A Hangout for All Your Social-Network Photos

Nowadays, people are storing a lot of personal photos on a variety of social networks. They capture photos with their smartphone cameras, instantly share them with Facebook, Twitter or Instagram and never see them again.
This week, I tried two methods for gathering photos from all sorts of social networks. I used ThisLife, a service that pulls in photos and videos from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Flickr, Shutterfly, SmugMug and Picasa, as well as from a computer's hard drive or an iPhone or iPad (via an iOS app). One thousand photos or one hour of video are free; more storage costs $80 or $150 a year. I also tested Seagate's STX +0.61% one-terabyte, $110 Backup Plus Portable Drive, which backs up photos and videos from Facebook and Flickr, as well as its primary function of backing up other computer files.
I was amazed by the trove of photos I didn't even know I had stored on many sites around the Web, and I spent hours flipping through them.
But is the photo quality on some social networks worth saving? Facebook, for example, resizes and compresses images. ThisLife recognizes this issue and uses image enhancement on each photo to improve things like balance, light and contrast. If it imports from a place where photos were saved in their original size, ThisLife preserves that photo size; it stores video at 1080p HD quality. Seagate simply copies the images from Facebook and Flickr to your computer or Backup Drive. Still, having all of my photos in one place outweighed any image quality concerns.

ThisLife

ThisLife stores photos and videos from social networks in one place.

ThisLife, which uses cloud storage from Amazon Web Services, takes a holistic approach, merging photos from various places, and also offers a timeline of favorite shots, facial recognition for labeling people and gets rid of duplicate photos. ThisLife saves photos posted by its users as well as photos from other people in which the user was tagged, or identified by name.
I connected my ThisLife account to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Picasa, Shutterfly and SmugMug, and installed its app on my iPad and iPhone to pull in photos from both devices. I used the ThisLife Desktop Uploader with my MacBook, clicking one button to move more than 7,000 photos from iPhoto into the service, a process that took a couple of days.
The overall interface of ThisLife is elegant, laying thousands of images out in a browse-friendly library that is organized left to right by time. I quickly scrolled through photos from a trip to New Orleans in 2006 (originally posted in Shutterfly) all the way up to my most recent Facebook photos, shared last week. The date of each photo appeared in the center of the screen as I scrolled, so I jumped to dates I knew had memorable photos, like my 30th birthday and a 2010 New Year's Eve vacation.
I dragged photos onto one another to organize each moment into stacks of images. And I deleted photos I didn't want. By tapping a heart icon on a photo, I added it to a timeline of favorite photos. The iPad and iPhone apps were a cinch to use on-the-go.
When I found an image I liked, I hit a Share button to send it to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr or to friends' email addresses. It isn't obvious enough that you can type in a person's email. The site first encourages you to share it with friends on their Facebook walls. Later this week, ThisLife plans to introduce a better interface that makes it easier to download images and to tell where they came from. Also this week, it will let people privately share photos with a group of users who can be labeled as viewers or contributors.

Seagate

Seagate's Backup Plus Portable Drive backs up photos and videos from Facebook and Flickr.

People nervous about privacy or who want to stop using a social network (like Facebook) altogether without losing all of their posted photos will like Seagate's Backup Plus. And its ability to fully back up a computer will offer some peace of mind.
Seagate's social-media backup works on six different drives for Windows or Mac computers; I used the Backup Plus Portable Drive for Mac. This drive is relatively lightweight and portable, measuring about the size of a mini Moleskine notebook. I plugged it into my MacBook using an included USB cord and followed directions to install the Seagate Dashboard software. Once opened, this software prompted me to sign into my Facebook and/or Flickr accounts, and immediately began downloading photos from the sites. In 27 minutes, I backed up copies of roughly 1,100 Facebook photos. A small Auto Save check box will prompt the service to copy new photos from these two sites once an hour.
Since people may not always want a hard drive plugged into their computer for this backup, Seagate creates a folder called My Online Documents on the computer and stores new photos there. The next time a person plugs in the Backup Plus Drive and performs a system backup, the images are transferred to the portable drive. I glanced through photos in a subfolder of My Online Documents, called Facebook, where album names from Facebook were used to group images together.
Right now, Seagate saves only your own shared photos. The company says that by late October, you will be able to save photos in which you were tagged.
If you're looking for a way to save all the photos you have floating around the Web, ThisLife groups them in a beautiful interface, while Seagate's Backup Plus is a practical, no-frills option for offline storage.

New NASA photo satellite to join 40-year mission

SIOUX FALLS, South Dakota — A fleet of picture-snapping NASA satellites that for 40 years has documented forest fires, tsunamis and everyday changes in the Earth's geography will soon get a new member.

With Landsat 8 set for a February launch, nearly 140 scientists and engineers from more than 25 countries are scheduled to gather in South Dakota next week to discuss how to best download, process and distribute the millions of data-rich images used in agriculture, education, business and government.

Since 1972, Landsat satellites have been continuously snapping pictures across the globe as part of a 40-year mission to document the planet.

But with Landsat 7 aging and its older sibling Landsat 5 failing, a new orbiter is needed to continue the long-term data record, said Jenn Sabers, remote sensing branch chief at the U.S. Geological Survey Center for Earth Resources Observations and Science.

"One of the things we want to do is preserve that legacy by ensuring that we collect consistent data with the prior missions," Sabers said. "Although we have that consistency, we also want to make improvements."

The USGS Center for EROS, located in the middle of farmland north of Sioux Falls, is the main federal repository for satellite images. Officials wanted to locate the center in the middle of the U.S, and they chose South Dakota in 1970 over several other states, partly due to persistent campaigning by the late Sen. Karl Mundt.

Members of the Landsat Technical Working Group will gather at the center next week to discuss how to best use the data-packed photos from the new orbiter, which will be known as Landsat 8 once it reaches space. The team, which provides scientific and technical input to the U.S. Geological Survey and NASA, will plan how to establish reception, processing and distribution capabilities from the new satellite.

Landsat satellites help document calamities, such as forest fires and hurricanes, as well as mapping the world's mangrove forests and tracking ice in the Antarctic. The images differ from programs such as Google Earth, as you can't see individual homes, but are able to see larger things, such as highways, NASA says.

Sabers said Landsat 8 will work harder, capturing at least 400 scenes a day instead of 250. It will also be able to point at angles not directly below the satellite, which can greatly assist gathering data during a disaster, she said.

"Before where the satellite would see exactly below it in the track, we can actually point the collection as well," Sabers said. "So we can get something next to where we would normally be collecting."

Jim Irons, NASA's Landsat Data Continuity Mission project scientist, said Landsat 8's sensor will offer improved sensitivity and a higher signal-to-noise ratio for more accurate land cover maps. The new technology is like switching from a ruler marked every quarter of an inch to one marked every 1/64th or 1/128th of an inch, he said.

Landsat 8 will also allow scientists to read ocean chlorophyll in coastal regions, detect cirrus clouds and correct for atmospheric effects.

NASA launched the first Landsat satellite in 1972, and the orbiters have been sending images back to EROS ever since. Two are still orbiting the Earth.

Landsat 7, launched in 1999, operates despite a faulty scan line corrector that leaves zig-zag gaps in some images.

Landsat 5, which dates back to 1984, began showing signs of impending failure in November, prompting USGS to halt the downloading of images. Sabers said engineers resurrected an older sensor on Landsat 5 and it is sending data, but EROS is archiving the data it can't currently process.

Landsat 6 never reached orbit after its 1993 launch because of a ruptured manifold.

The newest orbiter will hitch a ride on an Atlas 5 rocket, currently scheduled for a Feb. 11 liftoff from Vandenberg Air Force Base in San Luis Obispo, California.

Irons, who will attend the week of meetings in Sioux Falls, said scientists are excited.

"Since the launch of Landsat 1, there's always been at least one of the Landsat satellites in operation collecting images of the global land surface," said Irons, who is based at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

Landsat 8, which is about the size of a compact SUV with a 30-foot(9-meter)-long deployable sheet of solar panels, is being built with a 5-year design lifespan but will be stocked with at least a 10-year supply of fuel.

NASA is in charge of building and launching the satellite before turning over operation to the USGS, though NASA also uses Landsat data for science.

Long-term plans call for another orbiter to be launched before the end of Landsat 8's run.

"Hopefully we'll be able to continue with the next mission after that that will extend it even further," Sabers said.

Nissan Evalia launched in India; priced at Rs 8.49-9.99 lakhs

New Delhi: Nissan India has launched its all-new 2012 seven-seater Multi-utility vehicle, the Evalia on Tuesday.

The new product is priced between Rs 8.49 lakh and Rs 9.99 lakh (ex- showroom Delhi).

The Evalia, which will be available in four variants, all diesel, will be powered by Renault’s 1.5-litre K9K dCi engine that churns out a peak power and torque output of 85 bhp and 200 Nm, respectively.

"As part of our global Nissan Power 88 plan, we will be launching 10 new models by FY'16, which is introducing two new models every year," Nissan Motor Co Corporate vice president, Africa, Middle East and India, Toru Hasegawa told reporters here. 

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By FY14, the company will also launch the Datsun brand in India, he added.

"Emerging markets will play an important role in meeting our global target... There will be two products each from Datsun for India, Indonesia and Russia by FY'16," Hasegawa added.

Nissan will be considering all segments of the Indian market but special focus will be on the price sensitive segment.

Experts are also adding that the Nissan Evalia will give a tough competition to the Toyota Innova, Mahindra Xylo and the recently launched Maruti Suzuki Ertiga.

The interior cabin space of Evalia looks superb and seems to have been designed while keeping in mind the usefulness quotient.

The MUV in its global avatar, NV200, has already achieved a certain level success in the international market, being chosen as the new official taxicabs for the New York and London.

The Evalia, which is the joint venture of Japanese car maker Nissan and Indian commercial vehicle manufacturer Ashok Leyland, was unveiled at 11th Auto Expo in Delhi.