Category Archives: Gadgets & Apps

iPhoto 09: Faces and Places

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I only have 2,300 photos on my laptop, which has become my default computer. The other kids I play with have many, many more than that. But I don’t know how I’d keep up with a couple of thousand photos without iPhoto. I’m not saying it’s the best way to manage your images, only that it’s the best for me. And the new version includes two new features that I really like.

Faces attempts to “recognize” the people in your your photos and group them. This little video tour ‘splains it better than I can but after playing with this for an hour or two, I’m reminded that people (and places) are the way I think about my photos.

 

Sure, I could go through 2,000+ and tag photos of Barb. But I’d never get around to it. iPhoto 09 pretty much does it for you (with a little help).

I’ll talk about Places in a later post.

Re-evaluating Flip HD

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My initial impression of the Flip HD video camera was pretty positive. But the more I use it “in the field,” the more things I find that bother me. The audio is very poor when compared to my Casio EX-Z300 (a small still camera that also takes video). And in low light situations, the Flip really sucks, while the Casio is very forgiving. And if you don’t hold the Flip dead still, your video shakes like pup passing peach pits. Not so the Casio.

These cameras are comparable in price. I think you can get either for around $200. And I’m open to the possibility I’m not doing something right but these are pretty much idiot-proof cameras, so…

The 4 minute video above was shot on my Casio (by my friend Greg Perry) and edited in iMovie 09 (which I like much better than 08). He was also using the Flip. The difference was night and day. Couldn’t use the Flip stuff and the Casio came out okay. There’s some artifacts in the video above but I think that’s mostly YouTube compression. I’ll post the .mov file later if you want to download and take a look.

I still have the inauguration video I shot on the Flip HD so maybe I’ll see better results but I’m skeptical. If you I had to choose between the two cameras, it’s no contest: Casio wins hands down. And it records nice stills and audio. If you bought a Flip on my recommendation and aren’t happy with it, my apologies.

Think before pressing send

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President-elect Barack Obama told CNN he thinks he may be able to “hang onto” his blackberry after all.

“I think we’re going to be able to hang onto one of these. Now, my working assumption, and this is not new, is that everything I write on e-mail could end up being on CNN. So I make sure that — to think before I press ‘send.’”

What if all of our leaders understood that everything they say an do “could end up being on CNN” and they had to think before pressing send?

I love that O wants to keep his Blackberry, even if he can only use it for personal communication. The man wants to stay connected.

First Bluetooth webcam?

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So says Ecamm who showed this little bugger at Macworld. George saw it and says the video and audio are pretty good. And if you plug in a little dongle, you can increase the bluetooth range to 100 feet. Standard 640×480 H.264 video with 48 kHz AAC stereo audio and a promised four hours of talk time. Looks like it’s about the size of a deck of playing cards.

iLife ’09

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Of all the things I enjoy doing on the computer, messing with images (still and video) has to be near the top of the list. You’ve heard me and others talk about how the Mac –or, more accurately, the software running on a Mac– makes working with media easier and more fun.

Today at Macworld, Apple made a number of announcements, as they do every year, including a new version of iLife, the suite of applications for working with photos, movies, music, etc.

The brief video tours of iPhoto and iMovie illustrate why we Mac users get so excited we pee our pants. My copy is on the way.

Gmail users can view PDF files w/o downloading

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I hate clicking a link and discover it’s to a PDF file and Acrobat Reader begins its torturous load. Or a PDF comes as an attachment to an email and I just want to quickly peek at the document. That hasn’t been a problem since moving to Mac.

And now Gmail users can view a PDF file without downloading it, thanks to a new “View” link. Clicking “View” quickly opens the PDF inside your browser, complete with the graphics and formatting you expect to see in a PDF.

When I’m asked, “Why do you like Gmail better than Outlook?” I struggle to give them a useful answer. It’s really a hundred little things like the feature above.

Flip HD

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If you’d like to see/hear a side-by-side comparison, I’ve put both videos on this page. The first thing that jumps out at me is how much better the audio is on the Casio, even though it’s using a built-in mic like the Flip. And I think the quality of the video is a little better but that could be a function of how the two device encode for YouTube.

If you want to see the original, uncompressed video from the Flip, you can download the first 30 seconds (35 MB!). It’s not bad. NYT tech columnist David Pogue likes it, too. According to Pure Digital, (the makers of the Flip?) the little camera has 30% of the camcorder market.

ABC News iPhone app

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From LifeHacker: “The latest entry into news-based iPhone apps, ABC News offers top stories, location-specific news alerts, and videos from shows like Good Morning America and 20/20.”

What does this mean for local ABC affiliates? Why won’t every news organization offer an app like this? Will I still turn on the ABC World News when I get home in the evening, or will I already have seen the news?