Ding Dong The Droid is Dead

I have been waiting at least four years for this time that day in October when I was able to get an iPhone. Surviving the Blackberry Pearl and then a first generation Android, I was finally rewarded with a smart phone that lacks the clunkiness of Microsoft... Err, well, it might just as well be. Google will eventually get it but the software exceeded the sorry Gen 1 of the Droid. The folks in Cupertino CA have something going when they can release a new product in an old form factor hand have it so sucessful. I am talking of the iPhone 4S. It is the same shape and feel as the iPhone 4 but all new insides.

This is not going to be a post on how much I like my iPhone 4S but rather a review of one of the iPhone Apps.

TrueHDR is an App that worked ok with the iPhone 4 but when Apple changed the sensor to handle light a little better in the 4S and added the fifth optic element something happened. In a good way. When you start the app you get to choose how you are going to control the app.

• Auto Capture will take three exposures and work its magic. 
• SemiAuto Capture waits for you to select to locations in the screen. One for highlights and one for shadows. The you press the shutter button and the app takes two exposures based on your selection and then works its magic.
• Manual Capture is for the real control freak and really does little to enhance the usability of the app. You select a highlight area and click the shutter, then a shadow area and again you must click the shutter. Seams like a waste of time, but like I say, it can appease the control freak.

I like to use the SemiAuto Capture option and is what the following images are an example of. Excuse the fact that I am simply using my hotel room for the example but it serves the purpose for this post.

Here you can see the two locations in the image that I have selected to be used for the highlights and shadows of the HDR. When the camera shutter is pressed it will make two different exposures based on the selection I made.

Here it has taken both exposures and is waiting for the second one to display. When you press the Merge button, the app goes to work keeping you abreast of its progress with the following screen.

Once both images have been merged you are presented with four sliders to tweak the image. Here again there is not much to do here except for the previously mentioned control freak.

The sliders are self explanitory. At the bottom are some options which include some Fx presets. The presets available are Sepia, Retro, Retro-II, Mono, XPro RedShift, and Vingnette. You can select any of the presets and if yo decide you don't like any of the just click on the last selected and it goes back to the original merged file. Once a preset is selected you can also go back and make adjustments with the sliders by selecting the little slider icon at the bottom.

When you his the save button you really don't get to see the finished image but rather you have to exit the app and go to your camera roll to see the finished product. Here is a comparison between the iPhone 4S and the 4S camera after the TrueHDR processing.

I don't know about you, but I'm sold. If you want to enhance the already fantastic camera iPhone 4S, I can not more highly recommend TrueHDR for your iPhone Apps collection

That will do it for me today. Take care... Doug

Morning the Loss

Yesterday morning I thought it only appropriate to display on my iPad, this Apple logo that I worked up in recognition of the death of Steve Jobs. I am not a person who morns the loss of celebrities and the rich and famous. I do not spend a lot of time morning the loss of close acquaintances but rather enjoy the memories of the times I have been privileged to know and be in their presence.

I do however reflect, and recognize the greatness of individuals that have passed. Steve Jobs was one such individual. Listening to the news on Thursday the descriptive words were visionary, genius, inspired as well as inspiring. All these are true about Steve Jobs and so the best way I know how to celebrate this creative visionary' legacy is to make it to my meeting on the 14th at the Verizon office to purchase my iPhone 4s or as it has been said since his passing the iPhone Four Steve.

It will be good, I am sure. Take care all... Doug

Jobs Dies

Anyone who has been following Steve Jobs in the past couple of years can not be too surprised about this news today. Death is a reality in all our lives and impacts us in ways that we can not know when we do not look at deaths door.

Without going into a litany of discoveries and accolades I will simply make this statement.

Good Job Steve!

New Mac Attack

I have been ferry patient over the last four weeks as I have had a new iMac sitting in the box in the library and have passed it by several times a day knowing that I could do nothing about it. I did fire it up to see if it ran but then it was back in the box until I had the time to devote to migrating the 24 to the 27 inch. So yesterday I was going through the mail and  an OWC (Other World Computing) catalog showed up.My son has an older MackBook and is going to run out of his 80BG hard drive sooner or later. I found there was a 320GB 7200 RPM drive for $69. I flipped over to the memory area and found 2x4 8GB 1333MHz DDR3 cards for the iMac at $127. Wow... That is a little different than the $600 Apple wants for the same thing when upgrading from 8-16 GB. Sent the order in and by using Yahoo shipping, it basically paid for the overnight cost.

I watched the videos on OWC about memory and hard drive upgrading and they were very thorough. It didn't take me more than five minutes and when I powered up and checked, the 16 GB showed up as advertised. Lightroom is going to looooove this machine.

Before the migration can start I had to run a software update on the new machine and it is taking its sweet time. Much longer than usual to download and then I realized... My son is streaming a Netflix movie on the Wii and that has choked the bandwidth this evening. 
Ahhh... She says the download is complete. Guess I'll be going, complete the update and hook the to computers up for the migrations. I'll have to wait until the morning to see how it all goes.


For now I'll just be moving a long. Cya... Doug

Cool Mac Tool

With all the wonders and intuitiveness of everything Apple, when you first get into the Mac world and start looking for your files and are used to the Windows File Manager it is a little daunting. I'm not saying it is a hard transition, its just different. Different in a good way in that the options you have are more readily available to you. Having said that, Finder is not the end all app for file management.

A company called Binaryage has a really nice app called TotalFinder that essentially replaces Finder on the Mac that is running Snow Leopard (OS 10.6). Rather than having open windows spread all over your desktops you can have one with all the listings tabbed. See the screenshot below.

Three of the biggest tool in TotalFinder are tabbed browsing (above) dual mode (see below) folders on top and visor which is a hot key (double key the option) that brings up a finder window regardless of where you are working.

When there are multiple tabs open the slickest way to move/copy files is to enter dual mode. I use the default command-U but you can determine your own hot key. This action connect two finder lists in what appears like a mirrored screen. This is way cool.

The folders on top option is really nice and something Windows had right in File Manager. This lists the folders grouped above the files. The only downside that I would like to see TotalFinder improve upon is to reach into the open file dialogue and get the folders on top option at that level. Oh well it still is an imperfect world.

That would be my pick of the week if I had one.


Take care all... Doug

An Apple A Day

Well that might get a little expensive if you are talking a certain Macintosh Apple. You know, the silicon type. Following through with the promise I made myself last Tuesday, I placed the order today. 

So why did I go for the 2.93GHz Quad-Core i7  vs the 3.2GHz i3 and 3.6GHz i5. I am not going to sit here and tell you is is the hyper-threading technology but I will tell you it is the latest Mac Intel technology available on the iMac.

Ok whats with the hyper-threading mumbo-jumbo? Well, it is a technology developed by Intel so that a single processor virtually acts like two 2 to 4 and 4 to 8 and so on. Right now the i7 Quad-core with HT acts as though it is eight processors. Well, not really. The software has to be specifically written to use the expanded functionality of the chip. Sl why did I go for it. This will be the first time in the 25+ years I have been buying hardware where I am ahead of the power curve. Newer versions of software I would expect to be written to harness the extra horsepower in the i7 chip. The i7 chip is designed with such higher efficiency than the i5 that the slower clock speed of 2.93 GHz of the i7 performs at a higher speed than the 3.6GHz i5. That's why!

As far as memory, I selected 2 4GB 1333MHz chips rather than 4 sets of 2GB to allow me to expand to 16GB with more cost effective (read cheaper than Apple) 4GB chips. So why did I go with a 1TB internal drive? My philosophy is to use the internal drive for working files and once completed move them off to the Drobo or one of the other external drives.

Anyhow by October 28th, I will be spending some quality time setting up this bad boy.

Take care... Doug

Christmas Week

I am not going to be serious this week as it is a very special time in the Christian faith. That of the birth of the saviour Jesus Christ. So it will be a light hearted week gifts, thoughts and some funny stuff.

To kick off the week I was told about a fun little iPhone/Touch application called FlexPhotoLab. It is actually a product of Ford advertising their new Flex SUV. There are some photo editing tools in the "Darkroom" but the best is the Kaleidoscope effect. Don't worry, it is a free app and you don't have look at any advertisement from Ford. Here are some before and after images.

BEFORE

AFTER

BEFORE

AFT... You get the idea!

Kind of fun and mesmerizing when you are working with it. Have a good day.


Cya... Doug

Way Cool

I don' t have an iPhone even though I would like one, most of my family is on Verizon and the free calling just can't be a better deal for us. Soooo, that leaves me in the group of people that are longing for the moment when the Apple/AT&T alliance is completed and the iPhone is opened to the masses. We already know it has been hacked to 

log onto the Verizon network so it is just a matter of time.

I do however have an iPod Touch which is basically an iPhone sans the phone and camera. Why they dumped the camera who knows. This is a great tool from the standpoint of the photography business. I have an electronic and portable portfolio just waiting to be displayed to a possible client.

With the MobileMe account I have syncing with my calenders, favorites, contacts, and e-mail. No more retyping appointments on the iMac, and the PowerBook G4.

What the Touch also has in common with the iPhone is the ability to download applications. Most of these are $0.99, many are free and others run $1.99 to $9.99.

With the release of iWork 09 which includes Pages (word processor), Keynote (presentation app), and Numbers (spreadsheet app), some cross component functionality is being touted by the boys at Apple.

This would be the iPhone/Touch application for Keynote. What this little jewel dose is allow you to control your Keynote presentation form your iPhone or Touch. There are two orientations in the Keynote App which are

Portrait and Landscape. In the Portrait orientation you have the option of displaying speaker notes on the screen. In the Landscape orientation the next slide is displayed next to the current slide.

Using the App you simply sweep your thumb from right to left to advance the slide. If the slide has animations to it, the App automatically breaks up the slide into individual screens which will display with the next sweep. So how do you know when to sweep to the next screen? That little goofy rotating fan runs in the upper right corner unto the animation is complete.

The App does not use Bluetooth for some reason but links across a network. I guess this is good if you are running this show from a stage and the computer connected to the projector is a good distance away. The network can be a LAN or an ad hock network right off the airport (wireless) of the laptop.

So where does this Keynote App falter? Actually in a couple of places. First is the inability to make links possible on the presentation. My photo Keynote has thumbnails that link out to the larger image. This does not work and I must move though all the images to get to the one I want. The other thing is really an extension of the first. You have to go all the way through the slide show to pull up a particular slide. Apple could easily use the rotate function of the iPhone/Touch to drop into a thumbnail view so you could go directly to a slide. Who knows, I am sure the folks at Apple are working on some improvement. for now it is really cool.

Hey all, that's about it for me. I am in Columbus getting some training that I receive each year so I may or may not have a post for tomorrow. We will see.

Take care... Doug

Good Morning Laugh

Just a quick note and a funny video I found wile surfing last night. It is important to be able to laugh at ourselves once in a while. We take life way to seriously at times. This video is a fun poke at the MacBook series of laptop computers. Enjoy!

I hope to get something else up here today but I am also chasing a crew to do a checkride. So we will see.

Cya... Doug