technology

I have pointed it out before in postings here, on Twitter, and on our various shows, we are living with Star Trek technology already today… well, in many areas at least. In some ways, we surpassed what was predicted 45 years ago when the series premiered. For example, fax machines are really a relic of the past (even though some insist on still using them). We saw similar technology in Trek originally. Today we have iPhones, iPads, flat screen HDTVs… it is almost the bridge of the Enterprise right there.

Every month there seems to be a new post somewhere comparing today's technology with that of Star Trek's technology, so I won't repeat that here. Though with that said, I thought I would share the following infographic on it. It is not complete (in addition to fax machines which are now passé today, we saw Uhura wearing what can be compared to today's bluetooth ear pieces. Neither are represented on this graphic, but there's probably too many to include in one graphic anyway).

First I want to say thanks to Mobli for featuring me among other fantastic people in their popular section both in the app and the website. It was an unexpected surprise.

Thank you, Steve Jobs. Here's to the crazy ones… Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. Think Different.

I had come home from a wake of a long time friend of mine. His death was sudden and unexpected. I was in disbelief that we lost him so quickly. It wasn't long after I checked Google+ to see what was going on while I was away and to distract my attention from the loss of a friend. To my surprise, there it was... people posting story after story about Steve Jobs. Just returning from my good friend's wake and knowing Steve Jobs' health had been declining for some years now, I feared the worst.

Wednesday saw the passing of a visionary. However you might feel about Steve Jobs, there's no denying that he has changed our world.

My original plans for tonight (Wednesday night) was indeed to write about Apple, it was going to be my take from Tuesday's Apple announcements. So many people have been asking me about the announcements that Apple made at the event, I wanted to put down my thoughts here to share.

Mobli mobilizes your life... What does that mean? The mobile phone app, Mobli enables you to mobilize your life by allowing you to be almost anywhere in the world and it allows your life and experiences to be shared to almost anywhere in the world.

Mobli allows this via our smart phones (it is available for iPhone, Android, and Blackberry). It empowers us to engage with others that may be sharing similar experiences or have similar interests. It allows us to share our experiences with others by sharing photos and video taken right on our smart phones shared out to other Mobli users, the Mobli website, and if you choose, Twitter and Facebook as well.

I understood it was new when I started using it, but I don't think I knew that it was only one week after it launched when I took my first Instagram shot on my iPhone on that fateful Wednesday, 13 October 2010 (Instagram was launched the week before on the 6th). It seemed to be the natural successor to my Project 365 at the time. Indeed it was, but it has been so much more.

Instagram has just celebrated their 150th million photo shared via its service. They are seeing Instagrammers sharing photos at the rate of 15 photos per second. They have also seen incredible growth since launching with more than 7 million users now.

For those uninitiated, Instagram is a free app in the Apple App Store (currently only for iOS devices) which allows you to share your stories via photos and words. It is Twitter meets Flickr in a sense. Like Twitter, you follow people and people can follow you. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then it is thousand more than what you can convey in a 140 character tweet on Twitter.

The last several days I have been testing and trying out the new social media platform, Google+ which is currently in limited beta by (no surprise) Google. Before you ask, Google had disabled invites for the time being due to overwhelming demand. So I have no invites to share at this point. That said, it seems that Google does open the barn door from time to time (unannounced). So you may be able to get in if you are lucky enough. (Many people have already requested an invite from me, when I can, I will try to give them to those friends and followers that have requested one from me.)

What is Google+? The easy answer is to say that it is Google's answer to Facebook. While that may be true on certain levels, it is its own social networking service built on existing Google technologies with others added. Some may use it instead of Facebook, others may use it in addition to Facebook, some may not use either. In my experience so far, it has a similar vibe to what Friendfeed was back in the day, just without the automatic feeds pumping into it.

You may be saying, "But what about Google's previous attempts of social networking, like Wave or Buzz?" I never thought of Wave so much as social networking, but more as a communication tool similar to email, but that is another matter. I believe Google has learned from those experiences and Google+ is something other, grander than what Wave was or Buzz is today.

Although I have many, one iOS app not yet in my photography tool box is Filterstorm (App Store link). It has been highly recommended (especially in the Instagram community) by others and it has been on my 'want list' for some time now. Well, if you needed an excuse to buy it now (perhaps such as myself), it is has recently been upgraded to 3.0. The upgrade features a new interface along with some new features. It will be interesting to see how this app compares with other full featured photography post processing apps on the iOS such as PhotoForge2 and Photo fx (App Store links) among many others of course. It looks to be more similar to the former than the latter. Despite its name, I don't believe it is what we would call a photo filter app on iOS today. To my understanding it considers adjustments to exposure, color correction, sharpening, etc. as filters (as opposed to more artistic filters such as those in Instagram and others). It is now on sale in the App Store for half off (currently $1.99 from $3.99) for June 23-24, 2011.

Apple has released Final Cut Pro X to the Mac App Store (store link: Final Cut Pro - Apple®) today. The long awaited upgrade for this professional movie editor software has been rewritten from the ground up. The big news when it was announced a few months ago was that it would be coming to the Mac App Store with a new price of only $299 (previously FCP itself was $999). Other companion apps that had been included in Final Cut Pro Studio suite such as Motion and Compressor are sold separately also in the Mac Store for $49 each. It doesn't look like Soundtrack Pro has made the cut though, at least not yet.

Often I am asked which apps I use to do produce the images I do using just an iPhone. I decided to collect some of the apps I go to most for my iPhone photography at this time and list them here with some comments on each.

So you just got a new iPhone and you want to learn all the ins and outs of it? Or perhaps, you had an iPhone for some time, but you still feel like a newbie? Even for long time users, sometimes it is easy to forget the basics or not keep up with changes that each new iOS brings when it is upgraded.

Now you can have iPhone lessons right in your pocket... right on your iPhone. Your instructor is Worth Godwin. The app is the Video Training Course for iPhone (App Store link).

Being an avid Instagram user, I was excited to learn that there is a new client app for the social photo sharing service on the Mac. A third party app, called InstaDesk (App Store link).

Since Instagram opened their API to the public, there have been several new options for third party Instagram clients or web interfaces. For example, on the iPad there is Instagallery (App Store link) and Flipboard (App Store link) which will allow you to access your Instagram account. There are several web interfaces available as well, my favorite has to be Webstagram.

With the exception of posting photos and applying filters, you can basically do everything you can do on the official Instagram app (currently only available for the iOS) and more using Instagram API. Again, the best example of implementing the API is probably Webstagram that I have seen so far. As good as Webstagram may be though, it is still a website, not an application.

The popular 3rd party camera app for the iOS, Camera+ (App Store link) has been updated. Among some of the updated enhancements is a new feature called, 'Clarity.' While it seems like it is being trumped as a one button fix-all for all your bad photos, I would not be so quick to use it blindly. Like with any other post-processing feature for your images, you will want to compare the results you get from using it first. It is possible that while it may add 'clarity' to a photo, it may also affect the contrast and shadow elements as well.

The GetGlue app (from AdaptiveBlue) for iPhone and iPod touch has been updated and with it, it has a newly enhanced user interface and more. (See my previous article, Get Glued on GetGlue for more details on GetGlue). In addition to the user interface refresh, which is a quite welcomed refresh, it also now allows you to check into "sports" in addition to the previous categories already available such as television, movies, books, music, wine, etc. Also it now offers Foursquare location check-in integration as well (unfortunately, Gowalla is not also offered as an option as well).

It was X years ago today that Apple released Mac OS X, changing the face of the desktop OS forever.