Instagram Can Take Video Too

Instagram, the wildly popular photo-sharing app that was bought by Facebook last year for a cool billion dollars, just announced that it now supports videos.

They're pretty cleanly integrated into your feed; they won't autoplay as you scroll, instead showing just as a thumbnail with a small icon of an old-timey movin' picture camera in the top-right corner to indicate that these are videos rather than stills. Tap the image to start playing. Easy!

Videos can be up to 15 seconds long (or as short as 3 seconds), and you can stop and resume recordings while shooting, so you don't have to take a single continuous shot like you do with Snapchat. All the usual Instagram filters can be applied, and the videos include audio as well. It's available right now as an update for the iOS app, with Android soon to come.

So, the obvious question: isn't this just, um, a carbon copy of Vine, the video app launched by Twitter earlier this year? Ha ha ha welllllll yes, it is pretty much exactly the same, except Instagram is an app used by 130 million people a month, and Vine has maybe a tenth that many. And Vine has had trouble; apparently a stream of videos isn't the easiest thing to grapple with, and Vine is often buggy or slow to load. Instagram videos could be almost three times as long as Vine videos--how is Instagram going to deal with that? "We have to figure this out," Instagram's CEO told.

Canon 70D DSLR

Canon has, at long last, announced the successor to the EOS 60D DSLR: The predictably-named EOS 70D. Canon has developed an entirely new AF system for live-view and video shooting. It's called Dual Pixel CMOS AF.

The imaging sensor jumps to 20.2MP from 18MP, and sensitivity adds a stop, now topping out at an equivalent of ISO 25,600 when ISO expansion is on. Continuous drive mode now allows for 7fps burst shooting, up from 5.3fps. Canon hasn't yet announced how many shots you can expect per burst, though they never do so until a camera goes into full mass production. The AF system gets a big boost from the 60D's 9-point system, to the 70D's 19-point all cross-type system, with the center being a dual-cross high-precision point when used with f/2.8 or faster lenses.

It's the same AF system used in Canon's flagship APS-C DSLR, the EOS 7D. The LCD remains at 3-inches and 1,040,000-dots on a fully articulated hinge that lets it flip to the left side and angle up or down, but is now a touch screen. Built-in Wi-Fi offers the same functionality we loved in the EOS 6D. Video capture includes the full suite of H.264 recording found in all of Canon's flagship EOS 1D X and allows capture at up to 1080p 30 frames per second and a choice between ALL-I or IPB codecs. One thing it is lacking, however, is a headphone jack, something video shooters often crave.

Canon has doubled the number of photodiodes on the sensor, pairing them up in each pixel so that they can perform phase detection autofocus from each pixel site, though the 70D uses an area covering the center 80% of the width and height of the frame.

Traditional phase detection AF works by diverting some of the incoming light from the lens to a secondary sensor in which pairs of sensors compare the phase of the light arriving at the sensors. Once it sees what the difference in phase is, the camera knows how far it needs to move the focusing elements in the lens, tells the lens to move to the necessary location and focus is achieved. Canon's new Dual Pixel CMOS AF works the same way, except it does so without diverting the light to a separate sensor. Instead, the imaging sensor uses the paired photodiodes separately for AF and then together when capturing an image.

While the new AF system can function with lenses that have maximum apertures as slow as f/11, faster lenses should have tighter tolerances for focusing with Dual Pixel CMOS AF since the lens isn't stopped down until the image is captured and the shallower depth of field that faster lenses provide creates a tighter area within which the sensor can find focus.

The 70D does include AF micro adjustments for use with the traditional AF system. Also, unlike the Hybrid AF system found in the T5i and the Hybrid AF II found in the SL1, the Dual Pixel CMOS AF is just as fast with one of Canon's EF or EF-S lenses as it is with an STM lens, though the STM lens should provide less noise and vibration to the camera's built-in microphone. Of course, AF speed typically varies from lens to lens due to the size and weight of the focusing group and differing motor configurations, so you can still expect some variation in focusing speed, though they likely won't be drastic.

Because of the new system, focusing during Live View is now handled entirely by the phase detection system. Previous cameras like the T5i and the SL1 use phase detection for most of the focusing, but rely on contrast-based AF to lock-on. The result is a jitter just before focus is achieved. It's not a huge deal with still photography, but for video, it can be distracting. On the whole, AF during video mode has improved substantially. We only had a few minutes with a pre-production unit, but it really does focus the way you'd expect a dedicated camcorder to.

Legisi HYIP Ponzi-Scheme Pitchman Got Sentenced To 60 Months In Fed Prison

Legisi HYIP Ponzi-scheme pitchman Matthew John Gagnon has been sentenced to 60 months in federal prison, ordered to pay $4.4 million in restitution and further ordered to serve three years’ supervised probation after his prison release, the office of U.S. Attorney Barbara L. McQuade of the Eastern District of Michigan said.

Legisi, a $72 million Ponzi scheme pushed on fraud forums such as TalkGold and MoneyMakerGroup, was operated by Gregory N. McKnight, who faces sentencing in August. Gagnon’s five-year sentence was the maximum under a plea agreement with prosecutors, who’ve recommended McKnight serve 15 years.

Gagnon pushed Legisi and other fraud schemes through Mazu.com, the SEC said in 2010. The name of MoneyMakerGroup appears in evidence exhibits in the Legisi Ponzi case.

Gagnon will be permitted to self-report to prison, prosecutors said.

The Legisi case — perhaps particularly events involving Gagnon — has been closely watched because it shows that MLM-style HYIP pitchmen can be held accountable criminally for pushing scams. The SEC called Gagnon a threat to the investing public, describing him as a serial fraud pitchman who lacked licenses to sell securities and pushed the unregistered securities of multiple fraud schemes.

In civil charges announced yesterday in Ohio, prosecutors effectively made the same claims against promoters of the alleged Profitable Sunrise pyramid scheme. Included among them was Nanci Jo Frazer, who allegedly also promoted the $119 million AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme and the $600 million Zeek Rewards Ponzi- and pyramid scheme.

The Legisi case began as an undercover probe by state securities regulators in Michigan and the U.S. Secret Service.

Legisi’s Terms of Service sought to make members affirm they were not an “informant, nor associated with any informant” of the IRS, FBI, CIA and the SEC, among other agencies, according to documents filed in federal court.

Current scams such as Profit Clicking have published similar terms, which read like an invitation to join an international financial conspiracy. Ohio prosecutors said they believed Frazer also pushed ProfitClicking, in addition to Zeek, ASD and Profitable Sunrise.

McKnight, prosecutors have said, tried to sanitize Legisi by calling it a “loan” program and engaging in semantic obfuscation. Any number of HYIP scams have employed similar linguistic sleight-of-hand, with ProfitClicking bizarrely arguing that neither itself nor affiliates can be held accountable.

Mr Gagnon argued in court that he’d been duped by McKnight, but a federal judge didn’t buy it.

Pepsi Still Contains Too Much Carcinogen Found In Caramel Coloring

NEW YORK — An environmental group said Wednesday that the caramel coloring used in Pepsi still contains a worrisome level of a carcinogen, even after the drink maker said it would change its formula.

In March, PepsiCo Inc. and Coca-Cola Co. both said they would adjust their formulas nationally after California passed a law mandating drinks containing a certain level of carcinogens come with a cancer warning label. The changes were made for drinks sold in California when the law passed.

The chemical is 4-methylimidazole, or 4-Mel, which can form during the cooking process and, as a result, may be found in trace amounts in many foods.

Watchdog group The Center for Environmental Health found via testing that while Coke products no longer test positive for the chemical, Pepsi products sold outside of California still do.

Pepsi said its caramel coloring suppliers are changing their manufacturing process to cut the amount of 4-Mel in its caramel. That process is complete in California and will be finished in February 2014 in the rest of the country. Pepsi said it will also be taken out globally, but did not indicate a timeline.

Meanwhile, the company said the FDA and other regulatory agencies around the world consider Pepsi's caramel coloring safe.

Coca-Cola said it has transitioned to using a modified caramel in U.S. markets beyond California that does not contain Mel-4, so it wouldn't have to have separate inventory of products for different locations. It also said all of its products, whether they have the modified caramel or not, are safe.

The watchdog group Center for Environmental Health said it commissioned Eurofins Analystical laboratory in Metairie, La., to test Coke and Pepsi products from California in May and from across the country in June.

The lab did not find the chemical in California products. And it found no 4-Mel in nine out of 10 Coke products outside of the state. But it found levels of 4-Mel that are 4 to 8 times higher than California safety levels in all 10 Pepsi products purchased outside California, according to the Center for Environmental Health.

Trace amounts of 4-Mel have not been linked to cancer in humans. The American Beverage Association said that California added the coloring to its list of carcinogens with no studies showing that it causes cancer in humans. It noted that the listing was based on a single study in lab mice and rats.

The Food and Drug Administration has also said that a consumer would have to drink more than 1,000 cans of soda a day to reach the doses administered that have shown links to cancer in rodents.

Coca-Cola and PepsiCo account for almost 90 percent of the soda market, according to industry tracker Beverage Digest