The key to content-aware image resizing (and other recent image algorithms) is the discovery of "seams" -- paths of pixels that don't differ much from each other. Such seams are   places where the picture can be "pulled apart" gracefully. In image resizing, the seam is discarded and the two remaining pieces …

The good news is that I got a contract to write an article in which to discuss content-aware resizing (or rather, I got a contract for an article on performance tuning; I'll use the resizing algorithm as the sample).

The bad news is that the profiler I'll be discussing is …

Regular readers will not be surprised to hear that I spent the morning working on an implementation of this.

Figuring out the "next" seam is simple enough, but coming up with an optimal sequence is going to take more time. Stay tuned...

Now, would you be most interested in seeing …

I just glanced over at my RSS aggregator and was surprised to see a full-page Web ad for something I obviously wouldn't be interested in. I clicked the "back" button and saw the normal newspaper layout and a nondescript blogpost that had a Feedburner-supplied ad at the bottom.

Which, in …

Several people have let me know that comments often fail to post / validate. I'm planning on updating to the latest das Blog in a few weeks, after I do some traveling. Until then, I cannot afford to turn off CAPTCHA and I know that not every comment fails. My suggestion …

This video of an image manipulation algorithm shown at SIGGRAPH is jaw-dropping. They calculate paths through an image that have low entropy and either delete or interpolate them, creating images that shrink or grow while not distorting the "interesting" elements. (via John Lam) Here's \<a href="http://www.faculty.idc …

I used to frequently attend, talk at, and help organize software development conferences. As a former magazine editor, I couldn't help but compare the "information bandwidth" (if not the ultimate efficacy) of lectures with magazine articles and books. I concluded that successful one-hour lectures provided about the information of an …

Congratulations to my friends (and employers) at BZ Media, which has made the cut for Inc. Magazine's "5,000 list," ranking the fastest-growing private companies in the US.

The working groups of the C++0x committee are working hard to complete a major new standard for C++ (there's a big meeting here in Kona in October). If you're not intimate with C++, you may be surprised that such an important language has not had a standard threading model …

Looks like the only programming tools for Tilera's 64-Core CPU is a C compiler, but the day is fast approaching when we're going to start seeing more and more of these types of tools in the mainstream.