Adobe Releases Camera Raw 5.2 Update
Adobe – Latest Product Updates
“This new version of the Camera Raw plug-in replaces the original one that was installed with Adobe® Photoshop® CS4; Adobe Photoshop Elements 7.0; and Adobe Premiere® Elements 7.0 software. Visit the Camera Raw page for a complete list of supported cameras.”
This new Raw plug-in provides official support for the new Canon 5D Mark II camera. I’ve got a new 5D Mark II on pre-order with Wolf Camera. Yesterday they told me that estimated ship date was December 5th. Looking forward to what the new 5D can do. I haven’t heard of any new Mark II 5Ds shipping yet, but previously Canon had said that they’d be shipping by the end of November.
Simple Truths
New Artist of the Week Series #5, Ron Diorio
I’m pleased to present this week my 5th artist in a series of artists that I’ve been profiling at thomashawk.com.
Ron Diorio, or av_producer on Flickr, is a photographic and video artist living and working in New York. This selection of images is from “Coming around again” a trilogy (Anytown, Around here and Home town) examining the ambiguity of place in the early 21st century. Ron is represented by Peter Hay Halpert Fine Art.
I’ve watched Ron’s work progress over the years and his style is an interesting and unique one. Anonymous characters come and go throughout images in soft tones around the edges of city living. Dreamy portraits, scenes and characters are presented — letting your imagination take hold as you think about the scenes behind them.
More recently Ron has been publishing short form videos on Flickr combining poetry overlayed on top of video footage and his imagery. These are very interesting and thought provoking as well. Dark tales in some cases feeling like some sort of Joe Frank like radio noir. Here’s a direct link to Ron’s video set on Flickr.
An interesting artist working with urban America, I’d highly recommend Ron’s work. You can also find more of Ron’s work on his photography blog here.
Ten images follow below:
Lament on the death of a Blackberry / Courtesy of Peter Hay Halpert Fine Art
Back door man / Courtesy of Peter Hay Halpert Fine Art
Home town / Courtesy of Peter Hay Halpert Fine Art
Puddle jump / Courtesy of Peter Hay Halpert Fine Art
Loose change / Courtesy of Peter Hay Halpert Fine Art
Secret Garden / Courtesy of Peter Hay Halpert Fine Art
Day off / Courtesy of Peter Hay Halpert Fine Art
Independence day / Courtesy of Peter Hay Halpert Fine Art
Cruising / Courtesy of Peter Hay Halpert Fine Art
Lobby at night / Courtesy of Peter Hay Halpert Fine Art
Previous artists showcased in my New Artist of the Week Series:
New Artist of the Week #1: Carlotta Fancypants
New Artist of the Week #2: Troy Paiva
New Artist of the Week #3: rouge rouge
New Artist of the Week #4: Jonathan Haeber
GM Lobbies Current GM Auto Owners to Contact Congress on Their Behalf
My wife got the email below a few hours ago from General Motors’ Troy A. Clarke, Group Vice President and President GM North America at GM.
I assume that we got this letter because we own a GM car. The email reeks of desperation to me. GM says in their letter that they don’t want a bailout from Congress that they only want a $25 billion loan.
Whether or not GM ends up in Chapter 11 or not, it seems to me to be in poor taste for GM to try to use my personal information that they possess for the purposes of political lobbying.
What do you think? Should the U.S. bailout, er, I mean “loan” the automakers another $25 bil? If so, who else deserves a bailout as well? The homebuilders have asked for one. Nobody’s building homes anymore. What about the newspaper business? They’re in deep trouble right now because people aren’t subscribing or buying newspapers like they used to. Should the U.S. Govt bail out the newspapers as well?
Anyways, it’s a complicated situation. Email received today below:
Dear Thomas Hawk,
You made the right choice when you put your confidence in General Motors, and we appreciate your past support. I want to assure you that we are making our best vehicles ever, and we have exciting plans for the future. But we need your help now. Simply put, we need you to join us to let Congress know that a bridge loan to help U.S. automakers also helps strengthen the U.S. economy and preserve millions of American jobs.
Despite what you may be hearing, we are not asking Congress for a bailout but rather a loan that will be repaid.
The U.S. economy is at a crossroads due to the worldwide credit crisis, and all Americans are feeling the effects of the worst economic downturn in 75 years. Despite our successful efforts to restructure, reduce costs and enhance liquidity, U.S. auto sales rely on access to credit, which is all but frozen through traditional channels.
The consequences of the domestic auto industry collapsing would far exceed the $25 billion loan needed to bridge the current crisis. According to a recent study by the Center for Automotive Research:
• One in 10 American jobs depends on U.S. automakers
• Nearly 3 million jobs are at immediate risk
• U.S. personal income could be reduced by $150 billion
• The tax revenue lost over 3 years would be more than $156 billion
Discussions are now underway in Washington, D.C., concerning loans to support U.S. carmakers. I am asking for your support in this vital effort by contacting your state representatives.
Please take a few minutes to go to http://www.gmfactsandfiction.com, where we have made it easy for you to contact your U.S. senators and representatives. Just click on the “I’m a Concerned American” link under the “Mobilize Now” section, and enter your name and ZIP code to send a personalized e-mail stating your support for the U.S. automotive industry.
Let me assure you that General Motors has made dramatic improvements over the last 10 years. In fact, we are leading the industry with award-winning vehicles like the Chevrolet Malibu, Cadillac CTS, Buick Enclave, Pontiac G8, GMC Acadia, Chevy Tahoe Hybrid, Saturn AURA and more. We offer 18 models with an EPA estimated 30 MPG highway or better — more than Toyota or Honda. GM has 6 hybrids in market and 3 more by mid-2009. GM has closed the quality gap with the imports, and today we are putting our best quality vehicles on the road.
Please share this information with friends and family using the link on the site.
Thank you for helping keep our economy viable.
Sincerely,
Troy Clarke
New Era
January 20th 2009 is a street artist doing Obama portraits in San Francisco. Check out his Flickrsteram here: www.flickr.com/photos/january20th2009/
New Artist of the Week Series #4, Jonathan Haeber
I’m pleased to present this week my 4th artist in a series of artists that I’ve been profiling at thomashawk.com.
Jonathan Haeber, or TunnelBug as he is known on Flickr, is doing a remarkable job of documenting the abandoned and lost places of America. From Michael Jackson’s now largely abandoned Neverland Ranch, to resorts in the Catskills, to closed and abandoned factories and manufacturing plants of the San Francisco Bay Area, Haeber is documenting these sites and locations perhaps better than any other artist in the world today. To see a set that showcases 54 different abandoned sites as of this writing also check out Haeber’s “Abandoned” collection on Flickr.
Part of Haeber’s drive to document these places comes from a long and deep love of history. He also studied English and Geography at UC Berkeley and cites his background in Geography as being helpful in what he shoots.
More than just the photographs that Jonathan shares with the world, he also provides extensive write ups and research done over at his website Bearings. I’d encourage you to take a read on some of his work there to better understand who and why he is documenting the sites that he is.
There is also a YouTube video out with Haeber sharing briefly some of what he is about and what he is doing with his art and his approach to photography.
Haeber’s work is impressive, the actual imagery, the documentation he does behind the imagery, and most of all to me, the endurance and passion that he shows with his growing library of imagery from the lost and abandoned places across the world. Below are 10 images that represent some of Haeber’s work.
Front Gate of Neverland Ranch
Grossinger’s Resort Indoor Pool – Catskills Mountains, New York
United Technologies Corp. Rocket Testing Facility
Treasure Island Naval Base Bowling
Kings Park Psychiatric Hospital – Long Island, NY
Ukiah Masonite Mill (now demolished)
S.S. Independence Cruise Ship Dining Lounge (presumably being scrapped in Alang)
Oakland Tribune Building from the Key System Building
Oak Knoll Naval Hospital, where L. Ron Hubbard conceived of Scientology
Charles Main Grave Site – San Francisco Merchant during the Gold Rush
Previous artists showcased in my New Artist of the Week Series:
New Artist of the Week #1: Carlotta Fancypants
New Artist of the Week #2: Troy Paiva
New Artist of the Week #3: rouge rouge
World of Ghosts
10 Reasons Why the New Microsoft Social Network Spaces.Live.Com is Not for Thomas Hawk
See important update below.
I spent some time today playing around on Microsoft’s latest entry into the social networking arena, home.live.com. Unfortunately they’ve gotten so much of it wrong. I’m continuously amazed that a company with the resources as vast as Microsoft simply can’t put out something in this area that does not suck.
TechCrunch reported on the new Microsoft Social Networking site earlier today here.
Here are 10 reasons why the new social network is not for me.
1. The layout looks terrible. It feels boxy and typically Microsofty. It’s not simple and uncluttered. It’s visually and aesthetically unpleasing (you can see a screenshot of the site above). I’m not sure how to fix this other than hiring better designers to work on the project. Why, for instance, is the “S” cut off in “Friend’s Updates?” Same goes for “pages” in “Personalized Pages” below. It feels clunky.
I don’t care about OneCare which is featured prominently on my page. I don’t want to use their “Family Safety” section and “Spaces” only reminds me of the Microsoft blogging platform which I’ve always hated.
On the larger version of the page the “weather” in San Francisco is featured prominently. It feels very MyYahooish which I also hate and don’t use.
2. Just a small pet peeve, but when I try to customize my url thomashawk.spaces.live.com isn’t available. Seems like someone else is using that url and not doing much with it. Of course I’m not the only Thomas Hawk in the world, but it is nice when I can get my name like on FriendFeed, Twitter, Flickr, etc.
3. The photo uploading section is crap. There seems to be no bulk uploader and I’m limited to uploading only 8MB in images at once. Many of the images that come from my Canon 5D are over 8 images in a single image alone. Uploading photos to this site would be unbearable for me. By setting these limits they seriously limit most professional level DSLR imagery. This means that mostly I’m not going to see anything the likes of Flickr or Zooomr on this site. It’s going to be more like a Photobucket, which is certainly not a place I go to look for or share great photos.
Microsoft bought the Vizrea team right? What ever happened with that? Why aren’t they working on photo sharing here? Or maybe they are. Or maybe they are just waiting until they pick Yahoo off for $12 a share and integrate Flickr into this.
4. I don’t like the abrasive ads at the top. This makes the site feel like MySpace to me. Microsoft should take a page from the book of Flickr, Twitter, and FriendFeed here. When you are a small social network without many users ads don’t matter that much. What you want to do is grow the social network and get huge. *Then* you can think about monetizing it. Let users pay for a Pro account without ads (like Flickr does) or ad ads later. The revenue from the ads today can’t be meaningful or significant.
5. When I tried to customize my space by uploading my own photo as a background, it didn’t work. This could also be related to the 8MB file size upload limit. So instead I’m stuck with Microsoft’s crappy default or one of the horrible “themes” that they have for me to choose from. Why are the default “themes” so crappy and unoriginal? It feels like I’m selecting what default desktop theme package I’d like to use. Nature, Occasions, Patterns, Sports — all that feel very cliparty. How about hiring some cool, hip, cutting edge designers or artists to really create some cool stuff. What about that graffiti artist that said he was a “PC” in the big Vista commercial? What about hiring that guy or some actual interesting artists to design the themes rather than cheap and crappy looking defaults.
6. But I don’t want to blog here. I want to blog at thomashawk.com. There seems to be no easy way that I can tell to import your various other online sites from the internet. In TechCrunch’s article it seemed to say that this was possible as they compared it to FriendFeed. Best I can tell it’s not. I can find no way to link my blog, Flickr account, Zooomr account, YouTube account, etc. to my page on this social network. FriendFeed is doing better than anyone else out there in aggregating web presence right now. Microsoft, how hard is it to simply copy FriendFeed in this department? Why show me a “blogging” section on my space area if I’m never going to use it?
7. Inviting Friends needs work. What’s a social network without your friends right? Microsoft has a leg up here because you can import all of your Windows Live Messenger contacts into the site, but other than this there is no easy way to invite your contacts to your page. Other than this you can only manually enter an email address to send out an invitation. Microsoft should also allow you to access your gmail, yahoomail, or mail client app address book to mass invite or select more of you friends to invite if you’d like.
8. The “Events” section is lame. I went to the events section to learn about some cool events around me in the SF Bay area and guess what there are none. Why not use upcoming.org’s API to feed into here or eventful or meetup.com or whoever to give me some instant interesting things to think about doing?
9. According to the video on TechCrunch it looks like the new Microsoft Social Network is supposed to allow you to aggregate other places on the internet where you have a presence on your Windows live page. Several times in the video Microsoft points to something called “Web Activities” and “Add Websites.” The problem is that in real life this functionality seems to be non-existent on the site. I may just be stupid, but after spending about an hour playing around with the site today I simply could find no easy way to add outside websites where I have a presence. In typical Microsoft fashion I went to the help menu and typed in the phrase “activities” in the search box (seeing how they used the “activities” word over and over again in their video) and of course it still did not show me how to add activities to my page. It did, however, offer me up a little write up on how to close my or my child’s accounts. Something that I really had no interest in learning about.
10. Where’s my profile page? There seems to be no easy way to see what your profile page looks like and no easy url to send to your contacts to show them your presence on this social network.
It seems to me like Microsoft needs to go back to the drawing board with this one. Then again maybe like a lot of other Microsoft products they just feel that they are big enough to shove crap at people and people will use it anyways. Whatever the case, as someone who is very active on social networks, I’ll doubt I’ll be active on this one. At least until I can learn how to do the most basic things that a social network ought to allow.
Update: Ok, now I’m feeling kind of lame. It seems this might be the old Microsoft Live Social Network that I just reviewed. Tom Conrad just said the new version won’t be out until December.
I wish the Microsoft video on TechCrunch hadn’t said: “You can start adding updates from your web activities to Windows Live today. All you need is an id. Get started at home.live.com.” Turns out “today” really might mean a few weeks down the road.
50 Ways to Leave Your Lover
