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The Zen Stone Plus may not have the best battery life, but its supersmall size, built-in FM tuner, and variety of totable accessories make it a perfect companion for the gym. There's even an optional wristband that lets you wear the player like a watch, and--indeed--there's a digital watch screensaver that you can set on the LCD. The Stone Plus even has a stopwatch for timing those intervals on the treadmill. And for frequent fliers, there's the TravelSound Zen Stone, an ultracompact speaker for you to take on the road. To see the Zen Stone Plus and … Read more

LAS VEGAS--In a presentation at the Black Hat conference here Tuesday, Neal Krawetz of Hacker Factor showed how basic manipulations to images can be revealed through digital analysis.

After presenting on the specific techniques he used, Krawetz launched into what he called the case of "Dr. Z," who happens to be Ayman al-Zawahiri, the No. 2 man in al-Qaida.

Using a photo that originally appeared on December 20, 2006, in USA Today, al-Zawahiri appears to be seated before a large banner with a desk underneath. On the desk, in the photo, is a tiny cannon. Yet in the … Read more

Microsoft announced some significant progress Tuesday in getting its HD Photo technology standardized as JPEG XR, a significant development for photographers like me who don't like the idea that their camera is discarding data when it converts image sensor information into a JPEG.

But the arrival of a higher-quality alternative to conventional JPEG could mean a bit of a turf war between Microsoft and Adobe Systems, which is trying to popularize a file format called Digital Negative (DNG). DNG is, in part, an attempt to bring some order to the chaos of proprietary "raw" image formats that … Read more

Want to emulate that neat collage look you get when you get photos printed out? There's a service called Collagr that does it for you pulling in photos from Flickr. If you've got shots on there, just fill in your username and Collagr will do its magic. The result is a square array that may look a little small in the preview, but if you save it to your hard drive you'll notice it's 1,400x1,025, which is larger than the average desktop wallpaper. The recommended use, however, is for MySpace profiles--you know, the kind … Read more

Office time-waster alert! AOL's AIM Network has launched an interesting new service, CircaVie, which allows you to create a timeline of just about anything--your kid's life, your job, your backpacking excursion in Southeast Asia, or the chronicle of last week's party's devolution into debauchery. You can then embed your timelines into your blog, share them with friends, I played around with it, and I like the concept (a lot), but this is the kind of service that's left me wishing there was more you could do with it.

It's clear that CircaVie is trying … Read more

Pikifx (pronounced "pickie-fix") is a new online photo editor for adding a bevy of effects and tweaks to photos without resorting to software apps. It comes from the same folks who made Web-based comic creator Comeeko (review), which has renamed itself Pikisnips. It's also a sister site to Pikipimp, which is virtual paper-doll-like prop tool for mucking about with digital photos.

Like other solutions that have cropped up in the past year, Pikifx lets you easily upload a shot from your hard drive or snatch it off the Web with a URL. From there you can choose … Read more

We've had an influx of inexpensive RCA MP3 players lately. Jasmine posted her reviews of the RCA Jet and the RCA Pearl last week. Now we've got the RCA Opal, which is probably the most unique player RCA has released. It has a great list of features, including support for DRM WMA and Audible formats. I thought the user interface was a little confusing--not helped by the fact that the control pad is a little slanted.

The claim to fame here is that the Opal supports photo and video playback for under $70. If you're interested, click … Read more

Girls and women are under all sorts of pressure to look perfect--and to make it look easy in the process. Duke University identified this new unattainable standard as "effortless perfection."

As individual women, it can be easy to wonder why we fall into the trap of trying to live up to an unattainable standard. It's something we absorb on an almost subconscious level. Deconstructing this month's Redbook magazine cover shows us just how manufactured the images of beauty we see really are.

I didn't think twice about the cover image of country singer and actress Faith Hill when I first saw it. But an untouched original photo obtained by Jezebel shows just how much "digital magic" even a certified star needs to be ready for her close-up. … Read more

We all goof, but we don't all do it as visibly as CNET TV star and executive editor Molly Wood, nor do we often relish fessing up. Molly does both with wit, charm, and FotoTagger, a handy digital-photography freeware tool for annotating digital photos via movable captions.

Read Molly's hilarious confession, Anatomy of a Buzz Report screwup, to see why FotoTagger has become her "new favorite thing." While you're at it, try it out.