Despite what you may have heard President Obama did not kill SOPA. SOPA & it’s sibling PIPA are still very much alive. Don’t know what I’m talking about? Put simply, it’s NOT about piracy, it’s about censoring content on the Internet. Despite what Hollywood, and other media moguls might tell you, their failing business practices shouldn’t be used as a sledgehammer on our greatest communications tool.

This isn’t doomsday pandering, or Y2K nonsense, this is the real deal. If YOU create content, then you want to stand against SOPA & PIPA. It’s not protecting content creators, it’s about padding bank accounts & corporate greed.

Google Petition Against SOPA

American Censorship Petition Against SOPA

After months of speculation, followed by  the device’s introduction–the iPad is here. I didn’t buy one, nor did I intend to make a purchase, but let me tell you why I will anyway.

My initial thought is the iPad is for content consumption not content creation. It’s not as powerful as my Macbook Pro which I use for tethered photography, Lightroom & Photoshop processing. It’s not as portable as my iPhone which aside from the obvious mobile features is really my handheld portfolio. I don’t have a pressing need for a third device. However, as a business owner, I can’t ignore existing or potential customers. It doesn’t matter what I think about the iPad–300,000 iPads sold on the first day. Twitter was a buzz, mainstream media jumped in, and the Apple fanboys enjoyed the Rapture as the iPad finally arrived in stores last Saturday. If you’re an iPad naysayer you probably want to jump in and tell me about it’s lack of Flash media support, remind me that tablet computers have never been mainstream, but that’s not the point. Apple didn’t make the iPad for the Power User, the technophile or gadget geek–the iPad is a consumer electronic device.

Consumers don’t care about how technology works, they just want it to work. Consumers expect a dial tone when they make a call, they’re not interested in how many hops the call is routed through. Consumers don’t debate the advantages of HDTV vs standard definition, they just want to watch their TV shows. Apple has created a device that my retired parents will love with proven iPhone technology so simple my two-year old daughter already uses it. Apple isn’t creating a new market, as much as they are recognizing the needs of an existing consumer base. Anyone will be able to use an iPad because the learning curve isn’t steep. Will everyone take advantage of all the nuances of the device? Certainly not, but that’s the same for a lot of consumer electronics out there. HDTVs are more common now that prices are under $1000, but only the home theater enthusiast is going to pay money to calibrate their LCD screen if they don’t tweak settings themselves.

We as content creators cannot ignore how consumers are accessing our products. Scott Kelby wrote a post this morning on how the iPad affects photographers, and I would add all industries should pay attention. In this global marketplace, you have to take advantage of every opportunity that presents itself. Making your content available for the iPad while time consuming AND financially redundant is the smart choice because leaders are proactive not reactive. While many people are focusing on iPad apps, Terry White mentioned the opportunity for eBook self-publishing with Adobe InDesign. That’s right, my mother could very well publish that cookbook she’s always dreamed about, and make it accessible to 300,000 people today.

In summary, it remains to be seen if the iPad will be the revolutionary device Steve Jobs claims it will be, but I’m not going to stand around on the sidelines waiting to find out.

Good afternoon dear readers!

This is just a quick update to let you know there will be some changes to the website in the next few weeks. The biggest change will be the use of Category Feeds. As longtime readers know this blog has covered a wide range of topics ranging from entertainment to games to politics, fitness & health and of course Adobe software.

Having individual category feeds will make the blog more useful to everyone. In the future you’ll be able to pick the category you want to follow, and you can ignore the rest of my ramblings. Given my schedule this is the best option versus starting another blog, or two, or three.

So there you have it. I’ll announce the updates when they’re online, and I appreciate your continued patronage of the blog.

It’s week #2 of John P’s GetHealthy Challenge and I’m sitting here having lost 2lbs in about one week. That’s surprising given the fact that I cheated last week while in Oklahoma eating McDonalds not once, not twice, but THREE TIMES… the horror. However, in my defense I really only blew it once. After discovering my Double Quarter Pounder meal was over 1300 calories that was enough to make me think about just having a snack wrap the next time. I decided early on that if I was going to commit to this fitness challenge I would take advantage of any technical gadgets I could get my hands on. You see I love gadgets, and if I can find a legitimate use to buy/trade/download one then so be it. Today’s review is of two iPhone apps–My Fitness Pal & Daily Burn. Both apps do a good job of helping you track nutrition & exercise information which tie into the websites and online communities they support. That being said, neither app will work unless you sign up for a free website account. My intention is to primarily use the iPhone app as I hope to be moving around more, and sitting in front of my computer less. Also, given my schedule it’s more likely that my fitness diary will be entered on the go. Let’s get to the details of each app:

My Fitness Pal

The iPhone app and online web account are free.

The Good – My Fitness Pal has a well thought out interface. If you do not have an account you can create your profile directly from the iPhone app. You’ll be prompted to enter such info as current weight, goal weight, current height, activity level, weekly number of workouts planned, in addition to some personal info like your birthday & city location. The final step is to create your username/password and then you’ll be shown your calculated daily calorie summary. NOTE – I highly recommend getting the advice of your doctor or a professional nutritionist to calculate how many calories you need per day. My suggested calorie intake was a total of 1100 calories, which I found rather low. Fortunately, you can edit your profile info, so I changed the suggested number.

After creating my account I was able to jump in right away adding my first meal on record–Two Eggs Scrambled, Jimmy Dean Turkey Sausage, Pace Salsa – 289 calories. The Home screen shows a Daily Summary with the “Add to Diary” button easily recognized in the center of the app. Scrolling the Home page reveals detailed nutrition information, calculated from the foods you enter.

When adding new entries you can search for foods by name or brand, choose from your last entries, or create specific foods & meals. That’s right, you can group a series of foods into a meal which makes data entry even easier once you get a few items entered. The process is straight forward, and I found it easy to edit items such as number of servings or create meals.

The Bad – the application requires an Internet connection via WiFi or cellular. Entries cannot be entered offline. The workout section could be improved to capture & provide more information. Compared to the nutrition section of the app, the workout implementation feels light.

Daily Burn

The iPhone app and online web account are free. There is a PAID version of the app for $2.99 that has more features, and the website also has varying subscription level services. Daily Burn is also supported by a 2nd iPhone app called Food Scanner which is currently on sale for .99 cents.

The Good – The application has separate screen page icons that display your fitness progress, workout and nutritional summaries. Nutrition entries include a picture of the item as well as a capture of the product nutrition label. The workout section includes popular programs–even the Wii Fit–allowing for detailed progress of your workouts. The body section provides a graph which allows for a larger detail view simply by rotating the phone. This application interfaces directly with the Food Scanner which is a slick application. I found myself going through my pantry scanning stuff I had no intention of eating. Nice if you don’t like to type on your phone.

The Bad - The application interface requires too many page changes to get to what you want. The free version of the app only allows you to save 20 food items, and you can’t save complete meals. When I searched certain foods–or even scanned them directly with Food Scanner–the nutritional information was wrong. (I can understand this with the Daily Burn app, but was very surprised to get mistakes with the Food Scanner). Constantly reminded in app (and on website) to upgrade to Pro version. As with My Fitness Pal the app requires an Internet connection to use.

Overall Comparison Summary

As I mentioned before, both applications are good for counting those calories. Daily Burn has an advantage when you pair it with the Food Scanner app, but I would have to say for regular use My Fitness Pal just works better. The fact that I can create meals saves more time than the ability to scan bar codes, and the user interface is clean, simple & easy to navigate. But don’t take my word for it, test drive the apps yourself. For me, I’m going to use My Fitness Pal for the rest of John P’s GetHealthy challenge.

According to yesterday’s blog post, Twitter has plans to work retweets (RTs as they’re used) into the online application. According to Dan Zarrella this is a summary of the change in function, “Twitter plans to add a button to the Twitter web client that says “Retweet” that will allow you to send the same exact Tweet, withno editing, to your followers. Your followers will see the original poster’s avatar and name, even if they’re not following them, and the only indication they’ll see that it is a ReTweet will be a small line of light gray text underneath it.”

I saw a sputtering of tweets today on the topic, and I’m inclined to jump on the #SaveReTweets bandwagon. However, if we’re to assume Twitter has the interests of the community in mind, I would like to add some helpful critiques.

The image above is an example of the proposed change to retweets. The retweet button is a good idea, but here’s why I believe the “retweeted by biz” line fails:

1. This drawing assumes I use Twitter.com to read & post my tweets. Folks who are taking advantage of the power of Twitter are using third party clients.

2. The implementation shows the original poster’s avatar. When scanning through a list of tweets, I look at the avatars first then read the tweet. This ties into my 3rd point -

3. I’m reading the tweet AND/OR following the link because I trust the person who retweeted. In the image above, I won’t see @Biz’s avatar, and I’ll ignore @Ev because I don’t follow them.

4. The implementation doesn’t allow for a retweet chain. Sometimes I retweet two or three people, as I didn’t discover the thread AND I can introduce my followers to more people. For example, RT @Person1 RT @Person2 this is a really great tweet.

5. A driving factor for me on Twitter is discovery. The changes to @replies and now retweets hampers discovery of new folks. Since RTs can be ignored, I won’t be introduced to new people, and I won’t be able to introduce folks to new discoveries.

6. I’m already using some great third party tools to track retweets. Twitter isn’t adding a feature that will be helpful to me, rather they’re breaking my current workflow.

Looking at Twitter’s blog post the changes are in hand, and will be pushed on users after a trial period. My hope is that they consider how retweets have been implemented by the community before trying to reinvent the wheel.

It’s late (or early) so I’ll just throw out some links for you to visit:

NAPP – You should already be a member if you have any interest in Photoshop. Really. Other people who know Photoshop will heckle you if you’re not a member. They’ll be like, “There goes that person who thinks they know more than Scott Kelby AND all his friends.”

Why NAPP? Why now? Well, yesterday NAPP members got access to an exclusive Watermark panel that can be downloaded for CS4. That alone is worth the $99 membership fee for some folks. So go join. Now.

Wacom introduces the Intuos4. This was all the buzz yesterday during the Photoshop World keynote, maybe due to a few folks winning the tablet. Brought to you by the leaders in pen tablet tech, it’s worth a look.

AppStorm – I have Erik to thank for pointing out this website. For new & experienced Mac users, here’s a place to go to find app reviews. Sure there are more apps for Windows, but I’m starting to focus on quality in my computing experience not quantity.

Alright, I’m out. A bit of sleep before the day really kicks off.

How YOU doin’? It’s been quite a week, which ended with Sydney being sick today with a viral infection. Not how I planned to start the weekend. If you’re in Austin for SXSW this weekend, be sure to catch my sister Lesli’s band The Redwood Plan tomorrow at Lovejoys. I had planned to be there, but we’ll be staying home to get baby girl better. Alrighty, onto news around the Interwebs:

@Firgs recently wrote on her blog that she’s a Photoshop Snob. As a fellow enthusiast, I can understand the passion. However, while Photoshop is an AMAZING piece of software, it’s not for everyone. Even it’s little brother PS Elements can be a bit much, especially if all you want to do is have fun with your photos. And that’s what Vertus has done right with its latest software creation Play with Pictures.

It was quite a coincidence that the same time I was reading an email from Vertus, I was catching up with @DawnMHSH‘s blog. Dawn wrote an excellent review/tutorial of Play with Pictures, and she’s even running a contest which you should enter. As your local Adobe guy, I can say I had a blast with this package. It is fun for everyone, and easily mastered, which is perfect for home enthusiasts, families or the creative who wants to stretch their imagination. Download a free trial or Join the Play with Pictures Facebook group which has photos & videos. I had to get in on the action so I posted a quick video for you my dear reader:

Other notable links this week:

Nearby Tweets – What I like about this app is it gets you connected with people who tweet locally on topics you’re interested in. I love technology, but I enjoy an opportunity to meet folks face to face. What makes this app strong is searching by both location and topic. My new favorite.

Tweetlater – OK. Here’s my Twitter secret. I automate my Adobe Tips both on Twitter & this blog using Tweetlater. *shock & awe ensue* Scheduling tweets seemed like a silly idea until I realized the value a regular format gave to my followers. Loyal readers know that I tweet my Adobe Tips Monday through Friday at 9am & 9pm. Using Tweetlater allows me to organize all those tips “offline” and I don’t have to worry if something else keeps me from tweeting. Having a schedule for certain tweets means my followers know when to listen to me, which is vitally important as chatter static grows with each new follower. It also has a feature to vet new followers, a process for auto-following that allows you to check the twitterers first to see if you really want to add them. I use this constantly, especially with the rise in spambots. Finally Tweetlater has RSS feed capabilities which I use to update the sidebar with my daily tip.

Alright, it’s now early evening, and I should get back to the family. Everyone have a wonderful weekend, and I’ll catch you with Adobe tips next week.

It’s a short post this morning, as it was one heckuva day today. I should probably blog it, but frankly I’m tired and have a 5AM day coming in a few hours. Here are some quick links for today:

iPhone Apps Tell The Future – Interesting article about where portable devices, cell phone tech, etc., may be heading based on apps seen in Apple’s App store. There were a handful of apps that I hadn’t downloaded yet so it was a good read for me.

Cursebird – See how foulmouth some of your Twitter peeps can be when they get to chatting. Being a new dad, I’m happy to report no swearing over here. (Old posts within this blog are another story)

20 Best Web Comics – Thought the list wasn’t complete as they left out Sinfest (that’s .NET not .COM) and What the Duck. I thought the comments had a better list than the article.

Download the update for Lightroom 2.3 (Mac|PC)

Photoshop CS4 users will want to update to Camera Raw 5.3. If not already prompted by the Adobe Updater, you can manually install by visiting the Adobe web site.

In case you missed it, RC posted a great tutorial that combines Lightroom’s web gallery upload with the Shadowbox plugin for WordPress last Friday. What does it do? Checkout the flash gallery I created of my daughter.

You may be aware of the service called Twitturly that ranks the most frequent URLs tweeted, but did you know you can pull up the links of your favorite Twitterer? Simply add /user/twittername to the end of the Twitturly URL to pull up links by a specific person. For example to see the latest links I tweeted you would enter the following URL: http://twitturly.com/user/aj_wood Great for grabbing links instead of wading through tweets you may have missed.

Erik shot me an email told me that I should come up with a schedule, announce it, then stick to it. Well, I haven’t figured out the schedule, but once I do I’ll be sure to announce it.

Uhm… so this post was finished about two hours ago BEFORE midnight. Then I went to test my shadowbox gallery and discovered it didn’t work. In fact, many items weren’t working on the site as it seems my WP theme was broken. It’s fixed now, and that post will have to wait for another day.

Today was a rather worrisome day. Not because I’ve a mountain of work to catch up on (I do), but due to my Mac Pro crashing, downing not one, but two of my external drives. Anyone who’s attended a class with me knows I preach backups, and you’re not truly backing anything up without redundancy. In this case, I was doubly screwed. I had just moved all my image collections to a new WD terabyte drive about a week ago. I had a GINORMOUS number of images spread over several drives/machines with the most important going to my backup Lacie 150GB. I had a number of images crowding space on my laptop, and I’ve been meaning to prune my folder sets for some time. The problem with the terabyte drive reminded me of why I don’t use high capacity compact flash cards in my camera. I was looking at a potentially dead drive with several years worth of images on it. Here is how my afternoon played out:

1. Upon realizing that neither drive mounted when my Mac Pro came back up, I proceeded to gracefully power everything down.

2. I unplugged power from the external drives, and unplugged their firewire connections.

3. Powered up the Mac Pro, plugged in the firewire connections, then powered up the external drives. Nothing. Drives did not mount.

4. Opened up Disk Utility, and I could see the physical drives just not the volumes mounted. Ran a Repair Disk on both external volumes, status OK, but volumes still wouldn’t mount.

5. Drove to my office (hey I had work to do), picked up a copy of Alsoft’s Disk Warrior on the way back. (All the info I had pointed to Disk Warrior over Drive Genius)

6. Loaded up Disk Warrior, and ran it’s diagnostic on both drives. The volume directories were corrupt, but the data appeared to be intact. All-in-all, the process took about 20 minutes.

So things ended well, but given how quickly the drives dropped from a system crash, you might understand my nerves haven’t quite settled. My good friend Keith was very generous and last week handed down his Lacie 250GB drives. I’m looking at adding a UPS battery for just the drives in my office, and will be having an electrician make sure I’m not overloading a circuit with all the hardware I’m running.

In case you’re wondering about my backup strategy, it’s very similar to what Scott Kelby described on his blog back in October. Images are downloaded from camera cards simultaneously to both external drives. I work off the main drive, then overwrite the backup drive with finished Lightroom adjustments. My backup drive is actually a pair of drives which I rotate offsite once a month so I’m covered in case of fire/disaster. I use Slingshot by Martian Technology to keep the backup drives current with the main drive. I also use Slingshot to sync my laptop & desktop computers.

In summary, remember that even the best laid plans will be tested at some point. I’d like to think today wasn’t so much about luck.

Feb 2009 Update – Still think backups are not important? Checkout what happened to the Drobo setup of Creative Tech Guru Terry White.