This Christmas brings thoughts of good cheer and tiddings to all readers of donburnside.com, and maybe a little geekery about iPhone photography.
We all know that the iPhone is pretty amazing at taking photos. We also know that there are apps that improve the experience quite a bit, from cool effects and filters to ways that make sharing photos easy. Here are some of the things I’ve found so far, along with a couple new pieces of kit that I got for Christmas.
Apps
Hardware
I scored this Christmas! Check out these two great things Stella got me!
. I saw this when it first appeared on Kickstarter and I was sad I didn’t have an iPhone to use it with. The minute I got my iPhone, the first thing I wanted was this. Allows you to easily mount your iPhone to a tripod.
. Said tripod. This one comes with a case to use but if you have any kind of screen or back protection like Ghost Armor or a MotoringBadges iPhone wrap, it’s not a great fit. The tripod does work fantastic with the Glif!
Online services While Instagram works great for sharing photos to all of your social media sites, the way it works with Facebook isn’t that hot. Same goes with Flickr to Facebook integration. I think many FB users have those services blocked, so a lot of the time the photos go without being seen.
Enter IfThisThenThat, a service that’s been around a while but I haven’t used. You use it to build your own programs that actually do stuff. I will probably do an entire post on it later. You can even create recipes that are shareable, which is what I have done.
This will take any photo that has been uploaded to Facebook and automatically move it to Flickr including a link back to the original photo in Facebook. And, it works!
I’m still on the hunt for photo apps, but slowly. I know that some of you have more than a few you would like to share, sound off in the comments below. I’m sure Hipstagram is a favorite out there, but I’m not really a fan yet. I would love to hear others!
Oh boy is the internet pissed at Godaddy this week! Turns out they supported SOPA (which they later changed their mind about). That was reason enough for quite a few folks to start pulling their domains and move them to different registrars. I know I did, but not because they supported SOPA. More like, that’s the straw that broke the camels back.
I’m transferring domains away from GoDaddy as fast as my checkbook will allow. I only have 8 or so left with them, and I hope to have them transferred to Hover by the end of January. This is a process I started earlier this year after Bob Parsons came home from Africa after spending some quality time shooting elephants. But that’s only part of why I’m moving my domains.
Another part is their famously awful user interface. Or the fact that they are the worst WordPress host. Or the fact that when trying to check out when purchasing anything you have to click through 10 different pages offering upgrades, magazine subscriptions and ginsu knives. But, like the other reasons, this is just a part of why I’m transferring away.
If we take a second to look at the graphic at the top of this post. That is a screen shot from my Gmail account. Please note the date stamps on each line. If you want to know why I’m transferring away from GoDaddy, it’s because they are practicing email spammers and there is no way to make it stop that I can find.
Buy a domain? 2 emails. plus the weekly “buy more domains” email. Have a domain? 9 months before it expires they start sending reminder emails to renew. As the date draws closer, the frequency of the emails increases until you are getting 2 per day (per domain). Once the expiration date has passed, they continue to send emails at the rate of not less than 1 per day per domain. And there is no way to make them stop.
Worse part is when you don’t want a domain name any more. I let about 10 go this year that I will never do anything with (or my customers won’t be using). And the damn emails never stop. It’s truly rediculous.
So, if the emails won’t stop, if the UI won’t change and if the check-out process won’t stop pushing ultra high security email and faxing from my rotary phone, then I’m out.
And now you know The rest of the story.
Driving to work this morning, I thought I would give iTunes Match another try. On my iPhone, I navigated to my songs and hit the shuffle button at the top of the screen. First song up played for 30 seconds then paused for about 10 before playing for another 20 seconds and pausing. So I turned it off, stopped for gas and gave Twitter what for.
I then resumed my drive to work and hit play one more time.
The next 8 songs played without a snag. Until I hit next too early, then it was play/pause/repeat all over again.
I want music on my phone. I don’t want to stream it, I don’t want to listen to previews, I don’t want a streaming service. I want my music. iTunes Match, for all of the awesome it can be, is still not living up to it’s full potential. At least it’s not for me.
So, off it goes.
About an hour before recording the latest episode of White Roof Radio, I was trying to get everything setup and in place to do a live-to-the-internet show. I’ve done it before without any issues, so I thought I’d start early and get listeners lined up before everything started.
Open up uStream.tv. Get logged in and select the channel I’m going to use for the live show. I’m then prompted for the Flash Security stuff. And that’s as far as I got. The browser didn’t crash, but at the same time, it didn’t do anything. I tried multiple times without success. So I tried again in Firefox.
Oh yea, right. Lion doesn’t come with Flash. And the uStream broadcast thing only works with Flash for how I needed to use it. Next step to most would have been to shuffle off to Adobe.com and get Flash for OSX Lion.
I did not.
Chrome has it’s own, built in intepreter for Flash that seems to work perfectly fine on almost everything I need. Considering that I have gone almost 2 weeks before I realized I didn’t have Flash installed, I’d say it’s hit that mark.
I’m going to try to go as long as possible. I think I can go forever without having to install Flash on my Mac. Since the Chrome version appears to work ok, no need to clutter up my system with rubbish Adobe Software, right? I don’t like or need Flash. But for when I do, I’ll use Chrome, even if I break up with it like I mentioned above. But that’s for another post.
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