Build A Beauty Dish From An IKEA Lamp

We featured a few beauty dishes before, one made from a turkey pan, and one made from soup bowls. (Even when it seems like DIY, it is actually about food).

With a recent mention about the connection between DIYP and IKEA, I thought that it would be fun to feature a beauty dish made with the very appropriate named IKEA FOTO.

It is a simple build, the smarts here are in the bracket that takes the load of the strobe head and allows for easy mounting on a lightstand or a boom. [read]

Kanex mLinq $99 video adapter does 1080P through your USB port

Let me echo the author that IF this works as advertised.

If this product works as advertised, I see huge potential.  The new $99 Kanex mLinq adapter (PDF) does something pretty simple and incredible.  It plugs into your Intel-based Mac’s USB port and outputs to HDMI at full 1920×1080 (1080P)  HD resolution…with sound.  The device is even powered by the USB port so there are no messy extra wires to contend with.  You will need to install some software first (provided) but if it works at a respectable frame rate, this product is a winner in our book.

The device will do smaller display resolutions as well.

For older Macs that don’t have the Audio built into the Mini Displayport/Thunderbolt port, this may be the best option for HDMI video out.  For newer Macs that have maxed out their display ports, another one is now available.

We’re working on getting a demo and hope to have a review up shortly. [via 9 to 5 Mac]

Happy 77th Birthday, Bob Moog!

In honor of Bob Moog’s 77th Birthday this week, Moog engineer Steve Dunnington summons a Minimoog Voyager Orchestra to play a Mooged Out version of what else?…Happy Birthday!

Steve overdubbed 6 tracks of Minimoog Voyager, one voice at a time, to realize this rendition of Happy Birthday. Using sounds from the Voyager factory presets, this special version of Happy Birthday for Bob was envisioned as a stylistic mashup of Kraftwerk and Jean-Jacques Perry. Both are artists who helped put the Moog Synthesizer in the ear of listeners all over the world. [view video]

Map: The Electric-Car-Charging Hot Spots Of America

For electric cars to bloom, there needs to be a place to plug them in. So if you’re looking to predict where electric cars are going to catch on, looking at charging stations isn’t a bad place to start. Car Stations is a simple Google maps mashup that shows all the electric car charging stations in America. It lets users add them as they find them, and offers you directions to the nearest one. But perhaps most interestingly, it paints a fascinating picture of the investment in electric car infrastructure around the country. [read]

Believe the Hype: Former Apple engineers release Flash-killing HTML5 authoring tool

For all the talk of HTML5, web developers nowadays are still doomed to hard-coding pretty HTML5 websites. Deciding enough is enough, two engineers left Apple to found Tumult, a Y Combinator-funded startup. Their goal: Address a chronic shortage of decent HTML5 authoring tools. What, you didn’t think Adobe’s Creative Suite is the be all end all of web development?

The result of their undertaking is Hype, a brand new Mac application taking the pain out of creating eye-catching animations on the web that don’t require the Flash plug-in. Jonathan Deutsch, one of the co-founders and former engineering manager for the Mail.app backend, explains in an interview with Paul Hontz’s The Startup Foundry: [read]

20 Reasons Why Your Website Design Sucks Part 1

We all have or have heard about those clients from hell, those that really love pink pages with red text. Even worse, what about those people who call themselves “web designers” with expensive prices and services listed on their really messy, horrible and amateur portfolios, just because they made their uncle’s business page and they liked it. Unfortunately, many people believe that web design is all about personal style and smart IDE’s with pre-built buttons. Let me tell you something – they are wrong. I love to play football, but that doesn’t make me a professional player, and Dreamweaver does not make you a professional web developer. Web Design and development demands knowledge, practice, daily effort to learn and study, and passion, like professional football players. [read]

———————— Need help?  3 Penguins Design – Joe Randeen

HTC boss does some field research in Apple’s Palo Alto store

Apple’s pull is virtually impossible to resist, we’ve all known that. Despite fierce competition from the likes of Samsung and HTC, Apple gets the utmost respect from rivals. See a female shopper in the above shot? That’s HTC’s co-founder and chairwoman Cher Wang, accompanied by husband Wen-Chi Chen, a CEO at VIA Technologies. The two were snapped up shopping for Apple gadgets at the Palo Alto retail store, reported the Chinese-language Mobile01 site. So, why on Earth would the couple want to set their foot inside an Apple Store? [read]

Underextended

There is a lot of fear associated with ‘overextended’.

Take too much financial risk, expose yourself to the vagaries of the market and you’ll end up stressed, bankrupt and overextended.

Stretch your knee too much in the wrong direction after a long swim and the doctor will tell you that the ligaments are overextended.

Brands that get greedy and put their names in too many places in too many ways (as Tiffany’s did a generation ago) get overextended and take a long time to heal.

But what about the more prevalent, more insidious and ultimately more damaging notion of being underextended? [read]

Tamron 18-270mm Di II VC PZD Named Lens of the Year

The Tamron 18-270mm f/3.5-6.3 Di II VC PZD lens has won the Lens of the Year award at the Camera GP 2011 Awards hosted by the Camera Journal Press Club of Japan. Sporting an ultrasonic Piezo AF motor and vibration compensation, the Tamron 18-270mm F/3.5-6.3 Di II VC PZD is the world’s lightest and smallest 15x travel zoom for DSLR cameras with an APS-C sized sensor.

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Support JTF purchase the Tamron 18-270mm at:
AMAZON
- Tamron AF 18-270mm f/3.5-6.3 Di II VC PZD LD Aspherical IF Macro Zoom Lens with Built in Motor for Canon DSLR Cameras
- Tamron AF 18-270mm f/3.5-6.3 Di II VC PZD LD Aspherical IF Macro Zoom Lens with Built in Motor for Nikon DSLR Cameras

B and H
- Tamron AF18-270mm f/3.5-6.3 Di-II VC LD Asph. AF (IF) Macro Lens for Canon
- Tamron AF18-270mm f/3.5-6.3 Di-II VC LD Asph. AF (IF) Macro Lens for Nikon

How to Use Exposure Settings Creatively [photography]

Before pressing the shutter on your camera, many choices are made regarding exposure i.e. aperture, shutter speed, and ISO setting.

In theory there are various technically correct exposure settings, but is it the best creative exposure? Have you thought of the validity of your subject before setting the aperture, shutter speed, and ISO? If not then you haven’t been taking creative photos.

Mathematically there are many correct ways of choosing exposure settings. For instance, lets say your camera’s meter reading is telling you that a particular scene has a correct exposure of aperture f4 and 1/100 shutter speed. Lets assume ISO is set to 200 (unless auto ISO is enabled on your camera, ISO is always set by the photographer). Not only is f4 and 1/100 one way of getting a correct exposure, so is f5.6 and 1/50, and f8 and 1/25, f11 and 1/13, f16 and 6, and finally f22 and 1/3. Whenever the aperture “stops down”(increases in number), the shutter speed gets longer (the fraction becomes a larger whole number). Knowing that there are many different ways to get a correct exposure is the key to understanding how to take creative photos. [read]