This is a picture of MI6 headquarters. The people in that building are quite curious how a camera loaded with super mega secret stuff was auctioned off on eBay. Well, maybe they are more curious as to whom was doing the selling and how they acquired the camera. They’re investigating it now.        Less

The NUI Group has been working hard to bring the PS3 Eye to windows.  From the factory, this device has pretty impressive specs, but no windows drivers.  After a bit of hacking, they’ve developed a driver for it and released it on their forums.  The main reason they are so interested in it is that it can capture full frame at 60 frames per second, making it perfect for multi touch sensing.  Now that they’ve got it working with windows, they’re working on a custom PS3 Eye filter for touchlib. [via PS3 Fanboy, thanks vor]        Less

Add to iTunes | Add to YouTube | Add to Google | RSS Feed You’d think that all tripods are the same. They all have three legs, right? But saying that is tantamount to saying that all cars are the same, because they have four wheels. A few weeks ago, I broke yet another tripod. I’ve owned several, and they just never last. So now that I had no more tripod, I asked some friends what they recommended. One good friend, Usrbingeek, recommended the Manfrotto Pro 055XPROB. The 055XPROB makes the Manfrotto-patented horizontal center column feature even easier to use. By extending the column to its highest vertical position, it can be swung round to horizontal without removing the head or disassembling the column itself, so switching between framing and positioning setups is more convenient than ever. The ergonomics of the leg angle release mechanism and the quick action leg locks themselves have also been greatly improved. 804RC2 Pan Tilt Head With Quick Lock The 804RC2 is a 3-way photo head constructed of an ultra-durable and lightweight technical polymer that easily withstands the daily rigors of the professional photographer. A unique spring feature has been added to the 804RC2 to assist in the tilt motion of the head to compensate for heavier, off-center loads. The ergonomically designed handles fit comfortably in the hands, while the standard quick release plate fits snugly in the low-profile receiver. I was impressed as soon as I took it out of the box. It’s extremely sturdy. Of course, there are plastic parts to it, but not where it matters most. This particular series has been recommended to me by several photographers. When they saw the box for this sitting on my desktop, they were all impressed. I didn’t realize I would need an adapter, but that’s ok. I’ll get one, and it’s easy to get. I spent about $150 on this. Before you freak out… keep in mind I’ve spent far more than that in total on ones that subsequently broke. To me, it’s worth it to spend more for a product, in order to know that I’m getting a quality piece of merchandise. My chair, for example, was expensive. However, instead of buying a cheap one that wouldn’t last and wouldn’t be comfortable, I chose to just buy ONE chair. It hasn’t let me down yet. So, I went with my gut and bought the more expensive tripod, as well. The nice thing about this tripod, is that once I mount the camera, it can turn the camera essentially 90 degrees. The stand itself is capable of holding up to 15 pounds, which is nice. Don’t buy this without checking with me first. Just like with any product, I can probably save you some money with a coupon. Digital Photography Secrets. Video Pop-In Genius! Catch The Online Video Wave Today. Digital Photography Success. Want to embed this video on your own site, blog, or forum? Use this code or download the video: <object width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/GZtLmT48NnE"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/GZtLmT48NnE" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed></object><br /><a href="http://chris.pirillo.com/">Chris</a> | <a href="http://live.pirillo.com/">Live Tech Support</a> | <a href="http://media.pirillo.com/">Video Help</a> | <a href="http://feeds.pirillo.com/ChrisPirilloShow">Add to iTunes</a> Are You an Amateur Photographer? Has a Wrist Strap Ever Saved Your Camera? Camcorder Buying Tips Wireless Camera More Help with Your Digital Camera (SLR) Buy a Digital Camera SLR Accessories to Buy Digital Camera Tips Buying a Digital SLR Camera Canon Digital Camera (SLR): Rebel XTi Join the Geeks Community Are All Camera Tripods Built Alike? Less

http://geeks.pirillo.com - http://live.pirillo.com - You'd think that all tripods are the same. They all have three legs, right? But saying that is tantamount to saying that all cars are the same, because they have four wheels. A few weeks ago, I broke yet another tripod. I've owned several, and they just never last. http://chris.pirillo.com Less

Using a custom built cable connected to the lower GBA slot and a copy of Canon’s SDK, [Steve Chapman] has come up with a very clever way of taking pictures remotely with a Nintendo DS Lite. Currently the software supports bracket shooting as well as bulb mode. [Steve] points out that he is currently testing an audio based trigger system using the mic built into the DS and the software is still a work in progress. While the weight saving benefits of using a DS instead of a notebook are obvious, there are things you do give up going this route. Traditionally, when you tether a camera to a computer the photos are saved directly to the computer where you can view the image on a much larger monitor. With the DS, it seems all you can do is remotely trigger the camera. Given the size and resolution of the screens maybe that’s all it can do. [via Boing Boing Gadgets] Less

[morcheeba], who you should remember from CVS camera hacking, picked up a Peek and took some pictures while tearing it down. The Peek is a $100 QWERTY device with a simple OS designed only to check email. The device is being sold by T-Mobile with a $19.95/mo data plan. There’s nothing too spectacular to see other than 16MB of flash memory and a TI OMAP processor. [via Make] Less

wwwade, photography, Microsoft Wade Roush wrote: Up to now, software giant Microsoft has largely missed out on the digital photography revolution. The most popular photo editing tools come from Microsoft competitors like Adobe and Apple. Flickr, every geek’s favorite photo-sharing site, was invented in Microsoft’s backyard in Vancouver, BC, but went on to become part of Yahoo. And Corbis, Bill Gates’ bold early-90s experiment in licensing digital images for high-resolution displays in consumers’ homes, devolved into an online stock image house. But the hottest new twist on digital photography is, unexpectedly, a Microsoft product. It’s a powerful Web service called Photosynth that can analyze multiple photos of a common object or space—say, Michelangelo’s David, or Times Square in New York—and intuit a 3-D model of the depicted subject, which then acts as the scaffolding for an interactive photo tour. The creation of a small Redmond-based product group called Live Labs, Photosynth is more than cool enough to earn Microsoft greater mindshare among photographers, both serious and amateur. I’ve been playing around with the tool since Microsoft started allowing members of the public to create their own “synths” on August 21. I would call Photosynth almost post-photographic, in the sense that it abandons any allegiance to the idea of a single, definitive image (goodbye, Doisneau’s “Kiss by the Hôtel de Ville” or Adams’s “Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico”) in order to exploit the abundance of images on the Web, or, these days, on any digital photographer’s hard drive. It assembles related images into interactive montages that can be navigated almost as if the user were walking through or around the photographed space or object. For example, in early demos of Photosynth, Microsoft showed how hundreds of images pulled from Flickr could be assembled into a massive 3-D montages of Notre Dame cathedral in Paris or the Trevi Fountain in Rome. Words don’t really suffice to explain Photosynth: to understand it, you should just go to the Photosynth website and explore a few synths. I especially invite you to check out three synths I created last weekend around Boston, representing my South End apartment, Copley Square, and the Christian Science complex. Embedded versions of these synths can also be found on the following pages of this article. Sadly, the special Photosynth viewer runs on Windows machines only, inside the Internet Explorer and Firefox browsers; this being a Microsoft project, there isn’t yet a version of the program that works on Macs. But at least the Live Labs people are apologetic about that: when you try going to the Photosynth site on a Mac, you get a message that says “Unfortunately, we’re not cool enough to run on your OS yet.” When you start exploring a synth, you’ll notice that mousing over an individual image brings up ghostly white outlines, indicating that the synth contains other images presenting the same objects from different angles. Clicking on one of those outlines (or on the arrows around the screen) will take you to those other images, but not instantly: Photosynth provides a smooth, animated transition, as if you were merely turning your head or approaching an object for a closer view. The best synths—that is, those with the most convincing transitions between images and the most complete sense of spatial unity—are those constructed from hundreds of photos taken with Photosynth in mind, like my three synths. The software’s matching algorithms have more to work with when there’s a lot of overlap between adjacent photos. So if you want to make a synth of an object like a sculpture, for example, you have to …Next Page » Comments | Permalink | Share |  E-mail Less

wwwade, photography, Microsoft Wade Roush wrote: Up to now, software giant Microsoft has largely missed out on the digital photography revolution. The most popular photo editing tools come from Microsoft competitors like Adobe and Apple. Flickr, every geek’s favorite photo-sharing site, was invented in Microsoft’s backyard in Vancouver, BC, but went on to become part of Yahoo. And Corbis, Bill Gates’ bold early-90s experiment in licensing digital images for high-resolution displays in consumers’ homes, devolved into an online stock image house. But the hottest new twist on digital photography is, unexpectedly, a Microsoft product. It’s a powerful Web service called Photosynth that can analyze multiple photos of a common object or space—say, Michelangelo’s David, or Times Square in New York—and intuit a 3-D model of the depicted subject, which then acts as the scaffolding for an interactive photo tour. The creation of a small Redmond-based product group called Live Labs, Photosynth is more than cool enough to earn Microsoft greater mindshare among photographers, both serious and amateur. I’ve been playing around with the tool since Microsoft started allowing members of the public to create their own “synths” on August 21. I would call Photosynth almost post-photographic, in the sense that it abandons any allegiance to the idea of a single, definitive image (goodbye, Doisneau’s “Kiss by the Hôtel de Ville” or Adams’s “Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico”) in order to exploit the abundance of images on the Web, or, these days, on any digital photographer’s hard drive. It assembles related images into interactive montages that can be navigated almost as if the user were walking through or around the photographed space or object. For example, in early demos of Photosynth, Microsoft showed how hundreds of images pulled from Flickr could be assembled into a massive 3-D montages of Notre Dame cathedral in Paris or the Trevi Fountain in Rome. Words don’t really suffice to explain Photosynth: to understand it, you should just go to the Photosynth website and explore a few synths. I especially invite you to check out three synths I created last weekend around Boston, representing my South End apartment, Copley Square, and the Christian Science complex. Embedded versions of these synths can also be found on the following pages of this article. Sadly, the special Photosynth viewer runs on Windows machines only, inside the Internet Explorer and Firefox browsers; this being a Microsoft project, there isn’t yet a version of the program that works on Macs. But at least the Live Labs people are apologetic about that: when you try going to the Photosynth site on a Mac, you get a message that says “Unfortunately, we’re not cool enough to run on your OS yet.” When you start exploring a synth, you’ll notice that mousing over an individual image brings up ghostly white outlines, indicating that the synth contains other images presenting the same objects from different angles. Clicking on one of those outlines (or on the arrows around the screen) will take you to those other images, but not instantly: Photosynth provides a smooth, animated transition, as if you were merely turning your head or approaching an object for a closer view. The best synths—that is, those with the most convincing transitions between images and the most complete sense of spatial unity—are those constructed from hundreds of photos taken with Photosynth in mind, like my three synths. The software’s matching algorithms have more to work with when there’s a lot of overlap between adjacent photos. So if you want to make a synth of an object like a sculpture, for example, you have to …Next Page » Comments (1) | Permalink | Share |  E-mail Less

http://live.pirillo.com - You caught my trying to organize my gadgets. Normally, they sit over on a stand on the other side of my office. The problem is, I'm a neat freak. I don't like to have them just sit around. So what's a Geek to do? Less

Add to iTunes | Add to YouTube | Add to Google | RSS Feed Picture this: you’re out and about and take the picture of a lifetime. Then, you need to transfer that picture to a computer. The problem is, you left your USB cord at home, so there’s no easy way to get that photo off of your camera. You could wait until you get home, or you could use this cool wrist strap. Not only is it a wrist strap, it also is a USB cable that will connect your camera to a computer (or anything else, like a photo printer). The USB Camera Lanyard and Wrist Strap is only $7.99 on Amazon, so why not pick one up? You’ll always have your USB transfer cable right with your digital camera with this unique wrist strap. The strap has a small sliding compartment that hides compact USB type ‘A’ and USB mini type ‘B’ (5-pin) connectors and the cable is easily long enough to connect to a USB port on your PC. No more searching in your camera bag for a cable or memory card reader. Camera not included. Make sure that your camera connects via USB, of course, and not some proprietary cable like mine does. For that reason, I’m planning to switch cameras. What point-and-shoot camera (that connects via USB) do you recommend? Landscape Photography 101 Videos & Manual. Digital Photography Secrets. Digital Photography Success. Want to embed this video on your own site, blog, or forum? Use this code or download the video: <object width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/AnnkBO5U5xU"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/AnnkBO5U5xU" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed></object><br /><a href="http://chris.pirillo.com/">Chris</a> | <a href="http://live.pirillo.com/">Live Tech Support</a> | <a href="http://media.pirillo.com/">Video Help</a> | <a href="http://feeds.pirillo.com/ChrisPirilloShow">Add to iTunes</a> Which USB / Firewire Car Charger do You Use? What’s in a USB Adapter Travel Kit? Do You Want to Remove USB Flash Drive Software? What do you Need to Know about USB? A USB Grommet Hub for your Home Office What’s Your Favorite Keyboard? Top Ten Portable Applications Camcorder Buying Tips Windows Vista and SATA Drives Cable Management a Has a Wrist Strap Ever Saved Your Camera? Less

http://live.pirillo.com - Picture this: you're out and about and take the picture of a lifetime. Then, you need to transfer that picture to a computer. The problem is, you left your USB cord at home, so there's no easy way to get that photo off of your camera. You could wait until you get home, or you could use this cool wrist strap. Less

http://live.pirillo.com - I have been addicted to the Web since the day it was born. The other day, I did a video about Cameroid which can help you do all sorts of cool things with your video camera. I came upon a link from my friend Mona for a site that is similar to Cameroid... only even better. Less

photography, Software, Internet Gregory T. Huang wrote: This week Nathan Myhrvold published some of the most stunning pictures I’ve seen in a long time. They’re compiled in a photo essay, entitled “Panoramas and Photo Technology from Iceland and Greenland,” on John Brockman’s Edge.org site. Besides the gorgeous scenery, what I found interesting was the technology behind creating these pictures, particularly the panoramic shots put together from individual pictures using photo-stitching software—a topic that Wade explored in his column last month. Myhrvold, the CEO and founder of Bellevue, WA-based Intellectual Ventures (and an Xconomist), is a serious photographer who counts paleontology, cooking, and race-car driving among his other hobbies. He recently returned from his travels around the North Atlantic, and it has taken him a few weeks to properly process the images. “My day job keeps getting in the way of my photography,” he quips in the piece. A key point Myhrvold makes is that he is able to find and buy photo software from all over the world—through companies like Focus Magic (New Zealand), Downloader Pro (UK), Focal Blade (Germany), Real Viz (France), Neat Image (Russia), and even a Brazilian model named Fred Miranda who writes Photoshop software. “Sometimes it is a hobby business or sideline, but a lot of these people make a living writing and selling this imaging software over the Internet,” he writes. “One can argue whether it takes a village to make a child, as Hillary famously said. It definitely takes software from a whole world full of geeks to make a state of the art photo.” Myhrvold’s photo descriptions go into incredible technical detail about things like sensor cleaning, managing dynamic range of lighting, noise reduction, and photo indexing—and how to do each just right. Just when you think you can’t read any more, though, he throws in a personal anecdote. “Like the other techniques, stitched panoramas have an issue with movement—if the subject moves while you are taking the multiple photos you have a problem,” he writes. “In the Falkland Islands last year an enterprising penguin moved fast enough between shots that he appears twice in one picture.” (There’s no solution for such penguins, but things like distortion and printing problems can usually be handled.) Wade points out that some of the landscapes have similarities to the surface of Mars, as revealed by the NASA rovers and the recent Phoenix lander mission—they look utterly foreign. For me, the pictures lend credence to The Onion’s satirical description of Iceland as a land where there is no “ice” to speak of—the country’s name being just a ploy to keep outsiders from discovering its spectacular scenery, natural resources, and outdoor hot tubs. Thanks to Myhrvold’s technical know-how, we know better. Comments | Permalink | Share |  E-mail Less

http://live.pirillo.com - The first camera I ever owned was a Polaroid Instamatic. This was long before digital cameras were even manufactured. I didn't take many pictures with it, because film was so expensive. It was nice in the respect that it printed your picture instantly. So what do you do when you want or need to print instant pictures these days? Less

This Casio camera features a 10 megapixel sensor and a dedicated 'upload to YouTube' shooting format. Less