There's a saying in photo circles, "the best camera is the one you have with you." For a lot of us, that means that our cell phone is often our best camera. With the iPhone, you not only get the camera, but the growing universe of creative applications designed to enhance or share your images far and wide. Starting today, we'll be profiling a few interesting digital photography apps for the iPhone. Today's spot-light, Comic Touch, from Plasq. This $2.99 app lets you transform your iPhone pics into mini-cartoons. You can add thought and talk bubbles, as well as add...

Chalk up the Canon EOS 1D Mark IV as more evidence that we're emerging from the recession. This $4,999 (body only) professional gem is sure to get high-end photogs reaching for their wallet. There are any number of impressive performance specs but to my mind the super-high ISO shooting stands out: The Canon EOS-1D Mark IV ISO speed settings range from 100 to 12,800 in 1/3- or 1/2-stop increments with expansion settings of L: 50 for bright light or H1: 25,600, H2: 51,200 and H3: 102,400 for even the most dimly lit situations. Video footage can be captured at settings as...

One of the great, unspoken challenges of digital photography is handling the ever-growing collection of photos piling up in your computer's hard drive. Your computer's an obvious destination for photos but it can't be their last stop. If you don't make some kind of back-up, you stand to lose your entire collection in one catastrophic swoop. Obviously, external hard drives are an excellent way to back those images up. Western Digital is out with a new line of Mac-based My Book Studio drives which can certainly do the trick. The new drives (in 500GB, 1TB, 1.5TB and 2TB capacities) offer a...

The Japanese trade show CEATEC is underway and the big news coming from the show is 3D television (or 3D HDTV). I've seen some 3D TV in action and think it's pretty neat, but what really intrigues me is the prospect of viewing your photos in 3D on your HD set. Several years ago I met with a firm (whose name escapes me) that was offering a way for consumers to snap three dimensional photographs. It was a very labor intensive process, involving a tripod with a built-in level and software, and you'd need 3D glasses to view the result. No...

Maybe you've got a nice new ultra-zoom camera and you're just dying to try it out. Maybe you're an aspiring (or actual) celebrity photographer aiming to turn a few bucks by exploiting people's privacy. Well, don't mess with Roman Abramovich: Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich has a rather curious new addition built in to his latest oversized yacht. The 557-foot boat Eclipse, the price tag of which has almost doubled since original plans were drawn to almost $1.2 billion, set sail this week with a slew of show-off features, from two helipads, two swimming pools and six-foot movie screens in all guest...

If you've used online photo services such as AOL Pictures, Sony's ImageStation and countless other smaller-named sites, you're no doubt familiar with the problem of data loss and data migration. These sites held your data (your photos) and when they went under, they had to remove it from their servers. Giving your data back to you in the form of disks and high-res downloads would have cost these services money - which they didn't have, of course, because they were bankrupt. And so, in some cases, you were confronted with the most perverse outcome imaginable: paying for your pictures! This is...

(Image courtesy VTech) Cordless phones are a lot like the Rodney Dangerfield of the consumer electronics market - they can't get no respect. I'm not here to argue that they necessarily should, but it still makes sense to get up to speed on the technology in the event you're in the market for an upgrade. And that means, DECT 6.0. What is it? Basically, it's the wireless frequency that your digital voice signals travel over from the handset to the base station. What sets DECT 6.0 apart is that it rides a different frequency than most other household wireless gear -...

Other than the morbid narcissism of it all, this story about the wife of Twitter's co-founder "tweeting" a blow-by-blow account of the birth of her child got me thinking: what is the best tech for a soon-to-be dad to bring to the delivery room? I've been there twice, so I'm a veteran but by no means as experienced as, say, this guy - so your mileage may vary. Here goes, in order from least to most important. *** 5. A notebook:  Most trips to the delivery room are filled with hours of waiting. A notebook (or netbook), packed with some digital...

Attention iPhone users: Andy Greenberg of Forbes is reporting that two researchers will demonstrate (and publicize) a method of wrestling control over a person's iPhone via SMS: If you receive a text message on your iPhone any time after Thursday afternoon containing only a single square character, Charlie Miller would suggest you turn the device off. Quickly. That small cipher will likely be your only warning that someone has taken advantage of a bug that Miller and his fellow cybersecurity researcher Collin Mulliner plan to publicize Thursday at the Black Hat cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas. Using a flaw they've found in...

Every parent learns on day one that sleep is a precious commodity. But it's not just kids that can keep us up nights. Bills, stress, the collapse of the global economy, world-altering climate change, wars, World of Warcraft... the obstacles to a good nine hours of sleep are endless. Maybe you, dear bleary eyed reader, need a sleep aid (and no, reading this blog doesn't count). That's where the Zeo Personal Sleep Coach comes in.  According to the company, Zeo is designed to "help consumers understand how they sleep, reveal habits and behaviors...