News in brief: 150 million Instagrams

Yep, in just seven months 150 million photos have been uploaded to Instagram. (That’s about one every 15 seconds.) And all of those would have come from an iPhone because there’s no Instagram Android app and you can’t upload from your computer, either. Apparently, Instagram haven’t ruled out an Android app, but they are being super tight-lipped as to when one might appear. I can scarcely begin to imagine what will happen when Instagram hits the non-iOS collective. Is the world going to become one giant Instagram?

(Headsup to Engadget)

What is this? - In our NewsFlash section, we share interesting tidbits of news. Think of it as our extended twitter feed: When we find something that get our little hearts racing, we'll share it with you right here! Loving it? Great, we've got lots more News Flash articles - and, of course, we're still on Twitter as well, for even shorter news tidbits.

News in brief: Copy Instagrams with Copygram

Instagrammers, if you’re looking for an easy means to download all your Instagrams, upload them to FaceBook or Google+, or even print them out (with SnapFish), you might want to take a look at Copygram. Non-Instagrammers, if you’re wondering what all the Instagram fuss is about, you can check out people’s public Instagram streams on Copygram.

In the nine days since Copygram has been going, 163,138 instagrams have been copied. So that’s just a few then.

It’s definitely worth noting that if your Instagram feed is public, anyone can download your images and have them printed off through Copygram. There is a note telling you that Instagram photos belong to the original photographer, but I doubt that’ll stop anyone, will it?

What is this? - In our NewsFlash section, we share interesting tidbits of news. Think of it as our extended twitter feed: When we find something that get our little hearts racing, we'll share it with you right here! Loving it? Great, we've got lots more News Flash articles - and, of course, we're still on Twitter as well, for even shorter news tidbits.

News in brief: Gaia - the billion pixel camera

I might’ve had enough of megapixels when it comes to camera phones and compact cameras, but I can probably forgive a billion pixel camera when its purpose is to map a thousand million stars across the galaxy, in 3D. (No, I won’t quibble with 3D here, either.) The camera’s called Gaia and it was produced for the European Space Station by e2v Technologies, based in the UK.

The camera is effectively a mosaic of 106 CCD sensors that measure 6 × 4.7 cm and are a few microns deep. They should be able to detect light from stars that are about one million times fainter than the human eye can manage. Or be accurate enough to measure someone’s thumbnails if she or he is on the moon and the camera’s on earth.

Want to know more? The European Space Station website has it all.

(Headsup to Engadget)

What is this? - In our NewsFlash section, we share interesting tidbits of news. Think of it as our extended twitter feed: When we find something that get our little hearts racing, we'll share it with you right here! Loving it? Great, we've got lots more News Flash articles - and, of course, we're still on Twitter as well, for even shorter news tidbits.

News in brief: The most incredible night-time sky

The Photopic Sky Survey is a 5,000 megapixel photograph of the entire night sky stitched together from 37,440 exposures. Large in size and scope, it portrays a world far beyond the one beneath our feet and reveals our familiar Milky Way with unfamiliar clarity. When we look upon this image, we are in fact peering back in time, as much of the light—having traveled such vast distances—predates civilization itself.

Seen at a depth thousands of times more faint than the dimmest visible star, tens of millions of other suns appear, still perhaps only a hundredth of one percent thought to exist in our galaxy alone.

Incredibly!

Our Milky Way galaxy is the dominant feature, its dusty arms sweeping through the frame, punctuated by red clouds of glowing hydrogen. To the lower right are our nearest neighbors, each small galaxies themselves with their own hundreds of millions of stars.

Check out Sky Survey for the full story!

What is this? - In our NewsFlash section, we share interesting tidbits of news. Think of it as our extended twitter feed: When we find something that get our little hearts racing, we'll share it with you right here! Loving it? Great, we've got lots more News Flash articles - and, of course, we're still on Twitter as well, for even shorter news tidbits.

News in brief: Flickr re-confirm user rights

After TwitPic’s recent brush with licence grabbing, a few other photo sites have gone under the loupe – and Flickr decided to post their response to the issue in their most recent blog post.

‘There has been some discussion on the web as of late about image ownership on photo sites so we wanted to take a moment to address this on Flickr,’ the blog post notes drily.

In their official statement, Flickr say that they ‘feel very strongly that sharing online shouldn’t mean giving up rights to your photos,’ and continue to confirm that their terms of service only includes a licence required by Flickr to operate its service – specifically, it ‘grants Flickr the right to (…) create the small, medium, and large sizes, display your photos on the site, etc. It doesn’t mean that we own them. When you upload your photos to Flickr, you retain the rights to your images.’

That’s the spirit, Flickr. Well done.

There’s more on the official Flickr blog.

What is this? - In our NewsFlash section, we share interesting tidbits of news. Think of it as our extended twitter feed: When we find something that get our little hearts racing, we'll share it with you right here! Loving it? Great, we've got lots more News Flash articles - and, of course, we're still on Twitter as well, for even shorter news tidbits.

News in brief: It’s all about the final result

I stumbled across a lovely article by ctein on The Online Photographer, where he talks in great detail about a rather bloody fantastic image.

“Making that photograph was a significant challenge”, he writes, and explains how he managed to push the boundaries of what was physically possible in photography, in order to to capture a picture of a space shuttle back in 1975.

In all the hard work he did to get the photo, he learned a brutal lesson… the story of which is definitely worth a closer read…

What is this? - In our NewsFlash section, we share interesting tidbits of news. Think of it as our extended twitter feed: When we find something that get our little hearts racing, we'll share it with you right here! Loving it? Great, we've got lots more News Flash articles - and, of course, we're still on Twitter as well, for even shorter news tidbits.