The Bean on Display at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden

May 18, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Before we moved to Staten Island my wife and daughter and I lived right across the street from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, which is a pretty freaking cool, not to mention beautiful, place to live across from.

The BBG is one of our favorite places to go for a nice long walk with the Bean. It really is one of the most relaxing, beautiful environments you’ll find right smack in the middle of Brooklyn. If you’ve never been there you should definitely check it out, you won’t be disappointed. It’s not free but it is affordable and, if you live close enough, the family membership gets you in as much as you want all year, plus a discount from the shop and garden.

One of my favorite times of year to go there are when the Cherry trees are blooming. The BBG has the largest variety of Cherry trees outside of Japan and when you see them all in different stages of bloom it’s a wonderful experience.

If Cherry blossoms aren’t your thing then stop by in June when the rose garden gives up an enormous amount of roses of all colors and sizes. According to BBG’s website it’s “one of the largest collection of Rose rose cultivars in North America, over 5,000 bushes of nearly 1,400 varieties thrive, including wild species, old garden roses, hybrid teas, grandifloras, floribundas, polyanthas, hybrid perpetuals, climbers, ramblers, and miniatures.

Anywho, the BBG is getting ready to celebrate its 100th anniversary and they’ve been collecting photos and stories from visitors on Flickr and other places around the web. I submitted the photo I took of my daughter (above) to the BBG Stories pool of photos.

I just received a message from them saying that they’re going to use the photo 100 Years, 100 Stories gallery exhibit this summer and they’re sending us all invites to attend the opening night reception!

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CBS Copywriting: So easy, a caveman could do it

November 3, 2009 By Leave a Comment

IMG_0519

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Google Image Search Rolls Out “Find Similar Image” Feature

October 27, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Google announced today that a sweet new feature was finally being rolled out of Labs and becoming a permanent feature in Google Image Search.

So, let’s say you want to find images of Ancient Egypt. Google Images will provide you with a rich variety of results, including pyramids, maps, relics, drawings and other types of images. Instead of poring through hundreds of images, now you can simply click “Find similar images” to narrow down the results to the results to the type you want. (We’re rolling this out gradually, so the links in the below examples may not work for you yet.)

Let’s say you want to find a work of art by Michelangelo but you’re not exactly sure what the piece is called. So, you do a Google Image Search for “Michelangelo”, which returns the following results:

michelangelo_gis

Which leads you to the image you actually want, The Creation Adam. Once you figure out what you’re looking for you can click on “Find similar images” and return a whole slew of results to choose from.

michelangelo_gis2

This is a very helpful feature and has the potential to save you a lot of time if you’re looking for just the right image for that project you’re working. Google is currently rolling this feature out so if you don’t see it now you should be getting it shortly.

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Snapture App vs. iPhone Native Camera App

October 14, 2009 By Leave a Comment

snapture_logoIt’s good to finally see some of the apps I grew fond of back in the day when I was still jailbreaking my iPhone making their way into the more mainstream App Store. Snapture has a few very cool features that may well make it my camera app of choice, even over the native camera app.

Snapture features

  • Tap anywhere to take a photo.
  • Can take either one photo or three photos in quick succession.
  • Preview thumbnails before saving.
  • Take multiple photos even while other photos are processing

My number one favorite feature of Snapture is that you can tap anywhere on the screen to take a photo. Often times the action key to take a photo with the native camera app is awkward to get to, especially if you’re trying to take a photo with one hand.

I have an 18-month-old daughter and I often miss something really cute or funny that she’s doing while I’m waiting for the camera app to reset itself so I can take another photo. Snapture can take three photos and quick succession and while those photos are processing you take more pics. I’ve had up to 15 pics in the queue to be saved, many of those photos are shots I would not have gotten on the native app.

As far as quality goes, the apps are pretty much evenly matched. Snapture seems to have a slightly warmer look than the native camera app but it’s very minor. All in all I would say, if you use your iPhone camera with any regularity, that Snapture is definitely worth the $1.99 it’s going for in the App Store.

Snapture. vs. iPhone Photos

native_1 snapture_1 native_2 snapture_2 native_3 snapture_3

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Posterous launches killer new iPhone App, adds Themes and CSS/HTML Customization

September 20, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Posterous iPhone App

Back in July I got word from the guys over at Posterous that they were hard at work on an iPhone app that would make posting video from your iPhone 3G S wonderfully simple. They did not disappoint. PicPosterous is by far the best media app I’ve used to publish photos and videos from my iPhone.

Your iPhone instant camera
Live-post anytime, anywhere
Make photo albums as you go
Auto-resized into an easy-to-browse gallery
Full-length video capture
Supports iPhone 3G S video, playable on web and iPhone
No signup/setup required
Start posting right away
Autopost everywhere
Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and more
I can assure you that this has singlehandedly sealed the deal on Posterous being the best mobile publishing site out there. Hands down. If you have an iPhone, there is no reason at all that you shouldn’t have a Posterous site and this app. You can download it here.

Posterous Themes

After much anticipation Posterous has finally added the ability to add themes to your Posterous site. Initially there are four new themes to choose from but I’m sure there will be more to follow. What’s even more exciting than the four new theme options is that they have also opened up the the HTML/CSS code to allow you to create your own Posterous theme from scratch. This will no doubt create an instant demand for quality custom Posterous themes for people to beef up their sites. This also allows people, for the first time to actually brand their Posterous site with their own company brand. This should be huge in the growth of Posterous.

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How To: Import photos from your iPhone to your PC in 3 easy steps using Picasa

July 17, 2009 By 8 Comments

If you go searching on the web for the best way to import photos from your iPhone, most likely the answer you’re bound to find is iPhoto. Which is great if you have a Mac, but what about us PC users out there?

Well, as an admitted Google fanboy I have to say that Picasa handles importing photos from your iPhone just as well, if not better than iPhoto.

Once you have your iPhone connected to your computer just follow these three easy steps.

Step 1: Open Picasa and click on the import button

iphone_picasa_1

If your iPhone was already connected Picasa will detect that as the correct device to import from.

Step 2: Confirm your device, choose which photos you want to import and execute

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Step 3: Enter your info

Enter a folder name and location and description of your photos. Also select what you would like to do with the photos once they’re copied onto your hard drive.
iphone_picasa_3

That’s it! Rinse. Repeat whenever you want to grab your photos off your iPhone.

Also, if you’re not familiar with Picasa, it integrates perfectly with Picasa Web and allows you to flip a switch and sync your offline albums to your online Picasa account. No uploading necessary, it’s all done in the background for you.

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Email Full-Resolution Photos from Your iPhone

July 11, 2009 By Leave a Comment

If you “Copy” photos out of your gallery and then paste them into the body of the email instead of the “Email Photo” button in the Camera app, you can email the full-resolution version of the photo.

In the gallery the first two images are screenshots of ways to copy images from your gallery and the second two images are examples of the resolution you get when you mail a photo and the full-resolution you get when you copy/paste a photo into an email.

Note: There is one caveat to this which can be a little convoluted. It seems that copy/pasting a photo does some sort of mucking around with the exif data. If you save a full-res photo onto your computer the thumbnail orientation is off, 90° CCW. But if you open that same image on your computer it looks fine. However, uploading that to your WordPress site will show the photo as off 90° CCW as well. Thanks to Jon at Geek Stuff I figured out the workaround for this is to open the full-res photo with your image editor and just re-save it. Not the most effecient process in the world (and this may be a non-issue uploading to Flickr or PicasaWeb but it’s definitely an issue with WordPress) but at least it is an option to share your full-res photos with everyone via email.

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Awesome Time Lapse Video of the Milky Way Galaxy

May 19, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Galactic Center of Milky Way Rises over Texas Star Party from William Castleman on Vimeo.

Time lapse video of night sky as it passes over the 2009 Texas Star Party in Fort Davis, Texas. The galactic core of Milky Way is brightly displayed. Images taken with 15mm fisheye lens.

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14th St closed between 7th and 8th

May 15, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Very bad car accident. From the police present and extent the streets are blocked off there may have been a fatality.

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Amazon’s Kindle 2 Photos and Price Point Leaked?

February 6, 2009 By Leave a Comment

If these images are for real, I may have to seriously consider coughing up $360 on February 24 for a new Kindle 2.  Living in NYC and commuting everyday, I’ve always thought the Kindle was a bit too bulky to consider for my everday commute, but the Kindle 2 seems to be a huge improvement.

Traveling on the subway everyday, you can see a microcosm of technology down there.  Since their initial launch, iPods/iPhones have always been popular with commuters, for pretty obvious reasons.  It’s the perfect subway music device.

Books are another big favorite on the subway, but I can honestly say that I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Kindle on the subway.  I’ve seen Nintendo DS’s, PSP’s, Blackberries and Sidekicks, but no Kindles.

I think there is still a ways to go on the price point (ideally around $199), but I’m curious if this new, sleek design will be the push commuters need to make the switch to e-reading.  And, let’s not forget, it’s green too!

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Flickr’s 3 Billionth Photo: DSC_2672_1

November 4, 2008 By Leave a Comment

The photo sharing site flickr reached a milestone yesterday when someone uploaded the site’s 3 billionth photo.  The photo is a shot of a door on an abandoned house in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward.

All the hard core flickr loyalists who have been around since the beginning probably took a shot to their ego to find out the photo was uploaded by a relative newb that doesn’t even have a pro account.

According to Webware.com Garrett Ryan Smith, the photographer of the photo, has been using flickr for only a few short days.

“I have been using Flickr for less than a week now,” he said. “My future sister-in law had her first child last week I had my camera with me and took a round of photos…We figured this would be a good way to share the photos with everyone across the United States and also with a family friend serving overseas.”

“Since Katrina hit I have been back to New Orleans numerous times and still cannot believe what it looks like three years later, especially in the Lower Ninth Ward area,” he said.

I have a pro account at flickr and I also have a large amount of storage on Picasa Web.  I generally upload all my photos to both.  

Most of my photos these days are family shots that I like to keep private and share with only certain friends and family.  While I like the community features on flickr better than Picasa Web, I find that for creating albums and sharing them with friends and family I am starting to prefer Picasa more and more, for a number of reasons.

One being it’s great integration with the desktop photo manager of the same name, Picasa.  Both Picasa and Picasa Web have had quite a few updates to them recently that have given them much more functionality and cool toys to use while file and saving your pictures online, including automatic album synching and face recogntion. 

For now, I’ll probably keep uploading my photos to both but I’ve definitely been a longtime advocate of Picasa and you can’t argue with the fact that they’re catching up with flickr with certain new community features.  What’s your preference?

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Facebook Reaches 10 Billion Photo Milestone

October 16, 2008 By Leave a Comment

A pretty huge announcement came in the form of a post on the Engineering @ Facebook’s Notes section of Facebook yesterday.

We recently hit a really cool milestone, our users have now uploaded over 10 billion photos to the site. Now, that’s a big number, but we actually store four image sizes for each uploaded photo, so that’s over 40 billion files. 

To celebrate, we got a bunch of cupcakes and handed them out to our engineering and operations groups. One of our engineers calculated that if we had gotten one cupcake for each of our photos, and lined them up side by side, the line could reach halfway to the moon. 

Some other cool stats about the over 10 billion photos hosted on Facebook:

  • 3,456,271,892 of the photos are of incredibly drunk people.
  • 1,982,120,427 are of minors that look like street walkers.
  • 4,398,284,589 are of attention whores/cougars.
  • 163,320,042 are of people who think their baby is the cutest baby on the planet.
  • 3,050 are of normal people who actually use Facebook for networking.

It’s all true.  I’ve done my research.

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