I just came across an interesting article on Ars Technica regarding a new intelligent camera surveillance system planned for Chicago. Apparently this is part of the windy city’s upcoming bid for the 2016 Olympic games, by having a state of the art surveillance and security system in place the hope is that the city will become a more desirable destination.
Chicago drivers have had to become accustomed to cameras at certain intersections that snap pictures of red-light-running drivers and a wider surveillance network, while some residents have been arrested for drinking in public after being caught by one of the city’s surveillance cameras. Now they’ll have to contend with “Operation Virtual Shield,” developed by IBM and deployed in conjunction with Chicago’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications.
Virtual Shield will capture, monitor, and “fully index” video from the Windy City’s surveillance cameras. The software used to run the system will be able to recognize specific license plates, vehicle descriptions, and even patterns of behavior. If someone drops a briefcase on the El platform and it stays unattended for more than a minute, the system could alert the OEMC, which could then dispatch police officers to the scene.
Hahaha, I laughed out loud when I saw this photostream on flickr. The guy has managed to catch squirrels playing around with cameras and well look at the photos, you’ll get what I mean.
I definetly wouldn’t mind having one of these for own to have and to hold.
The Greenphone appears to be a working GSM/GPRS mobile phone endowed with a bootloader amenable to letting users re-flash the phone with modified Linux-based firmware, via a mini-USB port. The phone will not be available standalone, but rather as part of a development kit. The kit will be offered under separate licensing terms to open source developers, educational institutions, “major” software vendors, and to “phone designers and manufacturers,” Trolltech says.
Trolltech says it hopes the Greenphone will help foster a third-party application ecosystem around its Qtopia Phone Edition (QPE) Linux mobile phone stack. Such an ecosystem is “critical in satisfying growing customer demands, and shortening development and delivery cycle times,” it says.
Ha ha what will people come up with next, this guy took his nokia phone and turned it into an optical mouse by writing code to utilize the on-board camera. Sounds like a great project and seems to be working well for him already.
