RollingShutter, a plug-in for After Effects and Nuke, recently came to our attention, not because it's a good plug-in (although it is), but because it brings up a flaw with CMOS sensors: Video cameras using CMOS sensors tend to suffer from a major annoyance in the form of skewing anytime the camera is shifted or a fast-moving object flies through the frame. This is mainly due to the line-by-line top-to-bottom scanning done by these cameras and it will make your videos look like a mild acid trip.

The good news is that this pesky issue can be corrected post-production with tools such as RollingShutter. What RollingShutter does is use Local Motion Technology to correct that unsightly jiggling. This means that rather than globally correcting entire frames, the plug-in corrects individual parts of the images and prevents accidental introduction of new distortion.

Your camera won't learn to focus on the fly all of the sudden, but the difference in the before and after clips in the video is pretty huge and almost makes RollingShutters $500 price tag an easier pill to swallow for those who only want their jello to wiggle and jiggle. [The Foundry via badrobot]

The 1520 x 2032 pixel image looks very videoish, just like the iPhone. I was hoping for a better camera, but I guess that everyone is cutting corners when it comes to smartphones—and there's not enough space to make things a whole lot better.

But since one photo alone is not good enough to judge the quality of the camera, here is a gallery taken by Rik Sagar—Multimedia Software Engineer at Palm—with a Pre.

I wish he had some taken in darker environments, to see the speed, but it doesn't look much different from the iPhones or Blackberries of this world. I hope someone releases one with a better camera built-in, at least as good as the ones found in some cameraphones. [Flickr—thanks Stephan—and yfrong via Twitter—Thanks Kat]

Seriously. When I was around eleven years old, for some reason I spent a lot of time thinking that me and my brothers were all robots. I imagined that somewhere inside me there were chips, valves, and strange circuits. Some nights I couldn't even sleep thinking that my parents-who I thought were human-would come at night to open some hidden compartment and recharge my batteries or access my memory.

Definitely, this image scares me to no end. [Dark Roasted Blend]

The Lunar Orbiter missions included five spacecrafts dedicated to map the entire lunar surface, a task necessary to select the landing sites for Apollo. The first three missions focused on twenty potential landing sites, while the two last ones—which flew high altitude polar orbits—took photographs of 99% of the surface with a resolution that ranged from 60 meters to an stunning 2 meter.

While these probes were not as sophisticated as the HD cameras of the Selene spacecraft developed by the Japanese space agency, the NASA orbiters had a clever imaging system that achieved similar results four decades ago. It included a dual lens camera—one 610 millimeter narrow angle for high resolution and an 80 millimeter wide angle for medium resolution—, a film processor, and a scanner. Both lenses were aligned to expose the same part of the 70 millimeter film roll, so the high resolution image area was centered with the medium resolution area.

This was more complicated that it sounds: Since the spaceship was cruising above the lunar surface, they had to compensate for that motion. Using an electro-optical sensor to measure the distance while a small motor shifted the film so the second exposure exactly matched the first one. After that, the film was processed, scanned, and the information send back to Earth, where it was stored in analog tapes.

Now, the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project at NASA's Ames Research Center, is retrieving and analyzing all the data stored in those tapes. To do this, first they restored the original tape recorders and 1,500 of these tapes. Then they digitized the data into modern computer, putting it through special software designed to extract all that information to produce the image you are seeing here. Their goal is to do this with every single image lurking inside those tapes, which then will be mapped to standard coordinates and sent to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

Their objective is not only preserving and enhancing these historical documents, but also provide the scientific community with refreshed information prior to next year's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission. [NASA]

More Gizmodo Sunday Eye Candy

The Mac in question is a 2.2GHz MBP with an undisclosed amount of RAM installed. The user, Flickr member burnflare92, stated no slowdown was detected at all. I find that a little hard to believe, as mine lags a bit with a mere 20-plus apps running, even if it is a 2.16Ghz, 2GB RAM MBP. What do you guys reckon: is zero lag with 150 apps running total BS? [Flickr]

Hit the link to learn of other galactic fantastic Apple iPods. [TUAW]

That picture is our own confirmation shot, but try it for yourself and see. Who is this Wheelchair Dude? Does Wheelchair Dude know he is featured in Apple Thesaurus? Where was this vestibule? Why does the narrator of the dictionary/thesaurus always leave out the important details? Is Wheelchair Dude protecting New York City when we are not looking? If you observe him, tell him his cover is blown, and he better have a damn good excuse for all that vigilante work he's been carrying out. [Cuberoot]

*Image taken in the Virgin Music section of Myer Sydney City store on 26 December 2007. [phlog] Thanks Derek!

Try it out for yourself. The image above of a cat drinking a soft drink yielded the following fifteen results: man-made, texture, color, people, indoor, food, painting, royal_guard, fruit, feast, holiday, mural, cloth, abstract, guard. Not all words I'd choose to describe a thirsty kitty, but not bad for a bundle of electronics. – Karson Thompson

Automatic Linguistic Indexing of Pictures [via Technology Review]