My Desultory Blog

Posted By RichC on September 24, 2012

After being a little (ok, a lot) disappointed with Google Maps being replace by Apple’s Maps app in iOS, I was anxious to give something else a try — so I downloaded, activated and have started to update Waze . So far so good with using the turn by turn navigation on my way to a couple addresses and manual updating of road hazards, police locations and “automatic” updating of slow traffic spots … but like all GPS “ping” oriented apps, battery life suffers (a high priority accessory is an Apple Lightning connector for the car).

I’m not endorsing Waze yet, but if you are a socially active GPS mapping kind of person, give the iOS and Android OS app a try (short video explaining Waze below).

VIDEO WAS REMOVED

Category: Automotive, Productivity, Social Media, Video | No Comments »
Tags: android, GPS, ios, iphone, mapping, smartphone, Software

Posted By RichC on September 23, 2012

Category: Apple, Misc, Video | No Comments »
Tags: iphone

Posted By RichC on September 22, 2012

The Apple iPhone 5 camera makes for a substantial improvement over my previous smartphone’s camera and so I was anxious to experiment with image quality and play with a few of the hyped features. Since I’m upgrading from the nearly “extinct” Palm Pre, running a rooted webOS install, any modern smartphone camera would have been an improvement. The tiny 8-megapixel phone camera in the iPhone 5 (and 1.2-megapixel front) may be ho-hum for iPhone 4s owners or high-end Android phone users, but for me it was a real leap forward. (inside the iPhone 5)

In my opinion, too much is made of the number of megapixels; it make far more sense to pay attention to the lens, optics and how focus and pixels are handled in the phone. Supposedly the Apple A6 chip and efficiency in how quick the iPhone loads the app are advancements for everyday people and how they will use their picture taking gadgets. It seems sensible to keep the images sizes down if speed and storage space are of paramount concern. So far so good … that logic registers with me.

Untouched photo through our back window from the iPhone 5  – only resized

My first photo was a tweet on Friday, but I gave a little more thought to how I’ll be using the camera as I started experimenting this weekend. Below is my first iPhone panorama HDR photo … obviously shrunk for the blog since the original image exceeds 13 megs – uploaded to Flickr. (but you can still click the inline photo below for a larger 1200 pixel wide image)

In everyday shooting, I doubt if the HDR or panorama features are ones that most people will use. Point and shoot speed, convenience of operation and automatic corrective lighting adjustments are the kinds features we really need – along with the downloading uploading and sharing of the photos.

I tested the smaller 1.2-megapixel front facing camera with a challenging lighting situation – bright lighting directly behind the subject – just to see what the camera would do (image right). The untouched/as taken photo was substantially washed out, but I doubt my higher quality DSLR camera in program mode would have done a much better job considering the lighting.

A couple other things I use a cellphone camera for are macro photos. I often take close up images and archive documents or articles … in fact am working on a smart-app for iPhone and Android to archive camera-phone “scans” in a freeform “stack or cards” type database similar to the way many of us used a rolodex or index cards – quickdex.com. (more on that in the future) My Palm Pre was really lousy for this and I knew my next phone would be one with vastly better macro capability. Besides taking a “leaf photo” (below), I snapped and cropped an article from the newspaper included to the right (click for larger). All but the top left of this image was pass-able … I’m curious if all iPhone 5s have optical imperfections?

Another area where the iPhone 5 excels now is in shooting video. The phone seems snappy and easy to operate … except for handling the diminutive sized phone! I found it difficult to keep my fingers behind the camera and steady the solid little block of aluminum and glass. What stood out most to me is the crispness of the retina display of the iPhone … and I can see that before long I’m going to want that kind of display on my notebook computer and iPad. Very nice.

All in all the camera on the new iPhone 5 is impressive. The facial recognition and autofocus feature work great and the initial images look good. I can see that leaving our Kodak Playsport Zx5 behind is going to be easy to do … and that we’ll be questioning wanting to lug my DSLR and camera bag of accessories around to family functions or while touring on vacation. For simple “capture the moment” photos and video, the iPhone 5 is going to be hard to beat.

A quick test of the front facing video camera and audio below.
 

Category: Apple, Cellphone, Photography, Photos, Video | 3 Comments »
Tags: aircraft, airplane, apple, camera, Cellphone, iphone, mp4, photography, project, smartphone, sonex

Posted By RichC on September 21, 2012

While waiting for delivery of a new 4G LTE phone, it made sense to compare carriers who currently have markets offering these higher data rates (currently Verizon, AT&T and Sprint). For many in the U.S. and overseas who are locked into existing contracts or not near LTE metro areas, buying a 4G LTE phone will mean little.

Unfortunately for me, Sprint currently has a weak LTE footprint for an iPhone 5 with LTE radio chip, but they do promise an aggressive rollout in 2013 – who knows when the Ohio cities will come online? My wife and daughter occasionally use Sprint’s WiMax 4G which improves on 3G speeds, but has a small footprint and drains an already taxed smartphone battery (although the WiMax 4G footprint is far larger than their current LTE offering).

Verizon has hit the media airwaves heavy with ads highlighting their LTE coverage (video) and is using it to attract data hungry users desiring faster speeds. AT&T seems to be struggling to catch up, but where they do have service, the speeds are impressive. A friend of mine traveling to Orlando last week sent me his AT&T speed test. Not bad unless your data use is limited … but that’s for another post.

Category: Cellphone, Marketing, Technology | No Comments »
Tags: 4G, at&t, iphone5, lte, smartphone, sprint, tmobile, verizon, wimax

Posted By RichC on September 20, 2012

For surfers, there’s nothing worse than spotting a large gray figure swimming underneath you. In that brief moment where the brain tries to process the information, the body can go into shock, which is downright debilitating.

Rookie pro Kolohe Andino had a tough second-round match at the Hurley Pro, and then he had the real locals he had to contend with. Both Andino and fans watching got a good scare when this surfing fan got a little too close. Pro surfer Kolohe Andino’s moment of panic came smack dab in the middle of his Round Two heat Tuesday at the Hurley Pro, as he spotted something underneath him just as he was taking off on a wave at Lower Trestles.

With thousands of people watching, Andino wasn’t the only one who spotted it. Fans on the beach and judges in the scoring tower saw even more of the big gray lurker than Andino did, and debate as to what it was was rampant.

“Was that a dolphin? Or a shark?”

Those pushing the shark argument noted that the dorsal fin looked a little too straight to be a dolphin, and that it was swimming alone, which is way more typical of a shark. Meanwhile, those arguing dolphin pointed to the whole pod of them frolicking in the surf at a neighboring break in the San Onofre State Park earlier that morning. They also pointed to the tail that looked more horizontal, a sure sign of a dolphin.