Goodbye cameras, hello networked lenses

Jason Kottke sees the world clearly and explains his rationale with ease.

Craig Mod, writing for the New Yorker, says goodbye to cameras as photography transitions to the use of “networked lenses”.

After two and a half years, the GF1 was replaced by the slightly improved Panasonic GX1, which I brought on the six-day Kumano Kodo hike in October. During the trip, I alternated between shooting with it and an iPhone 5. After importing the results into Lightroom, Adobe’s photo-development software, it was difficult to distinguish the GX1’s photos from the iPhone 5’s. (That’s not even the latest iPhone; Austin Mann’s superlative results make it clear that the iPhone 5S operates on an even higher level.) Of course, zooming in and poking around the photos revealed differences: the iPhone 5 doesn’t capture as much highlight detail as the GX1, or handle low light as well, or withstand intense editing, such as drastic changes in exposure. But it seems clear that in a couple of years, with an iPhone 6S in our pockets, it will be nearly impossible to justify taking a dedicated camera on trips like the Kumano Kodo pilgrimage.

And indeed, the mid-tier Japanese camera makers (Panasonic, Fujifilm and Olympus) are struggling to find their way in the networked lens era. A few years ago, I wrote a post called “Your company? There’s an app for that.” about how smartphones were not only going to make certain devices obsolete, but drive entire companies and industries out of business. This bit, about cameras, seems almost quaint now:

Point and shoot camera — While not as full-featured as something like a PowerShot, the camera on the iPhone 3GS has a 3-megapxiel lens with both auto and manual focus, shoots in low-light, does macro, and can shoot video. Plus, it’s easy to instantly publish your photos online using the iPhone’s networking capabilities and automatically tag your photos with your location.

The best camera is the one you have with you the one with built-in posting to Facebook.

Via Kottke

29 Dec

2013

35 Reasons Elon Musk has been an interesting story in 2013

We have talked a lot about Elon, TESLA, Solar City and more here on this blog. Check out the 35 reasons why Business Insider thinks he has been a great story — Here.

Image via Forbes

Learning, Tech

Tablets As Teachers

12 Dec

2013

The best innovations of 2013

(Bryan Versteeg/ Mars One)

Via the Washington Post:

At times, 2013 seemed like a science fiction movie come to life. The new DARPA Atlas bots seemed to be inspired from the “Terminator” film franchise, Stewart Brand’s concept of “de-extinction” seemed to be lifted directly from the storyline of “Jurassic Park,” Motorola’s new “password pill” reminded some of “The Matrix,” and new test-tube food concepts brought to mind earlier “Soylent Green” visions of the future. And, of course, there were the many other nifty gadgets and gizmos that continued to deliver onthe promise of a “Jetsons” future. We’ve picked out the trends and concepts of 2013 that seemed to have the most staying power for the year ahead.

Here, in no particular order, are 10 innovations from 2013:

1) The crowd got involved in space exploration.

While NASA is still at the forefront of space innovation, this year marked the first year that the crowd became actively involved in the future of deep space exploration. After launching in April, the MarsOne project quickly signed up over 100,000 people worldwide for the chance to take a one-way mission to Mars. According to the MarsOne organizers, the crowd would also play a role by selecting the four people chosen to become Mars astronauts in 2022 via a reality TV show, and part of those application fees ($38 a pop) would go towards funding the audacious mission to Mars. In other words, you no longer have to be a professional astronaut to go to outer space.

And that’s not all. In order to put the new ARKYD deep space telescope into operation, asteroid-mining firm Planetary Resources created a $1 million crowdfunding project on Kickstarter, with one perk at the $25 funding level being the ability to send a “space selfie” into outer space. The project, touted as “a space telescope for everyone,” ended up being wildly over-subscribed, raising just over $1.5 million. Based on the success of this crowdfunding venture, NASA recently unveiled a new asteroid-detection project in partnership with Planetary Resources that would rely on the crowd for the detection of potential asteroid threats.

Read 9 other interesting inventions of 2013 —
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2 Dec
2013

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos looks to the future

Amazon Prime Air (Drone Delivery Service):

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Happiness, Health, Tech
Woosh Water is reinventing the drinking fountain

November 21, 2013blevine32Sustainability, Tech Leave a comment Video
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The Future of Simple Credit Cards? Coin Explained

November 16, 2013blevine32simplicity, Tech Leave a comment Video
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9 Nov
2013

Mindfulness Growing in Silicon Valley

We’ve touched on the yoga benefits for coders and programmers and it seems this trend is continuing throughout Silicon Valley. Check out this Wired article on mindfulness and meditation at Google and other tech companies:

Chade-Meng Tan is perched on a chair, his lanky body folded into a half-lotus position. “Close your eyes,” he says. His voice is a hypnotic baritone, slow and rhythmic, seductive and gentle. “Allow your attention to rest on your breath: The in-breath, the out-breath, and the spaces in between.” We feel our lungs fill and release. As we focus on the smallest details of our respiration, other thoughts—of work, of family, of money—begin to recede, leaving us alone with the rise and fall of our chests. For thousands of years, these techniques have helped put practitioners into meditative states. Today is no different. There’s a palpable silence in the room. For a moment, all is still. I take another breath.

More than a thousand Googlers have been through Search Inside Yourself training. Another 400 or so are on the waiting list and take classes like Neural Self-Hacking and Managing Your Energy in the meantime. Then there is the company’s bimonthly series of “mindful lunches,” conducted in complete silence except for the ringing of prayer bells, which began after the Zen monk Thich Nhat Hanh visited in 2011. The search giant even recently built a labyrinth for walking meditations.

Many of the people who shaped the personal computer industry and the Internet were once members of the hippie counterculture. So an interest in Eastern faiths is all but hardwired into the modern tech world. Steve Jobs spent months searching for gurus in India and was married by a Zen priest. Before he became an American Buddhist pioneer, Jack Kornfield ran one of the first mainframes at Harvard Business School.

BUDDHISM TEACHES THAT WE ARE ALL INTERCONNECTED. AND NOWHERE IS THAT MORE APPARENT THAN ON FACEBOOK.

And if we start such training, Meng insists, we won’t just be helping ourselves. “My dream is to create the conditions for world peace, and to do that by creating the conditions for inner peace and compassion on a global scale,” he writes. “Fortunately, a methodology for doing that already exists … Most of us know it as meditation.”

Click to read more of this meditation and mindfulness benefits piece by Noah Shachtman.

Image via Google Commons

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9 Oct
2013

Bill Gates and the Start of Microsoft

It may have been the most momentous purchase of a magazine in the history of the Out of Town News stand in Harvard Square. Paul Allen, a college dropout from Seattle, wandered into the cluttered kiosk one snowy day in December 1974 and saw that the new issue of Popular Electronics featured a home computer for hobbyists, called the Altair, that was just coming on the market. He was both exhilarated and dismayed. Although thrilled that the era of the “personal” computer seemed to have arrived, he was afraid that he was going to miss the party. Slapping down 75 cents, he grabbed the issue and trotted through the slush to the Currier House room of Bill Gates, a Harvard sophomore and fellow computer fanatic from Lakeside High School in Seattle, who had convinced Allen to drop out of college and move to Cambridge. “Hey, this thing is happening without us,” Allen declared. Gates began to rock back and forth, as he often did during moments of intensity. When he finished the article, he realized that Allen was right. For the next eight weeks, the two of them embarked on a frenzy of code writing that would change the nature of the computer business.

What Gates and Allen set out to do, during the Christmas break of 1974 and the subsequent January reading period when Gates was supposed to be studying for exams, was to create the software for personal computers. “When Paul showed me that magazine, there was no such thing as a software industry,” Gates recalled. “We had the insight that you could create one. And we did.” Years later, reflecting on his innovations, he said, “That was the most important idea that I ever had.”

It may have been the most momentous purchase of a magazine in the history of the Out of Town News stand in Harvard Square. Paul Allen, a college dropout from Seattle, wandered into the cluttered kiosk one snowy day in December 1974 and saw that the new issue of Popular Electronics featured a home computer for hobbyists, called the Altair, that was just coming on the market. He was both exhilarated and dismayed. Although thrilled that the era of the “personal” computer seemed to have arrived, he was afraid that he was going to miss the party. Slapping down 75 cents, he grabbed the issue and trotted through the slush to the Currier House room of Bill Gates, a Harvard sophomore and fellow computer fanatic from Lakeside High School in Seattle, who had convinced Allen to drop out of college and move to Cambridge. “Hey, this thing is happening without us,” Allen declared. Gates began to rock back and forth, as he often did during moments of intensity. When he finished the article, he realized that Allen was right. For the next eight weeks, the two of them embarked on a frenzy of code writing that would change the nature of the computer business.

What Gates and Allen set out to do, during the Christmas break of 1974 and the subsequent January reading period when Gates was supposed to be studying for exams, was to create the software for personal computers. “When Paul showed me that magazine, there was no such thing as a software industry,” Gates recalled. “We had the insight that you could create one. And we did.” Years later, reflecting on his innovations, he said, “That was the most important idea that I ever had.”

Via the Harvard Gazette. Image via Google Commons.

Hat tip to Jason Kottke.

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9 Oct
2013

The 20 Smartest Things Jeff Bezos Has Ever Said

Amazon is thriving. It is dominating, in fact, including in lines of business having little to do with its original undertaking of selling books. Shares now trade for three times what they did at the peak of the dot-com bubble.

Thank Amazon’s quirky CEO, Jeff Bezos, for this success. He created a culture that’s not only different from, but often totally at odds with, how most business leaders think. He’s also quite quotable. Here are 20 smart things Bezos has said over the years.

1. “All businesses need to be young forever. If your customer base ages with you, you’re Woolworth’s.”

2. “There are two kinds of companies: Those that work to try to charge more and those that work to charge less. We will be the second.”

3. “Your margin is my opportunity.”

4. “If you only do things where you know the answer in advance, your company goes away.”

5. “We’ve had three big ideas at Amazon that we’ve stuck with for 18 years, and they’re the reason we’re successful: Put the customer first. Invent. And be patient.”

Check out the rest — here.

Image via Google Commons

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