As an amateur photographer myself (on and off), I know its hard to find gigs and projects to work on that pay well. There’s alot of competition out there, and it’s quite a challenge to differentiate yourself from all that talent. Fortunately, there are ways to earn money online without having to find someone’s graduation event to photograph — it’s called stock photography! The best part is, you don’t need to be a professional or have overly expensive equipment to post up high-quality pictures and make money.

For the amateur photographer, weekend warrior, or even professionals looking for some supplemental income, check out the 3 best stock photo websites that allow you to make money, below:

1. Shutterstock - 25 cents per download
   
2. iStockphoto - 25% of image price (depends on resolution and # of downloads)
3. Dreamstime - 30-50% (depends on resolution and # of downloads)

In addition, you can earn money by referring fellow photographers. All three of these sites above have minimums for payments, so make sure you read some stock photography tips! Also, read more about these microstock sites at Dphotojournal.

MTI Media Lab, in conjunction with several companies and organizations, is working on creating a $100 laptop which will be used to educate youth in many 3rd world countries.

The $100 Laptop will be a Linux-based, full-color, full-screen laptop, which initially is achieved either by rear projecting the image on a flat screen or by using electronic ink (developed at the MIT Media Lab). In addition, it will be rugged, use innovative power (including wind-up), be WiFi- and cell phone-enabled, and have USB ports galore. Its current specifications are: 500MHz, 1GB, 1 Megapixel. The cost of materials for each laptop is estimated to be approximately $90, which includes the display, as well as the processor and memory, and allows for $10 for contingency or profit.

Read the FAQ for more information here.

Although I do not use or support Yahoo, I do support Firefox and their movement to “Take Back the Web“. I’m more of a Google guy, but I think Yahoo’s decision to increase its programs’ compatbilities with Firefox browsers is a great thing. I hope this encourages other web-based companies to do the same.

I think one of the number one setback for IE users to change to Firefox is that Firefox is not guaranteed to work with everything. I still find websites that do not load properly or have features that do not work when using Firefox. Paul Roub’s Firefox extension “ieview” switches the website you’re viewing in Firefox to Internet Explorer in two clicks!

So, in short, its good to see more companies beginning to support different browsers and non-Microsoft products That’s always nice. I wonder if operating systems and computer will EVER escape Microsoft’s grasp?

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Microsoft announced their beta Antispyware program yesterday. Although I’m not completely excited when a new Microsoft product comes out - they are usually exploited and followed by thousands of patches, PCWorld magazine actually feels this program might compete with the spyware-killing big boys - SpyBot Search and Destroy and Ad-Aware.
Here are the test results for Microsoft’s Windows Antispyware program:

It was able to detect 91 percent of the adware/spyware in our test suite, including 96 percent of processes running in memory, 67 percent of home- or search-page modifications, 100 percent of BHOs and toolbars, 95 percent of Registry additions, and 100 percent of other items such as menus and buttons added to programs. The utility scanned our 2.7GB of data in less than 3 minutes.

The program looks really good as far as those tests go. But in another article, which digs a little deeper into the Beta program, reveals that it still has some major features to add.
This article mentions that despite the innovative technology behind Microsoft’s new product, support for Firefox, Opera, Netscape and other browsers is nonexistant. Not only that, but using the “restore settings” feature of the Browser Hijack Restore tool returns all the annoying Microsoft advertisements - links to MSN.com, MSN Search, and the MSN Search Toolbar - into Internet Explorer again. The Track Erase tool erases your history and tracks on several programs, including ICQ, Realplayer, Adobe Acrobat, and Internet Explorer, but lacks support for Firefox browsers, AOL AIM chat software, or AOL client software.

Download the program at Microsoft’s website.