As if it wasn't obvious what would happen, McDonalds launced their own "Design-your-own-banner" campaign. The results can be viewed on top here. (Curtesy of AdRants) and on MonkeySpan which has lots of links to creative McDonald's spoofs.

I bet some people over at AdBusters must be delighted, although - it might appear that McDonalds should have anticipated it all - especially not with the Bush-Cheney poster "success"

Just a quick linkdump. Feel free to suggest good gadget sites I should visit.

• Gizmodo - probably one of the best known gadget sites around these days. Well worth a visit if you want to stay current on the latest gizmos
• Engadget - run by the guy that built up Gizmodo to its fame and fortune. Not at all a copy of Gizmodo.
• I4U - if you read the previous two, some of the news might be old to you when you get to I4U, but its a cool site with interesting technews
• Kevin Kellys Cool Tools - this guy always serves up the most interesting tools, gadgets, hardware, a real eclectic selection of stuff you could lust for
• MoCoLoco - focuses on design and the "at home" kind of gadgets. You will guarenteed find something to spend off all your money on.

Coming from analog photography (SLR) I've always wondered how it was that all pictures taken with small digital cameras always was in focus. I have to admit I never really thought about it, and basically took it as a fact of life.

Getting a digital camera where depth of field suddenly shows itself again made me wonder even more. Luckily Anders (another Norwegian blogger and amateur photographer) posted a link to a blog that contained a few links to articles on the subject.

• Depth of Field tutorial and explanation - by Michael Reichmann. Interesting tutorial that shows that in practise tele lenses and wide angel lenses have the same depth of field
• DOF and digital cameras - by Andrzej Wrotniak. Probably my favorite of these links. It manages to explain why it is so hard (read impossible) to get to see any noticeable blurring in small digital cameras.
• Depth of Field and the Digital Domain - by Bob Atkins at Photo.net. This is the most advanced explanation of the differences between large format, 35 mm and consumer digital cameras.

From Bob Atkins article: So the bottom line - and all you really need to know - is that DOF [Depth of Field] is inversely proportional to format size. Note that format size is inversely proportional to the "digital multiplier". The higher the "digital multiplier", the smaller the format and thus the greater the depth of field. Note also that now you can see one of the reasons large format camera users need tilts and swings to get adequate depth of field. With an 8x10 camera you have about 8.5 times LESS depth of field than you do with 35mm for the same image. This also explains why consumer digicams, some of which have sensors 1/6 the size of 35mm film, have such a large depth of field and one of the reasons why it's almost impossible to get blurred backgrounds when using them.

Which, really, explains it all :-)

BTW: The articles are all in-depth and goes well into the matter. Bob's article also includes more links to good articles about the subject.

[Via Anders via The ArcterJournal.]

Ecto is a pretty cool new tool for MovableType, Blogger, Typepad and Windows users (Uses XML-RPC so it should be possible to use it with any blog system utilizing XML-RPC), at the moment it is in pre 1.0 beta, and this is my first post with it. Will probably report more about features and possibilites. The first that caught my eye is the possibility of having the song you are playing at the moment you are posting being listed automatically. Unfortuantly I haven't been able to download the plug-in for WinAmp yet - but I will get to it.

A cool little function in the editor is that it will automatically past in the last url you have copied into the clipboard.

The only thing I am missing at the moment is a spell checker.

BTW: Ecto has been available for Mac for a long time.

Photography has for some reason become one of my time wasters. I guess buying a lot of expensive equipment and wanting to get to know how to use it will do that to you.

As some of you might remember, I recently purchased a new digital camera. (It was about time, my previous camera was bought in the previous century ;-)

What do you think about one of the later pictures I have taken? I am setting up Gallery these days, and I promise to post a link to the new gallery as soon as I am happy with the setup.

I have been interested in photography for a long time, but getting new possibilities as well as new challenges. So here are some cool photo related links I have picked up so far:

Photo information sites:

• Digital Camera Reviews has a lot of intersting information. Along with the great reviews and price guide there is also a user forum for many of the major digital cameras out there
• Megapixel has a lot of interesting tutorials and information. Both in english and french.
• Photo.net has always been one of my favorite photo related sites. Its huge with a big community, forums, tutorials and galleries. Well worth a visit
• Even if you don't have a Canon digital camera, you might find a lot of interesting photo related stuff at Canons digital photography site.

Viewing others photographs:

• Sensitive Light - Very cool site, especially like the macro photography.
• Extrospection - fellow norwegian blogger Anders has his own photoblog, very nice pictures there.
• Rion.nu has many cool photograps in her photoblog, updated almost daily with great shots.
• Shutterbug australian photographer and blogger Tracey shares some of her coolest photos

Although not a work of art or design, Elana aka "Kid of speed" from Kiev has made a very thought provoking website called Ghost town

Its about Chernobyl and how it is to travel through the very radio active city close to it, as well as the area around the reactor.

[Via Kyrre]