Richard’s Notes

Braille Polaroid Camera

With a built-in Braille printer, the Braille Polaroid Camera is designed for the blind to record and print Braille images of the world around them.

Wow, what a fantastic concept and design.

[via Caitlin Vatikiotis-Bateson]

Pogue’s Posts: Wi-Fi on Airplanes

Let’s just look at the bright side: you still can’t make cellphone calls on planes.

Charles Cramer is a well known landscape photographer and fine art printmaker. His photographic work is considered among the best around. I have to agree, it’s spectacular.

JPG Magazine Goes Under

I’m a fan of both Derek Powazek and Heather Champ, they are both pioneers in the area loosely referred to as “the social internet” or in the subset of that area that might be called “user driven content” or “content driven community.”

They founded JPG magazine and then had it taken away from them in a way that led to bad blood that certainly contributed to JPG’s folding.

Heather is a driving force behind Flickr, one of the most successful user driven sites on the web and Derek publishes Fray, a quarterly print magazine that gets its content from submissions on the web. Derek’s recent talk on crowdsourcing is a great introduction to the entire field.

All of the various things they’re involved in are pioneering efforts and while JPG might have lasted longer had they remained on board, I’m not absolutely sure about that.

Both Derek and Heather build beautiful, simple things; they both share tasteful graphic design aesthetics and they both understand user interface. They understand the social internet better than almost anyone, and have the connections and resources to build great things, which they’ve done. But, I’ve been thinking that there’s a weakness in the underlying model of user driven content and that weakness might have taken JPG down no matter what.

I was an early member of JPG mag but I got turned off when I found out that one of the ways images made the magazine was a social popularity system much like flickr explore. Whether or not these types of popularity systems actually work to pick good stuff is less important to me than the fact that over time, those systems become influencers on community interaction. I, for one, left JPG mag early because of that system. And, as I say in my long diatribe on flickr explore, it wasn’t for lack of popularity (sour grapes).

I’m just not sure that communities that include tracking systems and popularity contests, at least as they are currently implemented, are sustainable; at some point the crowd seems to alienate individuals.

My thoughts on this are raw, not very clear, and I don’t have much to substantiate them, but something isn’t right with some of these social sites and my hunch is that the popularity piece is getting in the face of the open-hearted sharing piece.

JPG folding will no doubt be thought of as the karmic rebound for the way Heather and Derek were treated but it would be foolish for those involved in user driven web sites to leave it at that. I think there’s more going on although I’m not quite sure what it is.

[via Daring Fireball]

Canon’s Err99: the Man, the Myth

Roger Cicala, owner of LensRentals.com has written a great article on the error99 code that Canon DSLRs will exhibit when they hang for any number of reasons.

Roger went through much of the endless comments in our post: Canon DSLR Error 99 fix and has done a great job of not only extracting the nuggets of useful information but also combining them with the technical facts as he knows them. What makes his take on this meaningful is that he runs a successful rental company and rents the very camera bodies and lenses that are involved in this, so he gets both user reports on his own gear and he’s in direct contact with Canon tech support.

I’m delighted to say that his take on all of this is pretty much mine but it’s a lot easier to go through his post than the comment thread at this site so those of you who are facing this error code or wondering what to do if it pops up should read his post.

Actually, all Canon users should read his post and bookmark it for future reference.

Charlie Rose interviews Malcolm Gladwell

This is a fascinating interview on the topics in his new book “Outliers” which is about the nature/nurture issues behind being successful.

[via Signal vs. Noise]

Bill Moyers interviewed Mark Johnson, this film’s director a while back. It was a great show: Playing for Change . Watch the video on the Moyers site, it overlaps the one embedded here but it’s worth it; goes into more detail about the movie.

And on that note, Anne and I wish you all a very happy new year.

[via Norah Cross]

New York City. A quick shot of Anne on our way back to Grand Central and home after a satisfying Afghan dinner.

I really like the auto ISO feature on the new Canon bodies. Even though I can’t set the threshold where it switches it seems to be pretty smart about keeping shutter speeds high enough for decent images. And, the light weight of the XSi with a 50mm f/1.4 lens and hood on it makes for a nice little package.

Olivia Arthur has some amazing photography at her site. Check out her Iran: Beyond the Veil set. Wow. And her In the Name of God set. Wow.

[via Gary Sharp]

Gad. Do I really want to shop at J&R? Better B&H.

[via The-Digital-Picture.com - Canon Digital SLR, Lens and Accessory Reviews]

NY Times: 2008 - The Year in Pictures

Wow, this is a spectacular collection from a variety of photographers. Play the audio and sit back for a great photojournalistic ride.

Editorial Observer: Four Decades After Milgram, We’re Still Willing to Inflict Pain

I posted about this famous experiment I was in before: Milgram Revisited. This new research is rather depressing: even after all political movement away from a culture of people who simply follow orders, we’re still a people who follow orders if the person giving them is an authority.

I wonder what it is about human nature that pushes us to this?

New York City. Riding the Staten Island Ferry is always a good thing to do because it gets you away from Manhattan for a different perspective (without going to New Jersey). Combine that with dusk and you have a winning combination. Others had the same idea, the ferry was packed with sightseers.

Taken from the Staten Island Ferry which is about to dock in lower Manhattan.

This was taken in the financial district. I really do enjoy a wide angle focal length among office towers, very dramatic.

Friday night in New York is one thing, combine that with Holiday time and stand in Times Square and you have wall to wall chaos. Gary and I were in heaven although I certainly would not want to be there on New Year’s eve.

I waited a split second too long, the image was on his screen and then disappeared just before I took this shot. Still, this is Times Square x 10,000. Come New Years Eve, x 500,000 no doubt.

Goshen, Connecticut. Of all the things to shoot on Christmas I chose this dish scrubber. Call me crazy but it has an ornamental beauty to me.

Larry Towell has a wonderful collection of images at the Magnum site. Let the slide show go, it’s an endless collection of spectacular images.

[via Gary Sharp]

Our friend Gary is visiting and took this picture. The Kitty is getting very old and fragile and is shedding like mad for some reason but she’s still kicking at 18 and a half.

Warren, Connecticut. I got these small stuffed cats at my favorite Japanese handmade paper store in LA a while back. They’re too small to be pincushions so they’re simply dust collectors (or stuffed hello kitties). They’ve just earned their keep by posing for this shot.

Happy Holidays to all of our friends both offline and online (analog and digital). Anne and I hope you’re warm, dry, safe, and happy wherever you are.

New York City. It’s rare to see a tobacco shop these days and even as a non-smoker I love these shops: the smells, the great cigar and pipe paraphernalia, and the wooden Indians (Native Americans) that stand out in front of them.

I’ll be sad when tobacco use is over and these stores go away. No doubt these statues will have value in 100 years. For more on smoking see this post: Smoking on 7th Ave.

Warren, Connecticut. Gary and I spent a day inside playing with camera gear, photographing kitchen tools and such. Once it was time for beer the subject matter shifted. This particular beer has great color and amazing effervescence. It tasted great and had the desired effect.

The Big Picture has a wonderful photo essay on a complete cycle of the space shuttle Endeavor: Round trip with Endeavour.