Ian Betteridge:
> The entire farce has cost Google somewhere in the region of $11bn, even once it’s managed to get $3bn back from Lenovo, which is desperate for a brand it can use to crack the American market.
Here’s the thing though, Gmail/Search/Maps is free — how could you possibly think ill of Google abysmal acquisition?
Nice guide form Keith Smiley on setting up a VPN with a Raspberry Pi model A and B. I use my Mac mini, but if you want cheaper hardware then this seems like a great option.
Best comparison on Lightroom versus Aperture I have seen.
Gabe Weatherhead, in what I suspect won't be the last of the leaving OmniFocus posts, sums up the fears about OmniFocus nicely:
However, this year has brought some disappointments and huge amounts of resistance to my OmniFocus affair. The OmniFocus 2 for Mac beta left me bewildered. OmniFocus 2 for iPhone is so uncomfortable to use that I simply stopped using it on my iPhone, choosing to enter tasks through Siri and letting OmniFocus add those to my database instead.
That's, in part, why I switched to Flow.
Peter Ludlow:
The Bush fear-peddling is usually considered the more extreme, but is it? The Obama formulation puts the “radicalized individuals” in our midst. They could be American citizens or legal residents. And the subtext is that if we want to catch them we need to start looking within. The other is among us. The pretext for the surveillance state is thus established.
Bruce Schneier:
What frustrates me about all of this – this report, the president's speech, and so many other things – is that they focus on the bulk collection of cell phone call records. There's so much more bulk collection going on – phone calls, e-mails, address books, buddy lists, text messages, cell phone location data, financial documents, calendars, etc. – and we really need legislation and court opinions on it all. But because cell phone call records were the first disclosure, they're what gets the attention.
The Kickstarter description:
To make photo printing fun – for the first time by our reckoning – we’ve designed a photo finishing system ready for the 21st century. Museum quality (Giclée) printers, German 220 gram photo paper from sustainable sources, laser cutters, and robots with carbon fiber arms will allow Flag to deliver prints, for free, that are better than any you can pay for today. We want to turn your memories into mementos you can be proud of.
Our secret to making photo printing free? An advertisement on the back of each print. It will always be tasteful, and we are steadfast in our commitment to never sell or share your personal information with advertisers.
Let's leave my feelings about ads out of this for the time being.
Why are we encouraging this? At this writing 711 people have decided to pay at least $10 to see this happen. Wouldn't your money be better spent on buying prints instead of paying to fund a business to then get free prints? (And spoiler, I don't think this is a sustainable business.)
Funding a business on Kickstarter so that you can get a free app/service later seems like a wholly bad idea. It's like pissing your money away. Why not just pay for one of many other services that do this kind of high quality printing already? i doubt many of you would print more than 20 photos a year, especially at the likely small size these guys are offering for free (they don't seem to mention the size, I'm guessing 4×6, or 5×7). ((They do note that larger photos cost extra money, and in my book anything smaller than 8×10 is a useless print.)) I have an excellent photo printer and I barely print enough to keep the ink from drying out.
Somethings, I guess, I will never understand.
Our ability to deliver prints relies on making deals with advertisers who'll pay for your printing and postage and we are already talking to a number of significant potential advertisers.
Also of concern: no launch partners booked. Seems like that would be priority #1 if you spent the last three years planning this.
What a great little app — first its kind that does’t look like a cheesy pos. I also like that they are using subscription pricing.
Via Beautiful Pixels who note:
> Archipad calls itself as a sketching tool with scale and does only that. So it won’t really replace your standard CAD software. Nor does it have a feature rich freehand sketching toolset like many other apps in that category do. Instead it hits a spot in the middle, tries to help a professional designer who wants to quickly sketch out ‘scale aware’ ideas on the go and share it with others later.
Richard Esposito, Matthew Cole and Mark Schone, with Glenn Greenwald:
> Documents taken from the National Security Agency by Edward Snowden and obtained by NBC News detail how British cyber spies demonstrated a pilot program to their U.S. partners in 2012 in which they were able to monitor YouTube in real time and collect addresses from the billions of videos watched daily, as well as some user information, for analysis. At the time the documents were printed, they were also able to spy on Facebook and Twitter.
James Ball:
> So successful was this effort that one 2008 document noted that “[i]t effectively means that anyone using Google Maps on a smartphone is working in support of a GCHQ system.”
Also, take a look at the iPhone slide. Wow.
Some great photos of old Macs.
I put up a little photoblog on my personal domain. The goal is to just share a favorite photo I took. I am going to try and share daily, so be sure to grab the RSS feed.
I’ll try to limit pictures of my kids, but I can’t help it.
One thing to note: there’s sharing buttons.
Unlike this site I am giving WordPress’s standard suite of tools a try — what the hell.
Dark Sky released a huge update today. I don’t need to do a review (been on the beta, thankfully) because I’ll tell you with 100% confidence that this is the *only* weather app you need.
One of my favorite little things: it tells you the hours left of daylight, not just the sunset time. Love that.
Jamie Phelps:
In the end, advertisers are currently willing to pay a lot more than consumers for control of the relationship with service providers and distributors of content. In order to get rid of advertising, individual consumers need to be prepared to pay enough money to take control of the relationship that is currently controlled by advertisers.
Great post.
Some good tips for shooting tethered, and most apply to more than just Fuji cameras. The Photosmith + EyeFi is one I need to try.
Mark Ames:
> The secret wage-theft agreements between Apple, Google, Intel, Adobe, Intuit, and Pixar (now owned by Disney) are described in court papers obtained by PandoDaily as “an overarching conspiracy” in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act and the Clayton Antitrust Act, and at times it reads like something lifted straight out of the robber baron era that produced those laws. Today’s inequality crisis is America’s worst on record since statistics were first recorded a hundred years ago — the only comparison would be to the era of the railroad tycoons in the late 19th century.
Interesting discovery from Terence Eden (which Google now says is not a flaw). Basically if you add a appointment with an email address in the appointment title — the person with that email address *may*, or *may not* get an invite. Even if you specifically are trying to not invite them.
Good lord — the inconstancy of the “feature” alone is enough to drive you nuts.
Great tool to remove noise if you edit images on iOS.
John Carey on retro themed cameras:
It’s only natural for manufacturers to look back to the roots of the craft as a means to pull in photographers who crave more than what their mobile phone can offer them in regards to in camera creative control. That said, when you imagine a camera in your mind with full exposure control you imagine a box with knobs that allows you to adjust these key values quickly. In this regard, these supposed retro themed cameras are not retro, they are obvious. No touch screen or series of buttons will give you the same quick uncompromising access to control that simple task specific knobs do.
As Carey mentions, the Fuji X series is really leading the way in great camera body design. More on that later.
David duChemin on his Leica M(240):
> All of that means I am more present in the moment and that is more important to a photographer than anything. Whatever camera does that for you is the right camera. Little else matters.
Good read if you are interested in the switch from dSLRs to mirrorless systems.