Websites

Almost a year after Zack Arias first announced that he was working on an educational project called DEDPXL (pronounced dead pixel), the project has gone live on the web and is ready for you take a look at.

If the idea hadn't been around for so long, we'd call 'In My Bag' type websites the flavor of the month. First there was InMyBag, which we shared with you at the beginning of last week, and now we have ShotKit, the latest 'in my bag' site turning heads online.

As was inevitable, the more common and generic top level domains (e.g. .com, .net, and even .co) are becoming scarce as more and more domains are registered each day.

Knowing this moment in time would come, ICANN, the authority in charge of managing domain names, has been putting out more and more top level domains in hopes of opening up more options for those looking to grab their own piece of the web -- and photographers are benefiting more directly than most.

Here's something that'll help you start off the week with a grin (or a grimace, if you harbor an aversion to beards). Will it Beard is a fun photo experiment of sorts created by art director Pierce Thiot and his photographer wife Stacy Thiot.

They wanted to determine what household items 'will beard' -- meaning what random objects they could successfully pack into Mr. Thiot's beard -- and got a fun, viral photo series for their troubles.

'What's in Your Bag' posts are popular on major photography websites. National Geographic's PROOF blog even does a unique version where they focus on those things that have meaning, but aren't necessarily gear.

But what about the rest of us? If you're not expecting a call from Nat Geo asking you to reveal the contents of your camera bag any time soon, the website InMyBag gives you a chance to share that with the world and pique your gear envy at the same time.

At first, The Atlantic's profile of the duo behind the mega-popular @HistoryInPics Twitter feed reads like your standard "young geniuses find lucrative economic niche in this crazy new media world" piece.

Photojournalism jobs may be disappearing in real life, but they're thriving in at least one corner of the Interwebs. A handful of participants in the online version of "Grand Theft Auto" have decided it's more fun to document virtual felonies than commit them and have formed a team of street photographers.

The filmmakers behind a BBC nature show got more than they bargained for when they came up with the idea of encasing a video camera in a fake egg to gather surreptitious footage of a penguin colony on the Falkland Islands.

With a name like SelfiePolice and a tagline like 'you owe humanity a dollar,' we have a feeling the charitable organization Selfie Police is going to go far -- in fact, we really hope it does.

In a move that will be popular with many bloggers and, perhaps, less popular with many photographers, Google …

You know, it used to be even photography thieves had to put some work in if they wanted to get a bit of dishonest business, but a new project by the name of Pro-folio shows that just a little bit of code can make stealing photos and creating a whole fake portfolio a one-click affair.

Maybe you thought year-end 'best-of' lists were only for desperate journalists trying to survive the holiday news doldrums or news agencies looking to wow you with the photographs they compiled over the course of the year. Au contraire.

Once you've gotten to a certain level of proficiency as a photographer, it's easy to forget how rough things looked when you first started out. Of course, that forgetfulness might be a good thing, but there's a site out there that wants you to relive those moment by sharing them with the world.

Those who see iPhoneography as some kind of barbarian invasion may want to give their DSLRs an extra hug after hearing this: The venerable British Journal of Photography has launched a new e-magazine all about smartphone photography and available only as an iPhone app.

News flash: You can't believe everything you see on Twitter. We know, we were shocked too.

Such was the case with this striking sepia-toned image that started lighting up the mediasphere yesterday billed as "the Earliest Photograph Taken of New York City - Broadway, May 1850." (And immediately started attracting comments in the vein of: "And they haven't fixed the potholes since!")

Yesterday night, Yahoo! took yet another step forward in the Flickr renaissance, although we doubt all photographers will see it this way. In a bid to make the service more share-friendly, Yahoo! has introduced new, cleaner embedding capability to the photo sharing site.

Being "journalists" more or less restricted to "facts," we can only look with awe and envy at New Camera News: a blog that tells the truth about the photography industry by making up witty, insider satire in the mode of The Onion

Rejoice, all ye illustrators and designers, at least if your work involves antiquarian subjects. The British Library has just posted more than a million copyright-free images to its Flickr photostream, and the pickings are choice if you need to illustrate anything from phrenology to 17th century geological theories.

The tech world is full of 'wars,' all of them over the attention of that flighty creature known as 'the consumer.' And one of the wars being raged most furiously is between the major social networks: the established behemoths Facebook, Instagram and Twitter; that stubborn network loved by photogs, Google+; and the new kid on the block that has everybody's undergarments in a bunch: Snapchat.

Well, Facebook has had its go at stealing some of Snapchat's market (both literally and through acquisition) and has been ultimately unsuccessful on all counts. Now it's Twitter's turn.

The key to creating a good photo-based service is to fill a need that isn't being filled by any other app or website -- a task increasingly difficult as more and more players enter the market. Still, once in a while someone stumbles on an idea that is just the right mix of concepts to create a service really worth your while, and Exposure seems to be just that.

So emergency workers are all over the Brooklyn Bridge, trying to talk down a suicidal man poised to jump. Media people are everywhere, doing their usual sensitive storytelling. A big chunk of the city is holding its breath, waiting to see how the life-and-death drama plays out.

Perfect time for a selfie, right?

What do you do when you're not busy destroying rebel planets, choking out generals and dealing with traumatizing father issues? Why, you grab a quality selfie and upload it to Instagram of course.

In the past, before resumes, interviews and portfolios, there was the master/apprentice relationship. If you wanted to learn a trade, craft or skill, you sought out a master of that skill and humbly asked for their tutelage.

That system has all but disappeared where most professions are concerned, but photographer Trey Ratcliff wants to bring it back into the world of the arts, and he's doing it through a newly-formed online "Magical Academy for the Mastery of the Arts" that he's calling "The Arcanum."

Here's a new way to be violated in the social media era: Post a photo of yourself on Instagram, then wait for somebody you don't know and didn't authorize to repost an edited version that looks vaguely like you, except shinier and with a lot more makeup.

This might just be one of those services both the loves and haters of Instagram will like. Because while other services print your Instagram shots on magnets or postcards, Boomf prints them on... marshmallows.

So, you see, if you like Instagram you get to turn your favorite photos into edible confections, and if you don't, you get to eat all of those pretentious selfies, food shots and cappuccino pictures you so despise. As Michael Scott would say: "win win win."

You might have found yourself in this situation before: you're in the middle of a photo shoot and you find that you badly need to set up a shot or lighting that is, in fact, impossible to do 'professionally' given the gear you have on hand.

So what do you do? You go all MacGyver of course! You put together an off-the-top-of-your-head DIY fix that gets the job done (even if it doesn't look all that good doing it). The Tumblr blog Shitty Rigs is dedicated to showing off those brilliant, if a bit silly, creations.

Just in time for the Holidays, Yahoo! is introducing a new service for printing custom photo books through Flickr, touting automatic features and a "clean, stunning design" that the company hopes will encourage Flickr users to take advantage of the new feature instead of going elsewhere for their photo book needs.

Google has agreed to replace a Google Maps satellite image of a Richmond, California railroad yard that may show the body of a murdered teenager.

Instagram may be home to a wealth of aesthetic and legal offenses, but it can also be a tool for promoting our better instincts, as a recent movement involving relief for victims of typhoon Haiyan attests to.

The idea isn't entirely new. At one point, photographer Allen Murabayashi experimented with re-imagining famous photos as if they had been taken with Instagram to dispel the thought that filters and a square crop often somehow "improve" a photo.

The website Histagrams is similar, only it takes it a step further and lends a comedic edge to the whole experiment. Site creators Gusto NYC and Gavin Alaoen imagine how historically significant moments might have been shared if the people behind them had had Instagram at their disposal.