Sometime back I gave a pretty strong pan review of a couple of "toys" that were not compatible with GNU/Linux - with open standards really, since the community ensures that free software is compliant - and were therefore nothing more than a disappointment to my kids.

Stanford photo scientists are out to reinvent digital photography with the introduction of an open-source digital camera, which will give programmers around the world the chance to create software that will teach cameras new tricks.

Both of the big powerhouses in the digital SLR camera market -- Canon and Nikon -- make software with which you can control your camera from your PC through an attached USB cable. It is a nice tool for situations when manually triggering the shutter might cause shake (such as long exposures), or for automating multiple shots at timed intervals.