Hasta La Gadget!

Iwan Baan photographed New York City from the air last Wednesday, and his image has become perhaps the most iconic record of Sandy, gracing the cover of New York magazine and flooding the internet. This is how he got the shot. More »

In this age of digital photography, a picture can be transformed a thousand ways, made to look like a Polaroid snapshot or an antique image, given a moody or artistic or saturated look. Instagram, the social photography app, allows smartphone users to take a picture, apply a filter, and then send it off into the social networking sphere. Now, according to sources, Twitter is poised to take on the popular photography service by adding photo filters to its own mobile app.

The changes to Twitter’s mobile app are supposed to happen “in the coming months,” and will allow users to apply effects to photos directly without needing Instagram as a middle man. In addition, the sources claim that Twitter is also looking into adding other features to its app, including the ability to directly edit and upload videos. Presently, users must go through YouTube, Vimeo, or other video sharing websites.

According to the New York Times, the sources are Twitter employees who do not want to be named because they’re supposed to be staying mum on the project. Says one employee, Twitter’s “Very Important Tweeters,” namely big name celebs, would be “especially happy” for the addition of photo filters to Twitter’s mobile app due to their frequent use of Instagram to send pictures to their Twitter accounts. A Twitter spokesperson declined commenting on the claim.

This claim comes shortly after Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram for $715 million. The acquisition prompted Twitter to consider the purchase of its own photo service, with sources saying that both Twitter’s co-founder Jack Dorsey and executive chairman Dick Costolo were involved in the process. Ultimately, the company elected to build its own filters instead.

[via The New York Times]

Twitter to compete with Instagram by adding photo filters, says sources is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The swiveling displays on some modern cameras make it easier to shoot pictures from a variety of angles. iPhones and iPads don’t have swiveling displays (yet), but this attachable right angle lens can help even up the playing field.

The HiLo’s three lenses and prism help it do its job. So what can you do with a right angle lens? Watch the video below to find out:

Pledge at least $60 (USD) on Kickstarter to reserve a HiLo lens. What I want is a lens add-on that prevents people from shooting videos vertically.

[via HiLO Lens]

Today Google announced some new devices and updates, including the Nexus 4 smartphone, the Nexus 10 tablet, a 32GB Nexus 7, and an update to Jelly Bean that brings it to version 4.2. One of the new features in Android 4.2 Jelly Bean is called Photo Sphere, and it allows users to take panoramas in any direction that they’d like.

The feature has you starting in a central location, then all you have to do is move your device around to capture the images you want, going in any direction that you choose, meaning that you don’t have to go from left to right, or from the bottom to the top. After you’re done capturing what you want in the photo, simply go back to your central location where it then saves the image.

We already talked a little about Photo Sphere in our rundown of new features in Android 4.2, like additional dictionary items in the speech-to-text archive and improved keyboard suggestions, but Google has been pushing out more details to us about the feature. Obviously, Photo Sphere reminds us of Street View, and that’s actually where Google got the inspiration for Photo Sphere. Users can essentially create their Street View if they want.

Photo Spheres are stored as JPEG files and can be shared easily, since all of the information required to view Photo Spheres is embedded as open XML metadata in the image itself. This means you can easily email them to friends and family, and post them up on your favorite social network, whether that’d be Facebook, Twitter, or Google’s own Google+.

[via Hugo Barra]

Google’s Photo Sphere creates panoramas in any direction is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

A drop of water might seem mundane, but if you take a picture of one the right way, it can be absolutely stunning. No one knows that better than Markus Reugels, the guy who took that amazing “world in a drop of water shot.” This is how he does it. More »