which came first - the chicken or the egg?...

In this case we are asking, which came first... science fiction or reality. And as the debate rages on, we continue to see yesterday's scienfiction become today's reality. Case in point, the MakerBot Replicator introduced at CES this month. 

A personal 3D printer avialable now for under two thousand dollars. I know that sounds like a lot, but the first generation Mac's cost more than that. And who could have predicted that we would have a manufacturing plant in our homes? Oh yeah... the Sci Fi writers of course.

So I will let the scholars debate whether the sci fi writers of the past were uber insightful or whether the scientist and inventors of today were simply influenced  by the sci fi of their childhood.... and I will just continue to be amazed that we are living in a present that was only recently dubbed science fiction.

You can print just about anything you can design. And if your not so handy with 3d software, just head on over to thingiverse.com and download a design shared by your fellow replicator owners.

Who knows, maybe soon we will all be saying "beam me up Scottie"... but for now, it is amazing news that I can have a "replicator" in my home... now if I can just find my Star Trek uniform ;-)

how "sharing" on the web is evolving...

I recently read two great articles discussing the web and how "social media" and "content curation" are growing and changing. 

The first was an article by Om Malik at Gigaom titled "You are what you curate". 

The second was an article (mentioned by Om) by Elad Gill titled "How Pinterest will transform the web in 2012: social content curation as the next big thing". 

Both articles are very interesting reads and the graphic shown here from Elad's blog illustrates well a point that he makes in his article. That we have quickly evolved from long form blogging to short form messaging and are moving toward "push button curation".

If you are interested in these sorts of thing, I urge you to read both thoughtful and insightful articles. If your not sure why this is important, I will share with you my thoughts.

In short, one of the most powerful companies on the web is Google. They make their living on search and they (and others) are scrambling to return better search results based on individuals social graph. What does all that geek speak mean? It means people are no longer simply searching the web for the closest Chinese food restaurant or looking up the nearest mechanic that can service their car. They are wanting to ask their online friends for advice first... or better yet... have their "trusted advisors" suggestions filter to the top of their search results.

In any case, the pace of change and the availibility of and access to really cool stuff is facinating to me. So of course, I have signed up for Pinterest to see what this is all about ;-)

reading with your ears...

I can't believe it has taken me this long to post about what has to be the most used app on my iPhone... the Audible app for iOS.

Actually, Audible.com is part of the Amazon company and is THE PLACE to purchase audio books on the web. (imho) They now have over 100,000 titles and the narrators are amazing. As you can see from the video below, they don't just read books to you... you get performances created by professionals. They have everything from the latest blockbuster, to classic scifi, to the latest business books. You can purchase individually, or you can sign up for various plans where you get 1 or 2 credits per month to download the book(s) of your choice. Click on the image right to go to their site and hear an example of the audio.

On a personal note, I received a gift subscription to Audible years ago on fathers day and it has is one of my all time favorite gifts. I never could fine the time to read before, and when I did, I would quickly fall asleep. Now I am "reading with my ears" all the time. Cooking dinner, washing dishes, mowing the lawn, on the drive to work... any time you have access to your portable media player device or phone, you can be "reading".

I simply love it.

Here is a video interview with Martin Sheen talking about being chosen to read the Dali Lama's latest book which is now on audible.

Snapseed photo editor now in MAC app store...

If the logo looks familiar, you are correct in thinking we have written about snapseed before. Last time however, Richard's post was about how snapseed is one of the best photo editors for the iPad.

Now the folks at Nik Software are at it again. They brought snapseed to the Mac in 2011 and it is available in the App Store for $19.99. Take a look at the video here (and at snapseed's website) and I think you will see why it won Apple's app of the year and why so many people don't have any other editor on their iOS device. 

I am a huge fan of Pixelmator as my photoshop replacement for my Mac, but I think for the quick and artsy touchup, snapseed will be my new go to app. And with Flickr & Facebook functionality built-in to the app, you will be able to share your work easily.

A quick note for Android users... their web site says "comming soon" ;-)

Adobe Posts Lightroom 4 Beta.

Adobe has just released an update to their RAW editor Lightroom 4. This release is a public beta, and shows off a lot of the new features they have added to Lightroom. For me the best new feature is the ability to build books inside Lightroom. I currently use Aperture or iPhoto for this feature, but Lightroom is my main image editor, so it will be nice to be able to stay inside one app to do all of my work. Another nice feature is the ability to add GPS data to your photos. The mapping feature uses google maps to locate your image location. If you didn't use or don't have a GPS feature in your camera, you can add location data to that image after the fact. There are also many updates to the Develop module. The main change is they have given users greater control over the exposure controls and have added a "Whites" slider that helps modify, you guessed it, the white values in the image. For me, this has made HDR photography unnecessary for most lighting conditions.
While I'm excited about these updates they are only adding features that are already built in Aperture and to a lesser extent iPhoto. I still like the user interface better in Lightroom, and that has not changed significantly. In all this update/beta brings Lightroom inline with the feature set of Aperture and even goes beyond in some areas.