We're hard at work organising the first International VR Photography Conference. The big news is that online registration and payment are now available on the conference site.

Google has accepted the Hugin and Panotools opensource projects for its Summer of Code project. During the Summer of Code, students are encouraged to contribute to open source projects.

The International VR Photography Conference will be held in Berkeley, California from June 15 to 20, 2007. It will cost $250 for IVRPA members.

Attendees should plan on arriving in Berkeley either on Friday June 15th or Saturday June 16th.

The New York Times Real Estate Section had a great article on 11 February 2007 about how much an image adds to Real Estate listings.

If nobody beat me to it, this is the 1000th 'node' on the IVRPA site. Every forum post, blog post and gallery item, as well as most of the 'static' pages of the site constitute nodes, but comments are not counted as nodes*. The posts to the photokina subsite are not included in the main node count.

As reported first by Scott Highton in the forums, it turns out that Sony is the thus far anonymous buyer of the IPIX assets. When IPIX filed chapter 7 almost 6 months ago, the industry was abuzz with speculation what would happen with the infamous fisheye patents.

Read the news as it emerges

At this time, still very little is known about what Sony will do with the assets and IP they acquired.

The 12th World Wide Panorama project launched on December 31. For this installement, titled 'Best of 2006', over 300 panorama photographers from around the world shared their best work of the past year.

The World Wide Panorama: Best of 2006 website is now open to the general public.

The date for our next get-together is Tuesday, January 9 2007 at 7 PM.

To give busy Macworlders a break, I happily offer up my office space in Berkeley as a new venue. For those who came to John Greenleigh's before, I'm just a few blocks away -- San Pablo Avenue at Bancroft Way.

In the past year IVRPA has made great progress with our new website, our new logo, and continued successful events. For those photographers looking to market their services, our improved website offers a "find a member photographer" feature, and through arrangement with the Adobe Photographers Directory, qualified IVRPA members can get listed on the Adobe site as well.

With the end of 2006, most IVRPA members will need to renew their memberships for 2007. If you are a current or past IVRPA member, log in to the site, and you can pay your membership dues via PayPal or Kagi.

The IVRPA, the International VR Photography Association, has announced that it will bring a VR Photography conference featuring top VR photographers to the University of California Berkeley campus in May 2007.

In conjunction with the University of California Berkeley Department of Geography, the conference, will feature lectures, workshops, and photo expeditions in the San Francisco Bay Area, and to Yosemite National Park.

"California is one of the epicenters of VR photography innovation and practice, and we are pleased to present this conference", said