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Hugin is free open source software for creating panoramas from a series of photos. It is not terribly difficult to use, but you should follow one of the tutorials such as the Lifehacker Hugin tutorial. This explains how to set control points between photos in order for Hugin to know where things line up.
There are downloads for Windows, Mac, and various flavors of Linux. For simplicity, download from the pre-compiled versions.
Surprisingly, Microsoft Announces Cool Phone
While Apple’s iPhone is the leader in smartphones, there is competition from Google’s Android phones, RIM’s Blackberries, and Palm’s Pre. This week’s announcement of Windows Phone 7 Series at the Mobile World Conference in Barcelona should put Microsoft back in the competition.
While Microsoft has made phone software for over 13 years, the phones were never popular outside of business. The phones looked like slimmed down versions of Windows and were clunky. With Windows Phone 7, Microsoft is using the acclaimed user interface from their Zune music players and completely revamping the phones.
Expect to see phones running Windows Phone 7 around November 2010.
Note the first line of this video demo/promo. It says “A different kind of phone…” Reminds me a little of another company with small market share that asked people to “Think Different.”
For more videos, see Microsoft’s YouTube page on Windows Phone 7.
eBay has recently announced new seller fee prices to take effect at the end of March. While they announced “lower insertion fees”, if you are selling something that sells for between $50 and $1500, your total fees will end up much higher.
The new fee structure will have no listing fees for the typical auction seller. The old way was usually $0.15. Both assume you start your auction at $0.99. The old final value fees had a tiered structure where you pay 8.75% for the first $25 and then 3.5% for $25-$1000 and so on. The new fees have a flat 9% final value fee but with a maximum of $50.
The following table shows how the total fees will change. It assumes you start your auction at $0.99.
| Sale Price | Old Fee | New Fee |
|---|---|---|
| $10 | $1.03 | $0.90 |
| $25 | $2.43 | $2.25 |
| $50 | $3.21 | $4.50 |
| $100 | $4.97 | $9.00 |
| $250 | $10.22 | $22.50 |
| $500 | $18.97 | $45.00 |
| $1000 | $36.47 | $50.00 |
| $1500 | $43.96 | $50.00 |
| $2000 | $51.46 | $50.00 |
Rumored for years, the Apple iPad is finally here. Starting at $499, it is a major new product that will compete with notebooks and eBooks. See the full video from Apple’s presentation today.
Google’s Crisis Response page for the Haiti earthquake has news, donation links, maps, satellite imagery, videos, and a Person Finder tool to look for or report on missing people.
This video is from the White House Haiti Earthquake Relief site:
