Scott Loftesness

A Very Pretty Afternoon in Sharon Park

See my post "A Last 2009 Sunday in Sharon Park" over on InMenlo.com, a "hyperlocal" blog about Menlo Park that we started about six months ago with a couple of very good friends.

Today was a mixed day weather wise - some drizzle and some spectacular sun. I took Lily for a late afternoon walk at Sharon Park and caught the low sun angle reflecting on the pond and fountain - taken with my iPhone 3GS using the BestCamera app.

Curious About Book Edition Pricing - The Lost Symbol Example

Dan Brown's latest novel The Lost Symbol is available in a Kindle edition - said to be selling better than the hardcover edition at Amazon.com!

Yesterday, while browsing the iTunes Store, I noticed there's also an edition of The Lost Symbol available for the iPhone (in an edition powered by Iceberg Reader)! Iceberg says:

"We currently offer over 500 best-selling books in the App Store, and are thrilled to announce we will soon be bringing more than a million books, as well as more than 50 major magazines and over 170 daily newspapers to the iPhone."

Frankly, I hadn't noticed they had over 500 books for sale in the App Store!

Anyway, back to The Lost Symbol. What's curious is the pricing: Kindle ebook edition: $9.99, hardcover edition at Amazon.com: $16.17 (plus any shipping), iPhone ebook edition: $24.99. Hmmm.

Eating Crow!

OK, time to fess up and eat some crow...iPhone crow.

Two weeks ago I penned a post about how the iPhone 3GS was the iPhone I really wanted - but wasn't going to get because of AT&T's then-current approach to subsidizing iPhone purchases.

At that time, I wrote: "I'll most likely be skipping an iPhone 3GS upgrade this cycle - and just living with my 3G until June 2010 when my current bondage to AT&T is exhausted and complete."

Turns out that AT&T listened - and adjusted. Thank you!

Through a combination of determining the qualified date based upon total payments to AT&T (e.g., family plan, data plan, text plan, etc) and an accommodation they made to accelerate upcoming qualification dates to being qualified now, I was able to suddenly qualify for the iPhone 3GS at the fully subsidized price - in my case $299 for the 32 GB model. I picked one up today at the Apple Store at Stanford and have been enjoying its much improved speed and responsiveness, the new camera (with video!) and Voice Control!

What am I offered for a "mint" 16GB iPhone 3G that has suddenly become surplus gear?

The iPhone 3GS and Me

Unfortunately, I jumped from a Blackberry to an iPhone 3G last August shortly after the new 3G was introduced. I say unfortunately because the iPhone 3GS is the phone I really wanted - but didn't get. Let me explain.

I'm a payments professional by day and an aspiring photographer otherwise. The photo and video features of the iPhone 3GS are just about ideal for a go anywhere device that's always in your pocket. The new iPhone's everyday photo/video capabilities coupled with a high-end digital SLR (in my case, the Canon 5D Mark II) for those special photo shooting occasions are just about everything I might need to satisfy my photography desires!

Would I love to upgrade from my iPhone 3G to the iPhone 3GS for its enhanced photography features? Absolutely. But, then there's AT&T - who thinks I haven't owned my iPhone 3G long enough to qualify for the best pricing on the 3GS. Based upon the pricing signals AT&T is sending to the market, they'd prefer that I stay with my original iPhone 3G for at least another year.

For non-qualified customers, including existing AT&T customers who want to upgrade from another phone or replace an iPhone 3G, the price with a new two-year agreement is $499 (8GB), $599 (16GB), or $699 (32GB).

The result? I'll most likely be skipping an iPhone 3GS upgrade this cycle - and just living with my 3G until June 2010 when my current bondage to AT&T is exhausted and complete. I really don't want to give AT&T another $200-$300 for an upgrade! As this BillShrink post indicates, AT&T is already the high cost provider without giving them extra for the upgrade!

Who knows - by June 2010 I might be even happier with the mid-2010 rev of the iPhone - perhaps available then on another wireless network other than AT&T?

The Zepp Over San Francisco - iPhones and Lizard Brains

It was another one of those stunning Spring mornings in San Francisco today - perfect (if a bit warm!) for all those Bay to Breakers crazies!

On my walk into the UCSF Conference Center in Mission Bay, the Zeppelin poked through on an early morning cruise (8AM) over downtown SF.

I was heading to UCSF to attend day two of an O'Reilly iPhone application developers workshop - trying very hard to get my lizard brain around things like Objective C-2.0, XCode 3.1, and the iPhone SDK (pre 3.0).

I must say I came away from my iPhone training with a new found respect for successful iPhone application developers. My experience at the workshop reminded me of why air traffic controllers generally retire by age 40. Beginning around that age, they just can't keep the spatial relations all in their head to be safe.

The iPhone SDK brings to mind similar notions - iPhone app development seems to me to be a young person's skill! These folks at Stanford seem to be perfect candidates!

The O'Reilly workshop was great - and I got through it just fine. But I came away with a real appreciation for the effort required to build a great iPhone application! I'm just not sure my ideal bank branch locator app will be coming to your iPhone screen anytime soon! Maybe you'd settle for my Tic-Tac-Toe game instead?

Where did I put my RPG programming manual, anyway? ;-)

A Late February Friday

I took a day off today for some R&R with my new Canon 5D Mark II camera. I headed up to San Francisco, spent some time in Golden Gate Park (Stow Lake), crossed the Golden Gate Bridge, and headed up to the Marin Headlands. Here are some of today's shots on Flickr.

I can't recommend the Marin Headlands highly enough - the scenery from the headlands is truly stunning. If you go, head directly for Hawk Hill - you'll be on top of the world, looking down on the Golden Gate and San Francisco when looking east and on the Point Bonita Lighthouse when looking southwest. Heading back from Hawk Hill, I had hoped to find the Nike missile site open - but it turned out I was an hour too early and I needed to keep moving.

Heading home just before lunch, I came through the tunnel and out to Fort Baker. Friends had told us that the new Carvallo Point Lodge at Fort Baker was a great spot - so I headed there. Amazingly, a free parking spot was open right in front of the building with the Murray Circle restaurant - so, I took it as a sign that this was where I should have lunch!

Murray Circle (also the name of the street that loops around in front of the lodge) has a half dozen tables outside on the porch - and the weather was just ideal for sitting outside today. Here's the view from my outside table today - snapped from my iPhone 3G:

I had the Petrale Sole - a very tasteful slice of sole served on a bed of broccolini. I brought my Kindle 2 along and had a delightful meal while reading in one of the most beautiful settings I've seen in the Bay Area. Almost too decadent!

But, what a wonderful way to end a delightful Friday morning away from the office!

Creating an iPhone-friendly Home Page for a TypePad Blog

Over on our Payments News blog, I've created an iPhone (and iPod touch) friendly version of our home page. The URL to view the iPhone version is http://paymentsnews.com/m. Here's more about how I did it.

Basically, the process involved building on a basic template that the Six Apart folks have provided in one of their support items titled Tip: Creating a Mobile Friendly Weblog. We use TypePad's Advanced Templates for Payments News so the process involved creating a new index template just for the iPhone page. The article contains the basic version of the index template that I started with.

Here's what I ended up with:

<html> <head> <meta name="HandheldFriendly" content="True"> <meta id="viewport" name="viewport" content="width=device-width; initial-scale=1.0; maximum-scale=1.0; user-scalable=0;" /> <link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="http://www.paymentsnews.com/images/apple-touch-icon.png" /> <title>Payments News - Mobile Version</title> <style type="text/css"> body { margin: 0; margin-left:5px;margin-right:5px; font-family: "lucida grande", "lucida sans unicode", "lucida sans", lucida, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; font-size: small; } h3 { margin-top: .5em; margin-bottom: .5em; } p { margin-top:.5em; margin-bottom: .5em; } .entry-content { font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; } * { margin: 0; } <p></style><br /> <script type="application/x-javascript"></p> <p>if (navigator.userAgent.indexOf('iPhone') != -1) {<br /> addEventListener("load", function() {<br /> setTimeout(hideURLbar, 0);<br /> }, false);<br /> }</p> <p>function hideURLbar() {<br /> window.scrollTo(0, 1);<br /> }</p> <p></script><br /> </head></p> <p><body><br /> <div align="center" style="border-bottom:1px solid #d0d0d0;"><br /> <img src="http://www.paymentsnews.com/images/PN-300x48-v1.jpg" width="300" height="48"><br /> <p style="margin-top:-3px;">iPhone edition from <a href="http://www.glenbrook.com">Glenbrook Partners</a></p><br /> </div><br /> <MTEntries><br /> <MTWeblogPostIfShow field="date_header"><br /> <MTDateHeader><h3 style="font-size:small;"><$MTEntryDate format_weblog_date="1"$></h3></MTDateHeader><br /> </MTWeblogPostIfShow><br /> <div class="entry" id="entry-<$MTEntryID$>"><br /> <MTWeblogPostIfShow field="post_title"><br /> <h3 class="entry-header" style="font-size:small;"><a href="<$MTEntryPermalink$>"><$MTEntryTitle$></a></h3><br /> </MTWeblogPostIfShow><br /> <div class="entry-content"><br /> <div class="entry-body"><br /> <$MTEntryBody$><br /> </div><br /> <MTEntryIfExtended><br /> <p class="entry-more-link"><br /> <a href="<$MTEntryPermalink$>#more"><$MTTrans phrase="More"$> »</a><br /> </p><br /> </MTEntryIfExtended><br /> </div><br /> </div><br /> </MTEntries><br /> <!-- Start of Google Analytics Code --><br /> Add your Google Analytics code here...<br /> <!-- End of Google Analytics Code --><br /> </body><br /> </html><br />

To use the template, in the Design tab of TypePad you select "Create new index template", give it a description name (I used "PN iPhone" and an output filename (I just used "m" for the filename). Then paste the code in and hit save. Next, go to the URL of your blog and add "/m" (or whatever you used for the filename) to the URL and hit enter. You should see the new page. If it's there, give it a go on your iPhone!

Note that if you use this template, be sure to add your own Google Analytics code near the end of the template.

I did this in a hurry this morning - so it's not pretty in terms of using a separate stylesheet, etc. I've also got some font settings embedded in the code that I need to clean up when time permits.

The Javascript that's included is a little trick I saw elsewhere that scrolls the Safari window up such that the URL bar is hidden when the page first opens. That helps put the most content onto the small screen of the iPhone.

My 2009 Wish: Make Beautiful HDR Photography Super Simple!

This is a bit of a New Year's Eve rant - and a wish for 2009!

Computers are here to help us make things more productive and efficient. Unfortunately, computers today (including the processors both in my MacBook Pro and in my Canon DSLRs!) have yet to be utilized appropriately in helping us both take the photos and manage the post-production process associated with High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography.

Both the camera companies and the software companies share the blame for the shortcomings. Because of their lack of decent HDR support, we have to cobble together our work, trying to remember arcane camera settings, burning up memory card space like crazy (couldn't image alignment and consolidation be done automatically IN THE CAMERA?), and pushing the images through a post-production process that's just a cumbersome PITA - not integrated with our photo management applications, software that's sluggish and frustrating to use because it ignores the power of our computer's on-board graphics co-processors, etc. We slog through it and get it done - but today's HDR workflow is truly painful and unproductive. It's silly.

Why can't my iPhone 3G take beautiful HDR photos? Why can't Photomatix Pro simplify the post-processing rather than make it even more complex? On and on it goes...

Sorry. I said this was a rant. Others have posted about this before - including finding some accommodations. But it still feels like we're living in a 1995 world when it comes to HDR photography.

I have a dream - that I'd like to see fulfilled in 2009 - and that's brain-dead simple yet beautiful HDR. I want to press 1 button on my camera and put it in HDR mode. Even better, I'd like my camera to propose that the particular photo environment I'm looking at would look great if shot in HDR - and ask "should I do that?" I'd like my photo management software (Lightroom or Aperture) to just deal with the incoming sequence of images and propose HDR handling for them. Etc.

Am I being unreasonable?

PS: Happy New Year 2009!

Sunday Musings Heading Home

I was up in San Francisco for a few hours today taking some photos (playing with hand-held HDR again) - and came back along the Pacific Ocean on the Great Highway to Interstate 280 heading back home. The sun was at a low angle in the west while I was heading south on 280 - a very beautiful winter afternoon along the "World's Most Beautiful Freeway"!

I had Pandora's folk/country rock channel playing on the car stereo (via my iPhone 3G) and the music was just perfect for the road: Eagles - "One of these Nights", Journey - "Light", Doobie Brothers - "Listen to the Music", Jackson Browne - "Running on Empty", etc.

Wow, it was a great drive home! Rockin' and rollin' down the highway in my Honda Civic Hybrid at over 50 mpg!

Stanford's CS 193P - iPhone Application Programming

This is cool. Jason Striegel posts to the Hackzine blog about Stanford making available its CS 193P - iPhone Application Programming course for free. Something fun to do over the holidays!