NEWS : TECH (NFPC)

Insta-Hate For Instagram's New Rules

Has a popular social network finally done the hitherto impossible: revise its privacy rules so drastically that a large chunk of its users flees? The situation is still developing at Instagram, but the free photo-sharing service that Facebook recently bought for $715 million in cash and stock may yet pull that off.

Instagram announced its new privacy policy and terms of service, both of which go into effect Jan. 16, in a low-key blog post on Monday. "Nothing has changed about your photos’ ownership or who can see them," it reassured users.

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That's true in a way that can look false. The new "ToS" document -- at over 6,000 words, it runs about six times longer than the old policy -- hides two inflammatory bits about a third of the way down.

One requires users to "agree that a business or other entity may pay us to display your username, likeness, photos [...] in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you." There's no opt-out provision and no exception for users under 18.

Photos on Instagram are public by default, and the old terms gave Instagram arguably even more leeway to monetize those images.

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But now it looks more blatant.

The new terms' next clause warns Instagrammers that "we may not always identify paid services, sponsored content, or commercial communications as such." The Federal Trade Commission, which frowns on ads that aren't labeled as such, may not be amused.

The new privacy policy, only slightly more verbose than the old, appears innocuous in comparison.

The perception that your photo could get sucked into somebody else's ad--without a chance to rake in the proceeds -- had upset enough Instagram users to jam the service's one endorsed photo-export option, a third-party site called Instaport.me.

Tuesday afternoon, co-founder Kevin Systrom posted a much longer follow-up that said Instagram would update the new terms to clarify that it would not sell photos to advertisers.

A service like Instagram -- with iOS and Android apps to update and servers to run--has to cover its costs somehow. But selling ads isn't the only way to underwrite a free product; one common alternative is to charge a minority of users for added features or capacity, as Yahoo's Flickr service does.

ANALYSIS: Is Internet Destroying Privacy?

(Disclosure: While I have a Flickr Pro account, I have done little with my Instagram account beyond the above images. Applying canned filters to smartphone photos to fake the appearance of age never excited me.)

And posting sweeping, jargon-saturated terms of service and pretending they're no big deal is a monetization strategy Instagram should have definitely known to avoid. Its new corporate overlords could have told it all about that; in some ways, Facebook now looks good in comparison.

• Since the summer of 2009, Facebook has been posting "redline" documents showing what language it will add or delete from its policies.
• For all the grief I've given Facebook about its privacy interface, it doesn't hide its privacy controls in its apps while keeping them off its site.
• Facebook lets advertisers highlight your interactions as "Sponsored Stories"--Systrom's follow-up identified that as a model Instagram is working towards--but those only cover designated types of user data and remain bound by your privacy settings.
• Two years ago, Facebook added a way for users to download all their data (Twitter is only just now catching up).

That last part is important. Not giving users tools to take out the data they've put in betrays a lack of respect. So does saying "trust us" while serving up several thousand words' worth of legalistic sludge.

Credit: Rob Pegoraro/Discovery

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Spherical Panoramas from a Phone

It's crazy to think how panoramic photography has advanced in this century -- from pasting together photos in a scrapbook, to fiddling with open-source panorama-stitching software, to getting simpler software from camera vendors, to having cameras assemble a panorama automatically from a series of shots, to having the camera take those photos for you when you sweep it in one direction.

Now, a new option in Google's Android 4.2 software adds an extra dimension to this art form with "photo spheres" -- interactive panoramas that you can pan around, and not just from side to side but up and down.

And creating them involves little more work than taking a standard panorama. Select photo sphere from the camera app's mode menu, and the software will prompt you to hold the phone straight and level by lining up a circle indicating your aim around a blue dot that represents the vanishing point.

With that first image recorded, the app will display four blue dots around it. Slightly turn the phone to center that circle over one of them, and the software captures the next photo.

Move the phone again, and you'll see another blue dot to aim for; keep doing this until you've got the scene captured, at which point tapping a button at the bottom of the screen stores and fuses the photos.

It took 41 photos to generate a photo sphere of Lafayette Square in Washington using a Galaxy Nexus phone. The only hard part was the degree of contortion required to take photos of the scenery directly behind me without moving my feet (changing places breaks this process).

The results look great, with only a few awkward seams where one constituent image didn't line up with another. That could have been the product of operator error; a blurry image of my fingertip definitely was.

But the non-interactive image above, a screengrab of that sphere as posted to my Google+ profile, should suggest how few ways you have to share spheres. You can let friends play with them in your phone's Gallery app, you can upload them to Google+ (try searching for "#photosphere"), and you can submit them to Google Maps, where they will augment the Street View panoramas that gave Android developers the idea for this. That last option requires Google to approve your sphere; to judge from the total of five shared from Washington, fewer people may be trying it.

That's it -- everywhere else, even your own computer, a photo sphere appears as a static photograph. Apple's abandoned QuickTime VR format may have required specialized composition software when it debuted in the mid 1990s, but you could post these spherical panoramas anywhere online, with Apple's QuickTime software needed to interact with them.

A spherical-panorama tool for iOS that I haven't tried yet, Pixeet, allows a slightly wider range of outlets, including Facebook and Twitter and free hosting at that French company's own site.

(Update, 11/25/2012: I should have noted Microsoft's Photosynth--not least since I wrote about it when it launched in a different form back in 2008--as another way to generate spherical panoramas. But that software's hopefully-soon-fixed requirement that viewers install Microsoft's Silverlight plug-in imposes its own compatibility issues.)

So while photo spheres rank as a neat addition to the panorama mode Google added to Android with last year's Ice Cream Sandwich release, the fact that you can't post a sphere on your own blog may hold it back.

So will the restriction of this to Android 4.2--like all new Android releases, it will only reach most Android phones with extra support from the manufacturers and carriers involved. And most of this year's phones have yet to get an update to the 4.1 version that Google shipped back in June.

Credit: Rob Pegoraro/Discovery

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3D Printer Turns You Into an Action Figure

Who here wants a super-realistic action figure of yourself, standing there on your desk with arms akimbo and a renegade sneer?

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On the very good chance you raised your hand, you might want to start pricing airfare to Japan. Why? Because in just over a week, a pop-up shop will open in Tokyo's Harajuku neighborhood that will feature a 3D-printing photo booth capable of printing out a miniature figurine of your likeness.

As part of an exhibition at the Eye of Gyre in Harajuku, Omote 3D Shashin Kanand will open on November 24. There, you can buy an impressively detailed doll of yourself, as long as you can handle standing still for 15 minutes while a technician scans your body.

You can choose from three sizes of figurines: 10 cm ($264), 15 cm ($402) and 20 cm ($528). Yes, they cost a lot, but it's a small price to pay for such exquisite detail.

BLOG: Become A Superhero...In Action Figure Form

If you can't spring for airfare to Japan, maybe a trip to Spain falls more within your budget. If so, head to Madrid and take the Metro to the Gran Via stop. Near there you'll find the studio for ThreeDee-You, a photo sculpture company that also offers personalized figurine services.

via iO9

Credit: Omote3d

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Galaxy Note II Is More Than A Handful

There must exist a great many people who either never use a smartphone single-handed or have much larger hands than me. And I am monstrously insensitive to every last one of them.

How else can I explain the gap between my dislike of ever-larger phones like Samsung's new Galaxy Note II and the popularity of these big-screen devices? I teed off on the first Galaxy Note here and elsewhere, yet Samsung sold 10 million copies of that enormous phone in nine months. And now this model, despite having an even larger display, has sold three million plus.

(To put those numbers in context, Apple says it sold five million iPhone 5s in that device's first weekend. But by any other standard, Samsung's phone-inflation strategy is working.)

ANALYSIS: Samsung's Galaxy Note: Large, Not in Charge

The Note II (available on AT&T, Sprint and, soon, Verizon Wireless for $299.99; T-Mobile has it for $419.99 before a $50 mail-in rebate) is built around a 5.5-in. touchscreen. A thinner bezel allows this Android phone to be slightly thinner than the original, 5.3-in. Galaxy Note, but that doesn't make it any less unwieldy.

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That older phone's 5.3-in. display made one-handed use uncomfortable, but landing a thumb on the far corners of the Note II's screen verges on impossible. You need to roll the phone slightly in your hand just to get the other side of that AMOLED screen close enough. Taking pictures one-handed may be even more awkward.

So if you will use this thing, you'll need both hands free. If you accept that requirement, what do you get in return?

Reading and viewing are certainly more pleasant on that larger expanse of glass; with its 1,280 by 720 pixel resolution, you can fairly describe the Note II as an HDTV in your pocket. That extra space also allows you to play videos and view Web pages in small pop-up windows.

Like the original Note, this model includes an S-Pen stylus that you can extract from a well on the side of the phone. It can function as a more precise substitute for a fingertip; if you depress a tiny button on its side, the S-Pen can also bring up shortcut menus and clip selections of the screen as screen captures.

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The Note II's bulk also accommodates an extra-large battery. An AT&T model loaned for this review lasted for 10 hours and 19 minutes of Web radio playback with the screen on--better than any other phone I've tested, much less most Android models on fast LTE connections. In a second test, it registered 85 82 percent of a charge after 24 hours left idling on a desk, almost as good as the iPhone 5.

I suppose those could be acceptable tradeoffs for losing the ability to use a phone with one hand. I have zero interest in that, but Samsung's sales numbers require me to accept that some people do.

But then there's the other issue with this phone: Samsung's inability to stop fussing with Android's interface.

Like the Galaxy S III, the Note II ditches Google's standard arrangement of menu buttons, impeding multitasking, confusing experienced users and burying Android's Google Now personal assistant. But then the Note II uses a completely different keyboard than the S III's, trading that model's irritatingly pushy auto-correct for one that doesn't fix your typos at all.

I worry about how Samsung keeps making ever-larger phones (will the Note III pack a 6-inch display?), but I worry more about how Android is getting lost in the hands of the most popular Android vendor.

Credit: Rob Pegoraro/Discovery

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The Hobbit: 2 Versions, 2 Releases: DNews Nugget

"The Hobbit" to Screen in 48 Cinemas: The highly anticipated film, "The Hobbit," has two versions and while both will be released this Christmas, the special version will only be shown in 450 theaters -- as opposed to the 4,000 for a normal release of this magnitude, reports The Verge.

It is all rather technical, but in essence there will be two versions of "The Hobbit" in theaters this Christmas, one that looks like a normal movie, and one that looks more real than real. But what does that mean?

Well, Peter Jackson's prequel/follow-up to the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy was filmed in 4K and at 48 frames per second. The term "4K" alludes to the number of horizontal lines of picture on the screen; 4K has 4096 lines where HD has only 1920. When you take width into account this means 4K has SIX TIMES more picture than HD -- simply put it's SUPER clear (it's even bigger than IMAX). Add to this that most films are shot at 24 frames of picture per second (or fps), "The Hobbit" is filmed at 48 fps -- twice as many.

Why would you film it this way? Clarity. More frames mean less blur when things move.

This might not interest you at all, but to get to the brass tacks: both of these versions will be the same film, but one will be super clear. Do you care? Which would you like to see? Let us know in the comments below. via The Verge

Find a theater showing the 48 fps version.

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The iPad Mini: Apple's Big Little Tablet

There's a company out with a new tablet computer that poses a direct threat to the iPad. Fortunately for Apple, that company is Apple, and that tablet is the iPad mini.

Apple picked the right name for this $329-and-up, 7.9-in.-touchscreen device: Just as the iPod mini (and then the still-smaller iPod nano) relegated the "classic" iPod to the high end of the market, this smaller model looks primed to become Apple's mainstream tablet.

ANALYSIS: Things Unsaid in Apple's New iPad News

Why? It does everything a regular iPad can do at a lower price and in a smaller package that, at .68 pounds, invites single-handed use. A big iPad still makes more sense as somebody's only computer and for some specialized uses; for instance, I'd rather edit pictures on its 9.7-in. display. But for most Web-plus-apps-plus-media use, Apple users need look no further than the iPad mini.

The initial knock on smaller tablets, coming from Steve Jobs himself, was that buttons on their screens would be too small to navigate by touch. That's not the case on the mini, where pretty much every interface ingredient is easy enough to nail with a fingertip. Thumb typing seems outright easier on that smaller expanse of glass, although the sharp edge of the aluminum casing around the screen may distract you.

Text, however, looks disconcertingly small at first. I got used to that quickly, but in some cases (for instance, the Facebook app's display of comments or the iOS notifications center's listing of Twitter and Facebook updates) I hope developers switch to larger fonts.

The lack of the "Retina display" resolution I appreciated so much on this spring's new iPad also sets the iPad mini back a little. That disadvantage looks more obvious when you inspect how text looks on the mini's 1,024 by 768 pixels next to the 1280 by 800 pixels packed into the 7-inch displays of Google's Nexus 7 and Amazon's Kindle Fire HD, each starting at $199.

The mini, despite being no thicker than a pencil and thinner than many chocolate bars, also manages to deliver battery life exceeding any other tablet I've tested and better than Apple's "up to 10 hours" estimate. It sustained 11 hours and 53 minutes of almost uninterrupted Web-radio playback with the screen on.

Yes, you need one of Apple's new Lightning cables to recharge it. I think that's less of a hassle on a device that people don't routinely plug into car stereos or alarm clocks.

But if the case to buy an iPad mini instead of the $399 iPad 2 or the $499 Retina-display iPad looks clear -- Apple says it's "practically sold out" of the mini -- things muddy when you bring in Android-based alternatives.

ANALYSIS: New iPad Mini Eats Steve Jobs' Words

The mini is more of an all-purpose traveling companion, with some 275,000 tablet-optimized apps and a 5-megapixel back camera, absent from those competitors, that takes pretty good shots outdoors.

But the Nexus 7 (my favored Android tablet) and the Kindle Fire HD offer more pleasant web and e-book reading at a considerably lower price. Then factor in the cost of added storage: going from 16 GB to 32 GB adds $50 to each, $100 on the mini. A bigger gap exists between the $299 bill for the Nexus 7's upcoming mobile-broadband version and the $459 starting price of an cellular-data mini, although that will support faster LTE access from AT&T, Sprint or Verizon.

Then you have the inevitability that next year's mini will feature a Retina display. If that doesn't bug you, however, you might as well replace any iPad on your shopping list with an iPad mini.

Credit: Rob Pegoraro/Discovery

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Google Street View Hits the Trails

There was a time when I saw the Google Street View car a lot in my town. It became almost a daily event. And then as quickly as it came, it disappeared. Now, in attempt to leave no stone unturned on this planet, Google is taking it to the trail.

In their blog post this week, Google introduced the Trekker, a 40-lb backpack with one of those big-balled camera systems, to span rugged terrain those little hatchback cars can't handle. The ball has 15 cameras inside that capture images every 2.5 seconds.

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On its first outing to the Grand Canyon, the Trekker was able to capture 360-degree images of the landmark through its Android-controlled platform. The Street View team is continuing this week through the South Rim in the Grand Canyon National Park, as well as the Bright Angel Trail and South Kaibab Trail.

So, aside from rugged terrain and national parks, where else could the Trekker go? How about Venice? The narrow streets and unpredictable water has made it virtually impossible to get shots of the famed streets through traditional Google means. That's just one of the places they hope to get into. For now, panoramic views of their current travels will be up on Google Maps within the coming weeks.

via Laughing Squid

Credit: Google

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Lifelog Yourself With Memoto

If you're quick to bemoan the over-sharing epidemic plaguing Facebook, Twitter and other social networks, the road ahead, I'm afraid, is only going to get bumpier.

However, if you're the type who thinks the world can't get enough photos of your daughter in her ballet tutu or snapshots of your brunch frittata, your ship has come in.

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Memoto is a Swedish-designed wearable device that allows a person to document every moment of her life. Simply clips it to a T-shirt and the device automatically captures a photo every 30 seconds with a 5-megapixel sensor. Once Memoto links up with a computer via Micro-USB port, the device uploads photos to the Memoto Web Service for sharing and archiving.

Each photo includes the current GPS position of the camera and a time-stamp for each image. The device is equipped with an accelerometer so every photo comes out correctly oriented regardless of how the camera is tilted. Memoto has LED lights that indicate remaining battery life and contains 8 GB of storage in a square unit the size of a matchbox.

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The Web service, which has yet to be finalized, is expected to cost five dollars a month when it's slated for release in 2013. The unit itself will cost $279 and be offered in the colors graphite, grey, white and orange.

If Memoto sounds like the kind of lifelogging gadget you need, you can contribute money to the company's Kickstarter campaign. Donate $199 and you'll receive a camera and one-year Web service subscription.

via Gizmag

Credit: Memoto

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Must-See Hyperphotos: The Ultimate Zoom

We've all seen movies like Limitless that open with the following scene: a zoom shot from afar that seems to infinitely descend into microscopic detail. To a degree, Google Earth gives us the same effect, albeit with blurrier end results.

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BLOG: A 50,000-Megapixel Camera Points and Shoots

So if you're looking for a crisper trip down the magnified wormhole, I suggest you have a peak at Jean-Francois Rauzier's Hyperphotos. They're 10,000 times the resolution of a regular photo and will allow you to get up close and personal like never before.

Actually, Rauzier's Hyperphotos are hundreds -- even thousands -- of images that he's stitched together with Photoshop. After photographing his subject from every angle for an hour or two, he begins the tedious task of stretching, bending and multiplying his images into a seamless collage that resembles a single photo.

While Rauzier's photos are more artistic playscape than true-to-life documentation, they're absurdly fun to explore. But procrastinators beware, the potential to waste mammoth amounts of time exploring every last excruciating detail is very real.

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If you'd rather purchase the actual physical images, you can through Waterhouse & Dodd. Or if you're tromping around the north of France, swing on by the Palais des Beaux Arts in Lille. Rauzier's Hyperphotos are part of a group exhibition there that will run through January 14, 2013.

 via Slate

credit: Jean-Francois Rauzier

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iPhone 5 Can Go The Distance But Gets Lost

The iPhone 5 has me torn: With this trim and light smartphone, Apple seems to have cracked one of the more intractable problems in the smartphone world -- but it's also created a new, unnecessary one.

The single best part of this new iPhone ($199 and up on two-year contracts with AT&T, Sprint and Verizon Wireless, with a prepaid deal due from Cricket Wireless this Friday) is what's hidden inside: the electronic wizardry that lets it survive most of a day on an LTE signal.

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Older Android devices have struggled to make it to lunch on power-hungry Long Term Evolution radios, but a purchased Verizon Wireless iPhone 5 only edged below 10 percent of a charge after 13 hours of regular Twitter, Web and e-mail use. In an overnight test of Web radio and online use with the screen kept on, this device lasted nine hours and 19 minutes -- one of the best results I've ever seen. 

But the results of later tests (7:44 of nonstop Web radio, 85% of a charge left after 24 hours idle) weren't quite as breathtaking.

That's still impressive when you consider that the iPhone 5's battery, as revealed in iFixit's dissection, falls short of the capacity of most Android phones.

And yet: Would making the phone oh-so-slightly thicker to accommodate a larger battery (and keep Apple's old dock connector and micro-SIM slot instead of replacing them with the smaller, incompatible Lightning and nano-SIM) yield a device that could survive a long workday and a late night?

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That endurance is more important than LTE support itself, since its velocity varies widely. At one blessed spot in San Francisco, Speedtest.net's app clocked Verizon's download speed at 28.18 million bits per second -- but near Dulles Airport, it slowed to 8.71 Mbps, faster than 3G but not mind-blowingly so.

The iPhone 5's 8-megapixel camera took some terrific shots outdoors, even in high-contrast scenes, but indoor and nighttime shots look about as grainy as other smartphones's work. Its new panoramic-picture mode only matches what competing phones offer.

Four days in, the iPhone 5's taller, 4-inch screen doesn't feel much bigger, although it does help to see an extra row or two of tweets and e-mail messages. The beveled metal edges around it no longer look as jewel-like as they did on Friday, thanks to scuff marks already picked up.

And then there's the Maps app you may have heard about. I understand why Apple needed a new navigation program; it was apparently never going to get features like turn-by-turn directions from Google.

But the software on the iPhone 5 (and on older models updated with Apple's new iOS 6) is dangerously clueless, far worse than I expected. It couldn't properly locate destinations as obvious as Dulles International Airport or Baltimore's Penn Station and provided directions on bridges that are closed or have been rebuilt in adjacent spots.

Apple can theoretically fix those flaws by throwing enough money and people at them. But Maps' clumsy handoff of transit directions to third-party apps -- sometimes separate ones for a city's bus and rail networks -- can't be cured unless somebody ships a comprehensive, worldwide database of transit systems.

You know, an app like the Google-powered software Apple evicted, or the far more capable program on such new Android phones as Samsung's Galaxy S III (warning: terrible keyboard) and HTC's One X series.

So it's not an obvious choice. If you rely on your phone for navigation, you may resent the iPhone 5 until Apple puts serious work into its mapping application or Google ships a standalone version of Google Maps.

And as Android users can attest after too many delayed updates to Google's operating system from manufacturers and carriers, pining away for a software update you desperately need can get old.

Updated 9/26 with additional battery-life tests.

Credit: Rob Pegoraro/Discovery

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