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Time for a New Tech Preview of Deep Zoom Composer

Mark Edward Soper — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 15:35:05 -0500

Microsoft has released an updated technology preview of its cool Deep Zoom Composer tool for Silverlight 2. As we reported back in July, Deep Zoom Composer gives you the ability to display multiple high-resolution thumbnails, zoom in for a closeup, and pan back again. You can use Deep Zoom Composer to create mosaics (as in our original story), or to bring a new level of interactivity to online collections (as the Hard Rock Cafe has done).

If you want to give it a try, install the latest version of Silverlight 2 beta first, then install the Deep Zoom Composer technology preview 0.9.0005. Deep Zoom Composer runs on Windows XP SP2 or SP3 and Windows Vista, and requires a 2GHz Intel or AMD processor, at least 1GB of RAM, and a Microsoft DirectX 9-capable video card with at least 256MB of video memory.

See the Teaching Ideas and Resources blog at MSDN for more information about this and other imaging tools from Microsoft.

Join us after the jump for your comments, and don't forget to share links to your creations!

Haven't Flickred Lately? Time to Log In and Enjoy a New Home Page!

Mark Edward Soper — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 18:29:44 -0500

Flickr's rolled out a new home page design that's intended to make it easier to see what's happening with your Flickr account and on Flickr in general.

Here's what's new:

The Your Photostream section now shows your five most recent uploads
Your Photostream also has a toggle to show recent activity (such as comments from friends, your replies, and pictures selected as favorites). Don't want any more comments on a particular item? Click its Mute button.
Click More Recent Activity to see other activity and change activity settings.
The Your Contacts section now shows more photos.
The Your Groups section now shows the most recent photos from your groups.
Want to reduce page clutter? Click the double arrow icon next to a section title to close it, or click it again to open it.
There's now a new Explore module on the home page that displays the latest activities.
The latest entry at the Flickr Blog and the latest Flickr Tip occupy the right margin of the page, along with more ways to use your photos.

Haven't logged in for awhile? I think you'll like the changes. Join us after the jump and let us know if you agree - or not.

DSLR Compact Flash Users, Get Into the SD/SDHC (and Eye-Fi) Game with CFMulti

Mark Edward Soper — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 15:32:52 -0500

If you're a Compact Flash user, life's not been fair to you lately. You've seen CF stalwarts like Nikon and Canon turn their backs on this longtime favorite in favor of the new kid on the block, SDHC, in their newest DSLRs. Buy a new camera, and you make your collection of CF cards obsolete. Meanwhile, you've watched SDHC and its kid brother, SD, dominate the deals in your favorite big-box electronics superstores' weekly tabloids. And, just to add a cherry on the top of your cake of frustration, you've been thinking about how cool it would be to use wireless file transfer with Eye-Fi cards, but Eye-Fi is also in the tank for SD. Oh, and did I mention that "Compact" Flash is now the bulkiest flash memory format?

For all these reasons, Synchrotech's introduction of the CFMulti CompactFlash Type II to Eye-Fi + Multi-Card Adapter has come at a very good time. While CF adapters for SD cards have been around for awhile, the CFMulti also supports newer flavors such as SDHC and MMC+ as well as SD and any old MultiMediaCards (MMC) you have floating around. Plus, it's the first adapter to support Eye-Fi cards, albeit with a reduction in range. See the CFMulti and Eye-Fi FAQ for details and a list of tested cameras.

For more thoughts on the advantages of adding CFMulti to your gadget bag, and your chance to comment, join us after the jump.

Eye-Fi Gets Twittering, RSSing with New Manager Update

Mark Edward Soper — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 18:40:30 -0500

The Eye-Fi line of Wi-Fi enabled SD cards just keeps getting more social. The October update of the Eye-Fi Manager, in addition to adding à la carte support for geotagging, webshare, and hotspot access service updates, also adds support Twitter and RSS integration. You can use Twitter to tell your contacts when you have new photos posted on line, and RSS support enables you to publish pictures in real-time to your preferred RSS aggregator.

Eye-Fi now offers cards through its online store as well as at an ever-growing list of retailers.

RSS logo courtesy Variawa.co.za.

Google Reaffirms Its Commitment to Linux with the Launch of Picasa 3

Justin Kerr — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 00:02:13 -0500

Many Windows users have been running Picasa 3 for the past several weeks now, but Picasa development for Linux has always seemly lagged behind. This all changed on Thursday with a public beta release of Picasa 3 with support for all the major Linux distributions. According to the feature overview, the new version includes many of the new editing and retouching features missing in the previous version as well as a tighter integration with Picasa Web. For Linux users looking to further automate the process of importing photos you will also appreciate the auto detect feature that runs each time you plug in your camera. In a blog post by Google Software Engineer Lei Zhang he reminds the Linux community of Google’s commitment to their platform. Some of its largest contributions have been in the form of patches for the open source WINE project with over 2700 fixes. WINE (Wine Is Not an Emulator) is an application for Linux which allows users to execute programs written for Microsoft Windows. Want to learn more? Check out the November print edition of Maximum PC on sale now for an excellent how to guide on using WINE for gaming in Linux.

Eye-Fi Users, Circle October 5th for Big Changes

Mark Edward Soper — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 22:03:25 -0500

At Photokina this week, Eye-Fi, makers of the first Wi-Fi-enabled SD cards, announced two improvements to its product family effective October 5th:

First, a firmware update will double the photo transfer speed from Eye-Fi cards from the current 350KBps to 700KBps.
Second, users of Eye-Fi cards will be able to add the photo transfer features of their choice to cards that were not bundled with these features.

Here are the new options:

Users of the entry-level Eye-Fi Home card can add web sharing for $9.99/year, making the card equivalent in features to the Eye-Fi Share card.
Users of the Eye-Fi Home or Share card can add geotagging for $14.99/year.
And, users of the Eye-Fi Share card can add automatic uploading at open hotspots or at Wayport hotspots (there are over 10,000 of those) for $14.99/year.

By adding geotagging and hotspot support, users of Eye-Fi Share cards make these cards equivalent to Eye-Fi Explore cards.

The already long list of online photo sharing services Eye-Fi supports now includes Apple's MobileMe and AdoramaPix, effective immediately. Eye-Fi cards are now being bundled with digital cameras at Wal-Mart.com, and will be available at Best Buy stores starting October 5.

What do you think about the ability to add the features you want to Eye-Fi cards? Hit the jump for your chance to sound off.

Picasa 3.0 Beta: More Speed, Better Photo Repairs and Better RAW Support

Mark Edward Soper — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 22:44:07 -0500

This week, Google unveiled a public beta of its Picasa 3.0 photo-sharing software. Picasa 3.0 offers a huge number of new and improved features that will appeal to both point and shoot and DSLR users. I was particularly impressed by the following:

A new photo viewer that integrates with Windows Explorer and supports PNG, TGA and RAW formats as well as JPEG, TIFF, BMP, and GIF. The preview window displays thumbnails of other photos in the folder for faster navigation and offers one-click editing in Picasa, one-click uploading, or a one-click slideshow. Even on my less than swift single-core laptop, it displays Canon CR2 RAW files much faster than Windows Live Photo Gallery does. Google tested Picasa 3.0 on systems with up to 1 million photos, and it shows.
The ability to display image metadata for RAW files from within Picasa.
The enhanced photo collage creator with six preset designs along with easy drag and drop repositioning and image rotation. It's so good that I wonder if Microsoft Research's new AutoCollage 2008 (which costs $19.95) can compete.
Improved photo editing tools such as the retouching tool (good for removing scratches and dust) and the tuning tool, which features highlight, shadow, fill light, color picker, and color temperature controls. If you don't want to learn (or pay for) Adobe Photoshop Elements, you can do quite well in fixing less-than-perfect photos.

To see the photo viewer in action, and to find out where to learn more (or just get your hands on Picasa 3.0), join us after the jump.

New Nikon D90 Features Better Eye-Fi Connected Features

Mark Edward Soper — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 21:28:52 -0500

Eye-Fi, whose line of Wi-Fi-enabled SD cards caught our attention earlier this year, is back in the news: the new Nikon D90 DSLR joins its stablemate, the D60, as the second Eye-Fi-enabled camera.

What's New in the D90?

The D90, which makes its formal bow at Germany's Photokina trade show in late September, adds the ability to temporarily disable Eye-Fi transfer functions through the camera menu; a useful feature in hospitals, airplanes, or anywhere else where you want to prevent images from flying through the ether.

The D90 also features a 12.3MP image sensor, an optional geo-tagging module, Live View, face priority AF, and a 24-fps 720p movie mode, the first movie mode in any DSLR.

Other News from Eye-Fi

Users of any Eye-Fi Share or Eye-Fi card in any camera can also enjoy free geotagging and hotspot access by joining the photo-sharing site SmugMug, in a deal announced earlier this month.

How about it, DSLR fans? Does improved Eye-Fi support make you more likely to preorder a D90? Give us your take after the jump.