PhotoCycle Teaser

June 5, 2008 By

PhotoCycle is a new Video Show with Robert Scoble, Thomas Hawk and Marc Silber.

It hasn’t launched yet, but here is a little teaser.  This is one show I am really looking forward to!

If the video embed below doesn’t work, here is the direct link. 

 

First, we’ll, be taking you to meet some of the true masters of photography such as our walk with Annie Leibovitz through her show. She told us how she got some of her remarkable shots, for example her nude Vanity Fair cover of Demi Moore.  As Annie told it “Demi led the shoot and dropped her dress”

We’ll also be checking in with the family of photography masters such as our trip  to Yosemite with Michael Adams, Ansel’s son where he told us stories such as how Ansel got his famous shot of the moon over half dome, taken on his way to happy hour—just like you or I could have!

We’ll stop at Wildcat Hill, Edward Weston’s home and stand where he shot many of his famous images and talk with his grandson Kim, who by the way also shoots nudes—should be interesting.

We’ll be going on classic PhotoWalks where we strike out to accessible, photo-rich locations to see shots, discuss how to get them and again learn from these experiences.

We’ll also be exploring the business side of photography to get an inside view of making a living with photography.

Finally we’ll be passing along weekly tips and tricks to better your craft. We’ll learn from those who have mastered digital photography.

PhotoCycle will take you to meet some of the world’s top innovators in photography, yet I’ll be tailoring the show to you and your interests.

Filed Under: Misc, Reviews

Playing with Silverlight

May 9, 2008 By
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The "Deep Zoom" Feature in Microsoft Silverlight (Silverlight 2 beta 1) is pretty cool.  To play with it I made a collection of some of my daughters artwork.

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Silverlight lets you zoom in, drag the page around, double click to zoom, etc.

 

 

 

Click on the picture to open a new browser window.  If you don’t have Silverlight installed, you can get it here.  You will need it to watch the Olympics on NBC.com anyway :)

Filed Under: Personal, Useful Tools Tagged With:

Did Twitter get me on Alltop? Probably.

March 30, 2008 By

I started getting some hits from Alltop.com a few weeks ago – not many, and never seemingly from the same URL.  I dismissed them.  Of course, I follow Guy Kawasaki in Twitter (and he follows me) – so I know well what Alltop is.

Alltop aggregates RSS feed – "the best of the blogs" but they also sort them by category – and they have a lot of categories.

Today I got a dozen hits from http://life.alltop.com before I wondered what was up.  So I went and looked.  If you scroll down a bit, there is my blog, on the left.

I think the "life" section is probably where my blog belongs – because I talk way more about personal stuff than tech – and when I do talk tech, it’s normally personal!

About an hour later I got an email from Guy Kawasaki telling me they added me to Alltop – a canned email, but that’s cool.

So how did my blog make it?  My Technorati rank is ok – I’ve been in the top 100k often.  My subscribers via FeedBurner isn’t huge – averages 115 people/month.  So how did I get any attention?

I can only guess it was via Twitter.  Depending on who is online and active I may or may not Twit about a new blog post.  If I think it fits the (current) audience, I will.

Twitter gives you a huge voice.  But I’ve found I moderate (usually) what I Twit about depending on who is online, and active.  My Twitter friends online in the daytime are mostly different from those online at 1am.

And I appreciate that Alltop included my blog – it is just another way to make a new connection.

Filed Under: Community, Reviews, startups Tagged With: , ,

WordPress 2.5 RC1 Widget Interface – I don’t like it

March 29, 2008 By
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[Update - literally just as I posted this WP 2.5 was officially released.  The widget interface is, I am afraid, unchanged from RC1]

I’m sure people worked very hard designing the new Widget admin interface for WordPress 2.5 – and I really don’t like criticizing someone else’s work.  But I don’t understand the thought process here. 

A perfectly functional (and very simple) interface was completely abandoned in favor of a very busy, very dysfunctional interface.

(click images for larger view)

old_wp

 

To the left is the old interface. 

To add a widget to a sidebar you grabbed the widget from the bottom selection and dragged it onto the sidebar you wanted it on. 

You dragged the widgets to the order you preferred. 

And you clicked "Save Changes".  Everything was on one page, in one place.

Simple. Elegant, even

 

Why did it change?  Especially, why did it change to this:

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As you can see, I can’t even view all my widgets without scrolling the screen. 

And I can’t view both Sidebars at once. 

Really.

Seriously – you can’t. 

You can’t just drag a widget from Sidebar 2 to Sidebar 1, either.

In fact, it takes three mouse clicks to change from Sidebar 1 to Sidebar 2.

And each widget now consumes a fair amount of screen real-estate in the admin view.  Why?  Just to show the text that tells me a Calendar widget puts a calendar on my blog?  Why not just do that with a tool-tip as I mouse over the widget?

 

 

Here’s a suggested new layout:

wp_new1

Note that there are now two columns to display the widgets – less screen scrolling.

Both Sidebars are displayed.  No screen switching.

This would allow you to drag and drop widgets from one Sidebar to the other.

For the most part, the changes I have seen in WordPress 2.5 are nice – and they make sense.

This new interface for managing widgets isn’t in that category.  This is a huge step backwards in usability.

The changes to widget management seem to have done "just because we can" – and they don’t seem to have given much any consideration to the user experience.

But then – this is just a Release Candidate – so things could change before WordPress 2.5 ships.

For the sake and sanity of every WordPress administrator out there, let’s hope this section does change.

Filed Under: Reviews, Widgets Tagged With: , , ,

Consumer Relations Done Right – Mitsubishi Electronics

March 28, 2008 By
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Customers_logo_Mitsibishi Last year, I blogged that I had purchased a new TV.  It is a Mitsubishi 57 inch DLP High Def TV, and I have really enjoyed it.  So have my kids, and their friends.  They’ve played a lot of hours of Halo on this TV!

So this week, 1 year and three weeks after I bought the TV the projection lamp died.  Of course, it was three weeks after the warranty expired.  I called Mitsubishi parts and the woman on the phone was extremely nice.  I was in a good mood, even though I had just found that this bulb would cost me over 250 US dollars!  I was joking around, and making her laugh and she thanked me for not being upset.  I told her that there wasn’t any reason for me to be mad at her, and then I said, "If I would have called you a couple weeks ago when the "lamp" light first came on, I would have had the replacement by now".

Well, my remembering that saved me $250.  Remembering it, and being nice to the lady.  She put me in contact with Mitsubishi Consumer Relations – and they agreed to cover the bulb under warranty, since it started failing during the warranty!

Thanks, Mitsubishi.  I will do business with you again!

Filed Under: Customers, Reviews
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