July 14, 2009...................................................................................HOME..................................................."Favorite Things To Smile About"
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Favorite Things... Some Maccentric, Some for the Masses
If you’re here reading my blog, we’re friends, right? And when photography has blessed you with countless friends, what could nicer than sharing things that make you happy. So here are some of my favorite things. Things, simple to sophisticated, free to worth every penny you pay, common place to esoteric, that just bring a smile to my face each time I use them. And that’s the reason for this blog post, to share some smiles. Some are only for Mac users, others are for all of us.
The Big No Brainer: iPhone
Live on this planet? Then you know. But if you haven’t had your hands on one, do the Nike thing. I’m a tech lover and this device is the pinnacle of all my years wandering down the technology aisles. 24 / 7 / 365 it changes my life by giving me a portal to the world like nothing else that has ever existed. I just can’t say enough so will stop here... except to mention a couple of iPhone apps that make the iPhone, well, remember the American Express card ad... “Don’t leave home without it” ? Well forget the credit card, it’s the iPhone you don’t want out of your reach.
www.Apple.com
eBooks, Kindle, and the iPhone
I love to read. It used to be a hassle to lug around books. Even paperbacks were something of a nuisance when traveling, never mind that they were at home when you got stuck waiting in a traffic jam on the interstate or in a doctor’s office (the nerve of those doctors...). Enter E-books. I’ve been a fan of digital books for many years, ever since I discovered them on old PDAs. One little device, carry 10 novels around, read at night in bed on a backlit screen that doesn’t bother your bed partner, and turns off automatically if you fall asleep... awesome. When the iPhone hit, I knew it was only a matter of time til its superb screen became a digital book screen. I’ve sampled several different iPhone eBook readers, but I’m taken right now with Amazon’s Kindle app for iPhone. Not only is it free, but it makes buying books from Amazon incredibly easy and the Amazon book prices are the best, saving huge bucks over a visit to the bookstore. If you happen to also be a real Kindle owner, the iPhone app and Kindle talk to each other wirelessly, so that the farthest read page is monitored. Whichever device you open the book on, the technology takes you to where you last read. Wow. A great example of technology that hits the mark.
iTunes App Store
Shapewriter
Another iPhone app, Shapewriter is a very unique alternative to the iPhone keyboard. I don’t find the iPhone keyboard a problem for short emails, text messaging and the like, but I’ll admit if I have a long email, or document I want to write on the road, typing letter by letter gets tedious. Shapewriter approaches data entry from an entirely different perspective. Visualize a flat keyboard. To type a word you touch the first letter, but instead of lifting away your finger, you just drag it to the second letter, then the third, etc, until your finish spelling the word... then you lift your finger. Now imagine instead of your finger, you had traced the exact same pattern from key to key with a pencil. You’d have a unique shape, right. By knowing on which key you started, you’d know all the letters on which you paused and the order they happened. So you’d know what word was spelled. You wouldn’t? Well Shapewriter does. It seems outlandish, but you can quickly drag you finger around and spell words without ever even lifting your finger. Its way cool and makes writing longer pieces much more palatable. You type in the Shapewriter app and then export your document, including a “direct to email” function since that is where most of the writing is destined to end up.
iTunes App Store
SplashID for iPhone and the Desktop
Damn, 56 isn’t old. But my 56 year old brain is struggling with the state of the 2009 world, specifically when it comes to proving my identity. Who would have ever foreseen it? The password dilemma from hell. You ALL know what I’m talking about. And credit card numbers, expiration dates, social security numbers for your kids and parents... the list goes on and on. It’s just too much and will only get worse. SplashID (or some program like it) is almost mandatory is you want to keep your data available for reference, yet keep it secure. SplashID has a desktop version and an iPhone version that “talk” to each other so all your entries sync and keep you both current and backed up. Check it out. Hardly a day goes by I’m not poking my nose in there to find a number. The saving grace is you only have to remember one password to get into SplashID. Even my pre-Alzheimer’s brain can handle that... today. iTunes App Store
For Photographers Only: Magic Hour / Helios
Knowing when the magic light of sunrise and sunset will happen is BIG if you are a photographer. When you are traveling it can be tough to access a newspaper or the web to find these answers. These iPhone apps are two very different solutions to providing these answers. Magic Hour is cheap, but provides useful information, going beyond simple sunrise / sunset times to give astronomical, nautical, civil, and actual sunrise times (and the sunset equivalents). The other times relate to the stages of light appearing in the sky before the sun actually breaks the horizon. If you’re a photographer you know sky colors before sunrise and after sunset are some of the best. Helios, in contrast, is expensive as iPhone apps go ($30). But the information it provides is serious. We’re talking major league serious, as in this is the app to use if you are Steven Spielberg and need to know where on the compass points the sun will rise on a given day, what angle the sun will be in the sky tomorrow at 5pm, or how long shadows will be at 5pm for a 6’ tall actor. Needless to say, if you’re serious about how the sun will illuminate your subject, the price of admission is reasonable.
iTunes App Store
For Nikon Photographers: Sofortbild
I know. You’re looking at the word Sofortbild and thinking, Mark just had a stroke. Poor guy can’t type anymore. Guess again. Sofortbild is German for “picture immediately”. This is freeware ( !!!!!! ) that is worth buying if you need it (you may not realize you need it yet). It is an elegant program that lets you connect your Nikon DSLR to your Mac laptop and instantly import your image into the computer (called tethered shooting). Not only do you get direct file import, displaying the image on your computer screen instead of the camera LCD, but you can control the camera from the laptop. It also includes intervalometer settings so if you are inclined, you can do time lapse photography, saving the files to your computer along the way. I intend to use the program to do live demonstrations when I’m teaching and have the sample images I’m making instantly appear on the screen for the audience. Its great technology and free, although I made a PayPal donation to the author. Stefan Hafeneger is a young man with a promising future in computers and software (doing an internship with Apple at the moment).
www.sofortbildapp.com
Need to FTP? Transmit makes it easy.
Sending big files around the internet can be a pain. They are often rejected if attached to an email, and trying to send using your regular browser is not reliable. The best answer is dedicated FTP (File Transfer Protocol) software. The program has the smarts to log onto your recipients computer and move the file(s) from your computer to his. If you do electronic business, especially in the imaging industry, sooner or later (probably sooner) you’ll be asked to FTP someone your file. If they ask and you don’t know how, just nod and say “OK, no problem, give me the FTP information.” Then get Transmit or another similar FTP program and plug in the information they gave you. No reason your client needs to know you weren’t FTP savvy!
www.panic.com
Working with PDF files: PDFPen
PDFs are everywhere. They are the truly portable document format that almost any computer can easily read. But managing them, i.e., opening a contract pdf, adding information, electronically signing it and emailing it back... not so easy unless you really know what you’re up to. This simple little app makes everything I just said easy. It’s inexpensive and will make you realize how useful sending and working with pdf format documents can be.
www.smileonmymac.com
Google Desktop
This is a little app that runs in the background on your computer. Hit a dedicated key twice quickly and a little window pops up, where you can type the first few letters of a name, and Google desktop will search your computer instantly and offer to launch that app or open that document for you. Its so easy, you’ll love not having to click apps on the dock or go looking on your hard drive for some file you know the name of but can’t remember which folder is the location. Another freebie that is just plain fun to use, and a real productivity enhancement.
desktop.google.com
Off Site Backup: Carbonite
We all know we should backup. Some of even try to be good about it. Some of us are good about it, but don’t take the last step that really safeguards our data: keeping a backup copy off site. Somewhere else, so if our house floods, burns down, or gets burglarized, we’re not devastated when all the hard drives are ruined or stolen. Carbonite is a VERY reasonable ($54.95 / year) service that backs up your hard drive(s) in the background. You tell it what to back up and after the initial backup, it watches for changes and backs up anything with modified dates. AND the price tag is for unlimited backup. You can back up 10MB, 100MB, or 100GB all for the same price. My files are backing up as we speak. I’m going to sleep better knowing that my photo archive, in which I’ve invested years and a new career to produce, are finally backed up off site. Check it out. YOU SHOULD DO THIS. www.carbonite.com
Paperless Records: Paperless and/or Neat Receipts
This is something everyone should consider. It really can take some of the sting out of the paperwork shuffle. If you’re like me (well few of you are that demented but still...) when you need some “important” document, half the time you can’t remember what drawer it’s in, or admit it... you didn’t save it. These solutions work with a small scanner to quickly scan any document and store it on your computer for painless retrieval. Bank statements, insurance documents, medical records, estate papers, love letters... keep them all filed away where you can find them without ever going to the attic again. Once you start filing this way you’ll see other opportunities that make life easier. Remember, these suggestions are about smiling.
www.marinersoftware.com
www.neatco.com
ROR Lens Cleaner
Why would I list lens cleaner among my favorite things? Because I really like my glasses and lenses clean. Clean as in spotless. I’ve tried a whole variety of lens cleaners over the years, before I happened into a bottle of this in a Texas photo store. It was so good I called the company to tell them, and met “the company”, Reuel Kaplan. Reuel is an entrepreneur who along the way had a need for a really good glass cleaner, so he did the research and invented the formula for ROR (Residual Oil Remover). Where other lens cleaners just smear oils around into a uniform thin film (ever seen those streaks of sun when you put your “clean” glasses back on... residual oil film), ROR dissolves the film and leaves your critical glass immaculate.
www.ror.net
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