Cooliris has released an update to LiveShare. The new version offers a live news feed, allowing users to see updates from their friends, new streams they are invited to, and comments/likes on their photos. Additionally, LiveShare now features more robust geo-location features including an ability to explore public groups created in your vicinity by going to LiveShare.com using your smartphone’s Web browser. This enables users, even those without the app on their phones, to connect with like-minded people in their vicinity.

PhotographyBB has released the 44th issue of the free PhotographyBB Online Magazine. This month’s edition explores the ways that photographers can use the different elements of composition, colour, and lighting conditions to create a sense of ‘mood’ and evoke an emotional response with their images. Additionally, the magazine has teamed up with Data Robotics for a promotion, allowing one lucky reader to win a Drobo device. You can download the latest issue of PhotographyBB Online Magazine from the website below (registration required).

Website: PhotographyBB

The fourth issue of Adore Noir Magazine is now out. Adore Noir is a fine art photography magazine available exclusively in digital format. Featuring almost surreal, “neoillusionist” pictures by Polish photographer Dariusz Klimczak, dramatic weather photography by Mitch Dobrowner, captivating city-, land- and streetscapes by Ronny Behnert, deeply emotional, disturbing and often shocking photos of Cambodian children by Swedish photojournalist Peppe Arninge, and more, this issue reinforces the magazine’s commitment to high-quality black-and-white imagery.Adore Noir magazine is available for $2.95 from the website below.

Website: Adore Noir

In addition to the iPhone 4S, Apple has also announced that iCloud, a set of free cloud services including iTunes in the Cloud, Photo Stream and Documents in the Cloud, will be launched on October 12. Designed to work seamlessly with your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac or PC, iCloud allows you to automatically and wirelessly store your content - up to 5GB - and sync it with all your devices (if you have more than one of the above). “iCloud is the easiest way to manage your content, because iCloud does it all for you and goes far beyond anything available today,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services. “You don’t have to think about syncing your devices, because it happens automatically, and it is free.” iCloud will be launched on October 12 in the form of a free download to iPhone, iPad or iPod touch users running iOS 5 or a Mac running OS X Lion with a valid Apple ID. Using iCloud with a PC requires Windows Vista or Windows 7.

Canon has announced that an ultra-large-scale, ultra-high-sensitivity CMOS sensor developed by the company has enabled the video recording of meteors with an equivalent apparent magnitude of 10. Apparent magnitude is a measure of a celestial body’s brightness as seen by an observer on Earth. A star (or meteor) whose apparent magnitude is 10 is absolutely invisible to the naked eye. The sensor, with a chip size measuring 202 x 205 mm - the world’s largest surface area for a CMOS sensor - was installed in the Schmidt telescope at the University of Tokyo’s Kiso Observatory, Institute of Astronomy, School of Science. The photo above shows just how big this sensor is compared to a 35mm full-frame imager.

Jessops are offering 1/3 off all Jessops printed photo products to celebrate the opening of their new store at Westfield Stratford City in London. Constructed near the Olympic site, Westfield is Europe’s largest urban shopping centre. The new Jessops store boasts a new customer-friendly layout enabling you to test and trial live interactive cameras.

Symform has just announced a new referral programme that will reward users with up to 200GB of free cloud storage. Billed as “the industry’s first decentralised cloud storage solution”, Symform uses RAID-96 to geographically distribute, encrypt, and shred its data. Users contribute inexpensive local storage equal to the amount of data that they want to redundantly store in the cloud. For those with 200GB or less, the service is free.

The 43rd edition of the free PhotographyBB Online Magazine is now available. This month’s edition examines the fundamentals of HDR imaging, along with the practical applications for its place in the world of photography. In the Social Networking for Photographers column, the Mike Frye takes a look at Google+ and the important roles it can play for photographers both socially and in business. Additionally, readers will learn techniques for transforming their digital photos into pencil sketches, along with a tutorial for mastering some of Photoshop’s most useful tools. PhotographyBB Online Magazine is available as a free download through the PhotographyBB Website.

The seventh edition of the online Landscape Photography Magazine is now available. Promoting landscape imagery by photographers worldwide, the magazine is also showcasing some spectacular locations from around the globe, complete with map links. In this issue, you will find an article on Drag Landscapes by David Hay, a description of the Olympic National Park by Navin Sarma, an introduction to raw shooting by Mike Bell, and more.

Website: Landscape Photography Magazine

Sony has launched a series of ‘How-to’ guides across multiple platforms, to give customers handy visual guides to getting the most out of their Sony Handycams, Cyber-shot and interchangeable-lens digital cameras. The guides, available via YouTube and a number of major retailers’ websites include easy-to-understand tips and tricks and provide answers to the most commonly asked product related questions. All of the videos are professionally recorded and, where possible, made available in HD. If consumers want to find out even more, each video includes a link to a website where further details are available.

The third issue of Adore Noir Magazine is now available. Adore Noir is a fine art photography magazine available exclusively in digital format. Featuring artistic nudes by Elena and Vitaly Vasilieva, amazing macros by David Johndrow, sensual portraits by photographer/model April-Lea Hutchinson, landscapes by Håkan Strand, fine art photographs by Charles Grogg and architectural photography by Thibault Roland, this issue reinforces the magazine’s commitment to high-quality black-and-white imagery. In addition to introducing the featured artists, issue #3 also includes articles on topics such as censorship in photography and Art vs. Science, plus an interview with master printer Mike Crawford. The latest issue of the magazine is available for $2.95 from the website below.

Website: Adore Noir

The 42nd edition of the free PhotographyBB magazine is now available to download. This issue features photography techniques for shooting outdoors during the challenging lighting conditions associated with bright, mid-day sunlight, a special Q&A section on memory cards and a Photoshop tutorial for increasing mid-tone contrast in landscapes. “This month we look at techniques for learning to see with fresh eyes, along with the power of leveraging creativity by shooting with a friend,” says PhotographyBB’s Editor in Chief, David Seeram. You can download the magazine from the website below (requires free registration).

The sixth edition of the online Landscape Photography Magazine is now available. Promoting landscape imagery by photographers worldwide, the magazine is also showcasing some spectacular locations from around the globe, complete with map links. In this issue, you will find an article by Fran Halsall on Integrity and Inspiration in landscape photography, a discussion of Intimate Landscapes by Julian Barkway, a beginners’ guide to ISO sensitivity by Mike Bell, and more.

Symform has announced that for a limited time, it is giving 100GB of cloud storage for free to new and existing customers. Billed as “the industry’s first decentralised cloud storage solution”, Symform uses RAID-96 to geographically distribute, encrypt, and shred its data. Note that in order to take advantage of the free offer, you must contribute 150GB of excess local storage back to the storage cloud. For more information, visit the website below.

Website: Symform

“View” is an art photography magazine developed exclusively for the visual possibilities of the iPad. Curated by photographer Alon Koppel, View Magazine features little-known photographers from around the world, most of whose work was discovered online. View’s inaugural issue launched in March 2011 and the second issue has now been released. The magazine directly supports English, Bokmål, Norwegian, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish and Ukrainian. View Magazine is currently free and available on iTunes.

Jessops has launched its first “Image” magazine, a dedicated catalogue and magazine in one for its customers. In addition to listing all new products stocked by Jessops, “Image” also gives readers helpful advice to “aid them in making the right decision in buying the right products for their needs”, the company says. In future, Jessops will produce a magazine for every season.

Canon has won the accolade of “Best Photography Brand” at this year’s Which? Awards. The awards were launched in 2007 to reward the very best businesses in the UK and publicly recognise those companies that consistently ‘get it right’ for consumers. Over the last year Canon has won 22 Which? Best Buy awards across the EOS, Legria, IXUS, Powerhot and Pixma ranges and during voting, Which? members scored Canon highly in both customer satisfaction and reliability. They were “impressed by the Canon HS-System which helped to deliver exceptional image quality with the IXUS 300 HS and IXUS 1000 HS - the former received the highest overall picture quality rating that Which? had ever given to a compact camera”.

At the launch of the Leica M9-P in Paris, Leica presented a new project resulting from the company’s cooperation with Magnum Photos. “It is an account of a young gondolier in Venice shot by Magnum photographer Alex Majoli, who has been a full member of the prominent photographers’ co-operative since 2001,” Leica said in a statement. “The images are much more than the simple documentation of a profession steeped in tradition, which still plays an important role in everyone’s image of the city today. They tell a vivid story. Vital, authentic and brimming with the essence of real life – it is a story captured with the Leica M9-P.” A video showing the making of this portfolio can be viewed on the Leica website.

Brilliant Prints UK has announced a special offer on canvas prints until the end of this month. Customers who order a canvas print from the UK branch of the Australian company will receive a second one for free. Do note that this limited-time offer is open to UK residents only. For details of the promotion, visit the website below.

Legacy Learning Systems has launched the sixth edition to its popular instruction series, Learn & Master Photography. The series is available as a set of 15 instructional DVDs containing 24 sessions, two photography sample CDs with hi-res images for editing and experimentation, an exclusive Lesson Book highlighting each session and access to a free online student support site. The Lesson Book is full of photographs and illustrated photo techniques to add to a user’s visual learning. It contains information on all the assignments in the video sessions so it can be read at the user’s own pace. There is also a glossary of photography terms. The course costs $249.+ shipping.