slotMusic?!

Just read about this article on ars. Sounds similar to chip-based music players in the past, but not for your four year old. I am all in favor of changing the format from CD to what looks like micro SD-would cut down on packaging, materials and transportation costs all around(yay environmentalism). But ars is right, the whole point of digital music is that its digimalz! I shouldn't have to carry anything around! CDs are big, they get scratched and are motor based... We are always going to need a physical format (or are we?), so why not?

Labels launch slotMusic format, miss point of digital music: "

These days, digital music is all about convenience. Despite that, SanDisk and the Big Four labels have introduced microSD cards with preloaded albums that users can just pop into their portable devices. The physical format ship has sailed and slotMusic is destined to sink.

Read More...

"

(Via Ars Technica.)

Geotagging on the fly with Eye-Fi Explore

Yeah yeah, updates. Graduation is coming. I'm busy.

But I just picked up this story over at Ars, and it was just a little to cool/relevant to pass up. Eye-Fi is a company that makes SD cards for your camera, and they recently rolled out with new ones. SD cards are no big deal, so why talk about them? Well the newest ones have all kinds of tricks up their sleeve. For instance, the Eye-Fi Share gives you the ability to store 2 GB worht of photos, and then upload said photos to your computer wirelessly. Through the SD card. What?! You can also upload to Flickr and whatever site you want. Wirelessly. Through your SD card. What?!

The one I like is the Eye-Fi Explore. Which is an SD card, but basically has a functional GPS like ability to figure out where you are, and then record Geotags for each picture as it is taken. This rocks the socks right off expensive GPS cameras, and programs that you have to run your photos through in post. The little guy uses Skyhook, which is the service that uses WiFi hotspots and the like to determine location. Soooo, if you are in the Sierras... it probably won't work. But still, pretty cool considering its ALL IN YOUR SD CARD. Would be pretty cool for a suburban geocacher. Ars says it runs $130, so its not for the weak at heart.

As for me. School is almost over. Woo!

MarsEdit

OK. Serious blog rethinking time. Time to change the layout, the.. well everything... Lets start with editing. Time to give this whole MarsEdit thing a try.

First things first, HTML! Holy Guacamole! watch watch!

centered!

I'm tired of digging through layers of menus just to figure out out to center stuff. Journler has a nice feel to it, but does not work well with blogginess. MacJournal is ok, but to me, its just that, ok. iWeb is shiny, but doesn't have the text editing/RSS/email feel to it. Its a web page creator. Maybe Journler mixed with iWeb? nononono... HTML! Now just to decide if it is worth 30 buckaroos.

When it comes to any program that involves text and publishing, its really interesting how people expect it to work like MS Word. Just look at the progression of the iWork apps. Pages is picking up more and more aspects of Word. Its kinda funny, but standards are standards for a reason. Does this stifle innovation? maybe. I am a Mac user, but still, I want my toolbars!

Heehee!

Well, its the day after christmas, and hooray! No more school until late late January.
In the news:

Putin just launched a bunch of satellites into space. Apparently the motherland wants something different than GPS, which is run by the US and can apparently just be switched off for certain areas. So they revived their GLONASS program Global Navigation Satellite System, from the good old Soviet Days. Might there be a future bluray/hddvd squabble between GPS or GNSS? Probably not, but it is always good to have alternatives. Soon Tom Tom will have new features, “Turn right, comrade! Head straight on to capitalist marketplace!”

An aside:
A 4th person has found our geocache! hooray! Hopefully Team Inferno will be going on hikes soon. Expect more posts!

Navizon + iPhone = GPS?

        I am way too busy with classes... But I am taking a break this evening so that I can mess around with a few things. My super l33t hax0red iPhone loves to keep me busy when I should be doing other things. My only lament is that it lacks GPS... or does it? Via Installer.app I found a new app called Navizon. Basically, as you are walking around, it triangulates your location based on available WiFi networks AP and cellphone towers! The only catch is that someone has to have documented the coords of cell towers and WiFi spots in your area with a GPS for it to work. But, thanks to their handy app, one can drive around town with their GPS enabled laptop or smart phone, and everything will be compiled and ready to drop into their database. They will even pay you for it!
        It seems to be a small venture so support is limited and bugs are plentiful, but the cleverness of the idea makes me giddy. Sadly, their app is a spindly java client that emulates a cell phone on your computer. It is having problems finding my GPS and iPhone attached to the Powerbook, so my network/tower locating days may not be coming for awhile. le sigh... It would be like a lame version of geocaching.. except you get paid! WOO! Why do they have to taunt me so?!
        Hopefully everything will get worked out soon and then we could have GPS(ish) on our iPhones! *drool*

Geotag iPhoto with HoudahGeo

        
        So you want to geotag/geocode? I know I’m a bit late with this... I have been messing around with my iPhone, and will talk about that soon (tonight?). But for now is time to learn how to quickly Geotag photos on a Mac! If you are looking for a super fast way to do this, simply download HoudahGeo and it can be as easy as click and drag! I’ll give you a quick step by step just for help and to clear up any doubts about this cool little app! This program can work with or without a GPS, I’ll explain both!

        But first, what is Geotagging? A Geotag is a bit of metadata attached to an image or even a blog/wiki article, that shows the lat/long/alt of the subject of the media. So, if I take a picture of the Grand Canyon, and geotag it, Google Earth, Flickr, and many other apps and website will be able to quickly lay the photos on the map! Here is the most famous example on flickr! http://flickr.com/map/ Basically... its super awesome if you are taking pictures of obscure locations, where other people may want to visit.

        Kristin and I went on a quick bike ride around Tacoma the other day. I brought my GPS and made sure that it was set to track, and also made sure my camera matched the time of the GPS. Once I got home, I plugged my GPS in on one side of the my Powerbook, and my camera in on the other, and away I went (YES! Garmin will work on a Mac wonderfully with Google Earth, GPSBabel and HoudahGeo! Comment or email me if you want to know more about it!).

        What HoudahGeo does, is compare the time of the tracks, with the timestamp of each photo. It then adds lat/long metadata to the photo. After quickly uploading picture to iPhoto, drag the pictures you want tagged directly into HoudahGeo. You can then either upload GPX info from a GPS receiver or a saved file. There is even a cool feature for people without GPS receivers! Just select the photo, then select the point on the map. Then bam! Just hit write EXIF tag and you are done! You can even export directly to flickr! Check mine out here!
http://flickr.com/photos/bentup/map/ Here is the clipping from Google Earth:


It all works really well, and will cut a lot of time off of any geo blogging experience! Im stoked! Expect more posts soon! And please comment/email if you have anything to say!