Photoshop Express
Everybody loves taking pictures.
Not everyone loves editing picutres..
Photoshop has long been the king of image editing - both on PC and MAC. Arguments can be made but no other software is as proven or feature-packed. The price tag is hefty (especially compared to GIMP). But for professional image editing nothing else comes close.
With the growth in online applications we’ve seen some newer sleaker quasi-image editing apps roll out. Google made the biggest splash years ago buying Picasa and making it freely available. Although not a web-app it integrates with Googles online image service and allow for simple, end-sure friendly image editing. Quickly other online apps of similar nature rolled out in the line of though - simple, end user friend, not as feature rich as photoshop by any means - but highly usable.
Adobe wasn’t sleeping.
Eearlier this year Adobe rolled out Photoshop Express. A web-based ‘lite’ version of their full application. Photoshop Express is more of a photo-sharing site that contains various worth-keeping image editing features.
To end users dismay, Photoshop Esxpress is not as competitive as one would expect. As much as we’d like it Adobe has no plans to add the premium features of Photoshop into the online application.
Instead, they settled for the usual simple editing available in many other applicatoins and online apps. Granted it is a free - but it just doesn’t meet our hopes.
The four main functions are:
- photo editing
- organization of files
- sharing
- community sharing
Competing with services such as Photo bucket, Face book, and Picasa, photoshop express has a way to go.
Flicker integration is not available as of the moment but sooner or later it will.
To give you an idea of what it is like, the program is a mixture of iPhoto and Adobe Bridge CS3 with manageable features that a first timer won’t find hard to operate!
Joining, of course is free and easy; all you have to do is to sign up for a free account and log in your username with password.
To upload, you can get your images either from your computer or from other services. Moreover, your files can be arranged into albums and put a caption on it for faster searching.
Soon after release Adobe came under fire for the TOS of the online app. Seems that they claimed ownership of any file that was edited using the system. They have since modified those terms and conditions to remove the claim of ownership (pretty rude eh..)
All in all another free online photo editing service is good - but Adobe disappoints us with the effort.
Photoshop Express took so long to roll out that we really hoped it would be slicker, refined, and more feature-full.
Perhaps the next revision.
To Pownce or crawl?
Everything Kevin Rose touches turns to gold right?
Well – I’m still waiting for Pownce to get the midas affect.
Launched nearly a year ago – Pownce has yet to see an upsurge in user acceptance.
Built on the adobe AIR framework and touting features such as message shares (ooh.. unique eh..), file sharing, event sharing and of course social community.
Set up as a competitor and superior product to AIM and all IM clients it ends up that the main competition comes from Twitter (and all those twitter-holics).
Of course Pownce is free to use for a basic account. You can send up to 10Mb file in the basic account. There are also specially made pages that are dedicated for each event so people would know about them and they will be given the privilege to sign up and take part of it.
You will in fact be given the opportunity to split your friends into sets so you can send messages to specific niches of people.
The site also features integration with other profiles in other websites so you will have the ability to import friend lists from other services. Pownce is a neat way to get connected!
What’s Lacking? No sms, No rss feeds. (come on.. what are you thinking Kev)
The client will only be as good as the community around it.
And in order to build the community they’ve got some work to do.
Pedigree can’t be beat with Kevin backing it – but I think he’s going to need to spend some of his hard earned digg-cash if he is going to get it to critical mass.
Google App Engine
Google and free are synonyms right? I mean - who isn’t tired of hearing about some google ‘product’ that is beta and free to customers.
Of course when I say free - I mean in exchange for your privacy and ad attention..
So Google announced its long-awaited App Engine a few weeks ago. The Google Application services will directly compete with Amazon’s ever-growing S3 and Db services. Think Cloud Computing.
What is Google App Engine?
Well, the Company described this as an application-hosting tool by which developers can make use of in order to put up scalable web apps on top of Google’s infrastructure. There are no servers to maintain. All you have to do is to upload your application and you are ready to serve your users through a free domain name on the appspot.com or simply use Google Apps itself if you want to serve it your own domain.
It is easy and you will have a choice whether to share it with others or limit access to members of your organization.
The free account can give you up to 500MB space with sufficient CPU and bandwidth for about 5 million page views a month. If this is not enough for you Google offers a paid increase (price unknown).
Is it reliable? You are kidding, right? Has google every been down for you ?
The App Engine development environment comprise of outstanding Web serving, automatic scaling and load balancing, large space for better file storage, Google APIs for authenticating users and sending e-mail and a full packed local development environment. With all these, one can surely assume that the service is possibly reliable because Google is known for being almost invulnerable to widespread outages.
There are a few reasons to dislike the service - the most notable downside is the fact that developers can only make use of Python as their programming language. Google assures the public that Python is merely the first supported language, and that the whole infrastructure is intended to be language neutral.
Data Portability is increasing - as is the availability and ease of use of cloud computing services.
Amazon really set the pace with S3 and continues to lead in the area. Competition and choices are always a good thing - so we should all welcome google into the game.
NIN Releases Album via Internet : Free
It is no secret that we love Trent around here - and for very good reason.
Today NIN released The Slip via the nin.com site completely free of charge.
This follows Trent’s direct to consumer release of Ghosts - where he sold the album for $5 per full download. Fans can register via email address on the site and will receive a token to download the album. (Props go out to you trent - the site experience is much improved from ghosts).
Torrents are available both for lossless flac download and for purist audiophiles - wave format as well (1.2 gig download).
The internet boards are buzzing with fans begging for more, asking where to donate money and making all out fan-love to trent.
Go download the album. Take a listen to tracks #2 and #3 - my personal faves.
Microlending: The secret credit solution?
Micro-lending
The Internet has grown up. I can get porn anytime I want, watch my tv recordings anywhere in the world, music is free (well - almost) and everyone and their grandparents are linkedin or on myspace. What else is left?
So - you aren’t surprised to hear that you it has become popular to be your own bank online. Yes - that’s right - with little effort you can lend anyone else money via the Internet. Total strangers, taking your money - doesn’t that sound like a terrific plan?!
Well - it is.
Another example of the Internet flattening the economy and world.
Sites such as kiva and prosper have cropped up in the last few years and have coined the phrase microlending. The sites act as middlemen. They provide the meeting place and structure for a lender to meet up with a borrower - the transfer of money and logistics. Microlending is possible because hundreds of lenders can all join in to fund one single loan.
Let’s say Bob needs 10,000 to fund his new car. He can visit a microlending site - and ask the community for the $. Lenders can bid on the amount of the loan they would like to fund as well as the interest. If the loan is fully funded - it is executed. If not the borrower usually tries again.
This basic system facilitates a few things:
- Let’s the lender earn a higher interest rate then available at the local bank
- Bidding process allows competitive rates for qualified borrowers
- Allows high-risk borrowers a new source of funds
- By lenders pooling together on each loan the overall risk is lowered.
Is it too good to be true?
Try to visit Kiva which is the first website ever to introduce person-to-person online micro-lending .
Kiva has a social aspect as well - in that it allows people to lend directly to certain business owners in the developing world. It offers interaction between members since you will be able to choose for yourself the lender you wish to make a loan to.
Within the entire phase of loan, the lender will be able to receive updates through email journals, so they can better follow repayments. The moment when full payment is made, the lender can again re-invest the money to someone else in need. To avoid fraud, the folks at Kiva are continuously working to make the system more transparent.
Prosper.com is the other leader in the micro-lending game. They are a strict for-profit entity and rake a hefty percentage off each transaction.
Indeed, lending money online is a faster and smarter way to get your much needed cash. By doing so, you can avoid seeking help from family and friends (and ruining relationships). ! What’s good about this is the fact that both the lender and the borrower are able to benefit from each other.
The same financial responsibility is required when taking out a micro-loan. Most sites have partnerships with collection agents and the loans appear on credit reports (just as bank loans would).
Many will see these sites as an answered prayer - but to get the best deal as possible there are still some few tips that one should consider.
Lenders:
- Same rules as using ebay. Be careful. Alot of good people out there - but many ill intentioned ones as well.
- Do your research. Most sites have users credit records available. Be thoughtful and prudent.
- Set your risk level. Before you bid on any loans decide what your personal risk level will be. That could be a $ loss, a certain credit worthiness, etc. But determine it ahead of time.
- Relax - and enjoy. You will have bad loans. That is part of lending. You can minimize it when bidding based on lending criteria. But once it is out there don’t beat yourself up for it.
- Learn and improve. Everything is an experience.
For borrowers:
- Act like you are applying for a job. Brutal honesty is need and full disclosure will help you get the loan.
- Be reasonable. You have a much better chance looking for a low loan amount then 15k.
- Be heartfelt and genuine. Tell a good honest story in the application. Whether it be starting a new job, opening a business, etc. The better story you tell the better chance you have.
- Credibility. Most sites allow for friends to refer you or testify on your behalf.
- Explain all credit history. Fully explain any items of note on your credit history.
MicroLending Sites:
Adobe Flex
Adobe Flex is gaining more traction as a development platform. The framework produces a flash based output which can be consumed universally by clients agnostically to browser, OS or type. Flex is much easier to edit and create then native flash formats, using an easy to learn scriptable language.
As a web developer, you may always find yourself looking for possible web development applications that would suit your needs, providing a balance of rapid development, easy maintenance and wide cross-compatibility.
Most make use of JavaScript, Active-X and/or AJAX in order to make your sites dynamic and interactive. These traditional frameworks allow for rapid deployment - but necessitate heavy graphical work to make the app user friendly.
To answer the need for better application, the Adobe flex was released which is an open framework for creating significant web applications that that can be installed on major browsers, desktops, and operating systems.
Adobe Flex paves the way to make advanced application that can be used by traditional programmers. Before its release, traditional flash programmers spent hours with actionscript creating customer friendly but difficult to maintain flash-based apps and sites. The Flash platform was innovative and gained critical traction as a default standard over years.
Taking the next step Adobe’s Flex seeks to reduce the problem through the means of providing a workflow and programming model that is familiar to developers. It is programmed with MXML which is an XML-based markup language offers a way to rapidly build and lay out graphic user interfaces. Furthermore, one can also take benefit of interactivity by using ActionScript which is essentially the core language of Flash Player which was made using ECMA Script standard.
Like any other applications, the Adobe Flex has also its limitations. It is still a Flash application and therefore it is limited to what a Flash player can do. True interaction with the desktop is difficult - the Flex platform is not a browser, but is usually a web-based delivery (ie. drag and drop from Desktop to a Player is not feasible). This should be made possible through the release of Apollo.
The Flex popup window is limited to being shown within the dimensions of the player that created it. Incomparable to the popup window in a browser in where you can relocates them to your desktop, the Adobe Flex popup windows can’t go outside the area occupied by the player. Also, the Flash SWF format is a published specification meaning, it is doable for other vendors to create tools that produce Flash files.
Because the introduction of Adobe Flex was favored by the public, the Flex 2 which is an improved version of the first was made which is programmed with command-line compilers and a comprehensive class library of user interface components and utilities.
This program can be downloaded for free and it has no limitations or restrictions compared to the first. There is also the Flex 3 which was launched on April 26, 2007 and is equipped with Flex Builder IDE and the LiveCycle Data Services.
Adobe proclaims that in the near future they will launch the Flex 4 with Gumbo as a code name. The product plan has yet to be completed and although no one really knows what feature this one has, it is surely better than the other 3.
Flex is worth a look as a development and delivery platform if you are willing to work with a Flash based system. Take a look if you were turned off by Flash years ago and haven’t kept up with it.
Comparison between Aperture and Lightroom
I love photography - and have changed workflow tools pretty often over the years.
Adobe photoshop is a stapel for nearly every photographer - although Gimp is free for professional use it just doesn’t stack up.
With the advent of Digital Raw format a third set of workflow tools have risen to ‘develop’ these digital images.
Aperture and Lightroom (now Adobe - after they purchased Pixmantec) are the two top titles in the arena.
Personally I have been a Lightroom user for a few years (Pixmantec originally). I’ve tried some of the other choices and just have felt comfortable with the workflow and processes in Lightroom.
A professional photographer knows the merits of masterful editing, and in this knowledge comes the rivalry between Aperture and Lightroom, presently two of the best photography software programs to hit the market.
The positive thing about this is that photographers and artists are now given sufficient choice on which software to purchase.
Therefore, which of the two really gives back your money’s worth? Which software actually gives the greater benefits, and the lesser downside?
Well, making this decision is never painless, and your decision is compounded by the fact that once you choose one, there’s virtually no turning back. Ultimately, your chosen software will become the deep well of your creative ministrations and masterful editing, where you can store the many details and subtleties of your edited pictures.
A brief comparison on the attributes of Aperture and Lightroom is presented below:
Well, there’s the smart difference in the price tags, with Apple’s Aperture 2.0 at $200 definitely cheaper than Adobe’s Lightroom at $300.
However, there are a few observations that can be made between the two. Lightroom has a more extensive range of interface panel choices- four of them, than Aperture.
But the fact that Aperture has lesser options makes for a smooth transition between different activities, like assigning captions or tags and editing for example, and this could be largely favorable for most. I found this quite helpful especially when multi-tasking.
Moreover, Aperture offers the easy searching interface feature that allows you to sort out and search for edited and tagged files. Lightroom nevertheless shines when it came to its ability of transmitting colors. Up to five colors can be conveyed to each photo with Lightroom, Adobe’s software is also by far the more refined and advanced when it came to actual editing, with its revolutionary TAT, or targeted adjustment tool.
You can manipulate the tone, diffusion of the color, and brightness by simply targeting a specific section of the image, and use your mouse cursor to direct the course of action.
Vignetting is also one advantage of Aperture over Lightroom, as it is able to provide the so-called darkening corners effect to an entire image and a cropped equivalent, unlike Lightroom which can only do so to a full photo image.
Nontheless, Lightroom offers more correction options with lens complexities, especially when a photo has too much contrast in it, and this is what Aperture is found lacking. With editing options, you certainly will appreciate Lightroom’s capabilities, although when it comes to exporting and printing activities, Apple has it made.
Finally, what makes Lightroom an easy choice for a greater percentage of the market is that it can be run on Windows. Apple certainly cannot be trifled with when it comes to its latest offerings on touch phones and its revolutionary music and video players, but Adobe has earned its name in the photography and images soft wares in the first place.
Be the judge, join the poll, and make your verdict.
Android: Should Iphone be scared?
Google recently announced that it will release a new platform for mobile devices and it they dubbed it Android. This platform is a open software platform for use on mobile devices and is a competition to Symbian and Microsoft. Think of it as an OS for your mobile phone.
The project is being developed by Google and its partners in the Open Handset Alliance—Broadcom, eBay, China Mobile, Intel, LG Electronics, NTT DoCoMo, Nvidia, Samsung, Sprint Nextel, Telecom Italia, Telefonica, Texas Instruments, and Wind River—the thrust of which is to accelerate the relationship between the Web and mobile phones.
Currently, mobile phone users may send and receive emails and even surf the Web through their devices but are limited in what they can do and install. With this problems occurring, Google CEO Erich Schmidt mentioned that their mission is to create a whole new experience for mobile phone users—experiences that are not even imaginable today.
With this new technology being developed, people will now spend less time on their PCs or laptops. Experts predict that handsets will slowly evolve into laptop and perhaps even pc replacements. All that is needed to get wired is your mobile phone. The Linux-based platform by Google is being designed with so much flexibility as to allow major phone manufacturers to use it.
CEO Steve Ballmer of Microsoft critiqued that Google only has the Android on paper right now and that it will be hard to compare Google’s product with Microsoft’s own platform called Window’s Mobile, which is currently being used by 150 different handsets and is available in over 100 different mobile operators. Obviously the open OS code (think linux for your cell) would challenge Microsoft’s market.
Another competitor of Google is Symbian—a mobile operating software which is owned by Nokia, Ericson, Sony Ericson, Panasonic, Samsung, and BenQ—and its CEO Nigel Clifford said that Google’s Android is just another name in the list of Linux-based platforms. He also mentioned that Linux is fragmenting faster than it unifies. Symbian is the leading operating system for “smart phones”.
The Iphone can be seen as another competitor on a software level. As the Iphone opens up the OS just a little and allows for sdk and api access, android will provide the ultimate and flexible open development platform. As long as hardware makers create the phones any software developer can write and install the code they desire onto an android device.
Google touts that so far only 120k have downloaded the Iphone SDK in comparison to over 800k downloads of the android platform.
Google plans to release Android in the second half of 2008, during which time, Samsung would have also released two of its latest phones: the L310 and L320.
The L310 is a clamshell-type phone available in black, brown, and gold. Designed primarily for women, it has a 2-megapixel camera and different original applications. The downside is it has no external display.
It supports GPRS and EDGE for internet connectivity, the L310 is a tri-band mobile device. It boasts of a 1.8 inch TFT display with a resolution of 176 X 220 pixels. Targeting women as the market, Samsung included applications such as assistance in shopping and counting calories.
Dimensions of the set are 93.4 X 44 X 17.9 mm. It is equipped with Bluetooth technology and USB version 2.0 with a microSD card slot.
The L320, also a clamshell, has a curvier look and feel than the L310. With an external display, it has the same TFT display resolution in pixels as that of the L310. The difference is that the TFT display is 1.9 inches. Almost all features are the same.
The phone is expected to come out this month, February, but only in selected markets. It is still unclear when exactly these phones will be released.
Android represents a big, big win for consumers. More options are always better for consumers and we’ve long been restricted by phone makers and providers as to what software and applications we can use on our mobiles. Android will hopefully force all providers to open up - end result will be a better service for us - the humble consumers.
Vista Service Pack 1: What’s new?
Windows Vista has been a moderate success but hasn’t blown any of us away by any means.
Slow and steady adoption continues through upgrades and new system purchases. Most critics cite security issues and ease-of-use as failures (UAC?!?). As some features are pretty exasperating at times to use.
The primary goal of this new operating system form windows to to enhance security of the Windows Operating System. One setback for the Vista’s predecessor, the Windows XP, is that it was very susceptible to malware and viruses which cause computer to either breakdown or be hacked.
Microsoft has been known for releasing service packs of their software to the public for eta btesting. This allows the company to add and improve the features of their latest product. On February 15, 2008, Windows Vista Service Pack 1 was introduced to the market, readily downloadable by beta end-users.
Aside from security, Microsoft also targeted performance as an added improvement to their latest operating system. Microsoft touts that Windows Vista SP1 has many enhancements as compared to the original Vista.
The key areas if these improvements are device support, power management, application compatibility, security, performance, and reliability.
One major improvement of the Windows SP1 is desktop search. Windows SP1 allows a user to change search engines from that of the built-in Windows search engine to a third party such as Google.
Another improvement is the introduction of a new security measure for Application Programming Interface (API) and this will bring in more security for users who are frequently practicing P2P or peer-to-peer file sharing.
Some see the SP1 release as acknowledgement from Microsoft that Vista was flawed.
Microsoft of course is merely doing what they always have - never first to market, but after constant revision they usually end up with a winner.
A quick rundown of some of the critiques of Vista and SP1.
Software Compatibility
Critics claim that so much codes have been changed in the Windows Vista that it causes many programs to crash and mutate. There are many observed side-effects upon usage of the operating system and it is not compatible with other existing programs designed for other Windows applications.
Laptop Battery Life
According to users, Windows Vista can drain a laptops battery faster than Windows XP because of its added features. Because of its higher requirements, higher power consumption is a side effect.
Hardware Compatibility
Although this speculation was dispelled when Microsoft announced the requirements for Windows Vista to run, many end-users cannot use the operating system if their computers are bought earlier than 2005. For some, they may use Vista but they cannot enjoy other features, as their computers’ hardware cannot support Windows Vista’s requirements. The impact is the level of frustration for many end users who purchased the product and yet cannot fully access its features.
Cost
Windows Vista was criticized as overpriced—more expensive than Windows XP.
All in all, this attempt of Microsoft to provide better operating system will have it wonders and flaws. As with any other product, nothing really comes perfect. The bad thing is, purchasing a new operating system such as this is not wise for people who are not computer savvy. And with computer savvy I do not mean the simple end use type. What I mean is really computer savvy in which the degree of knowledge extends to that of program compatibility. If you purchased this operating system and it does not support your other existing soft wares or programs, you will end up using your old one.
Performance
Many comparison tests have been run (you can pick and choose which are more believable). But consistently Vista does not show up as a better performing OS then XP. Users were hopeful that the SP1 would rectify some of those stability and performance issues. From reports of beta testers it appears unchanged. Vista Sp1 appears on par or sub-par to XP on both stability and performance.
One could try to argue that the security gains on Vista are worth the performance hit - but that’s just no fun. You’d hope after 5 years of OS development things would improve across the board.
We will see what changes are made in the Vista Sp1 release which should hit windows update in the next week or two!
NIN - Can Trent stop the Downward Spiral?
As I type I’m listening to Ghosts I-IV - NiN’s latest album release.
There is no question that Trent Reznor is an unusual artist. Hell - anyone who makes a music studio out of a Charles Manson’s slaughterhouse is a bit different.
The album itself is a 36 track instrumental. In trent’s own words:
“I’ve been considering and wanting to make this kind of record for years, but by its very nature it wouldn’t have made sense until this point. This collection of music is the result of working from a very visual perspective - dressing imagined locations and scenarios with sound and texture; a soundtrack for daydreams. I’m very pleased with the result and the ability to present it directly to you without interference. I hope you enjoy the first four volumes of Ghosts.”
So what’s the big deal? The album was released online @ NIN.com (and on Amazon.com’s music marketplace). For the cost of $5.00 customers can download the FLAC lossless format of the entire album, cover-art and info (Smaller MP3 format available as well ). [amazonify]B00158SHD8:right[/amazonify]
This isn’t Trent Reznor’s first foray into direct music sales. He ditched his record label last year and has make news by helping Saul Williams launch his Niggy Tardust Album last year online. The album sales were not terrific - but impressive enough for an independent release with no support from the recording studios.
The Niggy Tardust experience gave Trent some lessons learned - as did RadioHead’s very public online album release of Rainbows. Both were less successful then expected, but provided valuable insights - not to mention press coverage and proof-of-concept for the directly to consumer music delivery sales model.
Since NIN is no stranger to controversy Trent went ahead and uploaded the album at release time to the popular Torrent Sites on the web as well. Torrent’s are familiar territory for Rez as he admitted last year to being a frequent user on Oink.com (we miss you oink). How can you not lov the reznor?!
Talk about a guy who ‘gets it’. Actually getting his music to the consumers, in a format that they are begging for, in a method that is quick cost effective.
Awesome.
I purchased the flac version of the album directly from NIN.com. There were a few technical glitches - as I’m sure the site was hammered from all of the press. (Trent - if you are reading.. I’m sure your tech folks can hook you up with some better distributed download system next time). But I think we can all get over those. The site was up again this morning when I checked with a note from Trent apologizing for the outage.
So what will it all mean for the music industry going forward? Can NIN push the music industry forward into a newer delivery model, embracing technology (and customers) instead of fearing both?
I think he can.
No one else in the industry has stepped forward with any better plan at this point - certinaly no one from the record labels. Independant artists and groups are getting exposure like never before from the social networks and the dependency on the music labels for promotion belongs in the past.
Trent’s album will be a tremendous success, as it has already gained high visibility - and let’s not forget that NIN get’s a much bigger slice of the revenue without sharing it. The visibility and example shown will push other mainstream artists to dabble in online and independant delivery.
Given the option I will gladly plunk down 5 bucks to purchase a quality album.
Tell me I’ve got to pay 9.95-14.95 and I’m restricted as to where I can play the music - and I’m less inclined. I’m not exactly unique on this one..
Only time will tell - until then I’d suggets we all thank NIN for giving us the chance to break free.