News. Technology. Ramblings.

While searching for DSLR cameras that I plan to buy “sometime soon”, I came across this color image from 1915 processed by Sergey Gorsky.

He used a very simple technique of shooting same frame on black and white film using 3 color filters red, blue and green and then superimposed to get colored pictures.

In contrast, it is hard to find color photography of India before 1960s.

Angry Grammarian Jeffrey Barg complains in the Philadelphia Weekly about the capitalization of Web and Internet but not website or intranet. Barg blames the inconsistencies on short-sightedness newspapers. Print journalists and the Associated Press, according to Barg, failed to understand what was happening on the internet.

Technology is making students “lazy and deficient”. That’s the view of a Emory University English professor. Mark Bauerlein suggests the idea in his new book The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30).

Are youth really brain dead because of all the time spent texting, twittering, gaming and obsessing over social-networking? Beuerlein says they are. But I’ll bet 50 years ago you could have published a similar book, substituting the words TV and movies for computer and internet. At least today’s digital gadgetry can lead to a dialogue instead of just zoning viewers into television oblivion.

You tend to find what you are looking for. Looking to waste time? Seeking new ways to engage others and the world around you? You’ll find each one readily available. It’s the user that makes the difference, not the delivery system. Though the setting may make it easier to tilt one direction or another, the responsibility for the decision is squarely on our own shoulders.

Live News Cameras is collection of live video streams from around the world. Moderators guide viewers to breaking stories.

If you pause when you see a police chase on TV news, you might find Air Fox Live interesting to watch. You can get behind the scenes with this mashup of a Google Map with the movements of a Chicago TV station’s helicopter. You can even call up the current speed and heading of the chopper.

There’s been a few bumps in the road for the Journalism Department at the University of Mississippi as it becomes a School of Journalism.

Mississippi Public Radio tries to sort out why there’s been secrecy and a dispute over what to call it in the story below.

At the same time, the prestigious Medill School of Journalism is considering a change to its own name. Most notably, dropping Journalism entirely.

 

 Ole Miss School of Journalism [4:10m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

On the scene reports about China’s devastating earthquake have the Internet buzzing. Despite China’s tight grip on media, citizen journalists are being credited with getting news out of the country in photos, videos, maps, and personal diaries. The stories of victims and remarkable rescues are moving unfiltered from the original source to computers and cell phones. Like it or not, the flow of news is changing. Here’s a sample of CNN’s iReports.

May 10th became a day to mark on our calendars. Filmmakers, artists, business capitalists with the help of Nokia did an amazing feat of starting celebration of the planet, celebration of Mother Earth, simultaneously happening all across the world.

The organizers invited the entries by releasing this video on youtube on September 10, 2007. Pangea Day received over 2500 entries from over 120 countries worldwide. 100 of those movies were chosen to be shared in four hour broadcast that happened at the same time across continents.

Watch first 20 minutes of broadcast here.

The rest was a phenomenon worth watching, the true festival of humanity.

No doubt, video has come out far stronger medium of information than print can ever be, for it has more of “the Human Element”.

I have read so much TextMate hype in Rails community, and now that I’ve started getting into habit of using TextMate for everyday programming, I can say, its the best editor I have used in long-long time. 

I have often seen people trying to find appropriate players for Videos and audios of various different formats.

So here is what I use - Open source, attractive, no-nonsense players for both.

Miro for Video

and Songbird for Audios.

Check for yourself , you’ll be blown away by what you were missing.