Technologies

Last week, I had a photographer friend (hobbyist, but very talented) ask me if it was still possible to make a living in photography. This coincided with a Facebook rant from a local pro about a small restaurant asking for free food photography in exchange for the dreaded “exposure.” There are really two questions here, but I think they tie in together nicely.  The question, I feel, is this: if people are asking for free/cheap work and photographers are willing to work for free/cheap, is photography still a viable business? This is an issue that’s discussed a lot online: complaints of a price race to the bottom, photographers with poor gear, photographers lacking skill, photographers working for free or charging expenses. In the UK, you can find event photographers working for as little as £50 a night, weddings being shot for £300, and portrait sittings for £30. At the same time, in my local area (Leicester, UK), there are wedding photographers booked out all yea...

SOUNDCAM is a new camera that lets you take pictures of  sound . It’s the first handheld camera that brings sound imaging to a size and cost that’s more accessible than industrial solutions that cost upwards of $100,000. “The system is intuitive and as easy to use as a smartphone,” the company says. “What makes it so special is its high speed and accuracy.” The camera works by combining 64 separate microphones, a traditional optical camera, and an integrated data analysis system. Using data from the mics, the system figures out exactly where in the frame the sounds are originating from and then overlays the high-resolution results in real time on the live view from the optical camera. “Sound propagates as a wave at a certain speed, which means that sound needs a certain amount of time to propagate from a noise source to each microphone of the array,” the company writes. “Depending on each microphone’s position, the sound wave will need varying travel times. The algor...

Tesla author and CEO Elon Musk simply paid an uncommon compliment to his own species, calling people "underrated" on Twitter a week ago. What achieved this to some degree disappointing award? Musk had guided Tesla to receive propelled robotization as the sequential construction system for Tesla's new vehicle, the Model 3 electric auto. Yet, now that Tesla is behind in making the autos, its clients on the holding up list are protesting. "Truly, unnecessary computerization at Tesla was an error," Musk wrote in the April 13 tweet. "To be exact, my error. People are underrated." [Super-Intelligent Machines: 7 Robotic Futures] The Model 3 is Tesla's first midpriced, mass-delivered electric auto, as indicated by CBS News. Its more moderate sticker price, beginning at $35,000, provoked numerous individuals to preorder it, and the organization reacted by saying it would create 5,000 new autos every week. In any case, the real yield has been muc...

Facebook must face a class action lawsuit over its use of facial recognition technology, a California judge has ruled. The lawsuit alleges that Facebook gathered biometric information without users' explicit consent. It involves the "tag suggestions" technology, which spots users' friends in uploaded photos; the lawsuit says this breaches Illinois state law. Facebook said the case had no merit and it would fight it vigorously. On Monday, US District Judge James Donato ruled to certify a class of Facebook users - a key legal hurdle for a class action suit. The class of people in question is Facebook users "in Illinois for whom Facebook created and stored a face template after June 7, 2011", according to the court order. In a successful class action suit, any person in that group could be entitled to compensation. In his order, Judge Donato wrote: "Facebook seems to believe... statutory damages could amount to billions of dollars." ...

Freelance workers have proven to be an extremely useful resource for many small companies in recent years, allowing for specialised expertise to be recruited when needed the most. However a new research report from security firm Tripwire has found that using such workers, particularly for IT projects, might actually be putting your business in danger of a major security breach. The company set up an experiment which recruited 25 freelancers to create a site for a staged project. Each developer received the same email with the exact same criteria, with 10 contractors eventually chosen to create a finished project - however when investigated by the Tripwire Vulnerability and Exposure Research Team (VERT), every single website was plagued with critical security failures. This included the shocking finding that every website failed to protect any documents from unauthorised users, and that none of the websites effectively prevented hackers from uploading a backdoor, which would...

The 2017 ICC Champions Trophy is set to be possibly the smartest sports tournament ever thanks to a new partnership with Intel. The technology giant has revealed details on a number of new technology platforms it is launching to help make this year’s tournament, which kicks off in London on Wednesday, the most connected to date. This includes an all-new approach to media analysis, as well as a chance for cricket aficionados to get a real hands-on experience that will help them improve their own game. However fans attending any of the games at Lord’s and The Oval in London, as well as Edgbaston in Birmingham, will be able to benefit from free and fast Wi-Fi in the stadium, as well as enjoy a futuristic Virtual Reality experience that puts them at the heart of the action. In a first for a sports tournament in England, Intel-powered drones will scan every inch of the wicket at the three grounds to provide in-depth information on the state of the pitch, crucial information for ...

In the Philips Hue app, if you tap on a room, you can control each individual bulb separately. But if you want to change the color of an entire room of lights all at once, there’s a quick shortcut that makes this easy to do. Until fairly recently, if you wanted to change the color of all of the lights in a room, you had to change the color of each bulb separately. It was not only inconvenient, but the colors more than likely wouldn’t match exactly. To change the color of all the bulbs at once, start by opening up the Philips Hue app on your phone. Make sure the “Home” tab is selected at the bottom. A list of your rooms will appear on the screen, as well as the status of the on/off state of the lights in those rooms. Next, choose a room you want to control and tap on the round icon to the left of the room name. The color selector will appear where you can tap and drag on the round selector to change the color. You can also tap on “Whites”  at the top...

Google has announced the launch of a new service to help businesses handle large volumes of data created by their IoT devices. Google IoT Core will look to take on the likes of AWS and Microsoft, although a company's spokesperson said that Google is not playing catch up. Instead, the company says it is catering to customers who were demanding such a feature, as an increasing number of companies are dealing with larger volumes of data, as more and more IoT devices come into the fold and start working.  Google Cloud IoT Core's main task would be to simplify data management. It is being sold as a service, where Google wants to do the majority of work for its customers, offering infrastructure and services needed to easily manage data. That includes Google Cloud Dataflow, Google BigQuery, and Google Cloud Machine Learning Engine. The service is currently in private beta, and customers that are currently testing the feature would not be charged for it. They will be, how...

Last year, we reported on a stunning 43-inch Dell 4K panel that could be subdivided into four separate 1080p panels and carried a $1,350 price tag ($899 at Amazon). Now, it seems the Dell P4317Q will face some competition from both Phillips and LG, both of which have debuted widescreen, multi-system displays of their own. First up, there’s the Phillips BDM4037UW ($999 at Amazon), a 40-inch curved 4K panel (pictured above) with a 4ms response time (Gray to Gray) with an 8-bit panel that uses advanced frame rate control to produce a 10-bit dithered image. This means that the panel can technically produce 10-bit color, but it won’t be as high-quality as a native 10-bit display. The degree to which this matters will depend a great deal on what kind of work you intend to do. Philips4K-1Around back, the BDM4037UW packs one VGA port, 2x DisplayPorts, 1x HDMI 1.4 port, and an HDMI 2.0 port. Four USB 3.0 ports and audio in/out jacks are also included. Kotaku notes that the BDM4037U ca...

After months (and months and months) of rumors, Apple’s long-awaited Amazon Echo rival may be announced as soon as June. According to KGI’s Ming-Chi Kuo and noted Apple leaker Sonny Dickson, Apple is preparing to launch its Siri-powered speaker at the Worldwide Developers Conference next month, though it won’t officially go on sale ‘til later this year. It’s unclear exactly what Apple would name the device (we’re guessing “Siri Speaker” isn’t the official name), but Kuo is predicting that it will be “Apple’s first home AI product” with seven tweeters and a subwoofer. You can also expect it to cost more than an Amazon Echo, because, well, Apple. [ Further reading: The best Ultra-HD Blu-ray players ] Kuo hedged his bets by predicting “there is an over 50 percent chance that Apple will announce its first home AI product at WWDC in June” in the note excerpt published by MacRumors. In other words, we might not see a home speaker at all. But leaker Sonny Dickson tweeted last week...

While you’re still waiting on your refrigerator or your microwave to be as smart as your phone, the car in your garage is already ahead of the curve. If you own a vehicle made after 1996, you can connect to it with a simple device called an OBD-II adapter and find out your fuel efficiency, diagnose check engine lights, and gather a ton of other useful data. Most cars manufactured since the 80s have an on-board diagnostics (or OBD) computer inside. These computers allow mechanics and regulators to troubleshoot any computer-controlled parts of the car. From January 1st, 1996 onward, all cars sold within the US were required to have an OBD-II compatible port. This allows anyone with an adapter to read information from the car. You may have seen this when a technician checks your emissions. For the most part, OBD-II tools were only used by professionals to do things like figure out why you check engine light is on, or to make sure your car is meeting emission standards. However, OB...

I’m all-in on Apple products. At my house, I’ve got two Macs, an Apple TV, an iPad, two iPhones, and an Apple router. I’ve never owned an MP3 player that wasn’t an iPod, or a tablet that wasn’t an iPad. And now I’ve got an Apple Watch to converge my Apple universe right on my wrist. I really do like my Apple Watch, even though it drives me crazy. It’s slow. The navigation can be confusing. I like wearing it, but I’m still unsure if I want to wear it every day, forever (or at least until there’s a new one). After a week and two weekends of nonstop use, it’s yet to change my game in any profound or major way. Apple calls the Apple Watch its most personal product ever, and as such, people’s reactions to it and opinions about using it will be highly subjective. One person might be delighted by the gentle taps on the wrist every time she gets a text message, while another might find those same taps jarring, and rush to turn them off. This review contains my subjective opinions on ...