photos

Reuters offers tech to trust citizen journos' photos

News organization Reuters is working with photo editing powerhouse Adobe and camera maker Canon so changes to digital photos can be detected, Reuters CEO Tom Glocer said on his blog last week.

Reuters, the news agency whose image was tarnished earlier this year when a freelance photographer provided doctored photos of bombing in Beirut, wants to ensure such changes can be found.

"I am pleased to announce today that we are working with Adobe and Canon to create a solution that enables photo editors to view an audit trail of changes to a digital image, which is permanently embedded … Read more

Self-portraiture for the friendless

To quote a wise philosopher we once met, this thing is so stupid it might actually be smart. Even so, we're not sure we'd want to look as dorky as the couple in this photo.

The "Quik Pod" is aimed at people like ourselves: those who are either too slow or slow-witted (or both) to use the camera's automatic timer. But if you must prove to your friends back home that you really did go to the Superbowl--and your Photoshop skills are kind of shaky--this may come in handy to record your attendance.

And as … Read more

Old-school lunch box with modern twist

Here's yet another offline use for all of those digital photos you've been storing on Webshots, Flickr, iPhoto or the like.

The photo lunchbox from Ogg Studio is $35 for one photo, $45 if you want a photo on each side. Yes, each photo can be different. BabyGadget points out that kids love things with pictures of themselves; so maybe this is a good gift idea for one of the little egoists in your life. Ogg will also put artwork on the box.

Hopefully, you will find an image of something more inspirational than your dog or child … Read more

Watch YouTube on your umbrella

So you've been meaning to waterproof your iPod but haven't gotten around to it. And now the rainy season has begun, and you're afraid of getting it wet.

Why not just watch your videos on the umbrella? That's what researchers at Tokyo's Keio University do, with their invention called the "Pileus": a system that projects photos and videos onto your open brolly. According to Plastic Bamboo, it can even stream Flickr photos and YouTube videos directly through a Wi-Fi connection.

We assume the university won't be held responsible for the sidewalk accidents … Read more

Tabblo prints teeny-tiny photo books

Tabblo is not the biggest photo-sharing site out there, but it wins big points with me by having a plug-in for Picasa, Google's photo-management application. There are many other good photo services out there, but I use Picasa to manage my photos, and I really don't like having to deal with separate uploaders. Picasa plus Tabblo handles it for me.

But Tabblo is also a very weird photo service. It launched with a focus on making posters of photo collections, which can be viewed online or printed. That certainly sets Tabblo apart from other sites, but how many … Read more

FlipTrack puts your slideshows to music

Video-sharing sites like YouTube, Grouper and Revver, are hugely popular because they let everyone around the world watch sleepy kittens, as well as to save favorite videos and leave snarky comments. Sites like JumpCut take the interactivity a step further with tools for creating your own videos from a variety of source materials. FlipTrack is a similar new service that lets you start with one of their prerecorded music tracks, add your own photos, tweak the special effects, and publish your creation to their Web site.

For creating videos from photos, FlipTrack works similarly to JumpCut, except that it requires … Read more

Another day, another photo frame

Digital photo frames seem a dime a dozen nowadays, though some have some interesting features. But these new 7- and 8-inch screens from Mustek are different: They are relative inexpensive ($100 for the smaller version) and can play MPEG video and music with built-in MP3 speakers, as well as show off your treasured snapshots. Unfortunately, the media apparently can be refreshed only by changing a memory card, rather than a remote Internet connection--meaning that you can't just send new stuff to grandparents in another state, unless you want to snail-mail it to them. That's too bad, because it … Read more

Kodak lets you send the very best

Even though most people who print photos at an in-store kiosk don't pay any attention to the company that makes it, Kodak is pretty proud of theirs, which can be found in Wal-Mart, CVS, Target, Ritz Camera, and Rite-Aid stores, to name a few. In fact, they like them so much that they've recently upgraded the software that runs them, to add new greeting cards, collages, and monthly calendars to the types of prints you can get from them. Apparently, there have been a lot of requests for these types of things from the many people who print … Read more

Microsoft lets people drive in online map

In what looks like a newfangled video racing game, Microsoft is previewing new technology in Windows Live Local that shows a street-level view from a driver's perspective and includes an interactive element that lets a user "drive" down the street using a keyboard's Up and Down arrows.

On the bottom half of the screen, a cartoon car navigates the city streets in a view that combines an aerial satellite map and a road map with street names. Users can change the border of the driver's window to "race car" or "sports car,&… Read more