Ask Engadget: best online photo album with public contributions?

We know you've got questions, and if you're brave enough to ask the world for answers, then here's the outlet to do so. This week's Ask Engadget inquiry is from Jeff, who wants to crowdsource his wedding photography without any mess. If you're looking to ask one of your own, drop us a line at ask [at] engadget [dawt] com.

"As part of my wedding plans, we're expecting plenty of our friends to take pictures of the big day on their smartphones and cameras. I'd like to create a public online photo album to let everyone upload the pictures to one place, and then I can download them later. I'd really rather not have anyone set up an account anywhere (so Flickr won't work) and, ideally, I'd like those who shoot in .RAW to be able to upload the full sized files. Any ideas and suggestions of places would be great, thanks!"

Well, actually, your humble narrator has this same problem early last year. My solution, which won't work for you, was to sign up with a Flickr Pro account and set up a new group. As you can email in images to a specific group email address, we sent this address out on our invitations. That way, anyone who took pictures could just email them straight to the site. As you've said, that's not going to work with .RAW images, so let's turn this question over to the community and see what they can come up with.

Filed under: Cameras, Internet

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Fast and Furious Actor Paul Walker Dead at 40

Paul Walker, an actor best known for his role as a fast-driving cop opposite bad-guy-gone-good Vin Diesel in the Fast and Furious movie series died on Saturday in a car crash in Santa Cruz, California, according to multiple sources. Walker was 40 years old.

News of the fatal crash spread first online after celebrity news site TMZ broke the story. Initially, most other news outlets and Twitter accounts picked it up as a report.

Has it been confirmed by other news sources? RT @LanceUlanoff: Paul Walker dies in crash: report http://t.co/rIPIlVNfo3 #RIP

— Jodi Echakowitz (@JodiEchakowitz) December 1, 2013 Read more...

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Alt-week 11.30.13: one well preserved baby dinosaur, and the forbidden gadgets

Alt-week takes a look at the best science and alternative tech stories from the last seven days.

Technology and science doesn't care how old you are. Whether you're a pre-historic beast, or a juvenile rebel -- technology applies to you. It's also what will, hopefully, finally make those lunar-vacation dreams a reality. This is alt-week.

Filed under: Science, Alt

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This Week's Top Downloads

Every week, we share a number of downloads for all platforms to help you get things done. Here were the top downloads from this week.

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Avoid Caffeine Before Interviews for Better Composure

While you may need your caffeine fix on most occasions, avoid coffee or any other drink with it before your next interview. Your adrenaline doesn't need that jolt, and it will likely harm it instead, says Desha Peacock, director of career development at Marlboro College in Marlboro, Vt.

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Growing up Geek: Timothy J. Seppala

Welcome to Growing Up Geek, an ongoing feature where we take a look back at our youth and tell stories of growing up to be the nerds that we are. Today, we have our very own Timothy J. Seppala.

I was 7 years old the first time I read Jaws. I was in second grade, and like most boys that age, I was absurdly fascinated by sharks and dinosaurs. I still am. What made me want to read it was spending an afternoon watching the flick on LaserDisc with my dad. By the time the end credits rolled, I was filled with a sense of wonder that I still get when I watch it on Blu-ray. It left me wanting more, though, so I checked the novel out from the library.

I don't remember how long it took me to read, but I recall not being able to put it down; it was unlike anything I'd ever encountered before. Mostly because it was an adult novel and I was still a kid. There was blood! There was swearing! There were entire chapters written from a shark's perspective! After finishing it, there was no way I could go back to the steady diet of whatever it was my classmates were reading, so I skipped youth fiction almost entirely. My next read was Jurassic Park. After that, the rest of Crichton's and Benchley's works kept me busy until high school where I discovered Tolkien and King.

Filed under: Misc

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25 Top Mashable Resources of the Week

It has been a crazy week in the tech world, so if you've been in a turkey-induced coma most of the week and missed some Mashable news, don't worry—we've got you covered

As always, we've rounded up the top 25 digital media resources of the last week, including plenty of Thanksgiving tips and Cyber Monday deals to ensure you get everything on your list. Scroll to the end for the top news of the week

Editor's Picks

A YouTube Legend Battles for His Basketball Future

Kiwi Gardner has become a star on YouTube, but does that mean he can make it in the NBA?

10 People Who Only Show Up During the Holidays

The holidays bring out some strange personalities. Look through this list and see if you recognize anyone. Read more...

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Get Email Alerts for Free Kindle Ebooks in Favorite Genres with IFTTT

If you want to build up a collection of great ebooks on your Kindle without spending a dime, Red Ferret has a simple but neat trick to using Amazon's individual RSS feeds and our favorite web automator, IFTTT .

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Beyond E-Books: HarperCollins Looks For the Next Big Thing

As competitors in the e-book subscription market, Scribd and Oyster like to emphasize their differences. Yet the two share a common talking point: They both drop the name HarperCollins.

The New York-based publishing house, whose roots date back to 1817, was the only one of the Big Five publishers to offer some of its backlist titles — and perhaps more importantly, some of its prestige — to these startups at launch, helping to kickstart the fledging Netflix-like e-book subscription market

"They intuitively got what we were doing right from the first meeting," Trip Adler, Scribd's CEO and cofounder, told Mashable in a recent interview about his interactions with HarperCollins. "They operate the most like a technology company in terms of their willingness to try new things." Read more...

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Why Traffic Is Digital Marketing's Foundational Metric

If you take the retail marketing adage "location, location, location," and translate it to digital, the result would be visit rate, or traffic. In the physical world, it's possible to pay premium rent to get your product in front of lots of people, but on the web, garnering traffic is a bit more nuanced. The medium requires strategies that are focused on targeted audiences rather than the general public, not because products are narrow, but because methods of measuring efficacy enable marketers to see more success this way.

Visit rate is likely the oldest metric on the Internet, and continues to be highly relevant for every kind of businesses. The most widely used statistic is visits per day, although unique visitors per day is usually seen as more actionable. This rate is often compared month-to-month or year-over-year and is often paired with frequency of visits, return visits or daily return visits Read more...

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Go “Back to the Future” to Make Better Decisions

When you are facing a difficult choice, take a moment and imagine yourself in a successful or failed outcome to gain some clarity, suggests Robert Sutton, author of Scaling Up Excellence: Getting To More Without Settling For Less.

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Cyber Monday Deals You Can't Miss

Black Friday hadn't even ended before some retailers started teasing their deals for Cyber Monday.

Amazon announced plans to start its Cyber Monday deals at midnight on Sunday and run promotions throughout the week. Walmart did one better and started its "Cyber Week" sales on Saturday.

See also: 14 Tips to Avoid Cyber Monday Scams

The term "Cyber Monday" was first coined in 2005 and it has since turned into the single biggest shopping day of the year for online retailers. Consumers spent nearly $1.5 billion online on Cyber Monday last year, the third year in a row that sales topped the $1 billion mark, according to data from comScore Read more...

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Nokia's Verizon-bound Lumia 929 shows up again in leaked photo

We're quickly losing count on how many times we have seen leaks of the Nokia Lumia 929. Still, something tells us Verizon subscribers won't mind getting as many looks as possible at what's rumored to be a pretty high-end smartphone. Now, courtesy of a forum member on Windows Phone Central, we're seeing the Lumia 929 from a slightly different angle than in previous occasions. As a refresher, Nokia's unannounced handset is rumored to come with a 5-inch, 1080p display, 32GB of built-in storage and a 20-megapixel PureView shooter. Previous reports suggested it could hit Verizon around Thanksgiving, but according to the person behind the most recent leak, this Windows Phone device won't be official until sometime in mid-to-late December.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Microsoft, Nokia

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Source: Windows Phone Central

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Tell A Compelling Story Through Diptychs For Our Photo Challenge

In photography, a diptych is a pair of photographs placed side by side to form one single artistic statement or comparison. The images can be identical or similar in composition, they can show different angles of the same scene, or they can demonstrate polar opposites such as morning and night, old and new, or before and after

Diptychs are great because they can deliver twice the storytelling impact of a single image. We want you to try this technique for this week's round of our Mashable Photo Challenge

See also: 6 Apps for Making Instagram Borders and Shapes

You can use Photoshop on your computer or any collage app on your smartphone to combine your images. Feel free to check out this Flickr group for some diptych inspiration. Read more...

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12 Vines That Sum Up Black Friday

Ah, Black Friday. The shop-til-you-sometimes-literally-drop holiday has become a spectacle leading up to campers posting up in line several days before Friday. In fact, this year, shoppers were in line around the U.S. as early as Wednesday.

See also: 12 Black Friday Hall-of-Famers

In honor of the madness, we collected parodies and real shoppers captured on Vine. Check out the list below and add links to your favorites in the comments.

1. Black Friday Shopping

2. Really ... #toosoon #blackfriday

3. People on Black Friday Be Like

4. Black Friday at Express!! :)

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5. Black Friday Gonna Be Like ... (Inspired By Gary Rojas)

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Smart Night Light Takes Fear Out of Bedtime

Product name: Boon Glo

Price: $84.99

Who would like this?: Kids of all ages

Children can be surprisingly hard to buy for at Christmas. Once you take into account what Santa Claus is planning to drop down the chimney, you may not find yourself with many options

We think we've found the ideal gift for kids of all ages — the Boon Glo night light. It's perfect for younger children struggling to overcome their fear of the dark, or for older kids who want to extend "lights out" time

We can all remember the comforting power of a night light. The Boon Glo takes this concept and adds some cool tech to make for some innovative illumination. While we can't promise getting them into bed will be any easier, we're sure all kids will be excited to turn on the Glo for an evening Read more...

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Xbox One's 500GB HDD swapped for bigger, faster drives, and tested for performance

The Xbox One arrives with a 500GB HDD built-in, and in contrast to the PlayStation 4's easily-accessed storage, it's not meant to be accessed or replaced by the user, ever. While we'll probably leave ours in place to keep from voiding the warranty or risk a ban from Xbox Live, a few folks have already cracked open the console to see what else will fit. iFixit noted during its teardown that there's an off-the-shelf 2.5-inch Samsung HDD inside connected via SATA II inside, and swapping that out isn't much of an issue. Brian Williams has already tried out the system with two alternate drives: a 500GB Samsung EVO SSD, and a Seagate 1TB hybrid SSHD. As you can see in his video (embedded after the break) boot time from off to the dashboard only improved slightly, with the SSD loading in 46.1 seconds compared to 50.5 stock. A test with Call of Duty: Ghosts revealed similar results, with the SSD loading up in 27 seconds and the hybrid drive close behind in 27.7, compared to 33.5 seconds stock. We'll need tests with more games to be sure, but so far it's not showing the improvements seen after swapping the PS4's hard drive out for speedier options. The folks at Tested report doing so improved level load times in Killzone: Shadow Fall from 60 seconds to 39 seconds.

So, if it's not a ton faster, why would you want to take the chance of prying Microsoft's box open? To get more space. Brian's drives were simply copies of the original transferred by Clonezilla, but an individual named Juvenal1 has already worked out how to get the system to actually recognize and make use of drives bigger than 500GB. By copying files from your original drive and using their Linux-compatible tool to repartition the new HDD, you can be up and running with more capacity after just a reboot or two. Of course, this carries significant risks and we don't recommend it for most, as Microsoft's Albert Penello has already revealed support for external drives is coming in a future update, along with the ability to do crazy things like see how much storage you actually have left. Still, if you just need to live on the edge (or store every game released so far and record hours of clean Upload Studio clips) the instructions can be found here.

Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, HD, Microsoft

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Source: Juvenal1 (Github), Brian Williams

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Buy Cheaper Stuff First to Avoid Splurging on Shopping

Instead of heading straight for the MacBooks and 4K TVs, buy all the less expensive items on your holiday shopping list first. It stops you from having a distorted perception of value, researchers say.

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Smartphone-Controlled Paper Airplane Soars on Kickstarter

Designing the perfect paper airplane — the one that flies the farthest and the fastest — is about to get easier.

Power Up 3.0, built by designer Shai Goitein, promises to give your basic paper model an upgrade, using a small attachable propeller and rudder for a little more speed and steering control

See also: How Kickstarter Users Evolved the Famous Ostrich Pillow

The most impressive part of this flight enthusiast's design is the Bluetooth connectivity, which allows you to control your paper airplane via your smartphone with an accompanying app. Tilting your phone to the left or right allows you to turn your airplane as it flies a whopping 60 yards. The app also includes a compass, controls for thrust and readouts for battery life and range Read more...

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A guide to street photography: Matt Stuart, manners and human autofocus

Street photography is the purest, most spontaneous way to create art with a camera. No studios, no props, no poses; all you need is the right equipment and a street with people on it. In this original series for Engadget, we'll follow three seasoned street fighters and try to glean some practical wisdom about what engages their eyes, brains and fingers in the moments before they shoot.

We learned about manual exposure in the last installment. Now we're going all in with a look at manual focusing. Our guide is Matt Stuart, a London-based photographer who's made his name with funny and quirky shots of humanity going about its business; shots that often materialize and then disappear so quickly that even the fastest autofocus system would fail to keep up. Since Stuart's style often involves stepping right up to people, almost to the point of invading their personal space, we'll also try to figure out how he manages to avoid confrontation.

Filed under: Cameras

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Slide Launcher is a Lightweight, Fast, Pretty Way to Start Any App

Android: When you need to quickly start any app, Slide Launcher can be your best friend. It's fast, it's pretty and it's really light on the resources, claiming no RAM and battery usage while running in the background.

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25 Spinning Long Exposure Photos to Leave You Breathless

Adventurous photographers on Instagram often capture gorgeous circular streaks of golden light — otherwise known as steel wool spinning.

The process behind these shimmering photographs requires the photographer to set fire to a tuft of steel wool tucked inside a wire whisk attached to a long, thick wire. If you swing the flaming wool in circles before a camera set for long exposure photography, the resulting images show dazzling bursts of light in otherwise darkened settings

See also: 15 Gorgeous Double-Exposed Instagram Photos

It's a risky but exciting way to create offbeat images that will grab your followers' attention. Treat your eyes to 25 fiery steel wool long exposure photos on Instagram. Read more...

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