Apr 15
Fun, Technology Darth Vader, Humour, R2-D2, Remote Control, Star Wars, ThinkGeek, video, Watch No Comments
I love this silly video by ThinkGeek to advertise their very cool R2-D2 Remote Control Watch thing. Great Darth Vader outfit too. Enjoy!
Apr 06
iPhone, Technology Apple, iPhone, mobile, N8, Nokia, Upgrades No Comments
I am a self confessed Apple fan. Our house is well equipped with Apple branded gadgets and has seen several iterations of the current devices passing through it’s doors on the way out to eBay.
Currently I own an iPad, iPhone 3GS and a 4 year old 15″ MacBook Pro. My Wife has an iPhone 4 after recently upgrading from a Motorola V3 / iPod Touch combo. My kids even pretend to have iPhones and iPads all the time, not knowing anything else in their 5 and 3 year old lives.
I am not trying to show off here, I just want to make it clear how entrenched in the Apple Ecosystem I am at present. Yes, it is very sad! ^_^
The iPad Effect
The thing is, since taking possession of an iPad, I have found myself for the first time ever, thinking about selling my iPhone with out the express intention of replacing it with another iPhone.
In fact, I am actively seeking a replacement for my 3GS that includes the features missing on or equal to those of the iPhone but at a cheaper price.
These include a decent camera, HD video, Wifi hotspot sharing without the ‘Apple tax’ (i.e. extra charges just because it is an iPhone), and the fabled ‘openness’ of other platforms.
This is the enormity of the iPad’s impact on my gadget life.
First Candidate – Nokia N8
It is with this purpose in mind that I have applied to trial the Nokia N8 and I heard today that it is on it’s way. I can upgrade to the N8 with Orange UK for just £49.99 today, as opposed to £230-ish for an iPhone 4, but if I wait until June I can get the N8 free for £10 less than I pay now for the 3GS.
Once I have received the N8 trial unit I will be going ‘cold turkey’ and hiding my iPhone for the two week trial period. The N8 will be my only phone/mobile computer (other than iPad)/camera/video recorder for those two weeks.
I will be seeing if I can live without the App Store on my Phone, how the iPad works with a non-Apple phone, if at all and what the Ovi Store experience is like for someone so used to Apple’s way of doing things.
I will post here as much as I can about my experiences over these two weeks, but I will probably put out more regular updates over on Twitter.
Aug 23
Technology, Training, Web chase jarvis, Courses, creativeLIVE, free, Jasmine Star, learning, online, Photography, Scott Bourne, training, Web Design, Weddings, Zack Arias No Comments
When something is advertised as ‘Free’ it often comes with strings attached and is rarely, really, free. The good folks over at creativeLIVE are offering something for nothing, well almost, but the something they ask back is a little bit of word-of-mouth promotion and it is well worth it for what you get in return.
I have enrolled on several of their Photography courses in the past and the talent they have brought in has been considerable, including Chase Jarvis (who was instrumental in setting this project up), Scott Bourne (Aperture master), Zack Arias (Rock photographer/Lighting guru) and that’s just the Photographers! There are many more talented people who have lent their talents to the creativeLIVE courses and who have shared their knowledge for free.
If you can’t tune in at the time the course is going out live, you can catch up later, sometimes they stream the event on a loop for a few days afterwards and then video courses are available for purchase afterwards, at a fairly reasonable rate for the number of hours tuition you get from the professionals involved, usually around $79-$129 depending on the amount of content.
They even streamed a whole weekend workshop live (actually 3 days) with the awesome Vincent Laforet on HD DSLR Video Production, which was very detailed and fascinating for the bits I was able to tune in for.
To top that, starting this Wednesday 25th creativeLIVE are running a Jasmine Star (super adulated Wedding Photographer with the best looking blog I have ever seen) workshop for 5 days, to include live streaming of the Photographer as she covers a real wedding.
That’s 5 days! What these guys and girls are providing for free is really, really impressive.
The only downside is that the time difference can be a bit of a pain for us in the UK, with some courses, such as the one I have just enrolled on Web Design Boot Camp running very late, in this case from 11pm – 1am GMT. So unless they stream that one for free afterwards I would have to pay to see it probably.
If you are at all curious about the Photography, Web Design, Photoshop, CS5, even Water Colour world, you should definitely check out the creativeLIVE calendar and see what is coming up, you can’t beat the price!
Aug 18
News, Technology, Video embed, Flash, iOS, ipad, iPhone, iPod Touch, player, Test, video, Vimeo No Comments
Well, that’s the hope anyway. This post is a test to see if it is true that embeds from the wonderful and much-classier-than-YouTube video sharing site Vimeo, actually do work on the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch.
Let me know in the comments if it doesn’t work for you:
shinya kimura @ chabott engineering from Henrik Hansen on Vimeo.
*Update* Had to change the video as it looks like there has to be a mobile version created especially, or at least, the original video by my friend James Burland (see the original here) didn’t work on my iPhone.
Jul 01
Photography, Technology backup, chase jarvis, data, inspiration, learning, loss, Photography, time machine, video, workflow No Comments
Part of my job is to explain why we need to backup our data, and whilst it is very hard to appreciate why you should go to all the effort when the chances of data loss are relatively small, the chance is there, and ever present with the increased amount of digital data that we are storing nowadays.
Chase Jarvis is a really amazing visual artist. As well as being a top notch Photographer/Media producer, he is also a great Teacher/Instructor and, unlike many professional photographers in days gone by, he loves to share the secrets behind what he does to get the results. I have learnt a lot from Chase and his team and been inspired in the past by their practical approach to Photography, but also the artistic side too.
In the video below Chase, and his (very professional) team, show us how their workflow has been setup, from capturing the shot/video through to final storage and output via backup processes for servers and individual machines. It is something to aspire to and is based on a full-on professional studio, but the principles of redundant backups, off-site backups and individual machines with Time Machine running (giving hourly versions of files), are useful to anybody.
If you have ever been unfortunate enough to lose cherished photos of moments that can never be repeated (I have) then you will know how painful and time consuming, (not to mention expensive!) data recovery can be.
It is vitally important to have a solid backup policy in place. At the very least it should include an on-site daily backup, copied to an off-site/online location of your key data.
Please, take the time to watch this very stylish and informative video, even if you have just a passing interest. One day you might be very thankful you did. And if you have any data loss horror stories feel free to leave a comment and share the pain.
Remember: With data loss, it is not if it is WHEN!
Apr 09
iPhone, Technology Apple, comment, ipad, iPhone, OS4.0, predictions 1 Comment
Apple yesterday announced that the new iPhone OS 4.0 will be hitting the ubiquitous mobile phone/device/mini-computer in the Summer, but the iPad would have to wait a few more months until Autumn (the Fall as they would call it). Call it paranoia, but I have a theory why this might be.
The iPhone traditionally sees a new model around the end of June. So that would tie in nicely to the release of iPhone for OS 4.0. Many features, most notably multi-tasking, will not be available to older models except the most recent iPhone 3GS. So to get all the new shiny goodness of OS 4.0 on their device, many iPhone users will have to upgrade. This will generate a ‘need’ in consumers minds so that they end up buying new hardware to run the ‘must-have’ features of the new iPhone OS.
However, the iPad will still only be about three months old by the end of June, and Apple may well be planning to upgrade the iPad’s specs, but not that soon for fear of really, really, upsetting their early iPad adopters.
So I think that Apple will revamp the iPad in 6 Months time, about September-time, and coincidentally will release OS 4.0 for the iPad at the same time. This will drive many who had been critical of the iPad’s first incarnation to think again about purchasing now it has better specs and a shiny new OS. This will also give consumers time to get used to having OS 4.0 and its enhanced features, and they will be gagging to get this same functionality on their iPads too.
Am I being cynical? Time will tell…
Related Tags: predictions, iphone, OS4.0, comment, iPad, Apple
Mar 10
Technology, Web Apple, beta, browsing, free, Instapaper, ipad, lists, readitlater, services, video, Web No Comments
I don’t know about you, but when I am online, specifically when I am on Twitter I see numerous links every day to articles or blog posts or just sites and services that I want to check out, and usually I don’t have time to look at them. So I have become an avid user of the Read it Later service. But it is just about to get better!
Mar 03
I recently purchased the Macheist 2 nano-bundle which, amongst other apps, included MacJournal 5. This application has a lot of writing resources but most of all, for me at least, it allows the authoring and uploading of blog posts, complete with multi-media elements.
Here is a picture from my iPhoto library, added via the media browser in MacJournal, scaled down to 25%:
Not too extensive a test, but this is just a quick look at it in a five minute break, a more detailed look at it will follow soon.
For now, go and have a look at the MacHeist nano-bundle. For around £13 it is a real steal, and includes the wonderful RipIt DVD Disc ‘backup’ software too.
Mar 02
iPhone, Photography, Technology HDR, iPhone, iphoneography, Photography, Reviews No Comments
This is the second of a two part post about the Pro HDR app for the iPhone. In this post I include some examples of what the app can do, and talk about why I like it and bought it.
In the first part of this two-parter I talked about how the Pro HDR iPhone app by eyeappsllc looks and works. In this second part I wanted to include a few examples and show what the app could do with the photos fed into it.
More
Feb 09
Technology bluetooth, gadgets, geek, mobile, phone, ring, wedding No Comments
This post looks at the new Orb Bluetooth headset which converts from a ring, worn on the finger, to a Bluetooth earpiece and back again; and why I want one!
I think I may have mentioned before that I consider myself a Geek and I am really not afraid to admit it. However, if I were a soon-to-be-married Geek, this is the ring I would be asking for (it is too late for our 10 year Anniversary, what’s the next one I can ask for a ring as a present?).
It has been developed by a company called Hybra Advance Technology and it all sounds a bit futuristic and fanciful, but it might just be real because it won the 2010 Best of Innovations Award at CES last month with a promised launch date of ‘Spring 2010′ for the OLED version and later in the year for the very nice looking full colour FOLED (Flexible Organic Light Emitting Diode – in case you were wondering) version.
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