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Earlier this year, we shared what we carry in our laptop bags, and this week we’re sharing our workspaces. Now we want to see what’s in your laptop bag—or better yet—your mobile workspace in action. Your I’m-getting-things-done-in-a-coffee-shop-today bags.

Photo by ifyr.

So snap a pic of your bag and contents (or even of your mobile workspace in action) and flex our comment system’s image upload abilities. Along with your pictures, share some details about what you bring, why you bring it, and how it helps you get things done.

(Keep in mind that images in the comments get cropped to fit in the comments, but you can click on any cropped image to view the full picture.)

Originally posted 2009-09-24 22:50:11. Republished by Old Post Promoter

blackberry Pearl 8120 from T-Mobile – View full phone specs, more images, videos, in-depth expert and user reviews at www.phonedog.com I spent a week with the newest Pearl, the 8120 for T-Mobile. It’s got wifi, hotspot@Home, and a 2MP camera. But that keyboard’s still kind of small for my hands. We add new videos on the latest and coolest phones almost daily – Subscribe www.youtube.com

Firefox: If you hate having to search through your folders every time you change the type of file or directory you’re saving to—and we certainly do!—Save File To helps you make custom context menus for file saving bliss.

The problem arises with the way Firefox retains the previous folder you’ve used to save something. That’s great for when you’re saving a bunch of the same thing in a row—who would want to navigate from the default directory every time you opened up the save as dialogue?—but if you’re frequently saving a variety of files you want a faster way to move between directories.

Save File To is a Firefox add-on that enables editing of the right-click “Save As” context menu. Immediately after installation it adds in your Desktop and My Documents folders as available entries—and you can navigate down through those folders—but you can also specify custom folders and reorganize the menu. It’s easy to add in a folder for a specific project you’re working on or create custom links to save to your wallpaper collection, music collection, or any other system you want to set up. Although we used an image as our example in the screenshot above you can customize all the Save As menus in Firefox including how you save pages, links, images, and other files.

Visit the link below to install Save File To into Firefox or check out the via link to see a step by step tutorial at How-To Geek on setting up Save File To. Save File To is free and works wherever Firefox does. Have a favorite add-on for customizing the menus in Firefox or a similar tool for another browser? Let’s hear about it in the comments.

Late last week, Apple removed all content from the App Store matching a new set of rules to remove apps containing women and men in swimsuits, apps showing skin, or apps oozing with innuendo, according to one of the affected developers. While broadly speaking we’re not that concerned about whether or not you can download apps with PG-13 images, it’s yet another reminder that Apple controls everything you can do on their latest slate of devices—and we don’t like it. Chillifresh via TechCrunch]

Remember the Pennsylvania school district that was accused of remotely flipping on the webcams of students’ laptops? As if the civil suit filed on behalf of those students wasn’t going to be enough trouble for the Lower Merion representatives, now it seems the FBI wants to know just what’s going on, launching an investigation into the practice. For its part the district said that it remotely activated the cams 42 times, and that it only did so with the bestest of intentions: when trying to locate a missing laptop. It would also like to point out that only two employees had the power to flip the switch, and that they only captured images — never sound. Because, you know, surreptitiously watching your kids is so much less menacing when there’s no audio involved.

Spying school district update: turned on webcams 42 times, FBI isn’t sure that’s legal originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 20 Feb 2010 13:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Windows only: Fans of TweetDeck with a preference for open source will love MahTweets, a plugin-based Twitter client that also integrates with Facebook, Flickr, Twitpic, and more, and offers all kinds of handy customizations.

The first thing you do upon opening MahTweets is choose what plugins you want to install. Right now it’s only got a few, but they give you the opportunity to choose what networks you want integrated (including Facebook, Twitter, and RSS) and where you want to upload pictures (Facebook, Flickr, or services like TwitPic or yFrog). It then navigates you through the rest of the preferences, in which you can enable notifications, automatic translation, a screensaver based on your networks, and tweak a bunch of performance-based options.

After you’re done with the initial setup, you’ll see the client itself. It starts off with only one column (shown above), but you can add as many as you want, with all sorts of different kinds of filters in each to keep your groups organized (like TweetDeck). In addition to the basic features for updating your status, sending direct messages, and re-tweeting, you can also take webcam snapshots, upload pictures to Facebook or Flickr, and view links to pictures inline—no more clicking on links to open images in your browser.

MahTweets is a free download, Windows only.

Originally posted 2009-10-20 18:25:18. Republished by Old Post Promoter

Heavy Rain relies on its characters to deliver much of the gravity and story of the game, but what you might not know is that the actors often provided both the sound and the face of their characters. How close are the two?

Jem Alexander, of the European Playstation Blog, recently posted some photos of the actors who play the game’s protagonists to his twitter account. The images below show just how much the character models look like the actors. The resemblance is frightening, particularly how much of a mirror image Sam Douglas is for Scott Shelby.

There is a video on the Blu-ray that shows Langdale delivering some of Mars’ lines, and it’s just uncanny. Look for Heavy Rain to be released on the PlayStation 3 on February 23. You can read our full review of the game to see what we thought.

Buying new gear will only get you so far in the world of photography. It might make things easier, but what really matters most is confidence and practice in lieu of schilling out your hard-earned cash.

Photo by seanmcgrath.

Photography weblog Photo Focus has recently shared their top 10 tips on knuckling under and making yourself a better photographer, surprisingly the entire list forgoes money or better equipment.

• Be objective. Be open to constructive critiques of your work. Step back and get rid of your emotional attachment to your images. Analyze them as a stranger would. Check yourself – to see if you’re hitting the mark you set for yourself. Be willing to admit when you’re wrong and learn from it.

Your goal is to make your work appear effortless, but to accomplish that, stepping outside of your comfort zone is a must. Many of the rest of the tips given boil down to the old standby rule of practice, practice, practice. It may not seem like a great fix when that new camera or piece of equipment looks so appealing, but the new gear isn’t going anywhere, and you can always buy it after you’ve boosted your skills a little. Check out Photo Focus’ full list of 10 ways to improve your skills without buying new gear. Got something you’d add? Sound off in the comments.

Originally posted 2009-10-14 18:25:25. Republished by Old Post Promoter

Aviary Phoenix, a really powerful and reader favorite online image editor, used to charge $25 per year for private online image saving and other select features. As of yesterday, though, the Phoenix editor’s gone entirely free.

What the unlocking mainly does is remove a few minor annoyances that free users might have encountered before. You could always save your images and project files on Aviary and download them, but they were viewable by the searching public. Adding a personal watermark was also a paid-only feature, and all the tutorials weren’t accessible—but now all that is gratis.

Those who paid for Aviary accounts in the last 30 days will get a refund, and those previously paid in will receive a blue badge to mark their support, as well as first-round access to alpha features as they develop. It’s heartening to see more high-powered webapps available for instant, full access when people need them.

Filed under: Macworld, Accessories, iPod Family, Peripherals, iPhone

I’m still skeptical about laser projectors — while the technology is impressive, the practicality is still a little limited. And unfortunately, Microvision’s demo of their SHOWWX projector here at Macworld 2010 didn’t do much to change my mind. It’s a nice little device — it’s almost exactly the size of the iPhone, and the rep told me that most of the unit is actually the battery — and there are some good applications for it. But for the consumer market that Microvision really wants, the $500 unit (that will go on sale in March) is still a little too small in terms of scale and usability.

Just using the device, which will project clear images and video from an iPhone or iPod on a wall about three to four feet away (more or less depending on ambient light), you can tell that the idea of a microprojector is almost at the level where it could be really successful. As the rep said to us, the iPhone is a 1:1 device, and while many of us do use it to show pictures and video to each other, it’s really only meant to show one person at a time. But the projector goes to a “1 to few” relationship instead, and that’s a prospect that will be appealing to anyone who wants to show off business presentations, video, or pictures of family members to anyone else.

There are a lot of other good things about the projector as well: since it’s a laser projector (the specific technology is called “pico p,” and Microvision is looking to sell not just these retail units, but the tech itself to anyone willing to pay), there’s no focal requirements — you can basically point it at any surface shape, and it’ll project in a visible way. It’s a piece of cake to use — just plug it into the iPhone and go.

There are enough issues that the unit isn’t perfect yet, and not all of them are Microvision’s fault. For one thing, that battery — it only lasts two hours (enough to watch a movie, but not much else), and it basically doubles the size of the iPhone. For another, the capability — Apple hasn’t yet enabled developers to project screenshots or actual app screens from the connector port, so while this might be a great device for showing off apps to friends and business groups, no dice. And the price is still a bit high — at $500, business users may be interested, but not many regular people will pay more than they paid for their iPod touch just to project pictures from it.

Personally, I think we will see projectors more and more — eventually, they’ll be included in a successful device (maybe even an Apple device), and consumers will enjoy projecting their favorite content on makeshift larger screens. But the technology just needs to get a little smaller, less power intensive, and a little cheaper. Microvision’s projector will be available in the US in March, and you might even see the sales guy bring one around the next time he arrives at your company for a pitch.

TUAWMacworld 2010: Hands-on with Microvision’s SHOWWX laser pico projector originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 12 Feb 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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