digitizing

Google is once again offering a glimpse into ancient history with online images of rare scrolls dating back more than 2,000 years.

Courtesy of Google, in collaboration with the Israel Antiquities Authority, the new Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library is now home to detailed digitized photographs of thousands of biblical and non-biblical manuscripts. These ancient scrolls were discovered in remote caves near the Dead Sea between 1947 and 1956.

Among them, the scroll of the Ten Commandments may be one of the most fascinating. Dating back to sometime between 30 B.C. and 1 B.C., the … Read more

Anyone wanting to download the SpongeBob Diner Dash game from Apple's iTunes app store today is out of luck.

Nickelodeon has removed the app from the store after an advocacy group filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission alleging the game violated children's online privacy rights by collecting their e-mail addresses without parents' permission.

According to the Center for Digital Democracy, which filed the complaint earlier today, cable network Nickelodeon and mobile game-maker PlayFirst are misleadingly marketing the game and are violating the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).

SpongeBob Diner Dash is a free app … Read more

There are plenty of services that can turn your photos -- whether taken with a phone or camera or downloaded from Facebook or Instagram -- into canvas prints. One of those services, SnapBox, is worth highlighting not just for the quality of the product, but for its affordable pricing and ease of use.

Ordering a print just requires you to e-mail a photo, which is quickly replied to with a proof of what it will look like. A 5x5 or 5x7 print is currently less than $10 and shipping is free if you're willing to pick the print up … Read more

Part digital camera, part smartphone, the 4G Android-powered Samsung Galaxy Camera could be the start of a new generation of digital cameras. And as of this week, both Verizon and AT&T sell it.

On the one hand, Samsung could find some advantage in branching into the digital camera realm early before the trend really takes off. On the other, reaching outside its core technologies into new territory could prove a major misstep for the Korean electronics giant.

Touted as the first 4G LTE camera in the world, the Galaxy Camera deserves a bit of attention. With features such … Read more

The original Swivl was basically a motorized platform for your iPhone that tracked your movement. Turn on the camera and you could easily record video of yourself or make FaceTime calls without worrying about drifting out of the picture.

Since its launch earlier this year, the device's creator, Satarii, has been getting a steady stream of requests for a model that supports an iPad, digital SLRs, or Android devices.

The new Swivl is basically the same thing as the original, but with expanded capabilities thanks to a redesigned base and built-in Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. It can now support all … Read more

Adobe's first major Creative Cloud-driven update to Photoshop CS6, as well as an important update the to the lesser-known CC-only Muse Web design tool, tosses out just enough capabilities to keep things interesting. Along with HiDPI -- i.e., Retina Display -- support for Photoshop and Illustrator, which rolled out to Creative Cloud subscribers all users last night (and which should be available to the rest of the nonsubscription folks by the end of the year), Photoshop actually reverts some changes to the crop tool, modestly fixes the text styles implementation, updates 3D text handling, finally admits that Actions … Read more

For digital cameras, the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show proved to be more interesting than past years'.

Instead of the usual humdrum point-and-shoots, we were greeted with three models targeted at enthusiasts and pros: the Fujifilm X-Pro1, the Nikon D4, and the Canon PowerShot G1 X.

Even a handful of the point-and-shoots announced were worth paying attention to, like the Panasonic Lumix DMC-SZ7, the Canon PowerShot Elph 520 HS, and at least three of the 18 cameras announced by Fujifilm.

Then there was the first Android-based smart camera, the Polaroid SC1630, which never materialized. (We eventually got the Nikon Coolpix S800c … Read more

Every day this week, a different CNET writer or editor will recall a tech or geek-centric present that left a mark. Read past stories by Eric Mack, Jeff Sparkman, and Jay Greene, and look for another installment tomorrow at midnight PT.

Maybe it's because I'm surrounded by this stuff every day, but traditional technology gifts tend to leave me cold. Even the memories of unwrapping game consoles or that first yellow Sports model Sony Walkman don't stand out in a best-gift-ever sort of way.

Instead, I turn to a more recent holiday gift, one that combines technology … Read more

Editors' note: This post is part of an ongoing series, for the other parts, check out the related stories. This post was updated on March 29, 2013, to add more information on backing up.

One of a storage device's most important roles, if not the most important, is to keep the information stored on it safe, especially from hardware failure. Redundancy and backup are the two popular types of data protection. They are not the same, however, and it's important to understand the differences between the two.

In a nutshell, redundancy in consumer-grade digital storage means using … Read more