2010-08-25
post/1009199176
I’ve been using Autostitch iPhone a lot this summer. It makes it easy to combine shots and so makes wide-angle panoramic photos a possibility, despite the fixed field of view of the phone’s camera. (You can see an cropped example, of Tromsø from the Hurtigruten coastal steamer, on Flickr. Above is the raw image that the phone produced.)
However, not all of my photos are with the iPhone, and so I need a desktop equivalent too. So I downloaded four Mac panorama stitchers and ran some photos I had previously stitched on the phone together.
Annoyingly, despite all costing at least ten times as much, they (with one exception) all performed far worse. Calico Panorama at least managed to get everything in the right place, and smoothed out the variations in exposure (which are unavoidable without manual controls). AutoPano Pro was also competent, but that UI is eyebleedingly awful. PTgui also did fairly well, but DoubleTake was clearly completely confused.
I also tried PhotoStitch, which was bundled with the Canon PowerShot S90 I recently bought. It needed to be told what the alignment was, and crashed after producing a version that was worse even than DoubleTake’s attempt. Poor show.
I suspect I’ll try a few more sets of images in Calico before deciding whether or not to stump up the cash, but there seems to be a wider lesson here. A piece of $2 software with barely any UI feels more able to do its job than a variety of desktop applications costing anywhere from $20 to $80, and it’s making me consider rethinking my workflow just to take advantage of it.
2010-07-19
Flickr Catchup: A Technique
I’ve been on holiday for a fortnight, so I haven’t had a chance to check Flickr. How to catch up?
Well, the search box on the “photos from your contacts” page has a handy filter: “from your contacts”. Put in space, press return, and you get… an error. Then go to advanced search, change “date taken” to “posted”, and put in the date you went on holiday, and you’ll end up at a page like this.
(Note the date in the URL; you can change that if you want to skip the navigation outlined above.)
That’s sorted by “interestingness”, so you’d hope the better / more noticed photos would come to the top. If you’re more egalitarian, you could always go for “recent”, and then start at the end of the list and work forward.
If I was away from a computer more often, I might use the API to turn this into a service, but I’m not, so I won’t. Also, as I’ve noted before, it’s a shame more sites don’t offer filtered search to your contacts. I kept up with Twitter pretty well, but I have no idea what I’ve missed on delicious, for example. Hurrah, then, for Flickr.
2010-03-26
post/474858436
If you’re creating a “digital time capsule”, it’s best not to make it an application. There’s a lesson here for everyone rushing into application development for online media.
2009-09-13
post/186843312
Kevin Marks, in a comment on John Scalzi’s Guide to Epic SciFi Design FAILs - Star Trek Edition.
Yes, it’s a terrible pun, but it seemed worth recording.
2009-05-18
Twitterfon, iPhone and Updates
From the Twitterfon home page:
What’s New in Version 1.5:
- Ad support
Beyond the fact that phrasing “Ad support” as a feature bullet point is odd, this brings up something (else) that’s new about the iPhone OS: unlike a desktop operating system, it’s pretty much impossible to disable updates.
On the Mac, you can choose to stick with an OS revision (heck, for major releases, unless you pay, you have to), and apps that update themselves have to manage it themselves, usually giving you the option to disable such updates¹.
On the iPhone, on the other hand, both OS and app updates are encouraged, in iTunes and (for apps) on the device itself (via the App Store’s Update tab). There’s no way to pin an app to a version you’re happy with, except for eschewing the “Update All” button forever (leaving you installing apps manually, which is understandably annoying).
Bait and switch has never been easier.²
¹ Spotify is a glaring exception here. Other people who use it may have noticed its irritating habit of needing to ask for permission to access your keychain and open ports through the firewall; this is because it auto-updates every day or so, and it’s impossible to disable this. (If they wanted to make the flow a bit better for users, they could sign the app, but that’s a whole other can of worms.)
² That’s not to say that naan studio set out to do this deliberately; why not try for revenue? However, if you’re going to be ad-supported, it’s probably better for everyone to start off that way.
2009-04-27
iPhoto ‘09
“iPhoto ‘09 crashes like a drunk who can’t tell the difference between the brake and the accelerator pedal who’s been given a Ferrari.”
The mean, short version of this post. The drunk then proceeds to forget what was in the car.
