(Auto) panorama of PNG mask

(Auto) panorama of PNG mask
Originally uploaded by imageo

Yes I am still playing with the camera features of my phone, and the one-click upload feature you get with shozu.

This is the nokia auto panorama feature, basically yiou click and slowly move the camera in one direction then click to stop. to be hionest is quirky and tempramentlyt and more a gimiky toy than a serious tool, but to leap to its defence I was trying it out moving the whole phone (like a scanner head) in front of the mask. Clearly this made the mtch up process stutter a little.

- Taken at 12:29 PM on October 31, 2007 - cameraphone upload by ShoZu

Taking another look at Shozu

I must admit I have seen others enthuse about ShoZu, pronounced show-zoo, but had not seen much application for it myself. I was wrong of course. If you are into social networking and have a mobile phone camera, you should get it, serious you should download it now.

The advantage is that photo goes directly to the website (no uploading and fidgeting on a PC required).  The list of destination you can share to is extensive, including flickr, facebook, most popular blogs and YouTube and if your phone supports it you can set up One-click uploads (you get the option to upload a photo whenever you take one, with a single click). This is a good feature

ZuCasts, are possible the next big thing, probably making this the number one phone application, they are a lot like a silent podcasts. After you subscribed to specific content it will get delivered to your phone in background, for you to review whenever it suits you.

Shozu is essentially free (there are no charges for joining or using) but you have to pay your phone carrier for the data being sent.

To setup and download directly from your phone, go to their mobile phone friendly website at m.shozu.com

Last Full Moon in Spring

As well as being the beginning of daylight savings, tonight is also the last full moon in spring, and it was a spectacular moonrise. The red colour presumably coming because of dust and pollen lifted into the air by strong north winds.

Blue Sky

The traditional way to enhance the sky (darken the blues and whiten the clouds) is with a polarizing filter. Whilst filters where much used in with films SLR, they are not that popular with digital photographers, possibly because post processing can do pretty much the same (and more).

 

With a polarizing filter

No filter

No filter on lens, but the "I'm feeling lucky" filter in Picasa

Plastic Bottles :: the new menace

Not long ago it was plastic bags that where choking the inland waterways. I get the impression things have changed for the better, with noticeably less shredded bags around now. However I was walking along the lower reaches of the Tarwin river, looking for erosion\flood damage associated with kings tides. There in the flood debris I was very surprised to find how many plastic bottles have taken up residence (maybe it because they float, glass ones would sink). Seams the littering habit is still alive!

 

   

 

Yet Another Sunset

Modern Photo Shoebox :: Digital Camera to CD

Back in the days of film, or even slides, photos that didn't make it into an album, or frame, disappeared into a shoebox. there was seldom any order or logic, negatives, prints and maybe if your were lucky a few notes might be penciled on the back. Well its not a lot different with digital pictures only the shoebox is now a CD, or set of CDs (maybe even a DVD) and probably they are no better organized than the old shoe box

So I thought it might be interesting discussing the various ways you can build and collate your collection of digital images, both with and without a plan to keep them organized. 

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As I go I will update links from here to related stories, but you can also just watch the blog for them to appear in no particular order.

Adelaide by Night

Whilst the city is not actually paved with gold, the colours of the illuminated buildings can assume that golden glow at night. Actually the northern side of Rundle street is paved with coins. These where all taken with night mode and since I didn't have my tripod with me I just used suitable nearby posts, bins and veranda poles for support.

The Pigs of Rundle Mall

 

The Case of the Shinny Balls & the Headless Ghost

 

This image is yet another multi-image photomosaic, stitched together with autostitch. I like the technique as a way to get a superwide angle view in a tight space (compare it with the normal "wide" angle/zoomed out view) below. The poor man on the right has become a ghost and lost his head because he moved between frames, but it does add a little of the surreal to the center of Adelaide.

 

Day & Night

What the heck is this?

It is a QR Code, a type of two dimensional bar code, which I heard described as a cross between a chess board and a crossword. on a recent BBC digital planet podcast. The really great thing about them, and why I bothered to blog about them, is that most new mobile phones, well the ones with cameras and web access, can probably already scan them and use them for instance connect to a web address.

Thats exactly what this one does, it is the URL (web address) of this blog, just point your cameraphone at the image, on the screen! and take a picture. The next step depends on your phone, (HINT: you may need to read its instructions), activate the QR CODE READER option and you will get taken to your phone's web browser and directly to this very blog site! On your phone, no difficult thumb and finger typing required!

If your phone doesn't have a QR Reader built in (most phones less that 2 years old will have it), but a camera you can download the free KAYWA Reader into your phone.

If you want to create QR Codes of your own, snapmaze is a simple on-line application. Not only web URLs can be encoded, simple text, addresses and contact details, the applications are pretty endless. The QR stands for quick response, and the process of linking directly to the web on your phone is now very popular in japan and has become know as hardlinking, or physical world hyperlinks.

Light, Silhouettes & Shadows

Uploading on the go

A few posts back I mentioned, backup your photos, to an on-line storage as you travel, there are now lots of ways to do this and moblogs is a fairly neat one for mobile phones. Sure any phone with a camera probably comes with some software to upload the images to your PC, then you have to email them or prepare a blog post, its all a hassle and kind of two hard. With moblogs you can send the pictures, video and text in an MMS format, just like you send your friends now, but know you are sharing with the world. If you are contemplating making a visual travel diary of your next trip, check it out. Best part is Mum, Dad, aunty Jean and Grandma can also become members and print out or download their favorites photos, before you get home.

Flickr also has some neat facilities, for uploading photos on the go. First they have a mobile phone oriented web portal, which is text oriented and cuts the bandwidth drain. It does let you use the web interface to upload from your cameraphone, but there is a better way. Flickr automatically generates an "private" email address, to which you can send photos and they will be automatically added into your photostream. You can also have the text and photo forwarded onto your blog (on a variety of common blogging system, including blogger, and live journal)

Photobucket, also has a similar "private" email service and the ability to share your albums into myspace and facebook as well as popular blogging sites.

Instant Beach Erosion

The combination of big swell and king tides, that correspond with the full moons in spring, has literally eroded scarps over two meters high along the beach in several places at Venus Bay, but beaches are dynamic places and seasonal changes are normal. The sand is actually being sweep back and forth along the beach giving the beach is long sweeping shape.

The bigger erosion risk for the beach are blowouts, caused by wind and clearing of vegetation in the dunes behind the beach.

Field Trip

 

My field trip around the Venus Bay Peninsular and Andersen Inlet, was very successful in that it was well supported. Whilst the purpose was to see evidence of the importance of understanding sea level rise and its influence on the development of ecology and landforms, I was abruptly reminded of the power of the sea and specifically recent king tides. The mangroves in the photo below, used to illustrate my notes, have gone and the site I had visited only 5 weeks before showed significant (several meters of) erosion.

click here to download my notes for the field trip "Some Thoughts on The Recent Geomorphological Development, in the Venus Bay Area, related to Sea Level Rise."

SkyDrive arrives

Those traveling, or  multi-computer using types, may be interested in Sky Drive, a new beta release of an on-line storage system from the Microsoft Live project. Whilst the 500 MB of storage is modest, it is the ability to limit access through encryption, to private, share with your family or group or even share publicly to the world, that may appeal. If you have a Hotmail account or a Passport ID sign up and give it a try. 
A 500 MB memory stick is cheap these days and may be better and more flexible way to backup of photos while traveling, yet it doesn't give you the ability to instantly share, with good control over who too, or give protection should you and/or your luggage have an accident, get damaged, stolen, any of a thousand mishaps. Remember the memory stick will be there with you or in your luggage, and probably suffer the same fate. Memory sticks are also notoriously easy to loose.
On-line storage systems give you an instance off-site backup, but if 500 MB is not big enough you could consider the formal on-line backup systems like Mozy (which offers 2GB free) or Carbonite ( with has a 15day free trial), both offer unlimited storage at reasonable monthly fees. However both require a piece of downloaded software to run on your computer, are easy to automate and probably require a decent broadband connection. Sky Drive on the other hand can be accessed from any cybercafe or "free" (and thus slow) wireless hotspot on an ad-hoc "need to use" basis.