Archive for January, 2007

1 down, 11 to go

Published
by
Danny
on January 31, 2007
in 365 Days, Flickr, Fun and Photography
. Closed

running on the sunset

First of all, I am totally digging the gorgeous weather we’ve had these past few days. Sunny and mostly clear skies. Clean fresh air. Sure, it’s still freakin’ cold, but it feels good to have the sun shine on me. The clear skies also make for some nice sunsets in the evenings. :)

Secondly…

I completed one month of 365 Days! Woo-hoo!!!

I wasn’t sure if I’d have the motivation to keep it going everyday, but, thanks to all the positive responses on my photos, I feel like this is a worthwhile project to continue. I’m also constantly amazed and inspired by all the great self-portraits in the 365 Days pool. There’s so much creativity there, and all I want to do is copy everything I see. Of course, I’m trying to be as creative as I can on my own, but a little bit of inspiration never hurts. ;)

The thing I’ve found very interesting about this project is that I really don’t have to think too much about taking a self-portrait everyday. I always have a camera with me, so all I have to do is point it at myself or some part of me and snap a photo. In fact, taking a self-portrait has become a daily routine for me. I treat it like I would brushing my teeth, checking my email, and eating. It’s just something I do everyday.

Now that I’ve made this a habit for one month, it’s time to keep it going for 11 more months. Flickr became a daily routine for me a year ago, I don’t see why this can’t be any different. :)

seattle flickrites and art

Published
by
Danny
on January 23, 2007
in Community, Flickr, Local Events and Photography
. Closed

northeast corner

Last Saturday was opening day for the brand new Olympic Sculpture Park, and the Seattle Flickrites descended upon the park with cameras in hand. In fact, thousands of Seattlites with cameras attended opening weekend, so, for the first time ever, all of the Flickrites blended in with the crowd perfectly. That made it difficult to track people down as we naturally split up during the photostroll (some people move faster than others), but we did eventually all meet up again at Cherry Street Coffee House for coffee and snacks later in the day.

The park itself is pretty cool. Loads of neat sculptures, nice landscaping (some of it still in progress), and great views of the bay and the sound. I think that once all the initial madness is out of the way, the park will be a great place to walk around and hang out. I’m thinking I’ll need to go back on a less busy day to do a few self-portraits with the sculptures. Too many fun possibilities there.

I didn’t take too many photos of the sculptures themselves, because I figured there would be enough — and most likely better — photos from other people in attendance. I did get a few interesting photos. Kind of. You can see them in my Flickr photostream. For a better view of the park, check out the Seattle Flickr Meetup pool as well as the Olympic Sculpture Park pool. Some great stuff there.

Also, Monica Guzman from the Seattle P.I. joined us for the meetup and interviewed several Flickrites during the stroll. You can read her article on the Seattle P.I. website.

evening jumping spree

Published
by
Danny
on January 17, 2007
in 365 Days, Flickr, Fun and Photography
. Closed

I’ve got nothing deep or intelligent to write about today (do I ever?). Just going to post a photo of me being silly for the 365 Days project.

it’s thin, it’s shiny, it’s iphone!

Published
by
Danny
on January 9, 2007
in Technology and Toys
. 4 Comments

In case you haven’t been paying attention to tech news for the past couple of hours, this morning Apple announced it’s long-awaited and much-anticipated iPhone at Macworld San Francisco. I’ll be the first to admit that I haven’t been too excited about the idea of Apple making a phone. Sure, Apple has all the technology and talent to put together a kick-ass mobile product, but the main question for me was what would set it apart from the other smartphones on the market.

I’ve looked at the current crop of smartphones available through various carriers, and I haven’t been too impressed. From a functionality standpoint, all of them offer pretty much the same things — voice calls, text messaging, PIM, basic multimedia junk — but none of them have really inspired me to dump my cheap Motorola flip phone. I’ve never really liked Windows Mobile nor the whole Blackberry system, partially because I think they look like ass and partially because I’ve heard nothing but horror stories about getting data to sync on a Mac.

However, iPhone changes things completely. It’s got the functionality I would look for in a mobile device, and it appears to take things up quite a few notches. I won’t bother going down the list of features and whatnot, since I figure people are smart enough to actually look at the iPhone website. I’ll just go down a list of some of my initial reactions on some of the features and potential drawbacks of iPhone.

First, the pros:

Kick-ass UI
I’ve always loved Apple’s approach to UI design, and it looks like the best has made it to iPhone’s interface. Just looking at iPhone’s screens makes you want to use it. It’s not intimidating. The buttons and widgets are nice to look at and make sense. I feel like everything I’m used to seeing and using on a normal desktop system has made the transition to a mobile device.

Multitouch
Remember all those cool touch-screen panels and gadgets you saw in those sci-fi movies? Looks like Apple’s made the first step in making it a reality in daily life. Sure, touch-screen tech isn’t new, but Apple’s implementation is incredibly sweet. Just use your fingers to tap, double-tap, scroll, and zoom on iPhone’s 3.5″ display. No physical buttons needed to do anything (other than the Home button), and that makes more room for a huge display.

Complete suite of mobile lifestyle apps
Voice calls. Text messaging. Music and video support. Built-in camera. Web browser. Email. Widgets for weather, stocks, traffic, maps. It’s all there. These are things that I would use on-the-go and during times when I don’t want to carry a laptop.

Syncs with Macs and Windows machines
This is a huge kicker. Syncing with a Mac is a given, but allowing syncing with Windows really opens things up. That’s what made the iPod so universally popular, and I can see this making iPhone a hit as well.

Multiple wireless protocols
Quad-band GSM, EDGE, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth. Pick one and use it.

And now, the cons (or, rather, some questions/issues that could pop up):

Battery life
Apple quoted 5 hours of talk time and general usage and 16 hours of audio playback. How true will that be under normal circumstances? Admittedly, I don’t talk much on the phone, but I could easily see myself draining iPhone’s battery with less than a day’s worth of internet usage, music and video playback, and text messaging.

Lack of physical buttons
As cool as the multitouch tech is, sometimes it’s just easier to have physical buttons. Touch screen interfaces require you to look at the screen at all times to do anything with the device. With physical buttons, you can go by feel. Some people are going to absolutely love the multitouch interface; others are going to hate it. I’m kind of undecided right now.

Syncing process
How exactly will all the data on the phone get synced with the computer (and vice versa)? Obviously iTunes will be main syncing application, as shown in the demos, but is that the only way to do it? Don’t get me wrong, I love how iTunes works with my iPods, but it seems a bit odd to use it to manage a phone. What about using iSync on a Mac? Will that be supported for things like iCal, Address Book, and other Mac-specific apps?

Camera image quality
Apple kind of breezed past this little detail. There’s a 2 mega-pixel camera on iPhone, but what do the images look like? My gut reaction would be no better than other camera phones. There’s very little space in iPhone to cram in an image sensor, so I anticipate fairly average looking photos.

MacOS X
Yes, it’s cool that iPhone runs a most-likely trimmed down version of OS X, but I wonder how that will affect daily performance. It’s possible that iPhone could try to do too much in such a small device. It’s possible that there might be security issues with a relatively normal OS running a modified version of Safari for web browsing.

Exclusive to Cingular
I’ve been a T-Mobile customer for nearly a decade now and have never had any reason to switch networks. iPhone is exclusive to Cingular and is now tempting me to jump ship. Being a GSM phone, it’s possible that iPhone could work with T-Mobile for voice calls and SMS, but I doubt any of the internet apps would work. If they do, there will definitely be no tech support.

Cost of services
iPhone is a pretty spendy device at $599 for the 8 GB version. I wonder what type of plans and charges will come with it. Will Cingular go with its current internet plans or create a whole new one just for iPhone users? $599 + 2-year contract + month phone charges + internet service charges can add up to whole boatload of money.

iPhone won’t be available until June 2007, so hopefully some of the questions and concerns I (and probably others) have will be answered. Until then, I’m just going to ogle the pretty shiny toy I can’t touch yet.

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