Category Archives: Arts

Testing the N900 “Lowlight” Photo Application

Posted on by

Nokia have released some “research prototypes” of applications that use the FCam libraries to do fun things with taking photos on their Nokia N900. One of these is called “Lowlight” and is designed to make it easier to get reasonable photos in, well, low light conditions. I tested this out on Tuesday night after the Linux Users of Victoria meeting, taking a photo of the Old Commerce Building on the University of Melbourne campus.

Old Commerce building, University of Melbourne, at night

Now given that’s taken hand-held without a flash, I’m pretty impressed, you can even make out the design of the courtyard floor in front of it! If you go and look at the original full size version on Flickr (CC-BY licensed) you can see there is noise around the outside of the building, and there is an almost oil-paint effect on the details of the carvings on the building due to their algorithm, but given the alternative was nothing at all it’s a great little program!

US Rental DVD’s Starting to Have Features Removed – What About Accessibility ?

Posted on by

Apparently some DVD rental outlets in the US are starting to distribute DVD’s specially made by the movie companies to lack the “extra features” of the standard DVD’s you can buy in the shops – things like the “making of” short, directors voice over, subtitles, etc..

In an apparent effort to give customers a reason to buy DVDs instead of renting them, movie studios have begun disabling certain features of new releases on discs rented out by Blockbuster and Netflix.

The subtitle issue is an interesting one for accessibility by people with hearing issues, as Media Access Australia notes:

It appears that deaf consumers in the US may have become the victims of a move by some DVD rental outlets there to block the special features section of a DVD. This is to encourage people to buy the DVD instead to receive the full viewing experience.

Some of the commenters on the original blog post have wondered whether or not this contravenes the US’s “American’s with Disabilities Act” (ADA), but having a look at the summary on the ADA website doesn’t seem to support that. Even so, cutting off a segment of your market by excluding them from DVD rentals doesn’t seem a particularly smart move for the movie companies. Let’s hope this doesn’t get to Australia anytime soon.

(Via the ABC Ramp Up disability twitter feed)