By Jason Kottke, kottke.org – October 18, 2012 at 02:05PM
I’ve never seen so much household organizational porn collected in one place before. Tumblr should get a Nobel Peace Prize for propagating such useful information so far and wide. A couple of examples:
(via hacker news)
Tags: lists
By Darren Rowse, Digital Photography School – October 18, 2012 at 10:09AM
In this tutorial Phil Steele from Photoshop Basics for Photographers shares a great little tutorial on a feature called ‘Content Aware Fill’ that is in recent versions of Photoshop CS and Photoshop Elements.
Check out more of Phil’s quality training at:
Post originally from: Digital Photography Tips.
Check out our more Photography Tips at Photography Tips for Beginners, Portrait Photography Tips and Wedding Photography Tips.
Photoshop Content-Aware Fill [Video Tutorial]
By Jason Kottke, kottke.org – October 17, 2012 at 04:00PM
Over the past few years, we’ve seen an endless parade of stories debunking the value of many of the products that line the shelves of our local pharmacies. Well, here’s a different kind of story. A massive study that included more than 15,000 men and lasted more than 13 years found that taking a daily multivitamin (in this case Centrum Silver) reduced the risk of cancer. It looks like there’s something to taking one multivitamin as opposed to swallowing high doses of individual vitamins.
Syndicated from Dave Pell’s NextDraft email newsletter.
By Mario Aguilar, Gizmodo – October 17, 2012 at 12:56PM
Wouldn’t it be great if cars ran off of compost? That’s not the topic of a TED Talk, but, sadly, that small nugget of an idea is all you would need to to be granted the freedom to pontificate before an audience of naive dreamers at a hokey conference. Welcome to The Onion’s first TED Talk parody. It’s incredible. And its best line just happens to sum up everything that’s annoying about TED in one little sentence: “I’ll be your visionary, and you do the things I come up with.” More » 
By Saikat Basu, MakeUseOf – October 17, 2012 at 12:31PM
Image recognition is getting better by the day. Perhaps, that’s why we keep talking about it so much. The reverse image search engine that usually gets most of the clicks is TinEye. We didn’t miss out on covering it when it came out. And then, we went back to it when we wanted to show you what a reverse image search could do for you. TinEye has stuck around and today one can genuinely say that it is a genuine alternative search engine and does something which even Google can’t.
But TinEye doesn’t need to go far away from Google. Apart from a bookmarklet and plugins for Firefox and IE, TinEye has a Chrome extension which I believe is a must install if you make use of reverse image search. Probably many are, because it is occupying a high chair on our Best Chrome Extensions Page. Let’s get up and close to it.
Nearly 400,000 users of the TinEye Chrome extension is quite a vote. If you are one of the new additions to that statistic, let’s give you the one-line introduction again. TinEye use advanced image identification technology to search where an image came from and if there are any more similar images like it. It’s most common use is to find out higher resolution versions of the sample image. But as we will find out, there are some really useful real-world uses you can put it to.
TinyEye works very simply. After installing it, you won’t see it on the toolbar along with the other Chrome extensions. Reason – it works from the right-click context menu. Right-click on any image on a webpage and this is what you will see:
For the above image, TinEye searches through its database in just less than 3 seconds and returns 16 matches.
Now, with the results in hand, I have three sort options – Best Match (the image that’s the exact match or closest), Most Changed (the image that has been edited), and Biggest Image (the image with the highest resolution). Every result also has a Compare feature that lets you compare your original to the result from TinEye.
For instance, here you can switch images back and forth and see for yourself if the result is actually the best match. You can do this comparison across all the three sort options.
TinEye also lets you do the obligatory share of your search result on Facebook, Twitter, via Email, or via a legion of third party services.
You can also right-click anywhere on a webpage (apart from an image) and allow TinEye to capture all the images on the page. Clicking on any image among the ones listed takes you through the process we outlined above. It’s a quick way to reverse search a few images on a single page.
TinEye can be used for so much more than finding out a plagiarized photo or a high-resolution version of an image. Let me outline a few below which I think should make you consider it as an essential install.
I generally do not add anyone on Facebook whom I do not know personally. If it’s a stranger, then I do not add anyone without a profile photo. You as well as I know that profile pics and avatars can be easily faked. TinEye give me a handy tool to check the origins of the Facebook profile pic or any other photo that might be open for public view on an album. It might not work every time, but when it does it tells me if the photo is genuine or lifted from somewhere. Alternatively, if it’s genuine are there any more references on the web.
Tumblr is a more often than not a dream for the guy who loves photos. But with images getting posted and reposted from one account to the next, it is a nightmare if you want to find the original web source of the image. On Tumblr, the image URL is of the Tumblr image server, and doesn’t direct you to the source URL. Google Image Search and TinEye are your best bets. I have had better and quicker results with a right-click on a Tumblr image and going for the Search Image on TinEye.
I am a Star Wars and Star Trek fanboy. The right-click TinyEye Chrome extension gives me a quick way to browse through hundreds of photos via the source pages I discover through a reverse image search.
This comes from a requirement we assiduously follow as writers. Image reuse comes with accountability and personal integrity. TinEye helps me find multiple sources – and hopefully the original source – for confirming permissions of use in an article or blog post. TinEye has indexed millions of images from photo stock sites like iStockPhoto, Photoshelter, and Wikimedia Commons among others. There are nearly half-a-billion images in their index.
This is a no-brainer. There’s a great image which is cropped. You can get to the full-blown un-cropped image using a TinEye search.
Though it is not a direct part of the extension, you can also use the TinEye Reverse Image Search and its lab tools for multicolor search and color extraction from an image. Is there a specific reverse image search you are looking for? Try out the TinEye Chrome extension and tell us if it’s a hit.
By Guest Contributor, Digital Photography School – October 17, 2012 at 10:19AM
A Guest Post by Anne McKinnell
Most of us start out in photography because we love to make images, it gets us outdoors, and helps us explore our creative selves. We do it for ourselves because it makes us happy.
But there is different side of photography that adds another dimension to the experience: sharing images with others. It’s one of the most popular things to do on the internet.
We do it to share experiences with our families and friends, get feedback from other photographers, and attract customers or clients.
There are three steps to making a big impression online:
So, you want to put all of your images online for everyone to see, right? That’s a really bad idea. Not putting them online – the bad part is putting *all* your images online.
Imagine you are looking at a photographer’s portfolio and they have hundreds of images. Some are architecture, some are seascapes, some are portraits, some are still life. You’re going to see a lot of these. Hundreds of photographers will all blend together in your mind because they are indistinguishable from each other.
On the other hand, let’s say you look at a photographer’s work and they have 20 images all of which are black and white seascapes. He becomes the “black and white seascape guy”. Or let’s say they are all dog portraits. She becomes the “dog portrait woman” in your mind.
That doesn’t mean that if you are the dog portrait woman you cannot make images of architecture. You don’t have to choose right at the beginning what kind of photographer you want to become. Just choose one selection of your images to show the world right now. That will make you stand out in people’s minds and you will grow a bigger following because people can identify with you.
Pick a theme to work on. My first theme was seascapes at twilight.
Notice how all the images have a certain look to them. They fit together as a group. And there are less than 20. That’s what you need to do.
Now that you have a great set of images to share with the world you need to choose a method for getting them online.
But … where to start? There are so many options!
So many that I could never summarize the pro’s and con’s of every available alternative but I will share what I have learned so you can get going quickly and easily. And I’m only going to suggest sites where your photos are sure to look great (sorry Flickr that leaves you out)!
The first thing is to determine what your goals are right now.
Let’s look at these options one step at a time.
500px is the best option for you. Images look absolutely stunning on the site and it is free if you upload fewer than 10 images per week. For only $20 per year you can upload as many as you like.
This screenshot is from Michael Russell‘s page on 500px.
Note that you can sell digital downloads on 500px too. The only print product you can sell is a fixed price canvas print which just doesn’t cut it if you are interested in selling print products.
SmugMug, Redbubble, DeviantArt, Photoshelter, Photocrati, Snapfish, Twitpic, Zenfolio – the options are endless and you could research forever before being able to make a decision.
I’ve tried many of these services, some paid, some free, and I’m going to tell you which one is super easy, looks great, and is totally free. It’s Redbubble.
This screenshot is from Jessica Jenney’s page on Redbubble.
Redbubble offers lots of different products. I have ordered many of them myself and am always impressed with the quality. You can set your own prices and Redbubble makes a small commission from any sales. The only drawback is that you cannot sell digital downloads – only products.
If you want to sell both products and digital downloads take a look at Zenfolio.
The two big players in this field are Blogger and WordPress.
Blogger is very easy to setup and adding content is straightforward but there are fewer options for design and custom features than WordPress offers.
WordPress has a steeper learning curve but if you are going to have a blog you probably want it to have a really nice design and some customizable functions. And it’s way easier to just start with WordPress than it is to try to move a blog from Blogger to WordPress later.
You can start a WordPress blog at wordpress.com or you can start a WordPress blog on your own website with WordPress.org.
The bottom line is that Blogger is a better option if you want your blog to be super simple to set up and add content and you don’t need a lot of bells and whistles. WordPress is a better option if you want more advanced features and customization.
Both options are free and both have plugins that allow you to display your gallery.
If you are already really serious about your photography and you want to have your own website with your own domain name and have a blog and a gallery in the same place, and perhaps sell products and advertising, then get ready to roll up your sleeves or get out your wallet! (Probably a bit of both.)
You might want to hire someone else to set up the website for you if you’re not tech-savvy and then all you have to do is add blog posts and new images.
If you want to take it on yourself you need to choose to a webhost, buy a domain name (yourname.com) and a web hosting package. If you want to blog you will need to install WordPress and find a theme you love and install that.
Next you will need to choose a method for displaying your image gallery:
Creating your own website is a huge topic so if you are going to delve into it you have some researching to do.
This screenshot is from Ken Kaminesky’s website built with Photoshelter.
For my own website, I use WordPress with a theme from Graph Paper Press and Photoshelter for my gallery.
If you want to promote your photography beyond your family and friends you should start building your audience right away. Using social media is the best and fastest way to find people who love to look at your images and might become customers or clients in the future. As well, they will be your marketing department by helping to spread the word about your photography.
There are so many different social networks out there. Again it is a learning curve just to figure out which ones will work best for you and how you should use them. So let me give you a quick primer on the five social networks that have worked best for me.
Twitter is my favourite social network and the first one I started. A “tweet” has a maximum of 140 characters so it is quick to sift through a lot of information to find what you are interested in.
Most photographers post links to their images and their blog posts. If you are interested you click, if not you move on.
If you want to grow your audience on twitter it is important to promote other people’s work as well as your own.
Google+ is the social network that was designed for photographers. In many ways it is the opposite of twitter because people tend to post very long posts and have conversations in the comments section.
Because of this engagement within G+, people rarely click links which makes it difficult to drive traffic to a blog. But if you put your whole blog post on G+ you might get more interaction and comments there than you do on your blog.
This screenshot is from Jon Cornforth’s page on Google+.
StumbleUpon is a bit like rolling the dice. You have no idea what it is going to land on but it will be something interesting to you. The idea is that you follow people who have similar interests and when you “stumble” you see the pages that they like. Or you can stumble certain topics like photography or travel.
The difference here is that you are not supposed to stumble your own links and you get penalized if you do it too often. It’s really better to put a StumbleUpon button on your website or blog and hope that other people stumble it. When they do you will get a huge spike in traffic.
Do you like scrap booking or collecting things? This social network is the one for you.
In Pinterest you have boards where you pin groups of images you like, just like pinning an image you cut out of a magazine on a cork board. It’s a great place for collecting images that inspire you, or places you want to go, or whatever you are interested in.
This screenshot is from Deborah Sandidge’s page on Pinterest.
When you follow someone you will see the images they pin on their boards. If you like an image and want to add it to your collection you simply re-pin it to one of your boards. You can pin your own images too and people who follow you will see them.
I hate to say it but I do get a lot of traffic from Facebook and it would be negligent of me to leave it out. Even though it is the most difficult, confusing, frustrating and sometimes outright stupid system to use. But because it was first almost everyone is on it.
Unfortunately, I don’t have the power to make everyone stop using it so it’s one of those “if you can’t beat them, join them” kinds of things. Regardless of my opinion, Facebook will generate traffic and help you build your audience.
If you do not yet have a gallery of images or a blog and you just want to get some stuff online quickly and easily, start with Redbubble. It is free, easy to use and comes with a great community of photographers. It’s a great place to get your feet wet.
Anne McKinnell is a photographer, writer and nomad who travels around North America in an RV photographing beautiful places. You can read about her adventures on her blog. She is also the author of several eBooks on photography. This post contains excerpts from her latest eBook “8 Ways To Accelerate Your Photography.”
Post originally from: Digital Photography Tips.
Check out our more Photography Tips at Photography Tips for Beginners, Portrait Photography Tips and Wedding Photography Tips.
Sharing Your Photography On The Web
By spinnrad@mac.com (Editor), InnovationDAILY for Syndication – Wednesday October 17, 2012
We got our first glimpse of Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer today! At the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco, Mayer served as a judge for the startup competition. She’s played a similar role at previous conferences, and she’s evaluated companies for her own personal portfolio. She’s an angel investor in Square, One Kings Lane, and other startups.
By Lee Hutchinson, Ars Technica – September 26, 2012 at 11:30AM
Last year, when Ars published our two-part DroboFS review (Part 1, Part 2), one of the requests we kept hearing was for a similar in-depth review of other home-oriented network attached storage (NAS) products, particularly those from Synology. A few months ago, I purchased a Synology DS-412+ to replace my DroboFS (which I have since passed on to my parents) and I’ve been living with it since.
Other contenders in the home NAS space include QNAP, NetGear, and Iomega, but I went with Synology chiefly due to their reputation for performance. The DroboFS was the very definition of “easy to use,” but after more than a year the slow read and write speeds just became too much. After scouring forums and reviews to find a replacement, I kept coming back to the then-newly released DS-412+.
Synology breaks down its models across several lines, and each device’s intended target market can be divined by dissecting the model designation. Units beginning with an “RS” are “RackStation” models, intended to be mounted in standard data center 19-inch racks; “DS” units are “DiskStation” models, which sit on the floor or on a desk rather than in a rack. The first number after the DS or RS is the maximum number of disk drives the device supports (though reaching that number for some models requires an external expansion bay). The next two digits are the year the model entered production, with all models on sale today having either 11, 12, or 13 (yes, a few models now carry a 13—don’t ask). The final character indicates anything special about the model—a “+” if it’s a business-class unit with extra oomph, a “j” for entry-level models which prioritize affordability over performance, or a “slim” for units which accept 2.5″ hard disk drives.
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By Darrell Etherington, TechCrunch – October 16, 2012 at 11:57AM
It’s definitely on between Samsung and Apple, with the two are battling it out in consumer hearts, courts around the world, and in supply chain arrangements. But now, the company’s two flagship smartphones go head-to-head in that timeless venue, the blender. Blendtec, the blender company famous for pitting its home culinary equipment against valuable electronics, has just posted the video you see above, in which the Samsung Galaxy S III goes up against the iPhone 5 in a blend-off that can’t end well for either.
By Greg Pollowitz, Media Blog – October 16, 2012 at 09:58AM
No, MSNBC, the guy who jumped from the edge of outer space did not brake the “speed of light.”
