Skins

By now, the idea of applying filters to give photos a retro look is well established. But for the more serious out there who want to go beyond the obvious smartphone apps, Alien Skin Software plans to release Exposure 4 tomorrow.

The Exposure software brings a certain precision to its task, carefully emulating the look of actual film--early Kodachrome, say, or Kokak Tri-X 400 pushed a stop--for those who remember. It's not a coincidence that the software has the tagline "Taking the digital out of digital photography."

Version 4 of the $249 software brings new abilities in reproducing defects such as light leaks or dust and scratches that film-era photographers usually strove so hard to avoid. And it's got hundreds of new presets for styles such cyanotypes and wet-plate photography.

Digging through the settings is like touring decades of photo history--you get far more than the usual collection of washed-out Polaroid, oversaturated Fujifilm Velvia, and antiquey sepia tones. If you want to hearken back to an earlier time, Exposure 4 is a good way to do so. … Read more

Forget the flowers this Valentine's Day. Go for a lightsaber-lit dinner, the open-source iNecklace, and the flirtatious Fingle app. Bridget Carey shows off tech to woo the nerd of your dreams.… Read more

In case you missed it, I wrote about iSkin's Year of the Dragon Aura iPhone case a couple of weeks ago. While it didn't quite make the official arrival of the Year of the Dragon, which kicked off on January 23, it came close, and is now shipping.

The case isn't exactly a bargain at $44.95, but it is pretty sweet (the dragon is etched into the metal back) and iSkin's offering up a promotion code to CNET readers for use on its site.

Just type in CNET-15 in the promo code box at check out to get 15 percent discount. That will basically get you free shipping and save you a few bucks. I know, not a bargain, but hey, it's something. … Read more

Fancy a Shakira-themed browser?

As of today, you can get it from Brand Thunder, a company that creates themes to let people reskin their browsers to declare allegiance to bands, colleges, sports teams, and more. That's because Brand Thunder just acquired its biggest rival, BrowserNation.

The acquisition means Brand Thunder has 25 percent more brands to tout, the company said today, giving it more clients in Europe and Asia and giving it a foothold in Latin America. Among its new clients are EMI, UMG Latin, and Epic Records.

"Given the changes in the once-stable browser market, it makes … Read more

It doesn't look like iSkin will quite make the arrival of the Year of the Dragon, which kicks off on January 23, but it's trying to get close with its new "dragon-themed" iPhone 4/4S Aura cases, which were spotted at CES in Las Vegas.

iSkin was also showing another new line of cases for iPhones and iPads that will be released "by Spring" with a kind of ruggedly smooth leathery look that got a lot of good feedback at the show. That line will be called Vintage.

The Canadian accessories company has also … Read more

Morning, deal fans! A quick housekeeping note: I hope you'll join me again today for CNET's Holiday Help Desk, which airs live at noon PT. (Occasionally the show kicks off a few minutes late, so if it doesn't start exactly at the top of the hour, stay tuned!)

Speaking of holiday help, still trying to find the perfect gift? I'm a longtime fan of "skins," which are fancy decals for everything from laptops to smartphones to MP3 players. My daughter, for example, adorned her iPod Touch with a supercute puppy; my son plastered his … Read more

I've been waiting half my life for the phrase "in your face!" to finally die. Now that it seems to be fading, I may have to contend with the rise of "On your face," as in "I'm gonna kick your ass, on your face!"

It's all thanks to a new technology that allows game players to actually fight their digital battles on their own faces. The iOS game Skinvaders uses an augmented-reality (AR) platform to take advantage of the devices' front-facing cameras and transform players' faces into the game terrain on which alien invaders must be defeated to save the world, or your face, or whatever... … Read more

It may be benign, but researchers have turned the virus M13 into a sophisticated engineering tool that could lead to the manufacturing of materials with biomedical properties that can be fine-tuned, such as bone, skin, and corneas.

"We took our inspiration from nature," said Seung-Wuk Lee, an associate professor of bioengineering at UC Berkeley who describes the team's self-templating material assembly process in the journal Nature. "Nature has a unique ability to create functional materials from very basic building blocks. We found a way to mimic [this]."

Lee points to the protein collagen as the … Read more