Jeffzilla

Last week I took photos and volunteered at the Friends of the Highline Design Book Release Party. The party was actually underneath the Highline, and featured a great band, food and drinks. The new book, “Designing the Highline” showcases the Highlines’s design from Gansevoort to 30th street. I haven’t been up on that section of it yet, but I did get the opportunity to explore the upper section, near the rail yard. Pics from that soon.

Photos are posted up on my new photography site - AcidLoungeMedia.com/Vision.  Additionally, the Friends of the Highline blog wrote about the party, and linked to the photos.

This Photo Safe II from Digital Foci sounds like nifty gadget..especially for traveling. I’d use it to backup pictures on my memory card, and not necessarily to offload the pictures…. ie not deleting memory cards after copying to the it. That way,the camera is lost or stolen while traveling, there’s still a backup of the pictures, and vise versa. I feel like very very quickly, the value of the photos your shooting far outpaces the value of the gear you’re using.. in many many situations.

Also, this could prevent you from having to do the “many smaller cards” scheme of data protection, and instead shoot with that whopper 32b card, and just back it up from time to time in the field.

Thoughts?

From Engadget -

Digital Foci didn’t go out of its way to drastically redesign the original Photo Safe, but we ’spose that’s alright in the grand scheme of things. Essentially, the Photo Safe II picks up where its predecessor left off by including a multicard reader (now with 100% more MS Duo and miniSD support) which automatically transfers photos from your flash card onto the built-in 80GB / 160GB hard drive. The integrated display tells you at a glance how much space is remaining and how much battery life is left, though it won’t show your stored photos in slideshow (or any other) fashion. A touch steep at $139 (80GB) / $189 (160GB), but that’s convenience for you.

Tonight, between the Gawker Media Meshing situation and dinner, I randomly met up with a friend and checked out sunset from the top of the New Museum in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. I think we got there just at the right time, because the sun was just below the horizon, giving great light. This little panorama is quick and dirty, as you can see, and shot with a 16mm lens. You can see at the edges the distortion is very pronounced, especially where building elements join at the end of one frame into the middle of another frame - the differences in magnification is intense.

Nat and David’s 4th of July BBQ was tasty - and I had a good time shooting some photos… Photos on flickr.

I’m back in NYC, after a great trip through Alaska. Writing a blog post about the trip is no simple task, though - in addition to the description, here’s what I’m working on:

Collecting photos from my camera (3 sd cards, 4gb total, about 650 photos), my brothers camera (200 or so photos), and my father’s camera (300 or so photos)

Download continuous (30 second interval) tracklog from GPS.

Geocode all photos - update photo EXIF data with lat/long info, as well as nearest city info

Integrate with Google Maps API to generate custom google map showing trip track log, as well as selected photos

Generate similar Google Earth KMZ File, with slightly more data, including USGS topographic data from backcountry portion of trip.

Upload all photos and videos (I didn’t mention all the videos yet, did I…) to Flickr, arrange in album, assign permissions - most will be private, many will be “friends/family only”, a representative few will be public - make descriptions for public pictures.

Edit video clips from associated sections of trip (river riding, bush plane, crashed weather balloon discovery) into watchable videos. - Upload to YouTube, tag, etc.

Collect links/info for Alaskan friends and their websites.

Finally, write blog post, and post up links to various media items - embed some.

How’s that sound? Stay tuned!

How about “Geo-tweeting”? Automatically posting geo-tagged updates to Twitter via iPhone 3G’s GPS chip, cell data coverage and wifi coverage? Maybe a Google Maps geotweet maps mashup?

Needless to say, I’m very excited about the new iPhone 3g, and can’t wait to get my hands on one and try out the GPS, high speed data, and new applications. Regarding iPhone 3G’s features - I’m dissapointed that there is still no native picture messaging, iChat AV integration or video capture. However, I’m hopeful that 3rd party software developers will be able to fill this gap - an all network IM client that could get on AIM, Yahoo, MSN, Jabber, GMAIL, IRC, Skype, Facebook and Myspace instant messenger networks (who sometimes share the same protocols…) would be fantastic.

Would it be possible to get super accurate gps reading via multiple gps readings? Use iPhone 3G’s internal GPS and Bluetooth connection to connect to a secondary, external GPS, maybe even one with WAAS land-based location accuracy augmentation? That, coupled with data network access could make for some nifty scientific, surveying, research and field applications…

Finally, the obvious application for a phone paired with gps paired with camera - automatic photo geotagging and upload. Flickr already supports geotagging and uploading via email (as well as third party apps). I’m almost certain this will be coming out of the gates soon after iPhone 3G launch, and almost certain I’ll be using it immediately!