Photos are everywhere. And there’s a very good chance the photo you’re looking at has had a touch-up or two. Do you know how to tell the difference between a real or phony photo?

This famous photo – which was faked – sparked a huge debate as to its authenticity when it was first passed around the Internet a few years back.

Working in the Shop
You know you have a good product when the brand name turns into a verb. Google and Photoshop probably know this better than any brand (just Google “Photoshopping” to get an idea of what I mean). Photoshop is an amazingly powerful tool that finds itself in the hands of more and more people everyday. Some for better and some for worse. Example A: photo manipulation.

We’re here to help you spot the fakes, but doing so requires a little detective work. And like a good detective, there are subtle clues that are a dead giveaway to help you spot what’s real and what’s not.

The Human Face
When you’re dealing with a photo that is a portrait of a person, or a photo where the main subject is a person, the human face can reveal so much about a photo’s authenticity. Why? You’re most familiar with the human face. You spend every morning (let’s hope) staring at your own while you scrub those pearly whites, so the oddities will stand out. This is especially true when it comes to the eyes, nose and mouth. What better tool to use to sniff these irregularities out than your very own two eyeballs. Using your own eyes and starting with the face, here are some things to look for in spotting a fraud:

Before (on the left) and after (on the right), Photoshop. 

The Eyes
Eyes provide two great clues for use when we are on the hunt for a fraud. Contrary to what you see on the front page of magazines and spread across billboards, eyeballs DO have veins and the sclera, which is the white part of your eye, is often a little discolored and cloudy. Also, depending on the light and the subject’s face structure, the shadows around the subject’s eyes may vary, but in almost all cases there should be some shadows. If the eyes in the photo look too good to be true, chances are, THEY ARE!

Facial Features
For photoshoppers that enjoy providing the digital nose job, they know it’s no simple procedure. Replacing noses is tricky because you have to perfectly match color, texture, and lighting three facets of the face that literally stick out at you on the nose. Detecting a bad blend job on any one of these items can help you easily sniff out the fraud.

Enhancing the size, color, and shape of lips is a common request in the land of Photoshop. Just like the eyes and nose though, if the light and texture look suspicious, chances are you’re on to something. Luscious lips are usually liars. Also, notice skin tone, in the photos above of George Clooney and Beyonce. Both of their complexions are unnaturally even and clean.

You may have been too distracted by the squirrels with lightsabers to notice the repeating pattern and bad image stitching in the background?

The Environment
Spotting a fish out of water has become increasingly difficult these days all thanks to Photoshop. Sure, it’s all fun and games when you photoshop your friend on the moon, but what about photoshopping a suspect into or out of a crime scene? Photoshop has used the blur tool quite a bit when it comes the world around us and whether we know if what we’re seeing is really in it or not. Here are some tips to knowing the world around you:

1. If an image seems suspiciously out of place, the best place to continue your hunt is on the edges. Poor blending and sloppy edge work will be your indication that someone tried to pull the ol’ drag and drop on you.

2. Just as in detecting a fraud on a portrait of the face, light plays a big role in the environment as well. I mean, after all, photography is about capturing light. When searching, look for strange shadows or missing shadows from objects that you think may be photoshopped in. Replicating shadows accurately can be a time-consuming and challenging process and thus can often be overlooked or just skipped on a hack job.

This five-headed snake is the stuff of nightmares, don’t worry – it’s fake. Notice how all the heads have the exact same angle and how the heads connect to the body of the snake.

Use Technology
If you can’t find evidence a photograph has been altered, using technology can help you. Perhaps it’s time to dawn some robot eyes. There are a couple of ways to get this done.

Notice the scales of the snake don’t have a consistent pattern; any naturally born two-headed snake does.

Using Photoshop, you can choose to switch between different color layers on your suspicious image. Switching between these layers will allow you to see differences in light that weren’t recognizable before. You can do this by going into Channels and manually selecting Red, Green, or Blue. Areas that have strange highlights or shadows may be indications that you have a fraud on your hands.

Using Image Error Level Analysis can be a great way to determine if a photo has been altered. The tool will provide you a heat map-like image of a JPEG you upload. It will analyze your uploaded image and detect for you areas that it thinks have been photoshopped.

A Career in Photoshop 
Did you know that there are whole careers around not only photoshopping pictures, but being able to detect when a picture has been photoshopped? That’s right; digital forensics is the study and breakdown of digital media and how it can be used to detect fraud. Learning Photoshop color correction, touch-ups & quick image optimization can help get you started. As technology and high-end production tools become more and more available, our ability to recognize the real deal and fake phonies is becoming increasingly difficult.

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Frank Darabont has an impressive resume: Not only did he develop the critically acclaimed Walking Dead TV show, he’s also a three-time Oscar nominee, having directed The Green Mile (1999) and The Shawshank Redemption (1994). Recently his script for the fourth Indiana Jones movie surfaced on the Internet.

Writer, producer and director Frank Darabont. 

Reinventing an Icon
Darabont, who previously worked with George Lucas as a script writer on the The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones television show, was hired to write a script in May 2002. The script, called Indiana Jones and the City of Gods, had Indy being pursued by ex-Nazis in the 1950s. For Darabont it would be no easy task to follow Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (a film that many felt effectively wrapped up the franchise) but his script did that, and then some.

Darabont finished his script toward the end of 2003 and presented it to Steven Spielberg. Spielberg, who thought up the story concept for the fourth film, loved the script. George Lucas, however, who created Indiana Jones, didn’t like it.

Spielberg and Lucas had long discussions about the story – both had issue with the 1950s setting, and that it ignored the Cold War. After some additional reflection, Spielberg (who had also received an Oscar for Schindler’s List) decided it would be inappropriate to satirize Nazis in the next Indiana Jones movie. Harrison Ford too, who played Indiana Jones, also felt the franchise had “wore the Nazis out.”

Grab a box of tissues and get ready to cry over what could have been…

Sadly, neither felt Darabont’s script was what they were looking for. Eventually, Lucas took over the script-writing duties and other screen writers came on too, with Russians becoming Indy’s main enemy, although one of Darabont’s story concepts remained: Marion Ravenwood as Indy’s love interest.

Script Writing 101
Fans have badmouthed Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull since it was released, and story elements played a huge part in that – including the scene at the beginning of the movie where Indy saves himself from a nuclear blast by hiding in a refrigerator. Writing for the screen is a craft that takes years to develop, but film camp can provide a great start and learning script writing can be a great asset for beginning filmmakers.

Check out Frank Darabont’s Indiana Jones and the City of the Gods script and see what goes into making the written word come to life on the big screen. It’s a craft that can pay off big; at last count, the Indiana Jones franchise has grossed over a billion dollars.

George Lucas, Harrison Ford and Steven Spielberg on the set of Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull.

The Future of Indiana Jones
So what lies ahead for Indiana Jones? Is a fifth film in the works? Inside sources say yes, that Speilberg and Lucas “have a story that they like and they’re working on it.” As for rumors that Shia LaBeouf will take over the franchise, don’t hold your breath for that one to come true.

In a recent interview with Time magazine when he was asked about passing the proverbial torch (or in this case, hat) to LaBeouf in the next movie, Ford replied, “What are you talking about? It’s mine. I would love to do another Indiana Jones movie. George Lucas is working on an idea now. Shia can get his own hat. I earned that hat.”

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It’s that time again, when holiday movies and TV shows take over the airwaves. And why not gather round the television with the family and zone out on a holiday movie after a platter full of turkey or ham? But before you find yourself in the middle of a stocking-stinker, check out our list for the ten worst holiday/Christmas movies ever:

10. Christmas with the Kranks (2004)

Tim Allen, Jamie Lee Curtis and Dan Aykroyd – Hollywood A-listers that flunk out in this holiday bomb.

When empty-nesters Tim Allen and Jamie Lee Curtis decide to forego the usual Christmas festivities in favor for a luxury cruise, their uptight neighbors (led by Dan Aykroyd) go nuts: they picket the couple’s house, subject them to endless Christmas carols, and worse. At first, the movie seems to be on the Kranks’ side, but by the super-cheesy finale, the point seems to be that you should always conform to your neighbors’ Christmas wishes — regardless of how you may want to celebrate the holidays. What a confused and wrong-headed mess.

9. Reindeer Games (2000)

An actor for a knack for bad movies, Ben Affleck makes our Christmas movie list – twice. In this one, Affleck teams up with a embittered Gary Sinise to knock off an Indian Casino. But when Affleck gets double-crossed he learns…the true meaning of Christmas. At times, its bad in an enjoyable way, but most times its predictable and worn-out holiday fare (with character names like Nick and Rudy – you guessed it, as a nod to Santa and Rudolph). This is a holiday-themed action vehicle that crashes head-on into a brick wall.

8. Adam Sandler’s Eight Crazy Nights (2002)

An animated Adam Sandler plays himself, under the character name Davey Stone – a cocky trouble-maker with an attitude and drinking problem. 

Parents expecting to find a cozy holiday cartoon with a message were shocked by the no-holds-barred musical comedy – alongside the bathroom humor are an unbelievable number of product placements (with shouts-out to more than 25 different mall-based retailers) and for what? Because someone thought it might be a good idea to take Sandler’s infamous “Chanukah Song” (the eight days of Hanukkah) and turn it into a holiday movie.

7. Jack Frost (1996)

Visual effects are created in Hollywood – so is the rich tradition of attempting to make scary holiday films. Just check out Black Christmas (1974); Silent Night, Bloody Night (1974); Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984); Christmas Evil (1980); or Don’t Open Till Christmas (1984). But until they make Black Friday, Jack Frost has to take the Christmas cake, with the concept of a slasher…who’s actually a snowman. In this case, a serial killer named Jack Frost is being transported to his execution when a freak collision occurs, involving a truck carrying genetic material. Through his exposure to the body-altering chemicals, Jack Frost morphs into a killer snowman, intent on wreaking bloody revenge on the citizens of Snowmonton. Often described as a “comedy-horror film,” Jack Frost never recovers from its oh-so-stupid premise. Cheap-looking special effects and forgettable performances (including Shannon Elizabeth’s first acting role) helped solidify this movie’s reputation as a true monstrosity.

6. Surviving Christmas (2004)

The second Ben Affleck holiday flick on our list, this film stars Ben as a spoiled millionaire playboy who decides to head home for the holidays after he turns his friends against him. And his friends aren’t the only ones to turn their back on him; Jon Favreau (director of Iron Man & Cowboys & Aliens) was offered the chance to direct but turned it down to make Elf. The studio thought so much of Surviving Christmas as a holiday film they released it around Halloween instead of Christmas. You’d think opposite of James Gandolfini and Christina Applegate, Affleck might be able to find enough funny to bring the holiday hijinks home – but you’d be wrong.

5. Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000)

“Let’s show them how we wreck a beloved holiday classic!” 

In 1957, a great and gentle genius named Ted Geisler (aka Dr. Suess) sat down at his drawing table and created a simple masterpiece, a children’s story about a Scrooge-like creature. In 1966, Warner Brothers animator Chuck Jones turned the film into an animated classic. Nearly 50 years later, that classic cartoon still plays throughout the holiday season, inspiring whole new generations with each viewing. In 2000, director Ron Howard decided to turn it into a big-screen blockbuster, in hopes of squeezing more money out of the Grinch.

The problem though is while a lavish, live-action version of the story – starring Jim Carrey in furry green costume sounds like a no-brainer – the producers and director mess too much with the classic and need to go back to film camp. To fill the two hours, the filmmakers expand whole sections of the story, which don’t seem at all like anything Dr. Seuss would have written in 1957 or for that matter, in 2000. Instead Seuss’ heart-touching rhymes have been replaced with Carrey adlibs and references to pop culture (circa 2000). You’re a mean one, Mr. Grinch!

4. Santa Claus: The Movie (1985)

Produced by the same team that brought you Superman, this holiday time-suck stars Dudley Moore as an elf named Patch who with John Lithgow aim to turn Christmas into a mass-produced holiday. The filmmakers worked for months to train real deer to pull a sleigh – if only the same effort went into the rest of the film. It was one of the biggest box-office disasters in the U.S., while it did eventually make back the budget worldwide.

3. Four Christmases (2008)

Will Hollywood ever learn? Another worn out “you must learn the meaning of Christmas” calamity centered around families that don’t want to spend the holidays together – starring Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon.

2. Jack Frost (1998) 

What was meant to be a kids movie turns into a perfect example of how NOT to make a Christmas movie. Michael Keaton stars as Jack Frost, the leader of the Jack Frost Band. They play, you guessed it, Christmas songs. But the film goes off the deep end when Keaton’s character dies in a car crash and is reincarnated as a snowman who must teach his son the true meaning of Christmas. So you can tolerate that? We should also mention that Keaton sings in the movie, and the soundtrack features Christmas songs by 90s pop icons Hanson and The Spice Girls.

1. Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964)

Even Martians can’t help getting that old Christmas spirit in Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.

Just take a moment and savor that title…Could there be a more colossally idiotic concept for a film? To its credit, the film explores the bizarre-o premise fully: the plot includes Martians actually kidnapping and trying to kill Santa, who is saved by a couple of resourceful Martian kids and some good-hearted, clanking robots. The film (and its no-name cast) is so awful that it routinely gets mentioned among the worst movies ever made of any kind. The film is so bad it even has its own cult of fans (it was featured on Mystery Science Theater) and has even spawned a novel and musical. At one point, Jim Carrey even rumored to be attached to a remake – thankfully, that never materialized.

Coming Attractions: The Best Holiday Movies Ever Made

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There is a reason Apple sets the standard for product design. With intuitive design and lifestyle integration, getting your hands on their products for the first time makes you wonder how you ever lived life without one.

iPad 2 is THE must-have holiday gift of 2012. 

Maybe you already lead an Apple-filled life, or maybe you’re looking for a reason to start one? Either way, if you don’t own an iPad and are considering a tablet, the iPad 2 is a no-brainer.

The Give That Keeps On Giving
The iPad 2 comes with a dual-core A5 chip and 10-hour battery life – it’s thin, 0.34 inches and weighs less than 1 1/2 lbs. It’s literally ready to go anywhere. Plus, with App Store and iCloud support you can be sure anything you’re looking for can be found with it and anything you’re looking to hold onto will be kept safe in it.

Sure, there are plenty of tablets and mobile devices out there but the iPad 2 sets the standard; there’s more than one reason it sits atop of the Must-Have Holiday Gift list. All other tablets, app stores and apps are modeled after Apple’s innovations, so why settle for a cheap knock-off? This device is more than worth the money.

 Get Creative, Make Memories – with Apps!
The iPad 2′s dual-core A5 chip and graphic performance is 9x faster than the first iPad. This allows you to cruise through any app quickly and easily. Multi-Touch gestures are fluid and seamless – unlike other tablets that have clunky interfaces and delayed responses, on the iPad apps load faster than every, and multitasking is a breeze. Looking to get creative? Here are three iPad apps to make the most of your holiday memories:

iMovie
$14.99 / Apple

Apple and the iPad 2 have made it a reality for everyone to become an HD video director and at just $14.99 who can pass up that deal. This video editing app makes it easy to shoot, edit, and share HD video with all of your friends and family. Here are a few features that really set iMovie apart.

Capture those holiday moments and make memories using iMovie. 

Multi-Touch – Whether you are a seasoned video editor or someone learning for the first time, iPad’s Multi-Touch capabilities are incorporated into iMovie and allow you to tap, pinch, push, and drag your way through the video-editing process, allowing you to get hands on with your film using intuitive multi-touch gestures.

Themes – iMovie allow you to easily set the theme and tone of all your films with a fun-filled batch of pre-sets that give your production a top-end polish.

Photos, Music, and Sound Effects – iMovie also allows you to easily add media from your photo library or iTunes library to quickly create a multimedia project for the whole family to enjoy. And if you’re looking for ways to create your own music or more stunning graphic art, Sketchbook Pro and Garageband are two more apps to take your skills to the next level.

Sketchbook Pro
$4.99 / Autodesk

This professional-grade paint and drawing application is perfect for the professional artist on the go or the daydreaming doodler. Designed by Autodesk and developed exclusively for the iPad experience, you’ll be able to touch up photos from your library or conjure new ideas into brilliant images with this app.

With features found in products costing hundreds of dollars, Sketchbook Pro is Photoshop for iPad.

High Quality Brushes and Tools – With Sketchbook Pro you can pick from more than 60 preset brushes, pens, pencils and markers to make sure you have the right tool at your finger tips and the professional-grade paint engine built in ensures you get the smoothest and most precise brush strokes.

Multi-Touch Control – Sketchbook Pro takes advantage of iPad’s Multi-Touch capabilities to the max. A three-finger tap brings up a whole control panel and a two-finger zoom allows you to zoom 2500% and that’s not where it ends. Multi-Touch and Sketchbook let your creativity come out as quick as your fingers can move.

Layers – Layers in Sketchbook allow you to import images from your Photo Library or from your Camera to add a few touch ups or maybe make unique compositions. You can also export layers as a Photoshop document to share with a desktop or send to friends to add some touches.

Garageband
$4.99 / Apple

Want to become a music producer? Put a complete music studio in your hands with Apple’s Garageband. Using the built-in microphone you can record and produce a whole album right on your iPad.

Make real music – not just play along with colored buttons – using Apple’s amazing Garageband. 

Multi-Touch – Just like iMovie and Sketchbook Pro, Apple’s Garageband makes the most of the iPad 2′s Multi-Touch gesture capabilities while tapping out chords and melodies on the innovative Multi-Touch Keyboard.

Smart Instruments – Like having a group of studio musicians at your finger tips. Tap keyboard chords out with just one finger to find your groove or actually strum a rhythm out on an acoustic guitar. Looking to add some drums to that guitar riff? Use Smart Drums to just drag and drop until you find your beat.

Share It! – Once your mix is finished you can email it directly to your friends from Garageband or export directly to your iTunes.

Share Memories, Socially
Why wait to share your holiday memories? With the iPad 2 and a few powerful apps you can now share those magical moments instantly with friends and family that couldn’t make it to the party.

Bring your family closer together this holiday season using Facetime. 

Facetime for iPad - Have a brother that’s serving overseas or a sister studying in Australia? FaceTime allows you to stay connected with friends and family that couldn’t make it home this year. Facetime comes pre-loaded on the iPad, so all you have to do is click on the app to get started.

Two Cameras – Unlike some tablets, (like the Amazon Fire which has no camera) the iPad 2 features two cameras, one on the front and one on the back, to allow you to chat face to face or show people the world around you. Plus they’re HD so you can share every last detail.

Facebook for iPad and Twitter for iPad - The iPad 2 brings social sharing to a whole new level – with high-res photos, live status updates, games, chatting, and more when you combine your iPad 2 with Facebook or Twitter. Plus, Apple has made it even easier with built-in Twitter integration on Apple’s new iOS 5.

Save Memories with the iCloud
The iPad 2 has made it easier to than ever to make and share memories and now with iCloud it’s just as easy to make sure they are safe – wherever you go.

iTunes – With the iCloud you can have all of your digital media at your fingertips regardless of what device you originally downloaded it to. So if you bought Jingle Bells on your MacBook at home you can easily access it on your iPad while at grandmas and get everyone involved with a sing-a-long.

Photo Stream – With iCloud and the iPad 2 you can also use Photo Stream to access all of the pictures on any of your iDevices. Snap a photo on your iPad 2 after opening presents and know that it’ll show up on your MacBook at home. No more forgetting pictures.

No wonder the iPad 2 tops the list of every holiday shopping list. Is there nothing it can’t do? Thanks to app developers and a growing number of people who want to become an app developer.

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In-car navigation systems are now more affordable than ever. GPS directional systems make arriving at our destination more enjoyable, and more importantly, much easier. In the future, however,  navigation systems will be even more helpful, thanks to Augmented Reality.

Using a system called “True3D” technology, Making Virtual Solid (MVS-California) won this year’s European Satellite Navigation Competition in Munich, Germany for its advanced navigation design. 

Augmented Reality is the process whereby virtual images are projected over a real environment. The technology creates a overlay of graphics.The technology has a variety of uses and could be incredibly useful for drivers.

Driving the Future
The European Satellite Navigation Competition (ESNC) is an international innovation contest that awards a grand prize of 20,000 Euros ($27,000 US) for the best new application of satellite navigation technology. This year, 401 proposals from almost 50 companies were submitted and the winner was Making Virtual Solid (MVS-California), which entered its True 3D Head Up Display & Navigation System.

The system uses augmented reality to display navigational graphics on a car’s windshield. It’s designed to provide a quick and easy way to view your directions and points of interest without taking your eyes off the road.

Incredibly, the display (which is projected over the entire windshield) blends seamlessly with the real-world objects that drivers come into contact with (for example, a gas station or even a sharp turn). It’s almost like having a video game or heads-up display that creates virtual objects along your journey. Things like road signs, hazards or other warnings are also displayed. Even a hotel logo may pop up on the horizon indicating that your destination is just around the bend.

Virtual Cable Cars
In addition to the images that are displayed on the windshield, a red cable provides a guide. The cable and landmarks appear to be on the outside of the car and are refreshed in real time (60 frames a second) just like your in-dash GPS navigation. Plus, the technology works in bright sunlight, too. It’s both an impressive and inexpensive system, so don’t be surprised if you see the technology in cars in the next few years. What’s under the hood, so to speak? For an application like this programmers are most likely programming with C++ or unlocking the power of Java.

Self-driving cars? They’re actually not that far off if you consider that the True 3D Head Up Display & Navigation System could be connected to a car computer and then be set to get you to your destination…automatically.

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Tired of just tweeting your status? Looking for an easy way to get your followers more involved with your Twitter feed? Then make your own Twitter apps. You can, and the process is easy using Bootstrap.

The DIY concept behind Bootstrap (a toolkit released by Twitter) enables developers to make or refine their own Twitter web apps.

Pulling Up Your Bootstraps
Bootstrap is a small set of tools that’s only approximately 6 KB. Though small in size, these are the same tools that Twitter developers use to create web pages and apps for the Twitter social network. Twitter released Bootstrap in August on the code-sharing website GitHub. In addition to using Bootstrap to make apps, it also has helped Twitter developers make Twitter’s operating code more consistent across its entire selection of apps.

At the center of Bootstrap is CSS, or Cascading Style Sheets (a programming language that regulates the appearance and functionality of a website or web app). Bootstrap lets developers define essential parts of web apps, including page templates, tables and forms, buttons, and navigation through the app and also covers style components (such as color palettes and typography). Bootstrap is considered an open source toolkit, which means that anybody is free to use Bootstrap and is even welcome to improve its functionality through added modifications (sometimes known as “forking”).

This little bird is doing a lot more these days than just updating his status.

Developing Apps Beyond Twitter
Twitter is the primary means of short, quick status updates – so it’s no wonder that more than 350 billion tweets are sent daily. Even more surprising is how we can condense our communications down to 140 characters.

If you’re interested in a career in technology or communications, a Twitter feed is as vital as an e-mail address. Bootstrap is a great place to start, but aspiring programmers and developers should look even further. Learning web development or how to build apps can be the key to your future. The first step though is professional training, and computer camps like Digital Media Academy can put you on a fast-track to a career. DMA offers hands-on instruction by industry professionals: experts in web design, app dev and more who share real-world experience in a pre-collegiate environment. Take, for example, DMA’s new program: Academy for Mobile Device Programming or the DMA Studios: App Development for iPhone & iPad. In both courses, students achieve basic mastery of app development and get a true taste of the industry. Creating the future has never been easier.

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224 years ago, on Nov. 18, 1787, Louis Daguerre was born. Daguerre, a digital media pioneer, was the man who invented the first reliable photography process, or what was known back then as the daguerreotype.

Daguerre was born in Northern France and even though he lived after the Renaissance, he was truly a “Renaissance man.” He apprenticed in architecture, theatre design and panoramic painting. He was also a skilled illusionist and invented the Diorama.

Honored with a Google Doodle on his birthday, Louis Daguerre was the Steve Jobs of his day, as photography was the emerging technology of the age. With an eye for capturing life, Daguerre developed the photography technique as a way to capture images he saw with his camera obscura. The technique he developed was unveiled in 1839 to crowds of eager scientist and artists. Ultimately, the French Government acquired Daguerre’s patent and offered it as a gift, “free to the world.”

The Invention of Photography
Back then, photographs were captured on metal plates, also called Tintypes. Daguerre experimented with the process for several years, often showing his work off to other artists in hopes of wooing investors to his idea. Daguerre didn’t truly invent the process, but he did refine and make it reliable. The first permanent photograph was created by Nicéphore Niépce. His process was long and laborious – it took about eight hours to produce a photograph and then the picture quality was extremely poor.

“Boulevard du Temple“, was the first photograph of one or more persons. The image was taken by Daguerre in Paris, in 1838. The ten minute exposure captures only still objects – including a shoe-shine boy and his customer at the bottom left, and two people sitting at a table nearby – who stood still long enough to have their likenesses immortalized.

Niépce learned about Daguerre and became partners with him in 1829. Daguerre continued the photography experiments the two were working on after Niépce’s death in 1833 – and that’s what resulted in the daguerreotype - the forerunner of modern photography. Today, only about 25 of Daguerre’s photographs survive; the majority of his legacy was lost in a fire that destroyed his studio and first Diorama in 1839.

Photography has advanced a lot in 200 years. Today photos are digital and can be shared with the world in an instant. Taking good digital photographs or learning your DSLR camera settings can be challenging. Lke Daguerre learned, you have to keep working at it to create a legacy.

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Skype just updated its iPad and iPhone apps as well as its PC software to allow Facebook users to video chat directly with other Facebook users. Rick Osterloh, vice president of product at Skype, said in the Skype blog, ”We are on a mission to connect over one billion people and our continued partnership with Facebook brings us one step closer to this goal.” Check out the video:

Since July, when Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg debuted “something awesome,” Skype has enabled Facebook video chat.  

The Personal Connection
If you’re one of the millions of people that can’t live without Facebook, you’ll be glad to see all your contacts instantly populate your Skype account with just a few keystrokes; all you need to do is sync your Skype and Facebook accounts. After that, your friends show up just like they do in Facebook. Video chats placed from Skype can be answered using either Skype or Facebook; it just depends on what service you’re logged into.

From Skype’s blog: “Initiating a Facebook-to-Facebook call from within Skype is easy; all you need to do is connect your Skype and Facebook accounts. Then, select a Facebook friend and hit the video call button in Skype- your friend simply picks up the call from Facebook. This new feature lets you maintain social connections with your Facebook friends and compliments previously announced features such as being able to see when your Facebook friends are online, read their status updates and IM them all from Skype.”

Video chat inside Facebook using Skype is just a few log-ins away.

The update also allows you to use Facebook Messenger for instant messaging from Skype to Facebook. “This new feature lets you maintain social connections with your Facebook friends and compliments previously announced features such as being able to see when your Facebook friends are online, read their status updates and IM them all from Skype,” Osterloh said.

Skype (which is owned by Microsoft) has been pushing the integration for a long time. In return for serving up the video-chat application, Microsoft’s Bing is used inside Facebook.

Apps and Chats
It’s hard to believe just a few years ago the world was going crazy over Instant Messaging. As a connected society, even though we still use IMs, we’re way beyond that now. Skype is a simple application but it enables free communication across the world,  provided you have a computer and an Internet connection. Building an app can be done alone or by working on an app-development team. But make no mistake:  it’s going to be apps like Skype that power the next generation of smartphones and tablet computers.

They are two of the greatest directors in film history, each the maker of acknowledged movie masterpieces. Both Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese came to prominence during the 1970s, one of cinema’s greatest and most productive decades.

Hugo is director Martin Scorsese’s first film to use 3D.

But both directors are closely identified with the films they made thirty to forty years ago and that presents a small problem. Now each director has to compete with his own legend, and each must prove that he can make new films that are accessible to younger audiences. To that end, each director has a new project that takes advantages of new techniques in digital filmmaking.

Coppola: The Godfather of Cinema                       
Before he was known as a master filmmaker, Francis Ford Coppola was a respected stage director and had directed a couple of films. But that was before 1972 and the release of the movie that would secure his reputation as a giant in cinema. The Godfather created a sensation and became one of the best-loved films of all time, and Coppola hasn’t been out of the public eye since. Along the way he’s made other masterpieces, including the Vietnam war drama,  Apocalypse Now.

From young lion to grand old man of the cinema: Francis Ford Coppola talks about his passion for film at the Toronto Film Festival.

For his latest project, Twixt, Coppola returned to one of his favorite film genres — horror. In the movie, a horror writer (played by Val Kilmer) visits a bizarre town which may or may not be inhabited by vampires. In one amazing scene, director Coppola has star Kilmer engage in a one-on-one conversation with the father of all modern horror, Edgar Allan Poe.

Coppola not only experimented with story elements but the director was also using an iPad for film editing. For example, when Coppola appeared at Comic-Con 2011 to showcase Twixt, he talked about his desire to take the film on the road and present it along with an orchestra — basically directing the film’s performance as a fresh audience experience each time out, even shuffling the order of shots as the mood of the performance struck him.

He told the Comic-Con faithful, “What I’d love to do is go on tour, like a month before the film opened…and go to all the cities myself, with my collaborators, with live music and actually perform the film for each audience uniquely for them — a different version for each audience.” The maestro also put his own unique stamp on using 3D. In Coppola’s case, that meant utilizing the effect selectively and only in certain scenes.

Coppola had seen a recent blockbuster and liked its use of 3D, but didn’t care for keeping on the special glasses throughout. “I enjoyed very much Avatar,” he said, “But I confess that I took the glasses off during much of the movie. And whenever I saw the images start to show that it was going to be 3D, I put them on and saw a wonderful sequence, and then I took them off again.”

Coppola not only paid tribute to early horror writer Edgar Allan Poe in Twixt; the 3D lenses Coppola handed out at Comic-Con 2011 were inset into Poe face masks. 

And although Coppola enjoys 3D, he doesn’t want to use it as a one-trick pony. “How dare anyone think that all movies have up their sleeve is more 3D. Cinema has many more surprises that you and your children will invent, because it’s at the beginning of this expression of image and sound.” While other art forms are thousands of years old, Coppola noted that film is still in its infancy as an art form. “Music and theater are thousands of years old. Cinema’s a baby.”

Scorsese: Genius Moves to the Third Dimension
Among major directors, few are as passionate about the craft of filmmaking as Martin Scorsese. Through landmark films like 1976’s Taxi Driver and 1980’s Raging Bull, Scorsese tackled tough subjects and did it all with a virtuoso’s artistry. His uncompromising vision has led him to a Best Director Oscar (for 2006’s The Departed), as well as other prestigious awards, such as the Cannes Film Festival’s highly prized Palme D’Or for Taxi Driver.

In 2006, Scorsese was presented the Oscar for Best Director for The Departed by Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola…the other major American directors who came to prominence during the 1970s. Scorsese’s natural sense of humor was on full display when he asked the presenters to “Check the envelope, please.” (Scorsese had been nominated five previous times before winning.)

Few directors have made more great films than Martin Scorsese, and even fewer have studied film in depth as Scorsese has done.

Now Scorsese is back and with a different type of movie than he’s ever made. Hugo (which opens November 23^rd) is an adventure/puzzle of a movie, and it follows the title character, a resourceful boy trying to unlock a secret left to him by his deceased father. A dazzling visual experience, Hugo is Scorsese’s first foray into making a 3D movie, and he recently talked about embracing the popular technology.

“Most people have stereoscopic vision so why belittle that element of our existence? Why not use it? We’re basically headed for holograms. You have to think that way.” He’s convinced of the screen power of 3D, although combining the technique with Scorsese’s patented perfectionism didn’t lead to quick results. “It really was an enjoyable headache,” the famous director said. “It demands respect. We just kept pushing it to see how far we could go. We would look at a shot and say, ‘What could we do to use the depth?’”

A Fresh Approach to Filmmaking
When Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese were learning film production, the only real source of training (besides on-the-job experience) was offered by film schools. Today, anyone interested in filmmaking can pull out their smartphone and post a video up to their YouTube channel. Still, the professional world of filmmaking demands that you master new technologies; after all, it’s a digital filmmaking world.

Aspiring filmmakers can now study film production and learn how to make a movie at film camp without waiting to be accepted to a full-time film school. Digital Media Academy is a state-of-the-art, critically acclaimed digital media education company that offers personalized instruction from seasoned industry professionals. You’ll also get exposure to the latest film-production techniques and hands-on training in film production and how to use editing software (like Final Cut Pro). Interested in becoming the next Coppola or Scorsese? Learn how from DMA.

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It’s official: Director David Yates will bring the BBC’s time-traveling Time Lord to the big screen. The announcement came today via the Hollywood industry trades. The Doctor Who film, which still has an undetermined release date, will be an entirely new take on the popular franchise.

Director David Yates calls the shots on the set of Harry Potter and the and the Order of the Phoenix, as actor Rupert Grint looks on. 

The Doctor is In
Yates is teaming up with Jane Tranter, head of L.A.-based BBC Worldwide Productions to develop Doctor Who into a feature film – with the same idea to make Doctor Who a multi-film blockbuster series – much like the Harry Potter films.  ”We’re looking at writers now. We’re going to spend two to three years to get it right,” Yates told Variety. “It needs quite a radical transformation to take it into the bigger arena.”

Doctor Who is the BBC’s most popular television series ever, with the original Dr. Who series running from 1963 to 1989. The latest version, which was rebooted in 2005, stars Matt Smith as the 11th Doctor Who. The show is the BBC’s most lucrative franchise and airs on BBC America.

What Came Before 
For the uninitiated, Doctor Who is a traveler, a super-intelligent alien who battles universal enemies across time and space. Yates is obviously intrigued by the character: “The notion of the time-traveling Time Lord is such a strong one, because you can express story and drama in any dimension or time,” but while the director appreciates what has come before, Yates acknowledged, ”Russell T. Davies and then Steven Moffat (the series re-booters and writers) have done their own transformations, which were fantastic, but we have to put that aside and start from scratch.”

The movie version would not follow the TV show and the film’s makers are looking for writers who will understand a fresh approach, while at the same time capturing the essence of the TV show. “We want a British sensibility, but having said that, Steve Kloves wrote the Potter films and captured that British sensibility perfectly, so we are looking at American writers too,” he explained.

Two previous films were based on the TV series: Doctor Who and the Daleks (1965) and Doctor Who: Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. (1966), both of which starred Peter Cushing as the Doctor. And while BBC had attempted to remake the show into a film before, the clout that Yates and Tranter bring to the table promise the film should be fast-tracked.

Director David Yates gives direction to actors Rupert Grint, Emma Watson and Daniel Radcliffe on the set of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1.

The Digital Filmmaking Frontier
Director David Yates is no stranger to blockbuster franchises. In fact, Yates helmed the last four Harry Potter films: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Parts 1 & 2), Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. The director uses state-of-the-art cameras and special effects to make his blockbusters but he also understands story and character development. Learning special effects and high-end production are just a few of the requirements for movie-making. The movie-making craft can take a lifetime to master; looks like Mr. Yates certainly mastered it.

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