BitTorrent have just launched Version 2.0 of Sync, their file hosting/sharing/synchronisation tool for Free BSD, Linux, Mac OS and Windows. Updates are also being rolled out to Android, iOS, Kindle and Windows Phone devices. "All of the core functionality we introduced in version 1.4 last August still exist in 2.0, letting you securely share folders across all platforms, with visibility into who has access," says Erik Pounds, Vice President of Product Management for BitTorrent Sync. "A bunch of new functionality has been added, from enhanced user interfaces across desktop and mobile platforms to a new certificates-based security model with even greater control and ease-of-use." The company has also introduced a Pro tier that adds additional functionality for business workgroups and individuals that need more capabilities and control. For more information, visit the website below.

Website: BitTorrent Blog

Foap is a mobile app (iOS and Android) and website that connects brands with a vast library of authentic, high-quality, user-generated images. The Foap process is simple: users upload their photos via the mobile app, tag them with relevant keywords and submit them for approval. Once rated by five other users, the photo appears in the Foap marketplace where brands and agencies can purchase it for their editorial or advertising purposes. Users make $5 on every photo they sell. Brands seeking photos for a specific campaign or purpose can even host Foap Missions, a call for entries for users to submit photos that fit the brand’s requirements.Mission winners receive a cash prize if their photo is selected, and all other photos remain in the brand’s library for future purchase. For more information, visit the website below.

Website: Foap

The Lomographic Society have just relaunched their website, lomography.com. The site has been totally redesigned and is now optimised for all screen sizes. It also has a number of new features and improvements including a new uploader, new photo filtering optins and a dedicated Shoutbox. "For now, we realise that some much-loved features from the old site such as LomoWalls are not yet integrated," Lomography says. "We will be polishing these and rolling them out one by one to best work your feedback in."

Canon has added new updates to its cloud-based image management service, irista. The new features include one-touch photo book creation, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom integration and full access to irista's functionality on tablet devices. The irista updates are accompanied by a pricing refresh for the subscription tiers, which increases the storage options at all levels. The updated free tier now offers 15GB of cloud storage space, with full functionality. Thoses with larger image libraries can now get 200GB and 500GB tiers available for a monthly or annual cost.

LensRentals today announced the official launch of its "try before you buy" Keeper programme. Allowing customers to hire equipment and apply up to seven days of rental fees towards the purchase of the product(s), the Keeper programme offers something for every level of enthusiast. Consumers can visit the LensRentals website, browse through the huge range of equipment for rental to discover items with a green "Yep. It's a Keeper!" badge that identifies products eligible for the Keeper programme. Clicking on the green badge presents consumers with a range of prices and how the discounts are applied. "Cameras and video equipment can be very expensive.  We know that many consumers would prefer to try and test certain items before deciding to make that investment," said LensRentals, Founder and CEO, Roger Cicala.  "We're thrilled to officially launch the Keeper programme and offer everyone the opportunity to keep items they know and love."

Gary Fong today introduced his new Interactive Virtual Camera Modules. With a model-specific virtual camera, photographers have the ability to intuitively navigate through information-packed Premium Video Tutorials that directly reflect what each button does. The Premium Videos behind each press of the virtual camera’s buttons contain extended, carefully-detailed tutorial courses from Gary Fong himself. “Customer education is the cornerstone of our business,” Gary says. “It is imperative we explore new approaches to learning, such as the Interactive Virtual Camera Modules, to teach our customers how to bring their cameras to life.” The Interactive Virtual Camera Modules are currently available for the Sony a6000 and the Sony A7 II. Modules for the Canon 7D Mark II and Nikon D750 are coming soon

Inspired by the Hungarian Fortepan project, the University of Northern Iowa has announced the establishment of a new public digital photo archive featuring curated photos made by ordinary Iowans over the 20th century. Taking its name from a panchromatic black-and-white film stock manufactured in Hungary right up to the closure of the Forte plant in 2007, the original Fortepan archive started out as a private project of collectors Ákos Szepessy and Miklós Tamási, borne out of a desire to demonstrate that photos - even "artistically worthless" snapshots - taken by ordinary people can help us better understand the history of the 20th century. Thanks to donations, the collection has grown to include over forty thousand digitised black-and-white and colour photographs, from a pseudo-bucolic idyll dating back to 1900 to a 1990 photograph of a still-standing section of the Berlin wall. Based on this project, the new Fortepan Iowa archive will display thousands of photographs along a sliding interactive timeline and invite visitors to horizontally scroll through highly curated, well-documented photographs digitised at "tremendously high resolution," the university says. The open-source platform will inspire visitors to engage digitally with the high-quality images — a rare opportunity in a heavily copyrighted age. Fortepan Iowa will launch in March 2015 with at least 2,000 photos in the archive.

Software developer Kolor has just launched Kolor Eyes, a web platform for viewing, sharing and hosting 360-degree videos. The platform was designed around three major concepts; quality, multiple players and community. Visitors can easily "like" and share the videos on social networks or embed them on their websites or blogs. The hosting service is currently provided for free. Paid plans offering professional features will be offered soon.

Olloclip has officially launched its new website, designed to serve as a social hub for the mobile photography industry. The new website offers an integrated European web store which allows olloclip lenses to be shipped directly from within Europe. This allows local European customers to save up to 25% on their purchase and benefit from fast delivery within 48 hours from placing their order. “The olloclip brand was built on the idea of minimalism and ease of use while pushing the lines of innovation. Our mission is to continually extend the parameters of what is possible in mobile photography, but our website up to now did not reflect that,” said Patrick O’Neill, CEO and founder.  “There was a need to simplify the shopping experience while efficiently telling our brand story in an engaging and meaningful way. While the revamped site itself doesn’t introduce any new programming innovations, it is more responsive and visually appealing and functions easily on everything from a smartphone to a computer.”

Robots for Your Photos is a new service aimed at photographers, which automates the photo-sharing process across multiple social media platforms. The service basically takes care of the most boring tasks by automatically uploading your photographs to various photo servers and online galleries (such as Flickr, Facebook, 500px etc.) and publishing each photo at the optimal time of day to ensure it’s seen by the highest possible number of viewers. "Monitoring the reaction to your published photos closely is part of our job," the company says. "We therefore know quite precisely what is the best time for you to publish in order to get the most feedback. And that is when we always publish - at the best times." Moreover, Robots for Your Photos collects all likes, favourites and comments from all services and presents them all in one place. Note that the project is still in the development phase - but you can sign up now to be among the first to try the service once it's launched.

Today Wacom launched Dropzone and Control Room, two new cloud based services that offer fast and easy access to images and personal settings. Offering up to 2GB of free storage, Dropzone enables users to easily store and access their images on any computer or device, at any time. Control Room offers a storage service for individual Wacom pen, tablet and display settings, saving the user time on configuration when they want to use their familiar settings on a different device of the same type. Both Dropzone and Control Room are easy to use, free of charge and work independently from existing services or operating systems. Note that a Wacom Cloud account is required for both services.

LightRocket has launched a new free membership plan, which includes 5GB of cloud storage, the ability to publish a collection of images on LightRocket's commercial archive, a configurable portfolio website and a host of other professional media management tools. For those who want to go to the next level, LightRocket's 'premium' members pay a little less than a dollar a week for their first year which gains them access to an even broader array of tools while offering greater visibility on LightRocket's consolidated media archive.

Now you have a chance to start your own photo portfolio or personal blog: TemplateMonster is giving out 3 premium WordPress themes for free!

This competition has now CLOSED. The three lucky winners are:

#3 Niklas Henriksson
#8 Tate
#11 Ryan Holman

WordPress is the most popular Content Management System for blogs, portfolios and business websites – stable, modern, extendable. TemplateMonster is one of the oldest providers of professional WordPress themes. Today we are starting the giveaway, after which 3 winners will get their premium themes with all their benefits – professional design, fully responsive layout and free 24/7 support.

CameraPeddler.com is a new online marketplace designed for photographers. Developed by Jorge Torralba - the man behind ZeissImages.com, JustNEX.com and other photo related sites -, CameraPeddler.com offers the ability to focus strictly on photographic equipment from individuals and trustworthy reliable dealers. "The intent was to develop a site where buyers and sellers can trust each other and feel comfortable with the transactions they engage in while utilising the features of the site," Jorge says. Click through / scroll down for more information.

The Tiffen Company has launched Tiffen ImageMaker, a community-oriented social media hub site. ImageMaker allows visitors to explore some of the world’s most beautiful locations, get a sneak peek of how Tiffen products are created and produced in its U.S. manufacturing facilities,and v view Tiffen’s featured picks from images shared on Instagram. 

Canon USA has launched its "Canon See Impossible" campaign, a branding effort aimed to inspire customers to see impossible with Canon products. As part of the companywide marketing initiative, the Japanese brand has rolled out a new logo accompanied by a 3-D visual of an expanding box (pictured), symbolising Canon’s desire to "break the boundaries of what is possible." Additionally, the company has set up a new microsite housing consumer, professional, and commercial stories of inspiration, imagination, and innovative end-user applications of Canon imaging technology. “As a technology-based brand, Canon is constantly challenged to empower its customers in today’s high-tech and fast-paced world in which new apps and innovations are launching every single day,” said Joe Adachi, Chairman and CEO, Canon USA. “With imagination and customer focus at the core of the Canon business model, ‘Canon See Impossible’ will highlight the combined technological innovation and human ingenuity that makes the impossible possible. Our new rallying cry will extract creative thinking from a place of isolation, encourage exploration of the unknown, and showcase our creativity as it impacts the real world with limitless possibilities.”

Eyefi has announced the worldwide availability of Eyefi Cloud, a private photo-centric cloud service that makes newly captured photos instantly available on a smartphone, tablet, desktop/laptop or smart TV. Eyefi Cloud offers users the ability to organise, sync and share unlimited photos, and the first 90 days are provided free of charge. Twelve-month memberships start at £34.99 for an unlimited number of photos.

Photo sharing company Forever has announced new pricing for its cloud storage service. The company is now offering 10 gigabytes of permanent sharable storage for a monthly fee of $4, with the 100GB option costing $11 per month. Beyond just sharable storage, these monthly subscriptions include toll-free telephone support, access to all Forever apps across multiple hardware and software platforms, ownership of a custom subdomain (usually based on the member’s name) and inclusion in the Forever Guarantee. Forever's monthly “subscription to own” packages are paid over 120 months. A 40% discount is offered to those who prefer to make an up-front, one-time payment.

Photo Productions, a UK company that produces premium photobooks for the public and professional photographers, have just re-launched their website. Rebuilt from the ground up it's now much faster and easier to use, the company claims. There are more options, international delivery is built in, sample albums can be bought through the site, and there are now eight sizes of albums to choose from. The main albums start at £144 including professional design, printing and UK delivery. To celebrate the website re-launch, Photo Productions are offering free Premium Pocket Books with every 12x15" and 12x18" album.

Panasonic UK has launched a new camera selector tool for its Lumix G range. The Lumix G ‘The One For You’ campaign is designed to make choosing a camera a quick and pleasurable experience, whether you’re an absolute beginner, passionate amateur snapper or dedicated pro. The interactive selector tool features each Lumix G product in the context of how real consumers take photos – making it easy for the viewer to identify the camera most suited to the kind of person they are. Comprising three easy steps, the tool clearly identifies the five cameras in the Lumix G range in line with the real world specifications consumers want, the company says. The new camera selector is featured on the website below.