End User: Get more latitude out of iPhone 3Gs photos

Ryan Brenizer shares his thoughts on HDR apps for the iPhone (3Gs). Results are pretty damned good. Check out his post for examples and links to Pro HDR and TruHDR in the iTunes store.

HDR is just a tool to fix the inherent problem most digital cameras have of being able to capture a much smaller range of lights and darks than the human eye, and few cameras need fixing as badly as a tiny cell phone camera. With all of those pixels crammed in to a space so small, each pixel isn't receiving very much light, and that tends to mean noisy images with blown out highlights. The noise problem is hard to fix, but tonal range is relatively simple: Just take a picture exposed for the shadows, another for the highlights, and slap them together. And that, simply and easily, is what both of these applications do.

MediaPost Publications How Topeka Capitalized On Google’s April Fools’ Joke

The tourism board did have one major challenge: it didn't have a way to determine the return on investment for its paid search campaign. Sheley hopes to change that by initiating a call to action to account for conversions. The plan is to drive people to the tourism Web page and prompt them to download a visitor's guide or book a vacation on or through the site.

KFC’s Bacon Sandwich On Fried Chicken “Bread” Starts Killing People Nationwide April 12

Here’s a horrific bit of something:

For those coming late to the story, it’s bacon and cheese sandwiched between two pieces of fried chicken. And now, many months later, I’ll finally be able to get my hands on one.

KFC announced the decision to go live with the Double Down yesterday, but we weren’t sure they weren’t playing a April Fools gag. But no, they truly are going nationwide with the delicacy on April 12.

I’m still holding out for the April Fools gag. There’s someone at KFC who has to have forgotten to make a call to someone important. This is the sort of thing that’s just wickedly funny after a bottle or two of cabernet, but just not so clever the next morning.

Google Mail Envelopes by Rahul Mahtani & Yofred Moik » Yanko Design

Just cause, in the last five minutes, I haven’t yet lost interest in this Google Maps Envelopes thing. Lots of pictures this time. First-world humor here.  

Google Envelopes turns Gmail into snail mail

Here’s a concept that couldn’t have come together until all the right technological planets aligned, and is still about 25 years late.

The envelope itself would be a Google Maps representation of the quickest route to transfer said message from you to the recipient if roadways and kayaks were used in place of fiber and coax, giving the receiver a crucially awesome keepsake each time you dropped him or her a line.

Gizmodo’s Essential iPad Apps

Particularly interesting how all three major newspapers went with a more traditional newspaper design. Smells a bit like they’re trying to remind me of just how great it was when I paid for something that looked a lot like paper, too.

I think it’s fair to say that Amazon is a bellwether for things to come in the swirl of holiday purchases. This year’s announcement that the company fulfilled more ebook sales than paper book sales seems like an appropriately big deal, even if it’s guaranteed to give my mother-in-law palpitations.

Likely the biggest culprit at Amazon is the Kindle, and while we don’t know how many were actually sold this year, Amazon says it was the highest-selling product in the company’s history. It beat the iPod touch — historically top-seller around the holidays. This is all well and good, but remember that Amazon is the only place you can buy the Kindle; clearly not the case with the iPod, or any other top sellers at Amazon.

Still, according to this, if you’re not reading an ebook now, you will be soon. Prepare for the robot uprising, people.

I was a skinny kid. Through elementary school and middle school, I was the tallest in class, and the scrawniest. I wasn’t very athletic, and dealt with some gross motor coordination issues that kept me from being anything terribly graceful. When I was 11, my dad brought home our first computer, and Apple II in 1983. When I was 13, EA released Bard’s Tale I: Tales of the Unknown. I was 11 when I discovered computers. I was 13 when I fell in love with technology.

And, since I wasn’t naturally good at moving around, and had some internal spark of talent at the keyboard, that’s where I stayed. I was, by in large, sedentary through highschool, unless by act of grade hijack. Luckily, my metabolism was on my side, and I managed to stay the skinny kid through college. When I got married, at 26, I was still at my fighting weight of 190.

All this is coming back to me tonight because of Alex Fuka. Alex married Lily, a good friend and client, less than six months ago. Alex is the love of Lily’s life; they have been blessedly perfect for one another.

A few hours ago, Alex suffered a massive heart attack and died while out walking in the cool afternoon air.

And tonight, my friend Lily is alone. She’s surrounded by family, her daughter, her friends, her chaplain, but she is alone. When she started today, she was of a pair. This evening, she is deserted.

As much as I could try to post something pithy, some link to a fabulous new tool, all that seems to matter today is this cold reminder that I — that all of us — need to take better care. As technologists, we need to move more, eat less, and stay strong.

I don’t know the details yet about Alex’s condition that lead to his heart attack, but I know mine. I’m no longer at my fighting weight. And I’m still not very graceful in dancing shoes. But every day that passes the stakes on my health go up just a little bit.

So tonight, I offer this bit of grist for the mill, since it’s where my heart and head will be: hug your loved ones, and may your rest tonight be sound. And as your days fill with business, step back and muse carefully on the things that matter more.

The great thing about the vast majority of musicians is that they are at the same time gracious and generous people, and hungry for attention. That means, if you point a microphone at them and turn on a little red light, by-in-large, they start singing.

So it was when Curt and I started Acoustic Conversations a few years back. The first show was a convoluted mix of stunning flamenco riffs lovingly gifted to us by our good friend John Carlson and poorly mic’d wannabe talk radio. Still, that conversation sparked something cool, and posted a stitch in time that leads to today, the last show of our second season, and our newest addition to the family, James Jeffrey-West.

James is a stunningly warm person. I say that as a point of contrast, I think. He’s a contrast to jokers who try to own a room with ego and pomp; he’s a contrast to yahoos who enter a room with jokester hippery; he’s a contrast to crooners who slide into a room with sticky smug insincerity. When James came into the AC lounge, well, we wanted to give him a hug.

In his bio, James says he plays “good, honest acoustic” music. Insofar as we couldn’t see the allusion when we kicked off the interview, we were wrapped up in it by the end. His songs are gracefully simple packages, easy on the ear and difficult to shake. His song-writing is at once worldly and approachable; he weaves his broad life experience into tales that are most often too short to be completely satisfying.

We talked a lot in this show. So much, in fact, that we didn’t actually get to all the music that we’d intended. It’s a shame, too, because for my money, the best tracks of the evening were those recorded after the show had ended. Take a special listen to Sacramento International, a haunting lullaby to congested air travel; and Half a World Away, an anthem to bifurcated love in ticklish harmonics. You’ll find the show, as well as all six of the tracks we recorded with James available free in iTunes. Please subscribe to support the show.

I deeply hope you enjoy the music of James Jeffrey-West. He’s a new favorite of ours and we’re thrilled to bring him to the show. As ever, comments welcome, but mostly, just go buy his CD. It’s in iTunes, CDBaby, and just about everywhere else music is served.

As much as I love Google products, and use them daily, here is a perky brick to the ethical head. The following quote is from Google CEO Eric Schmidt in the current CNBC Google Blockbuster.

If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place, but if you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines including Google do retain this information for some time, and it’s important, for example that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act. It is possible that that information could be made available to the authorities.

When Google was founded in 1998, the company hung its proverbial hat on telling the world that they would be successful without mucking things up in the process. Specifically, number six in the company’s own manifesto:

6. You can make money without doing evil.

This is all well and good until, for example, you’re a global titan with $12 billion and change in the bank, competing for telcom spectrum in an industry as messed up as wireless. What’s that they say about laying down with dogs?

So many cool things floating around the internet, I must have been hyped up on sneezing pandas when this most exquisite piece of work bubbled to the surface. It’s “Panic Attack!” by Uraguayan filmmaker, Fede Alvarez. Head over here to watch it for yourself.

The news that surrounds this short film is interesting all alone: Alvarez has been signed to Sam Raimi’s Ghost House Pictures to develop and deliver similarly themed freaky flicks. All I can think is “Cloverfield” — which has A) already been made and B) was super-excellent. Too bad it’s already been made. Still, the deal reportedly starts in the 6-figures with points if his films get made. All this after Alvarez made his YouTube opus on a reported budget of $300 (yeah, likely not including person hours in that budget, but whatever).

All of that is great for Alvarez, whose talent is deserving of a career in the field of moving images, however he ends up there. But it’s not the point of this post.

Google, sometimes you are water to a drowning man. With your fancy, model-breaking free services, your forever-beta attitude, your kicking font. So many services, so many configurations, so many thoughtful ways for a simple man like myself to divulge my personal information.

But this month, you have showered me with useful things. So man, in fact, that I have to shout it from the rooftops.

For Google Apps Users

I’ve been a raving lunatic for Google Apps since they launched. For those not familiar with the service, Google Apps allows you to take your domain name (like fifthandmain.com) and map all your familiar Google services to it. Use the nearly bulletproof Gmail service for your business’s email using your own domain, and have calendars, documents, internal websites, and more all hosted and shared across team members. There are three tiers of Google Apps: Education, Standard, and Premiere. At this time, only the premiere level of service has a fee associated with it — $50/user per year.
That’s all backstory nonsense, though. The big news is here. (more…)

A quick post and a tip today, and a letter to my friend Tony, a Flash guy.

Dear Tony,

I think about you often when I work on the web. It starts out fondly, and quickly turns to rage when my browser crashes thanks to over-abundance of Flash advertising which destroys my favorite sites. I think of you, Tony, because, since you’re a Flash developer, this experience makes me hate you, just a little bit. That’s why I’m writing to let you know about ClickToFlash.

Anyone want to know how much I love this photo? Anyone? Seriously, ask and I’ll tell you. I love it with the white hot passion of a star gone super nova. I love it, because it’s a picture of rocks. It’s a picture of rocks about sex and God, with a dash of good humor and a pinch of humility.

I love it because the man who made it is a man who loves more than anything to work with his hands. You can feel it when you pick up one of these rocks, the surface so smooth it’s as if nothing is there. And yet, the messages are at once salient, and impossible — it’s a burning bush argument: am I really getting fortune cookie karma from a river stone? Yep. From a guy who has a singular focus on what he’s doing, and has just the right tools to get the job done.

So, this is a post about tools. I have a lot of them, the digital kind, and I’m often asked what I recommend and could I teach them, and should client x buy Illustrator or Photoshop or InDesign or Final Cut Pro so they can make quick edits on files and on and on. And I’ve worked up a bit of my own burnished stone wisdom that may help someone other there in the Interworld. Here goes.