liveBooks, providers of websites that allow creative professionals to promote and manage their businesses online, have announced that they had secured $5 million in funding from strategic and private investors, allowing the company to expand into new markets. This funding has also helped liveBooks to lower the cost of entry into the liveBooks suite, introduce a subscription-based service to “eliminate the need for front-loaded monetary commitments” and launch pre-designed site offerings. The company is now offering an array of pre-designed themes and layout options with subscriptions priced at $39 a month. To reflect the expansion of its business model and offerings, liveBooks have also re-launched their website.

Website: liveBooks

Photo enthusiast Jarle Aasland has set up a website in an attempt to fund a Leica M9 for himself - and possibly another photographer too. “Like many photographers, I’d love to get a Leica M9, but it’s an expensive tool. First I’d have to sell a kidney, and then I would have a hard time convincing my wife that I really need a Leica,” he says. Seeing that it would be a difficult path to trod, he created a website and online store called Leicadream instead. Through this website, he is selling a huge variety of rangefinder-themed T-shirts, baseball caps, bags and other merchandise; and of course accepts donations as well. But he has gone one step further: “If I’m able to fund a Leica M9 for myself (which remains to be seen), I could do the same for someone else,” he says. So if you feel like helping him realise his Leica dream, and/or would like to get a chance to win an M9 for yourself, pay a visit to the website below.

Website: LeicaDream

Online photo service Snapfish by HP today announced it is partnering with Walmart and Duane Reade, the “uniquely New York” drug store chain. The partnership makes Snapfish the largest print-to-store web destination in the USA. Customers can now pick up “lab-quality” photo prints or photo cards ordered on Snapfish.com in one hour from any of the 3,350 participating Walmart stores - and beginning 14 November,Snapfish customers also will be able to pick up prints from any of the 200 Duane Reade locations in the greater New York City area.

Scrapblog has announced QuickMix, a service that helps users create quick, easy, personalised scrapbooks in minutes. Users simply select a pre-built “kit”, provide their photos, and QuickMix instantly produces a unique digital scrapbook tailored to the photos themselves. Users can select photos directly from their Facebook, Flickr, Photobucket, Picasa, Smugmug, MySpace and Webshots accounts through one-click integration to these sites, or upload photos directly from their computer. QuickMix users have full access to all the capabilities of the complete Scrapblog application as well. Through Scrapblog, users can tweak their scrapbook using the application’s online design tools, or add new elements including stickers, backgrounds, music, video, and more. When trying QuickMix for the first time, users will earn 150 free credits to use in the Scrapblog Marketplace where they can choose from recommended premium sticker packs and background packs specifically designed to match their QuickMix scrapbook kit.

Website: Scrapblog

Tradeclips, billed as “the world’s first full-service video, audio, text and picture media sharing site for the communications industries”, has been launched. Tradeclips features include fast, secure upload of all digital media files, including video, audio, text and photo; an established database of every major UK news outlet; monthly hosting payment with no upload or download charges, distribution of multiple media files via Tradeclips’ “Packages” service and syndication of material to existing and new contacts at the click of a button. The service will officially be launched at an exclusive party at the newly re-furbished London Aquarium on 19th November 2009.

Epson has added seven new video interviews to its Focal Points website dedicated to the Epson’s Stylus Pro 900 series professional printers. The list of the newly interviewed experts includes Bambi Cantrell, John Paul Caponigro, Douglas Dubler, Greg Gorman, Jay Maisel, Steve McCurry and Jeff Schewe. The videos provide an insight into how and why these professional photographers use these printers and the UltraChrome HDR ink set.

Website: Epson Focal Points

Shutterfly has announced the addition of Digital Download to its Pro Gallery service, a store front for professional photographers to sell their photos. With the new Digital Download feature, professional photographers can now sell high resolution copies of their images to customers directly from their Pro Gallery account. Shutterfly’s Pro Gallery service offers professionals premium service with web presence, top-quality professional photo printing services, full-service order processing and fulfillment and world class customer service.  Pro Gallery photographers also receive online sales reports, photo storage, and image rights protection.

The UK band Editors have decided to promote their new album in a unique way - they have augmented Google Street View’s London content with their own custom panoramic photos!  Within each location the user can hear music from the album, which was inspired by the mood and magic of London at night. Each of the nine tracks on the album has its own location which are unavailable on the regular Street View. Editors modified version of Google Maps allows users to enter into these locations and make the transition from light to dark so fans can explore the band’s atmospheric vision of London at night. The shots for this projects were taken by photographer James Royall in multiple parts using a 180-degree fish-eye lens, and stitched together using PTGui. .

Website: Editors Custom Street Views

A new company called Livedrive has an online storage and backup product with advanced photo functionality. The Livedrive product offers unlimited storage, and automatically backs up files. Additionally, Livedrive includes JPEG file editing, raw file thumbnail support, FTP access, quick and easy file sharing and more - all within the web browser, making it easy to access, edit, and share from any device. Livedrive boasts Facebook, Flickr, and SmugMug integration, so users can just drag and drop photos from Livedrive easily. Livedrive is also accessible from mobile devices, with special support for iPhone and Blackberry users.

Website: Livedrive

Following on from the success of the CX1 website, Ricoh have now announced the launch of a site dedicated to the promotion of the GRD Digital III digital compact camera. According to Ricoh, the GR Digital website has been developed as a one stop shop for all enquiries and will be in the form of a Flipbook. You can click and drag on the page corners to virtually flip the pages. The GRD III website features full sales information including technical specifications, review feedback from press, and stockist detail for the authorised Ricoh partners. In addition there is a competition for the lucky entrant to win a new GR Digital III worth £529.99. The competition closes on November 30th 2009 and all those in United Kingdom of Great Britain & Ireland are eligible to enter.

Website: Ricoh GRD III Promotional Website

PicScout today announced a strategic shift from a single source product company to a services company based upon the PicScout Image IRC. Image IRC serves as a fingerprinting index, metadata registry and API connection platform for agencies and image license holders. This means that soon we can look for online images marked with the small “i”, the internationally used icon for information. Pointing to it will reveal much about the image - who owns it, where you can buy it, even more information about the image, and a click-through to use the image legitimately. This is allegedly the first time web-viewed images are getting the attribution of their rightful owners or licensors and enabled with an easy connection to buy and use legitimately.

Legendary British photographer Rankin has joined forces with blindness charity Sightsavers to highlight the fact that women are twice as likely as men to be blind. His striking photographs, produced in collaboration with six world-renowned makeup artists, are showcased on a recently launched Sightsavers microsite. “I can’t imagine what it must be like to be blind and I can’t even begin to comprehend the distress it causes. What is most upsetting is that so much is treatable, and people suffer unnecessarily. With so many women affected by blindness, the work of Sightsavers is of vital importance. They are reaching people who often have no access to help, and taking the inequality out of treatment,” Rankin says. To see his photos and to learn more, visit the website below.

Website: Sightsavers Microsite

During the opening keynote at the Photoshop World Conference & Expo in Las Vegas, Scott Kelby unveiled the newest NAPP member benefit, H.E.L.P. (How-to Educational Library for Photoshop). If you’ve ever wondered what a particular checkbox, tool, filter, or option was in Adobe Photoshop, the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP) set out to show you just that in short <60-second videos. NAPP also launched a new project for people who are brand new to Photoshop, to help them get up to speed fast, with 2009 NAPP Photoshop Hall of Fame inductee Dave Cross as their personal guide and trainer. H.E.L.P. is free for NAPP members and is available on the NAPP member website.

Rollip.com is a new site where you can turn your digital photographs into Polaroid lookalikes. The site allows users to choose one of a number of effects, add text or decorations and upload their photos so that they can receive the “Polaroid” treatment. “It’s addictive,” says Lead Developer Maurice Sikkink. “Users who try it with one photo often end up processing their entire collection.” Rollip is a free service, and devoted users already have their own Flickr group.

Website: Rollip

PhotoshopIsland.com offers exclusive designs and elements for anyone who works with Photoshop, from professional photographers to scrapbookers. Three collections are available at launch: Distressed Background Brushes, 2010 Calendar Brushes & EPS Files and Postage-Themed Brushes. To encourage visits during its launch, PhotoshopIsland visitors who sign up for its e-news have a chance to win an Epson PictureMate PM 260 photo printer. Plus, each visitor who signs-up gets a free set of 10 high resolution Photoshop brushes.

Professional photographer and Photoshop educator, Stuart Little, has launched a brand new blog entitled ‘A Little Photoshop’. The new online publication is home to free articles, HD screencasts, training and inspiration based around the topics of Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom, digital photography and off-camera lighting. Stuart Little is a professional photographer and Photoshop Trainer with over 18 years experience in the field. Over the past 7 years he has lectured in digital photography worldwide for Photo Training Overseas, Fujifilm, The Master Photographers Association and The British Institute of Professional Photographers. He splits his time between commercial, lifestyle photography, blogging, and training photographers worldwide.

Website: A Little Photoshop

Dazzboard will officially announce a partnership with the social cloud storage provider MySites, allowing anyone to upload an unlimited amount of photographs, videos or music files for free. Dazzboard is a free service, to remotely store, and share data online or on the phone.  In exchange for endless cloud space, MySites users will get access to Dazzboard’s ability to move cloud-stored files to and from portable devices, to organise files on a computer or across the social web (e.g. Facebook) with a simple drag-and-drop. The service features the ability to use Facebook Connect, to publish comments on users’ files to their Facebook stream and to post content from the phone, directly to a profile. Dazzboard currently supports Windows XP, Vista and 7, Internet Explorer version 6 (XP only), 7 and 8, as well as Firefox 3.X. In the near future, Dazzboard will be compatible with Google Chrome and Mac OS, the company says.

Website: Dazzboard

X-Rite has announced a free webinar called ‘Colour Workflow for the Photographer’. The topics include obtaining consistent colour in camera, monitor-to-print matching, digital projector profiling,  benefits of creating and using custom profiles, soft-proofing in Adobe Photoshop and other applications, and applying printer profiles in Photoshop. The free X-Rite webinar is intended for wedding, portrait and landscape photographers, photo lab professionals and anyone doing their own printing. The webinar will be held on 23 September 2009, at 10am GMT. You can sign up at the website below.

Website: Colour Workflow for the Photographer

Think Tank Photo has announced the launch of its newly redesigned website. The new website features expanded content and video related to working photographers using Think Tank camera bags and laptop bags in the field and the studio. The redesign incorporates Think Tank’s traditional branding with a bold new graphic design and navigation.  Think Tank Photo consulted with Closed Loop Marketing on site strategy, usability and search marketing. Blast Advanced Media built the site on their Motivity e-commerce platform, provided organic SEO consultation services, and advised on the best user-centred design practices.

Website: Think Tank Photo

Vanguard, one of the global leaders in photo-video accessories, today announced the launch of its new website. The website includes new product information, 360-degree and zoom product views, videos and more concise descriptions of VANGUARD’s growing collection of tripods, monopods, ball heads, camera bags and cases, binoculars, spotting scopes and associated accessories. Additionally, there are special, login-required sections for dealers, distributors and journalists for immediate access to frequently-requested information.

Website: Vanguard World