Tag Archives: gadgets

measuring skin colour

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I came across an article in the Daily Mail about a phone app that can be used to measure skin colour. It is produced by Fujitsu. Trying to measure colour using a digital camera is difficult. The RGB values you obtain depend upon the lighting and the settings of the camera and even on the make of the camera. Technically, we say that the RGB values are device-dependent. Fujitsu have got around this by using a mask (see picture) that contains some standard colours that are skin tones. Presumably the app grabs the RGB values of the standard colours and then uses these to make an adjustment to the captured RGB values of the actual skin. It’s very clever and I am impressed.

colour kindle

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I recently used a Kindle for the first time. I have never had much interest in them; since a smart phone or a tablet seem to do everything that a Kindle does and a whole lot more. However, there is one advantage of the Kindle and that is that the screen is easier to read the brighter the ambient illumination. So on holiday, for example, the Kindle really comes into its own if you want to read novels on your sun lounger. Nevertheless, it is a major limitation that the screen is only black and white. For reading novels I guess its ok; but for lots of other reading material I think colour would enrich the experience. It had been thought that a colour kindle was many years away. But today I read a report on CNET that claims that Amazon is set to launch a colour e-reader later this year. There are doubts about whether the technology is ready yet … we’ll see.