Halloween ’11

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Another Halloween has crept up on us and given us a scare!

An evening of witches, demons, ghosts and the odd Harry Potter knocking on the door gleefully bellowing “trick or treat!” and waiting for the bag or basket of treats to be presented! Not that I mind as all of the kids that came round this year were extremely polite and had gone to a lot of trouble with their fancy dress…although they did look a little confused when I asked what tricks they had played so far tonight!

Just a couple of photos of our pumpkins from tonight as I’m recovering from the chaos of having family round and a very excitable niece and nephew!

Tablets…no, not the pharmaceutical kind!

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You may have already read my previous post on the BlackBerry Playbook and how much I liked it? Recently suppliers have been slashing the prices of the PlayBook as,
let’s be honest, it’s not been received that well!

However a new tablet has just been announced: The Amazon Kindle Fire.

Amazon Kindle Fire

Although not released until November in the US (no confirmed release date for the UK) it is already whipping up all sorts of ideas and hope that it’ll really challenge Apples iPad. Maybe you could say it is literally setting the market on Fire?! (I’ll get my
coat…)

Why is this? The Kindle Fire is almost identical in size, weight and specs to the PlayBook, but offers so much more. Based on a variant of Android’s OS, using the same fantastic touch screen as the PlayBook, it allows its user to stream, download, rent or purchase movies, books, magazines and games while also allowing the user to check email, browse the Internet using Amazon’s really very good Silk browser and store their purchases in Amazon’s cloud for free! This is something that not even the iPad is capable of doing (although the iCloud service has just been announced) for the price that the Kindle Fire is being sold ($199)!

As it’s based on the Android 2.3 OS, it will also mean that it will run Android apps. Something BlackBerry has promised for the PlayBook, but has yet to deliver a decent working version.

So what does all this mean for us photographers? At the moment not too much…just another name to consider when comparing tablets against the iPad.

I can see the potential of these devices to change the way photographers work out in the field though.  Yes, there are already plenty of apps in existence to edit photos, but those images are stored elsewhere and must be accessible to the tablet. Imagine being able to “tether” your camera to your tablet, access the shots you’ve just taken, edit them, upload them to wherever you store them (in the Cloud, home NAS box, workplace storage etc) all from the location?! The thought of not lugging a Laptop/netbook around and instead sticking a tablet in the kit bag sounds good to me!

That to me would take these tablet devices from being a nice to have with you kind of device, to something that could potentially make the world difference to photographers and photo journalists’ jobs. Mind you, what do I know…I’m just an amateur/hobbyist! Still you have to admit, sounds like a great idea right?

A lack of…anything really!

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There’s been a distinct lack of anything really on the Pixelcount site and blog…something I’m all too aware of! Why? Well a number of reasons I guess. 1) Having a conservatory built 2) Not enough time on my hands 3) Not really knowing what to write about.

The Conservatory. So we’ve had a conservatory built on the back of house and after two months it’s not quite finished. I’ll admit I hadn’t expected it to take this long or, indeed, to need as much involvement as it has done! How anyone goes through the stress, hassle and amount of time building an extension or a new property is beyond me! Maybe they have better builders or a project manager to deal with all the little things that come up?

No time. An age old excuse for being lazy and not putting in enough effort. When you look the word “lazy” up in a dictionary it’ll have a picture of us next to it! ;o)

Not knowing what to write about. I don’t want to fill the blog up with pointless posts about upcoming tech, how our cat has a limp or other drivel that will turn a reader away from a site forever, instead I’d like to write about the things that interest me and are (loosely) based about photography. However deciding on a subject is proving difficult. Do I write about Tablets…no not paracetamol but the iPad, Playbook amongst others…and the impact they’ve had and could have on photography? Or how about the weird attitude camera users have to one another; think Nikon vs.Canon? Actually they’re pretty good ideas! I think I’ll have to use those…watch this space!

Now I’ve taken up space on the blog and probably put a number of you to sleep with the drivel above, I’ll go and work on the Tablets and Brand War pieces! Oh, I suppose I’d better take some new photos too?!

BlackBerry PlayBook

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I’ve been lucky enough this week to play around with the latest offering from BlackBerry; the PlayBook.

While it’s no iPad – smaller screen, no 3G (yet) etc – it offers more functionality. You can pair it to your BlackBerry device to check emails, contacts and browse the web using your BlackBerry data allowance or you can use it as a standalone device connected to a wireless AP. It also has two cameras – a 3MP forward facing camera and a 5MP rear facing camera – supports Adobe Flash, can play full HD movies and some pretty decent speakers.

I can see this being a fantastic device for businesses and where I work we have already thought of several different ways in which we think it will be used. No doubt our end users will find ways to use it that we wont have dreamt of!

However, as a consumer I’ve struggled to find reasons why I would buy one of these over
Apple’s iPad. I then realised this would be a fantastic device for a photographer! It’s small, lightweight, fits in your camera bag easily enough and makes a good replacement for your Laptop. After re-reading Jamie Carl’s blog on wireless tethering (see here) we need companies like Breeze Systems to offer their software as an app for the PlayBook.

So come on you app developers! Get your creative hats on and come up with some apps for
photographers to use on the PlayBook!

Will I buy one? Not at the moment…I’ll keep “testing” the one I have through work!

Wireless Tethering?

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During a scan through some photography websites for tips, tricks and other stuff, I stumbled upon Jamie Carl’s site and in particular his blog post about Wireless Tethering.

Jamie Carl’s post – http://www.jamiecarl.com.au/blog/wireless-tethering-the-next-level/

Beth tells me I’m a bit of a “geeky nerd” and although I disagree most of the time, this blog post by Jamie really brought the “geeky nerd” out in me! To be able to control your camera via LiveView isn’t that new, but to do it wirelessly opens the door to a whole new heap of scenarios!

I’m trying to come up with a more practical reason of copying Jamie’s idea other than 1) it looks cool and, 2) it’d fun to do! Maybe I am a geeky nerd after all?!