Welcome to my technology blog!
Hey! It looks like someone forgot to tell Amazon.com that Adobe Photoshop Lightroom now goes for $299. There was an introductory price of $199 from February (when the product shipped) until the end of April. But it appears that Amazon still has some of those $199 boxes left. So while they have supplies left of the introductory sku’s you can get Lightroom for only $199.49. However, you’d better hurry as it says "while supplies last!".
I’m here in Austin Texas which is the second stop of the Adobe CS3: Creative License Tour. We have another standing room only audience of over 450 people. We’re having a great time learning all about Creative Suite 3. As part of my keynote address I do this live blog post by shooting a shot of the audience and then I process it in Bridge/Photoshop CS3 Camera RAW, from there I move the image into Adobe Contribute CS3 to combine it with this text and hit publish.
I’m joined by Lisa Forrester who’s covering Design Premium, Kyle Thompson who’s covering the Web Premium Suite and Kevan O’Brien who will be wrapping up the day with the brand new Production Premium CS3. By the way it’s 80• and sunny 🙂 I hope to see you at one of the upcoming cities
I have to admit that I’m rather stunned at the number of hotels I’ve stayed at recently that are now allowing you to print your boarding pass for your flight from a walk up kiosk FREE OF CHARGE! This is from the same industry that charges $3.50 for a bottle of water in your room and a $1 per page for an incoming fax ($4 per page if you stay at the downtown Chicago Hyatt).
It’s easy! You walk up, click the mouse to kill the screen saver and there is already a page up with links to most if not all of the airlines. Click on the one you want and check in for your flight. Print your boarding pass on the attached laser printer and walk away. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining and actually appreciate this service tremendously. I’m just shocked that they don’t try to charge for it (yet). If your hotel doesn’t have this yet, fill out those little survey cards in your room and ask, why not? My last 3 hotel stays offered this.
I’m here today at the Hynes Convention Center in downtown Boston attending the Scott Kelby Photoshop Lightroom Tour. I’m fielding questions on Lightroom during the breaks and learning some pretty cool tips. The Lightroom product manager Tom Hoggerty is also here and promises to show a sneak peek of what’s coming in the next update. Scott is presenting to a sold out crowd of over 500 people. If this is any indication of where the industry is going, it certainly points to the success of Lightroom and the importance of digital photography workflows.
Scott starts out with a live photo shoot of a bride and then goes right into the Lightroom workflow covering the Library, Develop, Slideshow, Web and Print modules.
I’m here presenting at the Adobe CS3: Creative License Tour in Chicago. Part of my presentation involves doing a live post to my blog using Adobe Contribute CS3. The audience here has been great and we are having a blast learning about all the new CS3 products. We have over 550 people here at the beautiful Navy Pier in Chicago. I hope to see you in the upcoming cities.
We had to bring in more chairs! What a great response to CS3.
The Navy Pier location was great for this type of event, although finding the correct room/hall was challenging for some.
I couldn’t resist taking the opportunity for a few shots right outside our presentation area of this rustic looking lighthouse.
I love my Garmin Nuvi GPS however, I’m not a fan of windshield suction cups. While they work for the most part, I primarily use my Nuvi in rental cars and therefore have to move the mount from car to car each time I travel. I’ve had the Nuvi literally fall off the window on more than one occasion while driving. While the Nuvi has survived the fall each time, it was a pain in the butt (and a hazard to my fellow motorists) to get it back on the windshield. So I started looking for other mounting solutions when I came across this “Portable Friction Mount – ie. Bean Bag” on Garmin’s site. In order to use this mount you also need the Automotive Mount. The Automotive Mount is designed to stick permanently on your dashboard as some states don’t allow anything to be mounted to the windshield (probably for the reasons above). However, it does slide neatly and not permanently into the Bean Bag mount. So in theory you could use the base that comes with the Automotive Mount in your car and still travel with the Bean Bag mount and the part that attaches to the Nuvi for other/rental cars. This isn’t a concern for me as my personal vehicles all have factory navigation in them already.
I took the Bean Bag mount for a test drive and it stayed in place even on those Indy 500 style turns that I’m known for. It’s also neat to just pickup the whole thing when you arrive and go inside. If you find that suction mounts “suck (or don’t suck)”, then I highly recommend this solution!
Now that Apple and AT&T are a couple and they’re about to give birth to their first offspring (the iPhone), it’s time that Apple stepped up to the plate and supported AT&T’s other kids. Namely the new Option GT Max 3.6 Express Card and the Sierra Wireless Aircard 875u (USB solution) Granted they are not as cute as the iPhone, however they shouldn’t be treated as step children. Apple had no problem supporting Verizon’s EVDO kids (v640 & v740 in the WWAN 1.0 Driver Update) so it should do the same here. Sure I know that Option supposedly offers Mac drivers directly, but that kind of child support should come directly from the father of the Mac. So how about it Apple? How about the WWAN 2.0 Driver Update? It’s embarrassing that AT&T has to list these cards as being supported by Windows only (isn’t that like welfare or something?).
I love my Verizon v640 card. It works great! However, the Cingular solution is a 3g (HSDPA) world solution that would work outside the US and it’s theoretically faster than EVDO. I don’t travel outside the US often, but when I do I hate that I have to leave the v640 parked in my bag until I return. Since Apple is more open to providing drivers for wireless cards right in the OS, I don’t want to have to go installing 3rd party drivers if I don’t have to. Apple either needs to support this card quickly or AT&T needs to ship the Novatel Merlin XU870 ExpressCard that Apple already supports. My Verizon contract is over and Apple I’m just waiting on you to do the right thing.
It’s not often that I get the chance to spend some quality 1-on-1 time with my buddy Scott Kelby. So I jumped at the chance to do a photo shoot with him this week in Tampa. I learned a lot and will be placing my order for a Westcott Spiderlite kit as soon as I get home. These lights do a phenomonal job of providing continuous light and basically giving you a what-you-see-is-what-you get situation. It also doesn’t hurt to shoot a beautiful subject either.
This shot of Ashley Gellar taken with my Nikon D80 and lit with the Westcott Spiderlite T5 and a reflector.
Did I mention how much I love digital photography?
I’m about to hit the road on a major tour and hopefully when I come to your city I’ll see you there! Register now for this momentous event. Be one of the first to learn new features and techniques available only in Adobe® Creative Suite® 3 that will change the way you work and create.
The Conference cities include: Chicago, Austin, San Jose, Toronto, Boston, Seattle Los Angeles and New York. We have an action packed agenda and there will certainly be a lot to learn. If you do make it to one of the stops on the tour be sure to say hi!
I recently had to move some computers around and transfer some data from one drive to another. The easiest way was going to be to put the New 750GB SATA drive in an external case. Since I didn’t own any SATA to Fir wire cases, I went looking for one. My search lead me to CoolDrives.com. They had this SATA to Firewire/USB2/eSATA enclosure on sale for $99. Although that still seems like a lot for just an enclosure, it was one of the lowest prices I found. I bought two of them (I will need them in the future) and temporarily installed my new drive to do the transfer. The transfer of 365GB’s went without a hitch (7.5 hours later at Firewire 400 speeds). I was floored to see that they included not only the power cable, but a Firewire 800 to 800 cable, USB 2 cable, and Firewire 800 to 400 cable. Although most users will only need one of these, it was a nice touch to not have to go out and buy them separately. Installation of the drive in the case was a piece of cake. Remove 3 small screws and you’re inside. Plug in two cables and secure the drive to the bracket. This case is whisper quiet and works as advertised.