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Adobe Photoshop is a fantastic software product. I use it at CNET every single day. However, I don't own a personal version at home, and I find that I don't miss it much for my own limited image editing and graphic design needs. For cropping snapshots, removing red-eye, resizing, or creating LOLcat images, I turn to the free image editors available at CNET Download.com.

The grandaddy of free design software is the GIMP (short for GNU Image Manipulation Program), which provides much of the functionality of Photoshop, with a very large and dedicated community that produces tons of valuable tutorials. However, the GIMP isn't the most user-friendly application. Newbies would be advised to try GIMPshop, which puts a Photoshop-like interface on top of the GIMP's core functionality.… Read more

You've got to hand it to eKey, quite literally. As biometric security technology becomes increasingly mainstream, companies have had to work overtime trying to figure out ways to get a leg (or an arm) up on the competition. So where fingerprint scanning is concerned, eKey had a novel thought: Why limit a system to just one finger?

Its "Bio-View" system actually makes use of three fingers, each with a different task--one to unlock the door, a second to control the alarm and the third to send an emergency alert if necessary, according to Cedia News. (We can … Read more

Well, that should teach us. Just minutes after making sport of Swarovski, we came across yet another another category of products that the infectious crystals are attacking: computer screens.

ViewSonic, a respectable manufacturer, has apparently succumbed to market madness by allowing customers to "beautify and customize" their LCDs with "original Swarovski crystals," according to PCLaunches. (As opposed to unoriginal ones?) And you can scream bad taste in grand fashion with a full 22-inch widescreen with 1680x1050 resolution. But you might have to wear sunglasses to cut down on the crystal reflection.

When Google unveiled its Street View service in May, it seemed the entire Internet went a little crazy.

But now, thanks to Google Blogoscoped, I was looking at some 1907 Rand-McNally "photo auto" images, which show close-ups of specific turns on the Detroit to Toledo driving route, and it's obvious that Google was fully 100 years behind.

These images are great: They show the specific directions that someone would have to take to go along this route, and they bear a striking resemblance to the images Google put up with Street View.

Which just goes to show … Read more

Here are a final few tidbits from my last day at Siggraph:

Microsoft Research gave a great presentation on HD View, a company project based on capturing, assembling, and displaying multi-gigapixel image. These images are stitched together from hundreds of pictures captured through… Read more

With all the bills and expenses of daily life, most of us need to follow some sort of budget. With Expense View for the iPhone, you can post your expenses as they happen and then track and analyze your money on the ExpenseView.com Web site. You'll need to register to use this application, but fortunately it won't affect your budget: It's free.

iPhone Link: http://www.expenseview.com/gadgetLogin.aspx

Web site link: http://www.expenseview.com

Google has added four more cities to its Maps street view: San Diego, Los Angeles, Houston and Orlando, Fla. San Diego is getting the same high-resolution imagery treatment that Google gives San Francisco; I'm not sure why. I asked Google about this and this is the response I got:

"As you probably know, Street View imagery is gathered by Google and a third-party data provider. Imagery in San Diego, like San Francisco, was gathered by Google. Our focus is on providing coverage for as many cities as possible; I don't have any additional details about our imagery … Read more

If you're sick of losing the remote (correction, remotes) between the sofa cushions or anywhere else, you're not alone. Even so, we're not sure we'd go so far as to strap them to our wrists.

Extreme TV viewers, however, may find this item of interest. Hailing from China, this remote control watch claims to work with most major brands of TVs and DVD players, commanding functions from a small touch-screen LCD that's backlit for use when you've got the mood lights on. But as Technabob notes, the face is so small that you might … Read more

Hundreds of Web developers, designers, and ordinary geeks gathered this weekend to build usable applications for Apple's iPhone. The barcamp.org event was hosted at Adobe Town Hall and featured dozens of sponsors. The hack-a-thon began on Saturday morning, and wrapped up late Sunday afternoon when each team had a chance to present its app.

Some teams included a group of Yahoo! developers, and others included complete strangers who had just met the day before. I give credit to all teams who participated, but here are the 10 most memorable creations:

10. iPhoneVote This application was the first one presented at the hack-a-thon, and it was used as a voting system for the event. You would tilt your iPhone in portrait mode to vote yay, and tilt it horizontally to give a negative vote. There was a laptop set up in the front of the room, and it was updated in real time. Unfortunately, I don't think the app reset each time a new team would present, so the votes just tallied up into the 80s. Even though it wasn't used for its official purpose, it was a great burst of hope for future apps like this, and boosted the morale of the developers in the room.

9. AppMarks If you have an iPhone, make AppMarks your Safari home page. The interface models the iPhone front door, but instead, each icon links to a Web app or HTML bookmark. I mentioned AppMarks in this blog post a few days ago. AppMarks is cool, but I want to see more functionality. If the AppMarks people want users to add AppMarks as their home page, they need to always be thinking of new features. There are other products, like Mojits, that are right on their heels.

8. PickleView The only sports application presented was called PickleView. Ryan Christianson from the Walt Disney Internet Group explained that in baseball, a pickle is a play in which a base runner is trapped between bases with fielders tossing the ball back and forth and usually ending with the runner being tagged out. Most will remember it well from the 1990s classic,The Sandlot.

Their iPhone app visualizes a box-score view of your favorite teams’s stats, and then displays a mock Twitter feed of PickleView's friends. I am not sure if that's how this app works, but the developers have a cool concept.… Read more