A Photo An Hour Challenge

We've all heard of challenges where you're supposed to take a photo a day for a year and most of us has probably started it but abandoned it after a few months. [Be honest you know who you are] 

As a photographer, I always enjoy challenges or anything that encourages people to take pictures. My friend Lisa Bettany, the mind behind Camera+ my all-time favorite photo app for iPhone, started a project called "Mostly365" that is a photographic community posting photos to it. Very cool.

Tomorrow, Sunday April 3rd, my last free day of the week before the work week starts, I'm starting my own challenge, but feel free to participate yourself. My challenge I'm dubbing "A Photo an Hour" [Like my creativity in naming? Heh.] The idea behind the challenge is to take a photo of whatever is in front of you or what you're doing every hour throughout the day. 

The idea probably isn't the first of its kind and yes it seems very simple, but that's the point of photo challenges. So here are the rules:

• You have to take a photo every hour of the day that you're awake.
• Try not to pre-plan what you're going to shoot (make it spontaneous!)
• Try not to edit the photos you take (originality is the best)
• Take your own photos. Don't steal.
• Have fun.

At the end of the day, I'll upload all my photos I take to my blog and note some things I found during my day of taking photos. In my past, I've done a few photo challenges, but I feel this one will be one of the more fun ones. Eventually, I'll expand it to days more mundane such as school and other gut wrenching events in my life. If you accept this challenge, I encourage you to upload them to some sort of service (If you do, send me a link of Twitter to see your results) 

In conclusion, like I said, I LOVE photo challenges, especially things that keep me wanting to take photos. If you accept, have fun with your day and enjoy!

Use Google Latitude To Find Your Phone

Back a few months ago Apple made their "Find My iPhone" service that locates your iPhone in the event it gets lost free. Sounds great, right? Well if you read the fine-print in the MobileMe terms of service, you'd know it only applied to iPhone 4's and I myself happen to have a 3GS. Darn.

Up until recently, I had been looking for a solution in the off chance I lose my iPhone. I don't lose devices all that often, but you never know what can happen. So I was pleased to find out that Google's own service "Latitude" offers the same location service for locating your lost device. If you don't qualify for "Find my iPhone" and you don't find MobileMe compelling enough to pay for a subscription, this may be a good solution.

Google Latitude is both a web-based application, but to actually locate your device, you have to download the free Google Latitude app for your iPhone. (Quick note: There are also Latitude apps for iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and Nokia phones) One thing I noticed about the app is that it is ALWAYS retrieving your locating, even if you've quit the app. This is indicated by the "GPS icon" in your menu bar. Of course you can configure this in the app's settings and turn that feature off, but if you're sensitive to that feature or would like to conserve your battery life, you may want to turn that off.

The Latitude website gives you a live Google Map showing your estimated location with a confidence circle. That confidence circle is large and broad at first, but as it has the opportunity to get a more accurate reading on your location, tue circle decreases in size giving you, in most cases, a very accurate reading on your location.

In conclusion, Google Latitude may not have the slick UI of MobileMe, and you probably won't hear many stories of chases in Tel Aviv over people trying to find their lost iPad, but Google Latitude is the best free solution for people looking to track their mobile device in the off chance you lose it or the more likely scenario, it gets stolen. Google Latitude links to you existing Google account, which doesn't require you to sign up for an additional service.

Twitter Turns 5. Thank you!

Twitter, the real-time social network most of us use, turned 5 today. Over the past week, co-founder Jack Dorsey has been tweeting the story of the company's initial beginning, even using the hashtag "#twttr" the company's original name.

Today in honor the company's 5th birthday, they encourage people to dig up their first tweet their ever posted with the hashtag "#5yrs" I've already seen some people's first tweets, including Baratunde Thurston's first tweet, which is actually pretty funny.

In conclusion, I just want to say thank you to Jack Dorsey, Ev Williams and Biz Stone, the creators of Twitter for everything they've done to create a product that so many people have adopted and use frequently in such a short time. Twitter is obviously a success and in just a short five years, it's become mainstream to where everybody knows about it and uses it. Not many companies can accomplish that.

Thank you.

Picture Show for iPhone

As a photographer, I love the iPhone not only because of its camera but because of the apps available for editing the pictures you take. I've already sung the praises of Camera+ and CameraBag, but today I'm here to talk about a new app I found a few weeks ago called Picture Show. Like any app, it has its hits and misses. Let me guide you through the app and give you my opinion on it. Here we go.

Interface
The interface at first threw me and it definitely took a while to get used to it and to learn all the secrets of it. The icons along the bottom are useful shortcuts to things like "Effect" and "Text" but at least for me, the icons are just a little small. For the first few days, I found myself trying to tap the "Share" button and accidentally hitting the "Settings" button located next to it. A small miss on their part but not a deal breaker. Along the top bar there's two buttons, Shuffle and a "Heart" symbol. The Shuffle symbol randomizes everything from the effect to the border frame used. If you accidentally hit it, you'll have to go through each settings pane and reset everything to your liking. The heart button lets you make presets or "recipes" of a photo you have edited. Kind of nice. Now, the super hidden secret of the user interface is how to change effects on the photo. Like me, you might want to tap the "Effects" button, but that will just give you tilt-shift controls and HDR controls. If you want to change the effect from cross process to IndigoHalo for example, you flick up and down on the photo in front of you to change between effects. Hit and miss. Hit that it eliminates the need for an extra button on what is already a cluttered interface, but miss because it's a hidden way to change filters and it's not very apparent or heavily exposed.

The landing screen where all the editing
occurs. Note the small buttons.

Effects

I'm going to cover both the effects (i.e. tilt-shift) and the filters. In my estimation, this is the absolute best app for doing tilt-shift photography. It has a simple slider for intensity and a draggable circle for where to apply the effect to your photo. The end result is very similar to the effect you'd get from a real DSLR (as long as you know what you're doing) The second effects are the filters you can apply to your photo. There's the usual suspects such as Holga and Lomo and then there's silly ones like Andy Warhol popart and a mirroring effect that mirrors your photo side to side. For me, a photographer, I tend to favor the useful filters such as lomo and holga, but if you like to do silly things to your photos, there's plenty of filters that make your photos look more fun.

Example of tilt-shift

Sharing
Picture Show offers a multitude of sharing options along with the basic ones like email and saving to your Camera Roll. It offers Facebook (obviously) Twitter, Flickr. You can also check out the Picture Show Flickr group where you can upload your own shots and interact with the community at large. There's also Tumblr and Blogger (Yay!) as well as email and exporting to the Camera Roll like I mentioned earlier.

Conclusion
My final thoughts on the app are one of happiness. This app is a mainstay of the busy photography app segment, like Toyota is to the car market. Picture Show is easy enough for amateurs looking to dabble in iPhone-photography and are looking for a good app to test the waters with, but it's also good enough for people like myself who know themselves around a camera and know how to change the look of a photo. It's a good intersection into the two worlds of people who are likely to buy this app. The price is also a win at $1.99. For me, I bought this app as an impulse purchase because of the price and some pretty positive reviews. If you buy this app looking to spice up the quality of your photos, you won't be disappointed. {App Store Link} 

iPad Price Slash. How Much Can You Live Without?

The iPad 2 kept the iPad 1's original price of $499, and the same prices throughout the rest of the model line. The way Apple tends to roll, not more for less, not less for more. More for the same is the motto in Cupertino.

The 1st generation 3G iPad's exclusive to AT&T got an extreme price cut today. It goes as followed:

- 16GB Wi-Fi+3G - $429 (originally $629)
- 32GB Wi-Fi+3G - $529 (originally $729)
- 64GB Wi-Fi+3G - $729 (originally $829)

These are significant price cuts in terms of entry to ownership of a device that is still pretty hot on the tech radar. But these price cuts raise the inevitable question. Can you live with an iPad 1st gen. considering the price drop? Let's discuss.

First, price. For some people, the iPad is still kind of pricey. At the iPad 2 announcement event, Apple's video showing the practical uses in medical environments, public school and its benefits to autistic children make it seem cheap in terms of what it can do and its functionality, but for people living on a realistic budget $499 isn't quite an impulse buy, more of a long term investment. Since the iPad 2 came out, it's added features like the gyroscope and cameras don't make the iPad 1 totally out of date, so the idea of a 3G 1st gen. iPad seems pretty enticing to some people who don't have to have/want the latest and greatest in terms of current tech. While pro-users like us appreciate the gyroscope and things of that nature are willing to pay for that, people like my sister who has kids and a small business, she's just looking for the cheapest entry price.

A similar argument can be made is "Why not go for the iPad 2 for $70 more?" If you're already in for $400, why not go in for the full $499 and get the newest package. One argument is that the now discounted iPad's include 3G, something you'd have to pay minimum $629 for. The fact that it comes in at $429 (again) is a very low barrier to entry. However, one reason not to go with the slashed 3G model is that the data plans are no longer very attractive ever since the death of the "truly" unlimited data plan. Now you're constraint to either 250MB or 2GB. However for most people, including myself, 2GB is just right.

My final thoughts on the matter is the fact that AT&T and Apple have reduced the price on the original iPad now allows more people to experience the iPad who normally wouldn't due to the cost. However you look at it, it's a good move on both parts and we'll expect to see sales numbers on specifically discounted/reduced iPads.

Starting Fresh.

Tumblr. Wordpress. Squarespace. Posterous. TypePad. During the past couple of weeks, I found myself looking for a new blogging engine for my personal blog. I was on Tumblr for the longest time, but despite their $40M funding, they just can't seem to keep their servers up. I exported my blog to Posterous, but I found myself bored with them quickly mainly due to their plain interface. I felt myself at a loss for options for where I could/wanted to host my blog. However an archived post in TechCrunch from December reminded me that Blogger was proven to be more reliable that Tumblr, my current platform at the time.

That post convinced me to switch to Blogger, for a number of reasons. Reason one is the 0% downtime compared to Tumblr which had almost 50% downtime. Secondly, Blogger links to my Google account, which makes it easier for me not to have to manage another account for another platform. Finally, the simple and easy interface for posting articles and managing settings. It's not as easy as Tumblr, but pretty darn close.

In conclusion, what I'm getting at in this post is "Welcome to my new blog" When I start blogs, I like to import my existing content to it, but for this one, I'm starting fresh. If you care to read my old blog, it's over here. I hope you enjoy my updates, ramblings, rants and raves on my blog.

Enjoy.