So I had to show my Mom how to operate my digital SLR for this one. It came out pretty good. This is at the lower falls in Montezuma, Costa Rica.
I thought the colors stayed pretty good for converting this to an animated GIF, if you click the image for a larger version it looks pretty good too. I used GIFQuickMaker, which I got from the MacApp store.
Yeah, I know I’ve shown you high-def video of a similar thing not so long ago (but I’m in Montezuma again, so I’m doing it again), but I’m playing with the photos and animation software so you get it again.
This week’s question isWhat do you use for your alarm clock – an actual alarm clock or your phone (or maybe the sun, your kids, your pet, other)?
Sleep is a complicated issue for me, I like a fan or a white noise machine (fortunately there’s a White Noise app* for that) to help me sleep. Generally I sleep with a fan on, that automatically turns itself off about 10 minutes before the alarm clock; if I got enough sleep, sometimes that’s enough to wake me up. Then a few minutes later a bright “natural” light turns itself on. Then the alarms start going off, the alarm clock (with the traffic report), then the phone alarm, then the alarm clock CD player (currently an upbeat Avril song is playing), then the phone again. And my friend Mark will call sometimes to make sure I’m up…
* The White Noise iPhone app I mentioned is great, it’s got lots of sounds (I like the white noise) and timers (countdown, alarms, etc.). It’s quite possibly the best $2 I’ve spent in the app store.
I’m not sure what kind of playback unit this is, probably digital, but it doesn’t look like it. The screen was only about 4 or 5 inches diagonal and had some kind of touchscreen interface. It looked like it was ancient and belonged in a rack in an old TV studio.
Now while I’m picking on it, I do realize this was probably pretty cool technology when it came out. But these days the could probably just be using a $200 iPod touch for it. That’s probably 15 pounds they’re not flying around for hundreds of thousands of miles a year (a month?). And while they’re at it, ditch these old TV monitors (that weigh a ton) and put in some cheap LCD screens that barely weigh anything…
The audio isn’t that great, I’m kinda hoarse and the plan is kinda noisy.
Please note, I shot this with my iPhone on the plane, uploaded it to YouTube (via GoGo) and typed this text and posted it while sitting on a plane. That is so cool (IMHO).
Skype 3.0 has now been released for the iPhone and it now supports video! Of course it supports the front and rear cameras on the iPhone 4! And it does the calls over 3G too! And it’s free. What are you waiting for? Go get Skype with video right now…
What’s New in Version 3.0 Improvements:
Make Skype to Skype video calls on WiFi and 3G*
Call Skype desktop users (Mac OS X or Windows) and other iPhone users.
Two-way video calls supported on iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS and iPod touch 4th gen.
Receive only video supported on iPad and iPod touch 3rd gen, with no camera.
Make video calls in portrait and landscape.
kype video calling requires iOS 4.0 or above.
*Additional Data charges may apply
What more can I say other than go try it out?
Actually, I could say “Where was this for the last 10 days when I was in Costa Rica?!?“.
The Word Lens application is amazing, one of the best uses of augmented reality yet! You just point it at a sign (or any text) and it removes the words that are there and superimposes the translation over the old text.
The program is free and if you want to test it out, it’s two translation modes: “erase the text” and “reverse the letters”, while not very useful, make a great demonstration. The Spanish-to-English dictionary is $9.99 (they also have English-to-Spanish for an additional $9.99).
Here’s the sign that was taped up that I wanted to read.
It’s not the best video, but I really wanted to demonstrate this in a real world example. And since in the middle of recording the video I realized it was time for my bus, it’s pretty real world…
You’ll want to make the video full screen to actually be able to read it (and maybe you’ll need to pause it to really see what’s going on).
As I said you’ll want to look at it full screen (in HD) or you won’t be able to see the action on the iPHone screeen, so be sure not to just watch the embedded version.
I forgot to mention, no internet connection is required to use it! Once you purchase a dictionary it’s on your device (I assume it runs on the iPod touch with the camera also), it’s actually got a “dictionary” where you can look up words.
UPDATE: Now they also have Russian, Portuguese, German, Italian, and French available. To be clear the program translates back and forth between English and the other languages, but does not translate between the other languages (yet!).
So a nice free video player came out for the iPhone (which also works on the iPad and iPod Touch) called VLC Media Player;
it’s the video player for Macintosh and Windows (IMHO).
What’s great about this program? It lets you play all sorts of video files on your iDevice without converting them first. The other bonus is that it lets you delete them when you are done, freeing up space for photos and video. It plays more than a few formats, but if you try some high-def Blu-Ray files it’s not going to have enough power to play them.
Here’s the problem, it might get pulled from the iTunes store due to some weird legalities*. So download it now. I actually think it’s been out for the iPad for a while, but it just came out for the
* Short answer with small words – The (source code) software is free and the program can must be freely distributed, but technically the iTunes app store puts on protection, so technically it’s not freely distributed, you must have an iTunes account.
I like using a NewsReader on my iPhone (or iPod Touch) and one of my favorites is Doppler. It’s easy to use and it synchronizes with Google Reader so it makes off-line reading easy to do. So this means that when you read an article it marks it as read on Google so you don’t end up reading it again.
It caches all your RSS feeds for off-line reading so it’s pretty fast when you’re going through the news since it cached it in advance; but this means you do click to click on the link a minute before you’re ready to read since it doesn’t download in the background. I usually tap it before I leave the house since it’s faster on the WiFi, even if I don’t read it soon, it’s cached most of the recent articles so that when I do sync over 3G it’s already got most of the new news…
TIP: When configuring to sync with Google it lists all your individual feeds at the top of the list, but if you scroll to the bottom of the list you can choose your “folders” as defined in Google Ready
I’m mentioning this software today because it’s free for download until July 20th, 2010. It’s worth the money, but free is better, isn’t it?
This photo was taken north of St. Pete Beach, FL. Possibly Medina?. Click it for a 1200 pixel wide version. A few stitching problems due to everyone not standing still but still a nice photo considering I was shooting into the sun during the evening.
The second photo is the same photo, but just before cropping.
