looking to improve your photography swing? Then it’s time to hit the range.

My favorite camera. let me qualify that for a moment: My favorite camera right now… is the Hasselbald 500 CM. I like it because in my completely automated world i am able to unwind and use something that is completely manual. When i shoot with it i really feel like i am capturing the image as opposed to being the operator, tripod, “button pusher” for my otherwise fully automated DSLR camera. When i take what i would consider an exceptional photograph i know that it was me, my efforts that made it possible. Not that the DSLR is all bad but it is designed to help me not fail as a photographer.

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I swear, im not an Apple Fan Boy…

So i did it.

I got the new iPhone. i told myself that was not going t o, that it was too important for me that the Android operating system was more open and available to more manufactures and therefore better, more diverse, and was going to take over the planet and crush apple to dust as Microsoft did to the apple II in the late 80′s and early 90′s however i did it anyway. this Jewel like shiny piece of glass and metal is just too shiny for me to fight it with any reason or meaningful explanation that i can conjure.

while i still think that the eventuality of apple loosing the battle against the more open platform is coming and Apple will face it someday soon. (I’m guessing around the release of the next iPhone next July the signs will be very hard to dismiss.) i think that for this round i will stick with them. not out of a driving need to fit in but the polish, durability and feel of the iPhone in this generation is really hard to ignore. the device feels like what it should. the competitors offerings feel like toy cars all plastic and clicky… they are on the whole not even close to the quality feel of the iPhone. infect, when holding the new 4G in one hand and a Vertu (Nokia’s premium brand of phones available in materials like solid gold and solid platinum) phone in the other you would probably prefer the iPhone over the Vastly more expensive phone not only because it works better but feels equally if not better constructed.

I’m certainly not a fan boy for apple just for quality design and innovation. i have a Toshiba laptop as opposed to an Apple MacBook, and a Windows Home Server instead of a Apple TimeCapsule.

in essence i think that this is more like a competition, apple keeps winning every year however each year more and more teams are getting to compete. eventually someone else is going to win and i don’t see Apples way back into the contest once that happens.

iPhone user 23,200,276 signing out.

Toshiba Satellite T115 Series 11.6-Inch Laptop Review

T115

Great Laptop, wish it was more durable., I have a T115 and i love it. I had an ACER aspire One with the Atom N270 processor and the battery only lasted for about 3 hours. (half way from ATL to LAX which was unacceptable.) As i make 6+ hour flights all the time i needed something with the battery power to get it done. The T115 really meets my travel related needs. The battery lasts at least 8.5 hours each time i have used it. The ergonomics of the 11.6″ form factor are almost the same as my full sized laptop. (my ACER was the 8.9″ 1024×600 screen resolution was trying at times…)

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Microsoft Courting iPhone Developers… Has Apple gone too far?

bad apple

Just over one year ago Apple announced the App Store and told developers that their new platform was going to offer developers the ability to make applications that could do almost anything! As we sit here a year later we now know that is not the case as Apple rejects apps based on what can only be described as murky rules that change based on what apps are submitted such as in the case of Google’s VOIP app.

After speculation that AT&T asked that Google’s app not be allowed onto the app store the matter is being further investigated by the FCC. None-the-less this is not sitting well with the one demographic that Apple should care the most about. iPhone owners…

There are countless blogs spewing rants about Apple and how the company rejected an App offering a feature that they were looking forward to. This creates unrest in an otherwise extremely loyal base of customers. Even worse is the moths of development that many of the coders have spent on working on apps that seemingly meet Apple’s rules only to get rejected for what seems to be emotional reasons on the part of Apple and their partners.

Now enter Microsoft, with a new way for angry and confused iPhone developers to recycle their code by porting their software to windows Mobile. This move from Microsoft allows them to play catch up with other mobile platforms and creates good will with App Store developers by allowing them to salvage months of work and effort spent on software previously rejected by Apple. Microsoft has also announced that their app store offering will be available for older versions of Windows Mobile giving cross-over developers access to a new user base of over 30 million windows Mobile devices.

So i guess we will see if this move from Microsoft enables a change of heart in Apple’s hard line dealings with App Store developers…

read more: Microsoft Courting iPhone Developers — Windows Marketplace For Mobile — InformationWeek.