Whether at a gallery without wall plaques, visiting a business establishment or hanging out at a friend’s home, having Magnus on your smartphone will let you see what the wall art around you is all about.

Pointing your device and clicking a picture brings up all kinds of details about a given work, including the name of the artist, medium of the work and its dimensions … as well as its price (either current, if available, or most recent if sold and off the market).

One of its more fascinating features, however, is  its comparative software that brings up what the app considers to be related works of art, by type, style and price. It does this by tapping into a crowd-sourced database of 8,000,000 works of art (and growing).

One risk here, of course, it that it reinforces the commodification of art. It is also sort of a strange function in that it boils art down to tastes and preferences … just because another piece looks similar or is priced in the same range does not mean a user should go out and buy it.

Magnus was 31-year-old German art entrepreneur Magnus Resch, known for his work on best Larry’s List, an active database of contemporary art collectors. His response to this kind of criticism: “Why is it ethically wrong to show users prices of an artwork they are interested in?

“If you are willing to spend $10,000 on an artwork,” he continues, “you should know that another gallery put the work on auction a year ago for $7,000 and it didn’t sell. Knowing this will allow the collector to make a more conscious decision.” Of course, for most of us, spending $10,000 on a piece of art is a bit unrealistic, so perhaps the general public is not really the target audience for the app.

The latest contender for ‘most scary yet exciting passenger cabin ever designed’ has trumped its predecessor – the first version boasted horizontal strips of screen on both sides of the plane’s interior while this latest one features effectively see-through ceilings as well as walls.

The S-512 being developed by Spike Aerospace boasts a four-hour flight time from New York to London, in part due to the reduced engineering requirements of a windowless cabin (and leading to at top speed of 1375 MPH).

In this audacious private jet, the windows and their supporting infrastructure are instead being replaced with view screens that stitch together live footage being shot of the plane’s surroundings while it is in flight.

Meanwhile, six months later, Technicon Design has released concept drawings of Ixion, which likewise uses cameras mounted on the fuselage and wings to capture images for interior high-resolution display, but with an added dimension of also disappearing the rooftop of the cabin.

The nearly-continuous visual experience would be segmented by strips providing lights and air conditioning, and in theory the projections could be shifted on demand, from realtime scenery to other full-surround displays. For now, though, only the first is a series proposal for a real private plane – the latter is a conceptual design pushing the idea further but with no plan for actual deployment.

Simple, intuitive and innovative for the everyday photographer, Iris promises even more to the disabled, letting anyone control capture area, zoom level, the moment of a shot and other features … all with only eye movements.

Mimi Zou is a graduate of the Royal College of Art developed this eye-tracking camera design around biometric technology. The device can recognize people on both sides of the lens by their eyes – the person taking the picture (so it can pre-load preferred settings) as well as the person being photographed.

A translucent screen inhabits the center of the circular device, allowing you to get an augmented-reality look at your subject matter, with optional overlays indicating prominent buildings or other features of the built environment you may wish to capture.

Narrow your eyelids to zoom in, then open wide to zoom back out. Focus on a spot, blink twice, and a photo is taken. If a friend is recognized in the frame, there is also an option to tag them on the spot. And all of this functionality is rolled up into what looks like a cylindrical lens without a camera.

As of right now it remains a working model, but with luck, time and funding it might become the next wave in ever-more-minimalist photographic contraptions, and particularly powerful image-taking aid for those who cannot use hands to easily hold and point a camera.

Many people who have an avatar (digital representation) in online communities like Second Life choose to appear completely different, but some people bear a striking resemblance to their virtual persona.‚ This New York Times‚ photo‚ series‚ shows a set of images that span the spectrum, but the best pairs‚ from the set are shown below – each showing different kinds of similarities.

In the top photo, the personality seems to show between the characters despite a dissonance in terms of actual appearance. The second pair shows a surprisingly close set of physical and actual outfits. The third, though, seems the best of the bunch – one can almost imagine the guy on the left exuding the presence that is physically represented by his bulkier virtual counterpart.