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3-D Pictures from your inkjet printer
 Remember those kooky lenticular 3-D pictures from novelty greeting cards back before cards played electronic tunes? (Hint: Some of the pictures blinked.) Relive it all with MediaBop’s 3D4U software (street price starts at $50 for the home edition) that lets you make lenticulars with your inkjet printer. The program displaces the elements of an image in such a way that our brains interpret them as three-dimensional when viewed through the lenticular screen on the special 8x10-inch inkjet paper supplied. Use the software to mask out objects in your image, place them in the order you’d like them to appear three-dimensionally (foreground objects in front of background ones), and print away. You can make blinking pictures, too. The software is compatible with Windows 95, 98, 2000, ME, NT, or XP. For more information or to buy, go to www.mediabop.com.
FASTEST BURN IN TOWN
 Samsung gives new meaning to the term high speed. The SM-352 CD-R/RW plus DVD-ROM combo drive is smoking! With read/write speeds up to 52X, this unit (street: $120) can write a full 700MB CD-R in just minutes. It’ll write CD-RW discs at 24X, and read DVDs at 16X. This new electronic hot rod is a time-saving way to make backup CDs of your image files. An 8MB buffer ensures that the discs read smoothly and help prevent buffer underrun error. Spinning drives driving you crazy? Samsung’s Dynamic Vibration Absorbers reduce the vibration and noise. For more info, log onto www.samsung.com/products.
Show ’em and stow ’em
 If you’re one of those photographers who wants to see your pictures big now, but also wants them backed up right away, check out Panasonic’s DMR-E60 DVD video recorder (street: $499). Equipped with both an SD/MMC and PC card slot, it lets you view digital pictures on your TV while you back them up onto a DVD, skipping the step of transferring them to the computer. You can edit on-screen as well, deleting images as necessary, and also run the pictures as a slide show. Or, use the DVD video recorder on your favorite TV programs. You can even start watching from the beginning while it’s still recording. To learn more, log onto www.panasonic.com/consumer_electronics/dvd_recorder.
THE LATEST PICTURE SHOW
 Friends bugging you for pictures you shot yesterday but haven’t had time to print? Make ’em a quick DVD! Ulead’s second version of DVD PictureShow is fast and easy. Just import the pictures you’d like to include, place them in the order you want them shown, and add a transition (such as a pinwheel, sliding image, or fade—or use them all with a random setting). We wish you could use more than one transition setting in a show, though. And go as showbizzy as you want, with pictures that sing. The software lets you add audio files for background music and multiple tracks, but we find that procedure is a little tricky. Once you save your slide show, you can burn it to CD or DVD for immediate viewing, or make another show to put on the same disc. You can also create DVD menus with the program. Windows versions come in a box ($50) or download ($45); for Mac, download only ($30). For details, go to www.ulead.com.
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