Image Editing: Resize Images without Sacrificing Content with GIMP or Rsizr

from Lifehacker by Adam Pash

Popout Ever have to crop or resize a picture to fit it better on a web site but end up disappointed with the content you have to lose from the photo? Using a method called liquid rescaling, your pics can be rescaled while retaining almost all of the pertinent content, so you can get the best of both worlds—a smaller image that retains everything you want. If it still sounds a little unclear, check out the video to see this brilliant idea in action.

If you're a fan of the open source image editor GIMP, you can download and install the Liquid Rescale GIMP plug-in to get liquid rescaling results (after you install it by moving the downloaded files into your GIMP directory, you'll see the Liquid Rescale option under the Layer menu). If you don't feel like installing anything, you should try out the Rsizr webapp, which does the rescaling from the comfort of your browser. Both tools are a good deal slower than what you see in the very cool video above, and neither are implemented to the full extent of what you're seeing in the video, but the results are still promising.

Liquid Rescale GIMP plugin Rsizr [via Photojojo]

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Clocks: CB2's World Panel Clock is Sci-Fi Sexy

from Gizmodo by Haroon Malik

Our desks are so cluttered we have given up the fight for organization, and that is exactly why we are tempted by CB2's World Panel Clock. The transparent LCD display looks Star Trek awesome and has all sorts of useless information we would otherwise have on our desktops, including time and calendar functions.

As you well know, we are suckers for cool, as you can tell from our fantastic fashion sense...well, CB2's World Panel Clock certainly does have ample flair, with a brushed aluminum base and a slanted transparent display. The timepiece is battery powered, which will saves you adding to your wired disorganization and is available for a reasonable $24.95. The fight against unneeded, largely pointless gizmos is futile—we'll have one over here, please. [Product Page via Technabob]

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Mansion: Jelly-fish 45 Habitat Won't Sting Your Pocket Too Much

from Gizmodo by Haroon Malik

If you have fallen a little short of the $50 million price tag for a Poseidon 180, fret not, the Jelly-fish 45 Habitat will set you back only a mere $2.5 million. Bargain! Designed by Giancarlo Zema, the "floating dwelling" comprises five separate levels all connected by a snazzy spiral staircase.

The floors are split into cheesy zone-titled areas including study, night, day, guest and viewing quarters. Though, if you purchase the floating mansion, you may abide by whichever nomenclature you wish. The viewpoint stretches 3m below the surface and looks jellyfish-like fantastic. The colossal seat-in-the-sea stands 10m high and 15m wide. Now, if I manage to roll out one hundred posts in 24 hours, Blam promises me a tour of his Jelly-fish 45 Habitat—game on! [Product Page via Ballers Guide]

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Speechless: AT&T Lets You Talk, But Limits What You Say

from Gizmodo by Mark Wilson

AT&T has revised their Terms of Service in a manner that should horrify the consumer public. Usually such updates screw the customer subtly, but AT&T's new adjustment ironically pulls freedom of speech directly from those using AT&T's service to speak. In short, if you slam AT&T, they can pull your service:

AT&T may immediately terminate or suspend all or a portion of your Service, any Member ID, electronic mail address, IP address, Universal Resource Locator or domain name used by you, without notice, for conduct that AT&T believes...(c) tends to damage the name or reputation of AT&T, or its parents, affiliates and subsidiaries.

Of course, AT&T has overlooked one important fact about their TOS: they can't cancel a customer's service who will no longer do business with them anyway. Changes in TOS are often a loophole out of your contract. And if I were an AT&T customer, my choice would be pretty clear. [TOS via morningpaper]

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Intel fleshes out 45nm Yorkfield launch details

from Engadget by Donald Melanson

It's been quite a while since we've heard anything from Intel on the Yorkfield front, but that looks to have changed in a hurry, with the company now busting out a whole slew of specifics on the forthcoming processors. First up is news that Intel will be releasing an "Extreme Edition" of the 45nm quad-core processor on November 12th, well ahead of the January 2008 launch for its decidedly less-extreme counterparts. Helping the processor (dubbed the QX9650) earn that designation is its top of the crop 3.0GHz clock speed, along with 12MB of L2 cache, and an extremely hot 130W TDP rating, not to mention a price just shy of $1,000. If that's all a bit too extreme for you, you'll also be able to get your choice of 2.5GHz, 2.66GHz, or 2.88GHz models, each of which scale the TDP rating down to a more manageable 95W, with prices running $266, $316, and $530, respectively. Even further on down the line, Intel's announced details on three dual-core Wolfdale desktop processors, which clock in at 2.66GHz, 3.0GHz, and 3.16GHz. No word on a price for the low-end model just yet, but the 3.0GHz and 3.16GHz are apparently set to run $183 and $266, respectively, with a mid-range 2.83 GHz version expected to eventually round out the lot, according to DailyTech. As if that wasn't enough, Intel's will also apparently be slippig out a 65nm 2.4 GHz dual-core Conroe processor dubbed the E4600 on October 21st, although there's no word on what it'll cost.

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