photo

Toshiba joins photo frame parade (yawn)

With so many variations of digital photo frames on the U.S. market, it's small wonder that Toshiba is peddling its version in Europe. Even giant bi-pedal lizards are horning in on the act here.

Against all that competition, Toshiba's "Tekbright" doesn't seem terribly impressive on paper. It does have a tiny bit of built-in memory (64MB) and can play MP3s, but it's got only a 7-inch screen--which isn't saying much in this day of 15-inch high-resolution displays--and at 129 euros (about $189), it's hardly a bargain. But we do like … Read more

Photobucket, Picasa bring photo-sharing to TiVo

Apparently, fast-forwarding through commercials just isn't enough. TiVo announced on Monday that users of select photo-sharing services are now able to access their image collections through its set-top boxes.

The digital video recorder manufacturer has partnered with two photo-sharing services--the Google-owned Picasa Web Albums and Fox Interactive Media-owned Photobucket--in order to enable users to surf through their photo albums as well as their friends' and family members', provided that their TiVo boxes are broadband-connected.

A release from the company emphasized the fact that photos are viewable in the highest resolution possible, which on the TiVo Series 3 and … Read more

Flickr: 10 things we love and hate

Over Thanksgiving break I got to field a lot of strange tech questions from friends and family. One of the most frequent was what photo services were worth using and why. Nearly everyone has a digital camera now, and there's no limit to the number of places designed to share your shots online. It's no secret I'm an unabashed Flickr user, and despite writing a newbies' guide on the service, even I'm a little hesitant of using it for honest to goodness photo backup (more on that later). Like any critic, I'm peeved by some aspects of the service--especially some of the perks that even a pro membership can't offer. I've put together of five things I love about the service, and five I loathe.

Love

Clear Creative Commons licensing tools. Savvy uploaders can set Creative Commons licensing restrictions on any of their shots, both individually and in batches. By default, you can also choose what kind of licensing you want any of your shots to have, which makes it easy if you're a professional photographer to limit what people can do with them. In addition to giving you tools to tweak photo licensing, Flickr also provides fairly simple explanations of each license type, along with links to learn more. Also, photos that have been given more restrictive licensing can't be downloaded, making it easier to keep control of your intellectual property.

Easy uploading tools. Flickr's latest effort to make photos easier to upload to the Web is a big step up from their previous iteration. We took a look at the new version in August and came away impressed. Well, it's still worth using one of the software plug-ins to get right-click mousing access for contextual uploading on any photos from your desktop, the new Web uploader is really great for updating a ton of shots all at once while away from your home machine.

The API. Flickr's API has allowed for a ton of third party applications and services for both personal and communal use of photos. From business cards to coffee mugs, a hosted photo is more useful when you can do more with it than a quick glance.

Photo slide shows on DVD

Along with "What's the best free video-editing software?" one of the most frequent questions I receive from CNET Download.com users is, "How can I put my photos on a DVD that anyone can watch?" For everyone whom I wasn't able to respond to personally, here's a quick overview.

First off, the most important issue is the DVD player for which you're creating the slide show. Many DVD players nowadays don't need a specially formatted disc to view digital pictures, and some have built-in slide-show features for viewing JPEG images. The … Read more

Gadgettes 68: The Good Idea Episode

Sony: When timing is everything...

[UPDATE: See the wrapup to this discussion in this later post.]

Use a Nikon?

Or at least that appears to be the message.

I opened my copy of Outside Magazine's companion piece of fluff, Go, this morning and was greeted by an ad for Sony's A700 DSLR with the tagline "In Photography, Timing is Everything." The accompanying photograph was spectacular and showed a leopard about to dispatch a baboon. Dust is flying and, clearly, timing has a lot to do with the impact of this photo.

It was also very familiar.

In fact, it's a … Read more

Putting a label on the latest weird trend

If there's one thing that's never in short supply on Crave, it's odd trends. But here's one that we never saw coming: labels.

Not only can we make labels using only a mouse, as we learned a few days ago, but now we can include photos grabbed from Webcams as well. Seiko has released a software update for its "Smart Label Printer" that works with many Webcam models on the market today, according to Electronista.

One day soon we suspect we'll be printing labels without the label maker.

Photos: An early look at CES goodies

Sure, it's still November, and we've got several major holidays to go before the Consumer Electronics Show takes Las Vegas in January. But in the interest of keeping you in the know gadgetwise, we offer this sneak preview gallery.

CNET News.com's Marguerite Reardon attended a New York event in which the Consumer Electronics Association announced its innovation and design award winners for the upcoming show, and she tells us--through the gallery--about a few that caught her eye.

Couldn't you use a gutter-cleaning robot? How about the latest helmet-mounted ruggedized video camera? Click on over and … Read more

Resize images on the fly

High Quality Photo Resizer is lightweight image editor replete with options, but it also suffers from some snags that might an update be worth the wait.

Revoking open source

Those of us who have actually read through many of the Open Source licenses and have spent a fair bit of time mulling and discussing their consequences take a lot of things for granted.

One of those things is that once a program, or anything else, is released under an Open Source license you can't just take it back. Maybe this seems obvious to you, or maybe not, but it isn't to everyone. Perhaps especially as we depart the realm of software where most developers involved with Open Source have given at least passing thought to the implications … Read more