Find The Best Photos In Your Crowded Camera Roll With This Image Organization And Ranking App

If you are anything like us, you have thousands of pictures saved on your iPhone. We'd rather just leave them all on our smartphones than take the time to look through all of them to delete the ones we don't like or need.

However, this means you might have some hidden gems that you totally forgot about. It also makes it close to impossible to share your best #tbt pic on Instagram, or to text your friend the best photo of you two from that party.

What you need is a way to organize your crowded camera roll. That means what you reallyneed is this app in your life.

Called The Roll, this app sorts photos to help you find the exact one you are looking for, and uncovers the best photos that are saved on the your camera roll so that you don't have to continuously scroll.

Developed by Eye'Em, The Roll serves as a way to organize all of your photos by automatically grouping together like photos by date, location, event and topic, such as "best of the week," "portraits" and "city," so that all these related images can be found within said category. The app displays the best images from each group on top.

For example, if you took three similar selfies, the app will group these together and showcase the best one above the others. This will help you see all the similar photos and go ahead and delete the duplicates or ones taken by accident.

To determine which photos are the best, the app uses an algorithm to give them an aesthetic score. The algorithm uses both artistic principles and deep learning that is based on choices from curators to give a score between 0 and 100. The higher the score, the better the photo.

That means if you took a whole bunch of photos at the family barbecue over the weekend, it will rank the images and put the best shots on the top of the pack by their scores.

The Roll also uses image recognition technology called EyeEm Vision to identify objects, moods and emotions so the app can then tag photos. This feature further sorts photos and makes searching for a specific image easier. For example, photos can be tagged with things like "summer," "outdoors" or "alone." You can also use the search bar to find your photos.

Users can also receive more information when tapping on an image, such as keywords and photography information like shutter speed.

Not only is The Roll a lifesaver for neat freaks who need some form of control over their ever-growing camera roll, but it also helps users see what kind of photos look good. While this may just be preference, it could help you see which of your selfies look the best and which cool vacation photos aesthetically look amazing.

The Roll is available to download for free for iOS, with the Android version expected to be released in the near future.

Siri Creators Introduce New AI Assistant Viv

One of the creators of the artificial intelligence (AI) behind Siri, the digital assistant acquired by Apple in 2010, today demonstrated a next-generation AI called Viv that he said could eventually let people "converse" with any smart device in the Internet of things.

Siri creator Dag Kittlaus currently runs a San Jose startup called Viv Labs, founded with fellow Siri creator Adam Cheyer. (Another Siri creator, Tom Gruber, now works for Apple.) At the Disrupt NY 2016 tech conference in New York today, Kittlaus gave a live demonstration of his company's latest creation, Viv ("viv" comes from Latin word, "vivus," which means "alive").

Kittlaus said Viv represents the next "new paradigm" for how people interact with computers. The technology's unique character comes from its use of dynamic program generation, an intelligent method for creating software on the fly depending upon the intent of a user's request.

'Software That's Writing Itself'
"We're going to use this technology to breathe life into the inanimate objects and devices of our life through conversation," Kittlaus said during his demonstration. Kittlaus gave several spoken queries to Viv during the presentation and received quick and accurate answers even to complex questions like, "Will it be warmer than 70 degrees near the Golden Gate Bridge after 5 p.m. the day after tomorrow?"

Unlike other intelligent assistants Viv uses a "computer science breakthrough" that -- after using speech recognition and determining a user's intent based on the words spoken -- automatically creates a software program to produce an accurate and relevant response to a question or request, Kittlaus said.

"This is software that's writing itself," Kittlaus said. The process, which takes just 10 milliseconds or so, enables Viv to scale in ways that other digital assistants currently cannot, he added.

Viv's Goal? 'Ubiquity'
Viv Labs plans to begin launching its AI toward the end of the year, first through a select group of partner, Kittlaus told TechCrunch editor-in-chief Matthew Panzarino during an on-stage Q&A after the demonstration. Eventually, Viv will be opened up to developers at large to allow them to create a wide range of uses for the technology. Viv can already interact with users and enable transactions such as ordering flowers through ProFlowers or reserving a ride through Uber.

For consumers, Kittlaus said he envisions Viv becoming "the intelligent interface to everything." For developers, Viv will be the next great marketplace and channel for offering content, commerce and services, he said.

By enabling people to interact with smart devices through conversation, Viv offers an easier and more natural way to interact with computers than, say, apps do, Kittlaus said. "I think kids will be asking in future, 'How did you get along without your assistant?'" he said.

Unlike with Siri, Viv Labs has no plans to sell its technology to a larger tech firm. Instead, Kittlaus said his company is in talks with most every major firm in the world to put it on almost every device. "Our goal for this is ubiquity," he said.

ROGER: ALEXA ON YOUR PHONE

Roger, an app that lets you send voice messages to your contacts in a walkie-talkie format, has now added third-party integration — starting with Amazon’s Alexa, Dropbox, and Slack.

The app is currently the only free way to utilize Alexa on your phone; there’s a paid app called Lexi that solely offers access to Alexa’s voice services. But with Alexa on Roger, you now you can access Alexa and throw commands at her on the go — you can check your calendar, control smart home devices, make shopping orders, and more, but not all orders will work.



Phrases like, “play music,” won’t enable Alexa to begin playing music on your device, and Roger CEO and co-founder Ricardo Vice Santos says that’s an issue on Alexa’s end.

Dropbox integration is a feature Roger users have been calling for as the app only stores messages for 48 hours. Now, users can have their conversations backed up directly to their Dropbox account for safekeeping.

For Slack, it works precisely how you think it would. Tap on the Slack icon to send a voice message to someone on the service — you can specify where you want to publish your messages, whether it’s to a group or an individual. Santos says the company is working on a transcribing system, but it’s not going to be a core feature since Roger’s purpose is to push voice communication.

Perhaps the more interesting feature is how Roger can deal with voicemail.

“One of the reasons why people don’t like voicemail that much is because it’s actually the only medium that you can’t respond in the same currency, so you can’t respond to a voicemail with a voicemail,” Santos told Digital Trends.



Once a call is missed and if a voicemail is left, Roger will identify the contact and let you listen to the voicemail through Roger. You can then respond with a voice message to that person through the app. If users don’t have Roger installed, they’ll get a text message with the voice message embedded.

Developers can build their own integrations with Roger, and users can also build IFTTT recipes to get more mileage out of the app.

Roger was built by former Spotify engineers and is funded by former Facebook executives. The update is available now — the app recently launched on Android, but debuted on iOS last year.

Google launches new keyboard for iOS

I downloaded the new Gboard for iOS today, and have been really enjoying it so far. Along with wondering about what Google will tell advertisers now that they can read every single thing I type, I came to the realization that pretty much every major function of my iPhone has now been taken over by Google software.

I use Google products for email, search, photos, maps, and video. Gboard effectively puts Google inside every app I use that requires me to type, from texting to taking notes. The only activity that isn't really mediated by the search giant at this point are voice calls, although in the past I have used Google Voice.

This isn't an op-ed about how Apple is dying or how Google products are superior to others. Just an observation that the two biggest players in the world of mobile devices / operating systems can radically overlap on an iOS device, in a way that I don't think would be possible or practical if I was on Android.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has made the argument before that part of the value customers derive from his company's products is privacy. Apple doesn't suck up your personal data and sell it to advertisers because it's found a nice business as the most profitable corporation in history mostly by selling hardware.

If you are the kind of person who is offended or frightened by the idea that a big company is tracking everything you say and do, Google apps are not a good fit. Personally, I'm okay with exchanging that information for a suite of software tools that fits my life. Now excuse me, I have some risqué emoji to search for.

source: theverge

Tracking App

Columbia's GPS Pal app for Android and iOS logs your hikes, geotags memories (video)

By Darren Murph  posted Apr 26th 2012 2:13AM

Move over, My Tracks -- you've got serious company. Google's own adventure tracking app just got majorly one-upped by a company that also happens to make heated jackets. Columbia's just-launched GPS Pal app is not only available on both Android and iOS, but it's actually designed to be used with a user account so that activity logs are neatly housed in a searchable, organized portal. It's free to download, and aside from monitoring your hikes and treks via GPS, it also syncs photos, videos, and trail information to a web journal automatically, complete with pinpoint geotagging information on each piece of media.

As for data points? It'll keep track of elevation changes, current speed and distance traveled, and it makes sharing said trips to social networks quite the lesson in simplicity. Naturally, you'll need a data connection in order to upload media while on the trail -- something that's often hard to find -- but at least the app tells you how poor (or great) your GPS signal is at all times, which is all that's required to keep track of your actual steps. Head on past the break for a promo video, or hit the links below to grab it for your platform of choice.