The world as frankps sees it!
Posts tagged Google
A 500px Review
1Development of Flickr seems to have more or less stalled. Another problem with Flickr these days is that it takes hours to find good pictures. Flickr is becoming more like Facebook. Lately I’ve seen lots of photographer migrating to Google+ with Picasa. What’s cool with Google+ is that there are lists of Google+ registered photographers. And there’s lots of them and it’s easy to subscribe to their feeds and pictures are presented in a nice way. Google+ has so far not become the success Google wanted it to be, but it fast became the preferred social network for photographers.
But there’s now a new kid in town, a online portfolio site called 500px.com. It’s only aiming for your best photos, and is in my opinion not aiming to store your family or holiday photos. Nor does it have privacy functionality, like only letting your friends/family see a photo set. But except from that, I am really impressed. 500px has nearly mastered the essential features that I am looking for as a photographer wanting to share my work and explore the work of other photographers. It’s design makes it pleasant to browse through, and isn’t overwhelming by keeping features to a minimum. The vast majority of work displayed on 500px.com is high quality, similar to photos you would see in magazines or art galleries. Because they are targeting a professional level audience they are able to stand out from competitors.
500px is a company based in Canada so they are bound by Canadian Copyright law which is very close to US Copyright law. In other words, the terms of use is pretty much the same as for Flickr.
I’m for now only using their free account, and they are letting me upload 20 photos a week free of charge. The system is easy to use and works well, so long as you have a supported web browser. Safari and Internet Explorer work fine, but I have some issues with Chrome when it comes to navigating the portefolio view. The images are presented in a beautiful way, and there is great rating system for those who want to use that.
I have not had the chance to look at the PRO version of 500px (Awesome account), but you upgrade to many more services including unlimited everything, personal domains, etc. for US$50 per year.
The social nature of 500px will attract many people. The images posted on 500px are available for rating and comment. The rating system could be better in that you should be able to see who rated your images. You should also be able to disable ratings or block people that you don’t want to interact with.
500px has a basic search functionality, but this could probably improved to include search in the EXIF metadata. I would like to be able to search after photos taken with specific cameras and lenses. I also miss that you cannot add location to the photos you have taken.
I’ve saved the best for last. The reason why I started looking in to using 500px, was it’s iPad app. I have never seen photos been presented in a better way on a tablet. The first week I was only browsing through others photo, but the last days I have started uploading photos. Only bird photos for now. There is also unofficial 500px apps for Android.
Google Buzz
0Finally an update to Gmail that I am looking forward to:
Google Buzz is integrated in Gmail and is a more social way of communicating than e-mail. My first though was, could this be functionality from the Google Wave project?
Buzz can be used with Picasa, Youtube, Google Reader, Flickr and Twitter, and is one of the easiest way I have seen to share updates, photos, videos and more. You can choose to share publicly with the world or privately to a small group of friends each time you post. What’s more is that you will automatically follow the people you email and chat with the most.
After having read about Google Buzz, looked at some screenshots and a video, I must admit that it is quite so similar to Posterous. Posterous works with tons of Internet services. I have been using Posterous as my blog in Norwegian, and enabled it to talk with Twitter, Facebook and WordPress.
And yes, Buzz also works on your favourite phone: iPhone and Android. Both phones have geolocation support. Now we just have to wait for our Gmail accounts to be upgraded. Google says that they will be rolling out it out over the next few days.
Notes Traveler on the iPhone
5At work we have updated our Domino servers to v.8.5.1, and gone is the need for Lotus iNotes Ultralite and Notes Pro for the iPhone. With the new version of Domino, Lotus now supports Microsoft’s ActiveSync. You can now have the same push functionality as with Exchange, and use your native iPhone applications. ActiveSync has become a de facto standard for pushing out information to mobile devices.
I have been writing lots of positive things about Lotus Notes, and I should continue a little bit more. Setting up Lotus Traveler on the iPhone is both elegant and easy,and done in about a minute. But seeing that the data of Lotus Notes desktop client, iNotes and the data on the iPhone not being in sync by default, can’t be said to be anything else then a sad story. I thought this was the whole purpose with Roaming User profiles. But ok, it could be fixed. I only had to go in to the Contacts preferences on the desktop and enable “Syncronize Contacts on the Replicator”. Just that this option didn’t make any sence to me. Syncronize my contacts with a replicator? What replicator? Why treat iNotes and the iPhone (or mobile phones) as something else then the destop client?
After having solved the replication problem, the solution has worked flowlessly. But sadly leaves me with a choice I have to make, Lotus Notes or Google Sync? The iPhone can only have one Exchange account, and I must admit that I liked Google’s Exchange service for Contacts, Calendar and Gmail better. It has to be said that we don’t use Lotus Notes for mail. But since this is a work phone, I guess I should stick with Lotus Notes. Not a bad choice if the amount of meetings increase, and if I was more on the move. But for now, I could have been just as happy with Google’s solution, pushing contacts and calendar entries.
I also found Google Contacts to have an easier accessable user interface, and it handles pictures of your contacts far better then Lotus Notes. I have not found what pixel size Lotus Notes use. So most faces look draged. It’s just a small thing, but it is nice to see when somebody has thought design all the way through their product. Google has!
But if it is Lotus Notes you have decided to use, Paul Mooney has put together a brilliant manual for how to set up the Lotus Notes Travel service on your iPhone / iPod Touch (this is only the client setup).
Barcode?
0I had a great laugh when I visited Google Search this morning:
They once in a while replace their logo for the holiday seasons or simply to tribute a person. The replaced logos have often been called Doodles.
Here’s the story: Today is the 57th anniversary of the first patent on the bar code. Inventors Norman Woodland and Bernard Silver filed the patent on October 1949, and it was granted, No. 2,612,994, on October 7, 1952.