It doesn’t matter whether you are a designer, a developer, an artist or an amateur learner – at some point you need to improve the quality of the original picture or video. You may want to retouch and enhance his or her photographs and videos, make it look better, more spectacular and more original. It could be for personal or commercial use.
The smartphone sales race may be closer than expected.Research In Motion’s BlackBerry Curve overtook Apple’s iPhone to become the top-selling consumer smartphone in the United States during the first quarter of 2009, according to research published by NPD Group on Monday.
Wolfram Alpha, the analytics-based “answering engine” built by Stephen Wolfram on his Mathematica software, is drawing immense hype even before its launch later this month.An invention that could change the Internet forever. Too much? Yes, I think so.
The NoScript Firefox extension faced a major backlash last week when users discovered that it was surreptitiously disrupting the operation of AdBlock Plus. The developers behind the two extensions turned the browser into a battleground as their conflict escalated. Mozilla has responded by proposing a new policy that sets boundaries for appropriate
Sapphire crystals may be the next material to transform the electronics industry, thanks to nanotechnology researchers who have announced a new way of storing data that would fit the contents of 250 DVDs on a coin-sized surface.
Plain old Web searching doesn’t do the trick anymore: It yields too much random data, or not what you need. Here’s how to get what you want when you want it—sometimes before you ask for it. Nobody “surfs” the Web anymore. Some 80 percent of all online sessions now begin with a search. Google proves the point by making over a billion dollars….
The Iranian government, more than almost any other, censors what citizens can read online and blocks millions of web sites including Facebook and Youtube until recently. Now a small software allows Iranians to surf the the uncensored Web. Despite the dangers the Iranians are eagerly grabbing this offering.
bobby f. writes “Infoworld has published its list of the biggest cults in tech — including Palmists, Newtonians, Commodorians, the Brotherhood of the Ruby, IBM power systems fanboys, Ubuntu-ists, and Lispers. A pretty fun read (unless you really are a cult member).” Although I think it’s pretty clear that the Apple camp isn’t an opinionated cult, they’re just always right. Fire away.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
theodp writes “Barack Obama has squared up for a major battle with big business, announcing a crackdown on offshore tax avoidance and evasion by US multinationals that’s designed to raise 0B and make it easier for companies to create ‘good jobs here at home’. Obama cited a building in the Cayman Islands where more than 18,000 US companies are housed: ‘Either this is the biggest building in the world or it is the biggest tax scam in the world,’ he said. ‘I think the American people know which it is.’ The administration says that more than a third of US foreign profits in 2003 came from Bermuda, the Netherlands and Ireland, and noted US companies paid an effective tax rate of just 2.3% on the 0bn they earned in foreign profits in 2004. Among tech companies affected by the crackdown, Microsoft joined 200 companies who signed a letter complaining that the proposed tax changes would put them at a disadvantage with their rivals, Cisco moaned that the measures ‘would adversely impact our ability to invest and grow our business in the US,’ and Google declined to comment for the time being.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Hugh Pickens writes “Industry experts claim the market for vintage whiskey has been flooded with fakes that purport to be several hundred years old but instead contain worthless spirit made just a few years ago. Now researchers at the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit have developed a method that can pinpoint the date a whiskey was made by detecting traces of radioactive particles created by nuclear bomb tests in the 1950s. ‘”It is easy to tell if whiskey is fake as if it has been produced since the middle of the twentieth century, it has a very distinctive signature,” says Dr. Tom Higham, deputy director of the facility. Nuclear bomb testing in the 1950s saw levels of carbon-14 in the atmosphere rise around the world so the amount of isotope absorbed by living organisms since this time has been artificially elevated. Whiskey extracted from antique bottles is sent to the laboratory where scientists burn the liquid and bombard the resulting gas with electrically charged particles so they can measure the carbon-14 in the sample. In one recent case, a bottle of 1856 Macallan Rare Reserve was withdrawn from auction at Christies, where it was expected to sell for up to £20,000, after the scientists found it had actually been produced in 1950. “So far there have probably been more fakes among the samples we’ve tested than real examples of old whiskey,” says Higham.'”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
