Street view now goes underwater.
Have you upgraded?
1000th Instagram
A week or so ago I posted my 1000th image to Instagram and to be honest it’s not one of my favourites or one of my best…
It’s a cooker!
It is part of my Instagram project for 2012, #366photos, in which I take a photograph every day during 2012 and post it to Instagram. You can see all the images I have taken for the project on my Flickr account.
A nice feature of Instagram is the functionality to also post to Flickr. You can also post to other social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr. I do like Instagram and I see it less as a photographic app and much more a social app.
Making movies on the iPad
In a recent post on e-Learning Stuff I mentioned that Avid Studio was one of my favourite apps for the iPad.
Avid Studio – Many people think of the iPad as a consumption device, however with apps like Avid, the iPad becomes a creation tool. This is an excellent and very powerful video editing app. You can either import video or shoot video (using the iPad camera) and then do all the things you would expect in a video editing app. I like Avid’s traditional look and approach to video editing which is different to Apple’s iMovie app.
Corel have recently purchased Avid’s consumer video editing tools and as a result have rebranded Avid Studio as Pinnacle Studio. If you open up Avid Studio you get a pop up saying that it won’t get anymore support and you should download Pinnacle Studio. You might be a little upset as Avid Studio did cost £4.99. Well for the moment at least Pinnacle Studio is free (and is free to everyone).
Big-screen moviemaking comes to the touchscreen with Pinnacle® Studio for iPad. Our leading film-editing technology brings you an easy-to-use app that enables you to quickly edit video, audio, and photos at the speed of your creativity.
Swiftly arrange your clips in the Storyboard, make precision edits using the Timeline, and add high-quality transitions, effects, and a soundtrack. Enjoy 1080p output support and share your movie directly to YouTube, Facebook, Box and more—or export your project to Pinnacle® Studio for the PC and continue editing with even more advanced tools.
So if you are thinking about editing movies on your iPad and want something a little more traditional than iMovie (and is free) then you might want to look at Pinnacle Studio.
iPhone 5 Promo leaked…
Via Justin Spooner
Podcast Choice #08 – In Beta
I have been asked a fair few times about the different podcasts I listen to. I not only have a lengthy commute to work, but also travel a fair bit for work, so it’s vital to me to have something to listen to. This series will discuss and review the different podcasts I listen to or have listened to. In a previous blog post I spoke about the why and how I listen to podcasts, now we look at the actual podcasts I listen to.
This week’s podcast is In Beta.
In Beta is a talk show about the ever-changing state of web-based and open source software. We examine how “ship first, fix later” affects our tools and culture, with an emphasis on mobile, social, and web apps. Hosted by Gina Trapani & Kevin Purdy.
In another podcast choice I recommended This Week in Google, one of the regular hosts of that show, Gina Trapani along with Kevin Purdy have started their own podcast, In Beta.
If you enjoy This Week in Google then I think you will also enjoy In Beta, which though is different in terms of style and content, is familiar and comfortable.
The structure is quite simple, Gina and Kevin chat and discuss a variety of issues, some topical, some not. Their conversation is somewhat technical and developer focussed, rather than looking at the social implications of the beta culture. Not that they don’t venture into that area, but this is very much a geeky podcast and they wear the geek label on their sleeves. However this is not a heavy technical geeky podcast talking about code. No much more talking about software development and how changes by companies such as Apple and Google have an impact. Kevin and Gina in addition do discuss social tools such as Instagram and Twitter, but the focus is very much on the developer perspective and how changes to the APIs impact on third party developers.
I am not a developer and really know very little about coding and programming, however I have found this an interesting insight into the minds of programmers and developing software. This is a relatively new podcast, at the time of writing they are at episode ten, but the content so far has been good and I think it has settled into a enjoyable conversation about software, development and open source. If you are interested in coding from a developer’s perspective and how they approach software development in a conversational format, then do have a look at In Beta.
Snapseeding
Out of all the many photo editing apps on my iPad, the one I like the most at the moment (and the one I use the most too) is Snapseed. I do use Apple’s iPhoto a fair bit, but when it comes to creating a particular kind of image, I prefer Snapseed.
I was particularly pleased with the way this image of the Matthew at the Bristol Harbour Festival turned our, almost like an oil painting with the shadows and textures.
What I do like about Snapseed is how it well it makes use of the touch interface on the iPad. It’s even usable on the iPhone, but to be honest I much prefer the screen estate of the iPad for image editing.
If you like editing images and haven’t already then I would seriously have a look at Snapseed.
Not quite one of those days, but nearly…
Got slightly annoyed with my iMac the other day. Came home from a day out, switched the iMac on and it just stuck there on the grey startup screen with the grey apple and the grey swirly thingymajig!
I was reminded of my iMac problem in May when attempting to upgrade to Lion, my hard drive failed…
I tried to start in safe mode… and that didn’t work.
I did manage to get into recover mode and verify and repair disk permissions.
I did try a few other things and none of them worked… it wasn’t helping that I couldn’t access apple.com through my broadband connection. No idea why that wasn’t working.
The only real option left, according to what I was reading was to reinstall Lion. In theory I could do that with Internet Recovery, however with the ADSL connection I am now on, downloading 4GB of Lion install file reliably wasn’t really an option. I do have the Lion install on a DVD, but even that didn’t work…
In the end I decided that, as I am still covered by Applecare, that I would take it the Genius Bar at my local Apple store; so I made an appointment for the following morning. I then put the iMac into Firewire Target Disk Mode and backed up my important files. Not too bad in some respects as I had done a full backup back in May, and incremental since then, so not too many files to sort out. This time though I did do a backup of the Home Library folder. I forgot to do that last time and lost a few important files as a result as the data was stored there rather than the Documents folder!
The following morning, I needed to drop my car off for a MOT, so after checking the files had backed up, I (for some reason) decided to restart the Mac and leaving the grey swirly thingymajig to swirl I drove off to the garage. Having dropped the car off, grabbed some breakfast and got a lift home, I decided I had better pack the iMac before heading off to the Apple store. I was therefore quite surprised to see that it had booted properly and I could see my desktop. I decided to check that it was working as it should and restarted the system…. it started correctly!
Hmmm, not sure exactly what the initial problem was then. I suspect that there was something that wasn’t working correctly from a software perspective and leaving the Mac to reboot for an hour or so was what it needed to sort itself out. Still a little concerned though.
I cancelled the Genius Bar appointment and have since then put the iMac through its paces without any problems.
The car passed the MOT too…
Climbing the mountain to see the lion
Today sees the release of the next incarnation of the Mac operating system, OS X, Mountain Lion 10.8. It was announced back in February and back then I wrote my initial thoughts based on the announcement. As when Snow Leopard replaces Leopard, Mountain Lion in many ways is an incremental update to Lion.
OS X Mountain Lion is the latest release of the world’s most advanced desktop operating system. Mountain Lion includes over 200 new features to update your Mac into the best computing experience yet. With the new Messages app, you can send text, photos, videos, contacts, web links and documents to anyone using another Mac, iPhone, iPad or iPod touch — you can even start a conversation on one device and continue it on another. The new Share button makes it easy to share files, web pages, photos and videos, as well as tweet straight from the app you’re using. With the Reminders app, you can create to-do lists and alerts that appear in the new Notification Center. With Notes, you can write down all your ideas and even speak your words with Voice Dictation. Play head-to-head games on your Mac with friends on their Macs or iOS devices with Game Center. And with iCloud built in, it’s simple to keep all your mail, contacts, calendars, reminders, notes, to-do lists, music, photos, iWork files, PDFs and more up to date across all your devices.
There are some interesting new features, there is the continued iOSiffication and deeper intergration with iOS devices. Speech to text is now built into the OS, though as with most speech to text you will need a quiet room and I can’t see myself talking to my computer in the office, unless I can shut the door and have the office to myself.
There is also notifications, which if you have been using Growl will realise has a similar functionality, you can configure it to let you know about Twitter responses, and other messages from various applications.
Finally Safari does what Chrome does and you can use the address field to either enter an URL or a search term. Countless times as I move between Chrome and Safari I have got annoyed with Safari as I type in a search term, only to have a ‘doh’ moment as I realise I have typed it into the address field and not the search. Combining the two has a few issues (for example if you want to search on an URL and not actually go there), but the advantages outweigh the disadvantages in my opinion.
One aspect of Chrome I like (especially since I got the Nexus 7) is the syncing of tabs and history, when iOS 6 is released this will come to Safari. iCloud Tabs makes the last websites you looked at accessible on your iPhone, iPad and Mac.
I do like the Share button, this is a feature I do use on the iPad so it will be nice to have it on the desktop. However having said that, with all the Facebook issues I have read about, I won’t be integrating OS X with Facebook anytime soon (nor will I do that when iOS 6 is released. Hopefully third party apps may take advantage of sharing, and embed it into their applications. I am really thinking about Firefox and Chrome at this point.
Reminders also comes to the Mac and I am thinking I might take advantage of that as it does integrate nicely with iOS. The same has happened with Notes, though I don’t think I will be replacing that with Evernote anytime soon. I like in Evernote how I can add image and audio notes as well as text notes.
There is better iCloud integration, but it still doesn’t work as I would like it to, so I can see myself staying with Dropbox for the foreseeable future.
I am not a great user of messaging services, but I think, again with the better integration with iOS that I may take advantage of it.
One downside for me is the size of the install file, at 4.05GB this is one big download and having recently switched from FTTC back to ADSL this was a very slow download…
As I said at the beginning this is very much an incremental upgrade, so I would be really disappointed to pay £100 for this, the price though is just £13.99 which is incredibly cheap for an OS upgrade compared to what we have paid in the past. Also, as it is on the App Store means that for £13.99 you can download and install it on all the Macs you own or control.
Amazon Basics Black Stylus
I’ve wanted to get a stylus for my iPad for a while now, but never really got round to buying one. I was recently buying some consumables for my printer at Amazon so doing a quick search, found this Amazon Basics Black Stylus
I was really pleased with it and it works really well. It’s great for doing brushwork on an application like Brushes and also allows you to interact with the screen as though you were using your finger. Obviously if you rely and use multi-touch gestures then you’re not going to be able to do those with this.
One advantage of using a stylus is from an accessibility perspective, I can see this making it much easier for visually impaired people to use VoiceOver for example.
It also works really well if you have really dry hands or eczema. The capacitive screens you find on the iPad (or the Nexus 7) often don’t work well. The stylus helps with that problem.
Personally I think it might be really useful when it’s cold and I am wearing gloves! Should also work with the iPhone too.