How to take better vacation photos

Image stabilization, automated scene modes, and face, smile, or blink detection can only take you so far. To get the best photos, you need to know when and how to use all those fancy features of your digital camera, and you need to know a thing or two about composition and light. In a recent post on his New York Times Gadgetwise blog, Rik Fairlie shared 13 great tips for shooting better vacation photos. [Full disclosure: the photographer he interviewed for the Q&A is my husband, Dan Lipow, who teaches digital photography classes in exotic locales.] Here are a few tips that I found most useful:

How to make photos of landscapes more interesting

Change your perspective by getting very low or as high as you can. Most people don’t go that far: they stand there, frame the photo and click. Instead, try climbing up on a wall or getting down on the ground.

Also, look for ways to add perspective, include a foreground element — a tree or a bush — that is not in focus. If you have something that is on the edge of the image, it helps to frame what you’re looking at. This will help you get a more interesting shot.

How to take the best sunset shot
Underexpose it a lot. That will help you capture the incredible reds, rich oranges and yellows. I use the manual mode to underexpose, usually about two to four stops. The exposure compensation features on most cameras have only three stops, and some have only two stops. Manual mode provides the best way to reduce the light level.

How to get better photos in the bright mid-day sun
First, you can utilize your camera’s ability for exposure compensation. If you underexpose a very bright scene, by one-third or two-thirds of a stop, that adds richness to it. I also set my camera’s white balance to a cloudy setting or an open shade setting. These settings will help warm up the image, and that can add a lot more dimension to the photo.

Another thing, in planning your trip you should remember that there are places that are better or worse to be, depending on the time of day. If you are in a European city and want to go to the old quarter, which may be a warren of little alleyways, midday is a good time to be there. But if you’re next to an open area, a riverfront for instance, in the middle of a bright day, the afternoon is a bad time to be there. Go to river late in the day, and visit the old town in the middle of the day. It will be cooler there then, and the light will be right.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/digitalcameras/?p=1004

Related article

Making the most out of your megapixels  (http://blogs.zdnet.com/Berlind/?p=354&tag=btxcsim)

WebSites that help you lodge complaints

Whether you want to target politicians, your employers, or companies that have done you wrong, there are a variety of sites across the Web that will help you voice your complaints. But beware that not all of them will actually solve those problems.

Anonymous Employee Those having trouble at the office should try out Anonymous Employee. The service allows you to create a user name and password without requiring an e-mail address. After that, you can input the name of your employer, the person you want to contact, and the issue you want to make them aware of. Anonymous Employee automatically sends the message to the recipient without identifying you.

Better Business Bureau The Better Business Bureau site is one of the best places to lodge complaints. Right from the home page, you can access the organization’s complaint tool, which allows you to take issue with your vehicle, your cell phone carrier, a product or service outside of those two categories, or a charity. After inputting information about yourself, you can describe your issue on the site. It’s then filed with the Better Business Bureau and investigated.

CongressMerge If you’re unhappy with what’s going on in your state, CongressMerge can help you out. The site provides you with a search field to find all of your elected representatives. Once you find the politician you want to contact, it gives you a listing of all their phone numbers, a map to their office, and even their fax number so you can be sure to get in touch with them. You can also check out your elected representatives’ voting records on the site. It’s a great way to find all the means of communication you need to have your voice heard in the political process.

Electronic Frontier Foundation The Electronic Frontier Foundation is a great place to have your displeasure heard. The site’s Action Center lists all the issues the organization has identified. You can sift through those issues, find those that matter most to you, and send an e-mail to the appropriate recipients expressing your displeasure with the rest of the EFF community. It’s a great way to stage an online protest.

Federal Trade Commission The Federal Trade Commission also lets you submit complaints. You can file complaints about suspect business practices, identity theft, or “episodes of violence.” According to the organization’s site, it will investigate any complaints that it deems is part of a pattern, but it won’t solve individual disputes.

Project Vote Smart Project Vote Smart is a great way to research the political process. You can search for politicians, see how they vote, and determine if you’re happy with the way they are representing you.

Ripoff Report Ripoff Report provides an outlet for consumers who have been negatively affected by companies to issue complaints. As of this writing, Ripoff Report has more than 460,000 reports filed on the site.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10278209-2.html?tag=mncol;title

Giant Moa Rebuilt Using Ancient DNA From Prehistoric Feathers

Historical photograph comparing a kiwi, ostrich, and Dinornis (giant moa), each with its egg. (Credit: Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.)

Scientists have performed the first DNA-based reconstruction of the giant extinct moa bird, using prehistoric feathers recovered from caves and rock shelters in New Zealand.

Researchers from the University of Adelaide and Landcare Research in New Zealand have identified four different moa species after retrieving ancient DNA from moa feathers believed to be at least 2500 years old.

The giant birds – measuring up to 2.5 metres and weighing 250 kilograms – were the dominant animals in New Zealand’s pre-human environment but were quickly exterminated after the arrival of the Maori around 1280 AD.

PhD student Nicolas Rawlence from the University’s Australian Centre for Ancient DNA says until now, the scientific community has not known what the 10 different species of moa looked like. ”By using ancient DNA we have been able to connect feathers to four different moa species,” he says.

The researchers compared the feathers to others found in the sediments from red-crowned parakeets that are still living today, determining they had not faded or changed in colour. They then reconstructed the appearance of the stout-legged moa, heavy-footed moa, upland moa and the South Island giant moa.

“The surprising thing is that while many of the species had a similar, relatively plain brown plumage for camouflage, some had white-tipped feathers to create a speckled appearance,” Mr Rawlence says.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090630215938.htm

Return To The Moon: First Images Kick Off Mapping Mission

This full resolution detail is from one of the first images taken by a Narrow Angle Camera, part of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera imaging system. Visible are distinctive trending lineations, which are probably remnants of a catastrophic deposition of ejecta from a nearby impact. Older craters are subdued, while younger craters are crisp and sharp. Image width is 1,400 meters (0.87 miles), north is down. (Credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University)

NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) has taken and received its first images of the Moon, kicking off the year-long mapping mission of Earth’s nearest celestial neighbor. The LROC imaging system, under the watchful eyes of Arizona State University professor Mark Robison, the principal investigator, consists of two Narrow Angle Cameras (NACs) to provide high-resolution black-and-white images, a Wide Angle Camera (WAC) to provide images in seven color bands over a 60-kilometer (37.28-mile) swath, and a Sequence and Compressor System (SCS) supporting data acquisition for both cameras.

NASA reports that the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which launched June 18, is performing exceptionally well and spacecraft checkout is proceeding smoothly, so smoothly in fact that LROC was given an early, but short (two orbits) opportunity Tuesday evening to measure temperatures and background values while imaging. Since LRO is in a terminator orbit, much of the area photographed was in shadows, which is actually a good situation for performing engineering checks of camera settings, according to Robinson, with ASU’s School of Earth and Space Exploration. Much to the delight of the LROC team, a few of the images captured dramatic views of the surface.

“Our first images were taken along the Moon’s terminator – the dividing line between day and night – making us initially unsure of how they would turn out,” says Robinson. “Because of the deep shadowing, subtle topography is exaggerated suggesting a craggy and inhospitable surface. In reality, the area is similar to the region where the Apollo 16 astronauts comfortably explored in 1972. Though these images are magnificent in their own right, the main message

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090702170135.htm

Stephen Hawking: “Humans Have Entered a New Stage of Evolution”

Although It has taken homo sapiens several million years to evolve from the apes, the useful information in our DNA, has probably changed by only a few million bits. So the rate of biological evolution in humans, Stephen Hawking points out in his Life in the Universe lecture,  is about a bit a year.

“By contrast,” Hawking says, “there are about 50,000 new books published in the English language each year, containing of the order of a hundred billion bits of information. Of course, the great majority of this information is garbage, and no use to any form of life. But, even so, the rate at which useful information can be added is millions, if not billions, higher than with DNA.”

 

This means Hawking says that we have entered a new phase of evolution. “At first, evolution proceeded by natural selection, from random mutations. This Darwinian phase, lasted about three and a half billion years, and produced us, beings who developed language, to exchange information.”

But what distinguishes us from our cave man ancestors is the knowledge that we have accumulated over the last ten thousand years, and particularly, Hawking points out, over the last three hundred.

“I think it is legitimate to take a broader view, and include externally transmitted information, as well as DNA, in the evolution of the human race,” Hawking said.

In the last ten thousand years the human species has  been in what Hawking calls, “an external transmission phase,” where the internal record of information, handed down to succeeding generations in DNA, has not changed significantly. “But the external record, in books, and other long lasting forms of storage,” Hawking says, “has grown enormously. Some people would use the term, evolution, only for the internally transmitted genetic material, and would object to it being applied to information handed down externally. But I think that is too narrow a view. We are more than just our genes.”

The time scale for evolution, in the external transmission period, has collapsed to about 50 years, or less.

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2009/07/stephen-hawking-the-planet-has-entered-a-new-phase-of-evolution.html

Triple Fossil Find Puts Australia Back On The Dinosaur Map

Artistic representations of the three new Australian dinosaur taxa: Australovenator (top); Wintonotitan (middle); Diamantinasaurus (bottom). (Credit: Artwork by: T. Tischler, Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum of Natural History / Scott A. Hocknull, Matt A. White, Travis R. Tischler, Alex G. Cook, Naomi D. Calleja, Trish Sloan, David A. Elliott. New Mid-Cretaceous (Latest Albian) Dinosaurs from Winton, Queensland, Australia. PLoS ONE, 2009; 4 (7): e6190 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0006190)

Scientists have discovered three new species of Australian dinosaur discovered in a prehistoric billabong in Western Queensland.

Reporting on July 3 in the open-access, peer-reviewed journal, PLoS ONE, Scott Hocknull and colleagues at the Queensland Museum and the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum of Natural History describe the fossils of three new mid-Cretaceous dinosaurs from the Winton Formation in eastern Australia: two giant, herbivorous sauropods and one carnivorous theropod, all of which are to be unveiled in Queensland on July 3. The three fossils add to our knowledge of the Australian dinosaurian record, which is crucial for the understanding of the global paleobiogeography of dinosaurian groups.

Australia’s dinosaurian fossil record is extremely poor, compared with that of other similar-sized continents, such as South America and Africa. However, the mid-Cretaceous Winton Formation in central western Queensland has, in recent years, yielded numerous fossil sites with huge potential for the discovery of new dinosaurian taxa. Between 2006 and 2009, extensive excavations have yielded many well-preserved dinosaur fossils, as well as the remains of other contemporaneous fauna.

In a single, comprehensive, publication, Hocknull and colleagues describe the remains of three individual dinosaur skeletons, found during joint Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum and Queensland Museum digs in two different sites in the Winton Formation. They represent three new genera and species of dinosaur: two giant herbivorous sauropods and a carnivorous theropod.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090703070846.htm

Seasteading Is The Aquatic Answer To The Housing Crisis

The Seasteading Institute, committed to the ongoing development of ocean communities, has just announced the winners of their first annual design content. Could people really end up living in these hypothetical off-shore communities?

The design contest had five categories: Overall, Best Picture, Aesthetics, Personality, and Community Choice. (The winners from each category are shown in this post in that particular order, so the first design up top is the Overall winner, the one to the right is Best Picture, and so on.) With prizes ranging from $250 to $1000, the design contest attracted both amateur and professional architects from around the world, as the winners hailed from such far-flung locales as Estonia, Hungary, Brazil, and Minnesota.

Seasteading, a term derived from combining “sea” and “homesteading”, is a general term given to the notion of either converting existing structures, such as old boats or disused oil rigs, or custom-building new ones to allow people to live in the middle of the ocean. Generally, this also includes the interrelated goal of establishing a sovereign state on the open seas, away from any existing governmental structures on dry land. Patri Friedman and Wayne Gramlich – whose 1998 article “Seasteading – Homesteading on the High Seas” is generally given credit for popularizing the term – founded the Seasteading Institute in 2008 in order to better organize the seasteading effort.

A lot more pictures can be found at – http://io9.com/5303443/seasteading-is-the-aquatic-answer-to-the-housing-crisis

A Drug That Could Give You Perfect Visual Memory

Imagine if you could look at something once and remember it forever. You would never have to ask for directions again. Now a group of scientists has isolated a protein that mega-boosts your ability to remember what you see.

A group of Spanish researchers reported today in Science that they may have stumbled upon a substance that could become the ultimate memory-enhancer. The group was studying a poorly-understood region of the visual cortex. They found that if they boosted production of a protein called RGS-14 (pictured) in that area of the visual cortex in mice, it dramatically affected the animals’ ability to remember objects they had seen.

Mice with the RGS-14 boost could remember objects they had seen for up to two months. Ordinarily the same mice would only be able to remember these objects for about an hour.

The researchers concluded that this region of the visual cortex, known as layer six of region V2, is responsible for creating visual memories. When the region is removed, mice can no longer remember any object they see.

If this protein boosts visual memory in humans, the implications are staggering. In their paper, the researchers say that it could be used as a memory-enhancer – which seems like an understatement. What’s particularly intriguing is the fact that this protein works on visual memory only. So as I mentioned earlier, it would be perfect for mapping. It would also be useful for engineers and architects who need to hold a lot of visual images in their minds at once. And it would also be a great drug for detectives and spies.

http://io9.com/5306489/a-drug-that-could-give-you-perfect-visual-memory

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/325/5936/87

Tiny, printable batteries promise to change the face of obnoxious greeting cards forever

Researchers at the Fraunhofer Research Institution for Electronic Nano Systems ENAS in Chemnitz led by Prof. Dr. Reinhard Baumann have unveiled tiny, printable batteries that they hope to put into production for pennies apiece. The new battery prototype is primarily composed of a zinc anode and a manganese cathode that can be screen printed and covered with a non-printed template cover. Each mercury-free battery weighs less than one gram, and can individually produce about 1.5 volts of electricity. By placing several batteries side by side, however, up to 6 volts can be generated. The institute has already produced these little power houses in the lab, and hopes to see them into production by the end of the year. The batteries have a relatively short lifespan, making them suitable for applications such as powering greeting cards. All we can say is that this battery would have made the card we got two years ago that sang “Word Up” much, much awesomer.

http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/02/tiny-printable-batteries-promise-to-change-the-face-of-obnoxiou/

DARPA contractor shows off tiny robo-hummingbird UAV

We’ve seen plenty of tiny UAVs (or NAVs — Nano Aerial Vehicles — as they’re also known), but none quite like the robo-hummingbird that’s been in development at DARPA-contractor AeroVironment for the past couple of years. While we haven’t heard much about it during that time, the company recently completed its most advanced prototype to date, dubbed Mercury, and it’s taken advantage of the opportunity to show off all the progress it has made. As you can see in the video after the break, the bot is able to fly about and hover in place by mimicking the wing movement of a real hummingbird and, of course, be controlled completely untethered. What’s more, the firm says that the final version will actually look like a real hummingbird as well, and be able to be controlled from up to a kilometer away — even inside buildings, where a hummingbird won’t look at all out of place.

Check out the Video of it in action

http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/02/darpa-contractor-shows-off-tiny-robo-hummingbird-uav/