face

Mashface lets you do Conan-style visual voice-overs

One of the things that put late night talk show host Conan O'Brien on the map was a segment where he'd take a picture of someone's face and superimpose another person's talking mouth over it. It was creepy, it was awkward, and now you can do it too with a service called Mashface.

To make your own horrific creation, you pick from one of the ready-made photos of celebrities and politicians. For now you're limited to just these photos, but I'm assuming users will be able to upload and mark up their own photos … Read more

BigStage launches, lets you face off with Mr. T

Like Slinkies and Silly Putty originating from flubbed technology, some of the cooler Web services have originated from tech originally intended for government agencies.

BigStage is definitely one of those services. It uses three photos of your face to map your features onto a virtual head using technology developed for the CIA. Your magic head is rendered into various scenes from popular movies, television shows, and digital shorts--including clips from The A-Team. You can then send those clips to your friends, parents, and relatives to be thoroughly confused and/or entertained by your shenanigans.

The service was originally demoed at both CES … Read more

SkiTech review: North Face Vortex II and North Face S.T.H. Gloves

I've noted before that when it comes to my hands, I'm a wuss. Last year I found the first pair of gloves that actually kept my hands warm: The North Face Patrol glove.

While I still consider that glove the gold standard (among Mountain Hardwear and other brands I've evaluated), I really liked the North Face Vortex II and North Face S.T.H. gloves that I evaluated this year, as well, though for entirely different reasons.

Skiing last month in Las Lenas, Argentina, the weather was perfectly suited to The North Face S.T.H. glove for the first day: relatively warm, spring-skiing conditions. The North Face S.T.H. glove is the glove you'll want to have when shoveling snow, but also the one for spring skiing or simply when loading up the car at the end of the day.

The North Face S.T.H. glove is water-resistant with a highly breathable Apex ClimateBlock stretch shell. This means it will keep you warm and dry in milder conditions, but not for much of the rest of the season.

The S.T.H. is also a super-supple, contoured glove, which means you can actually do things like dial a number on your mobile while wearing it.

The North Face Vortex II glove, on the other hand, will keep you warm on much harsher conditions, like my second day at Las Lenas where the resort received roughly nine feet of new powder (plus a fair amount of wind to keep things cool). I found that the HyVent two-layer shell kept my hands dry despite swimming through a heck of a lot of powder, and I never felt cold.

Given how wimpy my hands are in the cold, this says a lot.… Read more

SkiTech review: North Face Explosivo and Hetch Stretchy jackets

Last week Ubuntu's Mark Shuttleworth and I hit the slopes of Las Lenas, Argentina. The North Face kept us warm for the trip with The North Face Explosivo and Hetch Stretchy jackets. In seriously rough weather (fierce winds part of the time, around nine feet of new powder the rest of the time), The North Face Explosivo and Hetch Stretchy jackets rocked.

Verdict? Two thumbs way up.

Both the 2008/09 Explosivo and Hetch Stretchy jackets are heavier than The North Face jackets I reviewed last year. You won't need to layer with either the Explosivo or Hetch Stretchy jackets, except perhaps in extreme cold weather conditions. I suspect both jackets would serve particularly well for many reading this blog, i.e., people who hit the slopes once or twice in the season and so don't want to have to buy multiple layers of snow clothes, but want zero chance of getting cold when they do go.

Either the North Face Explosivo or Hetch Stretchy jacket will keep you warm around town, but then outperform on the slopes.

How well? The second day in Las Lenas, it snowed hard all day long, as shown below. I heard some reports that Las Lenas received up to nine feet (!!!). While we only skied in three feet of that, it was more than enough to suggest that both the Explosivo and Hetch Stretchy jackets are excellent ski jackets.… Read more

TruMedia ad tech's senior PROM

The next time you stop to watch a big-screen advertisement, remember: it may be watching you back.

TruMedia provides retailers with a combination of iCapture video-capture hardware and Proactive Merchandising (PROM) software to build custom age-targeted advertising content to passers-by. How? Face detection. The software analyzes the video stream and--as we're increasingly seeing with consumer cameras and camcorders--can distinguish faces in a crowd.

It's been able to differentiate between adults and kids for a while, but the new development is the ability to identify seniors as well. As they're a distinct and significant marketing demographic, that's … Read more

Still no official Facebook app for Windows Mobile

This past July, Facebook's excellent iPhone application joined similar apps for BlackBerry and Palm to bring core Facebook features to mobile socializers in a distinctive Facebook wrapper. Curiously, there's no official software for the Windows Mobile platform, and no word that a program is in the works. In fact, Facebook has kept mum to my inquiries, and Microsoft's Windows Mobile team responded with evasive PR nonsense.

That doesn't mean social butterflies of the Windows Mobile breed are left in a lurch. Two software companies have stepped up to bring their own freeware versions of Facebook to … Read more

The 404 158: Where Randall Bennett is obsessed with the 404

On today's show: Randall Bennett, former host of The 404, makes a guest appearance on the show to announce his newest business venture, Ubisoft video game event, calls from the public, face tattoos, Play-Doh bombs in lingerie stores, no-ho zones, and the $1000 iPhone application.

After a very long hiatus shrouded in mystery, Randall Bennett finally comes onto the show to reveal what he's been doing for the past few months, and contrary to our assumptions, none of it involves sleeping in! Turns out, he's working with a company called Crowd Fusion, a new "Web publishing … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 763: Average people suck

By average people we mean, mean people. As we have learned that mean and average are indubitably the same thing. However, we also learned on today's show that men are from Redmond and women are from Cupertino. That and a lot of news that actually isn't about the iPhone. Though we covered that to. Listen now: Download today's podcast

EPISODE 763

iPhone 2.0 software available for download http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-9987221-93.html http://www.macrumors.com/2008/07/10/iphone-2-0-firmware-5a347-available-early/

Apple launches new iTunes with App Store http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-9987100-93.html

It’s … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 750: 7 deadly spams

On today's Buzz Out Loud, why "your stupid face" works to get you to install malicious software, why eBay just flat out isn't for small sellers anymore, and why you shouldn't trust your IT guy...or at least not one in three of them. Also, EA releases Creature Creator, people create porny creatures, and EA attempts to crack down. Something about this picture just doesn't add up. Like, how novelty-sized bosoms can even exist on the side of a cow. Listen now: Download today's podcast EPISODE 750

One ton ‘Baby’ marks its birth … Read more