Photography Served – Brought to us by the always satisfying Behance Network, Photography Served can only mean yet another form of visual bliss. The site describes itself as a collection of “fresh works from leading creative professionals,” and that’s a gross understatement. You will find nothing short of top notch, magazine quality photography here, and each photo is even more inspiring than the previous one.

Below are a couple of photos I was mesmerized by and wanted to share. In addition, I recommend exploring our Photography mini page for additional photography resources and how-to’s if you are interested.

Fallingwater by Frank Lloyd Wright; photographed and retouched by Greg Bennett

Earth by Navid Baraty

Photovisi – Create your customized photo collage with this exciting free service by Photovisi. Choose a template, background color and added shapes, and upload photos (these can be from your PC, webcam, mobile device, etc.). Next, you can play with the photos’ position on your canvas and arrange them as you wish. This is a great deal of fun and the best part about it is that Photovisi also offers free download and sharing of your collage, and for a small fee you can also order prints and mugs of your photo creation.

Here’s my personal collage made up of a couple of photos of my cat, my summer feet and a winter day’s rainbow.

Artician – This truly is a superb free service for creative professionals. Offering to help you build your portfolio from scratch, Artician does it all with style and lets you customize your portfolio as much as you like thanks to the many presentation options available, including widgets, and loads more. For the most part, impressive online portfolio services cost $$, yet Artician offers its basic service plan for free (which is quite generous in terms of what you get for it), and there’s also the Artician Pro if you’re interested.

Either way I advise you to first take the Tour and explore the portfolio opportunities Artician has to offer. See the digital art work ‘Freedom’ below by Rgquarkup.

Pixcetera – AOL’s huge photo gallery is open to everyone, and it would be a shame not to give it a long hard look, literally. Offering more than two dozen categories of mesmerizing photographs, Pixcetera also offers framed print for sale, cool iPhone app and other interesting photos on their radar.

Choose photo themes as interesting as Nature’s Best, Black Voices, Celebrities, Food, even Music! Even if you’re not set on buying some prints for you home, cruising along Pixcetera is awesome and entertaining. See a couple of photos below I thought I’d share with you.

Photography by Arthur Yeo

Cocobay Resort

1x.com – Claiming to be a photo community with a difference, 1x is definitely unique. Aside from the absolutely gorgeous photos showcased here (hundreds of them in every possible category), serious amateur as well as professional photographers are welcome to contribute and add their works. I was happy to find an eCard section on 1x, which totally leaves the usual electronic greeting card sources in the photography dust. See a couple of amazing photos I was blown away by, and these are just the tip of the 1x iceberg.

The Wanderer by M.J. Arcanjo

Cowgirl by Nicole Bohem

Shit My Kids Ruined – Kids will be kids, and this is particularly true for the chaotic, draw-on-everything, spill-whatever-is-in-your-hands, phase young children are known for. Julie Haas Brophy woke up one morning to find out her little boy spilled a can of black paint all over her living room carpet. She posted photos of the mess on Facebook and she got reactions from all over. The next morning Julie decided to make an actual documentary-like blog of such mishaps in the house caused by her kids, husband and dog.

The result is Shit My Kids Ruined (or SMKR for short). Be sure to check out the shitmykidsruined.com domain in the future since the tumblr site might become obsolete sometime in the future. See some photos below of what it’s like in Julie’s house. I admire great projects that started out as an ordeal, and Julie has turned what other mothers would consider a continual disaster into a hilarious and fun thing. Go Julie! By the way, SMKR was also a Weekly Blog on our Blogs page, and users all over flocked to her site – she scored very high on popularity. Therefore SMKR made it to the Weekly Faves lineup.

Why Do I Live Here? – Another Weekly Blog winner a couple of weeks back, Why Do I Live Here is a Cheezburger lol blog showing photos of what you’d expect from the title. Funny houses galore, this blog is all about the extreme and bizarre. See some pics I found really daunting…

Historypin – A cool collaboration between the social movement We Are What We Do and Google has produced this amazing project focused on an innovative documentation of our collective history. Combining Google Maps (both standard and street views) with your grandparents’ historic photograph and personal story, Historypin brings the young and old generations closer. According to their About page, “Historypin virtually requires you to spend time with someone from a different generation: young people need older people for the photos, and older people need young people to explain when to click and when to double click.”

The Historypin scene as the meeting point of generations is spectacular. The superb interface, the ease of the documentation process and the existing database of other users’ documented photos (over 10,000 entries!) make Historypin a first of its kind in terms of both concept and execution. See the photo of Sydney’s Queen Victoria Markets (posted by Rebekah), dated 1885-1915, with the site’s current appearance in the background. Absolutely amazing. Add your photos and tell your story so the young generation in your family will learn your family’s history. You will need a Google account to sign up and contribute to Historypin.

 JPG Magazine – JPG is a magazine focusing on photography. The content of JPG is user-created and submitted via the magazine’s website. When photos are submitted, they are voted on by members of the site’s community for inclusion in the next issue. To watch their amazing photos, you can browse either their Theme or Photos categories (for photos: submitted, from contacts, spotlight, etc.).

Photos on JPG are extraordinarily impressive and captivating, to the extent that they surpass the quality of other photo browsing services online. I personally love the stories behind the pictures, you should take a look at that as well.

At the moment of writing this, Google Chrome is all the hype around the net. Though, at the same day that Google Chrome launched, Google also launched a new version of their popular Picasa and PicasaWebAlbums. Which is considered as one of the top destination for image uploading on the Internet. I don’t believe that the launch of this two services together happened by a chance. Google knew that all the hype will be around the new Google browser. No one seems to mention anything thoughtful regarding the new face recognition that they launched.

First, I would like to introduce you to the new service. When you login to your Picasa web account. You get an option at the right bar of the screen to perform name tagging. Which at first seems to be harmless. We all know the face tagging done on Facebook. In which you personally recognize your friends and tag them with a name, thus, an algorithm isn’t used to scan additional pictures.

Google Picasa is different. When selecting the name tag option, you receive a message stating that you have to wait for about half an hour until all your pictures are processed. Once processed, you will be able to view all your loved ones grouped together in a beautiful way which only Google can provide. So slick and simple.

(Click image to enlarge)

So what scares me… You’re asking? Well, Google’s main business model is through advertising. Google controls most of the Internet advertising market, it’s their main business and frankly they perform it unexceptionally. In addition, Google is also trying to infiltrate the old-school media TV and Newspapers. (You can read more about it here and here).

Did you ever stop and think what will happen if Google will find a way to show us ads on our daily routine. On our way to work, while shopping or just hanging out with friends at a local bar.

I think that the day which Google will shows us ads on the streets is closer than we think. Now, that they are able to recognize our faces. All they need is a camera to recognize us on the street. Oh, guess what!? They already have it!

What will happen when Google will have all the information about us? Isn’t that too much power for one company?

When Gmail started reading our mail and showing us relevant ads. There was a big privacy fuss around the issue. Now, when it comes to recognizing us in person, it seems as if no one is raising up these issues.

At first, Tagging yourself on Picasa seems harmless, but think about what will happen ten years from today. Privacy won’t exist when stepping out of your home.

I am a big Google fanboy. I even believe that I will try their new tagging option because I am way too curious. I also believe in Google’s moto – “Don’t be evil”. Though, we have to raise these issues before it is too late. We should have control over our privacy.

Am I just being paranoid or is this our future?

Look at the dancer below. What do you see? Is she turning clockwise or counter-clockwise? You just can’t help but love these optical illusions.

If you see her turning clockwise (right) then your left side of the brain is doing most of the work, which means you are more of a logic/analyzing person.

If you see the dancer turning counter-clockwise (left) then your right side of the brain is in charge, this means you are the artistic/intuition person.

You control the way the dancer turns. Try looking at this with a few more people and see how everyone sees it different.