http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/REC-powder-formal-20090901/
http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/REC-powder-dr-20090901/
http://www.w3.org/TR/powder-primer/
http://www.w3.org/2007/powder/
http://www.w3.org/2009/09/powder-pr.html
http://www.w3.org/2001/sw

vendredi 4 septembre 2009

What says Gartner about cloud computing?

Key Gartner predictions for the data center for the next 5 years:


  • By 2011, early technology adopters will forgo capital expenditures and instead purchase 40 percent of their IT infrastructure as a service.

  • By 2012, at least one-third of business application software spending will be as service subscription instead of as product license.

  • By 2009, more than one-third of IT organizations will have one or more environmental criteria in their top six buying criteria for IT-related goods. Initially, the motivation will come from the wish to contain costs. Enterprise data centers are struggling to keep pace with the increasing power requirements of their infrastructures.

  • By 2012, 80 percent of all commercial software will include elements of open source technology.
These Gartner predictions clearly indicate that data center efficiency and cost are forming massive waves for increasing data center efficiency with virtualization, better server utilization, cost reduction with more efficient power/cooling and the leveraging of open source software.

The main drivers that have caused poor data center efficiency and increasing costs are enormous IT infrastructure growth, low system utilization, software acquisition costs and maintenance costs.

Let's look at this in more detail.

A National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) document states that there are 11.8 million servers in data centers, which are used at only at 15% of their capacity.

A white paper published by IBM states that utilization rate of commodity servers hovers around 5% on average, leading to excess capacity going to waste; and the annual operational costs (power, cooling, and management) of distributed systems and networking exceed their acquisition cost by 2-3x and continue to climb.

By analyzing the above information from NIST and IBM, it is obvious that a key culprit for low data center efficiency is the anemic 5-15% server utilization rate. In other words, nearly 90% of the servers in a typical data center are consuming power and doing nothing. Considering that the operational costs (power, cooling and management) of these servers exceeds the acquisition costs by 2-3x, server utilization and power and cooling have become a massive IT cost burden for enterprises.

The NIST document also states that $800 billion is spent annually on purchasing and maintaining enterprise software, of which 80% is spent on installation and maintenance. This, along with the Gartner prediction that by 2012, 80% of all commercial software will include elements of open source technology, indicates that software acquisition and maintenance cost containment is also significantly driving the IT purchasing decision making.

The massive need for increased data center efficiency, cost containment, adoption of cloud computing and SaaS are changing the landscape for the entire IT industry including the data center, IT organizations and their budgeting, and infrastructure and software vendors, creating an enormous opportunity for both cloud infrastructure and SaaS vendors.

Following are CloudTalk predictions for the impacts of the cloud computing tsunami on the IT industry:

The Cloud Impact on Data Centers:
  • A mix of private and public clouds will become the norm.

  • Many organizations and lines of business will bypass IT to secure cloud-based infrastructure and SaaS applications.

  • Virtualization and cloud-based infrastructure will become the norm.

  • Power and cooling efficiency and green data centers will become critical and the norm.

  • A new breed of cloud computing skills will become common in data center operations.

  • Private cloud technology, such as cloud storage, will find its way to the IT organizations.

  • Service oriented architectures (SOAs) will drive the IT infrastructure and application architecture.
The Cloud Impact on IT Organizations:
  • We will see a transformation from programming to service integration and customization.

  • Security will be a huge issue.

  • With the cloud and SaaS usage-based pricing, IT budgets will transform from CAPEX to more OPEX, opening the door for immediate IT investments.
The Cloud Impact on Cloud Computing Vendors:
  • Significant market growth and momentum will fuel hypergrowth.

  • Cloud infrastructure utilization and efficiency will become critical to success.

  • Power and cooling costs will become enormously important factors to profitability.

  • Cloud infrastructure and SaaS vendors will become the new giants of the industry where the IT operations shop for infrastructure and SaaS applications.

  • Merger and acquisition frenzy will become the norm for hypergrowth.
The Cloud Impact on SaaS Vendors:
  • There will be hypergrowth in the number of SaaS applications and vendors.

  • Venture spending will grow significantly.

  • New requirements and standards for APIs, reporting, security and service-level agreements (SLAs) will emerge.

  • SaaS vendors will become the main source of applications.
The Cloud Impact on Infrastructure Vendors:
  • Server, storage and networking customer influence will decrease.

  • Server, storage and networking vendors will be selling to cloud vendors.

  • Infrastructure vendors will be fighting for mind-share with both cloud and SaaS vendors.

  • Infrastructure vendors will lose contact with many enterprise customers as they flock to cloud infrastructure and SaaS.

  • Merger and acquisition frenzy will become the norm for survival.

  • Infrastructure vendors will experience a dramatic change of business model.
The Cloud Impact on Application Software Vendors:
  • Application software vendors will have to adopt the SaaS model to survive.

  • They will lose business to SaaS companies.

  • Software licensing will dramatically change.

  • Merger and acquisition frenzy will become the norm for survival.

Et vous : à quand le SaaS ou le cloud?

New improvements to Google Docs

We've just released two new improvements to the drawings in Google Docs. First, we made it easier for you to build flowcharts in drawings by adding 20 new shapes for standard flowchart components. Second, we made it possible for you to have more control over drawing text layout by supporting explicit line breaks in text boxes and text within shapes.

Try out these new features by going to any document, spreadsheet, or presentation, and inserting a drawing.

Stanford open-source camera could revolutionize photography

Stanford photo scientists are out to reinvent digital photography with the introduction of an "open-source" digital camera, which will give programmers around the world the chance to create software that will teach cameras new tricks.

If the technology catches on, camera performance will be no longer be limited by the software that comes pre-installed by the manufacturer. Virtually all of the features of the Stanford camera -- focus, exposure, shutter speed, flash, etc -- are at the command of software that can be created by inspired programmers anywhere. "The premise of the project is to build a camera that is open source," said computer science professor Marc Levoy.

Computer science graduate student Andrew Adams, who helped design the prototype of the Stanford camera (dubbed Frankencamera,) imagines a future where consumers download applications to their open-platform cameras the way Apple apps are downloaded to iPhones today. When the camera's operating software is made available publicly, perhaps a year from now, users will be able to continuously improve it, along the open-source model of the Linux operating system for computers or the Mozilla Firefox web browser.

From there, the sky's the limit. Programmers will have the freedom to experiment with new ways of tuning the camera's response to light and motion, adding their own algorithms to process the raw images in innovative ways.

Frankencamera at minimal cost

Levoy's plan is to develop and manufacture the "Frankencamera" as a platform that will first be available at minimal cost to fellow computational photography researchers. In the young field of computational photography, which Levoy helped establish, researchers use optics benches, imaging chips, computers and software to develop techniques and algorithms to enhance and extend photography. This work, however, is bound to the lab. Frankencamera would give researchers the means to take their experiments into the studios, the landscapes, and the stadiums.

For example, among the most mature ideas in the field of computational photography is the idea of extending a camera's "dynamic range," or its ability to handle a wide range of lighting in a single frame. The process of high-dynamic-range imaging is to capture pictures of the same scene with different exposures and then to combine them into a composite image in which every pixel is optimally lit. Until now, this trick could be done only with images in computers. Levoy wants cameras to do this right at the scene, on demand. Although the algorithms are very well understood, no commercial cameras do this today. But Frankencamera does.

Another algorithm that researchers have achieved in the lab, but no commercial camera allows, is enhancing the resolution of videos with high-resolution still photographs. While a camera is gathering low-resolution video at 30 frames a second, it could also periodically take a high-resolution still image. The extra information in the still could then be recombined by an algorithm into each video frame. Levoy and his students plan to implement that on Frankencamera, too.

Yet another idea is to have the camera communicate with computers on a network, such as a photo-hosting service on the Web. Imagine, Levoy says, if the camera could analyze highly-rated pictures of a subject in an online gallery before snapping the shutter for another portrait of the same subject. The camera could then offer advice (or just automatically decide) on the settings that will best replicate the same skin tone or shading. By communicating with the network, the camera could avoid taking a ghastly picture.

Of course users with Frankencameras would not be constrained by what is already known. They'd be free to discover and experiment with all kinds of other operations that might yield innovative results because they'd have total control.

"Some cameras have software development kits that let you hook up a camera with a USB cable and tell it to set the exposure to this, the shutter speed to that, and take a picture, but that's not what we're talking about," says Levoy. "What we're talking about is, tell it what to do on the next microsecond in a metering algorithm or an autofocusing algorithm, or fire the flash, focus a little differently and then fire the flash again -- things you can't program a commercial camera to do."

Behind the lens cap

To create an open source camera, Levoy and the group cobbled together a number of different parts: the motherboard, per se, is a Texas Instruments "system on a chip" running Linux with image and general processors and a small LCD screen. The imaging chip is taken from a Nokia N95 cell phone, and the lenses are off-the-shelf Canon lenses, but they are combined with actuators to give the camera its fine-tuned software control. The body is custom made at Stanford. The project has benefited from the support of Nokia, Adobe Systems, Kodak, and Hewlett-Packard. HP recently gave graduate student David Jacobs a three-year fellowship to support his work on the project. Kodak, meanwhile, supports student Eddy Talvala.

Within about a year, after the camera is developed to his satisfaction, Levoy hopes to have to have the funding and the arrangements in place for an outside manufacturer to produce them in quantity, ideally for less than $1,000. Levoy would then provide them at cost to colleagues and their students at other universities.

The son, grandson, and great-grandson of opticians, Levoy sees his mission as not only advancing research in computational photography, but also imbuing new students with enthusiasm for technology. This spring he launched a course in digital photography in which he integrated the science of optics and algorithms and the history of photography's social significance with lessons in photographic technique.

As many ideas as Levoy's team may want to implement on the camera, the real goal is to enable the broader community of photography researchers and enthusiasts to contribute ideas the Stanford group has not imagined. The success of Camera 2.0 will be measured by how many new capabilities the community can add to collective understanding of what's possible in photography.

David Orenstein is the associate communications director for the School of Engineering.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Psi_njPBryE


Source : http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/stanford-open-source-camera-could-revolutionize-photography-24809.html