This gave me an idea for American manufacturing. Although we can’t undercut Chinese wages, the price per part can be minimized via high throughput reconfigurable automation.

An initial proof of concept might involve CNC mills, laser cutters, pick-and-place machines, or even 3D printers. However, as the concepts and methods mature, it is not difficult to imagine the addition of reconfigurable roll-to-roll assembly of the majority of the complex innards of products, requiring no human interaction whatsoever. The throughput of such a factory would be staggering…

Here is the answer.

1. Divide.

The idea that there is such thing as a problem that is infeasible due to technical complexity is an illusion. Everything that appears complex is recursively made up of simpler components, and once you know those components — the fundamental concepts that anchor the problem (and potential solution) in the realm of possibility — the illusion vanishes.

The trick is knowing what these components are or knowing someone who does – the more knowledge you have here, the further you can progress before encountering an indivisible sub-problem.

2. Conquer.

Once the problem is broken down into its fundamental requirements, it’s much easier to understand which parts are easy or already solved, which may require some research, and which are new.

A problem is almost never unique although it may appear unique on the surface. By pattern matching on historical work, much of the solution complexity can be delegated.

So, now what’s left is a set problems that you’ve never seen before.

3. Play.

Playing with new problems is often the quickest way to become acquainted with them. People tend to get caught up in analysis paralysis or worrying about the “correct” way to do something. This is all overhead to finding a solution.

Get dirty, make mistakes — the path to a novel solution is not paved.

I proceeded to enlighten the person who pioneered their use in computer graphics… Oops!

This is pretty incredible. If IBM figured out how to scale this a bit more, it could dominate the search industry.

In related news, iPhone OS 4 was announced for a launch in summer. Check out Steve’s keynote. The biggest highlight is probably efficient multitasking, and the biggest rumor coming out of the announcement is that there will be a new iPhone coming out this summer equipped with the new OS.

You can create as many drops as you want under 100MB for free. Larger drops can be created by subscribing to premium service.

Drop.io also has a ton of other features, like conference calling for a drop, leaving voicemail messages, and real time presentations.

Here’s my attempt at lightfield photography using only a ruler and a Panasonic LX3 point and shoot.

Perhaps it’s not the best scene to photograph, but, if there’s interest, I’ll make more lightfield pictures, and I’ll be sure to choose some more interesting subject matter.

More future photography techniques, besides lightfields can be seen at my Computational Photography page.

Looking for a web-based security camera that doesn’t require any special downloads or installation? Try out Vision on Tap: Spot Watcher.

In the demo, you can set up a motion detector using your webcam, select a region of interest (optional), and have a photo sent to your mobile phone or email. You can even use Twitter.

Here’s a video of me setting up an MMS alert on a cookie jar for my iPhone:

Vision on Tap Demo from Kevin Chiu on Vimeo.

In the future, you’ll be able to snap together simple custom programs that have capabilities beyond the demo.

Our research group is accepting new students this year! Please apply. We’re looking for people with computer vision / signal processing / optics backgrounds.

I’ve had the Droid for a few days now. Here are my emerging opinions.

Things I like

• Background processes – push email, IM, and notifications in general provide a superior communication experience.
• Surprisingly long battery life. Despite running all those background applications, the phone’s battery is still at half full after 12 hours.
• The LED on the front bezel blinks when you have something waiting for your attention – no need to turn on the screen.
• It’s fast. Most applications seem to have almost no load time.
• The slide out keyboard lights up in the dark.
• Facebook and Google sync everything in the background. When a new contact appears in Gmail, it’s automatically on the phone.
• The screen is extremely readable. Font rendering is especially good compared to the iPhone.

Things I do not like

• The camera takes horrible pictures and does not focus properly.
• Scrolling the home screen is rough.
• The virtual keyboard does not automatically appear when a text input field is highlighted. You have to tap the field to summon the keyboard.
• There is a limit of 3 home screens.
• Some of the applications that I enjoyed on my iPhone do not yet have an Android equivalent. Amazon Kindle is the one I miss the most.
• They layout algorithm for the home screen truncates application names longer than one line, even when there is obviously plenty of space.
• The interface aesthetic needs a lot of work. For starters, the black background featured in some parts of the interface is mismatched with the gray gradient background found in other parts. There needs to be a universal design tying all the components together. This would also help unify the appearance of third party applications as their developers take cues from the standard UI and widget set.
• The volume rocker and camera button have too much play, which makes them feel cheap.

• China Unicom reported only 5000 iPhones sold in the first week. This is in stark contrast to the 1 million new 3G subscribers it gained in total. Also, the iPhone App Store is not available, and neither is Wifi. This is a huge hit against the iPhone’s greatest strengths, apps and web browsing.
• Verizon just launched the Motorola Droid. The new phone is echoing around the blogosphere, leaving an impression as a true iPhone 3GS competitor, and in some ways, shows itself to be a superior product.
• Exclusivity with carriers in various countries creates a smartphone vacuum amongst the carriers that are not partnered with Apple. Android is steadily moving into these free spaces. In the US, these include Verizon and Sprint, among others.
• While yearly iterations on the iPhone platform have steadily improved Apple’s product, Android has nearly accomplished product parity in only two thirds the time.

Why Not:

• Android as a commercial platform for application developers is not currently as attractive as Apple’s solution. Google is trying to populate the store with higher quality applications through its Android Developer Challenges, but this also has the unpleasant side effect of temporarily suppressing the Android Market economy. Many of the high quality apps made for these challenges are released for free, wiping out revenues for entire application niches.
• Applications in the store seem to convert fewer buyers than their counterparts in the iPhone App Store.
• Piracy seems to be a more significant issue on Android, which might be a direct cause for the low conversion rates.

Niggles:

• The Droid camera autofocuses poorly, and the color processing is significantly more bland than that of the iPhone 3GS. However, this should be addressable with a software update.
• Applications can only be installed on the phone’s internal memory, which on the Droid, has an upper limit of 256MB. This means larger applications must install a small binary that will download the remainder of the application for installation on the removable memory.

Future Strategy

It’s very likely that the iPhone’s dominance will end in the near future if Android continues advancing at such a rapid clip. Apple is currently stuck in disadvantageous exclusivity contracts while its competition enjoys free roam among all other carriers. Apple’s saving grace is a superior application library and application discovery interface. If Android can revamp its approach to applications and find out where it can find its own iTunes-like foothold, things will start to get a bit more interesting.

Google stands to be the major winner if Android succeeds, even though it’s giving everything away for free. In the same manner Microsoft overtook Apple in the early days of Silicon Valley, Google stands to take over Apple in the mobile wars thanks to hardware independence and a strong foothold in personal online information. If Google releases a Sync application, perhaps within Google Desktop or Chrome, the stability of the foothold it could establish in competition with Apple will be tremendous. Currently, nearly everything on Android can be easily synchronized with Google’s services. However, a few strategic services remain unimplemented, such as media. In the same way Google Docs has displaced Microsoft’s Office in many small workplaces, Google could also displace iTunes using an online equivalent.