Instead of just throwing the mail away I turn to you, my readers.
If you are a dad and have a kid in the age between 6-16 years old and you two are living in Scandinavia (because the audition is for the Scandinavian version of Toy Story 3) now is your chance.
If you two get lucky you will be the voice of one of the green army soldiers in the movie, doesn’t that sound cool?

Ok, so here is what you need to do:
Head over to Disney’s Toy Story 3 audition site here, register and follow the audition instructions.

by mushir at DeviantArt.com

Since I was a little kid I’ve always been a fan of the animated movies from Pixar. WALL·E one of Pixars creations is a character I really love. It amazes me how the animators could bring life into a equally squared trash compacting robot. When you look at WALL·E he expresses his feelings in a such way that you get pulled into his feelings and understand him.
That is a way of art I really respect – To bring life to a character and let him/her/it to “decide” it’s own path.
Animation and Creation (modeling) is just a small part of the entire pie. One other area which I think is very important as well is the music, without the music the entire film looses a part of it’s soul.

History
The amazing story of Pixar Animation Studios began during 1979 when it became one of the Graphics Groups of the computer division of Lucasfilm. During that year they hired Dr. Ed Catmull who is the co-founder of Pixar Animation Studios and the President of Pixar and Disney Animation Studios. In 1984 John Lasseter (Chief Creative Officer, Pixar and Disney Animation Studios Principal Creative Advisor and Walt Disney Imagineering) left his animation job at Disney to join George Lucas special effects group.

Steve Jobs the world famous founder of Apple Inc. bought the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm Ltd. and with his magic fingers established Pixar as an independent company (1986). During this year Pixar did a Animation Short world premiere at the Siggraph convention. This Animation Short became a famous mascot for the Pixar Corporation – Luxo Jr. It took only one year before the Luxo Jr. Animation Short got it’s Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Short Film.

The years went by while their sales (of Pixar’s Computers) went for the worse and threatened the company out of business. It wasn’t until Lasseter’s animation department decided to produce computer animated commercials for outside companies, companies like Listerine, Tropicana and LifeSavers. During the following years Pixar continued its relationship with Walt Disney Feature Animation to produce the three upcoming computer animated feature films. The first feature film was Toy Story, it had it’s first public appearance 1995 during the American Thanksgiving holiday. It became the highest grossing film during 1995 ($362 million worldwide). During the following years Pixar evolved to a larger company and made jaw dropping computer animated films such as: A Bug’s Life, Toy Story 2, Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Cars, Ratatouille, WALL·E, Up and soon Toy Story 3. They’ve also created a bunch of Animated shorts such as: Presto, For the Birds, Lifted, Tokyo Mater, Knick Knack, Luxo Jr and many more.

May 5th 2006 Disney bought Pixar, John Lasseter became the new Chief Creative Officer, Pixar and Disney Animation Studios Principal Creative Advisor and Walt Disney Imagineering.

Pixar are building a new studio in Vancouver – British Columbia – Canada and will be named the “Glenn McQueen Pixar Animation Center” after the Pixar animator Glenn McQueen (Canadian born) who died in 2002.

—

Pixar Animation Studios
UnOfficial Pixar Blog
Pixar Planet
Toy Story 3 Trailer

The first time I laid my hands on Photoshop was a long time ago. If I remember correctly it was Photoshop v6.0 and that is a long time ago I can guarantee that my friends.

Adobe and NAPP (National Association of Photoshop Professionals) did a one of a kind “Photoshop 20th Anniversary” Event at San Fransisco together with Scott Kelby, Matt Kloskowski, Dave Cross, RC Concepcion, Matt Corey, Julieanne Kost (from Adobe), Terry White and many more attended the event and did various presentations.
You can see some pictures from Scott Kelbys site. Adobe and NAPP did broadcast the entire event LIVE, but for those who didn’t make it to San Fransisco or attended the LIVE broadcast can see the entire event at the Photoshop 20th Anniversary site.

Before this post is finished I want to share some Photoshop start up screens to all my readers.
Cheers!

Backyard Babies music video shot with Nikon D3s
Together with Nikon Scandinavia and the photographer from Sports Illustrated Bill Frakes and eleven Nikon D3s houses (with lenses ofcourse ) they created Backyard Babies new music video.
The video was shot in Åbo and Helsingfors in Finland during the bands 20th year anniversary.
The DSLR:s have come quite in the world of technology and with this new video features they will set a new milestone for video recording.

Some info about the band: Backyard Babies is a Scandinavian hard rock band which is very popular here in Sweden and they popularity is expanding to the UK:s streets and cities.

New firmware update for the Nikon D3s
Nikon have released a new firmware update for the Nikon D3s (version 1.01).
Six things have been approved and one of them is a error with the recording feature.

You can download the new updates here:

Nikon D3s firmware (version 1.01) update for Windows
Nikon D3s firmware (version 1.01) update for Mac

Note: The links are to the Nikon Europe site!

PhotoPlus Magazine – Canon EOS 550D/Rebel T2i
PhotoPlus Magazine have been looking more closely at the Canon EOS 550D/Rebel T2i. To share their findings and thoughts about this new house they’ve been kindly enough to share a video there Canon’s David Perry are talking about the new body desing and improvements.

Aperature 3 – Face recognition
Apple have reloaded their guns with a new version of Aperature 3. In the new version of Aperature you can catogorise your photos via the facerecognition software feature. Another thing that Apple have included is categorising by places via the Geo tagging feature, ofcouse you need to have a camera with build-in GPS or a GPS accessory to get the cordinates and the rest of the information that the GEO tagging feature requires.
There is 15 new brushes to apply various filter effects to your photos and with the new adjustmentfilters you can very easely change a photo to black and white, sepiatone, toycamera effect (you get the idea).

Bill Frakes from Sports Illustrated that I mentioned before have tested Aperature 3 with a database of over 1,5 milion pictures. Bill said that the new version works like a charm and with a single click you can zoom upp to a thousand percent to see your pictures in detail.

All in all Aperature 3 will give you over 200 new functions that you can play with.

Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet!
Can’t wait until the movie have it’s premiere in theaters June 18th 2010.
Until then you can drool over these newly baked trailers:

(Video: Watch this video on the post page)

(Video: Watch this video on the post page)

Woooooow, Hold Your Horses mate! because I’ve got a announcement for you or I would rather say Wacom got a announcement for you.

Wacom have a great collection of professional tablets, the Intuos 4 series, Bamboo series and the Cintiq series.
Recently Wacom announced a new tablet to their Intuos 4 line-up. It’s their new Intuos 4 Wireless (yup you heard right, freaking wireless!). Up to 10 meters or 33 feet, Mac and PC compatible, No cords (of course it’s wireless otherwise it wouldn’t be called a wireless tablet ).

So what is the price you may ask?… Well only if you give me 100 bucks first… you know I’m kidding right? , I’ll cut to the chase it’s 399$.

Specs:

was a event at Trafalgar Square in London and yes WAS is the right word for this post. For some strange reason I didn’t hear about this until it was too late to post it on the site as a upcoming event . Well well you can’t know everything in time but hey even if that event was at January 23rd 2010 the problem still remains in Great Britain but in other countries as well.

I’m A Photographer Not A Terrorist! is a organisation to gather people in defence of street photography.
Since 9/11 countries around the world have tighten the leash of what you can and can not do especially street photography. Photographers like kids, tourists, amateur, professional, whether landscape, architectural or street photographers can’t take a picture before a security guard put’s his greasy, slobby hands in front of your lens and can take you into custody, take the camera or forbid you to take photographs on that site and asks you to leave at once.
People have been taken into custody and questioned for some time before they get released with no charges. Many people report that the police and security guards in the UK are miss using the anti-terrorist law.

I’ll quote “Following a series of high profile detentions under s44 of the terrorism act including 7 armed police detaining an award winning architectural photographer in the City of London, the arrest of a press photographer covering campaigning santas at City Airport and the stop and search of a BBC photographer at St Pauls Cathedral and many others.”

I just want to spread this message to all the photographers out there (from children to Pro:s) who haven’t heard of PHNAT (I’m A Photographer Not A Terrorist!) to go to their website and learn more about what you can do to support the photographers rights!

Some people love it, others hate it,  some people call it “The worlds largest iPod”, some people will buy it, some won’t.

Yeah Baby! I’m talking about Apples new tablet the iPad.

At January 27th I and many others (millions of people around the world) tuned in to Apples press event at Yerba Buena Center of The Arts in San Francisco.

When Steve showed the world the iPad my jaw dropped to the ground. In the matter of seconds I said to myself “I need one of those!”
Imagine sitting in the sofa and browse the web, updating the blog, watch movies (when you are on the go).

When Apple launched their first mobile phone the iPhone many people was not happy about that it didn’t support Flash, Copy & Paste, Multitasking, no voice command or Physical keyboard. After a time Apple did fix some of the things I mentioned above (Copy & Paste and Voice Command).
When the iPad was reveled to the world I was stunned to hear that it didn’t support Flash, Multitasking, MacOS X, especially Flash and Multitasking which I’ve wanted since the release of the iPhone.
Shame on you Apple shame on you!

I really what the iPad but I think the wise choice is to wait for the 2nd Gen and hope they will fix Flash and Multitasking support.

The time will tell and the people will tell the World what they think and my ears are open to take that information and process it to a final decision.

– JP

To not miss this amazing event I went to twit.tv which is hosted by Leo Laporte.
Leo runs many different high quality podcasts with the main theme: Technology.

I’ll mention some of the shows he is hosting: Security Now with Steve Gibson, This Week in Tech with friends, The GizWiz with Dick DeBartolo (from MAD Magazine), etc. Leo and his crew covered almost the entire CES 2010 Event (and yes I said almost, because there was many halls and floors and each hall was several football fields large, over 20′000 exhibitors and approximately 150′000 people). Yeah Baby that Event was INSANE I tell ya!

Ok, enough chit chatting and bring in the list.
This list is my personal opinion of the gadgets and hightech gizmoz I really like (and some of them will I probably buy when they will get released) and I saw from the event via Live streams and articles from engadget and several other sites as well.

1. Boxee Box

Boxee is a multimedia software which is developed so you can enjoy entertainment from the Internet and your computer on the tv.
Boxee is developed from the open source project xbmc.
During the CES 2010 event in Las Vegas Boxee announced the Boxee Box which is a Boxee in a hardware solution instead of software+pc/mac that you needed before.

With it’s cool design of a cube going through the table and a good price tag 150-200$ this will be a awesome product… and I’m going to buy one

2. Nexus One aka Google Phone

The Nexus One Googles first mobile phone. People have talked about it, people have waited for it, people have drooled after it and now it’s here, ok only in the US so far.

I’m not sure if I’m going to buy it because it’s the first phone from google and my experience with newly released devices is that it will have some sort of children’s disease. We’ll just have to wait and see what the public will tell to the world about this new phone.

In the end I really like this phone for it’s speed, sleekness and what engineers have done to it (what I’ve seen and heard). Hopefully in the future the Google phone will be a strong competitor to Apples iPhone.

3. Ford SYNC (MyFord and MyFord Touch)

Ford were the keynote during CES 2010 at Las Vegas Convention Center. Introducing their new technology Ford SYNC or the new name (what I’ve heard) MyFord and MyFord Touch.
SYNC is a ease-to-use car connectivity/communication system, you can operate popular features as the MP3-player, Bluetooth and USB drives with a simple voice command.

SYNC include features as:
* Hands-free Calling
*911 Assist
*Music Search
*Vehicle Health Report
*News, Sports and Weather Forcasts
*Real-time Traffic
*Turn-by-Turn Navigation and much more.
To get more info about this amazing product you can visit SyncMyRide.com.

4. Panasonic 152″ 4K3D Plasma TV

A another product that was very popular among the companies was 3D technology. LG, Samsung, Panasonic, JVC, Sharp, Sony, Philips and many more.
Two Tv:s stood out from the rest. The first one is Panasonics monserous 152″ 4K 3D Plasma Tv, 152″! 4K! Insane I’ll tell ya.
The second thing that stood at the CES 2010 Event was the worlds thinnest LED-backlit LCD from LG, were a talking about amazing 6,9 mm thin.

All I can say is WOW.

5. Eye-Fi 802.11n Pro X2

The Eye-Fi have been around for a while, but during the CES event they announced a updated version, the Eye-Fi 802.11n Pro X2. This card will only be sold in 8GB sizes and is a Class 6 card which means more speed.

The idea behind the Eye-Fi is that while out shooting for example and you are near a WiFi-hotspot the card will upload its contents to a specified ftp or storage center and delete the content after it has been uploaded successfully.

Last Minutes with ODEN from phos pictures on Vimeo.