Hasta La Gadget!

‘Tis a sad, sad day for fans of all things retro. In a developed nation dominated by high-speed connections, near-ubiquitous 3G and sub-$€300 computers, it’s more than a little astounding that the Minitel is just now being axed by France Télécom. Originally, the aforesaid machine was ordered by the French government in the 1970s “as part of an initiative to get people to share information and, eventually, reduce the consumption of paper.” In a bid to rapidly increase adoption, the terminals — complete with a monochrome screen and bantam keyboard — were actually doled out to denizens free of charge, with access billed on a per-minute basis. It obviously required a phone line, and things were kept understandably simple; users rarely did more than shop for train tickets, check the occasional bank account and peruse the phone directory. Astonishingly, France’s precursor to the internet still raked in €30 million in revenue last year, but the time has finally come to push existing users onto more sophisticated solutions. As of June 30, 2012, “the Minitel will die.” ‘Course, the service itself will be the only thing shuttered — those memories are bound to last a lifetime.

Broadband claims another: France Telecom putting the kibosh on Minitel originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 25 Jul 2011 11:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you insist on using film, this DIY reflector might help you get your photos into your computer. Photo Andrew Lewis

If you have a bunch of old negatives that you’d like to get into your iPhoto or Picasa so you can process them and actually look at them once in a while. then you might want to try Andrew Lewis’ cheap-o DIY project that will help your flatbed scanner get better scans of your negs. It’s pretty simple — a triangular box made from silver cardboard which will reflect light to illuminate the film from behind.

If you still shoot film — using a Lomo, perhaps — then easiest path to digitization is to have the lab give you a CD of TIFFs or JPEGs along with the processed prints. For everything else, this virtually free hack might help.

Download Andrew’s PDF template and print it on the reverse side of a sheet of silvered card. cut, score, fold and glue it into a prism-shaped reflective chamber. Andrew says that it lets you scanner light the slide or negative from the rear, giving a proper, contrasty scan.

You’ll want to place the box perpendicular to the travel of the scanning head. This will let its white light enter into the chamber from the side. Placing it longwise will only let light enter through the neg itself, which kind of defeats the object of the lightbox.

This DIY project looks easy, fun and effective. It also highlights one of the main reasons I’ll never bother with film again: its just a pain in the ass to deal with.

How-To: Turn Slides and Negatives Into Digital Photos [Craft via Photojojo]

See Also:

• Canon Film Scanner Accentuates Positive, Eliminates Negative …
• Short Shot on Flatbed Scanner Screens at Disposable Film Fest …
• Scan Old Negatives with a DSLR and Toilet-Paper Tubes

The retro X100 brought out all our kleptomaniacal tendencies when we first went hands-on, and it has since impressed virtually every other lucky soul who’s come into contact with its build quality and groundbreaking integration of a big APS-C sensor within a compact body. But, just as you often find in extremely beautiful humans, the camera’s brains were slightly haywire: in particular, it tended to forget or confusingly alter crucial ISO, dynamic range, macro and drive settings when shifting between shooting modes. Fortunately though, many of these niggles can now be nuked by downloading firmware update v1.10 at the source link. The update promises a total of 22 fixes and modifications, which are listed in full in the PR after the break. Of course, some annoying issues will remain outstanding with this $1,200 shooter, including slow focus-by-wire MF and strangely buried menu settings. We don’t know if they’ll ever be fixed, but the next time we get hold of one it’ll still be a morality-pounding wrench to give it back.

Continue reading Fujifilm X100 gets firmware update, 22 tweaks make the best even better

Fujifilm X100 gets firmware update, 22 tweaks make the best even better originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 24 Jun 2011 12:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Bird Electron charger powers your MacBook for a whopping two hours using ‘just’ eight c-cells

If you were looking for the most expensive and least ecologically-friendly way to power your MacBook, then you could do a lot worse than pick the MacBook Air External Power from Bird Electron. If your other criterion is to have a device that looks like a 1970s cassette tape recorder, then you really have no choice.

Here are the numbers. The asking price is ¥23,100, or around $290. Then you have to buy enough C-cell batteries (yes, I said C-cells) to fill it. It takes eight of them. Next, you’ll need to buy a MagSafe airline adapter, which is another $50.

Then, when your 11-inch MacBook Air has finally exhausted its five-hour battery life, you plug it into this money-sucking behemoth and enjoy mere two extra hours. At least you can head to the corner store and buy up their entire stock of C-cells to keep the thing going. Or, you know, spend the money on a coffee and recharge at a Starbucks.

It gets worse. The box weighs in at a whopping 1,050 grams, or 2.3 pounds, or just about the exact same weight as the 11-inch Air. And that’s without batteries. Add in eight c-cells and, according to this chart, you’ll add another 520 grams, or 1.1 pounds.

As a backup for disasters, when you can’t recharge even an external li-ion battery, this could be worth it. That’s a rather rare use-case, though. Still, it looks awesome, and that counts for something, I guess.

MacBook Air External Power [Bird Electron via Akihabara News]

See Also:

• External Battery Promises 16 Hours for MacBook Air
• MacBook Air Battery Easy to Replace