The world as frankps sees it!
Photos
I have taken quite a few pictures through the years. Most of them end up on my Flickr account, and some in tourist guides and magazines around the world.
Can Expono battle with Flickr and Picasa?
0I have had access to Expono for a while, but never gotten around to use it. Before you read this review, know this: I have been using Flickr 3-4 years already, and have all my pictures there. I have only briefly tested Picasa. It is difficult to review Expono as a start-up company, as it is competing directly with two of Internet’s biggest players, Google and Yahoo. Both Google’s Picasa and Yahoo’s Flickr are popular services and just about feature complete. So the questions for this review are: Is there space for Expono and what extra does Expono give, that should make established users of Picasa and Flickr consider to move. I consider it wrong to ask the question: If I was to start sharing pictures today, what would I choose?
There are a fair number of photo sharing sites available, and it was therefore strange to see the announcement of Expono opening for the public on the very same day as Fox Interactive Media lays off one third of the staff (of 120) at the competing photo-sharing site Photobucket. I hope Expono makes it.
Expono is fairly easy to use and comes with a clean and simple user interface for most of it’s functionality. I found the connections to Facebook, Twitter and Friendfeed a mess. The uploads have an ok speed, but miss not having the possibility to upload directly from Adobe Lightroom and Windows Live Photo Gallery. Perhaps someone will make a plugin in the future? Expono has all the features you expect to find on a media sharing site: Online backup, easy sharing, albums and tagging (also face and geo tagging), find duplicates and iPhoto photocast support. It also comes with a fine-grained access control, actually quite a bit better then the one in Flickr. Just take a look at Expono’s feature list, and you will be convinced. There are a lot of people that has not chosen a photo sharing solution yet, and Expono has timed there launch well, opening their service to the public in July. Just in time for people to upload and share their holiday memories.
Launching after Flickr and Picasa gives them the advantage of knowing what functionality users want, and also an opportunity to implement the features in better ways! Expono is for instance far easier/better on creating a new album and then adding photos to the album. And these functions are key functionalities in any photo sharing solution!
Expono is also one of the best examples I have seen of cloud computing so far. The company does not have their own server park, but have rather based their service on Amazon AWS (Amazon Web Services) combined with RightScale Cloud Computing Management Platform.
Flood in Budapest
12 years ago
Funny how the media in Norway again fails to report on the flood along Donabe in Austria and Hungary. Newspapers only manage focus on one topic at the time, and the last week have been about Michael Jackson (only). I have just watched the TV news from MTV (Magyar TV) and googled for some pictures. Soldiers and volunteers are doing walls of sand bags on some parts of the river to protect buildings and roads.
As so many times social media these days are a better place to search for information about what is really happening. So also this time, the pictures are found on Flickr. Environment Minister Imre Szabo told reporters that the Danube is expected to peak at 7.6 metres above its normal level in Budapest yesterday. As you can see from the photos, the streets on both side of the river are flooded. The picture below shows the road in front of the Parlament.
Austria has seen some of its heaviest rainfall in 50 years in recent days, causing widespread flooding. All the ferries crossing Donabe in Hungary are now closed cause of that! We have our summer house a long the river Tisza in the east, but my mom can report report that several places in Hungary have gotten a lot of rain lately, some places in between 40 and 50 mm in a matter of hours.
Last year Hungary had flood in Tisza while I was at the summer house. And Donabe had bigger floods then this year in 2002 and 2006.
Also other parts of Hungary have flood. The Raab River rose to nearly 5 metres above its normal level in the western town of Szentgotthard, on Hungary’s border with Austria. This is 30 centimetres higher than a record set in 1965, when a major flood devastated large areas of western Hungary. Since then, however, flood defences have been built up along the river. Nevertheless, trains between Hungary and Austria had to be cancelled as tracks were covered when streams broke their banks.
It feels really strange to think about flood when the temperature in Oslo, yesterday reached 31,3 degrees and Oslo wasn’t even the hottest place in Norway. A small place called Gulsvik had 32,1 degrees. Well, time to prepare for work and another really hot day…
Related link: The Budapest Times – Raba, Danube flooding in W Hungary and Storms unleash killer floods.
Street art in Oslo
0When walking in Oslo you will see a lot of grafitti on building walls and other surfaces, most of it ugly, but there are exceptions.
This first one was found at the Pavilion café at Kuba (between Grünerløkka and Gamle Aker). Another beautiful wall can be found at Grønland, in the entrance to a park in Urtegata / Platous gate.
The third photo that I have included is street art made by herakut, Herakut is a symbiosis of the aliases Hera and Akut, two graffiti artists from Frankfurt and Erfurt, Germany. Their contributions to make Oslo more beautiful can be found outside the bar Mir (also called Grünerløkka Lufthavn). They have also done a painting at Deichmanske Library (I will try to find it).
Don’t you hurt me is actually four drawings, forth ones is on the other side of the entrance gate to Mir and it was therefor not possible to include it in the same picture. But I have put together a small gallery:
The last picture I want to share with you in this blog entry is taken outside Pantagana Artclub in Deichmans gate 15. Their main purpose is to make a social, and artistic habitat for people interested in arts, poetry, music and social gathering.
More streetart (grafitti) pictures are available on my Flickr account.
The iPhone as DSLR Remote Control
0
A new killer app is just about to be introduced on iTMS for the iPhone (and iPod Touch). I would have loved to get my hands on it, but it will only work with a few high end models from Canon. As you might now by now, I have a Nikon D60. A Nikon version of the software might be coming, but definitely not to my camera:
onOne Software yesterday announced that they submitted our first iPhone app to the Apple iTunes App Store. DSLR Remote is a “wireless cable release” for your Canon EOS DSLR camera.
Link to the blog entry: 1on1 with Mike Wong and here is a video blog entry.
A complete list of supported cameras in the DSLR Remote version 1.0:
- EOS-1D Mark II
- EOS 20D
- EOS-1Ds Mark II
- EOS Kiss Digital N/350D/Rebel XT
- EOS 5D
- EOS-1D Mark II N
- EOS 30D
- EOS Kiss Digital X/400D/Rebel XTi
- EOS-1D Mark III
- EOS 40D
- EOS-1Ds Mark III
- EOS Digital Rebel Xsi/450D/Kiss X2
- EOS Digital Rebel XS/1000D/KISS F
- EOS 50D
- EOS 5D Mark II
Lots of photo taken
0On Thursday I came back to Norway after having been two weeks in Mindszent, Hungary. Two weeks with beautiful spring and temperatures as high as 26-27 degrees most of the time. It was also two weeks spent with family and friends.
Lots of photos were taken, and they are now all available on my Flickr account as two photo sets: Julia and Mindszent 2009. As you can see from this blog entry, I spent some time on getting to know my SLR camera and Lightroom.
Home in Oslo I yesterday visited Fotovideo, and had a look at Nikon 70-300mm F4.5-5.6 G IF-ED AF-S VR lense. I want to be able to do shots from distance, especially of animals and flowers. I saw lots of animals in Mindszent this time, animals like deer, lots of rabbits and pheasants, some falcons or eagles, a few white storks and great white egrets. And I could hear a woodpecker from time to time. But with 18-55mm I could simply not get close enough.
The lense got tested, and “flower” was shot with the full use of the lense. It was about 7-8 meters away:
So the lense is something I will try to buy when I finished renewing my appartment. What I ended up buying yesterday was a tripod for my camera. I ended up with Benro A-157, and then went up to Akerselva and did photos of the wild river (snow is melting up in the mountains around Oslo):
