Hasta La Gadget!

It may look like a spotty, monochromatic water melon, but we’re taking NASA’s word on this one — the image above is the very first taken from an orbiting spacecraft of our solar system’s innermost planet. Mercury has been snapped by NASA’s MESSENGER probe, which is currently preparing itself to start on its elliptical trajectory around the planet and commence collecting data about it in earnest. Hit the links below to learn more about this bold exploration project.

Visualized: Mercury originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 29 Mar 2011 20:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This is a 40,000 megapixel, 280,000 x 140,000, 360 degree picture of the 868-year-old Strahov Monastery Library in Prague, Czech Republic. A lot of numbers, right? Here’s more: the gigantic picture is actually made up of 2,947 different images that added up to 283GB and took over 111 hours to stich together. More »

Given the impressive knockoffs and official camera kits we’ve seen, we’d say the iPad’s definitely got the stuff to help out most shutterbugs, but up until now, uploading content from a CF card wasn’t exactly easy. Well, our friends over at MIC Gadget recently showed off an iPad / iPad 2-compatible card reader that fixes that on the cheap. Simply called the CF card reader for iPad and iPad 2, the thing slips right into the slate’s dock connector port and, as you can see from the video below, it transfers HD video and high-res images in a snap — it also sports USB connectivity. Like its predecessor, the reader’s available from MIC for $29.90, but you’ll have to wait at least a month to get your hands on one. Oh, and a word of warning, you might want to make sure the iPad supports your camera’s video format before shelling out the dough, as MIC found the slab couldn’t playback video from a Canon EOS 5D Mark II.

Continue reading iPad, iPad 2 get unofficial CF card compatibility (video)

iPad, iPad 2 get unofficial CF card compatibility (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 26 Mar 2011 12:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Everyday is an iPhone app to make a movie of yourself getting old

Everyday is a single-serve iPhone app which looks like a lot of fun — if you have a little discipline. Essentially it is an app for snapping self-portraits, but it brings an extra feature not found in other photo-apps: time.

The idea is to snap a picture of your face every single day (that’s where the discipline comes in). Then, once you have a bunch of photos saved, you can stitch them together into a time-lapse movie. You may have seen this kind of thing before — movies spanning decades done by patient people with regular cameras. The difference with Everyday is that it is easy, even if you’re forgetful.

To take a snap, you line up your face with on-screen guides, or show a ghostly overlay from a previous shot. Then snap! That’s it. You can share the individual photos manually or automatically to the usual places — Flickr, Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr — and you can also have the app pop up a daily reminder for you to take the shot.

But the best part? It’s actually not the app, but the accompanying video spot, filmed by the ever soporific-seeming Adam Lisagor, the go-to commercial-maker for nerdy companies with something to sell. Check it out:

Everyday will cost you $2, and is available now.

Everyday product page [iTunes]

See Also:

• Portrait Machine
• Top 10 Wired Reader Self-Portraits, Decided by You
• Self-Portrait Add-On for iPhone is All Done With Mirrors

One of the great many announcements of CES 2011 was Lexar’s new pair of Class 10 SDXC memory cards, one sized at 64GB and the other touting a spectacular 128GB capacity. The two performance — minimum transfer speeds of 20MBps — and storage enhancers for DSLRs and camcorders have now started shipping, asking for a measly $200 and $330, respectively. Those are steep price hills to climb, to be sure, but they’re peanuts compared to the initial $400 and $700 MSRPs that Lexar was touting back in January. And hey, that Professional label adorning the new cards isn’t there accidentally either, Lexar’s offering a limited lifetime warranty with each storage cell. Full press release and locations where you can buy the new SDXC lovelies await after the break.

Continue reading Lexar now shipping 128GB and 64GB SDXC cards from the future straight to your door

Lexar now shipping 128GB and 64GB SDXC cards from the future straight to your door originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Mar 2011 16:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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