photos — James Poling

Chinese Gangster’s Cell Phone Photos Uploaded to Popular Image Hosting Site

March 25, 2012 By James Poling Leave a Comment

Four days ago someone uploaded an album of photos to the image hosting site imgur. The album contained 22 photos and is titled, “Pics from a Chinese gangsters phone”. In four days the album has gotten over 11 million views.

One of the unique features of imgur is that, while you can create an account for hosting your photos, it’s not necessary. Anyone can go there and upload photos without logging in at all. Needless to say, these photos were uploaded anonymously.

You can pretty see for yourself what the life of at least one Chinese gangster looks like. Porsches, piles of cash and puppies to for one. There’s also a few slightly disturbing images of what appears to be a few possible associates roughing up an older man for some reason. Strangely the roughing up session ends with the poor man being forced to pose with a shoe balanced on top of his head, another on his arm and an old plastic water bottle in his mouth.

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Filed Under: Photos Tagged With: cash, chinese gangster, imgur, photos, porsches

Fifth Ave. and 51st St. Manhattan circa 1908

January 29, 2012 By James Poling Leave a Comment

Fifth Avenue hotels north from 51st Street.

Another great, old photograph from early NYC. This one is from the early 20th century. It’s also a great contrast to this photo taken barely more than a decade earlier that shows the slums of New York in the downtown area.

Photo via Shorpy

Filed Under: NYC Tagged With: NYC, photography, photos

The Slums of 19th Century New York Captured in Photographs by Jacob Riis

January 20, 2012 By James Poling 1 Comment

Jacob Riis was a crime reporter in NYC in the late 1800′s and spent much of his time in the seedy parts of old New York. Many of his photographs are also used in a wonderful book called ‘Lowlife‘ (affiliate link) by Luc Sante. Sante does an excellent job of capturing the hardships of living in NYC during the late 19th Century while accentuating his point with this brilliant photographs by Riis.

Sadly, Riis never truly understood the importance of the images he was capturing and always viewed them as superfluous to his main work which was crime reporting.

You can take a look at some more of his photographs in this Daily Mail article but if you’re interested in seeing his a much larger collection of his photographs you can visit the Museum of the City of New York.

Filed Under: NYC Tagged With: jacob riis, NYC, photography, photos, tenements

The Daily News Gets in on the Obama/Osama Photo Mashup Meme

May 4, 2011 By James Poling Leave a Comment

For the past few years the line between so-called mainstream media and blogger media has been slowly dissapearing but I have to say this is the first time I’ve seen a major newspaper’s website jump on a viral photo mashup meme and publish so many of them.

For a minute I wasn’t sure if I was reading Reddit or the Daily News.

A couple more for reference sake of course.

This little girl can't catch a break. First she's miserable at the Royal Wedding, then she's miserable watching bin Laden get Black Opped

Call of Duty: Osama bin Laden

Filed Under: Media, Politics Tagged With: barack obama, daily news, mashups, Media, osama bin laden, photos

Photo of President Obama, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton Watching the Events of bin Laden’s Death Unfold

May 2, 2011 By James Poling Leave a Comment

This photo reminds of one of those still shots or photos you would see of Presidents in the Oval office during times of war after hearing some sort of grave news. The expressions on the faces of Obama and Clinton speak volumes as to how heavy this situation was on everyone. It’s hard to imagine what it must have been like to be in a room watching these events unfold live. Watching our troops finally close in on the man who masterminded the 9/11 attack on the United States.

President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, along with members of the national security team, receive an update on the mission against Osama bin Laden in the Situation Room of the White House, May 1, 2011. Seated, from left, are: Brigadier General Marshall B. “Brad” Webb, Assistant Commanding General, Joint Special Operations Command; Deputy National Security Advisor Denis McDonough; Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton; and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. Standing, from left, are: Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; National Security Advisor Tom Donilon; Chief of Staff Bill Daley; Tony Binken, National Security Advisor to the Vice President; Audrey Tomason Director for Counterterrorism; John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism; and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Please note: a classified document seen in this photograph has been obscured. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

via White House Flickr

Filed Under: Politics Tagged With: hillary clinton, joe biden, osama bin laden, photos, president obama, situation room

VisivoTab: Chrome Extension that Adds Beautiful Photos to New Chrome Tabs

April 12, 2011 By James Poling Leave a Comment

I learned about this extension from Marshall Kirkpatrick, co-editor of ReadWriteWeb. I admit I was a little skeptical thinking I couldn’t live without the shortcuts the default new Chrome tab offers. But after thinking about I realized I never really used those app shortcuts all that often anyway and once I installed VisivoTab I was sold.

Tired of that boring old New Tab page? Spruce it up with beautiful high resolution photos hand-selected by Flickr’s visivo.

** Update: Uses Flickr’s “large” size when available to speed up rendering, the scaling difference isn’t very noticeable. If a few people ask for the larger size again I can add an option to enable that. **

** Update: Links to photo page when mouse is moved (a la google fade in) **

There is a calming sense when you’re slammed with work and open up a new tab and see a beautiful photo staring back at you. Even if you only take it in for a few seconds, it definitely gives you a change of pace and gives you a chance to explore some great photographs while you’re working at the same time.

You can download the VisivoTab extension here.

Filed Under: How To Tagged With: chrome, chrome extensions, flickr, photos, tabs, visivo

As if the Homeless Didn’t Have it Bad Enough Being Figuratively Invisible, Some are Now Literally Invisible

March 19, 2011 By James Poling Leave a Comment

Yes, yes, I know this is an old photo but it’s new to me and I just came across it on a friend’s blog who found it on BoingBoing.

I can only a hope a year from now someone else will come across it here and share it. The plight of the literally invisible homeless is one we should keep in the public eye.

Filed Under: Personal Tagged With: charity, homelessness, invisibility, photos

Amazing Images from Cassini’s Flyby of Saturn in 2004

March 16, 2011 By James Poling Leave a Comment

Yesterday’s APOD was an unreal video of a compilation of images from Cassini’s flyby of Saturn back in 2004. The compilation video uses only photographs from Cassini, no CGI and no 3D models. Apparently there’s going to be an IMAX movie coming out with more of these images called Outside In. If this short video is any indication it’s going to be a must see for all you astronomy geeks out there.

5.6k Saturn Cassini Photographic Animation from stephen v2 on Vimeo.

Filed Under: Videos Tagged With: cassini, NASA, photos, saturn, space, Videos

Ken Jennings Joins Me in Welcoming Our New Computer Overlords [Photo]

February 17, 2011 By James Poling Leave a Comment

Earlier I wrote a post welcoming our new computer overlords in a blatant attempt to secure my family’s position at the top of the human-slave caste that I naturally assume the computers are now plotting against us thanks to Watson’s victory.

I didn’t see tonight’s episode of Jeopardy so I was surprised when I came across this pic of Jennings mocking Watson with the “I, for one, welcome our new computer overlords” comment. Great minds really do think alike.

It got me wondering where this meme originated. I remembered it being used in an old episode of The Simpsons but I was pretty sure that wasn’t where it originated.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86zPFR4R0Ko

According to KnowYourMeme.com the phrase originated in the 1977 film adaptation of H.G. Wells’ short story ‘Empire of the Ants’ (which scared the crap out of me as a kid).

Arthur C. Clark’s 1953 sci fi novel Childhood’s End revolves around an alien race known as the Overlords in charge of overseeing the evolution of the human race. This is one of the first occurrences in which the term “overlord” was used to refer to an alien race conquering humanity, but it is not where the phrase originated.

The 1977 film adaptation of the classic H.G. Wells short story Empire of the Ants (starring Joan Collins) is allegedly the origin of the phrase “I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords”.

Here’s hoping the computers and insects don’t unite and combine forces to put a rush on that whole enslavement of humanity thing.

Filed Under: Tech Tagged With: ibm, jeopardy, ken jennings, memes, photos, the simpsons, watson

Forecast: Cloudy with a chance of Welp, We’re Boned

January 31, 2011 By James Poling Leave a Comment

Call Mr. Plow, that’s my name, that name again is Mr. Plow.

This visible image was captured by the GOES-13 satellite and shows the low pressure area bringing snowfall to the Midwest Jan. 31, 2011. Heavy snow is expected today in portions of northern Iowa, southern Minnesota and Wisconsin. Snowfall from the system extends from Michigan west to Montana, Idaho, Utah and Arizona. A mix of rain and snow also stretches into the Ohio and Tennessee valleys, and it is all moving east. This system appears to be as large as 1/3rd of the Continental U.S. The image was created on Jan. 31 at 12:45 p.m. EST (1745 UTC) by the NASA GOES Project, located at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The GOES series of satellites are operated by NOAA.

Image courtesy of NASA

Filed Under: News Tagged With: earth, NASA, photos, satellite images, snowpocalypse, snowstorm

Spectacular View of the Nile River and the Life it Supports taken from Space

November 1, 2010 By James Poling Leave a Comment

Astronaut Doug Wheelock posted an amazing photo he snapped from the ISS while passing over the Nile river. It’s a pretty fascinating view of the sheer amount of life that river supports, and really drives home how important a role water plays in defining the history and evolution of humanity.

Filed Under: Photos Tagged With: doug wheelock, international space station, NASA, nile, photos

REVIEW: Posterous Gets App-y, Posterous Users Get Happy (Screenshots)

October 12, 2010 By James Poling Leave a Comment

Posterous finally jumped on board the app train today with the release of their new Posterous app. Their previous app PicPosterous wasn’t nearly as robust as this and I’m pretty sure the guys over at Posterous knew they’d be better off starting from the ground up with a totally new app and that’s exactly what they did.

All in all the app is a huge improvement and makes it incredibly easy to manage and maintain your Posterous site from your iPhone. On the other hand, Posterous is so damn good at handling posts by mailing them in I’m not sure I see this app as completely replacing that method on the iPhone.

The two places this app will come in really handy is if you have a post you want to make private or for some reason don’t want to have it autopost everywhere you can easily manage that with the app. The other huge plus is the ability to upload videos straight through the app. If you’re using an iPhone 4 and taking HD video you’re going to find that you’ll quickly run into a size issue when trying to email it to your Posterous blog. This app, theoretically, allows you to upload videos of any size while continuing to run in the background. That feature alone in this app should quickly make Posterous a serious player in hosting and sharing mobile HD videos online. I for one can’t wait to give it a shot.