Canon ships 30 millionth EOS SLR, 10 millionth EOS DSLR

Found on Engadget: "It's been 20 years since Canon shipped the first film-based EOS 650 AF SLR, and although the camera industry has undergone some fundamental changes since, the EOS line remains as strong as ever. Canon announced today that it's now shipped over 30 million EOS cameras, and over 10 million digital EOS units since launching those in 2000 with the EOS D30. With popular models like the XTi / 400D flying off shelves, it looks like we've got another 20 years to look forward to -- congrats, Canon!"

ElfYourself

Recuva

Recuva (pronounced "recover") is a freeware Windows utility to restore files that have been accidentally deleted from your computer. This includes files emptied from the Recycle bin as well as images and other files that have been deleted by user error from digital camera memory cards or MP3 players. It will even bring back files that have been deleted by bugs, crashes and viruses!

Check out other free tools from Piriform: CCleaner and Defraggler.

Adobe Lightroom Resources

If you’re an Adobe Lightroom user (or a wannabe), you’ll want to take a look at books and links mentioned in this article.

Other nice site is Sean McCormack’s Lightroom Blog

Linux Reader

How to get safe and quick access to Ext2/Ext3 Linux file systems? DiskInternals Linux Reader is an easy and short way to solve the problem!
Linux Reader is a Windows-Explorer like program that grants you read only access to your Linux partitions. So if you have a picture, video, OpenOffice.org document, or other file that you just want to access from Windows, Linux Reader could be the safer option.

HardInfo

System Profiler and Benchmark.
HardInfo can gather information about your system's hardware and operating system, perform benchmarks, and generate printable reports either in HTML or in plain text formats.

It can also be easily extended, for developer documentation and full source code (released under GNU GPL version 2) is available. Download.

Canon EOS 5D Mark II Rumors

Gizmodo found pictures of the yet-to-be-announced succesor of EOS 5D in the depths of some German forum.

Miro 1.0

Cross-platform, open source video application Miro is now available in a full-featured, bug-fixed 1.0 version. The program formerly known as Democracy Player plays almost any kind of video file, but its real value lies in its content fetching and organizing features. Miro can subscribe to video podcasts, grab from YouTube channel feeds or BitTorrents.

Two new fisheye APS-C lens from Sigma

Sigma has for the first time marketed a true fisheye optic for crop sensors, projecting a circular 180° image onto APS-C sensors. The new lens sports a focal length of 4.5mm and maximum aperture of f/2.8.



The other type of fisheye lens available is the diagonal variety which squeezes a 180° angle of view into a standard rectangular format. This new 10mm F2.8 EX DC Fisheye HSM from Sigma is just such a lens. That said, it captures a true 180° vista only when mounted in front of a Nikon DX sensor - users of Canon and Sigma DSLRs make do with 167° and 154° respectively. A built-in lens hood and HSM focusing are here and the lens will focus down to 1.8cm (0.7 in) from the front surface of the lens giving a reproduction ratio of 1:3.3.

Exceeded the maximum number of allowed connections

If you've worked on a network with Windows servers, you've encountered this error message many times:


This problem happens because Windows only allows two remote terminal services connections when you are in administrative mode, and you've either got two people already on that server, or more likely, you've got a disconnected session that still thinks it is active.

I found two articles that offer solutions:

Command Line Hack for: "Terminal Server Has Exceeded the Maximum Number of Allowed Connections"

Managing Terminal Services Sessions Remotely

Skype 2.0 Beta Adds Video for Linux

Skype's latest 2.0 beta for Linux adds long-awaited video chat features to the popular freeware, cross-platform Voice over IP (VoIP) application. Video chat has been available in Windows version of Skype since 2005. Download.

Homemade Bread

Bread is quite easy to make at home, and you only need a few staple ingredients to make a simple loaf. Here’s exactly how to make a delicious loaf at home from scratch.

How to Photograph a Rainbow

The Digital Photography School blog rounds up the best advice for shooting those rare occurrences.

Linux Flickr Uploading apps.

GNOME-based application Postr is a streamlined posting solution that features drag-and-drop file choosing, tag and description editing and, most of all, a clean, simple interface. Postr is a free download for Linux systems and available in many repositories. KDE-based Linux users can also check out Kflickr.

Natasza

FDRTools

FDRTools are a collection of capable tools for the ambitious shutterbug.

This software allows you to overcome the technical limitations of your digital camera and produce images with a contrast and dynamic range not considered possible so far.

The dynamic range enrichment is handled comfortable and far easier than with traditional methods. The performance characteristics outclass these methods.

Essential features:

Combine several differently exposed photos of an exposure series into an HDR image

Prepare your HDR images for display or print with high quality tonal range compression (tone mapping)

Import the RAW images of your digital camera

Export and archive the optimised HDR image in a format of your choice

Download free version.

DriveImage XML

Freeware application DriveImage XML creates and restores images of any drive or partition on your system. That means that next time you freshly install Windows on your computer (whether XP or Vista), you can back up that clean and sparkling system state with DriveImage XML. Download.

Lifehacker: Turn Thunderbird into the Ultimate Gmail IMAP Client

Interesting article on Lifehacker:
"Gmail's IMAP support roll-out this week had nerds all atwitter about the possibility of synchronized email access across devices, computers, and clients. IMAP is far superior to regular old POP for fetching your messages and maintaining your folder list whether you're on your iPhone, office or home computer. If IMAP's got you curious but you're not sure what desktop application to use with Gmail, consider the extensible, fast, cross-platform and free Mozilla Thunderbird, our beloved Firefox's little sibling. Here's how to get the full Gmail experience in Thunderbird with IMAP."

How to Taste Wine

wikiHow is a collaborative writing project to build the world's largest, highest quality how-to manual. This one is about wine tasting.
Whether you are vacationing in California, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, France or Italy, wine tasting is one of the most rewarding excursions available. If you long to walk through the vineyards and admire the grapevines and picturesque backdrop, wine glass in hand, you must first learn to appreciate the subtle beauty of wine.

31 Ways to Motivate Yourself to Exercise

There are a million ways to motivate yourself to exercise, actually, but these are a few that have worked for the author of this article. The things that have helped include finding a workout partner (one of the best motivators!), logging my exercise, reading magazines, books and websites, and rewarding himself.

New Canon superteles under development

Canon announced the development of two all-new telephoto lenses for use with its EOS SLR cameras: the EF200mm f/2L IS USM and the EF800mm f/5.6L IS USM. The Company will exhibit prototypes of the new lenses at PhotoPlus Expo.

The new Canon EF200mm f/2L IS USM and EF800mm f/5.6L IS USM, both of which are L (luxury)-series lenses incorporating a high-performance Image Stabilizer, feature optical systems utilizing special optical materials such as fluorite to correct chromatic aberrations, making possible high-resolution, high-contrast shooting performance.



The Canon EF200mm f/2L IS USM, targeting users who seek a brighter lens for portraiture and indoor sports photography, realizes a large aperture of f/2. The EF800mm f/5.6L IS USM, expected to deliver telephoto performance surpassing the current top-of-the-line EF600mm f/4L IS USM super telephoto lens, is being developed in response to requests from users working in the fields of sports and news photography who are looking for a high-performance lens that offers a longer focal length.

Digitize Your Analog Images at ScanCafe

If you've got a drawer full of photographs you'd love to preserve digitally but don't feel like going through the work of scanning every one yourself, send them to web site ScanCafe for cheap and professional scanning. The service charges $0.19 for each negative and $0.24 for each slide you accept (you can reject up to 50% for whatever reason, whether you don't like the quality or you just don't want the image). The door-to-door round trip will take approximately seven to eight weeks, but the quality is excellent and price is very competitive.

openSUSE 10.3 released

A collection of major changes and additions characterizing the current openSUSE Linux 10.3 release:

Linux kernel 2.6.22.5, Alsa 1.0.14

glibc 2.6.1, gcc 4.2.1

autoconf 2.6.1, gdb 6.6

libzypp 3.25.0

bash 3.2, core-utils 6.8

KDE 3.5.7 and KDE 4 Preview

Gnome 2.20

X.Org 7.2

AppArmor 2.1

OpenOffice.org 2.3

Boot time is vastly improved

GNOME 2 is installed under the /usr file system hierarchy since openSUSE 10.3 and KDE 4 now follows. KDE 3 will stay in /opt for compatibility reasons.

Includes a program called Giver that can be used to transfer files with other Giver users. Any Giver users on the network are automatically recognized, and the transferring works without any extra configuration.

Available for i386, x86_64 and PowerPC architectures.

Retail product: 16 GB on 2 DL-DVDs for 32bit and 64bit, printed user manual, free installation support

Skype releases its Skype 1.4 Linux version

After five months of beta testing, the Internet phone and chat application company, Skype, has released its Skype for Linux 1.4 version. New features include Call forwarding, which forward your Skype calls to a phone or mobile, and Birthday reminders, which subscribers automatically receive an alert when one of the contacts celebrate birthday. Other features include group chat with up to 100 people or conference call with up to nine others. It still lacks SMS and video support that existed in other platforms.

Download TV Torrents and Watch TV Online with TIOTI

Web site Tape It Off the Internet (TIOTI) is an online television portal designed to help you find and watch your favorite TV shows, either through streaming online video, BitTorrent downloads, or links to purchase the episode or season from iTunes or Amazon.

Sleep: Reboot Your Brain with a Caffeine Nap

Scientists say that a successful midday nap depends on two things: timing and (no kidding) caffeine consumption. Experiments performed at Loughborough University in the UK showed that the sleep-deprived need only a cup of coffee and 15 minutes of shut-eye to feel amazingly refreshed.

Network USB Hub

Belkin is finally shipping the Network USB Hub this week. The five-port USB hub "simulates a direct USB connection" that allows you to use all your USB devices over the network.

Specifications:
Ports

1-10/100Base-Tx auto-sensing and auto-uplink RJ45 port

5-USB2.0 ports

Network Standards

IEEE 802.3 10Base-T

IEEE 802.3u 100Base-T

Protocol Supported

TCP/IP

NetScout buys Network General

NetScout Systems wants to purchase Network General for $205m, the company said today. The takeover will be the third time the once-leading packet monitoring firm has changed hands, 10 years after McAfee purchased Network General for $1.1bn. I used to work for NGC (formerly Network Associates) for 6 years and Netscout was always perceived as arch rival.

Chronology:

1986: Network General Founded with Sniffer software.

1992: Passes on acquiring Frontier Software Development (which becomes NetScout).

1997: McAfee merges with NG for $1.1bn, renamed Network Associates.

2000: I joined Network Associates.

2003: Silver Lake Partners purchases Sniffer Technologies unit for $275m, renamed Network General (McAfee reverts to previous name as well).

2006: I left Network General.

2007: NetScout purchase for $205m.

Canon EOS 40D review roundup

20D to 30D upgrade was minimal. Is 40D real enhancement? Read these reviews and decide yourself.

CNET Asia

Cameralabs

Bob Atkins

The World According to Roland

DP Review

Luminous Landscape

Photos by Jay

PopPhoto

ePhotoZine

Coffee Drinks Illustrated

Blame Canada!

In article written for Canadian newspaper "The Daily Gleaner" by Don Macpherson I read this paragraph: "Schindler was a German industrialist who's been credited with rescuing more than 1,000 Jews during the Holocaust by having them work in his factories rather than being sent to certain death in a Polish concentration camp." What in heck were "Polish concentration camps"? This guy is calling himself professional journalist and he did not check basic historical facts?

Setup your FC4 iSCSI target in 5 minutes

FedoraNEWS.ORG ultimate guide how to setup your iSCSI target on a Linux FC4 machine. This article doesn't include the setup guide for Linux iSCSI Initiator. However, it does tell you how to download and use a Microsoft iSCSI Initiator for use on a Windows server/client PC for iSCSI Initiator role. You can read all about iSCSI on Linux here.

DPReview: Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III

Canon raises the stakes in the professional photography market with the launch of the 21 Megapixel, 5 frame per second EOS-1Ds Mark III. Delivering 14-bit depth resolution from a newly developed 35mm full frame CMOS sensor, Canon’s new flagship digital SLR produces files that convert to over 100MB uncompressed 16-bit TIFF, setting a new benchmark in image resolution and sharpness for 35mm-format digital photography.

DPReview: Canon EOS 40D

Canon today introduces its latest digital SLR for advanced amateurs and semi-professionals: the EOS 40D. With a 10.1 Megapixel CMOS sensor, 6.5 frames per second burst performance, a newly developed AF system and 3.0” LCD with Live View mode, the EOS 40D makes significant advances in both performance and versatility.

Photo Contest: Canon Photography in the Park

Grand Prize: A vacation for two to a national or state park.

1st Place: EOS 5D / EF 24-105mm F/4L IS USM kit / PIXMA Pro9500 Photo Printer

2nd Place: EOS 30D / EF-S 17-85 F/4-5.6 IS USM / PIXMA Pro9500 Photo Printer

3rd Place: EOS Digital Rebel XTi / EF-S 18-55mm F/3.5-5.6 USM kit / PIXMA Pro900 Photo Printer

Grocery Guy - best way to sharpen a knife

Grocery Guy's blog and his video on the best way to sharpen a knife at home. He offers some fantastic advice and makes the process of sharpening your steel easy to understand. Sharpening your knives at home is initially a bit of a time commitment, but is worth the effort because having good tools makes your time in the kitchen better spent.

Eight foods you should eat every day

Website BestLife suggests eight foods that you should eat every day to ensure you've hit all your nutritional bases. In short, the list looks like this: spinach, yogurt, tomatoes, carrots, blueberries, black beans, walnuts, and oats. The article points out why each food is so worthwhile, highlighting effects like sexual enhancement, muscle growth, brain stimulation, and more.

Disable Windows Update restart nag

To stop this service, open [Command Prompt] (Start>Run>cmd>Enter) and type the following command sc stop wuauserv. This will not prevent Automatic Updates from starting at the next boot. So don't worry, you'll keep getting Windows updates. Just don't forget to restart eventually.

Lifehacker: Top 10 PDF Tricks

In Lifehacker article: 'The PDF file format is one of the best ways to publish, save and exchange well-formatted documents that will look exactly the same regardless of the device or computer you open them on. Whether it's your résumé, a tax form, e-book, user guide or a web page, you can't go wrong using a PDF. Chances are you've already got a free PDF reader installed on your computer, but you can do a lot more with your PDF files than you might think. Hit the jump for our top 10 list of techniques for converting, exchanging, sharing, managing and editing PDF documents.'

FastStone Photo Resizer

FastStone Photo Resizer is an image converter / resizer intended to enable users to convert, rename, resize, crop, rotate, change color depth, add text and watermarks to images in a quick and easy batch mode. Drag and Drop mouse operation is well supported.

Control your webcam with your browser with Seenly

Seenly displays live video from your computer's webcam in your browser of choice (instead of using desktop software.) Seenly can take pictures using your webcam —which you can then save to your hard drive or store in your Seenly account.

IEs4Linux

You can now install Internet Explorer 7.0 in Linux with the latest beta release of IEs 4 Linux. IEs 4 Linux now includes a graphical installer and gives you the option of installing Internet Explorer 5.0, 5.5, 6.0, 7.0 and the Flash plugins.

What to Do When You Lose Your Photos on Your Memory Card

Tomas Hawk wrote in his blog: "Don't panic. Like I said. You will probably be able to get the shots back. " I read article and found that some interesting comments bellow. Especially link to this website with lots of info about undelete software. I personally used ImageRescue which comes with some Lexar CF card I bought. Tomas Hawk recommends PhotoRescue.

Automate free software installations with Win-Get

Windows only: Freeware command line utility Win-Get is a Windows version of the popular Linux command line tool, apt-get. Win-Get can automate the installation of freeware applications with a simple command line syntax. For example, you can download and install the latest and greatest Firefox with win-get install firefox. This kind of command line install isn't for everyone, but it really can be much quicker than hunting for web sites and download links when you just want to download an app. Win-Get is free as in speech, Windows only, works with any application that is free as in beer.

FitDay

FitDay is a new tool to help you achieve your nutrition, weight loss, diet & fitness goals.

Share files with Firefox and AllPeers

The AllPeers Firefox extension adds drag-and-drop peer-to-peer file sharing to the comfort of everyone's favorite browser.

Click through to the gallery below to get a glimpse of how AllPeers makes it easy to share everything from web pages to large files with your friends or family through Firefox.

Kingston Technology Boosts CF Ultimate Card Write Speed to 266X

Kingston Technology Company, Inc. today announced it is increasing the write speed of its popular line of CompactFlash® Ultimate memory cards to 266X – twice the minimum sustained write speed previously available in the Ultimate line. Kingston® CF Ultimate cards will also have an added feature of free MediaRECOVER® data recovery software that serves as a recovery tool to help restore lost, deleted or corrupted image files.

Capacities(a): 2GB, 4GB, 8GB
Dimensions: 1.43" x 1.68" x 0.13" (36.4mm x 42.8mm x 3.3mm) - CF Type 1
Speed Rating(b): 45MB/sec. read rate and 40MB/sec. write rate
Data Recovery Utility: MediaRECOVER for Windows/Mac

SanDisk Extreme Ducati Edition CF and SD Plus Cards

Sandisk has introduced its new 'Ducati Edition' range of high speed flash memory cards, inspired by its sponsorship of the Ducati Corse MotoGP team. Available in CompactFlash and SDHC formats with capacities of 4 and 8 GB for the CF and 4GB for the SDHC, the new media are Sandisk's fastest yet - claimed to reach speeds of 45 and 20 MB per second respectively. The SDHC card is of Sandisk's 'Plus' design incorporating a USB plug into the body of the card which is protected by a hinged section of the shell - until now this feature has been limited to the Ultra II range.