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I’m a fan of yours

Two days ago I was really having one of those days. It wasn't that anything had really gone wrong, but I was really starting to reach my limit on the whole blogging thing. I know that my blogs help thousands of people and I don't do them for praise I do them because I enjoy technology and sharing my views on technology. I don't expect everyone to agree with my opinions here just like I don't expect everyone to agree with my opinions in life. So it's OK to disagree or have another way to doing something, just be nice about it. I can write a post and get 49 people that tell me that it helped them in some way or they have good questions about about something I wrote or even disagree and respond with why they disagree. Then there's always that one that just sucks the life out of the virtual room. The one that writes the hateful, mean, derogatory, outrageous comment. Those comments usually never see the light of day, but  they can be draining at times reading and deleting them. Not to mention the Virus/Malware attacks I've suffered over the past month. I was pretty much ready to walk away from this for a while…

 

Then Something Extraordinary Happened On Tuesday

Tuesday I got a message on Twitter from someone claiming to be Seal. Yes Seal, the musician superstar. Like many of you are thinking right now, I thought "yeah right." It's a joke. I'm being pranked. It must be a spam message. However, this guy was persistent. So I decided to play along. I went to his twitter page and it actually looked like the real thing. Now keep in mind that anyone can start a Twitter account and claim to be someone famous and it happens everyday. I know this! However, the weird thing was the page had been up a while and usually a  celeb will have fake pages removed. Even then I thought "well maybe it's his manager." Even then I was still VERY skeptical. Still I played along and he asked if we could talk on the phone. What? Um, OK, sure. So I responded with "what's your number?" Fully expecting that to be the end of this charade. The next response was an LA based phone number. Sure it could be faked easily too, but this was starting to feel even stranger. So I bit. I called it. OMG! It was really him! I was on the phone with Seal. Seal has a very distinct voice and while it could have still been an imposter, at this point there was nothing devious or phising about his conversation. After all you wouldn't have to go through such an elaborate hoax just to ask me some questions about technology. He had some questions about one of my posts and needed some help understanding how RAW processing worked on the iPad. We talked for 45 minutes about all things tech and photography. He told me that he was a fan of mine and had been a follower of this blog for a while. He was naming things that I had written and forgot about. It was real. It was this one phone conversation that made all of this seem worthwhile. It was someone whom I've admired for years and wouldn't have thought knew I existed that told me that he liked my style of writing, and that made me say maybe this isn't a waste of my time. 

I know that my sites get thousands of visitors a day. I know that I positively impact people. Your thank you's and "great jobs" do mean something. It does help me balance the "idiot comments" that I get from time to time.

 

Thank you for being there!

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TiVo outs a NEW Wireless 802.11N Adapter and it costs how much?

I applauded TiVo many times in the past for making a relatively inexpensive 802.11g adapter for their DVRs. It's great to be able to put a TiVo on your WiFi network just by plugging in a simple adapter and having the support BUILT-IN to the DVR itself so it's drop dead simple to setup. Although 802.11g isn't the fastest in the world it does work and I've been happy with it here in my rooms where an Ethernet drop wouldn't be easy. So needless to say I got excited when I saw yesterday's announcement that they finally came out with an 802.11n version until I saw the price! $89.99 Seriously? Now I don't want to get into the "hey they can charge whatever they want and you can either buy it or not argument". I invented that argument 🙂 However, for a company that is struggling to remain relevant in this world of "we'll give you a DVR FREE if you sign up with our service", I think that this smacks of "they don't get it." The former adapter was under $40. I can't imagine that this one costs more than twice as much to produce or even invent, but hey TiVo it's your business at risk, not mine. Continue doing what you're doing. It's your call.

 

What about the performance?

Putting price aside for a minute. I'm even more curious about how much better this thing will perform? The reason I say that is because I have some TiVo HDs on Ethernet and some on the WiFi 802.11g adapter and from my limited testing I can't really see much if any difference in speed of transferring content from say one connected via Ethernet to my computer also connected via Ethernet vs. the one connected via WiFi. However, my daughter often complains that the TiVo in my bedroom (on WiFi) is slower when transferring shows from another TiVo in the house (on Ethernet) vs. the one in the living room which is on Ethernet transferring from another one in the house on Ethernet. So this is a test I'm willing to try. Stay tuned…

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Wacom Intuos 4 Wireless: Video Review

When I'm in Photoshop and I don't have my Wacom Tablet I feel naked! I've become so used to it that I won't retouch a photo without one. One of the things I've always wanted was a WIRELESS Version. As a matter of fact during my part of the Adobe Creative Suite 5 launch I was walking around with a Cintiq 12wx.

It was really wired to a Mac Pro, they green screened it out to give the allusion of it being wireless. Although we're probably still a ways off from having enough wireless bandwidth to do a wireless Cintq, we are at a time where we can have a wireless Intuos 4! Here's just a few minutes of video featuring the Intuos 4 Wireless Edition:

 

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8AytkRxFJc

 

The Particulars

The tablet is using Bluetooth and therefore it's Mac and PC compatible. I'm using it above in the video with a NEW MacBook Pro 15" and Photoshop CS5. Most of the Creative Suite design tools support pressure sensitivity. It has 2048 levels of pressure and an 18 hour battery life per charge. It charges over USB with the same supplied cable that can also be used for a wired connection if the battery dies. The Battery is user replaceable. The wireless range is 10 meters. More specs here.

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iPad Camera Connection Kit Review

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFtx9HzM-lE

 

As a photographer one of the iPad accessories I was most anticipating was the iPad Camera Connection Kit. This kit consists of TWO adapters that connect right to the iPad's Dock connector. The first one is a standard SD (SDHC) Memory Card reader. You connect it to your iPad and then insert a memory card with images/videos on it and transfer those images to your iPad. No software to install because the iPad already has this ability built-in to the Photos App. The second adapter has a standard USB port on the oppositie end of the Dock connector. With this one you can not only connect your camera via USB and transfer images directly, but as my video above shows you can even use a Card Reader with it! This overcomes (although not as elegantly) the problem of wanting to use Compact Flash or other card formats. 

 

How does it work?

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Tech Profile of Corey Barker

Corey Barker

Photoshop Guy

Company:

Kelby Media Group

Oldsmar, FL

 

Your blog/website:

www.planetphotoshop.com, www.photoshopuser.com

 

Favorite Gadget(s):

Apple TV, PS3, XBox, and Wii I use them all for different reasons. I rent movies on Apple TV, PS3 is my Blu Ray player, XBox is for online gaming, and the Wii is just fun! Oh and the iPad, even though I haven't got one yet.

 

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Now You Want To Charge Me For My Carry On Bag? Seriously?

As a frequent flyer I know all too well the headaches that carry-on luggage can cause on a flight. It's usually the people that don't travel regularly that either have bags that are too big to fit in the overhead or bags that don't fit the short way to accommodate more bags. It's frustrating for sure. It can even cause delays. However, for Spirit Airlines and others to consider charging for Carry On luggage, I think you're going about it the wrong way. Sure it's your airline and you can do whatever you want. You can charge whatever you want. No question about that. I think that most will view this as a negative even though you've supposedly lower the price of checked bags and that's my point. You charge your customers either way. It would be different if you said. "Hey if you want to carry your bag on there's a fee, but if you check it then it's free." Although I wouldn't be totally happy with that, at least it would be more fair and perhaps ease much of the pain I've described above. Also since you invested in all of those "your bag should fit in here" kiosks, why not charge the folks with bags that don't fit? Or simply enforce that policy of "if it doesn't fit in here, then you can't bring it on" that you already have and much of this issue would go away.

Here's what the CEO of Spirt Airlines had to say about this:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omYDG-YuSxI

 

The Bottom Line

Luckily Delta (the carrier I fly the most) and others did not follow suit and I think they didn't because they know that their customers wouldn't like it. Most travelers are traveling with things that can't be checked such as laptop computers and other fragile items (although a "purse" or "briefcase" is probably still allowed for free). So in effect you're punishing everyone with this policy because most of us don't have a choice. We have to travel with something that we can't check. I'm certainly not going to check my camera gear or other valuables. And again you're charging customers no matter what they do so I don't really see how this is helping anything other than perhaps your bottom line.

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Creating My 1st iBook for the iPad with Adobe InDesign CS5

These are exciting times in the publishing industry! The tools have never been better to get your word out. With the introduction of Adobe Creative Suite 5 and in particular InDesign CS5, my head is spinning thinking about all the possibilities. I can use one industry standard app to publish for Print, for the Web with NEW Interactive features and now more easily than ever to standard eBook Reader formats such as ePUB. There’s also a lot of excitement around the Apple iPad. The beauty here is that I can use my new found publishing power and Apple’s popular device to get my content in front of more eyeballs than ever.

 

The Project

As you may know I co-authored one of the best selling books for the iPhone, “The iPhone Book”. I’ve been very happy with the success of that book and of course as soon as the iPad was introduced, many eyes turned towards me to question if I was going to write a book for this new device. While the project seemed interesting (and still is), I wanted to try something a little different this time around. I wanted the iPad Book to be an iBook on the actual iPad. All of my books are already being laid out in Adobe InDesign. So there’s nothing new there, except there is something new there in terms of capabilities. The enhanced capabilities around the ePUB format and Interactive Document publishing beyond PDF. So I wanted to do two things: I wanted to get a sample out there of what an iPad book on the iPad and I wanted to experience first hand what it was like to create one from scratch using InDesign CS5. So I enlisted the help of my colleague at Adobe, Colin Fleming (eBOOK guru) and Colin gave me the inside scope and even some sample demo documents that he had put together. This was a great jump start and helped me avoid some stumbling blocks. Yesterday, I started my sample “25 iPad Tips” and today I have a FREE iBook that you can download right here.

 

The Making of my 1st iBook (ePUB)

The iBooks App on the iPad reads standard ePUB documents and Adobe InDesign CS5 just so happens to export them out directly. Great! There are some limitations that you have to be mindful in your document itself. These are limitations on the standard more so than of InDesign. For example, InDesign is an amazingly powerful page layout application that pretty much allows you do do anything you want on the page. However, ePUB has limitations on how the content has to flow to make it possible to have this single document on a multitude of different devices. I recorded this video to walk you through some of those things to look out for:

 

 

Downloading and Installing my FREE “25 iPad Tips” Book

The first step is to download my ePUB file here. Once you download the ZIP file, unzip it and you’ll have a short readme.txt file and the actual “25 iPad Tips.epub” document. Open iTunes 9.1 and higher and simply drag the ePUB into the Library area of iTunes on the left side. It should now appear in the Books Area of iTunes and once you plug in your iPad via the USB cable, you can select it as a book to sync in the Books Tab in iTunes. Enjoy!

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Ask a Creative Suite Pro Your Questions on Thursday

Now that Adobe has taken the wraps off of Creative Suite 5, there are lots of questions on the minds of our customers. So we thought it would be bennificial and fun to address your questions LIVE via Adobe Connect. Not only will Adobe's Worldwide Creative Suite Evangelists (Greg Rewis – the web guy, Jason Levine – the video/audio guy and myself) be on hand to field your questions, but we'll also show Creative Suite 5 tips and tricks for our Design, Web and Video suites.

 

Details to Participate

This special Q&A session will take place Thursday, April 22th @ 11 AM PDT (2 PM EDT (GMT-4). and it will take place via Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro. Here’s the URL: http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/askcspro

Sign on as a GUEST with your real name. While there is no pre-registration required, this session will be limited to 100 attendees. So it’s first come, first served. I advise you to log in 15 minutes before the 11 AM  start time as we plan to start on time.

 

Speaking of Tips

Here's a video to tide you over until Thursday 🙂 

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUIcQ1nXkWk

Also be sure to check out Adobe's Sr. Creative Director Russell Brown's Latest CS5 Videos here. More videos at Creative Suite Video Podcast and Adobe TV.

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Sprint Reminds Me of AT&T’s Broken Promises

Sprint says come on over and use our 4G data card with your iPad. Now I get that this is just Sprints way of trying to get in on a good thing with their newly introduced 4G Case for iPad. Clever! However, it reminds of one of the biggest broken promises of 2009.

Last year (June 18, 2009) AT&T told us that iPhone tethering (the ability to use your iPhone as a data connection for your laptop or in theory iPad) was "coming soon". By soon most of us assumed that meant by the end of the year. Well 2009 has come and gone and now it's the later part of April 2010 and official iPhone data tethering support is no where to be seen. To make matters worse or to give us more of a rub, Apple announced and is about to ship the iPad WiFi+3G model, which again runs data on AT&T's network!

 

So AT&T let me get this straight…

You can provide unlimited data to iPhones. You can provide tethering support to every other smart phone you make. You can provide 3G data cards for laptops to anyone that wants them. You can even bring a relatively low cost, contract free data plan to Apple's NEW iPad, but you can't provide tethering support for iPhones yet? I don't get it! No one is asking for FREE tethering support. So chances are you're going to charge for it and because you're going to charge for it, it means that not everyone is going to use it. Is your "improved" network still that fragile? Really?

I have no love or hatred for AT&T. For the most part my service has been fine and I travel all over. I just wonder what's really going on here?

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