I love to take photos. I have 8,447 photos on Flickr, and that’s just the ones I’ve taken in the last few years. The problem I have is when it comes time to upload them. It takes a while, so I always have to stay up late the night I took the photos and upload them or it ends up getting put off for weeks. I’m pretty good about keeping my cables and card readers where I can find them, but we’ve had several occasions with missing data cables for other cameras in the house and at the office, too. I hate having a camera full of photos trapped on a card when I can’t find the transfer cable, especially when people keep bugging me for them. It’s not just me, either. There are photos that my friend Lindze took on Halloween that I’m still waiting to see.
A good solution for this is an Eye-Fi card. This cleverly named device is a combination of an SD card and a Wi-Fi card. It actually uploads your photos as you take them (if you have it set up with a Wi-Fi connection in the area) or can upload all your photos when you walk in the house.
Getting Set Up
First thing’s first. Will your camera take an Eye-Fi card? They have a compatibility list, but you really just need to make sure your camera is SDHC capable. My DSLR (like most) does not take an SD card at all, and my wife’s Casio Exilim Z60 (the Frankencamera) has a dead battery, so I borrowed a friend’s Casio Exilim Z75.
To get going, I plugged in the USB card reader that came with my 4GB Eye-Fi Share Video. This was were I found my only gripe during the process. The reader is wide , so it blocks my second USB port. While inconvenient, this only needs to be in for a few minutes. With the reader plugged in, I slid the card into the reader and the typical Windows dialog opened up, asking what I wanted to do with this media. What was not so typical is that the first option was to use the software included on the card. New devices are a lot more fun when I don’t have to put in a CD, find drivers, or struggle in any other way to get going. The software installed and began with me creating an account on the Eye-Fi web site and setting up my wireless connection. My new account also required some configuration of photo and video sharing services. I set up my Flickr and Facebook accounts and then removed my card and put it in the camera.
The whole setup took about 10 minutes to get my account, wireless connection, and two services set up and the software installed on my computer.
Shooting and Sharing
There are two key ways the Eye-Fi can be used to make things easier for you. The first and probably easiest is to set it up once as described above, and just let it do all the work when you bring your camera home. This should happen even if you use it the second way, too. When the camera is on, it looks for that wireless connection you configured and automatically connects and starts uploading any new photos and video while retaining a copy, organized by date, on your computer. Here’s an example video showing how that works:
The second way the Eye-Fi can streamline your multimedia life is by uploading as you go. This is probably going to be less used by some people, but I think it’s even cooler. Let’s say you head to an industry event like Blog World. When you first arrive, you configure the Eye-Fi to use the event’s provided Wi-Fi connectivity. Throughout the event, you snap photos and shoot video, but instead of waiting until you get back the your hotel room to share, everything gets uploaded instantly to your selected account. This would work great on Christmas morning, too. Relatives who can’t fly in can experience everything with photos uploading as the presents are opened.
Whatever you do, you have the option of logging into your account to see photos and videos coming in and manage everything as it happens.
It also takes your privacy into account, which was a plus for me. When you set up a photo or video sharing service in your account, it asks you about privacy levels. During my testing, I had it uploading photos as I took them, but they were flagged as private in Flickr, so I was the only one who could see them until I reviewed and made them public. The user experience and small details were definitely not overlooked.
Win Your Own Eye-Fi
If you’ve read everything above and are thinking “I want one of those in time for Christmas”, you’re in luck, because they’re giving away 12 of them. Perhaps it’s for the 12 days of Christmas, but whatever you celebrate this time of year, you might get one of these things for free by just commenting on this post or sending out a tweet containing the hashtag “#eye-fi” with a link back to this blog post. Complete contest rules are here: http://izea.com/contest-rules-regulations/eyefi-contest-official-rules/.
Conclusions
In short, I love this device. It does what it says, but it does it elegantly and the setup is about as short and sweet as it can be. If you have an SDHC capable camera, this should be on your wish list for Christmas. That said, I noted two things that I’d love to see happen with the Eye-Fi. Mainly, I’d love to see this built into a Compact Flash card for my DSLR. My DSLR supports Wi-Fi, but not sharing to Flickr, etc. and it’s nowhere near as easy to get set up. I’d also like to see the ability to upload to up to three sharing sites concurrently. It would be great to be able to have my photos up on Flickr and Facebook instantly, for example. Over all, this is a great time-saving device, a unique gift idea, and decently priced.
Now that the iPhone 3G S is all over the place and allows you to take nice quality videos, edit and upload them, the only thing missing is the ability to shoot video hands free. The first thing that comes to mind is a tripod. Last week, the delivery guy showed up with a new product for the iPhone from Joby, a company known for their tripods that are more than just tripods. The item wrapped around my iPhone in the photo below is the Joby Gorillapod Mobile for 3G/3GS.
How Well Does It Work?
For Christmas one year, someone sent me an original Gorillapod, but I had problems with it. It wouldn’t hold my camera upright and I eventually just threw it in a drawer. As you can guess, I had my reservations about this review. Still, I always want to be fair, so I entered into this with an open mind, hopeful that I just had bad luck before or wasn’t using the first one right. The good news is I must have been doing something wrong before because this one works great. Before I could test it out, I had to attach the adhesive clip to the iPhone case. On my first attempt, I must not have held it on for long enough because it popped right off the first time I tried to adjust the position of my phone. Luckily, they include two of these adhesive clips. I’m sure this is so you can attach the second to some other case you already own, but in my case, it was a welcomed backup.
Once I had my iPhone in the case and the adhesive clip affixed properly, it was all set. I wrapped it around my arm, adjusted it, unwrapped it, wrapped it around everything else I could find, kept adjusting… You get the point. The design of the product is to hold your iPhone in place on a table top, a pole, etc. As far as the function goes, it does exactly what it’s supposed to do.
It Came With Extras
When you buy a Joby product, you already know it’s more than a tripod. That’s why you would buy one. What I didn’t expect is that Joby included the additional adhesive clip that turned out to be needed and another clip to work with cameras and other tripod-ready devices. It’s nice to think that I don’t have to buy a second one to accomodate my digital camera as well. It’s also nice that they’re willing to give me unexpected flexibility with a single product where other companies might just hope to make the sale of an additional product. The $40 price tag, it turns out, should cover most of your devices.
Conclusions
I mentioned above that I had an original Gorillapod and never really used it. Now that I have one that works well for me, I see a lot more potential for it. Not only did I have no problems with this one, but there’s a lot more need for it with the iPhone. The $40 cost seems well worth the convenience if you’re going to use it and if you shoot videos with your iPhone 3G S, I’m sure you’ll use it. Just learn from my impatience and make sure the adhesive clip is really secured before trying to use it the first time.
Yesterday, I got up earlier than normal and instead of heading into work, I headed out to meet up with Wes Novack at Phoenix WordCamp, a Phoenix gathering of about 400-500 bloggers, for a day of WordPress and general blogging education.
Phoenix isn’t the only city to have a WordCamp. They’re all over and they’re a great way to get a ton of important blogging tips for only about $30 to get in. If you’re a blogger, find your local WordCamp and buy your ticket early because our WordCamp sold out. I learned way too much to post it all here, but I’ve pulled out the most important tips for you below:
Read and Re-read Before Publishing
Originally expressed during the keynote from Lorelle of Lorelle on WordPress, this was reiterated throughout the day by other speakers. Be it text or video, photos or audio, take a look when you’re done and edit as needed. Then read through it again just to be sure. There’s nothing worse than publishing a post only to have someone point out mistakes after most of your readers have already seen it.
Publish With Intent
Whether you’re writing a review, a how-to, or just an editorial piece, do it with intent and know what your intent is going into it. Loreelle reminded us that if you publish with intent, it will show through to your readers.
Don’t Plagiarize
It’s easy on the web to just take good content and share it as your own. Lorelle couldn’t stress enough that this is just unacceptable. Not only can it make you look bad, but you’re also not offering anything original to your readers.
Be Timeless
Yet another top tip from Lorelle is to write timeless content, and I couldn’t agree more. Unlike a newspaper, you want people to find your post for the first time months or years later. When they do, it shouldn’t feel old or outdated.
To Stand Out, Be Outstanding
What a great point made by Dave Moyer, from wordcastpodcast.com. When you look at a blog and it’s just OK, you probably won’t be back. It’s the outstanding blogs that are rewarded with reader loyalty.
Make Use Of Keywords
GoDaddy.com not only sponsored the event, but they threw in their SEO expert, Jim Christian. In addition to a lot of other great SEO tips, Jim reminded us that you should use your target keywords in the post’s title, description, keywords, and any tags. You can’t retain readers if they can’t they find you to begin with.
Engage Your Audience
Writing is only half the job, cautioned Jayson Cote’ from WPCOOP.org. The other half, he says, is engaging your audience, and I agree completely. I don’t always respond to every comment on my blog, but I try to personally respond to most and this theory carries over to your social media as well. Social media is a two-way conversation.
Find Your Unique Voice
Merlin Mann of 43 Folders, the best speaker of the day in my opinion, warns against being average. He says, “It is very hard for someone to become you because of blank. Find out what that blank is.” This will also make it a lot easier for people to remember you. Most of the sites I visit are from memory and not bookmarks.
Give More Than You Get
Merlin could not be more clear about his stance on social media and blogging and how he hates that so many people want to create a selfish, one-sided relationship with their readers. Everyone wants to be successful and help themselves, but the best way to do that is to give first. When you do that, good things will come back to you.
Form = Function
That is to say that neither form nor function is most important. When you design or choose a template for your new blog, be sure to think about design, but make sure you think about usability and function, too. The two should compliment each other.
I hope these tips help you and if you have your own, please leave them in the comments.
You spend hundreds of dollars to upgrade to a new phone like an iPhone and you want to protect it, right? There’s tons of different cases to choose from, but there are a few well known names. One of these names is iSkin, who sent me a Solo FX skin to review on my own iPhone 3G S. They also included two Blackberry Bold Vibes skins, which I’m going to give away to a couple lucky winners, so keep reading for more on that below.
In a nutshell
iSkin makes a pretty decent product. I see them everywhere and have had my hands on one before, so this wasn’t completely new to me. I almost used the word “case” in the title of this review, but I hesitate to call it that because it truly is more of a skin than a case. I like a skin more than a case because it seems less in-the-way, but I also tend to worry that it might not protect as well. That said, my new iSkin does offer shock absorbency and really does have a cool look.
As you can see in the photos below, it also offers access to all your iPhone’s openings. I feel like that’s something every protective phone covering should offer, but some don’t, so it’s worth noting.
Using it
I’ll be honest… Personally, I like my phone naked, so some of my dislikes are more about cases or skins in general, and not specific to this one. The first, of course, is that the rubber-like material sticks a bit to the inside of my pocket when I try to pull out or return my phone. The iSkin seems a little easier, but it’s still a concern. It is also pretty thin, so that helps. I’m not going to really throw my phone around to test this, but I did give it a couple small drops to see how it absorbs. The skin seemed to take some of that shock, but didn’t quite bounce, and that’s a good thing.
The skin slips on, which is a little tough do do because it’s so snug. It’s also a little tough to take off, but you’ll probably leave it on all the time, anyway. This is certainly better than it coming off way too easily. As I mentioned before, all the key openings are still open, but the power and volume controls are covered. This makes them not nearly as easy to use, although the skin is a little thinner to give you some access. I would have preferred them open like everything else, especially the power button.
This skin doesn’t add any noticeable weight to my iPhone and isn’t bulky, either. The rubbery feel takes a little getting used to, but I also feel more comfortable with my phone protected. The skin comes with a screen guard, as well. I had one of similar thickness and I could probably watch someone run a key across my phone with some pressure and not flinch (much). I love the screen guards and think they compliment any skin or case well.
Solo vs Solo FX vs Solo FX SE
One thing I was a little unsure about was the difference between the three different Solo skins. The jump between each one is in style. The Solo FX has some cool design effects added in and that just sets it apart from the Solo. Stepping up from that is the Solo FX SE, which is a little more rock star, but also has an added function. The SE is made with Microban® antimicrobial protection, which helps inhibit the growth of stain and odor causing bacteria on the product. I don’t know how necessary that is, but I think I’d pay the extra couple bucks for it. These things are $29.99, $32.99, and $34.99, respectively and can be seen below.
Get your free iSkin Vibe for Blackberry Bold
Here’s the fun part. If you want to win one of the Blackberry Bold skins, all you have to do is tweet. Just send out a tweet with the link, http://lnk.gd/bold with the words “contest”, and “iSkin” in it and you’re entered. I’ll pick two winners and DM them (so make sure you follow @joetech) and the first to reply with his or he choice of “Carbon” or “Red” will get that skin and the other winner will get the remaining one. Enter once per day from now until Wed., November 11, 2009 GMT-7 (Arizona time). That’s when I’ll pick my winners.
Conclusions
I’m not much of an iPhone case kind of guy, but I have been using this and it is a little better than my previous cases and skins and definitely looks better than my last plain black skin. If I were going to spend the $30 on a skin, I’d probably either get the FX or the FX SE and it really would probably have to be the Onyx colored FX SE. For the comfort of feeling like your phone is protected, it’s worth it to buy something like an iSkin, but the iSkin is a good choice if you want your phone to look good and stand out. Just buy one before your phone gets scratched and dinged up.
