Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Medium Format Lomography – a marketing masterpiece

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Great way to sell a crap camera producing ugly pictures – but there are some great ideas, too.

Back in 1946, the first Lomo Lubitel camera was created in Leningrad. Its name, meaning “Amateur” in Russian, reflected its simplicity.

Shooting with the Lubitel+ is different than anything you have shot before. The combination of its glass lenses, the flexible 120 or 35mm format, fully manual everything, fully automatic nothing, peering into a waist-level finder, slowing things down with focusing and dialing in the correct exposure settings, and a myriad of other analog factors make it a full-bodied experience that activates all of your senses and brings you into a special and very intimate place.

The key to keeping the spirit alive is VARIETY. Doing the same thing gets repetitive and a bit boring. Change it up and inject some fresh passion into your Lomographic relationship! No matter what your mood, the Lubitel+ has a film format to match it. For even if you’ve been around the block with 35mm film more times than you care to count, the union of PANORAMIC sized images (58mm tall!), exposed SPROCKET holes, and a fresh PORTRAIT format will let you see a new – and irresistibly tempting side of 35mm film that you never know existed before.

This is truly “auto-nothing.” This affords you total control over everything that happens. Lubitel+ pictures have their very own look and special analog character. Of course they are sharp, crispy, artistic, painted with light, and grand. But they’re also occasionally random, sometimes too vibrant, often vignetted at the edges, and totally flexible to your wishes and innovative tinkering. Rather than reflecting the objective reality in front of you, they reflect the subjective reality of the Lomographer behind the camera. They will make you look twice.

Friday, May 22, 2009

Mighty Marvel Wallpapers

staff picks

Staff picked, May 21st, 2009.

The free source for Marvel super-hero and super-villain wallpapers! Each click will randomly pick an image from Marvel comics, toys, movies, and video games to help you bring a little bit of excitement to your computer’s desktop. If you like a wallpaper, switch to back side clicking the “i” buttom on top-right corner, select wallpaper size and click “Get it” to download it.

What’s New in this Version
- More than 400 new wallpapers added!

freeComics is back!

freecomics 1.5

freeComics 1.5: all comics are back, lots of new characters included, more than 150 strips supported!
Dilbert, Calvin & Hobbes, Garfield, B.C., Momma and dozens more are again available in freeComics, thanks to a huge redesign of the widget.
The list of comics has been updated to include all the latest release: moreover, several all-time classics are now in full color.

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Cooliris

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The plugin that transforms your browser into a lightning fast, cinematic way to enjoy photos and videos from the Web or your desktop.

Friday, May 15, 2009

Memo

WolframSpikeyVersion7 “There is no risk of Wolfram Alpha becoming too smart, or taking over the world. It's good at answering factual questions; it's a computing machine, a tool -- not a mind.”

Let’s remember this when the Singularity will arise.

Wired Gadgets Reviews

Often very funny:

pr_Panasonic_TM300_f Panasonic HDC-TM300 HD Camcorder: A multicoated Leica Dicomar lens delivers light to three -- count 'em, three -- photon-sucking, quarter-inch CMOS chips.

The auto-focus tracking feature is straight out of the future: Tap a subject on the LCD, and the camera automatically keeps it in focus.

Although it had far less digital detritus than you'll find in most consumer camcorders, we did notice artifacts during fast pans. Reproduces colors like a Crayola factory - Great zoom tackles action better than Jason Statham.