geekosystem

Dear foxes, this is how you get a reputation for being sneaky and untrustworthy. A Dutch wildlife TV series leaves out a perfectly nice rotting carcass for you to snack on, and stuffs it with a video camera so they can observe you in your natural habitat. So what do you do? You ignore the meal, of course, and steal the camera -- which, to be fair, is a pretty 'foxes being foxes' thing to do.

The El Hierro volcano was below the ocean's surface when it erupted last year, but it still managed to come out on top. Specifically, it won NASA's first ever Tournament: Earth photo competition. The contest put 32 photos of the Earth up against each other "March Madness" style, and even though El Hierro entered the tournament with an unimpressive number seven seed, it managed to take down all comers and win. Take a look at the full photo, and the ones it beat after the jump.

The Herschel Space Observatory's mission to photograph the stars is winding down, so we wanted to take the chance to remember some of the finest images Herschel captured during its three-year tour of duty. Now, yes, some of these images are color corrected and touched up to highlight the more spectacular points contained within them -- like the star forming inside a galactic bubble eight times more massive than our sun. In our view, that doesn't make them any less valuable to astronomers studying them, which is the whole point. It also makes them way better eye-candy for the rest of us to gape at, so we're just going to be thankful for it, rather than nitpicky.

There are a lot of apps like Instagram to make the pictures you snap with your smartphone look like old 35mm film prints, but as far as we know there aren't any that take your actual 35mm film and digitizes it. Lomography wants to change that. They're launching an app and the Lomography Smartphone Film Scanner to give photographers the ability to take archival quality scans of their film. Looks like it's time to bust out that old box of film, or to explain what film was to your kids.

If the Curiosity rover had an OKCupid profile picture, this awesome self portrait would totally be it. Thanks to its reflective surfaces and rotating turret arm, the Curiosity rover can photograph itself as it travels across Mars, which would seem kind of self-absorbed if it weren't so utterly fantastic. This picture, which is a mosaic of 55 images stitched together brilliantly by NASA technicians, was taken just yesterday. Hit the jump for the full image.

Taking pictures can be a hassle in this day and age. First you have to take them, then transfer them to a computer, and then put them wherever else you'd really like them. Imagine the pain that this forced process causes amateurs, let alone professional photographers. Thankfully, David Hunt, an Irish photographer, may have built a solution. Hunt has taken a Raspberry Pi and embedded it into a DSLR camera grip; when the camera takes a picture, it transfers immediately to his iPad's ShutterSnitch app.

Because nothing says "love" better than curling naked in your lover's arms in a little plastic bag as an old vacuum cleaner sucks the air from around you, the plastic closing in on you, compressing the life (and love, don't forget love) out of the body that used to be you. If you come out alive, you get to see photos. Photos of your love at its very height. Right before you were going to die.

Yesterday, Facebook announced that they would be rolling out a new standalone app for iOS. Focused entirely on image sharing, the new app -- called Camera -- allows Facebook users to quickly browse existing images, take photos, apply interesting filters, and then upload them to Facebook. Basically, it's a blue Instagram.

Cameras are getting better and better. We've got cameras than can change focus after the fact, smartphone cameras that can shoot actual feature film footage, cameras that can shoot at 1 trillion fps, but what boring thing do these all have in common? They deal in pictures. Matt Richardson's Descriptive Camera is taking the technology in a whole new direction. The Descriptive Camera "takes" pictures like a normal camera, but it doesn't output pictures, it outputs written descriptions. How is that possible? There must be a little guy in there or something, right? Actually yes. Kind of.

For those unaware, Instagram is a hit iOS app that allows users to manipulate pictures on their phone with a variety of filters and effects and then share those pictures with the world. Until today it's been a successful app exclusive to Apple devices, but Android users can lament no more: The app is available, for free, in the Google Play store night now. In fact, about 1,700 people have already have downloaded it. Looks like Instagram has another hit on their hands.

Over the past few weeks, you might have noticed two bright lights in the night sky that stuck close to each other night after night. These weren't stars, but rather the planets Jupiter and Venus traversing across our view. On Sunday, the two planets lined up with our moon in a spectacular conjunction made all the better by Rick Ellis' multiple exposures, tracking the progress of the triplet as they make their way across the sky.

One of the hardest parts of taking photos in public -- aside from the eternal shame of looking like a filthy tourist -- is all the people who tend to be out in public, going about their own business: The business of getting in your way. Best case scenario is that they take pains to avoid you, the filthy smartphone-camera-wielding tourist, and then you feel self-conscious about it. Well, no more. Remove, a Scalado app, can actually remove bothersome interlopers from your photos. It won't assuage your social awkwardness, but it'll leave you with souvenir pictures that reflect a perfect photo-op that never actually existed.

When describing his series of explosion photographs, New Zealand artist Geoffrey H Short told the Daily Mail, "I am not trying to tell people what they should think, rather I am making art objects which I hope will make people think." Which is convenient, because his work lends itself to a myriad of interpretations; is it a statement about fossil fuel consumption, about war, about fear, about the explosive forces of nature which began all things? Or are they like formless clouds on which we can project our thoughts. Whatever answer works for you, Short's work is as mesmerizing as it is terrifying. See more pictures, after the break.

The neon signs of the animal world, fireflies have been impressing us non-luminescent humans for millenia. Though their flashes are just a gaudy advertisement for sex, it is no less beautiful -- even more so when you photograph them with a long exposure camera. These photos from Japan capture fireflies as little more than beautiful points of light, while others capture the zigzagging path of the moving insects. It's great stuff, making the forest look almost magical. See more, after the break.

Friends, are you troubled by restless spirits in your barn? Is your canning disturbed by poltergeists in the root cellar? Are you tired of your goodly family being distressed by irritating demons, perhaps guised in the form of a talking mongoose? Then look no further than Uncle Henry's Good Time Ghost-Removers, who will use the latest scientific snake-oil vacuum-pump technology to rid you of your ghost problem before sun down! Or simply enjoy this marvelous triptych from Noah Doely. See the whole thing, after the break.