telescope
Latest
Widget Watch: Telescope, a Basecamp widget
After blogging the Basecamp widget, TUAW reader Mike Jacobsen wrote in to let us know about a Basecamp widget he recently launched for Dashboard, called Telescope. For now, Telescope appears to be more of a monitoring widget than anything, allowing users to: List current projects View last 25 updates (to-dos, milestones, messages, comments, files) Filter update list by project View next milestone for each project Mike also blogged his experience with building the widget in Dashcode, and links other projects that have either produced products, such as Packrat and other Basecamp utilities. He even lists 37Signals APIs and resources in case you're a developer looking to hop on the bandwagon.It's good to see more work being done on utilities that interact with these web services in creative new ways. My personal favorite is still Packrat for Backpack, largely because of its offline and syncing capabilities.
Mobile Phone Telescope for crappy telephoto photography
We'd almost get excited about this optical 6x attachment if it supported any decent cameraphones, but the compatibility list shows all of three devices: the Nokia 6230 / 6230i and 6680. Granted, the entire back of the phone has to be replaced, but throw us a bone, guys: the 6230 has a VGA camera and the 6230i and 6680 (with its 6682 sibling) don't do much better with 1.3 megapixels. That's alright -- can't be too comfortable in the pocket, anyway.
Starfire Optical Range -- a death ray for science's sake
We're rather impressed with the US Air Force and their Starfire project. It's not every day you get to build a death ray on a desert hill in New Mexico and write it off as a scientific endeavor. The premise is that since the atmosphere diffracts light, messing up the view of ground-based optical telescopes, the Starfire shoots a laser 56 miles into the mesosphere and measures the distortion to adjust the telescope optics. Images from the Starfire are 40 times more accurate than regular, but the laser technology is coincidentally multi-purpose: "We don't hide the fact that it could help build an anti-satellite weapon," says the installation's chief, "if you choose to do it." Our thoughts exactly.
DALSA ships 111 megapixel CCD
Don't expect to see one of these in a commercial DSLR anytime soon (especially now that Mamiya has left the game), but a division of DALSA Semiconductor has successfully manufactured and delivered a 111 megapixel image sensor that's only been topped on these pages by the 500 megapixel monster inside Fermilab's Dark Energy Camera. Putting even the highest-resolution bacteria-based cam to shame, the new 4-inch-square CCD features an array of 10,560 x 10,560 pixels, and was developed in conjunction with Semiconductor Technology Associates to aid the U.S. Naval Observatory's Astrometry Department in precisely determining the position and motion of celestial objects. While you probably can't afford to hire DALSA to build another one of these just for you, there's at least one option on the market that will give you the hundred-plus megapixel bragging rights you seek without breaking the bank: Better Light's 144 megapixel E-HS medium format backing, which, while technically only capturing 48 megapixels per color (and taking at least 66 seconds to do so), should still be enough to impress even your EOS 1Ds Mark II-sporting friends.
