I have to start by saying I am just as guilty as anyone when it comes to this subject, but I have finally seen the error in my ways. Over the last 3-4 years of making digital images I have migrated between a few different cameras. From cheap to mildly expensive. From film to digital. I have by no means “seen it all” but I have a good taste of what’s out there. As with a lot of new hobbies that you start, it is easy to get wrapped up in the gear and tools side of the hobby, which is normal because you are not only learning about new things, but you get to play with them too! Over the years I have ooh’d and ahh’d over certain camera bodies, lenses, tripods, etc. In your head you know that buying a newer, more expensive, body or lens doesn’t make you a better photographer, but maybe it will help right? I think a lot of us feel this way when starting out, “if only I had X, I would make such better images.” Often times, the shiny part of the new piece of gear overtakes logic and you end up with the new item, and yet your photos remain unchanged. How could that have happened?

I recently took a Black & White film photography class at a local college. This class was my first real experience with film. After shooting various assigned projects, we went through the steps of manually processing the film, and then making prints in the dark room. Shooting film was a whole new world; you were still making images, but in a very different way. With digital cameras, the camera does a lot of the heavy lifting for you, but when shooting film, every single aspect of your end result print is 100% your doing. From manual focus, to shutter speed, to proper processing times with the chemistry, to exposure times for photo paper, it’s all you. This class was the beginning of my “new vision of photography”. That sounds kind of weird and deep, but what I mean is the way in which I approach photography as an art form.

The Internet and the age of digital has opened the flood gates to everyone to be creative (or not so creative). I have taken a lot of inspiration from fantastic photographers and artists that I would never know about if it weren’t for places like Flickr and SmugMug. This also means that “competition” is vastly increased when it comes to people finding your particular images interesting. This is where technique and style come into play the most. Anyone can pick up a cameras and press the shutter release, but it take someone with a highly tuned and developed eye to make that image wonderful. No piece of gear will help you tune your creative eye. The next time you are going to do research online about a new tripod or camera body, go outside instead and shoot 10 or 20 photos of things you would never normally shoot.

Longish story short, gear doesn’t matter; forget about it. Anytime you find yourself saying that you could make a better photo if only you had XYZ piece of gear, you are only making excuses. Trust me, I am speaking to myself as much as any of you, so don’t take it personal. I even removed all the gear I was lusting over from my Amazon wish list. I am going to focus on developing my skills over the next 12 months, and just make the absolute best images I can with what I have!

Film. Digital. $20 camera. $20,000 camera. 1MP. 50MP. None of these will change your images, only your vision will.

(@alcedine helped me (did most of the work) with this little mockup!) :)

Fine print: unfortunately due to those pesky things called “laws” I can only send it within the USA.
You will get the Jawbone headset and charger.

Mint - http://www.mint.com

Remember The Milk - http://www.rememberthemilk.com

“Photo Manipulation Apps”

Google Docs - http://docs.google.com

Miro Sync - http://www.getmiro.com

WordPress - http://wordpress.org

Google Navigation - http://www.google.com/mobile/navigation

Amazon - http://www.amazon.com

Qik - http://qik.com

If you are a photographer that shoots with an SLR, you know why you prefer that to your typical point and shoot style camera. Control, picture quality, low light capabilities, etc. Unfortunately, carrying your bulky SLR around with you everywhere does not always cut it. You may be at a party, concert, or just out and about; there are times when an SLR just doesn’t work. You want something more compact that will fit in a pocket and is hassle free. Generally, point and shoot style cameras have too many trade offs to make them desirable to the SLR shooter. I thought the same, until I came across the Canon PowerShot S90. This small point and shoot changed the way I thought about point and shoots. With its wide variety of manual controls, wide aperture, and control ring, I was sold.

The Canon S90 weighs in at just a touch above 6 ounces, and you can pretty much fit it in any pocket. It has a beautiful 3 inch LCD viewfinder on the back complete with intuitive controls for camera settings. You have a large selection of shooting modes as well, complete with aperture priority (Av), shutter priority (Tv), and even full manual mode (M). The S90 has an f/2.0 – 4.9 lens with 3.8x optical zoom, and Image Stabilization. This puts the lens at about a 28 – 105mm focal length. At 10 megapixels, Canon decided to opt for low light capabilities rather than high megapixel count. This is fantastic for photographers, and casual shooters alike. One of the really innovative parts of this camera is the Control Ring. This ring is around the lens and allows you to customize what it controls (aperture, focus, shutter speed, etc.) for all types of creative shooting.

A few other features of note include: built in flash, HDMI out, video mode, and low light scene mode. If you are looking to shoot HD video in addition to making great images, then this is not the camera for you, as it only shoots SD video. However, if you are mainly interested in still shots, then absolutely take a look at this camera.

Pros:
- f/2.0 lens
- Control Ring
- 10.0 Megapixel
- Large beautiful LCD
- Ability to shoot manual
- Turns on very quickly
- Shoots RAW format
- Macro shooting mode
- Low light performance
- Battery Life

Cons:
- No HD video
- On the high end of the price scale

Retail Price: $399

Long Answer: No, I don’t.

By now you have all heard of Facebook. You may use, love, adore, hate, or want to stab it. Either way, the point is, you have heard of it. I never really saw a use case for it that fit anything I wanted to do online so I never signed up for an account. This changed about a month ago when I decided I would give it a shot and see what all the craze was about. I got a lot of pressure from friends on Facebook, saying I “needed to be on it!” Apparently all of the MANY other ways I exploit myself online were not enough. I signed up and was quickly reminded of why I had not signed up for this in the past. The interface alone is enough to make you throw up. The layout is hideously cluttered with everything you don’t want to see or care about. I am no “design expert” but come on already with the horrible ad selection and lack of page layout preferences.

Over the past few weeks it has been hard to read any news without seeing something concerning Facebook security and privacy issues. This may be due to Facebook mis-coding a lot lately, or more than likely, people are finally becoming aware of exactly what is going on with Facebook. I believe the majority of users were blindly using the service assuming the privacy settings they were using were adequate. They really had no reason not to think Facebook was doing things that were in the user’s best interest. That combined with the fact that I think people tend to turn a blind eye when it comes to something they really like.

Facebook, to me, seems to be trying to become the AOL of 1996. They seem to want you to come into Facebook’s world, and once there, never leave. Ever. If what you want is not something tied into Facebook, you don’t really need it. A walled garden, yes. But depending on the type of walls and what the “graden” looks like, that can also be described as a prison. Anytime someone is trying to lock down any part of the web, there is cause for concern.

The fact that Facebook did not seem to solve any problem I had, combined with the fact that they seemed to be doing all they could to give out everyone’s data which the users thought was private, I decided to just get rid of the account before I got burned. I went ahead and went to my account preferences and chose to close my account, or “deactivate” as they called it.

Deactivating turned out to not be the same as deleting. It would seem as though Facebook would like to trick you into thinking you have removed your account when, in fact, you have not. When you “deactivate” your account, all that has been accomplished is that your profile is no longer visible. You are still a user and linked to everything you were linked to before. This is very annoying, and if you want to actually remove your account from their system you have to follow another path. By going to http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?showform=deleteaccount and filling out the necessary info, including captchas, just in case nasty robots try to delete your account! sarcasm

I am by no means saying you should absolutely go delete your account right now. If you find Facebook useful, then keep it. Just be aware that what you think is private online, most likely is not. If you don’t want anyone to see it or know about it, don’t put it online. Have you seen the t-shirt that says “I Read Your Email.”? Ya, that isn’t really a joke. Be careful out there.

There are tons of apps out there for various platforms that are awesome for doing filters and effects on your camera phone photos. The problem is that no one app is available for everyone. What is available to everyone is a physical filters placed in front of your cell phone camera.

I recently stumbled upon a product called Jelly Lens at http://www.jelly-lens.com/. These awesome little filters fit just about every make and model of camera phone. They have a filter on one side and a round sticky circle on the other side so you can just stick the filter over your camera lens on your phone. The sticky material is re-usable and does not leave any marks on your phone.

As of this writing they have 14 different filters you can buy (I bought them all!). The best part? They are only $5 each! And for that 5 bucks you actually get a pretty damn good result. In some cases it actually improves the quality of an image you would get with just your camera phone.

Available Filters:
1. Wide Angle
2. Stretch
3. 6 Image Mirage
4. 3 Image Mirage
5. Heart Frame
6. Blue Filter
7. Star Frame
8. Sepia Filter
9. Polarizer
10. Close Up
11. Soft Lens
12. Starburst
13. Vignette
14. Spark

Short Youtube how-to from @alcedine:

With the arrival of the iPhone in 2007, the game was officially changed. This marked the smartphone revolution. I was, of course, one of the many in line on day one to spend $600 for a phone that, when you look back, didn’t really do very much at all. With the introduction of the iPhone, we all expected the competition to step up and show us some really amazing devices, but sadly, this was not the case at all. The scene turned into a bunch of companies trying to make “iPhone killers” by simply copying features, and usually not very well. No one was innovating. To be honest, I don’t think they were even trying, relying more on false advertising and trickery to move these crappy devices off the shelves.

In October of 2008 Google decided to throw its hat into the ring and compete in this space. They released Android running on the G1. This was potentially the first true competitor to Apple and its iPhone. “Potentially,” being the keyword there. The G1 was met with somewhat positive reviews and attention; however it was obvious that Android in its initial release was very beta and was going to need time to get up to popular demand.

In January 2009 at the Consumer Electronics Show we were shown another company step up to the challenge. Here we saw an announcement from a company that many forgot about or gave up on, a company that was struggling to stay afloat, a company that needed a home run or would risk certain death. That company was Palm. Palm had been hard at work on their new platform, and on that day, they unveiled WebOS. Along with this announcement came new hardware, the Palm Prē, and an amazing new accessory, the Touchstone charging station. This charging station was the first mainstream consumer charger to acheive wirelessless charging through the use of electromagnetic induction; with the added bonus of not needing to house your beautiful phone in a nasty, and very bulky, third party case. All of these announcements were very well received and caused quite a stir of excitement. Unfortunately, the story did not end as well as it started. With a poorly planned launch time (a few days before the iPhone 3GS), low stock count in the stores, somewhat flakey hardware, and a carrier that really didn’t seem all that excited about the product (Sprint); WebOS and the Palm Prē were quickly dismissed and swept into the gutter.

A year later, Palm was back at CES to announce a refreshed line of hardware and updates to the WebOS platform. They announced the Prē Plus and Pixi Plus, with revved up internals and a better build quality. These freshly updated lines also got carrier upgrades, moving to Verizon, and later AT&T as well. Even with the new hardware updates, software updates, and added carrier choices, people are still failing to recognize what this platform has to offer.

I truly believe that the WebOS platform by Palm is the best thing no one knows about. When every other company is spending 90% of their budget on marketing and 10% on innovation of the product, it feels as though Palm did exactly the opposite and spent 90% on innovation. Every aspect of the platform and phone feel as though someone actually thought it out and used it before committing. The user interface of WebOS is such a pleasure to use and navigate. You get exactly what you want every time.

On all the other platforms I always found the need to hack/jailbreak/root the device to make it truly what I wanted it to be. This never ended well; it was always a pain to update to the latest software builds, and usually made the phone less reliable. With WebOS, there is none of that. Palm embraces developers and open source like no other company I have seen. Android says they are open, but compared to WebOS, they are as closed as the iPhone. With the iPhone, Blackberry, and Android, the operating system feels as though it was not built for you. WebOS, on the other hand, feels very organic, like it was made to be a true extension of you. WebOS works for you, rather than against you. WebOS makes using a smartphone a joy again, rather than a constant headache. If you are not 100% happy with your current phone, there is a way to be: give WebOS a try and see what the world of smartphones is supposed to be like.

RTFM Beta $Fr.ee
Still in beta, but works great for accessing your Remember The Milk account on the go!

aniWeather $Fr.ee
Very cool little animated weather app for checking weather in locations of your choice.

Slacker Radio $Fr.ee
Mobile app for accessing Slack Radio from anywhere.

Tweet Me $1.50
A new Twitter client that just set the bar for WebOS Twitter clients!

Gowalla $Fr.ee
Check in everywhere you go on Gowalla!

MyQ for Netflix $3.00
Add, edit, and view movies on your Netflix Q from anywhere you are.

Google Latitude Assistant $1.49
A much needed addition to WebOS. This allows your phone to update your Google Latitude as intervals specified by you.

WootOn! $Fr.ee
A very good interface for looking at the various Woot! properties.

Preware $Fr.ee
A package management application for the Palm Pre. Preware allows the user to install any package from any of the open standard package repositories on preware.org (or any other location that hosts an open standard package repository). Preware relies on a custom written service developed from community research which allows the mojo app to talk to the built-in ipkg tool.

The product has come a very long way in just a few years. The first Eye-Fi card was a 2GB model that supported transfer of JPEG images to your computer and your favorite photo sharing sites. Flash forward to 2010 when the newest card, the Eye-Fi Pro X2, was released. This insanely powerful card boasts 8GB of storage, the ability to transfer the RAW file format, geotagging, 802.11n WiFi, SDHC Class 6 Read&Write speeds, and a brand new feature called “Endless Memory Mode”. With 8GB of memory, you might think it is basically endless already, but what they have done with this new feature is quite brilliant. Endless Memory Mode will begin to free up space on the card by removing images that have already been uploaded safely to their destination. Finally, a card that never runs out! A huge bonus that comes along with this feature is that the card is effectively backing up your photos as well. It is all well and good to have a giant card for your photos, but if that card is the only place they exist, if that card dies on you, you have lost everything.

Of course, the new Pro X2 card is not for everyone, as you may not need all of these very high-end features. Good news is that Eye-Fi offers a range of cards which will fit any style and level of photographer. From Point & Shoot to Digital SLR, these cards are a must have for your camera!

For more Information please visit: http://eye.fi/
Retail Price: $149.99

Barnes & Noble launched their eReader, nook, in November of last year. But due to supply shortage and high demand on pre-orders, it was tough to get one until February of this year. A major plus for the nook from a selling standpoint is physical retail space. Barns & Noble will have nooks in their retail stores right in front of customers who may want an eReader device but are not ready to commit to a somewhat high purchase price online, sight unseen. The ability to have tactile feedback from the device is a selling point that is tough to beat.

In today’s world of multitasking, a device that does one thing can be a tough sell. But when it comes to an area like reading, you want simple and elegant. Just the words wrapping around each other and intertwining to form the intricate design of story telling. Sure, your smartphone, or laptop lets you read books. But they only accomplish the task, they don’t excel. eReaders are meant to do one thing, and do it very well. Electronic ink is meant to mimic the look of ink on paper.

Everyone is busy with their modern lives. Life has a way of making you think there just simply isn’t enough time. Some have even famously said, “no one reads anymore.” Reading a large novel can be intimidating, let alone in order to actually read it when you have a spare moment you must have the book with you. The nook solves these common problems eloquently. Weighing in at just a little over 12 ounces, it can be taken almost anywhere. As for a large novel being intimidating, the nook ensures that every book, no matter the number of pages is a mere half inch thick.

With value added features like expandable memory, replaceable battery, color navigation screen on the bottom, the open Android Operating System, and support for the open ePub book format, the nook truly is leading the pack when it comes to electronic paper media consumption. Will this change? of course, it wouldn’t be technology if it didn’t. That said, the nook stands to stay in the lead for a while given the limitless possibilities with software updates to the versatile device.

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/nook/

Well, to be honest, very little! I switched from using an iPhone to using Android in November of 2009. After switching I never looked back. To this day I do not regret it one bit. Sure the platform is a little less polished, but it is so much more forward thinking and open. This makes it number one for me. All that being said, there is one thing that is absolutely driving me up the wall; OS updates. I see a huge problem in the way Android OS updates are rolled out. I am mostly speaking to version 2.0 and later since all the 1.x builds were still, in my opinion, in Android’d infancy stage. When the OS hit 2.0, I felt it was ready for prime time.

Since Android is open source, anyone can grab the OS and modify it how they see fit. A lot of hardware manufacturers are doing just that. It’s great on the one hand because you get a bunch of cool versions of the OS, it sucks on the other though because updates to those handsets are very slow to come and are never up to date with the virgin “Google Experience” phones. If a handset maker wants to make a custom OS version, at this point, they seem to be locked into using older 1.5 and 1.6 versions of the OS code. This sucks for the consumer because even with a brand new phone they are stuck with 3-6 month old technology on day one of using the phone.

With each new release of the OS like 2.0 and 2.1, the new OS seems to launch with a single phone. With 2.0 it was the Motorola Droid. With 2.1 it was Google’s very own Nexus One. Meanwhile everyone else is stuck with whatever version their phone came with. This almost makes it seem like if you want the latest OS you have to buy whatever phone is launched with it. This of course will not work.

I am not sure what, if any, are the technical reasons for this. Perhaps drivers for specific hardware are the culprit. What I would like to see is a more uniform release schedule of OS updates. If drivers are the problem, there should be a more common specification for how hardware is to talk to the OS and every handset maker should follow that spec. If you want to have a hardware keyboard, here is how it talks to the OS, same with touchscreens, trackballs, cameras, speakers, and so forth. Something similar to how USB peripherals work on a computer. If i get a new USB keyboard, no matter what it looks like, it still types normally. There should not be a difference in how an HTC keyboard talks to the OS vs. how a Motorola keyboard does.

I use a Motorola Droid so I have a “Google Experience” Phone. In this case I would like to see updates hosted by google. When google put out the Nexus One with 2.1, I would have liked to see a ROM download for “Google Experience 2.1 Update” and one for each of the carriers if necessary. This would ensure the platform keeps moving forward, and applications are more likely to work across the board

Currently in the Android market you are seeing over and over applications that say “does not work with droid” or “must have 1.5″. If the latest version of the OS were more readily available, I think more developers would be developing for the newest version and taking advantage of all the newest updates have to offer

So, to say that Android sucks, would be a gross mistake. Android is absolutely fantastic! Any of the problems I have seen up to this point are all nothing to worry about. I had an iPhone from the very first day it was launched, and to be honest it sucked until half way through version 2.0 also. Although I love Android and recommend it to a lot of my friends, I would still not recommend my mom use it, but very soon in the near future I think I probably will be able to.

Handcent SMS – A frontend for SMS/MMS. Adds a great deal of functionality to Android for messaging.

Home++ – A full home replacement that looks great and is coming along very nicely.

Movies – Find movies, theaters, and even manage your Netflix Queue.

Wifi Analyzer – A graphical WiFi analyzer.

Foursquare – Official app for the Foursquare service.

NewsRob – RSS reader with Google Reader sync.

Yelp – Official app for the Yelp service.

Seesmic – Relatively new to Android, but a fantastic Twitter client. I use Tweetdeck day to day on my laptop, but seesmic is very similar.

Advanced Task Killer – A must have app to manage running applications and even schedule app killing.

Barcode Scanner – All around barcode scanner for prodcucts or QR codes.

Evernote – Official Evernote app. Have your notes everywhere. Always synced.

DroidLive – Shoutcast internet radio player. Beautiful UI.

Remember The Milk – Official app for the best to-do list service there is, Remember The Milk.

Qik – Live stream DVD quality video from your phone.

LOLcats – Gotta get your daily fix of cheesburgerz!

Google Maps w/ Navigation – Hands down, THE BEST turn by turn navigation software I have ever used.

Weather Widget – Absolutely beautiful widget for the weather, with cool animations.

Amazon.com – Official Amazon shopping app.

Autorotate Widget – A quick one tap widget that will enable/disable the accelerometer for screen rotation.

AppsInstaller – Installer to install .apk files.

ASTRO File Manager – The best file manager I have found to date for browsing files in the Android filesystem.

Feel free to add more apps in the comments below or let me know what apps I should have picked. I will most likely have late additions since the year isn’t actually over yet. :)

You get the toothbrush body, a couple brush heads, the external LCD display, and a dock type charger / brush head holder for the counter. You can use this toothbrush for multiple people since you can remove the brush head. The External LCD display not only tells you how long to brush on each section of your mouth, but also tells you when you are brushing too hard and when it is time to replace your brush head. Sounds gimmicky, but it is a really nice addition. Not to mention, it’s a nice clock for the bathroom.

My mouth has never felt as clean as it does after using this toothbrush! Once you use it, you won’t go back to a normal toothbrush. A little pricey, but totally worth it I think. I mean after all, I wrote a friggin review about it on my blog. :)

That’s it, short and sweet. Buy it at Amazon.