Hi all,

Here is a peek into what is happening out there: it's time for cool stuff. For your daily dose of coolness, see the archive, subscribe to the feed or follow me on Twitter.

Photo things

• Picaboo, a direct competitor of Albumprinter for bound books and greeting cards, has brought in $1 million in equity and rights, according to VentureWire.
• Postino is a mobile application from AnguriaLab that lets you take iPhone photos and turn them into postcards which you can send to your family and friends. And no, they don't mean "e-cards" (although Postino supports those, too) - they mean actual, printed out, physical cards sent through the mail service. Check it out.
• In contrast with the new IPhone and its sorry 3 megapixel camera, Samsung decided to strike a real blow and introduces the 12 MegaPixel Pixon12 phone. That’s twice the resolution my point-and-shoot camera has – and that’s only two years old. Like any good camera phone, it works right out of the box with Facebook, Flickr, Photobucket, MySpace, etc.
• Here is a simple and funny way to make your still photos look like they are part of Google Streetview or an internet video, ready to be played. It only takes some tape, cardboard, and acrylic, plus a bit of genius when you frame the photo.
• MotionPortrait is a technology that automatically creates a 3D face model from a single picture. The model can be animated in a variety of facial expressions.

Technology

• We spotted it already at the Adobe Max conference in 2008, but Adobe Flash Catalyst is a new product on Adobe Labs that lets designers convert native Photoshop or Illustrator files into interactive Flash (SWF) projects with "zero" coding. Practically, that means that a graphic designer could alter an application and its code without bugging a programmer - a much faster and efficient option for designers to communicate their ideas visually without having to rely on static screenshots.
• Another thing from the Max that can be used right now: Adobe Browser Labs – a place to test your web app in different browsers. Very handy.
• Amazon has been one of the early movers in the cloud computing space, with its AWS offerings, including S3 and EC2. Now, there is a lot of chatter around the imminent open sourcing of all its APIs and services.
• RFID technology seems to be on the rise lately. After Mitsubishi announced a super-efficient tag reader last month and NEC said it was able to dramatically cut production costs for RFID two weeks ago, it’s now Hitachi’s turn: The company has announced today that it has developed the world’s smallest RFID chip. It almost fits in a book, because Hitachi claims their chip measures only 0.075×0.075mm, 80% smaller than other chips.
• Here is some really neat patterns and approaches for scalable web architectures. Hear, hear.

And finally, the cool stuff

• The Trunk Club is a new online initiative that has the objective of revolutionizing the way that men buy clothes. How? By providing all site users with a personal assistant through Skype. The web site has commercial agreements with lots of retailers and buy in only on demand, so their prices are competitive and the assistant is free.
• Prepare to be scared by artificial intelligence: 10 Brand New Wolfram Alpha Easter Eggs.
• What about Zombie Little Ponies, a Jabba the Hutt-suit or Japanese battle underwear? That’s what I call cool stuff.

That's all, folks. Until next time,

Sander