I think that I fit pretty easily into the blogger category, but iFan isn’t far off. I really need a NetBook….
Via Boing Boing Gadgets:
Technology was once about big things, but smallness rules the day: we are the gear that gets us through it. Augmented and assisted by the gizmos we buy, break and make, we’re taking tech culture out of the tubes. How to spot a species? Look inside the gadget bag!
Claim solidarity with your stereotype in the comments and send us evidence of any undiscovered tribes (email: rob o’ boingboing.net): we’ll be sure to forward it on to the Internet Anthropogogical Society for near-immediate updates.
Lots of discussion about Qik and the iPhone today. As a preface, I don’t want you to think that everything is glowy and that I have drank some form of apple flavored Kool-Aid. I like Apple stuff, I have bought a ton of it. I use their stuff, I have broken it, hacked it, forced it, and on an on.
Now, on to the big picture.
Apple does a lot of things very well. They are known best perhaps for having one of the best vertical integration systems in the world. They build the hardware, then write the operating systems, and follow up with world class software that resides on their machines so that the consumer, you and me, are never let down. There aren’t device drivers, there isn’t phantom hardware that doesn’t work, it all does, because they can control the environment where it resides. Because of this, the consumers stay happy, knowing that if it is supposed to work, it does.
Now, enter the iPhone. Pictures are taken in two different varieties, portrait and landscape. Portrait are taken in the conventional manner of holding an iPhone, with the home button at the bottom. Landscape is taken with the phone rotated 90 degrees so that the home button is on the left or the right. Due the accelerometer in the phone, the shutter button rotates with you. The phone knows that it is ok to rotate, and the interface changes with that. In my mind, this is the perfect solution. You should let your users know when the interaction is going to change. Hats off to the interaction designers at Apple.
Now with video, there is are a few formats, but in essesnce, everything is shot landscape. You may shoot 16×9, 4×3, or even in a cinema format like 2.35:1.
Ugly video icon, I know...
So, imagine this situation, you are at an event, and want to capture a moment of video, what do you do? Pull out your iPhone and shooting some video. You are shooting in a portrait landscape, because that is where the button is, and you can do it with only one hand. What happens when you get back to the house though? You kick start iMovie, and go to start editing, and here is your video, turned 90 degrees the wrong way.
Not that this was shot with the iPhone, but to illustrate what video would end up looking like if done with it.
So, here is my rationale, Apple has a decision to make. They have to reformat the screen for video, making it so that you are stuck shooting one way as part of the video application. The problem with this is that people want to take pictures and video at the same time. So, jumping from one framse size to another would be jarring. If they keep it like the camera app, they would get people who when they get home see that there video is all turned 90 degrees. When they load it into iMovie, it would come out that they have to rearrage all of their clips. My take, is that this isn’t going to happen.
Now, what about Qik and other streaming applications? Do they take the video at portrait, and they rotate it? Do they make an interface that forces the user to turn the phone on the side? I don’t know, I haven’t pwned my phone yet to see the results. (Tried, but it didn’t work. If you have a suggestion, let me know.)
So, what do you think? Will we see video on the iPhone? Are we doomed to let the peeps with Nokias hog the streaming space on Qik and other sites?
We have a little neighborhood get together with people that work in the tech industry. I gave a little presentation on Twitter last night. I gave a general overview, and then shared some of the tools that I use with Twitter.
TwitterMail creates tweets from a discrete email address. I use it to forward emails from the Salt Lake County Sheriffs department on canyon operations. In user here.
Takes care of the tedious work of following people back that you follow. Also adds auto follow messages when someone follows you. Social surveys have recently been added too.
Many of you that know me and read this blog, (namely Melissa), know that I am totally enamored by the photography of Jonathan Canlas. He is local of Lehi, yet renowned in the world of photography. Since I started following his blog, I have been dying to get my hands on a Holga, and have resisted the temptation every time that I have gone into Urban Outfitters for some time now. So, to my Amazon Wishlist it would go; in hopes that someday I would get one. Imagine my excitement when I opened a packeage today from Eric, my brother-in-law. He pulled it off the list and got me one for Christmas. So then today I was looking across Jon’s blog, trying to find the kind of film that he uses, I came across this gem:
KITSCH
Kitsch is a German term that has been used to categorize art that is considered an inferior copy of an existing style. The term is also used more loosely in referring to any art that is pretentious or in bad taste, and also commercially produced items that are considered trite or crass.
Because the word was brought into use as a response to a large amount of art in the 19th century where the aesthetic of art work was confused with a sense of exaggerated sentimentality or melodrama, kitsch is most closely associated with art that is sentimental; however, it can be used to refer to any type of art that is deficient for similar reasons—whether it tries to appear sentimental, glamorous, theatrical, or creative, kitsch is said to be a gesture imitative of the superficial appearances of art. It is often said that kitsch relies on merely repeating convention and formula, lacking the sense of creativity and originality displayed in genuine art.
Though kitsch and kitschy may be terms used to criticize, the term is sometimes used as a compliment as well, with some finding kitschy artwork to be enjoyable for its “retro” value or unintentional, ironic humor or garishness.
That is exactly what I am going for. To say that I want to be more like Jon would be an understatement. I love the style, and try to mimic it. It makes me want to be a better photographer.
So, the other day we went to see our friends Ryan and Kim at the hospital. Kim just had had their second little bundle of joy the day before, and Melissa is dying to hold babies, wants to support our friends so we headed up to SLC. After socializing a little, Ryan was leaving to go to his sister’s b-day party down the road at Training Table. So, I offered to help him take a few things down to the car. As we headed for the elevator, we were both holding the hands of his daughter Nora, swinging her in the air. As we got in the elevator, I kept holding her hand. (We have noticed with her, anything that interrupts that status quo is only remedied by hysteria…)
One floor down, a couple of nurses got on, and asked how old Nora was. Ryan responded that she was two. They said that she was just soooo cute. Then, the quote du jour, that WE, as in RYAN AND I, have done such a good job with her… Cute. Ryan and I.
Apparently the new politically correct rule is that when in doubt, assume the two dudes in the elevator are gay. The only way that I could think to respond without creating a fuss was to say, yes we have, and walk away from the elevator laughing.
I thought I should just mention that this has been a BIG week for me – Monday I went grocery shopping for the first time in a LONG time (2 hours and $200 later… yipee); yesterday I cleaned the kitchen, made dinner, baked 5 batches of cookies, AND folded 2 large loads of laundry; and today I blogged. Watch out, productive world out there, here I come!
One of my favorite authors of all time passed on this week. Mr. Michael Crichton. When I was a wee young lad, I could often be found with my nose in a book. I read the classics, I read fiction, everything was great. It was 1991, When I was only 8 years old that I picked up my first Crichton book. Jurassic Park was coming to the big screen, and I wanted to be sure to read the book before the movie came out. I was astonished when I checked it out from the library, weighing in at over 400 pages. Certainly the largest book I had ever read.
But I read.
Cover to cover. The book was thick, but I was sucked in. Words that I had never read about biology, DNA, and dinosaurs. The story was thick, matched only by the science. I was hooked. I loved the movie, but was disappointed by what they had left out.
This book started a love for science-fiction. I read every MC book I could get my hands on. Congo, The Andromeda Strain, Sphere, The Lost World, Airframe, and Rising Sun. I was addicted to it all. It lead me to other books and authors, Tom Clancy, and Stephen King.
I do have one confession to make. While I was serving an LDS mission in Newark Delaware, I was in someones home that we were teaching and I saw the book Prey on her bookshelf and inquired about it. She said that it was a new one, and offered it to me to read. I told her how we don’t read other books and blah, blah, blah. She new that I was going to be going home in a few weeks and said that I should read it when I got home. I obliged, and accepted her gift.
It sat on my desk for a few days, I read the back cover, the flaps, and tried to avoid the premise of the biocyber thriller. It wasn’t long before I had some free time and I was neck deep into the book. At about 3:00 in the morning, I put it down, having blown through every page. I loved the book, one of the best things that I had ever read.
So here it is that he has left us now. His legacy is intact, he gave us deep resonating stories about science and technology. Stories that inspire us all.
