There was that time your nephew accidentally deleted a month’s worth of photos. Or how about that time that your sister borrowed your camera and forgot to give it back?

To say the least, there are gaps in the photo timeline of your life.

That’s why we were pretty excited to hear about Pictarine!

It’s a web app that collects your photos from all the different places you’ve posted them on the web — Flickr, Picasa, Facebook, Instagram, Dropbox and lots more. It then turns them into a clean timeline that you can browse.

It’s even able to pull in photos your closest friends snapped, so you can see photos from the get-together that you didn’t get on camera.

We could tell you how nostalgic it’ll make you feel, but scrolling through your life in photo-form is something you’ll have to experience yourself.

Make a Photo Timeline with Pictarine via Netted

p.s. We’re judging a self-portrait contest by our friends at ViewBug. Check it out for chance at $100 in Photojojo bux and more!

Have you ever wondered what Photojojo’s deepest dreams and desires are?

What does Photojojo think about in the wee hours of the night?

Maybe you’ve just wondered how to make the best DIY home studio or which DSLR is hot right now.

We went to Twitter to ask Photojojo fans what question you would ask us if you could.

Here are our answers! Amit, Jen, Billy, Kiran, Kelly, Julieanne, Laurel…

See the faces behind the names along with our expert photo and DIY advice!

[Have a question? Ask us!]

Our Answers to Your Questions

p.s. Wanna work with us? We’re hiring in and outside of San Francisco. Seeking web developers, product buyers and sourcers, photographers, and writers!

p.p.s. Come eat pizza and photo walk with us!

Nikon vs Canon, Mac vs PC, Rebecca Black vs Justin Bieber.

2-sided feuds aren’t a foreign concept considering you’re a Canon/Mac/Bieber appreciator.

When it comes to phones, you’re an Android lover.

This week, our Twitter and Facebook peeps voted on their favorite Android photo apps – apps for editing, filtering, friend-sharing, and even afternoon snacking (i.e. Pudding Cam!).

These are the top 10 crowd favorites!

Plus, as an added bonus, we rounded up apps designed to make life easier while you’re out shooting with your non-phone camera.

Whether you’re working with a gingerbread, cupcake, or a little green robot, your photo app folder is about to get real happy.

Use Your Android as a Photo Tool & Top Voted Apps

p.s. We’re throwing a Facebook giveaway today with our pals at Fracture! Fracture turns your photos into gorgeous glass prints that make snazzy wall hangings!

We’ve been wondering what photo apps the cool kids are using on their phones these days. Instagram? Hipstamatic? Diptic maybe?

So we rounded up 12 of our favorite smarties and asked for their top 3 faves.

Who’d we ask? Photographers (of course), web entrepreneurs, illustrators, designers, the guy who invented the #hashtag, and even a Mythbuster!

Here’s what we found out.

[BTW, we've got Android apps in here, too!]

The Top iPhoneography Apps Right Now

p.s. We’ve teamed up with our buddies at Fracture for a Twitter giveaway TODAY! Fracture prints your best photos directly onto glass, is ready to hang and looks super sleek.

Of all the motions in the book, slow motion is the one that really gets your photo mojo (jojo?) going.

But woe is you — the price tag on a high speed camera averages about $100,000 (ohai Phantom Flex).

Will you ever get to play with slo-mo effects? Oh heck yes, you will!

Twixtor is a simple After Effects/Final Cut Pro plugin that will make your video look like it was shot at incredible 1000fps levels. It adds frames instead of merely slowing down your footage.

In other words, you’ll get epic montages that capture every gorgeous detail you’d otherwise miss in normal-time. Even super ordinary actions look phenomenal at 1000+fps.

Twixtor’s paving the road to making this creative effect available to more folks (not just ones with tons of moola), and we think that’s pretty rad.

A few not-to-be-missed samples of Twixtor in action: BMXer on a Canon 7D, roof jumping on a Canon T2i, puddles on a T2i, and a fire-breather on a 7D*.

[FYI Twixtor runs around $300-$500, thousands cheaper than a fancy camera, but another alternative are speed adjustment tools like Time Warp which comes with After Effects, as seen here.]

Get Rad Slo-Mo Effects via Twixtor

p.s. We’re headed to Hong Kong! Know any cool camera shops we should visit? (Or anything else amazing we should see?) Tell us!

*Videos via kottke, fstoppers

We’ll never stop <3ing our DSLR, polaroids, or film cams.

But it’s our camera phone that’s always with us. Like when we spotted a pug trotting down the street sporting goggles or that guy unicycling up the steepest hill of all time.

Enter Instagram.

Not just another camera app or more filters for your pix. Instagram is THE way to share the fleeting moments of your life.

What makes it different? It’s simple and fast. Take a photo, choose a filter (optional), you’re done. It uploads automatically.

Or tap the feed and see all your friends’ everyday lives through their eyes in about 20 seconds. The lack of editing + the immediacy of phone photography makes the experience raw, addicting, and kind of magical. In short, Instagram is what the camera phone was made for.

Download it, then peep our getting started guide (with help from Kevin Systrom, co-founder of Instagram) for who to follow and the best tips for Instagram.

Our Instagram Tips and Best Users to Follow

p.s. Yes, it’s iPhone-only, but versions for other phones are in the works! (Let ‘em know you want them.)

p.p.s. Today only, we’re running the 1st-ever Instagram photo contest on Instagram! Follow Photojojo to learn more!

Extra photos for bloggers: 1, 2, 3

We’ve been addicted to Hipstamatic lately, this iPhone app that lets you take retro-look photos with your future phone. You can change up virtual lenses, flashes, and even films.

Thing is, since each lens, film, and flash produces a different look, it can get overwhelming. You know, like, what does the Jimmy lens look like if you use Pistil film and the Dreampop flash?

6 lenses + 7 flash options + 8 films = 336 different combinations. YIKES!

So we took 336 photos with every possible combination of the Hipstamatic arsenal. (Because we love you.) And we’ve even broken it down into an easy guide to tell you which combos go together. (Ditto.)

Photojojo’s Ultimate Hipstamatic Guide
Here’s where we break it down by lens, film, and flash

Big Wall of 336 Photos
Find the look you like, click it to find out how to do it!

p.s. We’re hiring in San Francisco! Must write sharp copy, know how to spread ideas, and eat social media for breakfast. info…

p.p.s. Thanks to reader Kara for heppin’ us to Hipstamatic!

We’ve been trying out the Lensbaby* Composer lately: it’s an odd little lens that gives you a moveable area of sharp focus, surrounded by a dreamy halo of blurriness.

After knocking around with it for a few weeks, here’s what we think:

The Good:

• Easier to focus and sharper optics than the original Lensbaby.
• Easier to move the “sweet spot” of focus and get repeatable results.
• Good for photos where you want to draw the eye to one particular detail, like food, product or portrait shots.
• If you decide you don’t want the Lensbaby “look” for a particular shot, you can reduce the effect dramatically by using the narrowest aperture. A friend of ours uses it as his go-to lens because of the sharp optics and light weight.
• Gadgets! Optional, interchangeable optics and wide-angle or telephoto adapters give you lots of different looks from one lens.

The Bad:

• Having to change the apertures manually can slow you down a lot.
• Manual focus makes it harder to capture fast-moving action, and it’s tricky to focus in low light.
• Wider apertures are prone to some pretty serious lens flare.
• The Lensbaby takes some getting used to. It’s a good idea to practice with it for a while before taking it on an important shoot.

The Ugly:

• Sorry, we’re fresh out of ugly.

Conclusion:
If we got stranded on a desert island with only one lens, we might make it this one (with the possible addition of a wide-angle adapter). It’s light, versatile, sharp (when you want it to be) and really fun to use.

The Lensbaby Composer

*Full disclosure: Lensbaby is a Photojojo advertiser, but our love for them is true. (Their first lens was one of the first things we reviewed when we were just starting out almost three years ago.)

p.s. We put our test shots up here in case you guys wanna see ‘em.

Your point & shoot camera has been keeping things from you.

Has it mentioned, for example, that it has a motion sensor for photographing lightning, or that it can shoot in RAW format? We’ll bet it hasn’t even told you that it can shoot at speeds up to 1/25,000th of a second.

Well, if it happens to be a Canon, it can.

The Canon Hacker’s Development Kit (CHDK) is a free download that can expand your camera’s options like strapping a JATO rocket on a Chevy Impala.

CHDK’s been around for a while, but Lifehacker just wrote an article that makes it understandable for mere mortals. What is it? Why do you want it? How do you use it? It’s all there.

Open up communications with your camera. Let the healing begin.

Supercharge Your Point & Shoot

p.s. Free hugs for Twitter friends! Follow Photojojo on Twitter. Recent faves: Photo bombers! Fake infrared photos! & more!

Photo credit: Fir0002

If you’ve admired the lo-fi beauty of your bud’s Holga shots but dread returning to the pre-digital dark ages, we’ve got the answer.

Craig Strong invented the Lensbaby to give his snazzy digital SLR shots an aesthetic similar to a Holga’s. The tiny lens fits most popular camera bodies, and it’s decidedly old-fashioned: no auto-focus, no light-metering on many modern cameras, no zoom, no camera-selectable aperture.

Instead, your $150 buys unadulterated photographic fun–a cool effect reminiscent of a Holga or a tilt-shift lens, but totally unique.