iPhone

Two great apps for taking and sharing photos on the iPhone

You have no doubt noticed lately on my blog that there have been posts with but a single picture and a few words accompanying the image. I am using the now widely used app Instagram, coupled with Posterous. The first allows you to run your image through a few funky filters and then post to various sharing sites (Facebook, twitter, and Posterous). Posterous, in turn, shares to just about everything. Posterous (which, I just found out, is pronounced pos-ter-us, not post-erous) is a free service that you can push your updates to with a simple email.

A twitter and PSU colleague, ScooterNSticks, reminded me of Camera+, an app with great effects that I had purchased ($2) some time ago. The special effects really are superb (see the barn image in a previous post) and it also provides far more control of the iPhone camera than the standard app allows. What I did not realize is that it too had sharing features.

So there you have two apps that are well worth having on your phone if you like to take and share pictures. Remember, the best camera you own is the one that is with you. Here is one more image, enhanced by Camera+ with the “Fashion” filter.

Some days are just like this.

Instagram – Quickly share your photos

May 16th, 2011

by Christian Brady.

No comments yet

Tending goal is a lonely business.

You know me by now, I love photography more than comics. The iPhone does not have the best camera among smart phones, but it isn’t bad, at all. Sharing those images is part of the fun and while flickr is a great storage/sharing service there is no quick way to upload and share from the iPhone. Then came Instagram.

I am late to this party and it isn’t a perfect bash, for sure, but it is a nice free app an service. You take a picture, add one or none of a variety of filters including tilt/shift, and then upload to facebook, twitter, email addresses, etc. So when I took this shot of my son I was able to send it to twitter, facebook, and flickr and also send it to my wife’s email (since she never checks the other sites).

Add to that the new app Postagram (created by an SHC grad) which connects to Instagram and allows you to mail a physical postcard of your image and you have a great travel tool. When in Cali two weeks ago I took and instantly shared images with the fam. Then I sent a postcard to the kids that arrived after I did, but they loved it!

Why do I like these funky pictures?

Apr 28th, 2011

by Christian Brady.

1 comment

Most of you know that I love photography. There is an old saying that the best camera is the one you have with you and my iPhone is constantly with me. And I have to say that the iPhone 4 has a pretty decent 5MP camera. It is not great, but I have gotten some pretty nice results. There is a little app that is all the rage called Instagram which basically makes your nice iPhone images look like they are old and worn. The reason I use the app is that it allows you to upload the images to several social networking sites at once, flickr, facebook, twitter, all the usual lowercase culprits. What is odd is that the image effects are growing on me. Take a look at a few and let me know what you think.

Flickr: My stuff tagged with instagramapp.

Accordance for iOS is out NOW

Dec 31st, 2010

by Christian Brady.

3 comments

In yesterday’s post I commented that it was coming soon, well by evening it was released and available in the App store. Accordance for iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad is now available for FREE. I only saw it at 11:30 pm so I have had little time to play with it but I have very good first impressions. Best of all, if you log in with your account you can use their “Easy Install” feature to directly download all the modules that you have already purchased. It also comes with a nice set of preinstalled texts (including a demo version of BHS which unfortunately you cannot delete once you have installed a purchased copy) so you can get up and running right away. There are more details on their site.

So far just a few niggles. When you go to easy install it took me a few tries for it to load the complete listing of my available modules. Unfortunately that included Atlas files which cannot be installed on the iOS device. Every text has the book and verse reference on every line. You can turn that off in the desktop app but I cannot find the option to do that in the iOS app. You can only open two texts at once, not really a complaint, even on the iPad you cannot really see more than that usefully, but I could not close the Bible text pane in order to open just the Hebrew and English Mishnah texts.

And all of those comments should be seen as minor. This is an incredibly welcome app to the iOS and further moves it to my only device on the road. I will post a more complete review next week, in the meantime, it is FREE so download it now!

Apple’s AirPlay – The good and the oops!

Nov 28th, 2010

by Christian Brady.

1 comment

iOS 4.2 update for iOS devices came with some much hyped features. AirPrint, unless you have one of three printers, is effectively DOA, while AirPlay “just works.” In fact, AirPlay works a little too well. The premise is simple. You can have the audio or video from your iPad or iPhone stream to either your AirPort Express attached to a stereo (as I have it) or to your AppleTV. Video and music work great on the AppleTV and music streams nicely over the AirPort Express.

So what is my problem? If you have set the music on your iPad to stream to your stereo, even if you have stopped the iPod app from playing, and begin to play a game, say Plants v. Zombies, the audio continues through to your stereo. Having snuck out of the family room to complete a level of Angry Birds, I was caught by the sounds of exploding birds and grunting pigs going throughout the house via the stereo. Oops.