Ditching My DSLR On Vacation

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A week ago my wife and I went on vacation to Disney World in Flordia. The main purpose of the trip was for Steffanie to run in Disney's Princess ½ Marathon. While packing for the trip, I dutifully packed up my Canon 40D and my two lenses, a Tamron 28-300mm that I now regret buying, and my beloved Canon 50mm f/1.4. After arriving in Florida, however, it never left my bag. I thought about whether I should take it with me each morning as we were preparing to leave our hotel rooms, and each day I decided to just take my iPhone 4. I was quite happy with how a lot of the photos below turned out. When taking photos I primarily used the very excellent Pro HDR app which I picked up years ago at the recommendation of Merlin Mann. Below are some of the best photos I took using my iPhone 4 with this app. We stayed here: We saw this: And this: And even though this one didn't come out as well as I would have liked, I feel compelled to include this one: Check out the collection on Flickr of the various sets from this trip.

Thieves Are Your Best Customers in Waiting

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David Sleight, writing on his website Stuntbox:

These days the most common answer I get to, “Why’d you pirate that?” isn’t, “It was free,” but, “It was the only way I could get my hands on it.” Or, “It was a bazillion times easier.” As Jeremy noted, users are correctly identifying Byzantine content delivery mechanisms as damage and routing around them. Here’s what content conglomerates need to realize: This is a good thing. Fantastic even. The audience is telling you, in no uncertain terms, they want your stuff. And they are telling you precisely what stuff. The people you’re calling “thieves” are telling you where you need to be. They are jumping through hoops only slightly less complicated than the ones you set out for them via official channels, displaying the sort of pent-up demand that should make you drool. This is what’s commonly referred to in business circles as an opportunity. An excellent post that I recommend you read in its entirety.

The Little Boy Who Cried "Don't Be Evil"

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While catching up on the news I missed while I was on vacation, I ran across this via Daring Fireball. Nick Bilton on Google’s stream of privacy incidents:

“The past two months have been unprecedented; there has never been anything like it at the company,” said Danny Sullivan, editor in chief of the blog Search Engine Land, who has closely covered Google since the company began. “They are a big company, and any big company is always going to have something happen that they don’t expect. But these things keep happening where you can’t even trust their word.” When I asked Mr. Sullivan if Google was now too big not to be evil, he said, “I don’t think they were ever not evil.” Google says nothing has changed. John Gruber says, "Exactly".

Mountain Lion: Hands On With Mail

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Dan Frakes, writing for Macworld on changes coming to Mail in Mountain Lion:

A VIP is any person you designate as being important enough to have their messages treated differently by Mail. You designate someone as a VIP by clicking the star icon to the left of the person's name in any incoming or sent message. You'll immediately notice that every message to or from that person now displays a star in message lists, making it easier to find those messages. In addition, when you designate a sender as a VIP, that person gets his or her own entry in a new VIPs section of Mail's Mailboxes sidebar. Click a VIP's name, and you get a list of all messages, across all mailboxes (including Sent and Trash), to or from that person. If like me, you use Mail exclusively, you'll want to read this article as it details all the gritty details of what's coming. Having been using the developer preview of Mountain Lion for 4 days already, I had not even noticed these changes yet.

Two Charts That Should Terrify Republicans

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Brian Beutler, writing for Talking Points Memo:

But over that same stretch, the economy began moving in the right direction. Indicators of economic growth started moving upward, and the eye-popping indications of economic weakness started moving downward. That’s surely had an effect. And if the trends continue, it augurs very well for Obama in the general election. Check out these two charts. Also, I suspect this is why the main Republicans message these days are contraceptives, abortions, and gays. As usual in an election year when they have no real platform to run on.