Canon has just announced their new EOS 7D DSLR camera. It features a 18MP sensor, a 19-point AF system, shoots up to 8 fps and includes 1080p Full HD video. The retail price is $1699.00, placing it between the 50D and the 5D Mark II.

The EOS 7D boasts significant EOS advancements including a completely new 19-point Autofocus system, a new Canon iFCL Metering System (Intelligent Focus, Color, Luminance) and a new Intelligent Viewfinder. An 18-megapixel Canon CMOS sensor and Dual DIGIC 4 Imaging Processors fuel the EOS 7D’s 14-bit A/D data conversion and its ability to freeze fast motion in high-resolution with eight fps continuous shooting up to 126 Large JPEGS using a UDMA CF card, positioning this camera for the studio as well as the sideline. The EOS 7D captures beautiful low-light images with or without a flash, at occasions such as a dance recital or wedding reception, thanks to a wide range of ISO speed settings from 100-6400 (expandable to 12,800). In addition to its new still capture capabilities, the EOS 7D features Full HD video capture at 1920 x 1080 resolution with selectable frame rates of 24p, 25p or 30p. Native 24p recording helps videographers achieve a more cinema-style look for their footage without the need for post-processing.

DP Review has posted a hands-on preview of the 7D.

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Adam Koford drew this wonderful illustration of Gooflactus in response to today’s news about Disney’s acquisition of Marvel.

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SMITH Magazine recently launched The Pekar Project, a new weekly series of web comics featuring legendary underground comics writer Harvey Pekar, creator of the autobiographical series American Splendor. The first installment features Harvey having a phone conversation about art with Robert Crumb.

Harvey Pekar’s been mining the mundane for magic for more than 30 years in his autobiographical American Splendor comics. Now he has teamed with SMITH and four remarkable artists — Tara Seibel, Joseph Remnant, Rick Parker, and Sean Pryor — to create his first ongoing webcomic series. New stories appear every other week, with interviews, creator spotlights, and behind-the-scenes goodies.

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Worldwide Lexicon, a community translation service for websites, has released a cool new Firefox Translator which enables you to view websites in other languages.

The Firefox Universal Translator is a revolutionary new tool that makes browsing foreign language websites as easy as browsing the web today. Once installed, this tool automatically detects foreign language web pages, and will translate them for you. You don’t need to do anything, just open a URL, and if it senses that the page is in another language, it translates it for you.

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Can’t make it to Burning Man 2009 this year? Here are a few ways you can experience the event remotely through the wonders of the Interweb.

The Burning Blog

photo by John Curley

Once again John Curley has been doing a fantastic job documenting the evolution of Black Rock City. This year John is joined by an expanded team of bloggers who are posting updates on the Burning Blog as the event unfolds.

Photos

Throughout the week people will be uploading photos from the Playa. Here are all the photos tagged “burningman2009” on Flickr sorted by interestingness.

Also Flickr just announced that they are supporting machine tags for Burning Man photos so that they will show up on Burning Man Earth using the Burning Man API.

Twitter

It would be an understatement to say that Twitter will be huge at Burning Man this year. The existing wi-fi network along with this being the first year with cell phone coverage, is going to make it easier than ever for people to post Twitter updates from the playa. Also at long last Burning Man has not just one, but two official Twitter accounts: @burningman & @blackrockcity

Foursquare

Foursquare, the popular location based social network, is making it’s Burning Man debut this year, with people checking in and becoming major of various locations around Black Rock City, including “The Man”.

Facebook

Of course Burning Man has now a Facebook page, featuring status updates from the organizers, along with comments, photos and video from the participants.

Burning Man Information Radio (BMIR)

photo by unknown

You can listen to a live audio stream of Burning Man Information Radio (BMIR).

IRC

For those of you old school geeks, the Burning Man IRC channel is located at #burningman on irc.freenode.net.

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monochrom has just announced Arse Elektronika 2009: “Of Intercourse & Intracourse”, their annual conference on sex, technology and the future, which takes place October 1-4 in San Francisco, kicking off with the Prixxx Arse Elektronika 2009 Awards Ceremony on October 1st at the Roxie Theater.

We may not forget that mankind is a sexual and tool-using species. And that’s why our annual conference Arse Elektronika deals with sex, technology and the future. As bio-hacking, sexually enhanced bodies, genetic utopias and plethora of gender have long been the focus of literature, science fiction and, increasingly, pornography, this year will see us explore the possibilities that fictional and authentic bodies have to offer. Our world is already way more bizarre than our ancestors could have ever imagined. But it may not be bizarre enough. “Bizarre enough for what?” — you might ask. Bizarre enough to subvert the heterosexist matrix that is underlying our world and that we should hack and overcome for some quite pressing reasons within the next century.
Dont you think, replicants?

At this year’s event monochrom will be releasing their second Arse Elektronika Anthology “Do Androids Sleep with Electric Sheep?”.

Taking up where the successful first part of our series left off, this anthology stands under the motto “future” — and the ways in which the present sees itself reflected in it. Maintaining a broadened perspective on technical development and technology while also putting special emphasis on its social implementation, this year’s conference focuses on Science and Social Fiction.

Here are a few photos I shot last year at Arse Elektronika 2008.

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photos by Scott Beale

Last weekend I was invited to Foo Camp 2009, an amazing 3 day “Friends of O’Reilly” unconference where particpicants camped out at the O’Reilly Media offices in Sebastopol, CA. Here are a few photos of the event I shot with my Canon G10.

Photo Gallery: Foo Camp 2009

Here are some more Foo Camp 2009 photos from Joi Ito.

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The Walt Disney Company has agreed to buy Marvel Entertainment for $4 billion in cash and stock. Here’s the press release from Disney. ‘Nuff said.

via New York Times

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<img src="http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/time_travel.png" title="She also starts every letter with "Dear Future "." alt="She also starts every letter with "Dear Future "." />

Jim Unwin has created a really cool Venn Diagram of Mythical Creatures (larger version).

via Neatorama

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photo by John Curley

The United Nations Unconventional Culture Commission (UNUCC) has just declared Burning Man an Abnormal Behavior Containment Safe Zone in accordance with the Stockholm Plan for Abnormal Behavior Containment.

UNUCC encourages all abnormal persons to assemble in this ABC Safe Zone and assures that the international community will not interfere with any abnormal behaviors within. Burning Man represents the first real test of the Stockholm Plan, which outlines the use of safe zones to control abnormal persons and dissipate their weirdness far away from the world community.

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“Music for Cooking with Gas” featuring the Harry Fields Quintet

I need to find a MP3 of this for Lori.

via Tim Shey & LPCover Lover

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Andrew Hyde is in town and hosted a TechStars meetup tonight at 21st Amendment in San Francisco. A bunch of people showed up including Roberto Sequeira, founder of Gläce Luxury Ice, a company that produces a perfectly spherical, 2.5″ premium ice cube that sells in packages of 5 ice spheres for $40, which is $8 per ice cube.

Until tonight, I had no idea there was even a market for premium ice.

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photo by Scott Beale

Tim Hwang has just announced ROFLCon II in Spring 2010, a follow-up to last year’s ROFLCon, the infamous conference on Internet culture and memes held at MIT.

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Oakland photographer Sean Donnelly produced a really great video segment for The Oakland Tribune/Bay Area Insider about The Raygun Gothic Rocketship, a 40′ tall retro rocket art installation built by Sean Orlando and a team of 60 artists in West Oakland that is sure to be one of the highlights of this year’s Burning Man.

photo by John Curley

Earlier this week John Curley shot some wonderful photos of The Raygun Gothic Rocketship as it was being installed on the playa.

via CTP

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“Internet People 2″ by brentalfloss, SharkeyeJones and Spintown7.

Spintown explains how the video came together:

Awhile back I won an auction brentalfloss was holding on E-Bay. I decided to have him write a sequel to my favorite viral video “Internet People”. I picked who was going to be in the song, and brentalfloss did an incredible job of including every single person/item I wanted. Then I got SharkeyeJones to provide me with art work for the video. He did a great job of giving me exactly what I asked for in each illustration.

This sequel video was inspired by the 2007 video “Internet People” by Dan Meth.

via Veronica Belmont

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28 year-old Justin lives with his 73 year-old Dad who says some funny stuff, which Justin then posts to Twitter at @shitmydadsays. The account has been so popular it already has over 100K followers in less than a month.

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Onward Robots!, a new Shirt.Woot t-shirt by Chris Ware to benefit 826michigan.

Wear this shirt: to support 826michigan,, the Great Lakes State chapter of 826 National. This non-profit project offers free workshops, tutoring, writing rooms, and other resources to students aged 6 to 18 who want to develop their creative and expository writing skills. The artist’s proceeds from this shirt will go to the Michigan chapter, housed in the world-renowned Liberty Street Robot Supply & Repair facility.

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