Google Flu Shot Finder

Google has designed a tool to determine the flow of the swine flu. May be it helps you to avoid H1N1. You can track it from flutracker web site.

Adobe couldn't enter Businessweek's 'world's 40 best companies'

Nintendo, Apple and Google are the world's top three best companies, according to a new BusinessWeek top 40 chart.

The World's Best Companies/Global Top 40 list was compiled for BusinessWeek by management consulting firm A.T. Kearney.

Innovation, expansion, leadership

The top 40 is based on a number of factors, primarily "a commitment to innovation, diversified portfolios, aggressive expansion, strong leadership, and a clear vision for the future" with the top 40 coming from 18 countries.

Companies in the top 40 also come from a wide range of different industries "ranging from chemicals and contracting to software and shipbuilding."

However, it is notable that there are six tech and telecoms enterprises in the top 40 that have "tapped into continuing demand for mobile-phone services and new digital hardware and services", three of which are right at the top of the chart.

Japanese gaming giant Nintendo stands proudly at the top of the 2009 chart, with BusinessWeek noting that: "Its sales have risen 36 per cent annually over the past five years, while its value growth averaged 38 per cent. Despite the hard times of the past year, Nintendo's continued emphasis on innovation has helped the company develop must-haves such as the DS handheld game machine and the Wii console, which outsold rival offerings from Sony and Microsoft.

"Nintendo's strategy is emblematic of the tech companies on the list. Like Nintendo, American technology giants Google (No. 2), Apple (No. 3), and Amazon.com (No. 17) have continued to invest heavily in innovation, commanding large market share with new products even as consumer spending and confidence have declined sharply."

You can see the top 40 companies and stats; businessweek.com

via businessweek.com

An Additional Dimension With CS4

Adobe Flash acquires one additional dimension with CS4. I mean, 3D operations can be done with Adobe Flash. I know it sounds good for any Flash developer that knows limited environment of Flash before CS4.

Acoording to the flash article, the additional features of Flash are can be listed as below;

• 3D Rotation and Translation tools that enables rotating an object around x and y axis simultaneously and moving an object on x, y and z axes respectively.
• Property Inspector tool box enables you to set 3D values of an object. Like changing perspective, skewing, manipulate etc...
• Motion Tweens with 3D Objects
• Action Script 3.0 3D Programming
• And 3D Samples in Flash

Animations will be more exciting with Flash CS4. Please inform me about clever tips and tricks in Flash CS4.

A Review of Rich Islands for Adobe Flash

As an industrial engineer, I'm glad to see that SAP and Adobe are in collaboration to enrich interfaces of SAP applications. I've seen some of the examples at Adobe and immediately I find myself post here.

Firstly I want to explain how SAP and Adobe works together. I found an image that shows it in a simple way. Flash and Flex works are combined in a Flash SWF file and imported into Web Dynopro Component. Furthermore, application server can communicate with another Dynopro control and, data and event packages can move in two ways by using Rich Islands for Adobe Flash.

SAP Rich Islands for the Adobe Flash Platform

And now let's see the capabilities of these applications and how can visualize the SAP applications.

Interactive Data Visualization: You know flex graph are so dynamic and visually smart. But there is an interesting view of doing daily jobs. I think this sample is worth to take your time.


Production Monitoring is a real time simulation of an assembly line. Yes, you can see which job is bottleneck in this period of time. What an exciting project will it be...

Adobe Flash Platform

"Innovation tha stands out, technology that fits in"

Nice slogan that fits on Adobe Flash Platform. Let's see what is up coming ideas with these bunch of tools...

Clients : Flash Player, Air
Tools: Flash CS4 Professional, Flash Catalyst, Flex
Framework: Flex
Servers: BlazeDS, Flash media Server Family

You can go further.

Intel and Adobe Collaboration

Adobe and Intel are working together to port and optimise Adobe's Flash technology to the Intel Media Processor CE 3100. The aim is to bring Flash content to devices such as set-top boxes, digital TVs and connected audio-visual devices.

The two companies claim to be uniquely positioned to support consistent internet content across both traditional PC systems and TV platforms. The move is intended to provide better video and web content across the full breadth of consumer devices.

Adobe's Flash Player and Flash Lite will be optimised for the CE 3100, and Intel expects to ship the first CE 3100 with Flash Lite before mid-2009.

"Our effort with Adobe will provide consumers with access to a growing number of Flash-based applications that will ultimately be enjoyed across a number of screens seamlessly, from the laptop to a mobile internet device and now the TV, " said William Leszinske, general manager of Intel's Digital Home Group.

Announced in August 2008, Intel's CE 3100 is a system-on-a-chip combining an 800MHz Pentium M core with graphics functions and video decoder circuitry.

The chip enables developers to target growth areas such as consumer electronics using the familiar Intel architecture.

Daniel Robinson

vnunet.com, 05 Jan 2009

Download Adobe Air for Linux

Adobe Air Linux edition is released. You can download it from here. Some ideas about it ;

As of today there have only been releases of Adobe AIR for Windows and Mac but Adobe is committed to also delivering a version for Linux. This is great news for developers like me who use Linux as their primary desktop operating system.

Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch said in a statement: “This could enable a whole new frontier of applications for Linux. We’re actually looking for Linux users to help us test it.” He said that the Linux version of AIR is currently in an alpha format.

AdobeAIR Alpha on Ubuntu 64 Bit installation can be found here.

I'm very excited with this news. Thanks to Adobe... :)

"Linux lovers do not see below .net codes. I'm also a mac and linux lover but nowadays using .net in a project :("

Image Processing II : Two Ways for Grayscale

There may be many ways to process grayscale but I want to give two examples for it. One of them is very easy like taking average of colors. And the other one is better but uses color matrix. You must define a color matrix to use as image attribute. I like the second algorithm. Anyway, Let's see codes...

'--------------------Code--------------------
Public Shared Function GrayscaleAverage(ByVal img As Image) As Image
Dim rslt As System.Drawing.Image
Dim btmpImg, btmpRslt As New Bitmap(img.Width, img.Height)
btmpImg = DirectCast(img, Bitmap)
btmpRslt = DirectCast(img, Bitmap)
Dim rC, gC, bC, lum As Integer
For i As Integer = 0 To btmpImg.Width - 1
For j As Integer = 0 To btmpImg.Height - 1
rC = btmpImg.GetPixel(i, j).R
gC = btmpImg.GetPixel(i, j).G
bC = btmpImg.GetPixel(i, j).B
lum = Math.Round(0.3 * rC + 0.59 * gC + 0.11 * bC)
btmpRslt.SetPixel(i, j, Color.FromArgb(lum, lum, lum))
Next
Next
rslt = DirectCast(btmpRslt, Image)
Return rslt
End Function
'--------------------Code--------------------

Second function realized with color matrix. You can use another color matrix. may b

'--------------------Code--------------------
Public Shared Function GrayscaleMatrix(ByVal img As Image) As Image
Dim rslt As System.Drawing.Image
Dim btmpImg As New Bitmap(img.Width, img.Height)
btmpImg = DirectCast(img, Bitmap)
Dim g As Graphics = Graphics.FromImage(btmpImg)
Dim cm As ColorMatrix = New ColorMatrix(New Single()() _
{New Single() {0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 0, 0}, _
New Single() {0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 0, 0}, _
New Single() {0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 0, 0}, _
New Single() {0, 0, 0, 1, 0}, _
New Single() {0, 0, 0, 0, 1}})
'You can use other color matrix

Dim ia As ImageAttributes = New ImageAttributes()
ia.SetColorMatrix(cm)
g.DrawImage(img, New Rectangle(0, 0, img.Width, img.Height), 0, 0, img.Width, img.Height, GraphicsUnit.Pixel, ia)
g.Dispose()
rslt = DirectCast(btmpImg, Image)
Return rslt
End Function
'--------------------Code--------------------


Also we can see the difference between two algorithms here.

image taken from here

The other color matrix is here.

'--------------------Code--------------------
'Gilles Khouzams
Dim cm As ColorMatrix = New ColorMatrix(New Single()() _
{New Single() {0.3, 0.3, 0.3, 0, 0}, _
New Single() {0.59, 0.59, 0.59, 0, 0}, _
New Single() {0.11, 0.11, 0.11, 0, 0}, _
New Single() {0, 0, 0, 1, 0}, _
New Single() {0, 0, 0, 0, 1}})
'--------------------Code--------------------

I will continue with edge finding and background extraction. Like Photoshop, isn't it?

Image Processing I : Invert Colors

Hi all,

I'm starting with a basic image processing algorithm. After a while, the whole solution and sample files will be published. I'm also developing this library and sharing with you. Anyway, you can see the algorithm below. All basic colors are converted by subtracting from 255 and founded new Red, Green and Blue color codes. All converted pixel is set to a new image instance. See you at harder image processing algorithms later. Let's See;


'--------------------Code--------------------
Public Shared Function InvertColors(ByVal img As Image) As Image
Dim rslt As System.Drawing.Image
Dim btmpImg, btmpRslt As New Bitmap(img.Width, img.Height)
btmpImg = DirectCast(img, Bitmap)
Dim rC, gC, bC As Integer
For i As Integer = 0 To btmpImg.Width - 1
For j As Integer = 0 To btmpImg.Height - 1
rC = 255 - btmpImg.GetPixel(i, j).R
gC = 255 - btmpImg.GetPixel(i, j).G
bC = 255 - btmpImg.GetPixel(i, j).B
btmpRslt.SetPixel(i, j, Color.FromArgb(rC, gC, bC))
Next
Next
rslt = DirectCast(btmpRslt, Image)
Return rslt
End Function
'--------------------Code--------------------