For the first time in three years, I pulled my bike out of the basement and got it running again. I just went on a quick bike ride today to make sure everything was still working OK, heading along the Mystic River. Medford has some nice trails there in Mystic Riverbend Park, and you can continue underneath 16 over to MDC’s reservation and a tower overlooking the Boston skyline. This is all within a mile and a half of my house. I recorded some video clips along the way.
The Google Latitude iPhone app recently updated with more efficient battery usage while running in the background so I’ve been running it this week to see how well it works. Impressively I barely notice a difference to my battery life most of the day when I am at home or work, Google must slow GPS updates when it knows I haven’t moved for a while. On a computer, you can search your history – the photo above shows my activity for the last few days. Unfortunately the iPhone version still does not have auto-check in. It sure would be nice for it to automatically check you in not only on Google but Foursquare, Facebook, Yelp, and the rest of them. It’s all just another not very useful but fun feature of Google/iPhone.
Halfway through 2010 I upgraded from an iPhone 3G with a non-focusing low-quality camera that most apps would not support, to an iPhone 4 with a much more impressive camera. I quickly started downloading various photography apps, starting with the popular Hipstamatic. If you’ve done the same you know how easy it is to create artistic photos of everyday life. So every once in a while I would snap a photo of something interesting, and use various apps to transform it to a style I often envisioned when first taking the photo. The list of apps would build as time went on, sometimes I couldn’t remember which I used by the time I felt done with an image.
My iPhone now has three folders crammed with photo apps, including Hipstamatic, Pro HDR, Camera+, SlowShutter, Panorama 360 for shooting; Iris Photo Suite, Photomatix, BlurFX, TiltShiftGen for editing. But the fun is really in the vintage-styling apps like Infinicam, Lo-Mob, PictureShow, Pic Grunger, and more.
So click for a slideshow containing the photos from 2010 that I thought were post-worthy. On a side note, this new gallery format uses HTML5 and supports swiping on the iPhone and iPad. You will be seeing more of this in 2011.
Last friday was one of several snowy commutes that I’ve had in January, and I realized my normal dash mount allowed the iPhone’s camera a view of the road. So I recorded a few clips, if you feel like experiencing the crawl of traffic with me.
The video was shot vertically in portrait mode, as my iphone normally sits there running INRIX Traffic while driving. I was wondering what effort I would need to go through to rotate and crop the video, which is beyond the capabilities of iMovie on the computer. But a new free iPhone video editing app just came out that allowed me to do so very easily: Splice. In fact I’d say it is easier to use than iMovie for iPhone. Sadly it is currently prone to bugs and crashes (you MUST add transitions to get around export errors). But the price is right, and I’m sure it will be improved soon. It’s great to be able to shoot and edit together clips without ever leaving your phone-in fact 720tube lets you upload in full resolution, so there’s truly no need for a computer.
