email me: chris@chris-karath.com
August 2011
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Oddly enough while the Touchpad does have a video camera that does Skype video conferencing. it does not have a camera feature. Ie, it can not natively take photos. There are two apps, one free and one for 99c in the app catalog that will allow you to take and save photos to your picture roll. The above is a picture from one of them.
Flickr: Sat 08-20-11 17:52:04 -0400



Comes with a light plastic ring (not pictured) too.
Flickr: Sat 08-20-11 10:31:02 -0400



Its a very nice device. There are just so many things about WebOS that are slick. Nice to have one again ( since my pre died.
Flickr: Sat 08-20-11 10:26:28 -0400


Adobe Muse Now in Free Public Beta, Makes Website Creation Easy
source: Mashable!
I've been playing around with the Adobe Muse Free Beta, this morning. I'm pretty impressed. If you are a print designer with an interest in the web, you should go to Adobe's Muse site and download this while it's Free. It's the most WYSIWIG HTML editor I've ever seen.
For simple brochure type sites, or presentation type sites, this is a pretty easy to use tool. You're still going to need to be the type of person to know your way around Photoshop/Indesign/Illustrator type apps as well has have some design sense to you, to really take advantage of this app, but if you have a little of that background, I think it's likely you'll find a niche in your workflow for something like this, even if it's only to put together a quick site for a presentation or pitch.
Random Non-Sequiters
Jennifer and I had Hungry Howie's pizza yesterday. First time for me in several years. I noticed on the box that they have changed the logo.He's a little less 70s and a little less Bazooka Joe now than he was. Also his tongue isn't sticking out any more.
Let's Go Surfing
Mitt Romney: "Corporations are People"




First off, they are not. Second off, if they were, they could not be viewed as very good people..
Random Non-sequiters
Today was a rainy day. Mostly climbed into my office and burrowed into my Google Reader (as you can tell by all the link blogging below this post.)
On the news the US apparently avoided a default, but then got it's credit downgraded anyway by some private corporation that does such things. The thing I most think about this whole thing is, if the US is a bad place to put your money, where's a good place?
Obama is turning out to be fairly uninspiring isn't he? I mean, it's cool he hasn't had any scandals much to speak of, but nothing much has changed either has it?
If it comes down to Obama vs Romney it's going to be a pretty dull election next year isn't it?
You know what is still cool? iPad 2. Still rocking it as a magical device. Nothing else much tech-wise on my radar at the moment either.
Of course, we're a couple months away from Apple possibly announcing an iPad 3 so who knows, maybe that will grill hamburgers or make popcorn or something. probably another year to a year and a half before they start coming out with apps that no longer work on the 2 though.
A few weeks from the DC reboot. I'll probably checkout a bunch off the number ones but it seem very non interesting based on what has leaked out so far.
You now what turned out to be better than expected? The BBC show: Sherlock. We have watched the first 2 of 3 90 minute episodes so far and they are very good. I mean Doctor Who level good. There was one quote in particular in the 1st episode that really stuck with me: "Genius need an audience", what a great observation, and for the first episode at least that's all you need to know to understand Sherlock and Watson.
By the way, I'm typing this post on a small blutooth thumbkeyboard while lying down on the couch. My iPad is off to the side resting on an ottoman. The one thing that bothers me about all the gadgets I have is that their keyboards are all just a little different from each other and I always have abit of a ramp up time where I have to reacquaint myself with any one device's extended character locations and general spacing. Not sure there is a solution for that though although Im sure you could come up with some 4 row by 10 column universal key configuration that would be a start down the right path.
There are two genre movies out right now that I haven't seen yet: Cowboys vs Aliens and Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Not quite sure when I'm going to see them. There were just so very many genre movies out this summer and I've seen so many that I haven't been that anxious to go back into the theater lately. Maybe I might check these out in a few weeks though when they hit the Sunday $4 HotFM shows at Celebration Cinema.
So far I've been fairly unimpressed with Google+. Its a really great sharing service, but so far I think my problem is that I really don't have a large enough group of people to share with on it. sadly, the people I'm most interested in sharing information with are still best reached via email and are not very participatory on the other social networks. So Google+ is a nice enough service, but just lacks others to use it with.
I think my initial fascination with camera apps that stared with the iPod Touch acquisition last October has subsided some, mostly because I have so many and mostly to paraphrase the above Sherlock quote: because photo apps need an audience. iPhone photography is alot like Google+ in that regard, its just not as much fun unless you have a regular group participating with you.
I wonder if in the next year or so, coffee shops might embrace becoming iPad lounges. Sure there are lots of laptop friendly wifi enabled coffee shops out there but the iPad is a completely different vibe isn't it? It sort of begs out for comfier chairs and a less table centric experience. Probably within 2 years, just about everyone is going to have one of these things, so I imagine at some point someone is going to figure out how to cater to those that want to read and surf on theirs in public spaces.
Thats pretty much all the rambling for now, going to watch Thundercats and Torchwood now I think.
Flipboard is a great app, if you have an iPad, download it immediately. Every now and then though their general catagories highlight how myopic the tech blogging world can be, like below where 5 different sites pretty much posted the same press release story at more or less the same time.
Sent from my iPad