When you think of professional photographers shooting sporting events, you usually visualize huge Canon or Nikon lenses mounted on expensive camera bodies on top of massive tripods. But as The Guardian's photographer Dan Chung proves, sometimes you can do just as much with a lot less. Throughout the Olympics Chung is photographing the games using only an iPhone, an app, and (occasionally) an add-on iPhone lens or some binoculars. The stunning image of Michael Phelps shown here was captured by Chung using only the iPhone 4S with its 8 megapixel camera and the excellent iOS photo editor Snapseed (US$4.99 in the App Store). To get other images from the Games using his iPhone, Chung also sometimes chooses to shoot through the Schneider lens iPro Wide Duo Kit or with a pair of Canon binoculars in front of the phone's camera. Chung is obviously a photographer with a lot of talent, but it's still amazing that these photographs were captured through a smartphone. For those interested in photography (or the Olympics) click on over to The Guardian where they are running a photoblog of all Dan Chung's images throughout the Games. Special thanks to Dan Chung and The Guardian for permission to reprint the image above. [Image credit and (C) Dan Chung/The Guardian.]Dan Chung photographs the Olympics using an iPhone, Snapseed and some binoculars originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 03 Aug 2012 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments read more..
Tuesday, 7 August 2012
Professional Photographers-Canon Binoculars-Sporting Events-Nikon Lenses-Photographs
Monday, 6 August 2012
Wall Street Expectations-Mountain Lion-Talkshoe
Tonight on the Talkcast, it's time to share your first few days with OS X Mountain Lion. Got it running? What's to enjoy? Gotchas in the process? Bonus points for anyone who delivers their comments via Dictation. We'll also dig into Apple's earnings report a bit, given that the markets have not been kind to the modest beat of guidance (and the substantial miss of Wall Street expectations). Bring your calculators. To participate in the call, you can use the browser-only Talkshoe client, the embedded Facebook app, or download the classic TalkShoe Pro Java client; however, for +5 Interactivity, you should call in. For the web UI, just click the Talkshoe Web button on our profile page at 4 HI/7 PDT/10 pm EDT Sunday. To call in on regular phone or VoIP lines (Viva free weekend minutes!): dial (724) 444-7444 and enter our talkcast ID, 45077 -- during the call, you can request to talk by keying in *8. If you've got a headset or microphone handy on your Mac, you can connect via the free X-Lite or other SIP clients -- basic instructions are here. Skype users with dial-out credit can call in via the service, or use those free iPhone minutes. Talk to you tonight!#next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; }#next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; }Talkcast tonight, 10pm ET: Meow, Mountain Lion originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sun, 29 Jul 2012 19:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments read more..
The Winners-Atari-Pong
The winners have finally been announced in the long-running Atari/Pong Indie Dev Challenge, and the three winning entries have been revealed prior to their eventual release on the App Store. Atari's contest sought out modern versions of Pong for the App Store, and offered cash prizes and revenue sharing for the top contestants. Before we go through the winners, please note that I served as a volunteer, unpaid judge on this contest, along with Atari founder Nolan Bushnell, developer David Whatley, and Pocket God's Dave Castelnuovo. That means I got to play through all of the finalists and deliver scores based on my impressions of the games. According to those scores (as well as Atari's input and a popular vote), zGames' Pong World came out in first place -- it's a very colorful take on the old school game, with furry creatures as paddles and lots of ball tweaks and fun twists. Mad Ruse's Pong Tournament picked up second place, featuring a very wild 3D version of Pong, with high level tournament play and quite a few powerups and extra items to try and protect your wall while a ball is passed back and forth between two players. And Eppy Games' Fong variant got third place -- it's a really crazy circular version of Pong, with some strange rotational controls and some really frantic action elements. Each of those winners will get a cash prize for winning and a three-year revenue share agreement, enabling them to use the Pong name for their titles as well as earn money alongside the commercial releases. There's more information on those coming soon, so hopefully you'll be able to play some of these titles when they arrive.Winners revealed for Atari's Pong Dev challenge, Pong World earns first place originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 03 Aug 2012 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Source | Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments read more..
Sunday, 5 August 2012
Proper Power Management-Mountain Lion-Power Nap
One of OS X Mountain Lion's lesser-known features is the curiously named Power Nap. It's roughly analogous to an actual sleeping mountain lion; while he's catching some Zs in a tree, his brain is constantly aware of what's going on around him, monitoring sounds and scents that might spell danger or food. Likewise, Mountain Lion's Power Nap will keep your Mac a tiny bit awake. Just enough of the system will be active during sleep (on certain Mac models) to grab email, notes, reminders and messages, run backups, and download OS X updates. All of this is done without turning on a screen, powering up a fan, or doing anything else that could appear to be "waking" your Mac. It's enabled for both plugged-in and battery-only setups by checking the appropriate Power Nap box on System Preferences > Energy Saver. Power Nap in OS X Mountain Lion works only on current MacBooks that only ship with built-in flash storage -- the MacBook Air (2nd generation, meaning 2011 or later) and Retina MacBook Pro -- so this isn't a feature you're going to see on every Mac today. Will we see this extending to more Macs in the future? I certainly hope so; it could theoretically work on any Mac with proper power management circuitry and a boot SSD. I've enabled it on my 2011 MacBook Air and it works quite well. Previously, if I hadn't awakened the MBA for several days, I could count on having the Mail app spin for quite a while as it downloaded my email. Now when I open my Air's cover, I can be sure that it's going to be up to date with most, if not all, of my email. #next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; } Continue reading Mountain Lion 101: Power NapMountain Lion 101: Power Nap originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 25 Jul 2012 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments read more..
Slide Presentation-Sonicpics-Narration
SonicPics is an intriguing US $2.99 app that allows you to make a slide presentation and then narrate it, all on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. That's quite a lot of functionality that usually takes a lot more hardware. Take your photos off your camera roll and select them inside SonicPics. Get them in the order you want. Then hit the record button and start narrating. You swipe to the next picture to control the sync. You can swap images around, but then you have to re-do the narration. When you are satisfied, the presentation needs to be rendered, and then it can be emailed, saved to your camera roll, or uploaded to YouTube. The resulting file can run up to 60 minutes duration, if you have the space on your device. You can also select the audio quality. Even the lowest-quality option sounded pretty good. I can see lots of uses for this app, in real estate, education, creating illustrated audio books, and even creating simple presentations when you are on the road. With all my positive comments, there are still some negatives. There is no way to have a music background instead of narration. Even better would be to have narration plus a background track. Although you can label each image as you prepare your presentation, those labels don't make it into the finished video. There is no help or FAQ with the app. You have to be pretty inquisitive to figure out you have to flip each image to the next one while recording. A simple on-screen prompt would fix that. If you are doing a long narration and make a mistake, you have to start over again. That is going to be frustrating. The developer tells me some of those changes are coming, and he agrees about the lack of help (which is easy to fix). I still like this app very much. It is reasonably priced, and the issues I've mentioned are hardly insurmountable for an update. I can see using this on vacation and putting together a quick slide show for friends and family back home. This app is a great idea, and if it continues to evolve it is going to be awesome instead of just very good. Gallery: SonicPics presentations on the fly#next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; }Continue reading SonicPics lets you easily create narrated slideshows on iOSSonicPics lets you easily create narrated slideshows on iOS originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sat, 04 Aug 2012 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments read more..
Encryption Scheme-Removable Drives-Contextual Menu-Mountain Lion
[Post updated, see below.] Whole-drive encryption isn't one of the sexiest features in OS X, but it's nice to know it's there. FileVault 2 (introduced in Lion; the original FileVault began in 10.3 Panther) can be very useful, especially for Mac users with sensitive information on their hard drives. The ability to lock down either a boot disk or a removable drive means additional security for Mac users when they need it. In Mountain Lion, Apple has made the encryption process easier and faster by adding a contextual menu option to the Finder. Removable drives can be encrypted simply by choosing the Encrypt option when you right-click (or control-click, or two-finger click -- we need a better word for that task) the drive icon. Note that only drives with a GUID partitioning setting can be encrypted, and the resulting encrypted volumes can only be read on other Macs running Lion or Mountain Lion. Mountain Lion also adds encryption as an option for Time Machine backups, and there's a new command-line tool (fdesetup, well-described by Rich Trouton) that allows third-party tools and system administrators to monitor and adjust FileVault settings. ML's FileVault can sync credentials with a directory system in enterprise environments, and the overall encryption scheme is in the process of certification under the US government's FIPS 140-2 standard, appropriate for "sensitive but unclassified information." Encrypting removable drives is now three-clicks easy, but if you want to encrypt your startup disk completely the process has not changed markedly from Lion. Head into System Preferences under Security & Privacy and choose the FileVault menu. You will need to turn on FileVault there. You'll also need to make sure Recovery HD is installed on your hard drive. It should have been when you first installed your system, but it may not have if something went wrong. Then you'll need to have a password for all users using the encryption. Once you activate FileVault, you'll get a recovery key, which is a last-ditch effort to recover your files if your password is lost or forgotten. After that, your files are locked down. You can use the computer normally, but if you ever lose your password and that recovery key (or if someone tries to sneak in without those), your files won't be accessible. There is an option to save the key with Apple itself, but you'll have to answer some other security questions to retrieve it. FileVault also offers an "instant wipe" feature, which will wipe the encryption key and all of your files from your Mac. So if you do encrypt your files and ever need to pass it on to someone else, you can be sure none of your secrets will make the trip. FileVault is a powerful feature, and if you need to keep a secret, it can make an important task very simple. Update: Clarified that the new features in Mountain Lion are the Finder contextual menu, encrypted TM backups and the command-line fdesetup tool, not the underlying FileVault 2 encryption. Our apologies for the mixup.Mountain Lion 101: Finder encryption via contextual menu (updated) originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 27 Jul 2012 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments read more..
Saturday, 4 August 2012
Wall Street Journal-Electronic Device-Mobile Industry-Broken Jaw-Winkler
A new iPad, iPhone or other shiny electronic device is an attractive target for thieves, as Wall Street Journal reporter Rolfe Winkler now knows first-hand. But there are a few simple tactics to reduce your chances of having a device stolen from you, and the mobile industry is looking at further ways to make electronic devices less attractive targets for thieves. Winkler and a date were on a NYC subway train looking at an ebook while the train slowed and stopped at the Bergen Street station in Brooklyn. When a thief ripped the iPad out of his date's hands, Winkler instinctively chased after him, only to run into the thief's backup team on the platform. "Instead of winning back the iPad, I found myself lying on the platform bleeding, my jaw split in half," said Winkler. While Winkler ended up eating through a straw for a month, it could have been much worse; in 2011 a Chicago woman died after an iPhone thief caused her to fall down the stairs of a commuter rail station. Winkler is one of many victims of "Apple picking." With used iPads and iPhones picking up as much as $400 on the secondhand market, electronics thefts are climbing. Winkler's story in the Wall Street Journal notes that in Washington, D.C. alone, cellphone-related robberies climbed 54 percent between 2007 and 2011, and over 26,000 thefts were reported in New York in the first 10 months of 2011. Device blacklists are one way that the mobile industry is planning to fight theft. When a phone or tablet is reported stolen, the device's ID number can be entered into a carrier database. If someone tries to activate the device later, the blacklist would show that it is stolen and the carrier denies service. At present, only Sprint and Verizon have a blacklist in place, and AT&T and T-Mobile are planning to join up next year. In fact, by October of 2013, the four largest U.S. cellular carriers plan to have a unified blacklist up and running. In the meantime, there are other common-sense steps iPad and iPhone owners can take to keep their equipment -- and themselves -- safe. First, don't become so absorbed in what you're reading or doing that you aren't aware of the people around you. Many criminals are looking for victims who are totally unaware of them; occasionally peeking up from behind the screen and making eye contact with others in the area is a good idea. Next, don't make a big deal about showing off your device when you don't know the area. If you're in an unfamiliar part of town traveling on foot, waving an iPhone around is inadvisable. Finally, if you end up being a victim of electronics theft, be sure to report the theft to the authorities immediately, and then follow up to safeguard your personal information. You did set a passcode on your device, didn't you? And did you turn on Find My iPhone/iPad, so that you can give police an indication of the location of your stolen device and force a wipe of your personal info? While a determined criminal may be impossible to deter, some common sense about showing off high-priced electronics in public places might be just the thing to keep yourself from monetary loss or, in Winkler's case, injury.Subway iPad theft leaves reporter with broken jaw originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sun, 29 Jul 2012 08:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments read more..
Car Service-Party Buses-Variation-Car Rides-Uber
Uber is still growing its business as a disruptive (sometimes controversial) car service app, but in the meantime it continues to push the envelope on what else it might eventually do with the logistics infrastructure it is also creating. The latest development comes by way of Chicago, where Uber is now laying on busses with DJs and drinks. Yes, it's bus bumping from Uber.Uberpalooza will feature DJs Dante, Bobbylite, Megan Taylor and Andrew Hayden, and is being run to coincide with the Lollapalooza music festival taking place in the Windy City this weekend. Those requesting the service will be charged $50 for 25 minutes or 5 miles -- whichever comes first (so pick your traffic-clogged streets of Chicago carefully). Up to 10 other people can join in on the party bus -- as long as all are over 21. read more..
Wednesday, 1 August 2012
Restricted Stock Unit-Quarterly Revenues-Earnings Per Share-Social Networking-Share Price
The mystery is over: We now know whether or not Facebook is actually making money. In its first-ever earnings report released today, the social networking giant reported a net profit of $0.12 earnings per share on quarterly revenues of $1.18 billion. The earnings report matched Wall Street’s expectations of $0.12 earnings per share and revenues of $1.15 billion. Advertising revenue accounted for $992 million of the company’s total revenues. Facebook’s share price dropped by more than 11% in after-hours trading immediately following the news, dipping below $24. A major reason for the drop was that Facebook only made money on the quarter after excluding the negative impact of pre-2011 restricted stock unit compensation. Without that adjustment the company would have read more..
Hong Kong Island-Romeo Gigli-Collection
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After the daytime preview for those legendary Hong Kong clients—the ones who seem to keep a fair bit of the global economy going, and in this case have already nabbed around 75 percent of the collection—comes theevening launch of Romeo Gigli's collection for Joyce.
Yet gone are the days when the Tai-Tai contingent—the Hong Kong spin on the ladies who lunch, or Tom Wolfe's "social X-rays"—might dominate the proceedings in their carefully manicured and branded way. Yes, the super rich are always with us on Hong Kong Island, yet the goals and aims, wealth and borders of the clientele have changed somewhat in the 15 years since the handover from the British. It was the anniversary of this event at the beginning of the month.
"There is a new clientele that has emerged in Hong Kong," says Andrew Keith, president of Joyce and Lane Crawford and the creative driving force behind those stores' decisions. "It really is international and outward-looking and not just interested in going to visit the rest of the world for a branded handbag." Hong Kong has also become the gateway to the mainland over the border—rather than its exit point—and it is those mainlanders who are giving the Hong Kong-ers a run for their money both culturally and in Olympic-level shopping. In fact, a similar event for Mr. Gigli's collection will be held in another Joyce store, over the border in Beijing, in two days' time.
It is in these circumstances that Gigli's collection for Joyce makes perfect sense. The fact that Joyce was one of the original stores to buy Romeo Gigli's clothes in the eighties, together with his extensive knowledge of Chinese art and culture, all went into his careful decision to collaborate. This is, in fact, the first actual collection that he has personally designed in nine years. "Freedom is what is important to me," said Gigli at dinner. "Joyce gave me that freedom."
And it shows in the collection. The familiar silhouettes (delicate cocoons, collapsed bubbles) are there in the womenswear. As are the rich fabrics, those brocades, and streaked silks in dark jewel colors, each combined with the intense signature workmanship. None of it has been softened or curtailed for the store's own brand. But this is not a high-street chain indulging in designer desire, after all; this is a real designer collection with production standards to match.
The dinner for the event was held at David Tang's famed China Club, the corridors of which are filled with that powerhouse of contemporary art, Chinese Pop—including a painting of Whitney Houston split-screened with one of Mao, but signed sweepingly by the songstress herself when she was still alive, according to one of the guests. Mr. Gigli's dinner took place in the library, filled with a collection of first editions about Chinese history and perhaps a more appropriate venue for a designer with a contemplative approach to fashion and a family background in antiquarian books.
This, it seems, is the new China then, one a bit more fragile and branded with a contemplative global view. The guests reflected such, too, including Charlie Casely-Hayford, son of designer Joe, who is also a menswear designer in his own right and is one of the models for the campaign. "I never imagined it would be quite like this here," said Charlie, and for many who have not been to Hong Kong for a while, neither would they. It was left to Andrew Keith on behalf of Joyce and the new China to "welcome back a maestro," Mr. Romeo Gigli.
—Jo-Ann Furniss read more..