The 2011 PhotoPlus Expo: For professionals or the masses

At the recent PhotoPlus Expo in New York City, held between October27-29th, hundreds of exhibitors gathered to demonstrate their latest and greatest accomplishments in technology.  From new developments in cameras, lenses, printers, clothing, gear, gizmos and gadgets, the Expo had it all.  But if you consider yourself more of a hobbyist or weekend “photog,” you could have felt a bit out of place. The expo is mostly geared toward the professional shutterbug.  Many of the newest innovations, however, were suitable for both the pro and novice alike, although not necessarily that affordable.  Here are just 3 of the awesome innovations found at the PhotoPlus Expo.  For a deeper detailing, Popsci.com provides a more thorough look.


Sony DEV-3 and DEV-5 3D Binoculars

The new Sony DEV-3 and DEV-5 3D Binoculars are out of this world with their amazing photographic and video potential. Of the two the DEV-5 is more advanced, but only the DEV-3 was on display. Both of them have incredible multifunctional capabilities and can be used as 3D binoculars, a 7MP camera or a 1080i video recorder. The DEV-5’s optical zoom capacity is an astounding 20X! One of the stumbling blocks, however, is the high price tag of $2,000. The DEV-3 model has 10X zoom and costs $1400.  But for people that are looking for a top quality multimedia digital camera, these binoculars are worth considering!


Gorillapod Micro 250 and 350

Joby is a brand known best for its bendy camera tripods.  But one of the coolest gadgets at their booth was a tripod that we’re not accustomed to.  Called the Gorillapod Micro, these mini-tripods are stiff, much like small sticks, which can collapse nicely beneath you camera without adding much weight or bulk at all.  Best of all, they are available in various sizes.  You’ll always be able to catch that perfect sunset self-portrait because you’ll never be without your tripod again.


Wacom Cintiq 24HD Pen Display

The Wacom Cintig 24HD Pen Display provides a massive 24-inch display to fit any need, from professional photographers to designers. For those who require precision editing of pictures and designs, it might be well worth the price tag of $2600. Because of their high demand, they’re relatively difficult to acquire though. The display is praised for its snappy responsiveness and exacting detail, making it ideal for anyone in 3D design, animation, industrial design, game development.


The recent PhotoPlus Exposition was aimed primarily at professional photographers, artists and designers.  As a novice or hobbyist, however, it’s always good to keep up with cutting-edge technologies. Here we could only list a few of the many impressive items like state-of-the-art jackets, lighting, camera bags and gear. You'll want to check out other articles about the Expo, as well as reviews on a number of the other products on display.

Devices and Apps: Working Together to Make Our Lives Easier

We have talked many times before about how the world is becoming more connected, with others along with the world as a whole. Device connectivity could make how we live much simpler by reducing breaks in our work. For instance, if you are working on a document at work and want to continue on the commute home,  simply send it to your smartphone and use a voice transcription app to continue your work in the car. Connectivity presents us with an interesting future. Here is Microsoft’s take on the subject. This future is probably not far off and it makes me contemplate, what sorts of devices, apps, or combination of the two are paving the way for a future such as this? Below are a few.


iControl


iControl is a home energy management and security product that Comcast introduced recently. Using this product, people can monitor their homes in real time through video, control the thermostat, and turn the lights on and off giving the “lived in” illusion when away. The iControl software plus hardware and apps along with Comcast broadband make it possible for people to have full control over their homes miles away.


Air Sharing

You can turn your iPad or iPhone into an external hard drive for your computer with this application. This gives you freedom and mobility by permitting you to easily access your documents from your device.


AirPlay


Apple’s AirPlay app allows you to wirelessly stream music, videos, and photos to Apple TV. Imagine listening to a podcast or audio book on your run then walking into the house and seamlessly transferring it to your home system for you to finish enjoying. This kind of connectivity isn't just for work but also for play.

As more gadgets, apps, and software work harmoniously together, I see our day-to-day lives becoming easier and more fluid. Connectivity means that all elements of our lives are more connected. Hopefully this means that our tech can stay one step ahead of us and if result in less waiting, I am ready for it… how about you?

2011: Are We Closer to Hover Boards or 1955 Chevys?

In 1985’s Back to the Future, we travel through time with Marty McFly in a nuclear-powered DeLorean. Marty can do what man has wanted to do since the beginning of time: control his destiny. In the first movie, Marty goes back to the past to save his parent’s marriage, and consequently his existence. In the lesser first sequel, Marty travels into the future to change the paths of his children. While these films are obviously fanciful, they do present an fascinating question. In the year 2011, would we consider ourselves to be nearer to the technology found in Hill Valley in 1955, or the second film’s futuristic vision?

Where did we believe we would be by 2011? Certainly there’d be flying cars and hover boards, wouldn’t there?  Yet, we’re still driving fuel-burning cars, riding bicycles and scooters, all traveling on the ground rather than through the air. Of course the computer is vital to our everyday lives, but what of the other technology around us?  In essence, the things we use most haven’t changed very much in the last 70 years. By 1940, the TV had been invented; cars were equipped with air conditioning and radios, and films were in color.  The special effects in 1939’s Wizard of Oz still hold-up today.


Science-Fiction movies made decades ago have influenced and even prophesied many of the tools and machines we use today.  In Total Recall, Arnold is caught bringing a gun through a full-body x-ray screener, very much like the security measures found in airports today.  Tom Cruise, in Minority Report uses tech very familiar to anyone who’s ever used a touch-screen tablet or seen 3D TV.  In Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, Pan Am flies everyday people into space.  Individuals who have $200,000 lying around can board Richard Branson’s similar airship.


Some of the most amazing futuristic technology is used everyday:  Video phones and “Skyping” people on the other side of the planet for free are commonplace.  We're able today to clone sheep, cows and mice.  Are humans next?  The ethical dilemmas surrounding genetic engineering are being discussed right now.  However, if you looked out the window in the world we reside in today, does it look more like 1955?  Does your mental picture of life in 2011 match up to the reality?

Where does that put us?  The future is truly happening all around us. Its seen in video billboards, the Internet tracking our every website click or online purchase, and 3D TVs and binoculars.  We can still go to the movies – only now it might break your budget if you have a household of four.  Still, the old axiom is true:  the more things change, the more they stay the same.  Chevrolet is still producing gas-powered convertibles, Universal is still making bad sequels, and you can still watch Back to the Future.  But now you can enjoy it on your phone.

Does Perfectionism Help or Hinder Business

In the business world, it’s easy to find perfectionists. Are you one? Perfectionism can help us have a critical eye, keep us driven and motivated to work harder, but if you end up changing direction repeatedly, questioning your choices, or stressing about small details, perfectionism will be more of a hindrance then a help. Many negative things can stem from this, the most prominent being wasted resources of both time and money. At the end of the day the outcome doesn’t generally justify the effort. Below are some tips to liberate yourself from the net of perfectionism when you find yourself ensnared.


Make a Decision and Stick to it
Believe in the decisions you make! One trap of perfectionism is to second-guess yourself, which is often a never-ending spiral. So when you make a decision, trust yourself and stick to it.

Trus t your Employees
When you unveil your plan to your employees they will inevitably have opinions. Listen to what they have to say! If they tell you it’s a good idea, trust them. This will keep you from falling into the questioning game. Also, their skills are your resources, so trust them to execute their part of the plan well. You hired them because you trust their stills, right? And lastly, before getting settled into your plan be sure you…

Have a Plan B
You never know what’s going to happen! An obstacle may arise that can't be overcome, so make sure you have a plan B. A backup plan can help you from getting entrenched to deeply in your first plan and devastated if things go wrong. The more flexible and ready for change you are, the easier it is to adapt to things life throws at you.

There is a fine line between perfectionism and having a critical eye. It’s important to always strive for the best, but worrying about getting something perfect is damaging to the project and your mental health. The steps I’ve outlined above will help you to free yourself from the perfectionist mindset, if you find yourself there. Here is a great article about avoiding the pitfalls of perfectionism all together.

A Quick Take on some Interesting Winners at the T3 Gadget Awards

In a world where technological advances appear everyday in news-feeds and broadcasts, the annual T3 Gadget Awards is a microcosm of most of these advances in one place.  Like the Oscars for Technology, the T3 Gadget Awards nominate the most cutting-edge gadgets out today. With past releases like the iPad 2, Microsoft’s Kinect and huge advances in gaming, it’s worth a quick note to show many of the most important revelations which have taken place in 2011.  Over 960,000 votes, along with the final tabulations of a 6 person specialist panel, decided the winners.  Here are just a few of the more interesting revelations, as well as some interesting--if not ironic--choices for winners.   


Ironic Winners

One of the most interesting aspects of the Awards are the categories themselves. They run the gamut of technology, and aren’t completely focused on gadgetry. For example, there’s the Best Retailer award and even the Gadget Personality of the Year award.  It is in this category that one can find an ironic choice: Mark Zuckerberg.  Although his influence on modern communication can’t be ignored, few would debate that he’s got Clooney-like charisma. And then there’s the category of Best Commuting Device in which anything that helps you get from here to there can be included. So, the electric bicycle nominee might seem like an obvious choice. The winner, in fact, was the Amazon Kindle -- which makes “getting there” easier, as long as you’re not riding the electric bicycle while reading it!

Influential Winners

One of the most interesting awards, Digital Media Service of the Year, was a small surprise, seeing that Mark Zuckerberg walked off with the Personality of the Year.  Instead, it was Twitter that beat out Facebook and Google for this influential award.  Surely the CEOs of giants like Apple, Google and Facebook aren’t crying themselves to sleep over their T3 Award losses.  However, they must definitely take note that Twitter’s win speaks volumes regarding where social media is headed.  Facebook must continue to innovate and not upset their community, or they may well end up lost and neglected like MySpace.

Surprising Winners

If you were to ask the average passerby which phone would win Phone of the Year, most would probably say the iPhone 4.  Again, though, because a very tech-savvy crowd cast the votes, the votes went to Samsung’s Galaxy S II.  Google won the Tech Brand of the Year, beating out rivals Apple and Facebook.  Although it’s just the “T3 Gadget Awards,” Google is in a much better position amongst the tech community in terms of brand recognition and perhaps overall importance.

In the final analysis, the 2011 T3 Gadget Awards provided some fascinating insight into where technology is headed.  Some of the winners were surprising, with Samsung taking a number of Awards, showing that it’s not just the Giants in the industry making all the waves.  Please take some time to check out the complete list of Awards, categories and nominees.  You can even go back to 2008; the first year votes were cast, and see how much technology has changed, who the winners were in the past and whether or not they’re still relevant today.

Intel and Toshiba Announce Energy Monitoring Plans at CEATEC

Becoming greener is on many people’s agendas these days. Whether the intention is to save money or reduce the impact to the environment, this is true not only for individuals, but many high-tech companies as well. A necessity to knowing how to conserve energy is becoming aware of the areas of your home or business that consume the most energy.

Japan recently hosted the annual CEATEC conference earlier this month just outside Tokyo. During the conference, Toshiba and Intel announced their recent developments in energy monitoring. It’s no surprise to see these businesses coming forward with big developments that allow individuals and companies to manage and monitor their energy consumption. The following are a couple of the changes they will implement in 2012 that may change the way companies and individuals regulate their energy consumption.

Intel

PC users will be able to monitor the energy consumption of their PC with the application Intel has developed. With an easy to read dashboard where the data is organized and displayed in graphs, charts, and statistics, you will be able to much more easily see how your computer is using energy.

Toshiba


You may have read that Toshiba recently acquired Landish Gyr, a company that specializes in smart-meter tech, Toshiba is employing this as part of a “smart home” offering. This will allow people to more easily monitor the energy consumption throughout their homes. They are also developing cloud technology for a variety of verticals, including city infrastructure and health companies.


Japanese technology companies are currently highly focused on monitoring energy consumption. That being said, it is interesting that many companies in the US are pulling away from this. Microsoft and Google are just two examples. Microsoft announced in June that they are discontinuing their energy-monitoring service called Hohm. While Google announced it is taking a break from the green game by shutting down Google Powermeter.

We can see that though companies in the US are moving away from energy monitoring, companies in Japan are focused on it. What will the future be for the green technology world? It’s hard to say, but if you have any ideas or speculations about this, we would love to hear them!


The iPhone 4S: Revolutionary Or Evolutionary

The first time we heard the news that Apple was coming out with the next iPhone, we were as giddy as schoolchildren.  We all hoped that that it was going to be a game changing iPhone 5.  But, alas, it wasn't meant to be.  Instead, and with much fanfare, we got the iPhone 4S and we could only help but ask – is it just an iPhone 4 with a few more bells and whistles? Would it truly be worth the long wait in line?. Was the 4s destined to be revolutionary or evolutionary?  Here is a quick look at the 3 most noticeable upgrades found in the iPhone 4S.

Software


Maybe the most noticeable of the iPhone 4S upgrades can be found in its speed and power.  The 4S features a dual-core A5 chip found in the iPad 2, which makes opening apps, loading the browser, scrolling through home screens and countless other procedures much faster and smoother.  Apple states that the iPhone 4S is twice as fast as the iPhone 4, and exhibits seven times its graphical prowess.


Siri

Perhaps the most interesting addition in the 4S is the introduction of Siri, a voice controlled personal assistant that can help you schedule lunch dates, find restaurants or see what the weather is like in Denver just by talking to it in a conversational voice.  “Tell Jodi that I’m running late and need to reschedule my meeting” is a good example of how Siri can parse your information, find a specific person and complete the task for you. A down-side, however, is that it is still a work in progress, and many times Siri can’t handle the information in the question, and simply gives you a comical reply.  Which is amusing at first, but loses the humor after a few weeks.  Here’s another take on the topic: http://www.forbes.com/sites/benzingainsights/2011/10/17/is-siri-seriously-awesome-or-seriously-flawed/


iCloud

Similar to MobileMe, iCloud allows you to access all of your most critical data, pictures, apps, music and photos from any device, whether you access it from the device the content was created on, or if you want to use your iPad to show your friends a picture you took using your iPhone. One downfall, however, is that for users used to MobileMe’s specific syncing procedures, the user id it created doesn’t “play well” with iCloud. At the same time, iCloud doesn’t recognize email accounts like Yahoo or Gmail as they don’t contain a me.com email address.  Although it’s fantastic technology, the reality that it still has what seem to be fairly obvious faults makes it that much more frustrating to Apple enthusiasts.

In the final analysis, the iPhone 4S will of course be a huge commercial success. But, are the upgrades worth the wait?  In the end, it depends on who you ask. If you’re a Mac-addict, forever in need of the most up-to-date and coolest toy, then of course, it’s worth the wait.  With its improvements in power, efficiency, speed, software and upgrades, the 4S is an impressive machine.  However, if you’re able to get everything you need from your old 3G(S), there’s really nothing completely revolutionary about the iPhone 4S.  As an evolutionary device, it’s still pretty cool.


How Tablets and the Cloud Support Creativity

The cloud has become advantageous for many businesses. Due to the massive amounts of information that can be stored in the cloud and the prevalence of tablets in our lives, creative businesses have greatly benefitted. The cloud gives people in creative industries an edge they didn’t previously have. It may not be obvious how creative businesses have improved due to the cloud, so here are just a few ways they've changed.


Portfolios
The size of someone’s portfolio used to be limited to what they could physically carry.   Due to this size limitation, there were limitations to the content as well. Now, thanks to the cloud, they can create separate files tailored to each client’s needs, which they can quickly access from a tablet. This mobility can lead to more business more quickly.

Creative Collaboration
In the past, collaborating with people in different time zones was very difficult. It required sending huge files through email, working on them independently then sending them back. This created multiple versions and duplicate copies, which was confusing. The cloud permits people to work on the same file simultaneously. This speeds up the collaborative process and keep everyone on the same page, so to speak.


Brainstorming
Brainstorming and mind mapping are other things the cloud has improved as numerous people can input their ideas into one file. People can access these mind maps on tablets, get input from local collogues, and update the shared file that everyone can see. This kind of connectedness breaks down the distance barrier, which used to be such a limitation in business.


With the expansiveness of the cloud and the mobility of the tablet, there are almost no limitations to where creativity can happen.

How do I keep my computer safe?

We all love computers. Don’t deny it, you’re on one right now. The reason why computers are so popular, of course, is due to the value they offer. This value isn’t only found in what a computer offers, but additionally in what a computer costs. Even simplified netbooks costs a few hundred dollars. This makes these valuable machines regular targets for thieves. Make sure to keep your computer safeguarded from these attempts; here are some tips to do so.

Physical Security

All computers are portable, even if they are desktop models. A thief is more than happy to do a quick grab and run, leaving you with nothing but a few cords and a monitor. To further secure your computer, try adding a security cable. These cables are generally locked with a key, and cost only $40. They are both easy to install and straightforward to operate, and add a level of physical safety to your computer that is priceless.


Data Security

Computer’s are worth more than the sum of their physical parts. When a computer is stolen, the thief may have access to your personal information and data. Even if your computer is password protected or your data is encrypted, the data stored within could, theoretically, be accessed. Because of this, it’s a good practice to store your bank account, credit and social security information in a different location. Having your identity stolen on top of losing your computer would only add insult to injury.

Keeping Track

Wish there was a way to track down your pc when it goes missing? Yeah, there’s an app for that. Downloading tracking software onto your computer will help you to locate it once it’s gone, so long as the hard drive remains intact. While a computer may its hard drive wiped clean once stolen, there have been numerous occasions where computer tracking apps have been successful in returning the stolen item to its owner.

While all of these tips are useful in keeping your computer safe, there is no replacement for common sense and reasonable vigilance. Make sure to take good care of your computer; chances are it takes good care of you.

The PC Age is Alive and Well

The latest and most notable technological jump has, undoubtedly, been the recent leap in remote computing technology. Access to gadgets like tablets and smartphones is widely available and extremely preferred with tech users. But what does this mean for the personal computer? With the recent shift towards portable personal computing, is there still a place in the technological landscape for PCs? The answer is a simple and resounding “yes.” Here are three of the biggest reasons why.

Desktops Are Still Needed

    The death of the desktop computer has been predicted for years, yet it has never come. This is because updated and new technologies are still unable to reach the top-level performance of a well-built PC. The speed and power used to run sophisticated programs can’t be duplicated elsewhere. Neither the tablet nor the smartphone can operate at the level of a modern desktop unit. Because of this, the desktop continues to be a foundational computing technology, one that isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Tablets Are Less Practical
   
    It’s plain to see the value of a good tablet. The portability and connectivity options make them highly useful tools. However, PCs are still the preferred model for high end computing. There are certain tasks that are easier to complete on a PC in ways that outmatch the performance of a tablet. Because of this, PCs are still the preferred machine for typing long documents, running sophisticated programs or even surfing the web. The size and accoutrements of PCs make them the more practical machine.

Smartphones Are Less Functional

    It seems like everyone is using a smartphone these days. They are one of the most popular technologies in recent years, and an very helpful tool when accessing email and social media or even making a call. Some critics say that smartphones will begin to steal the laptop market as their design becomes more sophisticated. However, Smartphones still face certain physical limitations. The average basic laptop user utilizes their machine for Internet access and word processing. While smartphones offer some competition in Internet access, can you imagine a student writing a large term paper on a tiny smartphone screen? Neither can we.


    While the portable industry has made remote computing better than ever, it’s still important to have faith in the importance of PCs. For more reasons why the PC age is still alive and well, take a look at this article.