Hasta La Gadget!

Analog apes digital apes analog. The colors of Impossible’s new Polaroid film are wonderful. Photo Steve Maniscalco

If you want to shoot Polaroids, forget about Polaroid. The company is now little more than a label slapped onto plastic junk, which it then tries to make palatable by paying Lady Gaga to say nice things about it.

What you need is to find an old Polaroid camera (the proper ones that spit out the iconic square photos) and load it up with Impossible film. And analog-retro fans are in luck today, as the Impossible Project has launched a new film pack, the PX 680 Color Shade.

PX 680 is much like Instagram for real photos. The colors are vivid and sometimes rather skewed, and odd things can happen thanks to the fact that the emulsion remains sensitive to light for the first few moments after it pops out into the world. If you shield it from bright light after its birth and coddle it for four minutes, you’ll be rewarded with stunningly bright colors.

You have to follow the instructions, though. These suggest shooting straight into a box, shooting in a warm place to get brighter colors, and overcranking the exposure slightly to saturate the colors. And the pictures will continue to change for a few days after shooting. Try getting that kind of thing out of your digital camera.

The film works with Polaroid 600 cameras, as well as the SX 70 if it has a neutral density filter (the speed of the film is ISO600). A pack of eight shots will cost you $22. Available now.

Color Shade product page [Impossible Project. Thanks, Marlene!]

See Also:

• Impossible Project
• New, Vintage Polaroid Cameras Sell Out in Hours
• Rebel Film Developers Give New Hope to Polaroid Fans
• Photo Enlargers Loom Like Dinosaurs of the Film Age

For this week’s giveaway, courtesy of Swann, we’re serving up its new Emergency Strike RC helicopter.

Science! It’s the heady stuff that keeps the looneys in check and our feet planted on the earth. Back it up with a powerful CTIA lobbying effort and science can even move San Francisco policy. The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that The City’s law requiring cellphone retailers to label each device’s SAR level as tested by the FCC has been put on indefinite hold, with a watered-down version likely taking its place. Surely, this is yet another example of big business and government colluding to the detriment of man? Not really, not this time. As Joel Moskowitz, director at the IC Berkeley Center for Family and Community Health, and even the FCC will tell you, the SAR value is a poor measurement of radiation intake for consumers:

“The specific absorption rate isn’t a very useful measure because it’s the peak reading on a variety of tests conducted on cell phones to measure their radiation, but doesn’t indicate the average amount of radiation a user would generally be exposed to. You could buy a lower SAR phone, but on average it could produce more radiation than a higher SAR phone.”

Although changes to the law have not yet been formally introduced, they’ll likely result in retailers handing out “tip sheets” to customers that explain how to minimize radiation exposure from their new handsets. Ok, you win this time, reason, but we can still debate image artifacting on certain long-form birth certificates… to the choppa!

San Francisco backs away from cellphone radiation law, will distribute common sense instead originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 06 May 2011 06:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Popular Japanese glasses company Zoff have launched a new service on their website allowing users to try on their glasses using AR.

After downloading a plugin for the program users align their heads with the area marked out and the glasses appear on your face. It is impressive to see the glasses stay on the face as you tilt and move your head giving an idea of how they look from any angle. It was also possible to move a fair distance away from the webcam and the glasses still “stayed on”. You can then switch between a whole range of colors and styles to see which suit your face best and purchase them directly online. As you can see from the video you can also have a fair amount of fun seeing how a certain type of glasses may look on any face like object, or even making a particular celebrity look a little less/more cool.

Although AR mirrors are nothing new, and we have blogged about Shiseido’s Digital Cosmetic Mirror before, the technology is becoming more prevalent in the online marketplace aimed at driving sales up. Used with webcams in your own home this kind of AR technology could be great to help out those living in particularly remote areas too, where a short trip to the shops is impossible. Bringing the “high street experience” into the comfort of your home would also help those who have disabilities and find it difficult getting around busy city centers.

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Augmented Reality Cosmetic Mirror in Tokyo
UNIQLOOKS website for members’ UNIQLO fashion snaps
Electric Beauty Lift High Nose straightens, vibrates

Smartphones are getting kind of popular nowadays, in case you hadn’t noticed. The latest figures from IDC show a 79.7 percent expansion of the global smartphone market between this time last year and today, which has resulted in 99.6 million such devices being shipped in Q1 of 2011. That growth has mostly been driven by Samsung, which has more than quadrupled its output to 10.8 million shipments in the quarter, and HTC, whose growth has been almost as impressive. The other big gainer is Apple, with 10 million more iPhones shipped, but the truth is that all the top five vendors are showing double-digit growth. In spite of Nokia losing a big chunk of market share and RIM being demoted from second to third in the ranking, both of those old guard manufacturers improved on their quarterly totals. IDC puts this strength in demand down to the relatively unsaturated smartphone marketplace, and believes there’s “ample room for several suppliers to comfortably co-exist,” before ominously adding, “at least for the short term.” And after the short term, our break-dancing robot overlords take over.

Update: IDC has also released data for Western Europe that shows Nokia has lost the top spot both in terms of smartphones, to Apple, and in terms of overall mobile phone shipments, to Samsung.

Continue reading IDC: smartphone market grows 80 percent year-on-year, Samsung shipments rise 350 percent

IDC: smartphone market grows 80 percent year-on-year, Samsung shipments rise 350 percent originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 06 May 2011 04:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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