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Filed under: Photo

Filed under: Internet, Photo, Video, Holiday Gift Guide, Social Software

3 photo sharing sites for your new shutterbug - Holiday Gift Guide



If you know someone on your gift list is getting a camera or is a new shutterbug, you might want to consider getting them a "pro" photo sharing account where they can upload all their new photos. This is a nice gift for several reasons: 1. A pro account is a must have since most free accounts have a storage limit that the average photographer will easily exceed. 2. Pro accounts are ad free. 3. Pro accounts have more features and allow the upload of larger file sizes. 4. As the giver of the account, it stands to reason you might be given access to your shutterbug's photostream, although, it's equally possible you might not.

Here are my top picks for investing in a pro account. (Many thanks to our readers for enthusiastically recommending Smugmug).

Read more →

Filed under: Photo, Utilities, Video, Web

ZunaVision lets you place images and videos inside your videos

ZunaVision is a video technology that movie studios have had for years, brought to the average user by the computer science department at Stanford University. It lets you place images and videos within existing videos. Want to put a poster or an advertisement on a building in the background of your footage? ZunaVision's got you covered. How about changing the painting in a picture frame? It can do that, too.

ZunaVision isn't very hard to use. You can just select a surface, and it does a capable job of making your image look like it could plausibly be hanging there. It's not just pasted haphazardly on top of your video. It's cool enough that I'm already worried it won't stay free for long. The last Stanford web toy I fell in love with, Vector Magic, turned into a pay service after a while. Zunavision looks like it could be worth selling, too, but maybe the creators can just turn a profit by sneaking ads into other videos.

UPDATED: The URL for Zunavision changed, so the links in this post were broken. They should be working now. Thanks to all the readers who pointed that out!

Filed under: Internet, Photo, Blogging, Mozilla, Browsers

Post screenshots to Wordpress blogs with a Firefox add-on

On my list of 14 extremely useful Firefox addons I included ScreenGrab for capturing web pages to PNG or JPG images.

Today, I replaced it with Screen Grab to Wordpress. As you probably guessed, it's got the same core functionality with one major addition: the ability to send images directly to your Wordpress-powered blog.

Configure the URL, username, and password to all your Wordpress blogs an you're ready to go (just make sure you have XML-RPC remote publishing enabled).

Click the icon in your Firefox status bar to display SGW's menu and choose what to capture and where to send it. You can save locally, copy to the clipboard, or post directly to Wordpress.

If you're blogging a capture, you can enter a title, tags, body text, and even set your new post to publish - if you don't check the box, the post defaults to draft status. After successfully uploading, you're taken directly to the Wordpress edit page to put the finishing touches on your new post.

With less than 600 downloads to date, this one is a bit of a diamond in the rough. It's a tremendous timesaver for anyone blogging about items discovered while browsing with Firefox.

Filed under: Design, Fun, Games, Photo, Video, Macintosh

Get the "Obama effect" in Photo Booth with the Obamafy plugin

Although the presidential election is over, Obama-inspired design seems to have made a lasting imprint on American culture. If you loved those Shepard-Fairey-designed HOPE posters that the whole Internet seemed to be making parodies of, you can have the effect for yourself in Apple's Photo Booth. Here's how to do it, using the Obamafy plugin.

Once you've downloaded the .qtz file, move it to Compositions in your Library folder. Once you've done that, open up Photo Booth and click effects. You might have to cycle through to the last page of your effects to find Obamafy, but it should be there. It took a little bit of experimenting for me to find the right lighting to get a result that looks like the posters, so don't give up without playing around a little bit.

Filed under: Photo, Utilities, Microsoft, web 2.0

Photosynth: Microsoft's answer to Google Street View, with a twist

Photosynth, the much-anticipated three-dimensional photo experience from Microsoft Live Labs, has finally launched. "Synths," as they're called, are series of photos stitched together by a fancy algorithm that compares them to one another to create an immersive 360-degree viewing experience. You can start exploring Photosynth on most Windows PCs (and some Macs running virtual machines) now.

Photosynth is integrated with Live Maps, as well, so you can view other people's synths of various locations, right from the map. That's what's causing people to compare Photosynth to Google Street View, which is the closest product out there right now. But Google Street View doesn't let you create anything on your own, with a regular digital camera. Keep an eye on Photosynth as -- I know this is clichéd, but it may be true -- a game-changing technology.

Filed under: Fun, Internet, Photo

Barack Obama - President 2.0?

Obama family on election night
First the Obama campaign was sending out text messages to the masses and that whole thing came up about John McCain not using email. Obama was campaigning for those of us who are into the web. He appealed to our technology.

It appears he is going to keep it up. There are Presidential baby photos on the web. And, the President-elect is on flickr. He has released an entire set of election night photos of his family awaiting results in their hotel room. I wonder what will be next.

The Obamas certainly seem willing to let us have glimpses of their world. And they understand how to reach out on the web. No wonder someone took the time to make a flash game for Obama. Let's hope it continues. Maybe there will be a presidential blog.

[Via Lifehacker]

Filed under: Design, Photo, Productivity, Open Source, Web

Pixlr: slick new online image editor

There are plenty of online image editors out there, but it can be tough to find the right one. If you're looking for a few filters, a bit of layer support, and a decent range of tools, Pixlr might be the one you want. You'll be familiar with its tools from using desktop apps like Photoshop and The Gimp, but it's rare to see so many advances options in a web app.

Some of the Pixlr perks that surprised me: opacity sliders! Layers and transparency! The collection of filters includes halftones, scanlines and pixelation. Common (but useful) features like hue/saturation, resizing, and brightness/contrast are also intact. Next time you find yourself on a computer without Photoshop, you might also find you don't need it.

Filed under: Fun, Photo, Time-Wasters

PhotoFunia makes it easy to create funny photos

someone is sad Bush is leaving?
Looking for some good photos of McCain, Palin, Obama and Biden on this Election Day 2008? Thanks to PhotoFunia I was able to create something a little more interesting than what you will be seeing on CNN.

I have yet to master the skills in Photoshop to be able to make convincing fake photos. I usually fix colors, crop and reduce red eye but I rarely change any photos. PhotoFunia gave me the opportunity to make some pretty cool stuff today in just a few simple clicks. If you have a good head shot of anyone, you can make convincing photos.

Check out the gallery to see the variety of candidate photos I have assembled.

Gallery: PhotoFunia



[Via Lifehacker]

Filed under: Fun, Photo, Macintosh

Missing Polaroid pictures? Poladroid is the next-best thing.

Polaroid photos are a lot of fun, and they're a big part of the history of photography. When Polaroid film was discontinued, I thought I would never have as much making photos again. Maybe I won't, but Poladroid lets me get close. Drag and drop a photo, and Poladroid will spit out a Polaroid, complete with sound-effects and the experience of watching the image slowly develop.

Poladroid preferences include adding stripes to the image or the frame and changing the amount of rotation on the pics Poladroid creates. You can save Poladroid images either right-side-up or rotated. The only request I have to make Poladroid better is a plugin for Photo Booth, to let you shoot Polaroids with a webcam. Although this app is only available for Mac right now, a PC version is supposed to be coming in November.

Filed under: Internet, Photo, Search

Idée's super Multicolr gets Creative Commons awesomeness

Multicolr
Back in July, Jay linked to the rather awesome Multicolr service that lets you select up to 10 colours using the colour-picker on the page [selecting a colour more than once to add some bias should you wish] and the Multicolr app goes away and does its thing. 'Its thing' was, back in July, a search of the Interesting photos that make it into Flickr's Explore pages.

How times have changed. Just three months later, the colour search has a 10 million strong database of Creative-Commons photos the Idée Inc. folks have indexed from Flickr using their own 'visual similarity technology' and Multicolr now presents you with a grid of 50 matching CC-licenced photos. And yes, you read it right: that's 10 million Creative Commons-licenced photos indexed.

After playing with this new version of the mashup I'm still astounded - both by how the mashup works now [with a far larger image pool that previously], and by potential further uses. Multicolr, with perhaps tag-refinement for helping you find just the right photo subject, would be image-search nirvana - no doubt Idée [and I daresay Flickr] must be aware of this.

Filed under: Internet, Photo, Macintosh, Web services, Apple, Freeware

Facebook Exporter for iPhoto

Facebook Exporter for iPhotoIf you've ever wondered what the easiest way is to send photos from iPhoto to Facebook, the answer is Facebook Exporter for iPhoto.

Since Facebook is the largest photo website on the web in terms of images served, it makes sense that people would want to streamline the process of uploading photos to it as much as possible. Using Facebook Exporter for iPhoto, the process couldn't be more simple. just choose the pictures that you want to upload, optionally add an album and picture descriptions (and you can even tag people!), then press Export. You'll have to approve the photos on Facebook, but the plugin pops up a dialog with the option to go straight to your new album and do so.

You need to log the Facebook Exporter plugin in to your Facebook account before using it, and I had a little trouble logging in the first time, but once I was logged in everything was smooth sailing. I suspect I was experiencing a PEBCAK error.

Filed under: Internet, Photo, Utilities, Productivity

FlickrDown: bulk photostream downloader

My wife takes a lot of photos of the jewelry she creates, and she uses Flickr to store and share them. Recently, however, she was shooting out of town and ran out of room on her SD card. Her solution: plug in to a friend's PC and upload them to her photostream.

When she got home, she wanted a quick way to download all 300+ images for editing. That would have been a pretty tedious chore, were it not for FlickrDown.

You can search by username, e-mail address, tags, or groups. Results display quickly, and downloading is as simple as checking a few boxes, browsing for your destination folder, and clicking download. Authorization is supported - and necessary if you're going to download private photos.

FlickrDown will automatically create a new folder inside your destination to make sure your selected photos are stored neatly. Folders are named based on your search text or the group name. You also don't have to worry about it overwriting existing files - it will automatically append -fd to the new ones.

My only minor gripe is that the download progress shows in a separate window (and adds another button to the taskbar). It's easy to overlook since FlickrDown so good at what it does.

FlickrDown is freeware for Windows only, and the .Net 2.0 runtimes are required.

Filed under: Internet, Photo, Windows, Web services, Freeware, Browsers

GPhotoSpace for Firefox: use GMail to store, send your pics


Looking for an easy way to share photos with your GMail contacts? Adding the GPhotoSpace extension to your Firefox install provides you with a solution that's just as easy as using "send to: email recipient" in Windows.

Once you've installed the addon, you can open it by clicking the status bar icon. If you're like me and your status bar is hidden, you can also customize your main toolbar and dropping the included button (which is a little lo-fi) or bookmark chrome://gps/content/gpsMain.xul to access it.

The interface is extremely simple. Create a new album, describe it, add photos, and save it. The only adjustment you can make is the size of photos to share: 320/640/1024/1536 pixels. Make sure you change this setting if you want to upload full-size digital images, as it defaults to 640 pixels.

Remember that this is a GMail hack, so "sharing" an album actually just fires off an email to your recipient that contains your photos. Still, it's a much simpler way to send multiple images than using GMail's attachment button.

If you're simply in need of a good, free way to back up your photos, sign up for a new GMail account - the 7 gigs they provide will give you room for several thousand images.

Be aware that GPS currently only supports jpeg images. That shouldn't pose a problem for most users, but I'd like to see it at least support a couple other formats like png and psd.

GPhotoSpace is free, and currently only available for Windows - a Mac version is in the works.

[ via Life Rocks 2.0 ]

Filed under: Fun, Photo, iPhone

Cooliris still cool on the iPhone, not quite as useful

Cooliris is a fantastic browser plugin that displays image galleries on sites like Facebook and Flickr as a wall of photos that you can manipulate by dragging. It's an attractive visual effect, and it's actually a fast and efficient way to get an overview of a gallery and find a specific image. Unfortunately, the Cooliris iPhone app isn't as useful as its browser-based counterpart.

The upside is that Cooliris for iPhone looks just as cool as the web version, and it's more fun to play with. The drag and pinch interface of the iPhone is designed for something like this. Unfortunately, the mobile version of Safari isn't. Because a browser plugin would present some seriously problems for an iPhone developer, Cooliris is a standalone app. Instead of activating it within Facebook or Flickr -- photos you might really care about -- you're limited to its search function. It's a cool toy, but it doesn't feel nearly as essential as the desktop version.

Filed under: Audio, Internet, Photo, Video, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Web

Watch videos, find music, find photos, and download them with Bookmash

Bookmash
Bookmash is an online media browser and viewer based on Adobe AIR. It lets you browse or search to find for photos, music, and videos from sites including Flickr, SeeqPod, YouTube, and DailyMotion. When you find what you're looking for, you can play your media using the built in BookMash media playing feature, or you can click the icons below the media to download, share, or bookmark the file.

The media browser looks a lot like the interface for browser plugin Cooliris. But Bookmash is a standalone program that can be run without launching a web browser first. And Cooliris lacks the media download button.

Bookmash also shows top news stories from Digg and has social networking tools that let you do things like enter a person's name to find their profiles on social networking pages. The results are opened in a web browser, not in Bookmash.

[via Go2Web20]

Featured Time Waster

Forumwarz - a potentially offensive time waster

I pwn UAfter spending the better part of an hour on Forumwarz I still can't decide if it's just sick or if it's kind of fun. It's a bit like a car wreck on the highway. I know I shouldn't be looking but I can't quite turn away.

It's sick, it's twisted, it's the internet on it's worst level and darn it, it's kind of fun. At least for a little while.

Forumwarz is a parody role-playing game that takes place on the internet - or at least the Forumwarz version of it. Your goal is to complete missions that are given to you through a mock up of GoogleTalk called Sentrillion.

Your first "friend" is ShallowEsophagus who begins giving you missions to pwn various forums by being a troll. Depending on the character type you are assigned at start up, you have tools like drooling on the keyboard or bashing your head on the keyboard that you can use to destroy forum threads and eventually, pwn a forum.

Future missions involve buying illegal software from the Russians, pwning more difficult forums and other internet oddness.

Completing missions gives you cash, called Flezz in game, and items that you can pawn or use in other missions. The game is NOT for those easily offended. It's crass, coarse and there are frequent f-bombs in the fake chat sessions.

This is also a game for a more mature audience as it requires you to shop at the Drugs R Fun store to get various concoctions to improve your playing, engage in certain cyber activities to get more Flezz and just generally use a more adult perspective.

If you can get past that, here are the more enjoyable and time-wasting aspects.

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