Rumors of a multi-touch trackpad for desktops Macs have been along for ages, but the last time we really heard of them was last October. Since then it’s essentially been relegated to the annals of Apple rumor history, but oh look! Just hours before Steve Jobs & Co. are to take to the stage at Moscone Center for the WWDC 2010 keynote, a trio of photos said to be of the mythical multi-touch accessory have surfaced by way of Engadget. The images look extremely convincing, but let’s try to not lose our heads over a rumor this early in the morning. We’ve got a long day ahead of us.
Find microblog updates with images http://j.mp/au0V4f
Later this week we will be launching a brand new dPS eBook on the topic of Travel Photography – written by travel photographer Mitchell Kanashkevich. This post, written by Mitchell, is the first part of a short series introducing some of the mistakes many new travel photographers make.
As you can gather from the title, this post relates to travel photography. However, I want to note that travel photography is a broad topic and so for most part, the mistakes that I’ll discuss here are actually made by the majority of those of us who are in the beginning of our journey into the world of photography, regardless of the genre we’re involved in.
Because I wanted to go into some detail and to provide some visual examples, we’ve decided to split this post up into two parts. Without further ado, here’s part I and check back for part II tomorrow.
The two main misconceptions that we most often have about equipment when we’re starting out in photography are:
A camera doesn’t take the photo, nor does any piece of photographic equipment. Photos are made by you – the photographer. Sure in some very rare cases you might have a technical issue with a camera body or a lens, but for most part that’s not the concern. Most of the essential photographic gear is better than good enough these days, it has been for the last five years or so (with the development of affordable digital SLRs), one just has to know how to use it to its full potential.
My advice here in short is – forget about chasing the latest, greatest stuff. Get out there with what you have, figure out how to get the most out of your equipment, learn when to use one lens over another, when to use a tripod and of course, learn about the basics of photography – setting the aperture, shutter speed and ISO. This might seem like the most obvious advice imaginable, but somehow so many aspiring photographers still think that it’s all about the equipment you have, there’s just nothing further from the truth.
When I refer to research, I simply mean gathering as much information as possible about the place you’re traveling to. The best time/season to travel, the DOs and DON’Ts, the modes of transportation – these are the necessities, that we must find out about before every trip in order to have a smooth experience not only as far as photographing, but traveling in general.
Beyond the necessities, when photography is the main focus of your trip, it’s worth finding out as much as possible about what’s visually special in the place you’re going to. Sometimes this isn’t going to be obvious, you might have to dig a little, but when you do, a great number of photographic opportunities arise.
Traditional Vedhic school, Thrissur, India
I’ve chosen to include the image above because the story behind it is a good example of what even simple research can lead to. The photo depicts a Namboodiri boy (priest caste) chanting the Vedhas (which can be described in short ancient Indian bits of wisdom) in a traditional Vedhic school in the town of Thrissur. This place (the school) is not a major attraction, it’s not something that the regular visitor travels to Thrissur for, but to me it provided an incredibly interesting photographic opportunity. Despite the fact that I would have never just wandered in there by random chance, as the school is isolated from the main town, it wasn’t at all hard to find it or gain access to shoot there, it was simply a matter of knowing that it existed.
The reason I knew about it is very simple – I researched and by this I don’t mean that I did something complicated and difficult. I went into the tourist office and chatted to the staff there, telling them that I’m a photographer and that I’m keen to see anything that’s visually interesting and unique in their town. After “picking their brains” for about an hour I got a few bits of useful information and the traditional Vedhic school was one of the places I realised I just had to check out.
A lot of travel destinations have “must see”, “must photograph” main attractions. Sometimes we get so obsessed with getting an image of these attractions that we fail to see the subjects around them which could be equally or even more photographically interesting.
I’ve been guilty of this numerous times in the past and so these days I consciously force myself to look at what else there is to photograph besides the obvious. Sometimes this might even mean that I stay at a place for an extra day or two. I photograph the main attraction and then discover the lesser known yet still photo-worthy subjects. This is how the following image came to be. It was taken in Bromo National park.
Bromo National Park, Java, Indonesia
During my first couple of days I shot what everyone shoots there – the Bromo volcano and the neighbouring mountains, from different viewpoints. On the third day, rather than make my way to another viewpoint from which to photograph the volcano and mountains at sunrise, I decided to purposely focus my attention elsewhere. I rode around the area on a rented motorcycle and noticed the spectacular scene of these horsemen walking in the fog through the surrounding volcanic desert.
Not being aware of light means that you simply shoot whatever you see in any given lighting conditions without giving much thought to the whole matter. Your results might have impact on the viewer every now and then and they might sometimes reflect what you want to say and how you feel about what you see, but more often than not that won’t be the case.
Being aware of light means that you know there are different kinds of light and that the way your image looks will greatly depend on the light you shoot it in. This of course also means that you can make a conscious effort to photograph in the kind of light which will reflect what you want to say and how you feel about the subject you’re photographing.
Let’s look at a simple example.
Transylvanian countryside, Romania
The landscape in the image above looks beautiful, vibrant and dramatic because it is lit by the golden light during sunrise. I made a conscious decision to photograph in this kind of light because I knew that it would bring the colours present in this scene to life and it would basically “beautify” everything.
The light enabled me to create an image that reflected what I wanted to say – how beautiful Transylvanian countryside is, as well as to communicate the excitement which I felt. Had I photographed the same scene without considering light, I could have very well ended up with something much less dramatic. I would have likely just photographed the landscape the first time I saw it and that was on an overcast day, when the light made everything look rather grey and drab.
As we get a little more familiar with light and begin to develop an understanding of how it effects our photographs, a lot of us tend to move away from using artificial light, especially flashes.
The reason most of us do this is because we don’t have enough knowledge about artificial light. It’s true that the on-camera flash should indeed be avoided at all costs, but it’s not the only available artificial lighting option and avoiding artificial light altogether means you’ll never see what you can achieve with it, which in my opinion is a big mistake.
The artificial lighting tools that I consider a great addition to any serious travel photography enthusiast’s kit are an off camera flash in a softbox and/or a reflector. The reason these tools are great is that they allow you to control the light or to manipulate it. This opens one up to a whole range of creative opportunities or even opportunities to make photographs in situations where it would be impossible to do so otherwise. The following image is a good example of this.
Nomads at a camel fair, Kolayat, Rajasthan, India
The only reason I could make this shot was because I had the artificial light from an off-camera flash in a softbox “assisting” the light from the fire, which on its’ own was no where near strong enough to allow me to make the kind of photo I wanted.
Without getting into too much more detail because of the constraints of a blog post, I will say that artificial light is a very exciting topic. If you’re interested in learning more about it, particularly portable, artificial light in the form of an off-camera flash and a reflector, you can check out my eBook “Seeing the Light”, which was featured here on DPS a while a go. Find out more about Seeing the Light.
Stay tuned tomorrow for a continuation of this topic and another 5 mistakes travel photographers often make.
Post from: Digital Photography School - Photography Tips.
5 Common Mistakes Aspiring Travel Photographers Make (and How to Avoid Them)
"As you can gather from the title, this post relates to travel photography. However, I want to note that travel photography is a broad topic and so for most part, the mistakes that I’ll discuss here are actually made by the majority of those of us who are in the beginning of our journey into the world of photography, regardless of the genre we’re involved in. Because I wanted to go into some detail and to provide some visual examples, we’ve decided to split this post up into two parts. Without further ado, here’s part I and check back for part II tomorrow."
- Kol TregaskesBangladesh Blocks Facebook Over Muhammad Images - http://bit.ly/9avv23
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This one got to me instantly and powerfully: “not a book of pictures … (it) is a book of ideas.” As author Jim Krause calls it.
Measuring a pocket-book sized 23×15x2cm, it could fit into a mid-sized camera bag and would rapidly give you a jolt of fresh ideas when out and about with a camera.
In reality you have to take Krause’s “not a book of pictures” message with a pinch of salt: the book is actually chockers with pictures and very light on text. However the pictures — well over 300 of them — are of such a concise and powerful style that each does in fact give a creative jolt as you skim through them.
Delving deeper I discovered that each group of thirty images is backed up by 40-50 words of explanatory text describing how each was achieved at the camera and software stages.
Krause is a designer/illustrator/photographer by trade and his precise eye for a picture shows up brilliantly, not only in his choice of subject but also in the tight framing that avoids distracting elements in the frame.
I see a lot of books kin my reviewing tasks but this one impressed the hell out of me as a concentrated stimulant to get out there and get the shots! Great shots!
One of the best!
Author: J Krause.
Publisher: HOW Books.
Distributor: Capricorn Link.
Length: 354 pages.
ISBN 978 1 60061 044 8.
Price: Get a price on Photo Idea Index – Things at Amazon.
Post from: Digital Photography School - Photography Tips.
Photo Idea Index: Things [Book Review]
"Sabriel let us know about a story at Gawker about the repeated use of nearly identical covers for Men’s Health. For instance, here are the “Six-Pack Abs!” covers from December 2006, April 2007, March 2006, and April 2008 (it was used a couple of other times, too) But regardless, I’m not interested in the fact that a magazine was recycling covers per se. I was struck by two things. First, the repeated covers make clear how much men’s midsections have become objects of scrutiny, the area to work on and obsess about, and by which your physique is judged."
- April Russo (app103)So Men's Health is imaginative as Hollywood--er, I mean Remakewood.
- MiniMage loves youThe Gawker article focused on the repetition, this one focused on what was being repeated.
- April Russo (app103)Kind of amazing — a Flash player written in JavaScript by Chris Smoak. Here’s Simon Willison’s description:
It runs entirely in the browser, reads in SWF binaries, unzips them (in native JS), extracts images and embedded audio and turns them in to base64 encoded data:uris, then stitches the vector graphics back together as animated SVG.
Renders (some) SWFs in browser without the Flash plugin, using Canvas and JavaScript. Works (albeit somewhat slowly) on iPhones and iPads.
- huixingSmokescreen: Flash without the plugin http://su.pr/27FBG6 Flash to HTML5/Javascript converter.
- Francis Shepherd
Just can't wait for a Windows Phone 7 device? Here's the next best thing: use this paper cutout made by Swedish software developer Jayway. Simply download and print out the .pdf file (other formats available) and off you go.
Now on a serious note, this was actually made by a developer for developers so they can get a better idea of how their program would look like on a "life-sized" device instead of a 24" high-resolution monitor. In this case, the Jayway team was interested in font size. Basically you can print out your images of your test application and smack them on. Or even cut out slits and have a pull-through panorama style experience.
(Hint to Microsoft: developers really want prototype devices sooner than later!)
For us, we're going to print one HUGE one out so we can walk around NYC, reenacting those 'Trigger Happy TV' bits (must watch) "Heeello! What? Yes the iPhone is total rubbish!"
"Ubisoft anounced Tom Clancy's Hawx 2 for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360. Here are the first images from a game;
Ubisoft, Tom Clancy's Hawx 2'yi PC, PS3 ve Xbox 360 için açıkladı. Oyun için ilk resimler aşağıda;"
There are way too many posts from this account. I'm happy to have an occasionally post from your own site but you are posting many a day. Can you please cut the numbers down?
- Kol Tregaskesok i deleted you and you can delete our website from your profile..
- ParsGamerwaiting...
- NuclearbatThis is really quite neat: Alphabet Made From Google Maps Images http://huff.to/a28MmD from @HuffPostTech
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We’ve already taken a look at how to find popular content from different sources online, but there’s no denying the magnitude of content that can be found in just one place – on Twitter. There are countless ways to filter through the noise, and find the content that matters to you, whether it’s based on a specific topic or based on popularity.
In part one of this article, we’ll take a look at search Twitter for the most popular stories by the number of retweets or favourites a tweet receives, as well as how to find specific kinds of interesting information on Twitter.
There are a variety of services for finding the most retweeted blog posts, stories and articles linked on Twitter, the most popular and influential of which is TweetMeme. Stories on TweetMeme can be browsed by the most popular from all categories in the past 24 hours, the past 7 days, or by specific categories including Entertainment, Comedy, Gaming, and Technology amongst others.
Content can be further broken down by News, Images and Videos. TweetMeme also allows you to keep up to date with the content on their site by subscribing to their RSS feeds. TweetMeme is also searchable if you want to find the hottest stories on specific topics.
Logging into TweetMeme with your Twitter account will then enable you to retweet the stories that you want to share with your followers directly from within their website.
TweetMeme also have a few extra goodies for users including a bookmarklet, a retweet button or chicklet for your blog posts, and plugins making it easy to incorporate the button on your blog.
DailyRT takes a similar approach to TweetMeme, by ranking the most popular Tweets in the past hour, 24 hours or 7 days. The difference however, is that the content is not limited to blog posts and articles, but also includes the most popular tweets in general.
This does have its downside of course, as the most popular tweets are not necessarily the most informative. Using their search feature however allows users to harness the information found on DailyRT and get the most out of it. One interesting feature found on DailyRT includes the ability to search for the most retweeted items from specific users.
Logging in with your Twitter account allows you to retweet directly from the website, but gives you no choice in the wording, and each retweet includes a direct link to the DailyRT homepage. DailyRT has a list on Twitter of the 50 most retweeted members on Twitter.
Thoora is another site that plugs into the information on Twitter letting people know what the most popular stories are, but it also gets its statistics from the number of blog posts and news articles covering a certain topic. Each article is accompanied by the number of retweets as well as the number of articles or blog posts found online.
Information is broken down into categories including Business, Controversy and Sci/Tech, amongst others. Stories can also be browsed by the newest developing stories, stories that are currently popular and by those that have been popular for the past week.
Signing up for an account allows you to share the content on Facebook, Buzz, Twitter and via Email, and discuss the stories on the website. Opening up any given story is where Thoora truly excels in comparison to other similar sites. It provides users with statistics on the story, recent tweets about it, links from blogs and official news sources.
Another method of tracking popularity on Twitter is keeping track of how many favourites any given tweet has. Favstar does just that. This might not necessarily lead to a wealth of information and links, but it’s interesting and funny nonetheless. The website gives users a way to pass some free time, reading jokes, interesting witticisms and commentaries on current affairs, and you’ll even find the occasional link to an article or video.
Tweets are divided into popular, rising and new. Signing in with your Twitter account allows you to quickly follow interesting users featured on Favstar, add tweets to your favourites, and even retweet. Favstar should however come with a warning that it is not at all PG. Favstar also has a three lists worth following – Tech and Social Media Tweeters, Celebrity Tweeters and Funny, Entertaining or Insightful Tweeters.
You can also search Twitter for specific users to see which of their tweets have received the most favourites. The website is available in English, German and Japanese.
Micro.Vois features tweets relating to freelance work. Tweets listed on the site are divided into users looking for freelancer work, and users who are looking to hire freelancers – and it does so in a very simple way. Micro.Vois uses Twitter’s hashtags to label the tweets, using #havework or #wantwork to distinguish the tweets from the rest of the chatter online.
The listings can also be further narrowed down by profession, with web development, programming, graphics, writing and miscellaneous jobs.
TweetyJobs is another site that features job listings mentioned on Twitter. One main difference between Micro.Vois and TweetyJobs is the fact that the latter is searchable. You can search for a specific job title in a specific city or zip code, and filter the results into either listings from corporate sites or Twitter.
TwitShop is another listings site that uses Twitter’s hashtags to aggregate its information. If you have an item for sale, appending the hashtags, #forsale, #4sale or #auction, will ensure that your tweet shows up on the site.
TwitShop is searchable, so if you want to buy something in particular from another Twitter user, it’s easy to find.
CheapTweet, like TwitShop, aggregates items that are for sale on Twitter. It features listings in a variety of categories including Tech, Food and Home & Family, amongst others. Not only does it provide you with listings, but users can also vote on how good a deal each listing is.
We Are Hunted is a slick site which combs Twitter, along with other social media sites like Facebook and MySpace to give you a list of the 99 most popular songs at the moment. If you want to listen to all 99 songs, simply start at number 1, and it will automatically play through the entire list. You can also limit the results to only the songs that are popular on Twitter.
It also allows you to share any given song on Twitter, Facebook or via email. If you want a more extensive list of what music is currently popular on Twitter, check out David’s article on using The Hype Machine to do just that.
In the second part to this post, we’ll take a look at more ways to search Twitter to get the most out of the content, including finding out what new movies are popular on Twitter, how to find personalised content for you, and sites that list all the information available on specific topics.
How do you find the content that matters to you on Twitter? Let us know in the comments.
Image Credit: Dave Smith
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Find The Content That Matters To You On Twitter [Part 1] @diptychal http://muo.fm/9WwgGn /via @MakeUseOf
- Steve Rubel
Facebook recently introduced the world to its Open Graph vision and with it came the Facebook ‘Like’ button.
Prior to the Like button, Facebook had its own retweet, like Share button which gave users the ability to share content they came across into their Facebook stream.
Both the ‘Like’ and ‘Share’ Buttons did very similar things except the Share Button would permit images and other content to be imported whereas ‘likes’ would simply show a comment like format in your personal Facebook feed showing that you had liked something (shown below).
At some point in the last 24 hours, Facebook seems to have sensibly combined the two and in effect made the original Share Button negligible. As a publisher, this is welcome news, with the masses of buttons and limited space, being able to remove one button shouldn’t feel this satisfying.
We’ve contacted Facebook for confirmation and will update this post with further details as soon as we hear back from them.
Update: If you’re wondering why this post isn’t showing identical likes and shares. I’m pretty certain it’s merely a delay on the Share button’s part.
Has Facebook just merged its “Like” and “Share” buttons? Apparently so.
- Rob Diana
For over a month now, I have been working with two Aussie developers (http://twitter.com/GoldenTao“>David Golden and Winston Pang) on my first WPF software project, MetroTwit. Although we’ve kept much of our work to ourselves, an interesting event occurred yesterday that amused us and made us extremely eager to show off what we’ve been able to achieve with just a couple hours a night.
Recently, I have been inviting a small number of people to try out an early version of MetroTwit which is undeniably buggy but showed off enough to give people an idea of where we’re going to gather reactions and feedback.
To make sure this was manageable (since we wanted to focus on features and not bug fixes), we added a primitive authorization check to prevent it from accidentally spreading. Although we know some people have been keeping a close eye on MetroTwit, we underestimated just how desperate they were.
Yesterday while we were looking over the Twitter feed for “MetroTwit”, we noticed a link to a blog who claimed “exclusive” images of MetroTwit. And lo and behold, he actually figured out our private download site URL (it wasn’t very hard to guess) and put in the effort to bypass our authorization check so he could play with it. By the looks of his enthusiasm, I like to think he’s impressed. 
We’ve made a lot of progress since those builds and are very close to a wider technical bug-bash beta before our public release. If you’re interested in checking it out (without having to crack it), sign up below we’ll ping you as soon as it’s ready. I look forward to hearing what you all think.
This is not an image
The first photo shows Ginsberg's Volkswagen a few feet before the crosswalk at Southwest Fourth Avenue and Jefferson Street. Using a key provided by the city, Ginsberg learned that the coding stamped at the top of the photo indicates the light had been red for 24.9 seconds. Ginsberg got a signed letter from a city signal engineer, stating that the light remained red for 25 seconds -- one-tenth of a second after the photo was snapped.Then apply a little basic math:
The next photo taken about two seconds later shows Ginsberg's car in the middle of the intersection, but the same coding now reads 00.0 -- indicating the light is no longer red. It's green. It does not resume counting until the light turns red again..
A code on the second photo indicated he was traveling 15 mph. In one-tenth of a second, Ginsberg calculated he traveled less than 2 1/2 feet -- his front wheels wouldn't have reached the crosswalk.The police originally defended the ticket claiming -- falsely -- that the light was a 26 second light. However, after the case was dismissed, in a video the police admitted it was human error, but insisted that this was the only time this ever happened:
In a recent Inc Magazine live chat, I found myself, somewhat surprisingly even to me defending Facebook regarding their ongoing and evolving privacy policy. Here's what I said:
The essence of my argument is that there's enormous advantage for users in giving up some privacy online and that we need to be exploring the boundary conditions - asking ourselves when is it good for users, and when is it bad, to reveal their personal information. I'd rather have entrepreneurs making high-profile mistakes about those boundaries, and then correcting them, than silently avoiding controversy while quietly taking advantage of public ignorance of the subject, or avoiding a potentially contentious area of innovation because they are afraid of backlash. It's easy to say that this should always be the user's choice, but entrepreneurs from Steve Jobs to Mark Zuckerberg are in the business of discovering things that users don't already know that they will want, and sometimes we only find the right balance by pushing too far, and then recovering.
The world is changing. We give up more and more of our privacy online in exchange for undoubted benefits. We give up our location in order to get turn by turn directions on our phone; we give up our payment history in return for discounts or reward points; we give up our images to security cameras equipped with increasingly sophisticated machine learning technology. As medical records go online, we'll increase both the potential and the risks of having private information used and misused.
We need to engage deeply with these changes, and we best do that in the open, with some high profile mis-steps to guide us. In an odd way, Facebook is doing us a favor by bringing these issues to the fore, especially if (as they have done in the past), they react by learning from their mistakes. It's important to remember that there was a privacy brouhaha when Facebook first introduced the Newsfeed back in 2006!
What we're really trying to figure out are the right tradeoffs. And there's no question that there will be tradeoffs. The question is whether, in the end, Facebook is creating more value than they capture. I'm finding Facebook increasingly useful. And I think a lot of other people are too. Does anyone else see the irony in the screenshot below, from ReadWriteWeb's article More Web Industry Leaders Quit Facebook, Call for an Open Alternative:
Almost an order of magnitude more people have used Facebook's "Like" feature to approve of the suggestion to quit Facebook than have commented on the blog post!
That being said, T.S. Eliot's judgment (from Murder in the Cathedral) that
The last temptation is the greatest treason:
To do the right deed for the wrong reason.
danah boyd goes to the heart of the matter when she writes:
The battle that is underway is not a battle over the future of privacy and publicity. It’s a battle over choice and informed consent. It’s unfolding because people are being duped, tricked, coerced, and confused into doing things where they don’t understand the consequences. Facebook keeps saying that it gives users choices, but that is completely unfair. It gives users the illusion of choice and hides the details away from them “for their own good.”
There was an excellent editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle this morning, outlining the "user bill of rights" that Facebook's privacy policy ought to be based on:
Users have the right to:
1. Honesty: Tell the truth. Don't make our information public against our will and call it "giving users more control." Call things what they are.
2. Accountability: Keep your word. Honor the deals you make and the expectations they create. If a network asks users to log in, users expect that it's private. Don't get us to populate your network based on one expectation of privacy, and then change the rules once we've connected with 600 friends.
3. Control: Let us decide what to do with our data. Get our permission before you make any changes that make our information less private. We should not have data cross-transmitted to other services without our knowledge. We should always be asked to opt in before a change, rather than being told we have the right to opt out after a change is unilaterally imposed.
4. Transparency: We deserve to know what information is being disclosed and to whom. When there has been a glitch or a leak that involves our information, make sure we know about it.
5. Freedom of movement: If we want to leave your network, let us. If we want to take our data with us, let us do that, too. This will encourage competition through innovation and service, instead of hostage-taking. If we want to delete our data, let us. It's our data.
6. Simple settings: If we want to change something, let us. Use intuitive, standard language. Put settings in logical places. Give us a "maximize privacy settings" button, a and a "delete my account" button.
7. Be treated as a community, not a data set: We join communities because we like them, not "like" them. Advertise to your community if you want. But don't sell our data out from under us.
We need to heed the advice of management gurus Tom Peters and Esther Dyson. Tom reminds us to "Fail. Forward. Fast." Esther's tag line is Always make new mistakes. With that in mind, I'm willing to cut Facebook some slack. For now.
Good tips for bloggers: RT @MackCollier: How to optimize images for the web - http://bit.ly/cslEnd
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Last year, adult media company Perfect 10 filed a lawsuit against the leading file-hosting service, RapidShare. Among other claims, Perfect 10’s lawsuit stated that RapidShare was guilty of infringing the copyrights of many of its images.
The California-based company called for a jury trial in the United States to settle the issue. RapidShare responded by requesting that the case be postponed and transferred to Europe and heard under German law. This request was denied last month and the case went ahead in the United States.
This week the District Court of California rejected Perfect 10’s request for a temporary injunction. The Court stated in its ruling that as a file-hosting company, RapidShare cannot be accused of any copyright infringements. The ruling is a significant victory for RapidShare and the case sets an important precedent in the United States.
“The view that RapidShare does not promote any infringements of copyright, unlike other file-hosts, appears to be gradually catching on,” Christian Schmid, founder of RapidShare said.
“It is a milestone for us that this is also happening in the US. We are happy that the court in California has not bought into the odd line of argument put forward by Perfect 10 and we look forward to increasingly emphasize the major difference between RapidShare and illegal share-hosts,” Schmid added.
For Rapidshare this is the second high profile legal victory this month. Earlier, a German Court of Appeal overturned an earlier verdict in the case against the movie rental company Capelight Pictures. In the verdict it stated that RapidShare is not liable for acts of copyright infringement committed by its users.
It is not entirely clear what Schmid means by “illegal share-hosts” in his comment, but we assume that he refers to sites that encourage copyright infringement. The company previously said it would distance itself from other file-hosters that try to win the favor of those users that upload and distribute copyrighted content.
RapidShare itself does all it can to avoid such claims and is hoping to convert pirates into paying customers. Instead of simply removing pages where copyrighted material can be downloaded, RapidShare would like to redirect users to an online store where the same content can be bought legally.
Article from: TorrentFreak.
[gasp] from the comments: "Louisiana is about to be added to that list. They just approved legislation prohibiting insurance coverage of abortion (even for private insurers) — including in cases of rape, incest, and when the fetus has a condition that’s incompatible with life. The only exceptions are saving the mother’s life — of course, her health or future fertility are not considered important enough to make an exception for — or if the fetus has already died in utero."
- edytheDamn.
- Derrick"...including rape, incest, and when the fetus has a condition that’s incompatible with life." :| glad you're not a woman, derrick.
- edytheWow. The article doesn't mention the reason I immediately thought of for why women might pay out of pocket: they don't want it to show up on the insurance statements. If they're on someone else's insurance and that someone else ever looks at the statements and they don't want that someone else to know, that would be a good reason to pay in cash.
- Rochellecan i puke now? this country is going in the shitter faster and faster. it's like the so-called conservatives are doing whatever they can to destroy the past 150 years of what little progress that's been achieved.
- Joe Silence (circumspect)Ro said what I was thinking with regard to it not showing up on their insurance.
- Derrickas one of the bloggers at "crunk feminist collective" put it: "If I were a conspiracy theorist, I’d almost think our well-meaning conservative brethren were invested in perpetuating generational cycles of poverty among Black and Brown folks." i'll add "and poor folks in general" to that. i'm sure we've all seen the correlations between low divorce rates, high incomes, and reproductive options.
- tiffanythis is rude and unfair... :-(
- A.T.as for "don't want to show up" - if insurance company has problems with selling private data, why on earth to take insurance from them?
- A.T.I think congress passed laws a few years ago re: selling medical-related data. But, AT, since they all at one point engaged in such a thing, it would have been hard to be insured otherwise. The bigger issue would be whether it causes your premiums to go up.
- tiffanyAs for "rude and unfair," it is pretty well-known that allowing women to control whether they get pregnant and whether they give birth should they get pregnant is a really good way to lift women and families out of poverty. This is why family planning is part of most development programs.
- tiffanyAnd I will also add these two facts: the Guttmacher Institute found that the legality of abortion does not affect demand for it. We see this in Mexico where women who can travel to Mexico City and women who can't will insert pills in their vagina or take other risks. We see this in Georgia where women from TN, SC, NC, AL, and MS come to Atlanta clinics. We see it in California as well. Before Roe v Wade, septic abortions was the leading cause of death for black women in some states, and was a leading cause for women generally. In other words, restricting abortion makes it riskier. Do we not also value women's lives?
- tiffanyA.T., for a different perspective...I've seen it not about about selling the data but about women not wanting parents or partners (who are the actual holders of the insurance policy) to know. I know some people who have paid out of pocket when they were dependents on someone else's insurance for this reason. I'm not sure that others on the policy would get a statement of services like they would for other procedures, but there was a perception that they would.
- joey
In an earlier post, I showed you how to use Lightroom’s Survey View to choose one image from a selection of images. In this post I’ll show you how to use another of Lightroom’s specialty views – Compare View which has a similar purpose but which operates very differently.
Start in the Library module, select an image and then click Compare View or press C. When you do, Lightroom shows two images, the one you had selected and the one you most recently selected before this one in this same folder.
If you didn’t previously select an image, for example if you selected Compare View immediately after you selected a folder, the first image in that folder will be the only one selected so Compare View will show the first image and the one immediately to its right in the Filmstrip.
The two images you see are labeled Select and Candidate. The Select image is fixed and the Candidate image can be changed. To do this, click the left or right arrows underneath the Candidate image to move in the direction of the arrow through the folder. This replaces the Candidate image each time you click an arrow with the next image in the Filmstrip.
When you find an image that you want to use as your new select image, click the X
To simply swap the two images, click the Swap button to swap the two images. The current Select image becomes the new Candidate and vice versa.
Continue to work through the images on the filmstrip comparing them until you have the Select image that you want to use.
In Compare View, unlike Survey View, you can zoom the images. The lock icon on the toolbar, when locked, lets you scale both images at the one time using the Zoom slider.
If you unlock the padlock icon by clicking it, just the currently selected image (which can be either the Select or Candidate image) will zoom when you click the Zoom button.
You can also use Compare View with just one image by deselecting one of the images in the Compare View. Each image has a small X under its bottom right hand corner, which you can click to remove it. If you remove the Select image this way, you can work through images as Candidate images until you find a Candidate worthy of being a Select image and, when you do, click the Make Select button and the Candidate will become the Select image and the next image in the sequence will become the Candidate.
Click Done to exit Compare View with the Select image selected.
While Survey View allows you to compare multiple images with each other and to remove images you do not want until you get the one that you do what, Compare View works a little differently in allowing you to view only two images. The Select image always remains in place, but you can scroll through multiple images very quickly to determine if any of them are a better candidate for your needs than the select image. If it is, you can replace them and continue your comparison.
While Compare View allows comparison between only two images, it is more complex to use and understand than Survey View. However it’s a useful way to make a choice from two images as to which is the better and then continue to compare your current ‘best’ pick with others in a sequence.
Post from: Digital Photography School - Photography Tips.
Guzzle Revamps Personal Aggregator, Adds iPhone App
- Rob Diana
Now this is starting to get fun. Apparently Vietnam is the area for tech leaks lately.
What we’re seeing here is a 13″ Macbook update, with some pretty serious hardware upgrades from the previous version. According to the images, the Macbook is carrying a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics with 256MB of DDR3 SDRAM.
For those who aren’t willing to lay out the full price on a Macbook Pro, they’ll be missing out on the higher resolution display and of course the Unibody design. But this is looking like it could be a great trade off.
We’re watching this really closely, so you know we’ll let you in on anything we find.
Chrome OS — Google’s lightning quick operating system that’s based entirely on the Chrome browser — is due out the second half of this year (check out our report earlier this evening on its progress). We’ve seen some demos of it in action, and even tried out an early version ourselves, but there are still plenty of question marks as far as how people will actually use this thing. After all, while the browser will be able to accomplish most tasks, users are going to want some degree of multitasking, and there’s also the question of how users will be navigating Chrome OS’s basic file structure.
Luckily, Chromium — the open source project behind Chrome and Chrome OS — has been posting some conceptual screenshots of what the OS may look like. The Chromium site is full of reminders that the UI is under development and that “designs are subject to change”, but I suspect that we’ll see many of these ideas incorporated into the final builds of Chrome OS.
Some of these screenshots were actually uploaded months ago, but we haven’t seen them too widely distributed. Others, like the coverflow-like windows management interface, were uploaded to the site more recently. Click on each link below to see Chromium’s explanation for how these interfaces are being used and the rationale behind them (and click on the screenshots for a larger version).
