Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period.
Alien Skin Software, makers of photoshop plugins, have released Blow Up, for Photoshop and Photoshop Elements. This their latest offering gives the highest quality image enlargement available basically simplifying and improving image enlargement, making it easy to convert web graphics to print and create large format and gallery prints from digital photographs. Blow Up scales image up to 10000% - 10 times in each dimension - with no stairstep, halo, or fringe artifacts. The plugin supports CMYK, RGB, Lab, Grayscale, and Duotone image modes and can resize multi-layered documents without the need to flatten first. It also works with 8-, 16- and 32-bit compositions, including RAW and HDR images. Blow-Up can resize an image in a new document, leaving the original untouched.
The Blow Up plugin is available for $199. Registered users of other Alien Skin products receive discount pricing when ordering direct. Online ordering can be made at http://www.alienskin.com.
Photosynth from Microsoft Live Labs sounds amazing. They think so too by stating, boldly, that it "will change the way you think about digital photos forever". Photosynth takes a large collection of photos of a place or an object, analyzes them for similarities, and displays them in a reconstructed 3-Dimensional space.
Using this data you can walk or fly through a scene, zoom in and out, see where different photos were taken in relation to one another and find similar photos to the one you are viewing.
The photos are analysed to highlight hundreds of individual distinctive features - this could be a door frame corner or a a door handle. These features are linked and matched, with multiple images of the same item its 3D position can be calculated. The zooming feature sounds impressive too - you can, well, zoom right in!
It sounds mightily impressive and the potential they talk about - with photos having unique IDs and links to tags, urls and such like equally so.
But it is not yet available and no release date has been given. In the meantime have a look at the video and keep an eye on the teams blog.
Seems a little harsh... the Charlotte Observer has sacked a staff photographer for altering the colour of an image to, as he states, "to restore the actual color of the sky". He said the color was lost when he underexposed the photo to offset the glare of the sun.
The paper has issued a statement "Accuracy is among our most sacred journalistic values. That goes for the photographs, as well as the words, that we publish.So, it is with much regret that I inform you that the color in a photograph in Thursday's editions was inappropriately altered before it was published. The photo, taken by Observer photographer Patrick Schneider, appeared on the front of the Local & State section. It depicted a Charlotte firefighter on a ladder, silhouetted by the light of the early morning sun."
In the original photo, the sky in the photo was brownish-gray. Enhanced with photo-editing software, the sky became a deep red and the sun took on a more distinct halo.
Ricoh have released a second function-enhancing firmware update for its GR DIGITAL camera.
The GR DIGITAL a high-end digital camera was first released in October 2005. The firmware update can be downloaded from the Ricoh website. The following features have been added
Optional functions can be set for the Exposure Compensation and White Balance selections that were applied as fixed items on the ADJ. dial. (Before, the optional functions could be applied to two selections; but with the function enhancements, all four selections that can be made with the ADJ. dial can be set optionally.)
If settings are changed with the ADJ. dial, the setting can be selected by the zoom button. (Only when digital zoom function is turned off.)
According to an article in Newsweek digital photographers in the US will spend $300 million ordering prints and other paraphernalia (mugs, mousemats, calendars etc) online in 2006. This is a 50% increase over 2004. They look at four of the main competitors in this busy sector.
The pros and cons for Shutterfly, Kodak Easyshare, HP's Snapfish and Apple Iphoto are compared. It would seem you pays yer money and takes your choice as all have advantages and disadvantages. If comparing on price alone Snapfish comes out on top at just 12c a picture but its editing features are the worst of the set.
For all you budding foodporn snappers - how about a holiday (sorry, vacation) in Tuscany taking pics of food.
Thanks to Still Life With... for the details. You can have, in exchange for $2950, 5 nights and 4 days at il Bareto, 14 kilometers southwest of Siena in Italy. Each day an indepth look at a different aspect of food photography and cooking is covered. The course is run by Ignacio Urquiza (aka Nacho) who is an established photographer with over 60 books under his belt, including several award winning cookbooks. Details in the downloadable brochure,
Passport Canada is looking into creating a computerised tool to screen photographs of new applicants against images of criminal and terrorist suspects.
This facial recognition system will the first large scale Canadian involvement in biometrics. But hosting 21 million or so images of applicants is raising concerns from privacy and civil rights groups. The tool will compare passport applicants photographs with images from security watch lists and halt those not eligible for a passport from obtaining one.
The contract is to be awarded in November. A regional trial will be conducted in early 2007 with a national roll-out by late next year.
Mode Palette provides quick access to 16 shooting modes and 15 playback modes
Frequently used functions can be assigned to the Green button
Digital zooming provides up to 4X magnification
Approximately 23MB of built-in memory
Built-in AF spotbeam (on/off switching possible)
Includes the ACDSee for Pentax image viewer/image management software
Supports PictBridge, DPOF functions, Exif Print, and PRINT Image Matching
Optio S7 is the first compact Pentax to accept the new SDHC (Secure Digital High Capacity) memory cards in addition to SD memory cards. Recommended Price is under US$400.
Meade have introduced a series of binoculars, CaptureView, that come equipped with a 2 megapixel digital camera.
The camera, while a bit low on the spec front, boasts a 8x zoom, 16MB of internal memory, an SD/MMC memory card slot, and a USB slot that enables it to be connected to the PC. You can capture the view as digital images or video clips and use the Flashback feature to save the last 5, 10, 15, or 20 seconds of any recording.
The recommended retail price is approximately US$390.
From the gushing press release you would have thought it was the most revolutionary piece of camera equipement ever. But its just a bag. A rather nice bag, admittingly, but just a backpack in which to store your camera at the end of the day.
Words such as 'lifestyle', 'unique', 'cutting-edge technologies', are all very well and it may well be an 'unprececented design' and 'ergonomic' but what I need to know is how much it costs and what can be fitted inside!
Distributed exclusively in North America by Bogen Imaging the Ergo-Tech Collection offers a "futuristic design. Each bag features designated safe guard zones, where extra internal, modular padding is added to protect the gear within. In addition, safe guard zones also feature Flexi-Shield, a technology specifically designed for the Ergo-Tech collection. Flexi-Shield, Kata‚s new, high-frequency, molded flexible reinforcement, appears in the form of ridges on the exterior of safe guard zones for ultimate protection. "
Nikonians - the international club/forum for Nikon owners - has a small competition for registered users. Answer the 14 questions survey and you could win a Markins 3D Ballhead. This is a smaller and lighter head than the Markins M20 and the Markins M10 and is ideal for light tripods and monopods, like the Gitzo G11XX series or the Manfrotto 190 (Bogen 3001).
Tourist remover - just released from Swiss software engineering company futureLAB. It's an online tool that removes unwanted moving objects (like tourists or moving vehicles) from photographs. Interesting.
The process is fully automatic but you need 3 to ten photos of the same object taken in succession for the software to churn out a 'cleaned' image at the end. It is packaged with Snapmania - another photo organiser/sharing thingy - but I cannot seem to find any reference to it on the site.
Basically they ask for you to upload a picture with a summer theme - they mention a walk on Brighton Pier or a barbecue with friends and family. Now as this is a competition sponsered by an ice cream manufacturer I would suggest the inclusion of one of their products.
The prizes are a Nikon digital camera or a Mini Cooper. Oh and a years supply of ice cream. This is for UK residents only. I can't see any closing date info.
Alien Skin Software, makers of photoshop plugins, have released Blow Up, for Photoshop and Photoshop Elements. This their latest offering gives the highest quality image enlargement available basically simplifying and improving image enlargement, making it easy to convert web graphics to print and create large format and gallery prints from digital photographs.
Seems a little harsh... the 
Ricoh have released a second function-enhancing 
According to an article in 
For all you budding foodporn snappers - how about a holiday (sorry, vacation) in Tuscany taking pics of food.
Passport Canada
A new slim camera from Pentax. The S7, the 7 referring to its 7 megapixel capacity, features:
Meade have introduced a series of binoculars, 
From the gushing press release you would have thought it was the most revolutionary piece of camera equipement ever. But its just a bag. A rather nice bag, admittingly, but just a backpack in which to store your camera at the end of the day.
While I was reading up on icecreams for the 
