Author: jamesclay

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150 Million Images

Number One

150 million images have been uploaded to the photo service Instagram have announced in their blog.

…we’re excited to announce that more than 150 million photos have been shared on Instagram and Instagrammers now share photos with one another at a rate of 15 photos per second. If you don’t yet have Instagram, you can find it for free, exclusively in the Apple App Store.

I really do like Instagram, it’s quick and easy to use and also importantly I think fun.

The filters, though nowhere near what you can do with pro tools such as Photoshop, are nice and to be honest with Instagram you are not trying to be a professional photographer, no you are messing about with an image and sharing it with friends.

As well as posting to Instagram you can share the link with Twitter, Facebook and upload the image to Flickr. You can also do Tumblr, Foursquare or even e-mail.

I use the images I have taken a fair bit too, by uploading them automatically to Flickr I can then use the Flickr embed code to add them to my blogs.

Welsh Castle

If you have an iPhone then do check out Instagram and have a play. If you have an Android phone, well maybe one day you will be able to join the fun!

Related Post: Instagram on the Desktop

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Foursquared Out

I can probably blame (thank) David for this.

I am now no longer using Foursquare and no longer checking in to places. Though depressingly at the time of writing I am still the Mayor of Morrisons!

After having a podcast discussion with David about it (over on the e-Learning Stuff Blog) I did question why I was using Foursquare, what I was getting out of it, and potential benefits to me. I also wondered what educational benefits there were with learners using such a service within college.

To be honest apart from the satisfaction in “earning” badges I didn’t really see much benefit from using Foursquare. Very few of my “local” friends were using it, so even if did check-in to my local Costa, as none of my friends were using it, I wouldn’t know they were there…. well I guess I could just look round!

At the end of the day, for me it was a game, that wasn’t really that entertaining and when the GPS failed to lock on was quite frustrating. After chatting with David, I started to use it less and then just stopped. Not missed it at all.

There is probably something to be said to learners checking into college and seeing if their friends are there, or their co-collaborators and meeting up, but not sure if Foursquare is the best tool for that. At least with something like Places on Facebook there is chat built in too.

So are you still on Foursquare and if so what are you doing with it, or getting out of it?


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How long….

Last night I needed to download a 364MB update file.

I was totally surprised that according to Safari that it was going to take nearly ten hours!

I knew it wasn’t my end as my connection was working fine. I even checked by downloading the 666MB iOS 4.3.5 update from Apple, and though it was nearly twice the size it only took three minutes from the iTunes servers.

Putting it down to the remote server, I left it to download overnight. Reminded me of the time when I was less fortunate and didn’t have the speed of fibre.

Came down the next morning to find that the download had failed to download properly.

So I set it go again, expecting that it would take a fair few hours again…

Nope did it in a couple of minutes!

Putting it down to the remote server having issues last night.

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Instagram on the Desktop

Playing around with Instagram today I found out about two desktop applications for the Mac that allow you to interact with your Instagram feed from your Mac desktop.

Neither allow you to post from the Mac (which is a pity) but both do allow you to “like” and “comment” on the images from your feed.

Uploading images is forbidden by Instagram which allows only uploads from mobile devices.

Instadesk

InstaDesk lets you not only browse your or your friends Instagram pictures, but easily explore the social graph and find new people to follow.

Instead, with InstaDesk you can browse beautiful pictures, newest uploads of your friends, or interesting people to follow. Furthermore, you can comment on pictures, like them, download them, or watch them in slideshows.

Download Instadesk from the Mac App Store – £1.49

Carousel

Carousel is a simple, beautiful way to explore Instagram on your Mac in a minimal footprint. View your feed, popular photos, your photos, comment, like, save photos and much, much more. We’ve also implemented a full set of keyboard commands to make operation flawless and four wonderful themes to personalize Carousel to your liking.

Download Carousel from the Mac App Store – £2.99

Of course there are a few web based services out there that allow you to view your Instagram feed in a browser. However the couple I have tried are either not very reliable or are limited in how you can share feeds with non-Instagram users (not that you can do that with a desktop app).

Though Twitter is available in the browser, lots of people use Desktop Apps to access Twitter, these apps for Instagram may work for you allowing you to access your Instagram feed from your Mac rather than your iPhone.


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BookBook Case for iPhone

Clicking a link on Twitter I did enjoy watching this little video about an iPhone case.

Yes I know I need to get out more, but, well there is no but! I really need to get out more.

I do like this case and am tempted to get one for my iPhone, compared to other iPhone cases I didn’t think $59.99 was too bad a price, especially as it will replace my wallet.

The company also make similar covers for MacBooks and the iPad, but think I like the case for the iPhone best. Though you can the MacBook cover and the iPad cover on Amazon, you can’t at the time of writing get the iPhone case in the UK yet. Soon I hope.

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OneNote in the UK (finally)

Finally OneNote for the iPhone is now available in the UK.

If you work within a Microsoft Office ecosystem and have access to OneNote on your PC then this app will be a really useful addition to your iPhone.

Microsoft OneNote Mobile is an easy-to-use note-taking application for capturing all of your ideas and to-dos on the go, brought to you by Microsoft Office.

With OneNote Mobile, create searchable notes with text, pictures, bullets, and checkboxes. Then keep your notes in sync using free Windows Live SkyDrive cloud storage to access, edit and manage them from virtually anywhere, from your PC or almost any web browser.

Worringly it does say…

**Free for a limited time**

So get it now before it becomes expensive!

No idea why it was US only before, but geographical limitations on apps and services seem to be the norm these days.

By the way if OneNote sound a lot like Evernote then yes you would be right. Having immersed myself in an Evernote ecosystem, I probably won’t be using OneNote. Evernote is available on the iPhone and the iPad for instance, as well as native apps for Mac OS X, Windows and through the browser. However if a lot of people in my college start to use OneNote and we’re sharing notes then I may need to use it more, so pleased to see the iPhone App now available in the UK.

Get OneNote for iPhone from the App Store.

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Podcast Choice #04 – This Week in Photography

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 This Week in Photography.

Join Alex Lindsay, Frederick Van Johnson, and friends each week as they discuss camera technique, technology, and news. With in-depth guest interviews, and discussion around everything from taking family photos, to understanding how state-of-the-art cameras work — you’ll hear it all on This Week in Photography.

Despite the name, this podcast is not from the Twit stable, but does feature some Twit regulars, which is how I heard about it.

I do like taking photographs, but compared to some people I know such as Mark Power, Ian Dolphin and Rob Stillwell I know very little about taking photographs.

What I like about this podcast is that it tells me about what’s new in photography as well tips and tricks on taking better photographs.

This podcast is aimed at people who already know about taking photographs and certainly isn’t recommended for those who are just starting out in photography as I am sure you will get lost. Hey I think I know something about photography and even I get lost in this podcast sometimes.

If you are interested in what new photography technologies are coming out, what professionals use to take photographs, tips and tricks to taking better photographs and tools and technologies to improve photographs through software.

Subscribe to TWiP on the iTunes Store.

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Installed the Lion

I have now installed Mac OS X Lion on the kid’s computer. Well it’s a good test machine and it it goes all wrong, I can just format and reinstall Snow Leopard. It’s an older Core 2 Duo iMac so not state of the art, but still does a great job as a home computer.

The install process was quick and easy and the Mac seems to work just fine.

There are quite a few old apps on there and some now no longer work as they were for my old PowerPC Mac and relied on Rosetta, which isn’t part of Lion and doesn’t work on Lion.

No real problem as I don’t use those apps myself, but something to be aware of if you do use older apps. To find which Rosetta apps are on your system, use System Profiler.

System Profiler > Software > Applications

Select by Kind and look for PowerPC.

These apps won’t work in Lion, do you will either need to find alternative apps or not upgrade!

Though there are some fundamental differences between Snow Leopard and Lion, you can “ignore” much of the changes and have a system that feels and looks more like Snow Leopard than the iOSation of many of the features of Lion.

Having said that I quite like Launchpad and certainly much easier to use than the Applications folder in Finder.

Still not 100% sure if I will install Lion on my main production iMac as I do have a couple of key PowerPC apps that I still use and there aren’t currently Universal or Intel alternatives. Also still have a few concerns about Adobe. What I will do though is install it on an external drive connected to my iMac and by using that on a regular basis I will have a much better idea if I like it or not.

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1 million downloads

Apple have announced that there have been over one million downloads of the Lion OS X operating system from the Mac App Store.

That’s a lot of data at 3.49GB per download and £21m worth of revenue to Apple. Though with £47bn cash reserves that is mere pocket change for Apple, but not bad for one day methinks.

I haven’t downloaded it yet, but concerns about my Adobe software is making me hesitant about installing it on my main iMac. Adobe have published a list of known issues with Lion 10.7 and Adobe products. Previous experience with Adobe tells me they rarely update their current software, but release a completely new version that is compatible with the new operation system…

I will probably install it on an external drive and possibly on the kids’ computer and try it on there first.

So have you downloaded and installed it? What do you think? Is it a worthwhile upgrade?