Freelance photographer Steve Simon explores the collision of cultures along America’s border with Canada. Simon's site is also a finalist in the PDN Photo Annual 2003 Competition (via PDNewswire).

Taking moblogging to new heights, Hewlett-Packard is developing a 'wear-all-the-time' always-on camera to capture the most significant moments of everyday life. The camera they are working on will "continuously record images into a rolling buffer of a few seconds or minutes in duration; when something memorable happens, the user makes an indication of some kind, by saying a word or pressing a button. The camera technology then zooms in on that part of the buffer and, using complex pattern-recognition technology, selects what appear to be the best images, and appropriately adjusts and crops these images" (via MeFi).

Dynamic Vantage have just launched their new Expressions! hosted photoblogging tool at a cost of US$2.50 per month (with the first month free). It will be interesting to see how well this gets picked up, given the recent announcement about Movable Type's hosted blogging solution, TypePad (recently discussed on Antipixel), and how much photoblogging-specific functionality it offers.

Also released this month is Noel Jackson's PhotoPal 1.0 Beta, an image organization system with template driven layout, automatic thumbnail creation, RSS feeds, picture level EXIF date extraction, and picture level descriptions, all without the need for an SQL like database. (Thanks, Jeremy!)

Today I just came across a lovely Japanese photoblog by Tadashi Takeyama. His April 2003 photo gallery from Gifu features some intimate portraits of (I presume) his elderly bedridden grandmother who, in spite of her age, still manages a cheery smile and fingers raised in the 'V' sign (second thumbnail under Gifu).

Continuing with a selection from the best photography websites category in the PDN Photo Annual 2003 Competition; this time focusing on HTML sites:

In Rhean Anna's Journeys gallery, she presents a beautiful selection of images from her travels to Peru, New Mexico, Kenya, Bali and Hawaii in a clean, easy-to-navigate site.

Well-known Czech-born photographer Yuri Dojc's site showcases his instantly recognisable body of work.