The boffins at Fujitsu have have been scratching their heads trying to think of a better purpose for those front facing cameras on our smartphones, tablets and laptops. What they have come up with is a new imaging system which can calculate your pulse and help monitor health.

The system measures the amount of green light, which is absorbed by haemoglobin, reflected from your face to work out your blood-flow and calculate your pulse. The software can work using existing hardware and only requires users to hold still for 5 seconds to make it’s calculations.

Fujitsu aims to have the system adopted by device makers and also hopes it can be implemented to TV’s, mirrors and other household devices. What do you think of the idea, intrigued or not?

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The Samsung Galaxy S4 launch was really more about the improved software of the new phone rather than the design or hardware. Cool new features such as dual-camera, S-Translator and S Health might have some current S3 and Note 2 owners reaching for their credit cards.

But, hang on! Step back from your flexible friend and take a deep breath as you might not need all the new hardware to run those great updates. According to Nick DiCarlo, Samsung’s VP of Portfolio Planning, software updates which don’t require new hardware might be pushed on to other flagship Sammy phones!

Anything that we can do that’s not dependent on hardware like infrared, we’ll definitely bring to all the flagship devices.

By no means a guarantee that it will happen, but at least Samsung is saying it could happen. What did you think of the new software features announced with the Galaxy S4, impressed or not?

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Ever had the urge to use a new Wii U controller for gaming and other activities on your PC?  Developer and modder Chris Manning has bridged the gap and created software that makes it possible.

He has enabled the Nintendo’s Wii U big pad controller to communicate with your PC systems and even was kind enough to make the software available to you for download so you can mess around with this tweak as well. According to Manning, he isn’t done there, he is now working to release a new update that will allowing streaming to work and add touch screen support to the Wii U pad.

Chris adds, “Follow the readme.txt closely!  This requires a bit of technical know-how to get working.” Below is a video of the software in action and a link to download your own copy.

Without touch and streaming capabilities, the use potential for this Wii U Controller ‘mod’ is limited at this stage, but there is plenty of future potential here. What do you think?

SOFTWARE DOWNLOAD

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The game definitely is not going to give you an experience similar to the latest iteration of Call of Duty, but still, Angelina’s Space Station Invaders is a pretty impressive work. Created by Michael Cook, a computer scientist at Imperial College London, the AI builds games using a technique called cooperative co-evolution.

In Space Station Invaders (check out the game here), you have to control a scientist for fighting off rogue robots and invading aliens to escape a space station. For the game, Angelina designed different aspects such as level layout, enemy behaviour and power-ups, and assembled them randomly. Then the AI simulated a human playing the game for determining the most effective designs. The process is repeated around 400 times for creating the best designs.

But the AI is not yet capable of creating a game all by itself, the graphics and sound effects are added by Cook. But it’s a good start and the software can be developed into something big.

And Cook has the answer for game developers who think that the AI might bring days of unemployment for them. Cook says that he likes “to think that Angelina won’t steal anyone’s job, I think it will actually be a really positive force for designers”. He believes that Angelina can be used as a tool for making improvements to games build by developers. But isn’t that what they all say? “Oh no, the robot won’t take your job at the automobile assembly line.”

Head here to know more about Angelina.

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If you don’t want random strangers crowding your precious photographic memories, check out what Swedish photography firm Scalado has come out with.  The app called Remove, claims to be the world’s first optical removal software for smartphones.  Scalado says the new app will help you remove unwanted moving subjects from your photographs. It works just like you would imagine it to. The Remove app takes burst of shots in succession, you will have to keep the camera still on the person or thing you are taking a photo of. It then recognizes the moving objects in the frame by comparing the different shots, then it will highlight the objects in motion allowing you to select the ones you want to be removed. The final product will be a perfect photo of just your dear loved ones.

Just in case you are wondering, the background being blocked by an unwanted person is not lost in the process. The app selects the bit of background from another shot. But the only problem is that the app won’t be highlighting strangers who are standing still. It won’t be an app which can be downloaded, but software coming with smartphones. Hopefully there will be a partnership between Scalado and all the big smartphone manufacturers soon.

Unfortunately, the app is currently a prototype and the final version expected to be shown off at the upcoming Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, later this month.

Check out the video to take a peek at how the app works.

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