Many ways exist to search and download images by keyword/s. Nevertheless, copyright issues are usually raised. One source of graphics that is both extensive and free is stock.xchng. Its servers tend to be busy during daytime (America and especially Europe), but nothing else seems to beat it.

As a side note, Google Images will collect and index any image regardless of copying permissions.

If anyone is interested in research that I do (model-based image analysis and image registration), there is a 2-page abstract in print (PDF format, 1.8 MB). My work is described in pages 16-17.
 
 
 

MATLAB Central had me ranked 4th (world-wide) for my code contributions this month with over 1,600 downloads. This nearly tops July 2004 when I was ranked 2nd with almost 2,000 downloads. I was then only surpassed by the product manager, Stuart McGarrity.

A heated thread in Slashdot discusses why (or why not) the iPod is a better music player than a Palm. Here is a snippet:

Many people don’t need PDA functions, and even for those of us who do the standalones have advantages:

• Price – a 4GB SD card will cost much more than a flash based 4GB MP3 player.
• Size – iPod minis and shuffles are smaller than any PDA on the market and even the biggest current iPod Photos compare favourably on pocket real estate.
• Capacity – 60GB SD card or even CF microdrive? I don’t think so. Fair enough, most people don’t need the full 60, but even the sensible 20GB capacity doesn’t have any real competition from publically available cards, and plenty of people like to have their whole music collection with them to choose whatever they feel like hearing.
• Ease of use – iPods are set out (extremely nicely) to play and organise music. PDAs are not, and as such have loading times, fiddly small buttons and touchscreens that are hard to use one handed.
• Battery life – big fat backlit colour touchscreen or small, clear, functional monochrome display.

Cited by: PalmAddict

According to the Army Physical Fitness Research Institute, increased consumption of caffeine causes:

• increase in blood pressure
• heart rhythms change
• nervousness
• worse quality of sleep
• headaches and migraines

Think carefully before taking that extra cup of coffee to your desk…

If you are not familiar with syndication and aggregators, now is a good time to find out. Content is delivered to you, rather than you chasing content.

I am apprehensive of promoting MSN search, but their beta version has a nice feature that I am excited about. You can get common searches delivered to your RSS aggregator. The idea is very simple. Just replace the text in red with your favourite search query and replace whitespaces with a +.

http://beta.search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=othello+master&format=rss

Wal-Mart break a barrier by selling a Linux-based laptop for under $500. According to CNET:

The computer, dubbed Balance, comes loaded with the Linspire operating system and the OpenOffice.org office suite, the companies said.

The companies said Balance is the lowest-priced laptop currently available with an operating system and an office suite. It features a VIA C3 1-GHz processor, 128MB RAM, a 30GB hard drive, a CD-ROM drive and a 14.1-inch liquid crystal display…