My sister is coming to visit this weekend – it will be her 2nd-only big trip to “chi” in the 5 years that I’ve been a resident!  Naturally I’m stoked and can’t wait to figure out plans.  Problem is I’ve been as busy as a beaver with work and haven’t made it a priority until now to figure out what we will be doing.  After talking to Jen Lynn’s hubby Dave, it was indisputable that the focus will be meaty food: ribs, bbq, deep dish pizza, and a good ol’ fashioned Chicago hot dog with that silly green relish.  Yes, you can be sure I’ll be toting my TUMS and praying for heartburn relief because its going to be one crazy ride on the meat train. lol Read More -›

Barrett sent out a link today to the Idee – Piximilar Technology. It’s this application that searches through huge image archives (in this case, flickr), without keywords or metadata, to instantly retrieve visually similar images. Um, this is super cool and I’ve never seen anything like it!

You can search by similar images, uploading your own image, selecting multiple colors from a simple palette or an advanced color wheel to retrieve images containing the same colors. This is some serious sophistication in algorithms of color, shape, texture, luminosity, complexity, and objects. What’s crazy is the speed at which the program handles the information. It’s almost like magic – you have to try it for yourself.