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Stock photography

May 3, 2010

If you’re ever designing a website, brochure, display, sell sheet, or anything with generic photography, you’re better off buying stock photography than hiring someone to take photos for you.

While Getty has bought up most of the stock out there, there’s still some good sites for cheap (and good) stock photography.

One that I use often is iStockPhoto, where you pay a certain amount, and then your money gets converted into credits. Each photo is n credits, and the bigger the size, the more credits it costs.

Check them out the next time you need generic photography. You won’t be disappointed, I don’t think.

Posted in English Comp II, Photography | Leave a Comment »

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send me your tired, your poor, your homeless…

May 2, 2010

The New York Times reports that:

PHOENIX — Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona signed the nation’s toughest bill on illegal immigration into law on Friday. Its aim is to identify, prosecute and deport illegal immigrants.

The bill, sponsored by Russell Pearce, a state senator and a firebrand on immigration issues, has several provisions.

It requires police officers, “when practicable,” to detain people they reasonably suspect are in the country without authorization and to verify their status with federal officials, unless doing so would hinder an investigation or emergency medical treatment.

It also makes it a state crime — a misdemeanor — to not carry immigration papers. In addition, it allows people to sue local government or agencies if they believe federal or state immigration law is not being enforced.

The whole issue I have with the immigration debate is simple:

Whatever happened to that plaque under the statue of liberty? Where has that attitude gone?

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

I wish we wouldn’t forget this, this which made our country great.

Posted in English Comp II, ethics | Leave a Comment »

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A Genius Snow Leopard Feature

May 2, 2010

It’s extremely important to lock your computer when you’re away. What do you have on your computer? Personal emails, photographs, homework, banking information, taxes? I have all of that and more. Things you don’t want others to see, and things that if someone who got them could potentially ruin your life, financially or socially, if they got ahold of them. Enter a genius feature from Apple.

Finally I can be secure and not be annoyed by having to put my password in when I just run away for long enough that my screensaver kicks on. Yes!

Often you may run away to grab a sandwich, get the mail, or answer the phone. You’re away, but not for very long. Just long enough for your screensaver to kick on, which usually would lock your computer, requiring you to enter your password. If this happens enough, you’ll say “screw it” and just leave your computer unlocked all the time. Solved!

Posted in English Comp II, Technology | Leave a Comment »

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An Ode to my flip-phone.

May 2, 2010

I’m not very old. I’m 20. It’s so odd though that there’s things that are no longer around. Nintendo 64 (Sure, the 360 is amazing, but I miss mario kart with a cartridge (which seems to be made of uranium, it’s so sturdy) on a crappy old TV.) is one example. Another is my old Motorola v551. Around the time all of this Razr shit started coming out of the company, they made a truly fan-bleedin-tastic phone, the v551. I loved that little phone. I loved it’s beautiful blue front LCD, it’s wonderful speakerphone, it’s bluetooth, it’s mediocre by-todays-standards camera, everything was wonderful. I fell in love with slapping it shut to end the call, and using your thumb to pop it open to answer. I loved it’s curved shape, and how it actually seemed like you didn’t have to yell unlike smaller candybar phones. It was durable as hell, dropping it on solid concrete, down stairs, chucking it at the wall in a fit of madness. I miss that little phone. While my iPhone is great, I mean, I’ve got facebook, twitter, news, YouTube, Wikipedia, a hell of a lot of music, amazing games (including Tetris!), and the whole internet in my pocket, it will never top that v551.

Maybe I’m just in love with the flip-phone itself. It probably could have been any other phone, and I’d love it just as well. But all I know is, I want my v551 back. And while we’re at it, my Nintendo 64.

Posted in English Comp II, Technology | Leave a Comment »

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Flobots

May 1, 2010

One of the coolest albums I’ve seen in awhile. The viola work is simply brilliant. Flobots hit my radar awhile back with the popular Handlebars, and this album does not disappoint. An album with a strong political underpinning, even if you don’t agree with their message (though I’m not sure how anyone wouldn’t), you’ll enjoy the music.

Highly recommended. Also, Mackenzie is really pretty.

Posted in English Comp II, music | Leave a Comment »

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Everyone needs desktop images

April 29, 2010

When you’re looking at your computer all day, you need something framing your windows that looks good.

Everyone needs cool desktop images. After awhile the ones that come with your computer just don’t cut it. One of my favorite sites go hit when looking for something fresh is Mandolux. He’s an awesome photographer and has a way of making really nice images work for the desktop. Usually he has them cut up for dual or even triple(!) displays, but has quite a few for us single-display people too.

My second place I hit is David Lanham’s. He’s a stunning artist, and creates some of the most creative things I’ve seen. While not all of his work is available in wallpaper form, a lot is. He also sells prints. (which I keep meaning to pick a couple up…)

Two sites you should seriously check out, their work is not only beautiful, it serves a purpose. Removes boringness.

Posted in English Comp II | Leave a Comment »

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The Knowledge Navigator

April 29, 2010

I recently saw one of the coolest things ever. Watch.

Let’s deconstruct this video, which, by the way, was created in the 1980s. Before basically any of this was invented. Apple’s team that made this video was brilliant.

1) Computers that talk. This is here now, both in Mac OS X and the latest versions of Windows. Not quite as nicely spoken as this, but the Mac one is quite good. (Not sure about the Windows one)

2) Animation to make the guy’s face talk. This is basically here too. I’m not 100% that it can be done automatically, but I’m pretty sure it’s possible. (VS. manually created)

3) Time aware calendars: Yep.

4) “Let me see the lecture notes from last semester”: Well, in a roundabout way really. Searching (on mac anyway) is pretty much amazing.

5) “Pull up all the articles I haven’t read recently”: Not really. Unless you count RSS readers, or Queues like on Hulu.

6) John Fleming article: Again, searching. With keywords, this is fairly possible.

7) Multi-Touch functionality: That is, touching to do things rather than a mouse. It’s in millions of people’s pockets now.

8) Video Chatting: Completely here.

9) Video Chatting with screen sharing. It’s possible in iChat.

In the end, we’re extremely close to this reality. There’s a pretty new system called Siri out now. I watched a video of one of the guys who is making it discussing the way it works and how they built it the other day. The hardest part of these things is the context-aware system. Humans are so smart they’re dumb, they leave things out expecting the other person to figure it out. “I booked a ticket to London for tomorrow”…”Wonder what the weather is like”, etc. Well, a human realizes that they mean the weather in London. However, a computer has no clue. Enter context-aware. Siri has the ability to “remember” previous queries. So, ask it about movie times in Evansville, and then ask it the weather for tonight. It’ll assume you mean in Evansville.

We’re getting really close to this reality. And I can’t wait for it to happen.

Posted in English Comp II, Technology | 1 Comment »

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when is it too much? (Or: random babbling at 11pm with a pseudo train of thought)

April 28, 2010

The web is a wonderful thing- connecting us with long lost friends, far away family, or meeting new people from places you’d never be able to visit, it has allowed communication and collaboration on a scale never before seen. You can go and check out reviews for a restaurant in New York while planning your trip from your couch (or bed, or wherever–though I must caution you, don’t use a computer in the bath… It could go bad really quickly), or watch six people living in a house with 60 high-definition cameras, live 24-7, aspiring to become actors, musicians, and models (If I Can Dream). If you brought someone from even the 1980s to now and showed them what’s possible, they’d go crazy. I mean, I have a phone which can browse the web, take pictures, check weather in London, and holds thousands of songs, and videos, and, oh yeah, makes phone calls. But when is it too much?

When is there too much connectivity? When does it get to the point that too many people know too much about you? I mean, do your 600 so-called friends on facebook really need to know that you slipped in the shower and crushed the cat? Why am I compelled to pull my phone out and check facebook status updates at least three times a day?

First off, I think it can be pretty easy to move from the “this is cool” to “my grandmother just called me because she saw that one of my friends’ moms posted that I went to a pool party with booze and now she’s yelling at me”. And I haven’t said anything at all about the possibility, nay, the reality that the government(s) are watching what you’re posting, not to mention the companies that own facebook/twitter/youtube/wordpress/etc. Or how incredibly easy it is to stalk someone now because of these things.

Secondly, why am I compelled to pull out my phone to check facebook 3 times a day? Why am I not checking out the new york times or CNN? Probably because the real news is too real- it’s too sad and depressing and overwhelming. The world, if all you do is listening to the news, is going to hell in a handbasket..Or actually, it’s already there but the damn taxi hasn’t picked it up from the airport yet. So we turn to social media stuff, like facebook and twitter, because the “little people” (and not the dwarf and midget kind) don’t have problems that big. Sure, they might seem that big to them, but in the grand scheme of things, you falling and crushing the cat, while it sucks, isn’t nuclear war. It’s more like a very, very small genocide (they do have 9 lives after all. You’re a serial killer now.).

In the end, (and I’m not exactly sure where I was going with this) it’s a balancing game. Don’t rely on facebook too much, it might be gone tomorrow. Don’t post things that could get you in trouble, because they very well could. Think before giving a company your information, don’t ever use the same password at a bank that you do at facebook or AIM. And for god’s sake, don’t let your boyfriend video you having sex. It WILL end up online.

Posted in English Comp II | Leave a Comment »

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Why using Flash is bad for your portfolio

April 24, 2010

If you go looking for a photographer for a wedding, senior photos, well, whatever really, you’ve probably come across a lot of sites that use flash for the portfolios. Most likely, you go to the site, and you sit there waiting on a loader animation for at least 5-10 seconds, or at worst a minute or two. Then you get to see the photos, but what happens if you want to send someone a link to a particular photo on the site? It’s usually not possible. You’ve just been to a portfolio made in flash.

First, a bit of statistics.

Studies have shown people will, on average, wait on a site to load for 8.5 seconds. Which means, after about 8 seconds, if your potential client hasn’t seen any images, they will leave. Poof. Gone. You’ve lost what could be a big chunk o’ money due to a slow loading site.

Second, usability.

People have become used to normal websites- where the address bar, back & forward buttons work. It’s been that way since the web began, and flash sites generally screw that up completely. People WANT to send their friends/coworkers/family links to things (and chain letters, but that’s another rant). Unless the flash site is extremely well created (and let’s face it, the majority aren’t) that simply isn’t possible.

One study that I found very interesting was done by dack.com. It found that on Tiffany’s website (in 2000, but still extremely relevant), where they had a normal HTML shopping site and a flash version, that participants could find out simple things, such as how much an item was, comparing multiple items, etc 40% faster on the normal HTML site than the flash version. One of the major things that tripped people up? The normal back button didn’t work. And as far as I know (and I make websites for a living, but I could be wrong…) it’s simply not possible to make that work with flash.

Third, Apple.

There’s 50 million iPhones out there. Surely one hell of a lot of iPod Touches, and they’re on target to do well over 1 million iPads by the end of the year. None of which have flash. People are using iPhones and such a lot more than they used to, and that’s only going to go up. Don’t expect flash to come to iPhones/iPads/iPod Touches any time soon, since Apple and Adobe are basically in a holy-war still.

Why should you care? Well, iPhones account for about 25% of the smartphone market. That’s a LOT of people to exclude.

Finally…

Why should you use a technology that forcefully excludes a huge portion of your potential clients and will annoy the rest of them? It’s just bad business sense.

Regular sites simply work faster, better, and in the end really have the upper hand on any flash site. Especially with really cool stuff coming out of JavaScript development at the moment, flash is really, truly, (hopefully) dying a nice, slow, painful death.

Of course, I’m guilty of it too. However, the only reason for that is I simply haven’t had time to fix my site.

Posted in English Comp II, Photography, Technology | Leave a Comment »

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How to add your photos on Flickr to a group

March 24, 2010

Flickr is a great photo sharing tool. With millions of photographs, and TONS of users, it’s a great place not only to share photographs with your friends and family, but also a wonderful place to get noticed. Countless photographers of amazing talent have been discovered via flickr, but that will only happen to you if you get your photos out there.

One of the ways to get your photos noticed is to post them to groups. You also need to spend some quality time finding other photographers that you like and comment… Always comment back when someone comments on your stream, because the more relationships you build, the more people will friend you, and the more likely you will get noticed by someone important.

So, how do you add your photos to groups? It’s pretty simple. First, click the group tab at the top of the flickr website.

Then click “Search for a group”. Type in some keywords, for this photograph I might type in “Indiana”, or “church”, or “statue”, or “nature”.

There’s tons of groups for all different things. Maybe you want to become active in a group of people your own age (“College” would be a good search term)? Or possibly of your interests (“Rock Music Lovers”)? You could also join one of the groups that is specifically set up to provide constructive criticism. In these groups, you post a photo, but must also comment and give constructive criticism on a certain number of other photos.

Join a group, and then go back to your photo page and click “Add to group”. Select the group you want to add the photograph to, and then boom, you’re done!

Posted in English Comp II, Photography | Tagged , , | Leave a Comment »

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