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Free photo and graphics suite

STOIK Imagic is a large, feature-packed photo album, organizer, manager, and editor. It's also a retouching tool, a calendar maker, a media cataloger, a video editor, and a drawing tool. In short, it's a full-featured graphics suite with an emphasis on digital photographs. At 80MB, it's a big download, but since it's compressed, it's a fast one, too, and setup is virtually automatic, including scanning your system for images. Anything else? You bet: it's free.

Like all proper graphics apps worth the name, STOIK Imagic's interface is finished in mod dark-gray tones with … Read more

Database economics in cloud and virtualization

Many of the most interesting big economic landmarks in IT have happened around what might be called "re-platforming," as users take existing applications and redeploy them on new platforms, such as we see when applications move from corporate data centers to the Amazon Web Services EC2 or the Rackspace Cloud.

We see this trend every few years, for example when the IT masses switched from the mainframe to the client server world, and then again when we went from big iron Unix to Intel-driven X86 commodity platforms. Today, cloud and virtualization represent the next major re-platforming trend as … Read more

Google Shopper app hits the iPhone

iPhone users can now rely on Google for a helping hand the next time they go shopping.

The search giant yesterday launched a version of its free Google Shopper app for the iPhone. The app, which has been available for Android users the past year, is essentially a mobile search engine for products, letting you compare prices and read reviews before you open your wallet.

The app offers several ways to search for products. You can type the name of the item in the search field. You can snap a photo of a book, CD, DVD, or video game or … Read more

Rudolph no longer a radar-nosed reindeer

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus, and he's equipped with the latest in satellite-based technology to get you your toys on time (and in one piece).

So says the Federal Aviation Administration, which announced this week that its safety inspectors had certified St. Nick's sleigh, Santa One, for its annual chimney-chasing trek around the globe.

"Children around the world will get their gifts on time, regardless of the weather, thanks to NextGen," a new air traffic control technology, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said in a statement. "We're proud to say NextGen … Read more

Floating camera captures sea and sky in one shot

Have you ever seen photos in which the bottom half of the frame shows the sea while the top portion displays the sky? Well, if you have an underwater camera, you could do that fairly easily by submerging the shooter midway underwater and shooting. Or, you could wait for Han In Kyung's Underabove, a concept dual-lens snapper that does the same thing.

Han's idea is to float the device. The submerged end would have a camera that snaps photos under the sea, while the top half of the shooter would capture the scene above water. It's not stated, but we're guessing the rig will combine the two shots into one. … Read more

eBay buys Milo to unite online, offline shopping

eBay has bought a local-shopping service that it expects will help both buyers and sellers by uniting online and offline shopping.

The auction site said yesterday that it has acquired Milo, a Web site designed to help shoppers find products available at their local brick-and-mortar stores and compare prices with those from online retailers.

Though pointing buyers to products at local stores may seem at odds with eBay's online marketplace, the company believes the acquisition will open up new opportunities for buyers and sellers.

"Since eBay is an online marketplace and doesn't compete with brick-and-mortar stores, adding … Read more

Red Hat acquires Makara for cloud platform

Red Hat jumped back into the acquisition game announcing this morning that it has acquired

Makara, a start-up focused on providing a cloud platform (platform-as-a-service, or PaaS) for Java and PHP applications on both public and private clouds.

The open-source stalwart has been on the PaaS march for the last few months for a number of reasons, including the necessity to support applications in multiple environments and demand for private cloud solutions from large enterprises.

If you read between the lines from Red Hat executive comments (and the rumor mill), it seemed like Red Hat had Makara, or a Makara-like … Read more

Red Hat announces Enterprise Linux 6

Red Hat today announced the availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, the latest release of its operating platform, saying it is designed to support the new enterprise architectures of today, whether physical, virtual, or cloud-based.

The company said the new release includes "hundreds of technical feature enhancements" that are designed to improve agility, reduce costs, and reduce IT complexity. It also includes a range of updated server and desktop apps. More importantly, the company said the new release is designed to be as "future proof" as possible.

Pricing was not announced, but the company is … Read more

Audeze headphones: Redefining the state of the art?

I've never heard anything quite like the Audeze LCD-2 before. This headphone somehow produces extraordinary clarity, openness, and articulation, but without exaggerated detail or annoyingly overdone treble. The Audeze LCD-2 is a game changer; no wonder it's getting raves from the online high-end mavens at Head-Fi. Audeze's co-founders, Alex Rosson and Sankar Thiagasamudram, are onto something.

The headphones feel great in your hands. Build quality is robust, but the design is nowhere as sleek as Sennheiser's high-end headphones. The LCD-2's impedance is 50 ohms, and the maximum power handling is a remarkable 15 watts, which corresponds to a superloud 133 decibel output! You'd be hard pressed to blow this headphone up by playing it too loud. The LCD-2's tonal balance is noticeably warm, but I never felt it was smearing detail or lacking in resolution. It also sounds great at quiet listening levels. Sure, one of the advantages of headphones is you can play music as loud as you want, but it's still nice to have the option of listening low, without losing detail or presence.

The LCD-2's unusual technology (planar magnetic, or orthodynamic) is currently only used by one other headphone manufacturer, Hifiman, and I raved about its HE-5 headphones last year. The LCD-2's huge headphone drivers (6.17 square inches each) are many times the area of any dynamic headphone I know of. Audeze's very large drivers project sound over most of your outer ears, and that may be the reason why the LCD-2 sounds more speakerlike than other headphones. It weighs a rather hefty 19.4 ounces (550 grams), but I found it comfortable over very long listening sessions. The LCD-2 is handmade in the U.S., with real lambskin leather-covered earpads, and real Caribbean rosewood earcups.

The LCD-2's headphone cable is detachable, via very secure mini-XLR plugs, and is therefore user replaceable. I opted for a Chain Mail 8, an audiophile upgrade cable from ALO. It seemed to enhance everything about the LCD-2's sound, which was awfully good with the stock cable.

The LCD-2's big drivers make bass, oh boy, do they make bass. If you really want to hear amazing bass, you have to get "Kodo: The Heartbeat Drummers of Japan" CD. The drums' big sound is beyond the abilities of most headphones, but here, over the LCD-2, the drumbeats were clear and powerful. Not the sort of flabby, thick, or overdone bass you get from DJ headphones, no, I'm talking about pitch-accurate, highly defined bass that also digs deeper into the very low bass regions than other full-size 'phones.… Read more