BPC-SCREENPLAY is a completely new approach to scriptwriting and the creative challenge of getting from an idea to a movie. At the Berlin Picture Company, we wanted a software tool that would show exactly how our concepts are building up to become a movie, while we are at work on the script. This means hearing the dialogue as audio and being able to watch the images, sketches and photographs of the visuals we envisage, as well as building a traditional script and keeping notes on characters, locations and the action in each scene.

Whether you work professionally on cinema films, tv programmes and commercials, or industrial and business productions, BPC-Screenplay provides a platform to demonstrate exactly what you have in mind, not only in relation to locations, but also the pacing and timing of the project as it develops.

The Debut Edition has been designed for screen-writers using a small laptop with Windows XP. The next edition, BPC-Screenplay Pro will be a larger programme, with a range of advanced features configured for specialist production requirements. Registered ‘Early Adopters’ will be offered an Euro50 discount when they purchase the Pro Edition, which we plan to release in 2008.

BPC-Screenplay Debut Edition can be downloaded for an ‘early adopter’ price of only Euros25.00 (German sales: Euros21,01 plus 19% MwST Euros3,99), or ordered on a memory stick (USB) for postal delivery for Euros50.00 (German sales: Euros42,02, plus 19% MwST Euros 7,98).

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NexTune’s latest software release Composer 1.5, is tightly integrated with Apple’s iTunes(TM) music software. Users can import their iTunes playlists into NexTune’s Composer to quickly transform an otherwise bland list of music into a well-developed music program. They can then easily publish their music program to NexTune’s Music Network where other Network members can download the music programs for their own enjoyment.

The NexTune Music Network allows its members to create their own music websites complete with their own music programs, commentary and pictures. Members can link to other members and share music interests and ideas. The NexTune Composer software is a desktop application that enables seamless interaction with its music network. Combined with the iTunes music software, users have a powerful set of tools to create very unique music experiences.

In this day of the iPod and music portability, NexTune’s Music Network provides users the ability to move their playlists from one computer to another or even to other users. Unlike simply listening to someone else’s playlist, NexTune allows the user to actually download the playlist to their computer. NexTune’s patent pending technology quickly matches the music listed in the playlist to the downloader’s own iTunes music library. Songs contained in the playlist that the user doesn’t have are easily identified due to the intuitive nature of the NexTune interface. The downloader can quickly purchase the missing songs from the iTunes music store, which is integrated with NexTune’s Composer software.

Membership in the NexTune Music Network is free along with its software. NexTune participates in a revenue share program by referring its members to the iTunes store and by featuring advertisements on its network.

About NexTune – NexTune Music Network is an online service that helps its members create digital music playlists, share playlists with their online network of friends, discover new music and download digital music. NexTune provides a place to socialize with other music enthusiasts in an interactive, user-submitted network of friends, personal profiles, commentary, photos and music. NexTune is a retail affiliate of the iTunes Music Store and provides direct access to music and features available exclusively from iTunes. NexTune also incorporates Google Advertising in order to provide a cost free, interactive environment for its members.

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Computer graphics researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have developed systems for editing or altering photographs using segments of the millions of images available on the Web.

Whether adding people or objects to a photo, or filling holes in an edited photo, the systems automatically find images that match the context of the original photo so they blend realistically. Unlike traditional photo editing, these results can be achieved rapidly by users with minimal skills.

“We are able to leverage the huge amounts of visual information available on the Internet to find images that make the best fit,” said Alexei A. Efros, assistant professor of computer science and robotics. “It’s not applicable for all photo editing, such as when an image of a specific object or person is added to a photo. But it’s good enough in many cases,” he added. “Why Photoshop if you can ‘photoswap’ instead?”

Efros and his colleagues will present papers on two related systems at the Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Graphics and Interactive Techniques (SIGGRAPH) annual conference Aug. 5–9 in San Diego.

One system, called Photo Clip Art (http://graphics.cs.cmu.edu/projects/photoclipart/), was developed with graduate students Jean-François Lalonde and Derek Hoiem, and with Carsten Rother, John Winn and Antonio Criminisi of Microsoft Research Cambridge. It uses thousands of labeled images from a Web site called LabelMe as clip art that can be added to photos. A photo showing a vacant street, for instance, might be populated with images of people, vehicles and even parking meters derived from the LabelMe database (http://labelme.csail.mit.edu/).

To make the resulting image appear as realistic as possible, the system analyzes the original photo to estimate the camera angle and lighting conditions, and then looks in the clip art library for an object — a car, for instance — that matches those criteria. The user need only identify the horizon in the original photo to orient the system. Using previously developed Carnegie Mellon technology for analyzing the geometric context of a photo, the system can then place the object within the scene, adjusting its size as necessary to put it in proportion to other objects of equal distance from the camera.

“Matching an object with the original photo and placing that object within the 3-D landscape of the photo is a complex problem,” said Lalonde, who led development of the system. “But with our approach, and a lot of clip art data, we can hide the complexity from the user and make the process simple and intuitive.”

The other system, called Scene Completion (http://graphics.cs.cmu.edu/projects/scene-completion/), was developed by graduate student James Hays, another member of Efros’ research team. It draws upon millions of photos from the Flickr Web site to fill in holes in photos. Some of the holes might be from damage to a physical photograph, but more often they are created when an editor cuts out part of an image to eliminate an unsightly truck from a picturesque street scene, or removing a passerby from a group shot of friends. Photo editors often try to fill in those holes with sections derived elsewhere in the same image, but Efros said that a better match can often be found in a different photo.

The system looks for image segments that match the colors and textures that surround the hole on the original photo. It also looks for image segments that make sense contextually — in other words, it wouldn’t put an elephant in a suburban backyard or a boat in a desert.

In the case of well-photographed cities or popular tourist attractions, Efros said, the system might get lucky and find a photo of the same scene on the Web. In other cases, it might offer a number of possible images that could fill in the hole. A retaining wall edited out of one photo, for instance, might be replaced by the image of a building, a grassy slope or a rock outcropping. The system typically gives the user 20 different choices for filling in the hole.

The success of this approach depends on the number of photos available to the system, Hays said. “We saw a dramatic improvement when we moved from a database of 10,000 images to two million images,” he noted. “And that is just a tiny fraction of the hundreds of millions of images already available on sites like Picasa and Flickr. We have tons of photos from which to choose.”

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The basic rationale behind image spam is that it is difficult to detect using spam filtering software designed to detect patterns in text in the plain-text E-mail body. Attempts to filter text in image spam are easily defeated because optical character recognition of text in image spam can be prevented using a variety of obfuscation techniques which will not prevent the spam image from being read by human beings: this is the same phenomenon exploited by CAPTCHAs, but put to the ends of spammers, rather than vice versa.

Obfuscation techniques can include:

• Blurring of text outlines
• Construction of the image from multiple image layers assembled within an HTML e-mail
• Use of animated image formats
• Random noise added to the image to prevent the detection of multiple similar images using hash algorithms

Currently, the best known countermeasure for image spam is to discard all messages containing images which do not appear to come from an already whitelisted E-mail address. However, this has the disadvantage that valid messages containing images from new correspondents must either be silently discarded, or that bogus “backscatter” bounce messages must necessarily be generated to the reply-to addresses in junk mail messages, enabling denial of service attacks to be performed by spammers.

Most mailers can also be configured to display pictures only when requested, for users who know how to do this.

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AVG UK & Ireland, the official business partner of GRISOFT, makers of AVG internet security software, today announced the latest addition to its growing security products portfolio, AVG Mobile Security. AVG Mobile Security is currently in the BETA testing stage, and available for free download from www.avguk.com with a registration to a BETA portal (http://beta.grisoft.cz/). The system protects Symbian UIQ 3.0 platform mobile phones, compatible with Sony Ericsson P990i, M600i and W950i devices.

The new AVG Mobile Security features SMS anti-spam and anti-virus. It also includes advanced functions such as comprehensive system settings for scan scheduling and creating “whitelists” enabling users to configure AVG Mobile Security to their needs.

The estimated number of mobile viruses and threats to mobile phones today is about 350 and continues to rise. According to recently published studies[1], the number of virus attacks on mobile phones rose five-fold within the last year, affecting customers of more than 80 per cent of mobile operators worldwide. Thousands of mobile phones have been targets of successful attacks, resulting in disabled phones or high bills caused by unwanted messages and calls.

“As our first product for mobile phones, the new AVG Mobile Security platform was designed to help users keep their mobile communications secure at all times,” explains Larry Bridwell, Global Security Strategist at GRISOFT. “Hackers are now finding ways to access mobile phone data and we want to ensure that our users stay protected. We look forward to building upon this product and extending AVG’s comprehensive and unobtrusive security to protect as many mobile phones as possible.”

The new user group will be attached to a forum that will be a portal for users to share their experiences testing the software and gain useful advice and insight from other users. AVG Mobile Security is continuously undergoing updates through a professional distribution system of more than 10,000 high-speed servers worldwide, allowing rapid reaction to emerging threats.

GRISOFT continues to offer a full security software portfolio to protect computers. The latest editions of AVG Internet Security and AVG Anti-Virus with Anti-Spyware are available online and through various retailers nationwide.

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A new programming language developed at the MIT Media Lab turns kids from media consumers into media producers, enabling them to create their own interactive stories, games, music, and animation for the Web.

With this new software, called Scratch, kids can program interactive creations by simply snapping together graphical blocks, much like LEGO® bricks, without any of the obscure punctuation and syntax of traditional programming languages. Children can then share their interactive stories and games on the Web, the same way they share videos on YouTube, engaging with other kids in an online community that provides inspiration and feedback.

“Until now, only expert programmers could make interactive creations for the Web. Scratch opens the gates for everyone,” said Mitchel Resnick, Professor of Learning Research at the MIT Media Lab and head of the Scratch development team.

Resnick’s Lifelong Kindergarten research group previously developed the “programmable bricks” that inspired the award-winning LEGO® MINDSTORMS® robotics kits. Just as MINDSTORMS allows kids to control LEGO creations in the physical world, Scratch allows them to control media-rich creations on the Web.

“As kids work on Scratch projects, they learn to think creatively and solve problems systematically — skills that are critical to success in the 21st century,” said Resnick.

Designed for ages 8 and up, Scratch is available by free download from the Scratch website (http://scratch.mit.edu). The software runs on both PCs and Macs. The MIT Media Lab is now collaborating with other organizations — including Intel, Microsoft, Samsung, BT, the LEGO Group, Motorola, and One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) – to create other versions and applications of Scratch, including versions for mobile phones.

The name Scratch comes from the technique used by hip-hop disc jockeys, who spin vinyl records to mix music clips together in creative ways. Similarly, Scratch lets kids mix together a wide variety of media: graphics, photos, music, and sounds.

A glance at the Scratch website (http://scratch.mit.edu) reveals a kaleidoscope of projects created by kids: a story about a polar bear school, space attack games, and a break-dancing performance. Some creations are goofy and fun; some reveal serious social themes. Children are constantly modifying and extending one another’s projects on the website – and learning from one another in the process. “It’s exciting to wake up each morning and see what’s new on the site,” said Resnick.

Scratch was developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten research group in collaboration with UCLA educational researchers, with financial support from the National Science Foundation and the Intel Foundation. Throughout the development process, the design team received feedback from children and teens at Intel Computer Clubhouses and school classrooms.

“There is a buzz in the room when the kids get going on Scratch projects,” said Karen Randall, a teacher at the Expo Elementary School in St. Paul, Minnesota. “Students set design goals for their projects and problem-solve to fix program bugs. They collaborate, cooperate, co-teach. They appreciate the power that Scratch gives them to create their own versions of games and animations.”

For more information about Scratch, see http://scratch.mit.edu/about

LEGO and MINDSTORMS are trademarks of the LEGO Group.
Used here with special permission. ©2007 The LEGO Group.

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