Next generation of smartphones arrives

Next generation of smartphones arrives

We’re sick of the iPhone, too. Despite antenna issues, Draconian app store rules and an engineered inability to run Flash content, Apple’s flagship smartphone has done to the smartphone market what the Romans once did to Europe.
The good news: Now a marauding horde of smartphone manufacturers under the flag of Google Android are back for their turf, and they’re not just cobbling together iPhone-wannabes anymore. From the world’s first dual-screen smartphone to a phone with all the processing power of a laptop – and a dock that turns it into one – these next-generation smartphones will all bring something totally unique to the battlefield when they arrive soon.

LG Optimus 2x

The pitch: Two is always better than one, which makes the LG Optimus 2x, the world’s first dual-core smartphone, quite a catch. Nvidia’s hotrod Tegra 2 processor enables rich gaming, fluid multitasking and even 1080p video capture. With the HDMI output, you can hook it up to your TV and watch movies on the big screen, in 1080p.
Skeptic’s slant: Apps have to be specially developed to take advantage of the dual-core design, which means few of them will really tap into what the Optimus 2x can do at launch.
Availability: Rumors have the Optimus 2x launching in late March or early April, but LG will launch the Optimus 2x as a “world phone.” That means it won’t be showing up at the store down the street with a hefty subsidy like phones that carriers officially adopt – you’ll have to snag it online, without a contract, for a hefty sum.

Motorola Atrix 4G

The pitch: Plug Motorola’s Atrix 4G into its optional dock and the humble smartphone becomes a 13-inch notebook, giving you a full-size screen, keyboard, and even a separate battery to charge the phone as it sits.
Skeptic’s slant: The optional laptop dock will cost you $500, and because it doesn’t run Windows 7, it does a lot less than a $350 netbook would.
Availability: AT&T will open the Atrix 4G for preorder on February 13, and begin shipping units March 6 or earlier. The phone itself runs for $199 with a two-year contract.

Kyocera Echo

The pitch: When the Echo’s little 3.5-inch touchscreen starts to feel a little cramped, slide it apart and a second identical screen rises up to meet it, providing a combined 4.7 inches of glowing LCD. The two screens allow you to browse side-by-side websites, read an e-mail in one screen while you reply in another, and even play games like The Sims where one screen acts as a controller, similar to the Nintendo DS.
Skeptic’s slant: Not many apps will work with the dual-screen functionality right off the bat, and running two screens at once will cost you big time on battery life.
Availability: Sprint will offer the Echo for preorder within the next few weeks for $199 with contract, but it won’t begin shipping until spring.

Samsung Infuse 4G

The pitch: With a whopping 4.5-inch Super AMOLED Plus Screen and a body as deep as a pencil, the Infuse 4G will be both the largest and thinnest phone in AT&T’s portfolio. Thanks to HSPA+ 4G, it will also be one of the fastest on the network. And did we mention it shoots 1080p video?
Skeptic’s slant: Sprint’s 4.3-inch EVO 4G already dropped jaws (and stretched pockets) with its screen size. Is a 4.5-inch screen on a phone really practical?
Availability: Samsung’s Infuse 4G will arrive in the second quarter of 2011 exclusively on AT&T.

HTC ThunderBolt

The pitch: Verizon’s first 4G LTE handset will also be the first to support Skype-to-Skype video – with or without Wi-Fi. No more clambering around to find a hotspot when you want to videoconference, and being limited to friends with Facetime. It packs the same jumbo-sized 4.3-inch LCD and 8-megapixel camera as Sprint’s EVO 4G.
Skeptic’s slant: It’s warmed-over EVO 4G on Verizon. On second thought, maybe that’s not such a bad thing after all.
Availability: Rumors once pointed to a Valentine’s Day release, but the latest leaked documents now show “no ETA.”

Most Provocative X-Rays Pinup Calendar

“Miss September” wears stiletto heels as she strikes a pose for the Eizo X-ray pinup calendar.

It seems there is always someone thinking up new ways to shock us. This year’s pin-up calendar features X-rayed not X-rated girls. Yes, you heard me right. Bizarre but true. This 2010 pin-up calendar is the weird brain child of a German advertising agency called Butter. The idea was to promote Eizo’s high-precision displays for medical imaging so they used X-rays to shoot the pin-up models.
The Butter Agency declares that “pin-ups are more often found in auto garages rather than in medical offices.” I’ll say. “Eizo breaks this taboo,” Butter boasts. “This pinup calendar shows absolutely every detail.”

Their ad promotion made quite a splash on the Coloribus ad archive recently. Ever since these bizarre pin-up photos have been making their rounds on the Internet like the bizarre version of a Playboy centerfold.
Apparently, this calendar is a promotion only kind of thing and is not available as an actual calendar though certainly plenty of guys have tried to procure one. When several emailed the company: “Sorry, you can’t get it here. However, we appreciate the impact it has had on Eizo’s U.S. brand recognition,” the company wrote back.
What’s next? First we have skeletal thin fashion models because of eating disorders and the beauty world’s pressure to be too thin. Now we are gonna X-ray them too for display as pin-ups?

Miss January

Miss February

Miss March

 Miss April

Miss May

 Miss June

 Miss July

 

Miss August

 Miss Sepetember

 Miss October

 Miss November

 Miss Decemeber

10 European Anti-crisis cars

apple!

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When I was a teenager I babysat on Saturday nights. The mom of three boys across the street hired me for around $1.50 an hour. They were good boys who played hard and fell immediately to sleep when I tucked them in bed. The oldest boy was busted up badly when hit by a car while riding his bike on our quiet street one day, but not on my babysitting watch, thank God. The image of his mother running down the street with terror freezing her face, toward him lying on the pavement next to his curled bicycle is a permanent negative image in my mind. Thankfully he recovered fully from all those broken limbs. Oh, cherished little ones we entrust to babysitters! It's almost too frightening to think of it. How fragile, and how life changing a minute can be. Such responsibility.

One mother I babysat for managed to get me to watch her two energetic kids, plus feed a third - a baby in a high chair - and do the ironing for that amount. I think I only worked for her once. The money wasn't much, but it gave me a small amount of cash for a movie or a vanilla phosphate at the drug store (otherwise I raided my mom's wallet - brazen!). There was something else I hoped for at the houses where I watched kids. The parents were always nice and said what was in the cupboards and fridge was mine. (You might know by now that I love food.) Oh I remember babysitting my nephews Todd and Eric once, after my sister Nancy had made fried rosemary chicken for their dinner. She made enough for me, and I can still taste the bliss on my tongue. Usually I wasn't quite that fortunate, but the one snack I did hope for was a good apple. You see, my dad was as frugal as they came. This meant that he bought boxes of overripe fruit from under the counter at Horrock's, our local produce market. They'd put apples under there that were starting to soften and bruise, and they were cheap. Dad would put them in the fridge's crisper drawer (hopeful!), and within a few days the whole fridge started smelling like fermenting apples. This was my life. Me. A lover of a good apple, doomed to smell bad ones and never eat them. Except when I went to babysit. I might get paid eight bucks for the night, but if a good, crunchy, fresh apple was given as a bonus, I felt I was very well compensated. That frugal father of mine, bless him, had plenty of cash in the bank to loan us when we needed a down payment for a house - I'm grateful! But I just wanted a good apple.

By the way, I just made the shift from a PC to a MacBook Pro. Fresh!

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posterization

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My brother Bennett, who died in 1996, would be gaga over technology now. He had a personal computer before most people and was close friends with one of the early technicians of the Internet (no, not Al Gore). Besides being a computer geek he was a stellar amateur photographer who serves as inspiration for everyone in my family who takes pictures. As a 14-year-old I sat on the floor of our parents' living room spellbound watching slides from his college trip to Europe in 1970, especially captivated by Lautterbrunnen, Switzerland, a tiny hamlet in the narrowest and deepest valley in the world at the foot of the Jungfrau. (I was so smitten I took the same study abroad trip five years later.) Then after he graduated college he used to stay up all night developing photographs in the dark room he'd set up in Mom and Dad's basement.

One of my favorite projects was when he posterized photos, including one he took of Rembrandt's Dutchmasters painting in Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum. The original is above, and Bennett's posterized image is at the right. It's very 1970s-looking. (Sorry, my photo of it has some lamp flare.)

Posterization - which can be intentional or not - is when tones that are gradual in a photo become more abrupt and distinct with flat areas of contrast. When it happens by accident and is unwanted, it's called "banding." When it's intentional, think Andy Warhol's silkscreen of Marilyn Monroe, below. Actually the process of posterization reminds me of silkscreening.

When Bennett did posterization purposely in his dark room, he had to create several separate high contrast negatives and positives for each layer of contrast. It took hours to create one posterized image. The negatives and positives have to be paired and aligned on the photographic paper. I remember several piles of discarded attempts with misaligned layers of color scattered around the darkroom floor.

I often wonder if Bennett were alive, what he would think of digital cameras and digital photo processing. He was so fastidious about his film images, would he have chafed at the easy manipulations I do on PhotoShop and picnik? And would he prefer that particular quality of film that is lost in digital? I appreciate film photographs, but I'm grateful I don't have to practice on film and can delete thousands of digital images without a care for expense.

My preference for a photograph is an image as close to what the eye sees as possible, but it is also fun to play with processing and create an image that enhances what you see in some way. I almost always adjust levels of light and dark and contrast before posting photographs.

Here is an untouched digital photograph of a clematis flower on our farm.















This second image is after cropping it in PhotoShop to make a more pleasing composition (although I kinda like it uncropped too), adjusting levels of light and dark, as well as some highlight/shadow adjustment. Then on picnik I used the Orton effect then desaturated it a little.

Below is my posterization of the clematis flower done on picnik. Still at picnik I added frames and then did that "tearing up" of the frame I like doing on PhotoScape.

I recognize and appreciate beauty in other people's work that I will probably never replicate - either because I lack their imaginative powers (for instance rauf for his eye, skill and human connection, and Claudia, for her craft, composition and imagination), or because their style isn't my style, though I might still love their work, like Garry Winogrand.

I am not a trained photographer. I use "auto" settings most of the time and am hopeless at learning the rules about aperture and the rest. The way pianists "play by ear" I "shoot by eye"with a camera. But until I take Photography 101, I guess passing a quiz isn't important.

If you want to play and pay use Adobe PhotoShop, or you can use free downloads like PhotoScape and online tools such as picnik. There are many other tools, and if you use one and want to share, please leave info in a comment.

Here is a quote from David Bailey (extraordinary work), to remind myself (but not to reflect negatively on my dear painter friends who need insight and imagination too):

It takes a lot of imagination to be a good photographer. You need less imagination to be a painter because you can invent things. But in photography everything is so ordinary; it takes a lot of looking before you can learn to see the extraordinary.

Here is Bennett in a rare photo.

Man, I wish I could talk with him.

ode to brown

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It's possible that one reason I am drawn to old treasures, the earth included, is a love of brown. Ah leather-bound book, let me feel your moist density, antique clock - your wormholes, crinkled white pages - your age spots.

Many colors are enhanced when paired with brown, have you noticed? Pink and white petals edge closer to appear more beautiful.

Bare branches against a blue sky, yellow forsythia blossoms on a khaki twig, a chocolate calf saddled in white lace teetering in a grassy field.

There is the glow of polished mahogany, copper, brass and hand thrown pottery, or the fleeciness of pussy willow buds, striped feathers, fur and corduroys. How about the smooth shine of knotty pine, or a button? Crisp texture of dried leaves or timeless yet changing shades of rock formations, the depth and layers of a squirrel perched on a tree hanging over a silty river. The deep, rich stripes of a farmer's furrows.

In the popularity of all things vintage, sepia photographs enjoy a major comeback. Is it because in the proliferation of technology we crave nostalgia?

Ironic, isn't it, that new technologies such as Adobe Photoshop and Photoshop Lightroom help us turn our images back to an aesthetic created within the limitations of older technologies, before color photography was available to the public?

Our son Peter, in the middle above, in an image he processed in Lightroom, and his grandmother (my mom) below in a Bachrach portrait.

Dear brown, you recede and calm me, belying the life moving in you.

~ ~ ~ ~

Don and I are off to NYC Thursday for five days with our Lesley and Brian - HAPPY DAYS. I'll catch up with you soon!

flaxination

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After months of bundling up, it's comforting to look ahead to summer when I'll be skipping to the laundry line in loose linen clothes. I know, I know, I've been posting lots of winter praise, but I confess my shoulders ache with tension from bracing for the outdoors. This is my Filene's Basement $7 linen skirt, which I wore hanging laundry last summer for Peter to shoot a laundry line series on my first Holga film roll.

The linen for those summer clothes is made from flax of course. I didn't realize what a labor intensive process flax-to-linen is until I read about pulling, stacking, swingling, rippling, retting, scutching, heckling, spinning and weaving here. It's done mostly by machine now, but you can see Egyptians in these images growing and processing flax for linen. Do you suppose they ironed their linen garments? That would be an interesting frame added to these Egyptian collages.

We will be using another product made from flax when we install old fashioned linoleum squares in our bathroom. What appealed to us about linoleum (unlike vinyl) is that it is made from linseed - flax - and is natural and biodegradable.

Ingesting flax is good for you too. I take flax seed oil supplements for their high levels of lignans (chemicals that act as antioxidants) and Omega 3 fatty acids. There are wide-ranging health benefits against diabetes, heart disease, cancer and maybe Crohn's disease.

I was surprised to read about the "This Way" bike at boingboing. It's made from flax, but it looks like wood. I can just see myself riding this Big Wheel for adults on country roads to work. Nice thought actually.

I am humbled by new technologies as well as ancient processes that I know nothing about from experience. Friends like Gwen have sheered sheep and spun the fleece into wool, then knitted it into garments. She would not surprise me at all if she told me she has processed flax into linen.

Hands, hands, what are you doing? I think I live too much in my head.

Technology overload vs. the world in a cup

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I've been trying to read books and printed articles as a balance to online surfing. The nagging voice to "read more books" (sometimes through friends in kind and subtle ways) is finally taking hold. The excuse that my eyes are too sleepy at the end of the day is getting ignored as long as it's before 8:30.

So it was great to find an interview with Nicholas Carr (author of Does IT Matter?) in The Sun (see Carr's blog and home page too), titled "Computing the Cost." It's about how the Internet is rewiring our brains. (The entire March 2009 issue of The Sun is about technology and its effects on us.) By the way, I read the print version.

Apparently we use different parts of our brains for reading a book or other print materials than for reading online. Carr refers to the book iBrain, by Gary Small who studied two dozen people, half of whom had little Internet experience, and half of whom had a lot. Dr. Small and his colleague scanned their brains while they searched the Internet, resulting in different patterns of brain activity. The subjects with little Internet experience showed activity in language, memory and visual centers, typical of someone reading. The experienced Internet users had more activity in the decision-making areas of the brain. Disturbingly, within a few days of surfing, the previously non-users' brain activity resembled that of the frequent users. I haven't read Small's book, but Carr questions whether we are losing a vital part of our brain function that thinks and synthesizes information.

While reading the interview, first off, I felt pretty good about myself for trudging through The Ambassadors week after week, because I have felt, decisively, that on p. 144 I am more easily grasping content than I did at p. 1 or 10 or even 80. It doesn't really bother me that it's taking so long to get through James' novel, because I'm getting through it. And I am finding it possible to sit for longer periods reading it too. Thirty minutes is longer than 15. And 60 is longer than 30. That's about what I'm up to, 30-60.

Second, I recognized that when it comes to information, more is not necessarily better. While access to oceans of information is great on one hand, on the other, a) it is overwhelming and b), as Carr says, we are becoming big flat pancakes with lots and lots of facts in our heads and at our fingertips, but losing deeper thinking skills. If I read a political story, then read four blogs about it, did I give myself a chance to reflect on the event? And what influence will government or other agencies use to control me one day, if I am too reliant on this medium?

Clearly, the Internet's value to become more informed about current affairs, geography, history, literature, the environment, ways to help and not least, meeting friends around the world, is vast. And by limiting information intake I don't mean I want to close my eyes to the world's problems.

I'd like to contain the world in a cup, which of course isn't possible. But I don't mind keeping my world smaller than the Internet and its Googles and Wikis want to pull me into. I think a deeper, more focused world is a richer one.