mophone experimentation

mophone experimentation

mophone experimentation

mophone experimentation

Aviary joins the other companies that offer this service, including picnik, & photoshop express.

Picnik and Aviary differ somewhat in their services offered. Aviary it seems is attempting to create more of an online community, where picnik, taps into existing communities such as flickr and facebook for example.

With CS4 released and soon to hit the shelves here in Australia, I can't help but think, what of the future of desktop computer applications? The average person's needs are being driven down in terms of their must-have software, [it's all online now] factor in the increasingly narrowing focus of users of software such as photoshop, and I'm left thinking, where can this [and other packages] package actually go? Packages, such as Fireworks, Corel Paint. Why would anyone buy software, when there are ample alternatives to the big players?

Several packages have been released over the last 12 months, that have the potential to completely usurp programs like Photoshop, there's Iris, [$79.00 AU] Seashore [freeware], LiveQuatrz [donationware], and I'm sure this list will grow.

Aviary joins the other companies that offer this service, including picnik, & photoshop express.

Picnik and Aviary differ somewhat in their services offered. Aviary it seems is attempting to create more of an online community, where picnik, taps into existing communities such as flickr and facebook for example.

With CS4 released and soon to hit the shelves here in Australia, I can't help but think, what of the future of desktop computer applications? The average person's needs are being driven down in terms of their must-have software, [it's all online now] factor in the increasingly narrowing focus of users of software such as photoshop, and I'm left thinking, where can this [and other packages] package actually go? Packages, such as Fireworks, Corel Paint. Why would anyone buy software, when there are ample alternatives to the big players?

Several packages have been released over the last 12 months, that have the potential to completely usurp programs like Photoshop, there's Iris, [$79.00 AU] Seashore [freeware], LiveQuatrz [donationware], and I'm sure this list will grow.

[From Filtering out the fury: how government tried to gag web censor critics]

Same old same old?

'A photograph is not an opinion. Or is it?' asked Sontag in the introduction to Leibovitz's Women, lightly implying that the photographer might have some opinions of her own. If she does, they are not discernible in the portraits for which she is famous. George W Bush, the exhausted surgeon in Sarajevo, Scarlett Johansson in gold knickers: they are all one in Leibovitz's drastically neutral view of human nature. All the energy spent on celebrating the outward appearance of her subjects leaves little for what goes on inside

[From Too many stars in her eyes]

It's all about self promotion really

[From City Traces ]

Also fwiw, my contempt for bean counters and bureaucrats, has reached a new low.

And a word to all those big camera zealots out there, his main camera? An Olympus XA.

Rennie Ellis saw his photographic excursions as a series of encounters with other people's lives. His photos can be as straight-forward and blatant as a head-butt or infused with enigmatic subtleties that draw on the nuance of gesture and the significance of ritual. Often his images ask more questions than they answer.]]> Sun, 12 Oct 2008 04:58:06 -0700 http://virb.com/s2art/posts/text/868712 http://virb.com/s2art/posts/text/867809 New series commenced.

Looks like I've become a post-modernist after all?

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Henson's horror week has pulled the sporting beanie from our eyes -- art is truly a waste of time.

[From what more can I say; ]

sheesh

[From John Chiara]

I like the idea of addressing the way modern westerners treat mobility and tying it in with memory.

[ This particular entry is about an ad campaign for RAW and Kung Fu, make sure you watch the video!]Lots of special effects and pre and post production, notice how they actually photograph fire and the use of green screens, for various effects.

I encourage my students to use blogging as a marketing, promotional tool, some are doing quite well as a consequence.

]]> Wed, 08 Oct 2008 03:14:25 -0700 http://virb.com/s2art/posts/text/859687 http://virb.com/s2art/posts/text/859686 Found this page/article this morning, courtesy of an e-mail list/forum I participate in that is discussing computers and education.*

[From Neal Stephenson's publishers site, of the book, "In the Beginning was the Command Line."]

About twenty years ago Jobs and Wozniak, the founders of Apple, came up with the very strange idea of selling information processing machines for use in the home. The business took off, and its founders made a lot of money and received the credit they deserved for being daring visionaries. But around the same time, Bill Gates and Paul Allen came up with an idea even stranger and more fantastical: selling computer operating systems. This was much weirder than the idea of Jobs and Wozniak. A computer at least had some sort of physical reality to it. It came in a box, you could open it up and plug it in and watch lights blink. An operating system had no tangible incarnation at all. It arrived on a disk, of course, but the disk was, in effect, nothing more than the box that the OS came in. The product itself was a very long string of ones and zeroes that, when properly installed and coddled, gave you the ability to manipulate other very long strings of ones and zeroes. Even those few who actually understood what a computer operating system was were apt to think of it as a fantastically arcane engineering prodigy, like a breeder reactor or a U-2 spy plane, and not something that could ever be (in the parlance of high-tech) "productized."

Download the zipped file to read the whole article, I, of course spent a few hours turning the txt file into a dtp publishing application to 'dress' it up and make it easier to read.

OK; OK; so I'm mad.

Some noteworthy quotes

..."Applications get used by people whose big problem is understanding all of their features, whereas OSes get hacked by coders who are annoyed by their limitations."

..."Or they could make the browser one with the OS, gambling that this would make the OS look so modern and sexy that it would help to preserve their dominance in that market. The problem is that when Microsoft's OS position begins to erode (and since it is currently at something like ninety percent, it can't go anywhere but down) it will drag everything else down with it."

..."The OS has (therefore) become a sort of intellectual labor-saving device that tries to translate humans' vaguely expressed intentions into bits. In effect we are asking our computers to shoulder responsibilities that have always been considered the province of human beings--we want them to understand our desires, to anticipate our needs, to foresee consequences, to make connections, to handle routine chores without being asked, to remind us of what we ought to be reminded of while filtering out noise."

*Written in 1999, so some aspects of the article may or may not be relevant.and according to Wiki, now defunct as a piece of software. But I feel the principles regarding how and what a computer is used for, still hold true.

]]> Wed, 08 Oct 2008 03:14:24 -0700 http://virb.com/s2art/posts/text/859686 http://virb.com/s2art/posts/text/859685 Through the vagaries of hyper-linking I found this site called Photo-shelter.

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

This site has a more commercial bent to it than flickr and other sites I've compared., it aims to sell 'stock' photographs. I've created an account and have been poking around for a few hours. While it doesn't have the smooth and intuitive, albeit flash driven feel of flickr, it's not bad. There maybe some social networking aspects to the site, but I've yet to find them. Which makes sense the site is about selling images.

Their up-loader on the other hand is not my liking, nor suited to my style of organising imagery. A beautiful tool is a sight to behold, and a joy to work with, this is none of those. If I am to spend extensive amounts of time using a tool, I'd prefer if it was elegant simple to use and had some sense of visual logic to it.

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

]]> Wed, 08 Oct 2008 03:14:24 -0700 http://virb.com/s2art/posts/text/859685 http://virb.com/s2art/posts/text/852105 Since the recent upgrade of Movable Type, I've NOT been receiving e-mail notifications of comments. So I'm manually checking to see if folks have commented. If you've left a comment over the last few weeks and it has not appeared, please, e-mail me or leave another. I am checking more regularly now.

]]> Wed, 01 Oct 2008 00:20:43 -0700 http://virb.com/s2art/posts/text/852105 http://virb.com/s2art/posts/text/849756 Just discovered that twitter has it's own search tool, and it could, perhpas be used to get a feel for what is going on around you?

Couldn't help myself could I

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]]> Mon, 29 Sep 2008 21:08:53 -0700 http://virb.com/s2art/posts/text/849756 http://virb.com/s2art/posts/text/849755 When does a photo album become a book?

[From Inside on Flickr - Photo Sharing!]

This image from flickr by a commercial photographer working in the states has me thinking about what differentiates a photo album from a book? More specifically, a 'Photo Album' from a 'Monograph'. Is it just me or does the phrase 'Photo album' have connotations of a highly personalised history, family or otherwise, whereas a 'Monograph' has slightly more serious undertones, with a whiff of Academia?

Which of these values, defines one over the other, can one be both?

• Photo corners?
• Distribution?
• Content?
• Production Costs?
• Production Values?

Time to make another I guess?

]]> Mon, 29 Sep 2008 21:08:52 -0700 http://virb.com/s2art/posts/text/849755