vector

Somewhat-familiar drawing tool

Real-Draw Pro will look familiar to people who have used similar programs in the past. With suitable tools for creating digital drawings, Real-Draw Pro attempts to set itself apart from the pack with a few added options, but may be over the heads of novices.

This download looks more complex than Paintbrush, but less confusing than more professional programs like CorelDRAW. People familiar with either of those programs will instantly feel at home with Real-Draw, thanks to its traditional interface. The center of the screen is dominated by the drawing space, while the left side holds all the drawing tools, … Read more

Sun touts Java app store for billion-strong audience

Sun is to launch a Java application store, chief executive Jonathan Schwartz has revealed.

Currently code-named "Project Vector" but likely to be called the Java Store, it was described by Schwartz as a "network service" that will connect companies of all sizes and types to the approximately one billion Java users found worldwide.

"Vector...has the potential to deliver the world's largest audience to developers and businesses leveraging Java and JavaFX," Schwartz wrote in a blog post on Monday. "Most folks don't think of Sun as a consumer company, and largely … Read more

Online vector editor Raven joins Aviary's flock

When online image-editing site Aviary released Raven on Monday, the Holy Grail of image-editing tools had finally hatched. If you're new to the term, vectors are what allow graphic designers to create an image and scale it to any size without pixelation or degradation of quality. The Wikipedia vector entry does an excellent job of going into more detail about the differences between vectors and rasters, which degrade as you change their scale.

Beautifully, Raven only requires a Web browser and the latest version of Flash. In the words of Michael Galpert, co-founder of Aviary, "If you can … Read more

Cleaner and faster cars at the L.A. Auto Show

The Los Angeles Auto Show wraps up this weekend. I drove down to the Los Angeles Convention Center last week to check out the new BMW M3--which I hope to buy next year--and get a look at all the other new cars debuting there.

There were two clear trends at the show: higher performance and increased environmental sensitivity. The best new vehicles show improvements in both areas.

The new M3, for example, delivers 24% more power (414 hp!) from its new four-liter V8 along with 8% better gas mileage, along with more interior room than its predecessor and many new … Read more

Create vector images in a snap with Vector Magic

Those of us who are artistically challenged need all the help we can get when it comes to design software. A new tool called Vector Magic--the result of Stanford University Artificial Intelligence Laboratory research project by James Diebel and Jacob Norda--seems to be a valuable addition to the arsenal of free apps available for creating and editing images online.

Basically, Vector Magic takes rasterized images (composed of pixels) and converts them to vector (or scalable) images. The result is an image that can be easily resized with no blur or pixelation--an ideal format for logos or other images that need to appear both large and small. Vector Magic supports the uploading of JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, and TIFF formats, and can export its final products as EPS, SVG, or PNG files. A warning on the Vector Magic blog today warns users to be patient because of a recent upswing in the load on its servers, but I had no problem at all converting JPEG images of various sizes into vector images in no time at all.… Read more

When all else fails, read the enemy's mind

Every morning, generals across the world wake up and wonder what the enemy is thinking. Well, it depends: Are they "chicken" or "Rambo"?

That's the bottom line for a new DARPA-funded software program based on the child's game "Capture the Flag." The strategy-predicting software BEE (Behavioral Evolution and Extrapolation) is designed to anticipate enemy actions and deceptions--ideally in time to do something about them.

BEE works by replacing large numbers of combatants with digital avatars on a simulated battlefield, assigning them individual personalities (e.g., alive enemy, injured friendly), factoring in beliefs … Read more