A video frame for your picture

Traditionally, the pictures on magazine covers are usually shot as still images. But recently, some publications are using a single frame from high-resolution video footage for the picture. For example, a recent shoot for a TIME magazine cover was a video reel shot taken with a Red One camera, and a single frame was selected to be printed as the cover image. Men's magazine Esquire did something similar with Megan Fox, and they used the same high-resolution videocam.

One advantage of employing this method of shooting is that you can choose a precise frame (among many) which looks the best. Also, you don't have to be constantly making sure that the lens is in focus or be fiddling with other controls. Instead, you can concentrate on the subject and then select the best frame thereafter to be used as a normal picture.
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Google's real-time search debuts

Google announced recently the fruits of its earlier deal with Twitter, showing off how it has decided to present real-time Internet content within search results.

Amit Singhal, Google fellow, introduced the real-time section during an event at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. "We are here today to announce Google real-time search," Singhal said, calling it "Google relevance technology meets the real-time Web."

Twitter search will show the latest matches for a particular search term, but Google wants to do more than sort results by time. "Relevance is the foundation of this product," Singhal said. "It's relevance, relevance, relevance."
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Google Goggles lets you search by sight

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Google's first search engine let people search by typing text onto a Web page. Next came queries spoken over the phone. On Monday, Google announced the ability to perform an Internet search by submitting a photograph.

The experimental search-by-sight feature, called Google Goggles, has a database of billions of images that informs its analysis of what's been uploaded, said Vic Gundotra, Google's vice president of engineering. It can recognize books, album covers, artwork, landmarks, places, logos, and more.

"It is our goal to be able to identify any image," he said. "It represents our earliest efforts in the field of computer vision. You can take a picture of an item, use that picture of whatever you take as the query."
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JooJoo: The tablet formerly known as CrunchPad

Monday morning, former TechCrunch partner Fusion Garage revealed details of its plans to release its Linux-based Web browsing tablet.

Known as the CrunchPad until TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington announced on his blog that Fusion Garage had removed his company from involvement the product, it was expected to be a touch-sensitive slate computer designed for browsing the Web. It was said to have no local storage aside from what was necessary to load and run the operating system. Arrington said he was hoping to bring the product to market for under US$300, but did not expect it to be a big seller.

More recently, Arrington said litigation over the breakup was imminent.

Hands-on of the JooJoo

Fusion Garage has been quiet about the public but one-sided airing of the two companies' disagreements until now.

In a Web videocast Monday, Fusion Garage CEO Chandra Rathakrishnan laid out his position on the drama, and revealed plans for the release of the product.
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10 games not recommended for kids

Straight from the No-Brainer Department comes a list of games that parents should not buy their children this holiday season. The New York Times has republished a collection of 10 titles deemed totally uncool for kids to play by the media watchdog group Common Sense Media.

While we're all for educating parents about the naughty video games their children want to play, we can't help but slap our foreheads at how obvious some of them are. Besides, all a responsible parent needs to do is stray away from the big fat "Rated M for Mature" logo on the box art of such titles.

We wouldn't disagree with any title on the list, but some of the suggested alternatives for these titles are a bit suspect. For example, replacing Modern Warfare 2 with Battlefield: Bad Company only brings the blood level down a bit--the war combat and violence are still present in Bad Company. We absolutely loved Uncharted 2, but there's plenty of gunplay and headshots in the T-rated blockbuster as well.
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