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Digital Photography School has a tutorial on how to photograph fire. Basically, spot focus on the flame and overexpose a few stops to compensate for the fire's brightness. [DigitalPhotographySchool via Lifehacker]
There are lots of ways to get the most out of your fuel tank without resorting to buying a new car--closing the windows when travelling over 80kph, using a car's air flow system rather than the AC, and easing on the break being just a couple of examples. In case you need a little help implementing these methods, Fiat and Microsoft are releasing an optional Eco Drive software that will record your driving habits and give you suggestions on how to roll more efficiently.
The Xbox 360 is a powerful gaming system and media player, but few people know all of its ins and outs. Techradar publshed a "10 Tricks" article on the console, and while most of the information will not be news to the average Giz reader (OMG THE XBOX PLAYS MY IPOD!!), we found two tricks that we hadn't seen before. First, you can play online without a LIVE gold account by fooling your Xbox into thinking it's on a LAN with XLink Kai. The other tip is that you can reset your video settings to factory default by holding "Y" while booting the system. Hit the link for the rest of 'em. [Techradar via Kotaku and image]
Freedom isn't free, my friends, so sooner or later you knew that you'd be paying for iTunes. In iTunes 8, Apple has disabled the option to turn off those little arrow links that point your music tracks to the iTunes Store. Upon upgrading, one of our readers suddenly found himself inundated with arrows, lost in a sea of sales icons. Luckily, there's a 5-second workaround for Mac users.
In case any of you missed Adam Frucci's brilliant piece on Apple ruining his entire life by releasing a moderately buggy iPhone 3G, you may have also missed a tip he got from Apple. If you've been having trouble finding reception after losing it (say you go into a building and lose reception, but when you come out still no dice) try turning Aeroplane Mode on and off. This admittedly sad fix may just find you reception in a bind. And as for Adam, now he can continue bitching to the world about his sorry lot in life. Everybody wins! [image]
The folks at Aircell, providers of the Gogo in-flight Wi-Fi service that launched on American last week, have admitted that the ban on video and VoIP chats via Skype and other clients is not bandwidth related, it's for the sanity of everybody else on the plane (much like the in-flight calling ban that's started to float around Congress). Well, after the first few days of the service, Andy over at VoIP Watch has found a backdoor via the Twitter-based VoIP app Phweet that allows for chatting from 35,000 feet. If you must, read on for the details.
If you are serious about photography, at one time or another you may have considered how the human eye reacts to an image. After all, it is logical to assume that possessing information about what entices the eye can help you take much more powerful photos. If you could use a little education in the subject, the folks at PopPhoto have put together a comprehensive analysis called "The Photographers Guide to the Eye" that does a great job of breaking down how we see scientifically. The finer points of the article are outlined after the break.
We've noted in our iPhone 2.0 software review that iTunes' full image backup of your iPhone when you've made changes to what apps you've got installed can take a really long time. We're talking tens of minutes. If you're the type of person that doesn't really store anything important on your phone that can't be reinstated from your contact list or calendar or elsewhere on your computer, Zero Logic found that you can actually skip this process.
Just a quick note for you iPhone 2.0 users regarding entering domain names. In the original firmware there was a handy ".com" button when entering URLs, but you had to manually type ".org" and ".net" and ".co.uk" and other domain suffixes. While it wasn't a total pain in the arse it was still rather annoying. Now, though, you simply hold down the ".com" button and presto, you're offered the above mentioned options as one-click entries. No, you can't assign your own just yet, but we see that as a feature in the future. Why this was a priority on Apple's iPhone to-do list and cut-and-paste wasn't is puzzling, but we're still glad it's there. [TUAW]
You've probably seen the cool screen shots we've got all over Gizmodo today and wondered to yourself what tool we're using to make them. We're not using one, because the iPhone 2.0 software has a built-in screen capture shortcut. Hold the "home" button, then hit the "power/sleep" button, and presto, a capture of your screen is in your photos. This doesn't work in the 1.1.4 or earlier versions, so you'll need to upgrade, but chances are you already have.
