A new German company called X-Pire wants to give you a little more peace of mind with photographs you share online by allowing you to share them with a time-based “self-destruct” feature. According to Yahoo News,

The software should prevent the increasingly frequent occurrence of someone being refused a job or running into other embarrassing difficulties after posting a photo that maybe should have been kept private.

Before the user posts the photo, he or she drags it into the programme which assigns it an electronic key that is valid for a limited time period, said Michael Backes, founder of X-Pire.

If someone wishes to view that photo later, the server checks whether the photo has “expired” and blocks it from being displayed if its time is up.

While this might be effective in dealing with certain privacy situations, it doesn’t prevent people from downloading the “protected” photos since anything that’s visible online can be downloaded (e.g. a screenshot of it can be taken). Still, it’s an interesting attempt at a solution for people wary of having embarrassing photographs come back to haunt them in the future. It’ll be available by the end of Jan 2011 with a subscription-based cost of €24 ($32) per year.

(via Engadget)

Nikon President Makoto Kimura says that in order to keep its “top position” in Japan’s DSLR market, it needs to create an “entirely new domain” that may go well beyond its plans for a mirrorless, EVIL camera.

In an interview with Pen News Weekly, Kimura said:

“Nowadays digital cameras take movies, performance of cameraphones is rapidly advancing and demand for simple movie cameras for uploading video on the Internet is on the rise. Redefinition of photography may become necessary.”

Much of this comes at the heels of Canon’s revelation of their future plans at the Shanghai World Expo, with its Wonder Camera presentation.  With the introduction of cameras like the iPhone 4 and other smartphones with HD video modes, both companies suggest that there is a lot of pressure to keep abreast of the improving technology in typically lower-end camera competition from camera phones, as well as in higher end DSLRs with video capabilities. It seems that Kimura hopes to reassert Nikon’s product by marketing EVIL cameras to consumers primarily for higher quality video and video sharing, perhaps through a built-in internet mode.

However, it sounds like Nikon may have more up its sleeve than simply adding better video and internet. Kimura also said:

“It will be a camera that may take photos of the world that the traditional SLR cannot reach.”

(via Nikon Rumors)

The tech war is on between Apple and Adobe, and it’s starting to sound political. What’s fairly interesting is how Adobe’s been running “We [heart] Apple” as well as “We [heart] Choice” ads, suggesting that this tech war is all about word choice — or perhaps the word, “choice.”

The lack of Flash on Apple mobile devices has been a growing issue, especially since the release of the iPad. Apple’s omission left a lot of creatives, including photographers, scrambling to find a substitute for Flash-based sites.

A few weeks ago, Steve Jobs published his thoughts behind Apple’s movement away from Flash capabilities in mobile products.

Today, Adobe’s co-founders Chuck Geschke and John Warnock  responded in an open letter that was published in newspaper ads and on its website, titling it “Our Thoughts on Open Markets.” The letter launched alongside a new section on Adobe’s site called “Freedom of Choice.”Adobe also published a page titled “The truth about Flash,” which responds point-by-point to most of Jobs’ arguments.

Jobs had ended his letter with a stab at Adobe, saying:

New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.

Adobe responded:

We believe that Apple, by taking the opposite approach, has taken a step that could undermine this next chapter of the web — the chapter in which mobile devices outnumber computers, any individual can be a publisher, and content is accessed anywhere and at any time.

In the end, we believe the question is really this: Who controls the World Wide Web? And we believe the answer is: nobody — and everybody, but certainly not a single company.

So far this seems to be a war of words; Apple and Adobe are fighting over ownership of what “open,” really means and what the future of the Internet (and your portfolio) will look like.

Let us know where you stand on the issue in the comments.