Were you once using Fauxto and you’ve been wondering where it went? Well, Fauxto is back by a different name – SplashUp – and it’s a relatively useful tool if you do a lot of photo editing.

SplashUp is an editing tool that is in its own Web browser. SplashUp is compatible with all Web browsers and it allows you to edit photos from your desktop or many of the photo sharing sites on the Web such as Picasa, Flickr and Facebook. A cool characteristic about SplashUp is that you can edit pictures from various sites and export them back to their original location once you provide your login information.SpalshUp contains advanced tools similar to Photoshop (minus the ever-useful lasso tool) such as layers, layer effects, filters and brushes. You can edit multiple pictures at once, which is a useful tool that usually found in programs that you must purchase to use.

SplashUp is currently in beta. Users are able to start the editing pictures immediately from the homepage, there is no need to sign up or login. An undo/redo button is available and that’s a nice utility.

However, I am a big fan of Picnik and its simplicity. I would rate SplashUp’s difficulty level between Picnik and Photoshop but I think they are attempting to reach a difficult audience. At this time, SplashUp doesn’t enable more tedious picture editing for a photo editing guru and it isn’t easy enough for a novice.

If you had told me a few years ago, that for less than three thousand dollars, I could go out and buy a pro quality High-Definition Video camera capable of shooting 1080 lines of resolution at 60 interlaced frames a second, I would have laughed in your face and laid money on the table it would never happen. I would have lost.

Sony introduced the HDR-FX1 and changed the rules for ever. And for once, the manufacturers agree on a format. The HDV spec was agreed upon as a standard by Sony, JVC, Canon, and Sharp. Thank goodness for that. No more waiting around to see which format wins. There is only one.

The HDR-FX1 includes three 1/3-inch 16:9 1.12 Megapixel gross CCDs. Each CCD measures 960 x 1080 pixels. The pixels on the CCD are not square, but oblong, which allows them to shoot 16:9 aspect ratio video. The HDR-FX1 also includes a 12x optical Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar T* lens, a 3.5-inch LCD screen, a zoom ring, focus ring, iris / aperture ring, as well as buttons for manual control of most picture functions.

In fact, the HDR-FX1 has more functions, features and controls than a space shuttle, including the ability to create a “film look” with a cinematone gamma feature enabling would-be independent film makers to achieve a professional-looking film feel by improving skin tone capabilities.

Perhaps most interestingly, both Adobe and Apple are behind the format, offering native HDV support in Final Cut and Adobe Premiere.

The Sony HDR-FX1 has consistently gotten rave reviews from film makers and consumers alike and if I was in the market for a semi-pro camera, this would be my choice. Now, where did I leave that $3,000?

Want to buy it?  Get it at amazon.com.

Already have it?  Check out this complete guide.

If you are looking for something with some serious zoom capabilities, the Panasonic DMC-FZ18 is worth a look. An 18x zoom packed into a compact body. The equivalent focal range is 28 – 504. From wide angle to ultra zoom in a package weighing just 360 grams.

That’s a lot of power in a very small package. It makes me wonder where it will end. The first thing to note is that this is a Leica lens. Maybe not quite the same quality as Leica of old, but it still says Leica on the casing and that’s got to be worth something.

Panasonic have jammed just about every possible feature into this camera, and, all things considered, it performs very well. Certainly comparable with similarly priced models from Canon etc.

Image quality is good, as you would expect, with a little noise, but not bad for $400. The only real niggles I can find are the usual for these sort of cameras: The battery is a proprietary Panasonic battery costing over $40 and you can’t use AAs if you should run out of power in the field. And the memory capacity. 27MB doesn’t hold a lot of photos, so the true cost of the camera is hidden. Sony do the same thing with most of their range.

All in all, I find this to be a good little camera with a truly impressive zoom capability. AAs next time please.

Check out these related products on amazon.com:

Most consumers are moving towards the digital life, so it only makes since to create programs for the lifestyle. iLife is one of those programs. And iLife isn’t one giant program as some may think; iLife is composed of five applications – iPhoto, iMovie, iWeb, iDVD and Garage Band. These applications are designed to help you and your digital lifestyle, and they do so with Apple style—beauty and simplicity. I will give you a five part iLife ’08 review, so be sure to check back often.

Let’s start with one of my favorite programs—iPhoto. If you have used iPhoto before, you might have noticed the major improvement in the iPhoto software, which is the use of “Events”. The idea is to group photos together by time. This is a great idea. This new feature allows you to group photos together by events. I use this quite often and I find my library of photos to be much more manageable. iPhoto uses time to mark out where one event ends and another event begins. When you are looking at your collection of events, you can skim through the photos as you mouse hovers over the photo.

There are also some incredible new printing options also. iPhoto gives you the option of a portraits studio right on your Mac. You can print mats, multi-picture layouts, and more with just a few clicks. There are also some enhanced tools for making your images look as good as possible. Some are easy, and some are very advanced. Like Photoshop, you’ll have to play around with the options and get a good feel of what you can do.

If you’re a .Mac subscriber ($99.00/Year), there is another major component that you’ll want to know about – .Mac Web Gallery. You select an event, and then click “Web Gallery”. You are given options to make the gallery private or public and once you have uploaded the gallery, you can click a link in iPhoto to view the gallery in almost the exact same way you view your photos in iPhoto, even with event skimming. You can also have collaborative galleries that allow users to get an email address to submit their own photos, and submit photos from the iPhone as well as any other phone that can send pictures it takes.

iPhoto‘08 has received a pretty significant upgrade over the ‘06 version of the software that I once owned. You’ll definitely love the new features added. The iLife suite has always been a top-notch product, especially for the $79 price of admission. That includes five programs! Not bad at all. Be sure to check back for the four remaining iLife ’08 application reviews.

Check out these related products from amazon.com:

• Apple iLife ’08
• Apple iLife ’08 Family Pack
  
• iMovie 08 & iDVD: The Missing Manual
  
• iPhoto 08: The Missing Manual

I don’t think I’m physically capable of showing up in a photograph with red eye, but if I was I certainly wouldn’t be eager to buy Photoshop just to fix it. I probably wouldn’t want to get anything, even if it were free. And for people like that, web applications like FotoFlexer may be the perfect alternative.

FotoFlexer uses algorithms and artificial intelligence to power its editing tools, which include effects such as twirl, bulge, pinch, stretch, and squish. It provides the usual drawing tools and allows the user to correct red eye and cover blemishes or wrinkles as well.

Perhaps I’m looking at it from a biased, Photoshop-user’s point of view, but FotoFlexer really isn’t anything special. The practical tools are too simple to be of much help and the rest are cheap effects or shortcuts that newbies overuse and digital art haters accuse everyone of abusing. Say goodbye to shortcuts, prepare to confirm every change you want to make, and look out–if you try to undo, it will undo all the steps you’ve just made in relation to a certain tool.

It’s probably best used for touching up photographs, and will probably be most useful to people who aren’t extremely experienced with advanced graphic applications. Someone who digitally renders detailed landscapes probably isn’t going to do all of their projects in FotoFlexer. With that said, it’s good for what it is, and (fortunately) it’s free. The public demo is limited, but registering will give access to the full version. Try it for yourself at fotoflexer.com.