The only High Dynamic Range (HDR) images I like are the ones whose tags I have to consult to discover that they were so constructed. Every new tool brings a period of wild experimentation after which we either rewrite the rulebook or reassert the old rules. We’re coming out of that experimental period with HDR and the photography rulebook seems remarkably resilient. Photography is simply not about the technology. Since the geeks comprehensively colonised the ...

I was wondering aloud on Twitter today if, given Apple’s cash on hand, the company might choose to make Snow Leopard either free or very low-cost. Over the history of Mac OS X, the installed base has adopted new OS releases at a very impressive rate. From the data available from Omni Group, this appears to have dramatically slowed with Leopard: in nearly a year since Leopard’s introduction, it is still not used by the ...

I love programming UIKit. It’s really slick and, although it’s lacking a few things that I would really like to have, it’s already very powerful. In UIKit programming, the table is fundamental. Almost anything you see that appears in rows on the iPhone is data within a UITableView object. The iPhone does not support Cocoa Bindings, Apple’s technology for automatically synchronising the model and view layers of your application. This means we’re back to the ...

I will never write another iPhone application for the App Store as currently constituted*. Writing software is a serious investment of time and energy. It also carries the opportunity cost of the other things you could have built. We live in a capitalist economy. Under capitalism, profit is the reward for economic risk. Without a reasonable expectation of profit, the sensible business-person will not invest. Without investment and risk-taking, there is no innovation. Apple’s current ...

I teach Computing to children and in education there are many Computing terms that we rarely use outside the classroom. For example, we say IT in the real world but ICT (Information and Communications Technology) in school. One term that I think is useful but little used outside of the classroom is General Purpose Package. A GPP is any application which is of little use or interest until you input your own information, such as ...

Finally it’s here. I’ve uploaded the first public beta version of FlickrExport 3. Please visit the beta page and watch a brief screencast of the major new features in FlickrExport 3. To summarise, these are: Routing photos to multiple groups. The ability to store a collection of group additions and recall them for later use (e.g. “Send to all my Black and White groups”) A new photoset creation UI which lets you set the photoset ...