I am loving Instagram Photo App for iPhone

I'm quickly becoming addicted to a new photography application on my iPhone called Instagram.  All you do is snap a picture, apply one of the many creative filters, and then easily share it to all of your favorite social sites.  You can also geotag photos and check in to foursquare all in one shot.  It's also got the underpinning of its own social network, letting you view, favorite, and comment on the most popular public photos.  It combines the fun of Hipstamatic and the simplicity of Posterous, and it's free.  I can't wait to see where the creators of Instagram take it next.

Instagram joins Hipstamatic, Pro HDR, and 360 Panorama in my folder of photo taking tools.  You can see my reviews over at my Blippy page.

My 365 Project

My 2010 goal is to complete a 365 photo project; the idea is to produce 1 picture a day for every day of the year. Ideally this means taking a photo, doing any digital editing that I'd like, and publishing it to my gallery (though sometimes I'll use a picture I took earlier in the year) every single day in 2010. So far I've gone 23 straight days, so I think I'm ready to open up the project to the public:

Follow my daily gallery on Tumblr
or
See the gallery on Flickr

I'd love to buy a DSLR at some point, but in the mean time I'm relying on a point-and-shoot Canon SD700 and my iPhone 3GS. I'd love comments and suggestions on the pictures!

Making My Parents a 2009 Calendar

Every year my brother and I make a calendar for my parents for the upcoming year.  We post pictures on Flickr from the year previous, trying to capture photos of the two of us with and without our parents, cousins, etc.  Then print the calendar from Qoop.  Qoop is easy to use and the quality is really pretty good, and with shipping the cost of 2 printed calendars is under $37.  It’s fun to go back through the whole year’s photos, and my parents love it – one for my kitchen and one for my dad’s office.  It’s a great Channukah gift.

Here’s the photos Andrew and I chose this year:

Flashback: The Dominican Republic with Angela and my Friends

3.2007.dominican republic. 081
Originally uploaded by kskobac.

Lately pictures have been popping up in my picture frame that I've forgotten about, and absolutely love - I guess it's the kind of thing that good pictures memories become better over time. I'm going to start posting the pictures that make me pause, and writing a bit about them on flickr under the picture, in another attempt to tap into my Daily Fotolog, which never really took off. You can see my reborn daily Fotolog here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kskobac/sets/72157604529959949/

The picture here was taken on my trip to the Dominican Republic, with Angela, Bruce, Mark, and Ari. It was the first trip that Angela and I took together. I was nervous about it, but it was an incredible trip, everyone had a great time, and she held her own on a very male-driven trip with non-stop sports and little beach relaxation. Here Bruce and Angela are in the back of a bus taking us to a catamaran trip early in the morning.

election night with angela & kevin

Photo Booth reels are quickly becoming my favorite photos - the 6-picture series just captures so much different emotion and defines the scene

see my set of photo booth pictures here

election night with angela & kevin
Originally uploaded by kskobac.

Photosynth Turns Photos Into Immersive Environments

This week, one of Microsoft’s impressive lab products Photosynth was finally opened for personal use after 2 years of being only a technology demo.  Honestly even after two years I never expected it for public use given it’s seeming unheard of photo analysis technology, but this weekend I was able to dive in and start using Photosynth for myself.

Photosynth takes batches of photos (20+ photos at bare minimum) and analyzes them for overlapping content and views, and then builds them into a 3D environment where you can click into photos and see the objects within from different views, as well as to continue to move around environments as if all of the pictures are one. 

It’s hard to really comprehend until you start to use it, so I’ve embedded a photosynth above that I built of Mirror Lake in the Wallowa Mountain Range in Oregon (pictures and more from my recent backpacking trip).  When you upload pictures, Microsoft Photosynth tells you how “synthy” they are, which basically reflects how well your photos really connect with each other to build an environment.  You can see my Wallowa photosynth is 59% synthy, so it’s actually a pretty good collection of 44 pictures, but they split out into a few seperate groups and a few pictures can’t be connected.

One thing to note – Microsoft Photosynth is very buggy.  You may have to install it numerous times, and often when I return to the site it cannot detect  that I’ve already installed the plug-ins.  At any given time, either Firefox or IE doesn’t allow me to actually view the photosynths.  Hopefully over time the site will become much more stable, which is necessary for it to scale.

I’ve also built one from pictures I took of the Taj Mahal on my trip to India, see both of my photosynths here.

Newsweek's Olympic Photo Journals

Newsweek has very cool photo journals of the Olympics, an interesting way to experience the personal experiences and emotion of the athletes.

Panoramio is another confusing Google product that makes us wonder where GDrive is

In all of the discussions that come up around Google's missing long-rumored G-Drive, no one ever mentions Panoramio.

Google's storage strategy has always been confusing - at this point we have free about 6GB on Gmail, 1GB on Picasa, 200MB on Google Page Creator, as well as some storage on Google Docs (I can't remember how much off the top of my head). The product that never seems to get mentioned, though, is Panoramio - a location-based photo sharing site that Google owns now for around a year (purchased June 1 '07) and has integrated into Google Maps and Google Earth heavily (you can view geo-tagged photos from Panoramio on both of those products). I was surprised to find that Panoramio allows for 2GB of storage, more than Picasa, Google's main photo sharing site. One of the few things that keeps me from using Picasa more often is that lack of storage, and I would certainly be happy with the extra gig or two.

More importantly, there is still the main question of how come we can't share the nearly 10GB of storage Google is offering in its many products as we see fit? And how come we can't see all of our files across all of Google's owned and operated properties in one "storage" location? AOL and Microsoft both have products that offer 5GB of free storage of any sort - I am not sure exactly how integrated the storage is into the rest of their products, but it doesn't matter much - I don't really use them. With Google, I have some content spread across almost everything they operate, and I'd like to keep track of it, share it, manage it, and appropriate it easily and as I see fit.

Using Fotolog for a once-a-day photo journal

Thanks to this interesting post by Fred Wilson, this weekend I've been thinking about the 'once-a-day' phenomenon:

"There's just something about limiting yourself to one a day that creates something special. You don't want to waste the opportunity on something average, so you carefully select the one thing you are gong to showcase or possibly create. And when viewed over time, it's way more than that. It's a timeline to your life. Jerry told me that Jamie went out with one woman for a while and during that period, you'd see her in many of his daily polaroids. Then one day, she just stopped showing up. That's life and that's the power of one a day. "

After reading the post, I decided to try out Fotolog, the once-a-day photo / blog / journal site that was featured in the article.  Basically the rules are you can only upload one picture per day, it gets dated on a time-line, and you can write a post within the 10-minute window after you upload.  This limits you to making one comment or capturing one moment about your life at a time, and choices have to be made.  I had ideas for today that I wanted to put up, and only one slot, so I have to choose whether to waste another day's slot on going back.  Also, I am thinking about what parameters I want to put on this: Can I post a picture that pre-dates my last photo?  Can I post another person's photo (properly attributed) that represents my thought for the day (I probably don't take photos myself that often)?  I'm going to give this a try for a few weeks, to see if I have the discipline to post a few times a week at the very least, and how I feel this reflects/ads to my life.  I welcome thoughts on the once-a-day concept, and the potential rules that will define my experience.  Oh and if you use Fotolog or want to join in, drop me a comment also.

You can follow along here

On a separate note, I am cross-posting restaurant reviews on both Google Maps and Yelp, until I see a reason to use one over the other (Tonight's review was Jane). 

Saying Goodbye To Web Services that Died in 2008

It looks like some services I love are closing shop Today.  Yottamusic, the web service that provided a better interface for Rhapsody (most importantly it connected Last.FM to Rhapsody, why has Rhapsody itself not done that) has a goodbye letter up on its website.  Also as of midnight I can no longer access Riya, the photo website with facial recognition that I was such a fan of.  How many services that I truly liked and used will I realize have gone under as we hit the new year all over the world?

I had written the founder of Yottamusic a week ago asking about the future of the product and hadn't heard back - but he provided one-touch access to an XML file of your library and playlists if you saved music on the service, and also provided 24 hour turn around to syncing your Yottamusic library with your Rhapsody library, which is at the very least a very thoughtful and respectable addition to the service on the way out its door.

I have written the founder of Riya as well, but I've done this before and heard no response, so we'll see if it's different this time.  He is currently developing Like.com on the same technology, but for shopping, which is significantly less interesting and less valuable to me (although may be more lucrative).

Matisyahu Channukah Concert at Roseland Ballroom in New York City

 

Ari and I went to see Matisyahu during Channukah for the second straight year.  The opener was a supposedly well known Reggae band The Whalers, who played mostly covers of groups I didn't know but songs I recognized, which made them entertaining The Wailers, who were Bob Marley's original band - it turns out we recognized most of what they played, which made it really easy to get into (I just learned this after writing the original post).  Matisyahu himself was great - he's an engaging performer, and its amazing to watch Jews & non-Jews a like get immersed into his music, which is all heavily religious.  He jumped around the stage despite walking with a cane due to injury, he brought out guest performers (that I didn't recognize), and he lit brought audience members on stage to light the Menorah.  We met some Israelis, and then a Venezuelan kid who supposedly came to New York from Venezuela for the show (he spoke fractured English so we didn't quite connect on everything), an amazing fact.  One ridiculous thing - at the end of the show a security guard grabbed his camera and took out his memory card, screaming at him, claiming that he was video taping, which was heavily illegal.  The security guard walked right by myself and numerous other audience members who were doing the same thing, with possibly less impressive cameras (he later talked to another guard, who got his card back unharmed).  The videos I took don't do justice to the performance Matisyahu put on - check him out yourself, and if you want an album my recommendation is Live at Stubs.  Also his single on the following album, Jerusalem, is great (listen below).   There are also a few pretty interesting videos of Chassidic dancing by Matisyahu and others that was done on stage.

My photos

My videos

 

Technorati Tags: new york city,matisyahu,the whalers,chassidic dancing,10019

Back from Florence Italy

I'm finally back from all of my vacations - this last to Florence.  The trip itself was fantastic and I well documented it.  I have to thank Melissa, Emily, Katie, and others who gave me such thorough advice on what to do and where to eat, all of which lead me to having a great experience.  In return for their time I've written an extensive itinerary on Yahoo! Travel so I can contribute on my own to other people's future journeys.  You can check out the photo album here, or see the slide show.

Technorati Tags: florence,italy,tuscany,pisa,yahoo!,yahoo! travel,travel,trip itinerary

Back from Barcelona

I'm back from Barcelona for a few days to have Thanksgiving with my family before I turn around and leave for Florence.  Barcelona was incredible, probably one of my favorite cities - the food, the way the city is run, the people, the atmosphere, the attitude - I could easily see enjoying a month there instead of a few nights.  Above links to my whole picture album, and here is a direct link to the slide show.

Technorati Tags: barcelona , spain , catalonia

View from the top of the Empire State Building

Today I went to the top of the Empire State Building for the first time since moving to New York City, or in my adult memory for that matter.  It's one of those things you reserve for tourists, or for when you'll have to to show a visitor around (today I brought my friends from Idaho there), but it really was cool getting to look out on the whole city.  We went at the perfect time - a little before sunset fell - which got us up to the top before all of the major evening crowds hit.  I definitely recommend spending the $19 (for adults) on a nice day and making your way up there, and in the mean time you can check out my photos.

Technorati Tags: new york city , nyc , empire state building , skyline , sunset

Cardinals Stadium and Arch - My Most Popular Flickr Photo

A picture I took of the Arch overlooking the new St. Louis Cardinals baseball stadium has become popular on Flickr - 7 people have tagged it as a favorite in the last 3 months, and over 700 people have viewed it. The photo was taken with my Canon SD700 IS, using color isolation to highlight the reds in the stadium, an homage to the Cardinal.

Other color isolation photos I've taken can be found here.

Gmail storage is increasing, now what about Picasaweb?

Gmail Storage is increasing more rapidly starting today:

"Gmail just revised their storage estimates for the next 1449 years. Googlified
dug around in the code and discovered that you’ll be getting a tiny
increase to 2912MB on Friday, 4.2GB by October 23, 6GB by January 4
2008, 42GB by 2038 and 2.70266701 × 1072 TB by 3456. Google has since
since confirmed by on the Gmail blog that the counter’s speed has been increased." [via Mashable]

Now what about Picasaweb?  Man I wish Google had bought Flickr and integrated it with Picasa.  Picasa has better geo-tagging, desktop integration, and video, but Flickr has better social features a better web design, and unlimited storage for $25 a year.  And we need all of this in one place.

Technorati Tags: google, flickr, picasa, picasaweb, gmail

A Tour of the Flatiron District

On Sunday morning we went on a walking tour of the Flatiron District provided for free by the Flatiron/23rd Street Partnership.  Before hand I would not have believed that I would be interested in spending 2 hours walking around just a few blocks, but it ended up being a great experience.  The tour guide kept our attention as she poured out the smallest details about nearly every building around Madison Square Park, several of which she worked in for many years.  Until this weekend it never occurred to me to consider why Madison Square Gardens is not near the park, but now I know that MSG is actually the third incarnation of the building, the first two of witch were on the park edges.  I also had no idea that Madison Square Park was once the major park in Manhattan, more than several times its current size before two major downsizes.  It's amazing how much there is to learn about the city we walk through every day, how much history and story - and I hope to do more soon.

If you want to see some shots from the tour directly on a map as we walked it, check out my whole Flickr album, and zoom in close on the map.

Technorati Tags: new york city , nyc , flatiron district , madison square park

[where: 10010]

Content Aware Image Resizing

Here's a video of an impressive new concept of image resizing. Instead of scaling down or cropping, it analyzes a photo for the most important elements in terms of the photograph, and slowly removes pixels from the insignificant areas for as long as the image needs to be shrunk down. Essentially you are left with a different photograph that sums up the most valuable parts of the original. This also allows for amazingly accurate ways of removing objects from the photo, by manually identifying unnecessary pixels, and allowing for the smooth evolution of the image. The video gets significantly more impressive as it goes along. Also here's a small demo available made by a third party (try the horizontal adjusting for more impressive results).

Technorati Tags: photoshop, editing, photography, image resizing

Snapshot of India (part 2)

More pictures from India.. getting ready for the wedding, and then at the initial party. The ceremony pictures will have to come later - I'm getting ready now for a 4 a.m. flight to South India! Again, info in the slide captions...

Probably no email for the next week as I go to the South (river boats), the North (taj mahal) and the east, before returning to Mumbai for one night.

Snapshot of India (part 1)

A quick slideshow of some of the pictures from the first few days of our trip to India. We are stationed in Mumbai, living at Noor's house, for the first week. We'll attend a wedding this weekend, and then we're off on 4 flights across India. I've noted the pictures via caption on the slideshow- check them out!