The New iPod

Of course I'm posting about this. I think you'd be more surprised if I didn't post.

Ok, so first off, it's not fat! It's an optical illusion. Check for yourself, the new iPod is the same length and width as the previous generations. You can get the old specs from my over-the-top comparison I did before and then compare that to the new specs. 4.1 x 2.4 is the magic ratio. It looks different because the screen is bigger and the scroll wheel appears smaller.

Now, how did Apple fare in my wishlist?

60gig - check
Under $500 - check
Color screen and photo features - check
A depth less than .5 inches - yes on the 30gig, reeeeeeeeal close on the 60gig (.55)
Video capability - bonus

I'm a man of my word, so I ordered the 60gig white one earlier tonight. I expect my 3G to start giving my the cold shoulder now.

Now, video playback. I'm glad it's there. I'm glad the focus is still music. I'm jumping up and down with joy now that I can buy shows. I really hope that expands the way the music store has. It might get to the point where I could run the numbers and ditch expanded cable and just buy the shows that I'd normally watch on those channels higher up the dial. Battery life - ugg. 2 hours when playing video? That's just crap. Good thing it will get 20 hours playing music.

I downloaded a Lost episode. It looks ok on my 19" LCD. Not fantastic, but it will look good on the 2.5" screen on the iPod. I'm curious to see how long it takes for tonight's Lost episode to become available for download. Somehow I didn't have the ReplayTV set and we didn't get it recorded. I was ready to spend the $2 right then and there. I won't pay for every show, but there are cases where I will. I'm hoping that 1/4 VGA isn't the end all. I'll pay for high quality video delivered over the web.

Happy Halloween - Bluetooth Style

Happy Halloween and don't forget to visit Frightmare Forest

Don't Shade My Shine

Has anyone else noticed the new, hip thing in UIs? Well, it's the half shine, of course! Take a look at these examples from Office 12 and iTunes 5.




Ok, so maybe the half shine isn't new. Apple used this technique on its buttons for apple.com way back in 2002. Go check the archive. I just seem to be noticing this more lately. Can anyone point me to the first use of this by either Apple or Microsoft? Is Office 12 Microsoft's first use of the half shine? This post seems to suggest this is the first time Office has used it.

The Office 12 UI is shaping up to be pretty cool. There is a great blog on it. It is really nice to see the developers letting the rest of us take a look in on their thought processes. I'd love to do something similar at work, but I have a feeling that isn't going to happen. Microsoft is doing a great job with this. I guess it is all about developers, developers, developers.

Evil 9.99

Need some new music? The iTMS continues to impress me. First off, they have the newest Y4K, a DJ mix series, over a month before it is set to release.
Even better, it's by none other than Evil Nine. Even better, it appears to be an import to the US, which means Amazon wants $20, but the iTMS will give it to you for $9.99. This is some thumping, grinding, mixing. If you liked Crooked, you will fall in love with "Heel and Toe". I highly recommend picking this up.



Ohh, did I mention that I WANT FRICKIN GAPLESS PLAYBACK on my iPod? I want to break the thing everytime it harshes my groove. Head nod, head nod ... silent pause - DAMN IT!


While you're at it, take a look at the newest Global Underground release - Synchronised. This is an even better deal. $4.50 for a full album? I'll take 2 for that price :)

Take a Look

I don't think I can sustain a photoblog like Ian does, but I do have a few pictures I'd like to share from a recent trip to Illinois. Surprisingly, none of the pictures that I took in Chicago made the cut.

Some large fungus


Halloween fungus - This one's for you Ian


Cabins in White Pines Forest State Park


Moist Flowers in Illinois


Be careful passing on the left


Some sweet kayaks. The 3 person one has to be over 20ft. long.


Simplicity

Where Am I?

The geek athlete isn't as rare as you might think. There are plenty of us out there and we enjoy the tech as much as we enjoy the challenge.

I just wanted to take a moment and highlight two particularly interesting, bike mountable, GPS units I ran in to recently.

The first is from Garmin. I like Garmin. They seem to be ramping up their product development lately. Their latest, the Edge 305, has definitely grabbed my attention.


This is not only a tight little GPS, it also performs typical bike computer functions, and can talk to a heart rate monitor or wireless cadence monitor. It even allows you to race against your ghost from a previous trip. If you've played Wipeout or Gran Turismo on the Playstation, you know where they got the idea. I like bikes and I've been looking for a thinner, lighter unit to replace my Garmin eTrex Legend which I mostly use for Geocaching and hiking. The only thing that brings me pause is the cost. Nearly $400. Ouch.

The other device is from TomTom. The Rider is much larger than the Edge, but it is aimed at different functions. Color screen, turn by turn spoken directions, and Bluetooth. TomTom appears to be targeting this mainly to Motorcycles, but you could pimp this on your beach cruiser I guess.


The thing to take note of here is the Bluetooth in the Rider. TomTom is adding this to many of their GPS devices. It allows the unit to gather new info, over Bluetooth, when connected to a Bluetooth enabled phone. This is cool stuff. I've been saying this for years now, but I want to see Bluetooth included more and more in higher end electronics. All you have to do is include the hardware and give us a way to get some software on there and we'll take care of the rest.

Connect the Dots

So I'm watching Breakin' 2 the other day... have you stopped laughing yet? Good, I'll continue. So the movie opens and the credits tell me it is a Golan Globus production. Eh? I know that name. That's a recording alias of Joshua Ryan, a producer I like a lot. Joshua Ryan has the Golan Globus track "Blazer" on his "By Design" mix CD. The mix CD is quite good. I recommend it highly. I love "Blazer" and (trivia alert) MTV was even using it during a few of its jumpy, jazzy, "we're MTV" commercials last year. You can listen to it over at golanglobus.com, or better yet, buy it on iTMS. Version 2 is my favorite.

So who's this other Golan Globus? Well, apparently these two guys, Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, produced a ton of films during the 80s including Superman IV. It makes me wonder which movie Joshua Ryan liked so much that he named himself after the producers.

Ziggy Zocky

As part of our recent trip to Colorado, we attended Oktoberfest in beautiful Breckenridge. The weather was great. It was supposed to be cool, but it was sunny and warm. The beer was cold and the food tasted great. We had pretzels, brats, and fish tacos.



I also found the shelves in the porta-potties perfect for holding my beer stein.



A good time was had by all and I hope to attend again sometime.

Bike Camping

Julie and I took a mid-week adventure just to switch things up a bit. I've been talking for a while that it would be fun to go camping, and use our bikes to get there. Given the limited range on our bikes, our choices of places to camp were few. We decided on Pleasant Creek. It's pretty close and we were able to take the Cedar Valley Nature Trail up to Center Point and then ride in to the park from the northeast through the Lewis Bottoms.

The ride turned out to be a little longer than expected (30 miles), but overall not bad. The worst of it is riding on 2 lane county roads which might as well be the autobahn. I swear one car went by at over 80mph.

It's getting dark early this time of year, so we didn't have much daylight to do anything at the park. We attempted to start a fire, but were unable to find any decent brush to burn. Funny thing. You can't really carry firewood on a bike :) I did take some "fire started". I bet you didn't know that MSDN magazine puts up a fight to flame. That stuff just would not burn!

Being the outdoor geek that I am, this wouldn't be complete without talking up the gear that made the trip enjoyable. First off, I'm continually impressed with my Gregory Advent Pro backpack. The backpack is fantastically comfortable and does a great job at controlling loads. I used it before on a weeklong trip, so I already knew it was good, but that didn't stop me from appreciating it on this trip as well. I forgot I was even wearing it at times and it was jammed full with our tent, my sleeping bag, Julie's pillow, some clothes, and my headlamp.

I was also able to finally try out my new bike light. My Light & Motion Vega was great. On the way out, I kept it lit at a low setting, just for visibility to passing cars. At camp, I popped it off the handlebar mount and used it as a flashlight and mini-lantern in the tent. Having a bike light without an added battery bag lets the light serve a lot of purposes, so I was glad I chose that one. The next morning, it lit our way on the 10 mile road ride in the dark in to Center Point. We didn't have any problems with cars being able to see us and the Vega tossed out plenty of light. Even though the sun was up shortly after that, I left it on the rest of the way, just to test the battery life. I was quite impressed. I got a burn life past what they state and this was only the second charge cycle it has been through.

If I had it to do over, I think I would take the following morning off, just to allow for a little extra sleep, but I would definitely do this mini-adventure again. So, who wants to go on the next one? You don't even have to ride. You can meet us at the park with some cold beer... and firewood.

Ride your bike.

Bluetooth as Fashion?

I'm with this guy, gadgets are cool, but, in my opinion, you don't need to wear them on your body when they aren't in use. Just like the goofy cell phone on your belt, don't wear your headset when it isn't in use and you aren't expecting a call.

Be sure to check out the link. It made me laugh.

PHCR:Round 5:Clue 4

Written Clue - Don't be silly, look at the picture.



Send in your guess

PHCR:Round 5:Clue 3

Written Clue - Is it modern?



Send in your guess

Communication Identity

Phone numbers are stupid! The fact that they exist is a burden we must live with, but the numbers themselves have no business being displayed to humans. The folks that designed the Internet knew this. You don't type 216.239.39.99 in to your web browser, you type google.com. You don't even have to type the http: part, and you usually don't have to type the www part. The software figures that out. Yet we still get "I'm sorry, you must dial a 1 before dialing that number", and we still have to remember a random string of numbers to talk to our friends? Why? Why? Why?

We need a communication identity. What's a communication identity? Well, it's you, and all of the forms of communication that you can participate in, at that moment in time. Maybe you are at work and you have email, IM, and a phone. Fantastic. Maybe you are at a movie, and IM is appropriate. Maybe you are in the middle of Utah and email can stack up for you while you are gone. The point is, when I want to communicate with "Bob", I should just communicate with Bob in whatever medium is appropriate.

The techinical details below the identity can be hidden. Phone numbers can change. Email addys can change. Your family and friends don't even need to know this is happening. The identity should just auto update over the Internet when you make a change. How many "old cell" numbers have you called? This is 2005, there's no need for that anymore.

A few of you have heard me get all breathless talking about this before. I was reminded of it again this week when I installed Google Talk. Wow. First off, I love Google Talk. The interface is clean, simple, and has little touches that make it better than others I have used. Google Talk does something cool. Each person pretty much has a communication identity. When I double click the contacts name, I am presented a chat window and two buttons at the top. Those buttons are Email and Phone. I get to choose my communication medium. I'm in love. Now, phone is attached to a service built in to Google Talk, but it seems like this could be expanded to attach to a cell phone or perhaps a Vonage soft phone in your computer for traditional "phone" calls.

How cool would it be to have a traditional phone that plugs in to your computer over USB and then works with the Call button in Google Talk. Doesn't seem too hard. It's just a speaker and a mic piped in to USB. Things like the iMic already are that thing. Slap the guts in to an old handset and you have yourself a Google Phone. Hmm, maybe I'll try building that.

The thing is, these communication identities are never going to get off the ground until our phones get smarter. We need to be able to toss our contact info around easier. IR failed terribly at that. Bluetooth has a better chance at succeeding, but I've seen enough bad software to know that isn't an easy road to travel either.

My final comment is on single sign on. Passport failed, and the Liberty project is all but unknown, but the Google beast has a chance at succeeding here. With Google Talk, I can now login to both Gmail and Google Talk with one login, my Gmail address. Now, why they can't tie this in to my Blogger identity, and my AdSense identity, I have no idea, but at least we have something to start with. Another key ingredient to Communication Identity is single sign on. Now, I'm not saying all of your communication forms have to be with the same company, but your communication client will need to be able to sign you in to all of your communication forms with one login or the whole thing is doomed.

PHCR:Round 5:Clue 2

Written Clue - It's just an expression



Send in your guess

A Gathering of Bluetooth Headphones

I don't have much to say here, I just wanted to put together a summary post of some Bluetooth headphones that have been released. The last ones, from Plantronics are the most interesting to me. I don't like behind the head designs and I don't mind big headphones so they fit my style requirements. They can't be any bigger than the Sonys I wear everyday. They also seem to have some good tech behind them. If I decide to pick up the Platronics ones, I'll be sure to post a review.


Bluetake iPhono




Creative CB2530
Review at hardwarezone




Logitech




Plantronics Headphones - Review at Yahoo! News

Edit: At Jason's request, some prices.
iPhono: ~$170 - A2DP, Headset, Hands Free, Class 2, Multiple Pairings
Creative: ~$200 - A2DP, Bluetooth 1.2, Class 2
Logitech: $150 - Class 3
Plantronics: $150 without dongle, $200 with - A2DP

PHCR:Round 5:Clue 1

This is round 5 and the last round of the game. Scoring update to follow in the comments. Today's photo is in black and white. Who needs color?



Send in your guess

PHCR:Round 4:Clue 4

Written Clue: Are you down with the 3rd clue?



Send in your guees

Quit Whining - Ride Your Bike

I don't normally read msn.com, but it is the default homepage on a computer at work and one of the stories caught my eye today.

In the story about the costliest city to drive in is a great chart listing out the prices of gas around the world. Let's touch on a few highlights.

All of these prices are for one gallon

United States - $2.30
Brazil - $3.64
Ireland - $4.71
Germany - $5.21
United Kingdom - $5.60
Netherlands - $6.21
Venezuela - $0.12

Take a moment to let that sink in. Ok, now, have you complained about the price of gas in the last few weeks? LIAR! Yes, you have. This is another case of us not realizing how great we have it. I've been saying this a lot lately, but I want the price of gas to rise. Maybe then people will wake up and demand better fuel efficiency in their cars. Maybe then they'll ride their bike to work, or walk to the frickin mailbox, or demand better mass transit.

Sure, you'll point the finger at me and my gas sucking metal monster, but I was plenty aware of the fuel costs and I knew that I wouldn't drive that vehicle a tenth of what some people do (DJ!). I also put my money where my mouth is. I try to ride in to work 1-2 times a week, although I wish I could drag my butt out of bed for 4-5 times. I'll also ride to see friends if they live close.

I guess if you take anything away from this, let it be this. Rising gas prices should not rule your life. Adapt and conserve.... and ride your bike. If you don't have a bike, buy one with the money you'll save on gas.

PHCR:Round 4:Clue 3

Written Clue: Protection from above




Send in your guess

PHCR:Round 4:Clue 2

Written Clue: Take a walk




Send in your guess

Paddle the Cedar River

On Friday, Julie and I took a kayak trip from Indian Creek to Palisades Kepler State Park. The trip was through the Indian Creek Nature Center, but was run by Seatasea Watersports, a relatively new scuba, paddle, and swim shop in Cedar Rapids.

The trip was great. We met at the Indian Creek Nature Center, received some basic instruction, carried our boats down to Indian Creek, and navigated the short distance in to the Cedar River. The float to Palisades took a little over two hours. Along the way, you could do whatever you wanted, as long as you stayed somewhat near to the group. I paddled a little faster than the group, so I took the opportunity to really try out the boat I got. I paddled across the river, upstream, fast, slow, and even backwards for a while. I had a lot of fun.

It was a perfect night. Temperature was in the low 80s. The water was warm. We saw hawks, eagles, deer, turtles, fish, and many birds. It was very peaceful. Other than our 13 kayaks, we didn't see any other boats the whole way.

I highly recommend taking this trip. They are doing more of these in September and you can do a few other trips with Seatasea or even rent the boats and make your own trip. We are definitely going to do another trip, either with Seatasea, or just renting from Seatasea, so if you are interested, let me know and we'll get a trip going.

One last note. Seatasea is having demo days to try out their kayaks on the next two Wednesdays, August 23rd, and 30th.

A light light

This is such a simple idea, I love it. SolLight is selling a solar powered, LED water bottle cap. They call it the LightCap. The idea is that your water bottle is out in the sun most of the day charging and then at night, the LEDs will shine through the bottom of the cap, through the water and sides of the bottle and provide some illumination to your tent or table. Now, certainly this isn't meant to be a primary light source for car camping, but I'd like to buy one of these for hiking, backpacking, and what I call, airplane camping (pack light because you don't have much room).

When I'm camping, there are always two items that are within reach at night, and those are my headlamp and a bottle of water. The headlamp will still be needed for getting up and walking around in the dark, but I think a LightCap will take over the duty of lighting the tent while I'm in it.

My only complaints about this are that it appears you must buy a bottle along with the cap. That means it probably doesn't fit a normal Nalgene bottle and I really don't need another bottle. I've got plenty. Maybe someone (*cough* Black Diamond *cough*) will come along and make a similar product that just fits on a standard bottle.

The price is reasonable ($25), time to order one up.

PHCR:Round 4:Clue 1

Sorry for the delay in today's picture. I'll count this as day 0. Correct guesses sent in on Sunday will still get full points.




Send in your guess

PHCR:Round 3:Clue 4

Written Clue - It is Downtown




Send in your guess

PHCR:Round 3:Clue 3

Written Clue - Train Harder




Send in your guess

PHCR:Round 3:Clue 2

Written Clue - Off the beaten path




Send in your guess

PHCR:Round 3:Clue 1

Round 3 begins. Look for a scoring update in the comments of this post.



Send in your guess

PHCR:Round 2:Clue 4

Round 3 starts tomorrow. The scoring is much tighter now. Photo bonuses are making a difference.

Written Clue - You are an idiot if you can't get it based on the picture.




Send in your guess

PHCR:Round 2:Clue 3

Written Clue - The sky is the limit




Send in your guess

PHCR:Round 2:Clue 2

Written Clue - Right this way




Send in your guess

PHCR:Round 2:Clue 1

Round 2 is starting. Samantha and Jason are tied for first with 15 points each after round 1.





Send in your guess

PHCR:Round 1:Clue 4

Today is the last day of Round 1. A new round starts tomorrow. I'll post standings for Round 1 as well.

Written Clue - It takes a village.




Send in your guess

PHCR:Round 1:Clue 3

Day 3 has arrived.

Written Clue - Check it out.




Send in your guess

PHCR:Round 1:Clue 2

We're off to a good start. There is some good discussion going on and I think a few of you are on to something.

Written Clue - The time is now.




Send in your guess

Update: Two people have successfully identified the location. A full round summary will be provided at the end of the round.

PHCR:Round 1:Clue 1

And so it begins.
First, some more rules.
- You can work in teams if you want, and please bring in a friend or two if you like.
- Unlike Jeopardy, I'm not going to stick to your first answer. Just like bar room trivia games, if you change your mind, that's fine, but you'll sacrifice your earlier point possibility.
- Earning the bonus points for the picture can come seperate from your guess, but it must be received within the round, and it must have you in the picture. I don't care how you get in there. Ask a stranger, stretch your arm, whatever.
- Guesses should be sent to ryan@sadida.com


Round 1 - ding ding

Photo Hunt CR

I'm going to try something a little bigger than normal here. I'm again asking for some crowd participation. I have an idea for a "name that location" type of game. Here's how this is going to work.

* On Monday I'll post a photo of a location in the Cedar Rapids area. These will be interesting locations. Perhaps places you drive by everyday but never took a moment to soak in. Maybe they'll be unexplored territory for you. Maybe they'll be obvious locations, but the pictures will be purposely obtuse.
* Your job is to identify the location and email me with your guess.
* You earn points for your guess. The points start at 10 and decrease to 1 over time. Points are only awarded for correct guesses and they must be specific. Day 1 guess = 10 points. Day 2 = 5. Day 3 = 3. Day 4 = 1.
* I'll post more pictures and clues on the location as the week goes on.
* 5 bonus points can be obtained by taking a picture of yourself at the mystery location. These can be earned on any day during the round.
* A new round starts every 5th day. For this first game, we'll do 5 rounds.
* The winner gets a secret prize, oohhhhhhhhh.

Please leave a comment if you are even remotely interested in this.

Silly, Silly, Pictures

I took these pictures on my trip to Alaska. I realize they are only mildly amusing, but I'm only mildly amusing, so these seem appropriate.

The Internet? I hear they have that on computers these days
It made me laugh to see "Internet" written in that old west style lettering.


You ever take it off any sweet jumps?
You usually don't see this kind of bike on the roof of a car. Wouldn't they have fit in the glove compartment?

Morning Fire

Here is a photo I took while riding my bike this morning. It was a very peaceful ride and I managed to make it to work seconds before the skies opened up and poured rain.

Feng Shui

I've been on a simplification kick lately. Less clutter, less stuff, less to worry about. Moving my main machine to a Mac mini (crap, that's a lot of m's) has helped me simplify my computer room. I'm finally happy with the room. The cables are under control, the deskspace is adequate, and I just enjoy being in the room. Here are a couple of pictures of the desk and the electronics cluster in the corner.

Personal Content Production

In my efforts to give Apple as much of my money as possible, I've recently been experimenting with creating books in iPhoto and ordering up large prints of some photos. For the most part, I've been quite satisfied. I like iPhoto a lot, even if it is a bit slow on my admittedly low end Mac mini. I have had iPhoto crash on me a couple of times and when it crashed, it took some of my work with it. That's no good, and now I don't trust it completely. Every half hour or so, I'll do a Quit and Restart of iPhoto, just to gurantee my changes aren't lost. Man I hate doing that.

Anyway, while looking through my nicely bound and printed iPhoto books, I got to thinking..."Why doesn't Apple do this for all sorts of content production?". Apple likes to make a big deal of their Made on a Mac slogan. It even says so right in the back of the iPhoto books. They are also looking to pull more people to their platform and they've always been known to have the full solution. For instance, with iPhoto you can import and organize your own photos and then you can order prints and books. You can make your own songs in Garage Band. How come you can't order your own CDs with your own art on them? You can make your own DVDs in iDVD. How come you can't order your own DVDs with disc art and cover art? Sure you can burn these things and write on them with a sharpie. You can even print decent looking art on your home printer, but you can print decent looking photos too, but I'd still rather pay a few bucks to get the size I want, the quality I want, and get it right the first time.

I first thought this might be a copyright thing. Apple probably doesn't want to get in the middle of producing small runs of bootlegs, but this issue exists with photos too. There are even cases of some places refusing to print photos because they look too professional and therefore are probably covered by someone else's copyright. So maybe they lack an ordering system. No, wait, they already built that for their online store and the iPhoto books. So, they have content producing users. They have content producing apps that they own and can update easily. They have an ordering and distribution system. What's the hold up? Can any of you think of a reason they aren't doing this (other than cost of running the business)?

Maybe this will get solved when the iTMS lets the little guy upload and sell their stuff. I'm still waiting for that one :)

Ring It Up

The landline is gone, sort of. We recently switched from a local phone company to Vonage. In all, I'm quite pleased.

Our main reason for switching was cost. We were paying $40-45 a month with McLeod. We now only pay $17 a month with Vonage. After getting the Vonage adapter for free after rebate, the savings is adding up quickly. It's also nice that they just charge it to your credit card. That's one less bill to write a check for.

Audio quality is fine. There is a slightly elevated background noise level on our end, but I can't hear it on the remote end and no one else seems to either.

We've activated 911 on the line, and I'm not all that concerned about needing to dial 911 when the broadband is out.

We used Line Number Portability, so we kept our old number. That switch was the most painful. Vonage didn't seem to like our first two attempts to fax in the LNP document. After they accepted it on the 3rd try, the switchover was fairly quick. McLeod were idiots about it though. They sent us a letter that pretty much read "sorry you are leaving, but we really don't care" and they also told us we had to call all of these people to finish the switch. Yeah, we didn't have to do that. Vonage had already done the switch before McLeod told us to jump through some hoops.

Vonage also has a great "dashboard" that updates in near real-time with how many minutes you've used. We won't even get close to using all of our minutes each month. We really don't talk on the phone that much. It's also fun to get voicemails as .wav files on your computer if you'd like. They need a Tiger Dashboard widget to allow easy access to these.

In all, I'd recommend Vonage.

Two Turntables and an iMic at Home

So I was anxiously awaiting my iMic. The Mac mini didn't come with an audio input and I've really missed mixing and listening to my vinyl. You see, all of my DJ gear is attached to my computer and my speakers are attached to the computer. No computer, no sound, simple as that. I picked up the iMic for a decent price off of Amazon, but I've spent all night fighting it, and the vodka isn't helping.

I've managed to get it to output sound, but only if I record a new live instrument in Garage Band. Audacity isn't doing trick, even though I used it a lot under Windows. So far, I've only been able to get it to work in Mono mode with Audacity. Grrrrrrrrrr.

Yes, this is a grumpy post.

Pinpoint Accurate Photos

We recently took a vacation to Alaska. One of the greatest things about it was that 5 of us on the trip had digital cameras, and we used them. In all we gathered nearly 2000 still images that do a fantastic job of capturing the beauty of the terrain and the fun we had. The problem lies in making sense of all of those photos.

Writing code for a living, I'm well aware of "garbage in - garbage out". Unfortunately, this concept applies to far more than computer software. Of those 5 cameras firing off images for over a week, only 2 of them had proper dates set in them, and none of them were adjusted to the local time zone. So what? Well, now that I have the power of iPhoto's Smart Albums, I want to be able to sort the pictures by location, and without useful geocoding of those images (we'll talk more about that later), I'd like to rely on the timestamp and my own knowledge of where we were on that day to sort out the pictures. Since I now have a few hundred pictures that think they were captured in 2047, I'm going to have to figure out the power of Automator to fix that metadata. So my first wish for more accurate picture taking is cameras that can auto-set their own date and time.

Next up, location, location, location. By no means is this an original idea, but I want GPS enabled cameras! Built in is great. Bluetooth enabled cameras so that I can use an external Bluetooth GPS is fantastic too. I'd even be happy with a manual setting on the camera where I could pull up a map and point to where I was. That location would then be assigned to the photos. The software could have a setting of "Expire location after 1 day" to prevent false location data for pictures you'd take later.

We're starting to see products that do this. Ricoh has a GPS ready camera, and Mappr! is the start of just what I'm wanting.

My second wish for more accurate picture taking is location based Smart Albums in iPhoto. These would be both assignable, and searchable in iPhoto. To assign, you could select a group of photos and choose "Assign Location". Hopefully that would bring up a selection of methods for assigning location including an Atlas, Google Maps, whatever. You'd also be able to browse based on the location. Certainly Apple could create some slick panning map that would zoom photos up as you passed over the location. They could also make Spotlight smart enough to translate location names in to geocoded locations. That way, I can search for "Chicago" and get pictures of a Cubs game without having to tag the photos manually.

I don't know about the rest of you, but iLife was one of the major draws to get me away from Windows. If Apple continues to step it up and deliver features like these, I see even more switchers.

Deets

Moving contacts from Oulook under Windows to Address Book under OS X can be a pain until you figure out the easy way to do it.

I tried exporting to a .pst and importing that in Address Book. It didn't like that. I tried exporting to tab delimited and comma seperated. Outlook complained it needed to install a translator and then wanted the CDs. Forget that. I'm not digging those out. Finally, I found the way. Forward as vCard. Why Outlook doesn't offer vCard as an export type, I have no idea.

Anyway, just open your contacts in Outlook. Select all and then click Actions->Forward as vCard. Send that email to something you can retrieve on your Mac. Get the email on the Mac. Save the attachments out and then drag them from the Finder in to the Address Book. Bang, done, and you even have your contacts as vCards that can be easily backed up.

Hike and Float

Ben has been on me to post some pictures from my trip to Alaska. Well, here you go...






This is a picture of the Chilkoot Trail. We only went a few miles on it, but I'd love to go back and hike the whole thing. The Chilkoot Trail has quite the history behind it. This was the trail the gold seekers had to travel and Canada required 2000 pounds of food and gear per person that they could survive on. As 100 pounds is a lot to carry, most of the rushers had to hike the trail both ways, carrying near 100 pounds, at least 20 times. Ouch.

We took the hike and float tour with Skagway Float Tours. These guys were fantastic. I highly recommend them. The guides knew their stuff and were a lot of fun to talk with.

So who wants to go back and hike this with me? If you're driving, I call shotgun.

New Evil Nine on iTMS

I just got an email from Apple letting me know that two new Evil Nine tracks are now up on iTMS. Downloading now. That is all.