The Ultimate Mac Setup for Photographers (50 Apps)

Photography David Appleyard

OS X is a popular platform for professional photographers, and offers a huge range of software which can help to take better photos, streamline post-processing, sell images, and publish them for others to view. Whether you’re a complete amateur or a seasoned pro, this roundup will have something new to show you.

We’ll be covering 50 fantastic applications for various areas of photography: organizing, post-processing, geo-tagging, panoramas, HDR images, uploading/sharing images, and more.

Organizing & Editing Photos

• iPhoto - The basic photo program shipped with OS X, iPhoto packs a wide range of features and integrates brilliantly with all the other software on your Mac.
• Adobe Photoshop Lightroom - A professional photo organization tool, complete with powerful editing features. You can quickly import, process, manage, and showcase your images — from one shot to an entire shoot.
• Aperture - Having improved a great deal in recent versions, Aperture now offers a good way to cull through shoots, enhance images, manage massive libraries, and deliver stunning photos.
• Capture One Pro - The choice of seasoned professionals, Capture One works well for tethered shooting and offers a solid tool for a RAW workflow.
• Picasa - Google’s free photo management application, Picasa is friendly and simple to use. It lacks the innovative features found in recent versions of iPhoto.
• Bibble - Another RAW workflow tool, useful for organizing photos with a wide range of editing functionality.
• Shoebox - A solid solution for organizing all of your photos by content, with an interface well suited to widescreen displays.
• JetPhoto Studio - An easy-to-use photo management app with a range of publishing features (including the automatic creation of Flash web galleries)
• Photoshop Elements - Step-by-step editing, compositing tools, and it’s built on the solid foundation of Adobe Photoshop.

Post Processing

• Adobe Photoshop - The de-facto photo editing application, Photoshop has been an industry leader for many years. It’s incredibly powerful, but comes at a price.
• Pixelmator - An incredibly fast photo editing tool for OS X, which uses various speed-enhancing features of Leopard. Definitely worth taking a look at.
• Seashore - A native application built upon the core of GIMP, offering a well-rounded, free photo editing solution.
• Corel Painter X - Taking a slightly different angle, this app tries to simulate as accurately as possible the appearance of traditional media associated with drawing and painting.
• Acorn - A remarkably uncluttered and simple photo editor for OS X, with a great in-built brush designer.
• Picturesque - Useful for adding the finishing touches to a photo, such as borders, shadows, perspective, reflections etc.
• PhotoComplete - Similar to Acorn, PhotoComplete is a basic image editor which excels on account of a simple and easy-to-understand interface.
• Prizmo - This app allows you to easily change the perspective of a photograph, and essentially “scan” using a digital camera. Fascinating stuff.

Batch Processing

• Automator - The built-in automation app from Apple, which can perform a range of photo manipulation actions and be easily extended with a range of plugins.
• iMagine Photo - Another tool for automating your image processing workflow. You can scale, crop, blend images, apply filters and rotate.
• EasyBatchPhoto - Allows you to process hundreds (or thousands) of images with a single drag-and-drop, with a simple looking interface.
• PhotoDrop - A simple utility that allows you to create small, customized droplets that turn the tedious task of modifying a folder of images into a simple drag-and-drop operation.

HDR Photography

• Photomatix - A widely popular HDR app with tone mapping and exposure fusion. It works as a standalone app, or as a plugin for Photoshop or Aperture.
• Qtpfsgui - Despite the horrendous name, this tool is completely open source and offers a free way to start a HDR workflow.
• Hydra - A user-friendly interface, automatic matching of images and an Aperture plug-in make Hydra definitely worth a look.
• Silverfast - Whilst starting to look at little dated, Silverfast seems to offer a fairly large set of advanced features. Not too user-friendly.
• Bracketeer - A front-end GUI for Enfuse, which offers an auto-align feature and can supposedly create far better looking images than Photoshop. You can be the judge!
• FDRTools - Another similar tool for combining images, tone mapping, and exporting in a variety of different formats.

Panoramas & Stitching

• Panorama Tools - A page crammed with technical information seems to suggest that this is a very proficient set of tools for stitching and viewing panoramas. Also available as a Photoshop plugin.
• Double Take - A very simple, user-friendly interface make this a good choice for when you can’t get far enough away to fit everything in the viewfinder.
• PhotoWarp - Capable of producing some fascinating circular warps and panoramas, PhotoWarp is something a little different.
• Flexify - Allows you to bend and stretch a photo into seemingly any shape, creating some really impressive effects.
• Panorama2Flash - Support for batch conversion and Flash export make this app a full-featured alternative to those previously mentioned.

Uploading & Sharing

• Flickr Uploadr - A fantastically simple app for uploading your photos to Flickr and ensuring they remain organized as you’d like.
• Facebook iPhoto Plugin - A simple plugin for uploading images straight to Facebook, supporting tagging and organization within the app itself. Far better than the web based tools.
• iStockPhoto Aperture Plugin - If you sell images through iStockPhoto, this plugin can be a real time-saver. If you use another stock site, check around to see if a different plugin has been created (you’ll probably be pleasantly surprised).
• iWeb - Apple’s basic website design app can be very useful for creating quick, good looking photo galleries and slideshows from images already contained in iPhoto or Aperture.
• PictureSync - Offering a central app for tagging and organizing photos for upload to a wide range of different online services.
• Smilebox - A fun and friendly service for scrap-booking, creating cards, and quickly sharing photos.

Geotagging

• Geophoto - See your pictures from a new perspective and start tagging by location. It can import photos directly from iPhoto or Aperture and share them on Flickr.
• PhotoLinker - A professional solution than can integrate with GPS tracks, attempting to automatically put your photos in precisely the right location.
• GeoTagger - A droplet for inserting GPS coordinates into your photos that integrates with Google Earth.
• HoudahGeo - Catering for both geotagging for archival purposes, and for publishing to Google Earth, Flickr or locr. Also capable of matching photos to a GPS track.
• PhotoGPSEditor - An easy to use meta-data editor for photo files, plus it can match data from GPS (gpx or NMEA) files. Completely free.
• Trails for iPhone - If you have an iPhone, Trails is a fantastic way to track exactly where you’ve been for later geotagging. It doesn’t require an internet connection - great for when traveling.

Backup & Recovery

• CameraSalvage - Retrieve your photos from corrupt or formatted flash cards or other digital camera media. It can recover data from digital camera media cards, hard drives, CD-ROM, external devices, Apple iPods, and much more.
• Salvage - Salvage is a tool for recovering digital camera pictures from corrupt removable media.
• ImageRecall - And another. ImageRecall will do it’s best to recover any photos from a corrupt or accidentally deleted card.
• Time Machine - The OS X Leopard backup solution. All that you require is an external hard drive, and to keep a copy of your website locally.
• Dropbox - I use Dropbox as a means of keeping an off-site backup of important website documents and files (though it’s also great at keeping multiple computers in sync!)
• SuperDuper - If you’d like to keep a bootable backup of your Mac hard drive, SuperDuper is an excellent solution.

Conclusion

A huge selection of software is available for photographers, from direct tethered capturing right through to uploading images to a stock photography website. It’s always worth trying out a few options before settling on one in particular (especially when considering major software choices such as Aperture vs Lightroom).

Which pieces of photography software could you not do without? I’m interested to read about the applications that fit into your workflow.

The Wonderful World Of Tim Burton

empireonline.com — Tim Burton's style is instantly recognisable, as demonstrated in the recently released "Alice in Wonderland" pics. This piece looks back over his films to see how his style developed, in the man's own words.

clcik here to explore The Wonderful World Of Tim Burton

Hyundai Offers a $1.49 Price Lock on Gas

It's the Korean carmaker's latest effort to seize share in the depressed U.S. market after earlier this year assuring buyers worried about their jobs

By David Kiley

Suddenly gasoline is in the headlines again as attacks on Nigerian oil pipelines and the summer driving season cause energy analysts to predict higher prices at the pump. That could pay dividends for Hyundai. On Tuesday, June 30, the Korean automaker is launching a summer promotion that guarantees buyers of its vehicles one year's worth of gas at $1.49 per gallon.

The gas giveaway comes on top of other offers that have helped Hyundai boost its share of the U.S. auto market from 2.9% to 4.2% so far this year. Earlier this year, Hyundai launched an "Assurance" program that guarantees that buyers can walk away from a new-car loan if they lose their jobs, with no adverse effect on their credit rating. It already offered one of the most generous warranty programs in the industry. Hyundai also bought a series of extremely high-audience TV ad buys, such as the Super Bowl and the first ad spot on CNN after then-President-elect Obama's election night acceptance speech.

Hyundai is trying to increase its market share amid the recession, as Detroit automakers regroup and even Japanese companies are hurting. It is making similar moves in China, where its share rose to 7.3% from 5.3% a year earlier. "Hyundai appears to be using the difficult industry situation as a good opportunity to vault into the league of major players in two or three years," says auto analyst Sokje Lee at brokerage Mirae Asset Securities in Seoul. "Taking advantage of a weak Korean currency, it is spending heavily on marketing."

Gas prices were already expected to rise above $3 a gallon this summer, before the violence in Nigeria that forced Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa) to close its primary oil field on Monday. Crude oil prices for August delivery climbed $2.33 a barrel, to $71.49, on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The Associated Press reported that the average price of a gallon of regular unleaded gas fell by four-tenths of a cent, to $2.639, according to AAA, Wright Express, and the Oil Price Information Service. The U.S. imports almost half of Nigeria's production of light crude, which is the oil used in gasoline refining.

Driving Web site and showroom traffic

"A guarantee of such a low gas price could have a great psychological effect on car buyers, and it certainly will increase hits to Hyundai's Web site and create more interest in researching Hyundai, which is really the point of this promotion," says independent marketing consultant Dennis Keene. "Very few people actually take advantage of these headline-grabbing programs, but [the deals] stimulate Web site and showroom traffic."

Hyundai's Web site traffic is up 18% this year, according to the company. Its U.S. sales are down 7.9% through May of this year, but that's better than the industry's overall 30% drop.

Hyundai's research showed that nearly 40% of potential new-car buyers were staying out of the market specifically because of uncertainty around future gas prices. Chris Perry, director of marketing communications at Hyundai, says: "Our programs are designed to address consumer needs, the ones they are talking about around their kitchen tables." Indeed, while Hyundai's Assurance program increased Web interest when it was launched last January, fewer than 10 buyers have had to take advantage so far, the company says.

Consumers have to buy or lease a new Hyundai by Aug. 31 to take advantage of the discount gas offer. Perry says Hyundai is also running advertising reminding new-vehicle buyers of the Hyundai models that qualify for the Federal government's Cash for Clunkers program, which gives consumers up to $4,500 for trading in old vehicles that get below 18 mpg for new, more fuel-efficient vehicles. "We already are marketing our vehicles that qualify on our Web site, and we will add it to our ads as the government program rolls out."

Hyundai is already benefiting from a bump in attention since it topped Toyota (TM) last week in J.D. Power & Associates Initial Quality Study, which measures problems in the first three months of owning a new vehicle, as reported by buyers. Hyundai was the top-ranked non-luxury brand in the annual study.

the fine print may limit takers

The Korean automaker is not the first to offer discounted gas. Last summer both GM and Chrysler offered big discounts on gas when prices were more than $4 a gallon nationally. Buyers who had to choose between the gas discount and other deals typically opted for the cash or cheap financing rather than discounted gas. And they were smart to do so, because gas prices subsequently plummeted below Chrysler's $2.99 per gallon three-year price lock. Of course, if gas climbs back to $3.50 per gallon in the next 12 months, those buyers will be able to cash in again.

Here is how Hyundai's program will work: After buying a new Hyundai, the buyer registers a Visa, MasterCard, American Express, or Discover credit card, or a Visa or MasterCard check card, at hyundai.pricelock.com. After enrolling, the consumer gets a new Hyundai Assurance branded card to be used for all future fill-ups. The consumer is billed $1.49 per gallon of regular grade gasoline, regardless of the price at the pump, and Hyundai pays the difference. (The driver may elect to purchase mid-grade gasoline for $1.64 per gallon or premium gas for $1.79 per gallon as well, though all eligible Hyundai vehicles are factory-certified for regular fuel.)

The card can be used at any gas station in the Voyager credit -card network, which covers 93% of gas stations nationwide, including brands such as Exxon (XOM), Chevron (CVX), BP (BP), Shell, Texaco, and many more. Consumers are eligible for a maximum number of gallons, equal to 12,000 miles divided by the EPA combined fuel economy rating for the qualifying model.

Hyundai says buyers who opt for the gas discount have to subtract $1,000 from any rebate offered on its individual models. That may mean many buyers will pass on the gas discount. Why? The Elantra Touring model, for example, has a $1,500 rebate now. If gas prices average $3 per gallon in the next 12 months, the savings to a buyer would be about $720, based on the vehicle's 26 mpg rating. So buyers would be better off talking the full rebate unless they fear gas prices will again climb above $4 a gallon.

Read more about Pricelock's role in the Hyundai deal.

With Rebecca Reisner in New York and Moon Ihlwan in Seoul.
Kiley is a senior correspondent in BusinessWeek's Detroit bureau.

---

Seth McFarlane gives revealing interview & shows off office

fhm.com:80 — So how does MacFarlane cope with the burden of his critics? Of a $100 million contract? Of devoted yet unforgiving fans? No one seems to know; notoriously private, he gives only two interviews a year. But no matter – FHM snared one of them, so they flew to LA to find out and took photos of his amazing office.

click here for the article and glimpse into his office: Seth McFarlane gives revealing interview & shows off office

My Friend Bill, a Medical Marijuana Patient

By Phil Daigle

My friend, Bill is dying of cancer. He probably has two or three days left. He's not conscious and while the caretakers say that he can recognize my voice, I doubt it. He's being given a lot of drugs including morphine, but they don't seem to give him peace. His body struggles as if he is trying to free himself from unseen restraints. Perhaps he's pain-free, but he definitely does not seem comfortable. However, I was able to say goodbye to Bill with a smile on my face because of something his wife told me a few minutes earlier. She said, "Bill spent the last five days of his conscious life smoking pot." Now, if you knew Bill you'd know how utterly preposterous that statement sounds. Bill was a retired Pediatric Cardiologist. He voted Republican all his life until he voted for Obama. He did not waste money or words. And he definitely had never smoked marijuana.

Some weeks back, Bill's internist suggested that he consider medical marijuana as a way to restore his appetite which had been destroyed by chemotherapy. Later Bill decided to give it a try. Bill and his wife found a dispensary nearby after a brief internet search. They called the dispensary and were told they would need a referral letter and that a "doctor" would be on the premises that afternoon. At the time, Bill could only walk short distances and he was very weak, but they went over to the dispensary. They stood in a queue of seemingly able-bodied young men also seeking relief from something. The doctor relieved them of $140 and provided each with the referral letter. Bill's wife said that she was less than impressed with the certification process and ventured an opinion that "Bill was the only truly ill individual that doctor would see all week." The young dispensary clerks were very helpful. They suggested that Bill purchase two thumb sized buds "one of indica for pain and one of sativa for depression". Bill also picked out a nice psychedelic pipe. Once home, bill tried it. His wife said that once he felt the effects of the first puff a little smile brightened his face. He smoked some more and the smile broadened. His wife chuckled as she remembered his fondness for the stuff. She said, "I'd ask him if he'd like anything and he usually answered, "I believe I'll have some of that marijuana." It made Bill happy at the end of his journey. What a gift!

I agree with those that say that medical marijuana is mostly used by recreational pot smokers, but I know that there are other people like Bill who are truly ill and can't get anything from the medical community that works as well as marijuana to put a smile on their faces.

Bagel to Go

Remember CDs? Finally, a use for those CD spindles

Who Said a Yacht has to Look Like a boat?

It's hot and summer and what better place to relax than on a yacht - especially one with a striking design. Here is some ‘inspiration' for what you might buy.

Oculus

The Olucus is a very futuristic looking yacht from Schöpfer Yachts. Its 250-foot, can accommodate 12 guests and can travel at speeds up to 25 knots. It got a double-height dining room, an elevator and a special area for ‘the owner' + a lot more.

Infinitas

If that design isn't striking enough, then can you always opt for the bigger and more spacious designed Infinitas. It's 300-foot with a massive recreational pool area in the middle of the ship. It accommodates 12 guests, and pretty much got everything else you might need.

Including a living room on the main deck, a dining room on the other side of the pool area. A sky bridge, kitchen, storage, helicopter platform and a third deck for the owner.

Price? No idea. So far it is only a concept.

(via Schöpfer Yachts - Image credits: Tangram 3DS)

Skier saved from death plunge by Blackberry

A skier who slipped into a crevasse in the Swiss Alps was saved from falling 700ft to his death by his Blackberry mobile phone.

By Murray Wardrop

Despite the accident, the skier's Blackberry still worked and he used it to call his wife during the 10 days he spent in hospital

David Fitzherbert's half-inch wide handset in his breast pocket caused him to get wedged in a crack of ice, stopping him from falling further.

Remarkably, the phone still worked after keeping him stuck for two hours until a mountain rescue team winched him to safety.

Mr Fitzherbert, 52, was skiing off-piste down a glacier in the Matterhorn and Monterosa peaks when he fell into the crevasse.

The married finance worker from Kensington, west London, told The Sun: "After 70 feet it narrowed and I became stuck like a cork in a bottle between the walls.

"Fortunately, the extra inches of the Blackberry were enough to block the fall."

Mr Fitzherbert broke his jaw, damaged his teeth, broke a bone in his chest and nearly had his nose ripped off in the fall.

However, his mountain guide made a distress call and rescue workers came to cut him out of the ice.

Mr Fitzherbert added: "I was stuck so fast that they had to get a drill and dig away at the ice around me.

"I was eventually winched out by a helicopter rescue team."

Suffering from severe hypothermia, he was airlifted to hospital in Bern, Switzerland, where surgeons reattached his nose.

Despite the accident, his Blackberry still worked and he used it to call his wife during the 10 days he spent in hospital.

He added: "It was still working well enough for me to tell her I was alive. I couldn't believe it."

Stan Lee’s Cameo in IRON MAN 2

by Matt Goldberg

A Scooper has sent us info regarding what Stan Lee will be doing in Iron Man 2. Since some folks want to avoid all spoilers at all costs, we’ll let you know what it is after the jump.

For those that don’t follow Marvel movies religiously but have always wondered who that odd, grandfatherly-looking figure who randomly appears in almost all their movies, the answer is writer Stan Lee. Lee is credited with creating or co-creating some of Marvel’s most enduring characters including Daredevil, Fantastic Four, Silver Surfer, The Avengers, X-Men, and some cult superhero known as, “Spider-Man”. Stan almost always gets a cameo in Marvel movies because he’s such a delightful and iconic character himself among comic geeks. In the first “Iron Man”, we saw Stan mistaken for Hugh Hefner. How will we see Mr. Lee this time around? Hit the jump to find out…

Here’s the info according to a scooper:

Hey guys,

Big fan of the site. Since I hadn’t read this news anywhere, I wanted to let you know Stan Lee filmed his cameo for Iron Man 2. I was told Stan filmed earlier this week and he was dressed as Larry King. The scene has Stan asking Tony Stark when he’s going to be on his show.

While we usually like to have a second source, we are very confident in the accuracy of this report. It’s not an earth-shattering revelation (unless Larry King is actually The Mandarin; then we’ve unintentionally ruined the film), but it’s still neat and it doesn’t look like Stan’s cameo will be too distracting.

“Iron Man 2″ hits theatres on May 7th, 2010.

Stan Lee as Baxter Building mailman Willie Lumpkin in “Fantastic Four”

Real-time Control Of Wheelchair With Brain Waves

ScienceDaily (June 29, 2009) — Japan's BSI-TOYOTA Collaboration Center has successfully developed a system that controls a wheelchair using brain waves in as little as 125 milliseconds.

---

BTCC was established in 2007 by RIKEN, an independent Japanese research institution, as a collaborative project with Toyota Motor Corporation, Toyota Central R&D Labs, Inc., and Genesis Research Institute, Inc. Also collaborating in the research were Andrzej Cichocki, Unit Leader, and Kyuwan Choi, Research Scientist, of BTCC's Noninvasive BMI Unit.

Recently technological developments in the area of brain machine interface (BMI) have received much attention. Such systems allow elderly or handicapped people to interact with the world through signals from their brains, without having to give voice commands.

BTCC's new system fuses RIKEN's blind signal separation¹ and space-time-frequency filtering² technology to allow brain-wave analysis in as little as 125 ms, as compared to several seconds required by conventional methods. Brain-wave analysis results are displayed on a panel so quickly that drivers do not sense any delay. The system has the capacity to adjust itself to the characteristics of each individual driver, and thereby is able to improve the efficiency with which it senses the driver's commands. Thus the driver is able to get the system to learn his/her commands (forward/right/left) quickly and efficiently. The new system has succeeded in having drivers correctly give commands to their wheelchairs. An accuracy rate of 95% was achieved, one of the highest in the world.

Plans are underway to utilize this technology in a wide range of applications centered on medicine and nursing care management. R&D under consideration includes increasing the number of commands given and developing more efficient dry electrodes. So far the research has centered on brain waves related to imaginary hand and foot control. However, through further measurement and analysis it is anticipated that this system may be applied to other types of brain waves generated by various mental states and emotions.

Notes:

(1) Blind signal separation (BSS) is a technology that separates the noise components and useful signal components from brain signals that can be used to control the wheelchair. It utilizes only on-line-recorded EEG signals.

(2) Space-time-frequency filtering is a technology which extracts space and time patterns and frequency oscillation data from EEG electrodes to discriminate significant features and components which are able to reliably control the wheelchair.

Alice in Wonderland Fashion Battle: Tim Burton's New School vs. Cartoon Disney Old School

By Gendy Alimurung

Tim Burton's film adaptation of Alice In Wonderland isn't out until next year, but if the promo photos are any indication, it's going to be the most visually arresting, luxurious Alice yet. Here's a look at how new Alice stacks up against older Alices from a fashion perspective.

1. Alice

The new Alice is played by 19 year old Mia Wasikowska. From the looks of her outfit--a slightly-longer than tea-length gown, white booties, fingerless gloves--in this photo, the film will be returning to Alice In Wonderland's Victorian roots. Her dress resembles cartoon Disney Alice's frock, but owes more in feel and attitude to Arthur Rackham's haunting, Earthy vision of Alice. Also, I just noticed this, but look how chubby cartoon Alice's calves are compared to her arms.

Also glad that Wasikowska-Alice isn't a super-blonde blonde.

2. The Mad Hatter

Johnny Depp was all but born to play this role. Or rather, it's a role he's been playing for film after film after film now. Looks like he's a redhead in Tim Burton's flick. He's also way more psychedelic and frightening than either Sir John Tenniel's imagining of the Mad Hatter or Disney's portly, nebbishy Mad Hatter (who by comparison looks like he is on his way to a congressional hearing instead of a tea party). The pink sash around the hat and pink shirt peeping out from behind the wacky cravat are a nice touch. Why does pink on guys always connote crazy? I expect we'll be seeing a lot of this on Halloween and at cosplay conventions.

3. Tweedledee & Tweedledum

Maybe it's the black and white prison stripe shirts, but Burton must have been channeling the Addams Family when he did his version of Dee and Dum. Matt Lucas plays both of them. They look menacing and slightly Mongoloid in this illustration--you wouldn't want to be running into this pair on the playground anytime soon. Disney's cartoon twins in their bright, primary color jumpers look like effete clowns by comparison. Tenniel's twins look like thugs.

4. The Red Queen

Loving the heart-shaped geisha style lipstick on Helena Bonham Carter's pasty white face. The candy apple red hair--also a nice touch. The crisp white collar winging up from the bodice of her blue velvet gown is a nifty homage to cartoon Disney Red Queen. I like that she's not decked out in head-to-toe red and that her gown isn't a giant heart card. And that she's not mannish and butch like both cartoon Disney and Tenniel's Red Queen. Women in power--especially the violent, vicious ones--are sexy these days.

5. The White Queen

There was no White Queen in Disney's animated version of Alice In Wonderland. The White Queen is a character who appeared in Lewis Carroll's sequel Though the Looking-Glass. Anne Hathaway plays her in Burton's film. She looks amazing and sort of like what every girl wishes she looked like at prom, or at her wedding. And wow, that blood red lipstick against all the white! Will her gown have those puffy white Michelin Man rings around the skirt? One can only hope.

6. Wonderland

The concept art for the world of Wonderland is just spectacular. It owes a lot to Mark Ryden. It's his jewel-toned, cool pastel, chiaroscuro color palette to a tee. Innocent with a hint of darkness, and a soupcon of psycho.

Swedish city legalizes topless bathing….at public swimming pools

Sweden’s third largest city has legalized topless bathing…at public swimming pools.

The City of Malmö decision after initially being asked to vote on a motion that would force women to cover up after a feminist group started appearing at pools topless. Instead they voted in an amended version that said that “everybody should wear bathing suits,” leaving the door open for topless bathing as long as the woman was wearing a bottom part of a bikini.

A council spokesman told The Local that “We don’t define what bathing suits men should wear so it doesn’t make much sense to do it for women. And besides, it’s not unusual for men to have large breasts that resemble women’s breasts.”

The leader of the feminist group behind the law said that “It’s a question of equality. I think it’s a problem that women are sexualized in this way. If women are forced to wear a top, shouldn’t men also have to?”

Germans Get Cheaper Cell Phone Service In Exchange for Ads

Stacey Higginbotham

Alcatel-Lucent said today that it’s begun providing German carrier E-Plus with equipment that inserts advertisements onto mobile devices based on demographic information provided by a subsidiary of the carrier. Customers opt in to the service and in exchange get extra minutes or texts on their cell phone plans. Gettings, the E-Plus subsidiary collecting the information and delivering the ads, offers plans that send between 10-25 ads per week. When customers sign up for the program they are asked to indicate via a checklist topics that interest them so they are subsequently delivered relevant pitches.

Will this become a high-quality targeted advertising effort similar to the ads delivered by Google based on search, or will this sort of advertising instead remind users of the experience offered back in the late 90s when ISPs such as NetZero offered free dial-up in exchange for irritating pitches? If the experience is unobtrusive and the incentives are right, I can see plenty of younger subscribers signing up, and merely accepting ad-based mobile service as the way to do things, much like we do today for search. That could change the business model around low data-rate mobile services such as texting and voice calls, to one in which carriers offer them for free or at reduced rates to folks that accept ads.

As an opt-in program, presumably people will understand what exactly they are giving up, making this less underhanded than other planned mobile advertising schemes. However, it’s still an invasive form of advertising.