Gizmodo: digital photos

Digital Photos Act as Unique Fingerprints in Finding Criminals with Digital Cameras

Andi Wang — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 21:33:13 EST

Forensic specialists can now pinpoint the exact make and model of a camera simply by analyzing the pixels in digital photos. This technique would be useful in the future for tracking down criminals, such as kidnappers who've leaked photos of their hostages to the media. Read on to find out how it works.

When a digital camera captures a photo, the camera creates each pixel using a charge-coupled device—a microchip that is made up of millions of capacitors that get electrical charges depending on how intense the lighting is in a certain spot. Each of these capacitors has a lens and a color filter that creates one single pixel from a mosaic made up of red, green and blue filters.

The colors and brightness levels that we can physically see in our digital pictures are created by a demosaicing software, which is custom built for every camera model due to each camera's individual specs and subtle differences. Because of this, a certain camera model will generate distinct pixels—and unique relationships between its neighboring pixels—which can pinpoint the exact make and model of the camera.

Knowing this information could greatly help forensics teams since each digital camera has a shelf life of about 18 months, which would significantly narrow the pool of where and when it was sold. Although it is not perfect, early tests have shown this technique has proven to be 90 percent accurate, which is still an A in my book! [New Scientist via Slashdot]

iGala Wireless Photo Frame Has Touchscreen, Own Gmail Account

Kit Eaton — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 11:20:34 EST

Normally I'd say digital photo frame, splidgital photo frame...but iGala's one has a couple of features that make it stand out. It's an 8-inch touchscreen, with standard 4:3 ratio 800 x 600 pixels so you get less irritating crops or letterboxing, plus its wireless and has 1GB of internal memory. But it's actually got its own Gmail address so you can email photos to it directly from anywhere. Plus you don't even need a PC to set it up: it has its own interface. Neat stuff, for a not-too expensive $239. [Digitalpictureframereview]

Personalized Rubik's Cube: Family Photos + Arcane Game = Fun?

Gizloco — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 09:24:32 EST

Who hasn't wasted hours of their life trying to solve a Rubik's Cube? An online service is now offering to put any picture (I see no rules against racy photos) on a Rubik's Cube for your enjoyment. The pictures need to be at least 300 dpi in size with a recommended resolution of 900x1500 pixels. Then, after a short wait, you get your personalized Rubik's Cube delivered right to your door, initiating the long battle of trying to put Grandma back together again.

A simple concept to be sure, but think of all the revenge opportunities presented by this Cube. Why not give one to one of your co-workers whom you hate with a picture of him/her cheating on their spouse? The possibilities are pretty much endless here. – Nicholas Deleon

Product Page [Personalization Mall via New Launches]

Sony HDPS-L1 80GB Photo Storage Unit

Gizloco — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 08:43:52 EDT

The HDPS-L1 (have we met before?) is an 80GB photo storage unit from Sony that serves as a central place to store your digital photos, with all the appropriate outputs so you can watch edge-of-your-seat slideshows for when Grandma visits. It's about half the size of the average DVD player, so while not portable in the strictest sense of the word, it shouldn't be too much of a problem to bring it to and fro—the neighbor's house, the in-laws, jury trials, etc.

Images are transferred to the HDPS-L1 either via the built-in USB port or you can plug in any of the many types of supported memory cards, including Sony's MemoryStick and the ever-present CompactFlash.

Look for the HDPS-L1 in Japan starting on October 27 for around $300. – Nicholas Deleon

Press Release (in Japanese) [Sony via Fareastgizmos.com]

Maxtor Shared Storage II: 1TB of Storage

Gizloco — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 12:38:09 EDT

Announced while we were all celebrating our nation's independence, the Maxtor Shared Storage II (MSSII) brings 1TB (1,000GB) of networked storage capacity to LAN near you. As you can imagine, 1TB of data is quite a lot, but with gigabyte-hungry high definition content currently gaining momentum in the consumer market, the more hard drive space the merrier. Maxtor lists the MSSII as able to hold 768,000 photos, 72 hours of DV video or 16,000 hours of music. With that amount of space, you could conceivably load up the MSSII full of RIAA and MPAA-approved media and hunker down in your home theater, watching and listening until the end of days.

Now, the MSSII isn't just a big, static hard drive that sits on your network, eagerly awaiting for you to load her up. Using a RAID 1 setup, you can mirror up to 500GB of data on an external drive. System disasters can be further avoided by using a software-based one-touch backup or, for those of you who need to live by a meticulous schedule, scheduled backups. It's kind of like "set it and forget it," but for MP3s and Xvids.

The Maxtor Shared Storage II should be available here before the end of the month for $899.95 retail. Time to break open that piggy bank. – Nicholas Deleon

Product Page [Maxtor]

See the World Through the Eyes of a Baby

Gizloco — Wed, 10 May 2006 13:59:03 EDT

A group of visual researchers have come up with a method that alters pictures so that they look like what babies see. (Just ignore that terrible phrasing and take a look at the picture to understand better.)

Dubbed TinyEyes, it shows the clear progression of vision's improvement through the first few weeks of life. By the looks of it, you've got eight weeks to get rid of that terrible Dave Matthews Band t-shirt you've been wearing, lest your child think you're a total dweeb.

TinyEyes [TinyEyes via Daddy Types]