Cameras

Check out the below image of the International Space Station (ISS) going past the moon. Look a bit familiar? As Star Trek's George Takei pointed out on his popular Facebook account, the ISS resembles the (fictional) USS Enterprise in this shot. "My goodness, from this angle it looks like a certain starship I once flew," Takei, or whoever's actually handling his Facebook posts, wrote. The photo, which you can see at a fuller size at the bottom of this post, was captured by astrophotographer Maximilian Teodorescu of Romania and... (read more)

Microsoft is upping the stakes in the growing market for cloud-based ERP, with its Dynamics GP 2013 and NAV 2013 products now available for deployment on its Azure service.The launch, announced Tuesday, gives customers another option for cloud-based ERP (enterprise resource planning) services besides NetSuite, SAP Business ByDesign and others. It's a bit late in coming, as Microsoft originally said availability would be toward the end of last year.Microsoft was apparently intent on making sure the Dynamics applications ran well on Azure before scaling up the business."Over the past several months we've been working closely with our first 'go-live' customers and partners, as well as with the Windows Azure team, to develop guidance and tooling to ensure a great experience deploying on Azure," wrote Paul White, senior director of Dynamics, in a blog post. "That work is now complete."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

I first heard of Jim Mortram and his project ‘Small Town Inertia’ in the ‘Ones to Watch’ section of the British Journal of Photography. At first, I was happy that someone from my homeland, Norfolk, was making an impact in the photographic world. But of all projects I’d seen in BJP, Small Town Inertia was the only that gripped me. Jim is a documentary photographer in the rural town of Dereham, Norfolk in the UK. The project portrays the lives of those “living on the fringe of society”, often focussing on the emotional, mental and physical hardships of those involved. The images, accompanied by text and quotations, make up this “long-form documentary and environmental portraiture series” with captivating brutal honesty. The images, accompanied by text and quotations, make up this “long-form documentary and environmental portraiture series” with captivating brutal honesty. PetaPixel: Hi Jim, I remember reading about Small Town Inertia in an issue of BJP and it stood out to me over the rest. Could you explain how the project started? Jim Mortram: Thanks. Small Town Inertia was born from many elements all converging. Financially, being a carer living on benefits is crippling leaves you with zero budget. I don’t drive; I cycle or take public transport, so shooting in the immediate locale was literally the only option I had. It’s all been about sculpting negatives into positives, right from day one. I had a very fractured relationship with where I live: a small, lost, failing, isolated market Town in East Anglia. It’s really an island unto itself within England. I moved here when I was very young, eleven, so always felt like an outsider. Being a carer only served to reinforce this sensation. Working crazy hours, over time, you lose connection with peers and find yourself in the fringe of what community there is around you. When I began the series I gravitated instinctively to document people in similar situations; people out on the edge of society.  As the series evolved I found myself becoming more involved in life again, with the people and ultimately the area. It turned a hate relationship; being stuck in a kind of no man’s land, into love. I began to appreciate everything, notice more, listen more and realised just how much strength there is. The endurance in people’s lives, balanced against the hardship, stress and heartache.  Tilney1: “My sleep pattern got f**ked up after I was sectioned and put in hospital. I just can’t switch my mind off and the loneliness gets to me.” At the beginning I was using all borrowed equipment. It was a real fight. But, once the series got on the path it did, there was a natural momentum; an unseen magnetic pull that made me almost oblivious to the struggle. See, there is such a sense of responsibility that comes with shooting long form documentary, and it’s such an honour. I’m so lucky, to be given the gifts of honesty and trust by the people I document. It’s a very real, ever present sensation. That’s the fuel. That’s what creates the trajectory: listening to the stories as they unfold, being close to people, being given these gifts of their lives and, in turn, having a platform to then share them with the wider world. It’s amazing, just amazing.  What’s strange, for myself at least, is that it’s often implied that I shoot a side of life that no one sees, that people turn their attention from. But now, there is no conscious choice of who to document. It just happens, very organically. People are all around us. My philosophy is that everyone has a story and their experiences can inform us all about life. We all have shared common experiences. We all have so much to teach and share and learn from one another. Photography is such a powerful sharing tool; present that with testimony and you can really share.  I’m pretty obsessed with the notion of the ‘now’ of life, the right now. Even though this community is seemingly a satel

Yesterday, SmugMug announced that they've acquired the popular SmugFolio Android app, and renamed it SmugMug for Android. This app allows smart phone and tablet users to manage, browse, and upload their photos with ease. While on the surface this looks like a simple rebrand with a new name and app icon, SmugMug notes that they've joined forces with the original SmugFolio developer to add a few improvements. These include the ability to browse other SmugMug user's accounts and added security with OAuth login. The company notes that the new app requires Android 3.0 (Honeycomb), and that those using 2.x or earlier will need to download the older SmugFolio app. For those who are not familiar with SmugMug or SmugFolio, here's a break down of the app's features:Upload unlimited photos and videos into unlimited gorgeous galleries.Quick and easy access to your photos - even when you're offline.Upload photos and videos on-the-go, or automatically upload as you shoot.Browse and search through galleries on SmugMug (ideal for friends, fans and family)Full screen slideshows across all galleries or within a single galleryBrowse photos from favorite users without needing a SmugMug accountMulti select to move, collect, delete, and share multiple photos at a timeAuto download galleries when you're on wifiAuto upload photos and videos from any location to any albumBulk upload multiple photos and videos at a timeUpload with GPS locationDisplay photo geolocation on Google mapView detailed photo informationView comments on photos and albumsDelete photos and galleriesFilter photos by keywordsAssign photo ratings and filter by photo ratingCreate new galleries, edit gallery title and public settingSet photos as wallpaperPlay videosShare URLs or photos with other Android applicationsAutomatic short URL generation using SmugMugView photo or gallery on SmugMugExport photos and galleries to local device galleryChoice of browsing by category or by galleryChange download location to external SD card (or any folder you choose)Read only mode can prevent destructive actions like deleteFor more information, visit the SmugMug Blog. You can also download the new SmugMug for Android app from the Google Play store by clicking here. Did we mention it was free?

Here’s a short and sweet video in which underwater photographer and filmmaker Tom Campbell tells of an experience he had photographing a whale shark, the world’s largest fish. Campbell was diving in Ningaloo Reef in Western Australia with a scuba diver who was to serve as his model. The resulting photo captured by CampbellHe specifically wanted a diver in the shot in order to provide a sense of scale: by seeing the tiny size of a human next to the fish, viewers of the resulting photo can appreciate just how big the whale shark gets. The largest whale shark ever documented measured 41.5 feet long and weighed in at around 47,000 pounds. The fish is our planet’s largest living non-mammalian vertebrate. Campbell says that when you get into the water with wild animals, you lose a large degree of control over how things turn out. “There’s an area that you can’t call the shot,” he says. “You don’t know what the animal’s gonna do, so you make a calculated risk, and you depend on your experience, your training, and your ability as a photographer, but you’ve always got that overwhelming desire to get that picture.” In the end, he managed to snap a single beautiful exposure of the whale shark opening its mouth with two scuba divers hovering nearby. You can find the photograph on this page over on Campbell’s website. (via NatGeo via The Phoblographer)

Nvidia wants to accelerate mobile-device performance with underlying tools that enable CPUs and graphics processors to work in a coherent manner.The company released on Tuesday its CUDA 5.5 programming tools, which will for the first time support ARM CPUs used in most smartphones and tablets. The tools could bring the type of performance gains that have helped supercomputers surpass petaflops in performance. But with mobile devices, the performance boosts will fit within a specific power limit.Many tablets and smartphones already come with Nvidia's Tegra chips, which offer a strong gaming experience.Developers use CUDA parallel programming tools to write and manage applications that harness the combined processing power of GPUs, CPUs and other processors.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The attorneys general of several states are turning up the heat on Google, concerned that the search engine giant makes it easier for criminals to sell illegal drugs online, engage in human trafficking and peddle pirated intellectual property.At the summer meeting of the National Association of Attorneys General in Boston Tuesday, Mississippi's Attorney General Jim Hood said that he is ramping up the pressure on the Internet behemoth, to which he had earlier this month sent litigation hold letters that should compel the company to preserve emails and other possible evidence in case of a lawsuit. He is now sending a civil investigative demand, or subpoena, for records relevant to how the company's search business may facilitate the sale of pharmaceuticals without prescriptions. He said Google had "lawyered up" after failing to respond to a number of written queries.At the same time, Hood said, he does not want a legal battle with Google. "I don't want to have a fight, we want to work together," he said. He also expressed his hope that "conscientious investors" as well as advertisers would put pressure on the company to disengage from those using the search engine to conduct illicit business.Several of his colleagues echoed Hood's concerns as well as his desire to come to an agreement with Google about its business practices.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

A photographer is suing the popular viral content aggregation website BuzzFeed for a whopping $3.9 million after he discovered that BuzzFeed had used one of his Flickr photos without permission in a comedy “roundup” article. The controversy started when Idaho photographer Kai Eiselein came across an article on BuzzFeed titled “The 30 Funniest Header Faces.” It was a collection of 30 photographs showing soccer players photographed with contorted faces as soccer balls collided with their noggins, A screenshot of the BuzzFeed article at the center of this controversy One of the photographs in the original article was an image that Eiselein had uploaded to his Flickr account. The image was marked as “All Rights Reserved.” As you can see from the screenshot above, the title has since been changed to “The 29 Funniest Header Faces” after Eiselein’s photograph was removed (the photographer sent BuzzFeed a DMCA takedown notice). Shortly after the original post was published, the photograph began to appear on websites across the web (many of which source, steal, or syndicate BuzzFeed’s content): A Google Image Search result screenshot showing how the photo now appears across the Web Unhappy about the fact that his photo was published without his permission, Eiselein filed a massive $3.6 million lawsuit against the publisher in New York earlier this month. Why the massive amount for a single photo? Eiselein argues that BuzzFeed is responsible not only for its own copyright infringement, but for the damages that resulted from the photo subsequently appearing on dozens of other websites: Buzzfeed, Inc. actively encourages its users to share content, regardless of whether or not that content is owned by, or licensed to, Buzzfeed. The plaintiff asserts that Buzzfeed, Inc. is responsible for 61 contributory infringements upon his photograph. Here’s a copy of the lawsuit: This lawsuit is a major challenge to a business model that many websites are adopting these days: one that is based on finding photographs online, publishing them on a website (both with and without credit) next to advertising, and profiting from the resulting pageviews. Jeff John Roberts over at paidContent writes that BuzzFeed founder Jonah Peretti defended the business model to The Atlantic last year: [BuzzFeed] pays to license images from companies like Reuters and Getty, but that it also pulls from amateur sites like Tumblr and Flickr. In these cases, the provenance of the images can be unclear — in some cases, the photographer has made them available for public use while other times the author is simply unknown. Peretti also claims that, in any event, BuzzFeed’s photo montages are fair use under copyright law because they are “transformative” (which is one factor in the first part of a complicated four-part fair use test). This isn’t the first time BuzzFeed has been on the receiving end of a massive copyright infringement lawsuit. Last October, the website was sued for $1.3 million for publishing 9 celebrity photos without permission. As with that case, this new lawsuit will be a big test for whether or not new media websites can grab photographs from across the Web and use them for profit without the photographers’ permission. (via paidContent via Imaging Resource)

B&H has a Sony 64GB Class 10 UHS-I SDXC memory card for only $35.95 (reg. $52.95). These are available in limited quantities at this price. Check it out here at B&H Photo. Copyright/DMCA Notice: The RSS entry was originally published on Photography Bay and is protected by copyright laws. It is unlawful to (a) edit, modify, alter, or create derivative works of the text, content or links supplied by Photography Bay, (b) use any robot, spider, scraper, other device or manual process to monitor or copy any content from the Photography Bay RSS feed, (c) sell, retransmit or commercially exploit the Photography Bay RSS feed, headlines or content in any manner except as expressly permitted in writing by authorized representatives of Photography Bay, (d) incorporate advertising into or the placement of advertising associated with or targeted towards the Photography Bay RSS feed or (e) use the Photography Bay RSS feed for any unlawful purpose or in violation of the rights of others. RSSID#794326 Related posts: Sony 64GB SDXC Class 10 Card for $36.45 – Deal Alert SanDisk 64GB SDXC Class 10 Card for $48.95 – Deal Alert Lexar Pro 128GB Class 10 SDXC Card for $119.95 – Deal Alert

A year ago, Google constructed a “neural network” of servers that eventually learned how to recognize cats. On Tuesday, Nvidia said that a team of Stanford researchers had used its own graphics cores to create another approximately 6.5 times more powerful, using just 16 servers. The Stanford and Nvidia researchers showed off their work at the International Supercomputing Conference this week in Leipzig, Germany, where the list of the top 500 most powerful supercomputers was unveiled. Neural networks attempt to re-create the brain’s structure by approximating not only the millions of neurons within it, but also how the brain itself learns. The overarching principle is to create a framework by which the network can teach itself. That process can lead in unexpected directions, such as the Google network teaching itself to identify images of a cat inside a number of YouTube videos that Google exposed it to. Japanese researchers also developed a neural network that taught a robot how to pour a glass of water. While Google’s efforts to create a neural network most likely attracted attention because of its whimsical results, neural networks are a serious endeavor. In March, Google acquired DNNresearch for its work on layered, “deep neural networks,” which it will apply to a variety of services. Although Google did not say to what purpose it would put DNNresearch, it’s likely that its intelligence could be applied to everything from translation to Google Now, the service that Google uses to parse a user’s data and to show him or her relevant information, such as the time to leave to arrive in time for the next appointment. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here