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Content Based Image Resizing: Webstart GUI

To allow easy tryouts I just uploaded a Java Webstart version of the ImageSeams GUI tool. You need to have Java 1.6 installed, then you just click here and the application should start right away.

• Java Webstart ImageSeams

If you just want to know what this is all about … here is a short flash demo showing the brush and resize trick.

First steps are:

• Load an image with the rightmost button (jpg and png will work fine, try to use images not bigger than 800×800 for a start)
• Set the preferred size using the spinners (Do not forget to hit enter if you type it in, otherwise Java won’t recognise it)
• Hit the 2nd button in the toolbar and observe the effect
• Tryout the image brushing (click and drag on the image) to retain certain parts (e.g. faces) within the image
• Switch to the remove brush if you want to remove parts of the image before resizing.

Content Aware Image Resizing: GPL Implementation

Just for the proof of concept I’ve implemented parts of the Content Aware Image Resizing algorithm (presented by Avidan, S. & Shamir, A.) shown here (covered also on Slashdot, Techcrunch, …) in Java (GPL). Currently image size can only be reduced.

The images on the left show results from the implementation. The source as well as the binaries can be downloaded here:

• Source & Binaries (Java 1.6 needed, ~30k): SeamCarving.tar.bz2SeamCarving.zip
• Windows Executable (Java 1.6 needed, ~200k): SeamCarving-Win-Bin.zip
• The most current implementation can be found here.

I’ve furthermore put up a GUI tool for loading and ‘carving’ images. It allows to mark areas for retaining (red brush) as well as for removal (green brush). The screenshot shows the application with area already colored. Download is here:

• Source & Binaries (Java 1.6 needed, ~65k): ImageCarving-GUI.zip

Content Aware Image Resizing

A small buzz around content aware image resizing has hit the media. This is fully understandable if you watch the short but impressive presentation.

More information as well as the paper describing the approach can be found on Ariel Shamir’s Homepage. The paper (20.48 MB) is available at ACM:

Avidan, S. & Shamir, A. Seam carving for content-aware image resizing SIGGRAPH ‘07: ACM SIGGRAPH 2007 papers, ACM Press, 2007, 10

Preferential Attachment: An Example

Have you ever heard of preferential attachment? That’s part of a model generating scale free networks. Here goes an example from the field of viral marketing ….

And for those not familiar with Crocs: Crocs homepage.

6 Word SciFi

Actually this one is already reality …

Believe me. Press start to stop.

See all 6 word SciFi stories and an explanation what this is all about here.

Enforced Research Collaboration Communication Patterns

Enforced research collaboration (e.g. between people who don’t want to collaborate) often produces the same patterns …

Go to pikistrips …

Triple-I: Call for Participation

The I-KNOW conference has become a important factor in knowledge management research in the last 6 years. This years I-KNOW will take place in conjunction with the I-MEDIA and the I-SEMANTICS conference.

As always the event is in the Stadthalle in Graz, Austria. It starts on Sept. 5th 2007 and last for 3 days. I’ll be there as chair on the KOST special track, as participant of the M3A workshop and as co-author of a paper published on the I-MEDIA. Hope to see you there!

Funny News on Notepad++

Recently I updated my installation of the swiss army knife of programming - Notepad++ - and I stumbled upon the notes of the author of N++ (find it online here):

My laptop was screwed by my smelly cat. By trying to jump to my desk, she reversed one cup of coffee on it.

It will cost me a lot of money (1 thousand euros !) to repair it, so I just let it die (laptop, not cat).

So now I’m waiting my laptop manufacturer returns me back my dead laptop in order to get all my development from the hard disk.

I especially like the disambiguation that he didn’t let his cat die! Beside the actual fun value of these words they had a rather surprising effects: The author of N++ got a computer for ongoing development, quite a cool part of hardware …

TIR 07: Call for Participation

On 3rd September the Workshop on Text Information Retrieval (TIR 07) takes place in Regensburg, Germany. I’ll be there presenting our work (Michael Granitzer, Roman Kern and me) on folksonomy characteristics: Aspects of Broad Folksonomies (download pdf). Main contribution of the paper is that tag similarity in the del.icio.us folksonomy follows a power law in many cases. This means that many tags have only few highly related tags, while the similarity to other tags is rather low.

You can find the whole program as well as the contributions (as pdf) on the TIR07 website.

Addicted to Blogging: 71%

Having seen the addiction percentage on Ton’s blog I really had to do the same test:

71%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

So after those weird questions I’m rather sure that I’m up to 71% addicted to blogging. That’s not as wild as Ton’s addiction (> 90%) but it’s a serious infection