Hey Guys! John Mayer here.
Just wanted to let you guys know all about Photoshop.com. It’s a rock solid and essential site if you’re into photo-sharing or are starting up a blog of your very own. Photoshop.com provides you with not only storage for all your images but easy to use basic photo editing tools.
Sure you probably already have a Flickr, Picasa, or Photobucket account but what really makes Photoshop.com stand out is the quality of the photo editing tools available to you. Photoshop lets you make simple changes to your images like crops and resizes but it also offers some of its basic software features like color correction and effects all online and all for free.
Once you’ve made your edits and saved your picture Photoshop gives you the option of creating a public photo album to share with anyone, an embed code so you can copy and paste right onto your blog or site, and even a link to the picture to send to friends via email. Got a Myspace, Facebook account? Photoshop got your back with this too. Photoshop allows you upload directly to your favorite social networking site right from there. Visiting more than one site to get things done.
Photoshop’s basic offering -known to my adoring fans as their free offering - provides you with 2GBs of space. If that’s really not enough for you; they offer tiered pricing for more storage at a decent price. Now you too can get in on the photo sharing fun... just like your favorite Rock God!
Peace out, FJM.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Thursday, October 22, 2009
All Your Tweets Are Belong to Bing!
Not to be out done by Google, Microsoft's Bing has sealed a deal with Twitter and Facebook allowing them to search your tweets and status updates in real-time.
Here's how it works:
"The 'tweets' will be integrated universal-search style, ranked alongside the other [different types of] results, and you'll be able to click on those results and go to a page that shows only 'tweets' and real-time updates," said Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of search products and user experience, in an interview after her appearance on stage at the Web 2.0 Summit to announce the news. Users will also be able to restrict results to Twitter posts from the get-go using the engine's filtering controls."
It is worth mentioning there is no exclusivity to this deal and Google has also made an agreement with Twitter to search and offer them up to their searchers as well.
The War of the Search is here. Bing is definitely trying (really hard) to eat Google's lunch.
Bing Lands Deals with Twitter and Facebook via PC World
Here's how it works:
"The 'tweets' will be integrated universal-search style, ranked alongside the other [different types of] results, and you'll be able to click on those results and go to a page that shows only 'tweets' and real-time updates," said Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of search products and user experience, in an interview after her appearance on stage at the Web 2.0 Summit to announce the news. Users will also be able to restrict results to Twitter posts from the get-go using the engine's filtering controls."
It is worth mentioning there is no exclusivity to this deal and Google has also made an agreement with Twitter to search and offer them up to their searchers as well.
The War of the Search is here. Bing is definitely trying (really hard) to eat Google's lunch.
Bing Lands Deals with Twitter and Facebook via PC World
Blogged with the Flock Browser
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Windows 7 Alert
Hey guys! Guess what? Not saying that Win7 is crap - it isn't- but what's the message behind selling 3 PCs for the price of ONE Macbook Pro?
Sure we can argue the merits of a low price during a recession but that doesn't seem to rain on Apple's parade that keeps reporting crazy quarterly numbers. The pricing strategy makes sense if this was a pricing war; Apple clearly does not engage in any pricing wars with their hardware instead they focus portraying their products as high-end/high-quality, crafted devices.
You're buying 3 friggin' HP PCs (a desktop, laptop, & netbook) from Best Buy; nothing in this sentence evokes 'high-end', 'high-quality', 'crafted' or even 'easy' as adjectives.
In the 90's I think this would've been the equivalent of drilling a 10-yard field goal - a no brainer as it were - but the landscape has changed. Windows is no longer a requirement to computing. Viable OS options have opened up the market and consumers' eyes. The new consumers have become more aware of the things their gadgets can do; as a result the need to accommodate their digi-lifestyle becomes not just a matter of in-store price but what you can offer for the next 2 years.
Folks, especially Mac users that must use Win OS at any given point, try out Win7. It's good for what it is. You won't switch but it isn't a dreadful experience. People on the fence go for the deal if you think it will save you money - just remember that you'll be at Best Buy fighting off the People of Walmart AND some asshole teenager that swears you need a $300 Monster ethernet cable for your wireless home network.
via FakeSteve.Net
Sure we can argue the merits of a low price during a recession but that doesn't seem to rain on Apple's parade that keeps reporting crazy quarterly numbers. The pricing strategy makes sense if this was a pricing war; Apple clearly does not engage in any pricing wars with their hardware instead they focus portraying their products as high-end/high-quality, crafted devices.
You're buying 3 friggin' HP PCs (a desktop, laptop, & netbook) from Best Buy; nothing in this sentence evokes 'high-end', 'high-quality', 'crafted' or even 'easy' as adjectives.
In the 90's I think this would've been the equivalent of drilling a 10-yard field goal - a no brainer as it were - but the landscape has changed. Windows is no longer a requirement to computing. Viable OS options have opened up the market and consumers' eyes. The new consumers have become more aware of the things their gadgets can do; as a result the need to accommodate their digi-lifestyle becomes not just a matter of in-store price but what you can offer for the next 2 years.
Folks, especially Mac users that must use Win OS at any given point, try out Win7. It's good for what it is. You won't switch but it isn't a dreadful experience. People on the fence go for the deal if you think it will save you money - just remember that you'll be at Best Buy fighting off the People of Walmart AND some asshole teenager that swears you need a $300 Monster ethernet cable for your wireless home network.
via FakeSteve.Net
Net Neutrality - A Cheatsheet
It's gonna be a crazy week over at the FCC. October 22nd is the deadline for folks to voice their opinion to FCC and let them know why you'd like to keep the internet open for all. But with all the crazy talk on one particular cable network, it may not be clear what's at stake here.
First off: Net neutrality is NOT about restricting competition for your cable company, your phone company, satellite provider. Nope. Nah, not ever. How this net neutrality myth has gained steam lies really on the fact that this is a debate that's raged on longer than people considered the net to be cool.
Government regulation of the internet as Glenn "Asshat" Beck mentioned in his tirade is not about preventing a telecom from doing business; it's about making sure that said telecom continues to provide transparent services to their customers. Comcast regularly finds themselves (rightfully) as the target of many bloggers angst for their dubious regulatory practices in the name of protecting their business.
Clearly Beck must've not understand the concept of a "free market."
The proposed FCC regulations are designed to ensure that all ISPs - Comcast, Cablevision, Verizon, AT&T, et al will continue to provide internet service to their customers and provide clear, concise, no tiny print restrictions on their activities on said internet. Capping data downloads or uploads without expressly notifying their customers, restricting or crippling the use of specific websites would also be in violation of the proposed regulations.
How does this affect the regular guy/gal adventuring the interwebs? Well try to imagine an internet ran by AT&T (but you can just as easily insert your own ISP for the sake of fairness). In this internet, AT&T has an exclusive contractual agreement with Yahoo! for websearches; any AT&T customer that attempts to perform a search on Google or Bing will be (1) automatically re-directed to Yahoo! (2) be met with a 404 error (3) be in violation of their terms of service with AT&T and be subject to penalty.
Now imagine that your friend, coworker, client, family member is a Verizon customer with a Verizon email account. All emails sent from your AT&T account would be "lost" by Verizon in an effort to keep AT&T out of their "version" of the internet. You will not be amused to find out that you've lost a potential client because your ISP did not "approve" of their email address.
Clearly these are all doomsday scenarios but we must keep in mind that sometimes a little regulation is critical in maintaining order. Once upon a time there huge companies that owned raw materials, production, and finally point of sale. These were the "captains of industry," your blue-blood industrialists that brought forth the Industrial Age. They were also monopolizing giants that stifled innovation and oppressed their customers (and workers). And more importantly, needed regulation.
First off: Net neutrality is NOT about restricting competition for your cable company, your phone company, satellite provider. Nope. Nah, not ever. How this net neutrality myth has gained steam lies really on the fact that this is a debate that's raged on longer than people considered the net to be cool.
Government regulation of the internet as Glenn "Asshat" Beck mentioned in his tirade is not about preventing a telecom from doing business; it's about making sure that said telecom continues to provide transparent services to their customers. Comcast regularly finds themselves (rightfully) as the target of many bloggers angst for their dubious regulatory practices in the name of protecting their business.
Clearly Beck must've not understand the concept of a "free market."
The proposed FCC regulations are designed to ensure that all ISPs - Comcast, Cablevision, Verizon, AT&T, et al will continue to provide internet service to their customers and provide clear, concise, no tiny print restrictions on their activities on said internet. Capping data downloads or uploads without expressly notifying their customers, restricting or crippling the use of specific websites would also be in violation of the proposed regulations.
How does this affect the regular guy/gal adventuring the interwebs? Well try to imagine an internet ran by AT&T (but you can just as easily insert your own ISP for the sake of fairness). In this internet, AT&T has an exclusive contractual agreement with Yahoo! for websearches; any AT&T customer that attempts to perform a search on Google or Bing will be (1) automatically re-directed to Yahoo! (2) be met with a 404 error (3) be in violation of their terms of service with AT&T and be subject to penalty.
Now imagine that your friend, coworker, client, family member is a Verizon customer with a Verizon email account. All emails sent from your AT&T account would be "lost" by Verizon in an effort to keep AT&T out of their "version" of the internet. You will not be amused to find out that you've lost a potential client because your ISP did not "approve" of their email address.
Clearly these are all doomsday scenarios but we must keep in mind that sometimes a little regulation is critical in maintaining order. Once upon a time there huge companies that owned raw materials, production, and finally point of sale. These were the "captains of industry," your blue-blood industrialists that brought forth the Industrial Age. They were also monopolizing giants that stifled innovation and oppressed their customers (and workers). And more importantly, needed regulation.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
AT&T vs. Net Neutrality
Well this didn't take long at all. Lately the FCC under Chairman Julius Genachowski has begun to look into and possibly enforce regulations that keep telecoms "honest." Under the Obama Administration's push for an open internet, net neutrality is getting some attention in regular news these days.
Not to have their interests buried amongst your - the people of the interwebs - cries of free, available to everyone internet; AT&Tasshat lobbyist, Jim Cicconi sent out an email (republished here) to all AT&T employees urging them to comment on the FCC's OpenInternet.gov blog and let Genachowski know that he's a communist that's trying steal their mone... err... jobs.
Long story short, not only is the FCC trying to make you poor by ensuring that an ISP cannot play dirty games, control and monitor, or otherwise cap your usage of the internet in a non ISP approved way; they're letting Google head the death panel committee. The horror.
via Actuarial Outpost
Not to have their interests buried amongst your - the people of the interwebs - cries of free, available to everyone internet; AT&T
Long story short, not only is the FCC trying to make you poor by ensuring that an ISP cannot play dirty games, control and monitor, or otherwise cap your usage of the internet in a non ISP approved way; they're letting Google head the death panel committee. The horror.
via Actuarial Outpost
Monday, October 12, 2009
Pink Kills the Sidekick
Though technically this isn't an Apple related post it's one hell of a story. It has all the elements of a great spy drama - a spy, a business catastrophe, and hundreds of people at least one person crying bloody murder.
For about a week now Sidekick users have found themselves without access to their precious data, contacts, and after Apple Insider published an alleged disgruntled Danger employee's take on it; folks now "know" that Microsoft seems to be the culprit.
Money quote from AppleInsider's spy:
Now keep in mind this has explicitly been filed as a RUMOR simply cuz there's no proof that Microsoft is sabotaging a division they paid a lot of money for but there seems to be enough folks out there that think this could be a possibility.
Why Killing the Sidekick is Believable:
Although there are many customers that are quite content with their Sidekicks (my teenage cousins for one), the platform requires maintenance, development for new devices, and above all resources. Microsoft picked up Danger for the purpose of working on Project Pink - a rumored MS branded phone; killing the Sidekick would be a natural step in consolidating resources and efforts on one project.
A system-wide failure of the Sidekick would create outrage from subscribers; everyone was going to blame T-Mobile. It sucks being the front office as customers know you and not necessarily all the moving parts. Purposely creating this kind of failure or even failing to address the issue within a couple of days would put a lot of pressure on a company to find an alternative product to use; a wholly Microsoft branded phone or even phones running a Microsoft branded OS not only fills this need but gives customers assurance of an already existing product.
So is the blogosphere grasping at straws here? Maybe, but sometimes an idea may be so crazy that it may just be right.
For about a week now Sidekick users have found themselves without access to their precious data, contacts, and after Apple Insider published an alleged disgruntled Danger employee's take on it; folks now "know" that Microsoft seems to be the culprit.
Money quote from AppleInsider's spy:
"What's worse is that apparently Microsoft has been lying to [T-Mobile] this whole time about the amount of resources that they've been putting behind Sidekick development and support (in reality, it was cut down to a handful of people in Palo Alto managing some contractors in Romania, Ukraine, etc.)."
Now keep in mind this has explicitly been filed as a RUMOR simply cuz there's no proof that Microsoft is sabotaging a division they paid a lot of money for but there seems to be enough folks out there that think this could be a possibility.
Why Killing the Sidekick is Believable:
Although there are many customers that are quite content with their Sidekicks (my teenage cousins for one), the platform requires maintenance, development for new devices, and above all resources. Microsoft picked up Danger for the purpose of working on Project Pink - a rumored MS branded phone; killing the Sidekick would be a natural step in consolidating resources and efforts on one project.
A system-wide failure of the Sidekick would create outrage from subscribers; everyone was going to blame T-Mobile. It sucks being the front office as customers know you and not necessarily all the moving parts. Purposely creating this kind of failure or even failing to address the issue within a couple of days would put a lot of pressure on a company to find an alternative product to use; a wholly Microsoft branded phone or even phones running a Microsoft branded OS not only fills this need but gives customers assurance of an already existing product.
So is the blogosphere grasping at straws here? Maybe, but sometimes an idea may be so crazy that it may just be right.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Destroying Twitter... in a good way.
I will admit that I am new to this tweeting thing. I was never one for social networking. My Facebook page sits there collecting dust. The most I would do on it is update my status, simply just for the heck of it. With that in mind I decided to try Twitter since it is for the most part just the “status” aspect of social networking. Though I had been thinking of going Twitter for some time, what really brought me to tweeting was a good looking Twitter application: DestroyTwitter. More specifically this is DestroyTwitter 1.7.2Beta.
What first caught my eye is how simple and great DestroyTwitter looks. It reminds me of my current Adium setup, simple gray window with white text. The home screen shows tweets of the people you are following as well as your own tweets. Other menus such as Replies or Preferences open in the same window, so there aren’t a bunch of windows cluttering your desktop. Clicking “Home” sends you back to the Home screen, and it all works like its supposed to. Which reminds me. I found DestroyTwitter to be very newbie friendly. I am never sure how to add links to my status, whether it be Twitter or Facebook or some other form of status, they seem to handle things slightly differently. With DestroyTwitter you just copy and paste the link in a little field under the body of your message and it auto-magically adds it and shortens it to better fit your tweet-character limit. Since I linked my Tweets to my Facebook status (through the Twitter application on Facebook) I can just tweet and my status is up to date, without having to touch Facebook. Going back to the links, the shortened links created in DestroyTwitter make things look neater on the Facebook end as well, though not everyone may know what “http://tr.bibimbap” would be all about.
Another cool bit that reminds me of Adium, and is probably my favorite feature, is that you can customize the theme of your DestroyTwitter window. This can be done through the Theme Builder at the DestroyTwitter website (requires login using your Twitter account) or through the Themes page, where there are themes created by DestroyTwitter users. I played a bit with the Theme Builder and it is quite fun to create new color combinations and there are many great themes to choose from on the themes page. However I haven’t actually changed my theme because the default is just so flippin’ good looking. Kudos to the developer for making the application sexy out of the box.
There are a few cons, in my opinion, but these aren’t deal breakers. For one, I don’t know if I need a dedicated Twitter application on my Mac. I don’t think I tweet that much, so part of me wants to just use Twitter through Flock instead. But DestroyTwitter makes some actions as described above extremely convenient and newbie friendly. Also it requires Adobe AIR to be installed (but installation for both AIR and DestroyTwitter is quite painless). Sadly that means more of Adobe’s apps and plugins that you may only use sparingly taking up space in your hard drive. Also the Theme Builder on the site requires the latest version of Adobe Flash. Knowing Adobe the version you have now isn’t new enough. Update. Now. Most people have already installed these plugins at one point or another, so I don’t think it is that big of a deal. In exchange you get a solidly built, easy to use and great looking Twitter client.
There's tons more to look at, and playing with it for a week I've only begun to scratch the surface. I'm sure there are more snazzy features that I may have not mentioned. If you need a stand-alone Twitter client I can absolutely recommend DestroyTwitter.
Pick it up at: DestroyTwitter.com. The developer also has an interesting blog worth checking out.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Apple's for the Children
First let me just extend a big "THANK YOU" to Gizmodo.com for the picture. I don't think anything quite sums up this piece quite like The Breakfast Club holding up an iPhone.Piper Jaffray & Co. released their annual survey of America's teens to get pulse of consumer spending habits; big surprise: the youngs love Apple!
Here's a basic run down of what the Office of No-Shit uncovered:
1. 15% of the teens surveyed own an iPhone. That's an increase from 8% last year.
2. 22% plan on buying an iPhone within the next 6 months.
3. 87% (up a whole percent from last year) already own iPods - all flavors.
4. Of the 40% of teens that legally download music; 93% of them use iTunes.
So in case you have trouble wrapping your head around what all this means - if you're planning on shopping for any youngin's in your life chances are you'll be swinging by the local Apple Store this holiday season.
via AppleInsider
Thursday, October 1, 2009
It's a Mac-O-Lantern!
This is by far the most awesome throw pillow I've ever seen.
Just in time for Halloween the awesome folks over at Throwboy put together this set of pillows so you can celebrate All Hallow's Eve and your love of Mac.
You can pick up one of four for $29US or the set for $100US. Act quick as they are handmade and take at least 3 weeks to deliver.
Steven would approve.
via Throwboy.com
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