Language barriers, there's an app for that.

I just came back from Barcelona. As I don't speak Spanish, I had a hard time communicating with Spanish people, as their English is not that good. After a couple of these situations I remembered that there is an app for that. Well, not one, but many... hundreds even, almost for any language. Language translators, dictionaries, text to speech, etc. are just some phrases one can search for these kind of apps on the web, the iStore and Google Play (formerly known as Android Market). Anyone with a smart phone can download these apps to their device and start using them in seconds. It is not the most elegant solution, nor the fastest, but it can get you out of some tough situations which are based on language differences. Text-to-speech translators are especially useful if you have no clue how to pronounce the words... just push that button and let your device do the talking. Some applications work both ways. For example, if you present a question to the other person, he can answer it in his own language right into your device's microphone. The the application on your device will then process the answer, translate it and read it out loud back to you (which can be especially useful for blind people, for example). 

These sort of applications are bringing different cultures closer together. They are, by no means, a substitute for knowing a language, but can be useful for tourists across the globe. They can get you out of some tough situations. We are basically carrying most of the world's dictionaries and languages in our pockets these days, thanks to mobile technology and the web. 

Google has begun testing their latest invention, augmented reality glasses, or Project Glass as they call it. Among many of it's features, imagine walking the streets of a foreign country and letting the glasses translate the signs, menus, and other signalisation which a foreigner might have trouble understanding. That is the future and some day we will all walk around with augmented reality devices which will do the translating for us. Pretty cool. 

In an instant

I just got back from a conference in Portorož, Slovenia. As a photographer I occasionally work for http://www.finance-akademija.si/, which is a business academy run by Finance, a financial newspaper here in Slovenia. When I first started doing these jobs, photographing the events, I was surprised how active the PR team of the organizers was. I got used to it by now, but it was hard work back then (and still is sometimes). Let me elaborate (once again I am going to bring the internet into the story).

I don't know how this was done back in the days, in the era before the internet as we know it today, but things run quite a bit differently these days, I presume. Most of the time, as a photographer, I am present in the show room where the lectures are going on. I take pictures of speakers, the audience and basically everything else which catches my eye. As soon as a section of lectures and case studies finishes, I get a call from the PR lady asking for photos so they can put them on display on their website. The photos are on the website merely minutes, if not seconds, after I take them (mind you that I don't have the equipment to wirelessly transfer photos from my camera to a computer, otherwise it would be even faster). Everything is done almost instantaneously. Before the speaker finishes his presentation, he is already on the web for others to see. I don't know how PR articles were written before the internet era and how long it took to publish them, but I will surely ask the organizers of these events the next time I see them.

The point I am trying to make is that we are living in a instantaneous world these days. Everything has to be done right away, as soon as possible. The sooner, the better. The web made this possible, with the digitalisation of data. Data, in any form, can be sent across the world in seconds. If we look at the case I just described, the time to publish PR articles has decreased dramatically. I imagine the articles were published in the next day's newspaper, together with rolls of film containing negatives of the photographs which had to be taken to the editors (or sent via the postal services) and developed. So basically we are talking half a day's time, more or less, at it's best. Today, this takes a couple of seconds. Instant data.

Everything happens faster these days, which in my mind is a product of new media. We strive to make things faster so we can do more work. The tempo of life has increased radically and our society has adopted this new way of hyper production. It seems that things were quite simpler back in the days. Me, I am a product of this hyper world, as I grew up with the web, so it is hard for me to compare both eras. Nevertheless, I often hear stories of my parents and other older folks how things were less stressful back then. And quite frankly, this worries me a bit. The previous generation has experienced this cultural shock in later phases of their life. We were brought up with it basically from our childhood. And the world isn't slowing down, on the contrary, things are beginning to roll even faster as technologies advance. Will we cope with all this? Will we adapt the same way the previous generation did? Hard to say.

I have always said that I will try to cope with technology until my time comes and that I will not be overrun by it. But I am not so certain any more to be honest. I guess that depends on what kind of a person you are, but with all the technological breakthroughs it will surely be a challenge. Can the world get any faster than it already is? Sure. But when will it stop? Will it stop at all? We'll just have to wait and see.

This is the end of this post. After I click the "publish" button I have to perform my online check-in for my flight to Barcelona tomorrow, so I don't have to wait in line at the airport.

Using Twitter to engage audiences

Micro blogging is on the rise in the last couple of years. One of the more known micro blogging platforms, Twitter, has been used on one hand for engaging audiences to participate in debates and showcased on traditional media (mostly television), and on the other hand to produce news material for journalists across the globe - we see a rise of politicians as well as political parties using Twitter to spread news of their activity, especially during election campaigns, which is a great, quick source of information for journalists.

Media and journalism in general is being evolved through the use of Twitter and other micro blogging sites. For example, broadcasting companies use Twitter to engage their audiences to participate and express their views, beliefs, rants, etc., and be heard (well, read actually) - many shows nowadays feature a live Twitter feed at the bottom of the screen where messages from Twitter users regarding that topic are displayed (user use hash tags in front of their keywords regarding a certain topic, to be filtered to a news feed where a debate is going on... for example #newmediaandsociety, #twitter, #microblogging in this case). A good example of engaging audiences that I came across lately is the NBA half time show on TNT. They regularly give shout outs to people who participate on Twitter regarding a certain topic. The hosts will select a post which is suitable to be aired, read it out loud, say from which user it was from and then debate over that topic for a while. This is a great use to engage users during the show. Only a really small percent will be selected, of course, but users have the tendency to pursue their 5 minutes of fame on national television and thus engage in the debate. Instant content for the broadcasting companies and a happy user who feels has a saying? Sounds like a win-win situation to me. I think Twitter will be used more and more this way in the years to come.

Digital darkroom on steroids

The desktop publishing giant, Adobe, has just put out the beta version of Photoshop CS6, the latest in the Photoshop series. I have recently tested it and it's new features are truly great and make the designer's/photographer's job a lot easier in some ways - it is often said that time is money - and the new PS6 can save you quite some time.

Here are some of the new features of PS6, explained to us by Russell Brown, the senior creative director at Adobe (notice the similar narrating tone and enthusiasm often seen at Apple's Keynotes presented by the late Steve Jobs - everything is truly wonderful, amazing, superb... and other superlative adjectives. Is this helping promote the product in anyway or do the majority of people find it, well, redundant?)



Anyway, the desktop publishing software has come a long way since it's early days. The sotware is becoming ever more powerful and easier to use. Not only is the time which is needed to get the job done getting shorter, the process is becoming easier to master as well. I'm not saying that no knowledge is needed to become a desktop publisher nowadays, I am trying to point out hat the tools of the trade are becoming more powerful and easier to use. Especially, when you take a bad photo (blurry for example, due to the movement of the camera/subject). It is now easier than ever to correct that blurriness (this feature is not available in the beta version, but is said to be included in the final product). One simply enters a command and let the complicated computer algorithms do the rest. It was once nearly impossible for a "mere mortal" to correct such a mistake. That being said, Adobe is bringing desktop publishing to the masses. The products are still expensive (when you go for the full package with all the functionality available), but let's be honest, many people will download the cracked version and Adobe are well aware of that.

In these days, disregarding other factors such as financial crisis and the saturation of human resources on this field (probably due to the software's ease of use as well), it is now easier than ever to become a self employed desktop publisher.

Here is a clip of how digital retouching was done back in the day. Obsolete? Maybe, for today's standards. Dare we think of how the process was done before the age of the computers?

Phony 2012?

My last blog post was about the viral video Kony 2012. I have to say I was a bit sceptical when I first saw the video but didn't think much of it at that time. I was watching it go viral for a couple of days as it's popularity became stronger and stronger. Then I came across this video by David Childerley who expressed his thoughts on the video, basically saying it was fake and that it just might have been the new 9/11 if it were to succeed. As the activists have a fair share of politicians on board, he suggests that interests of bankers might be behind the project (the same way as it turned out in the case of 9/11).

I must say that this guy has a point, now that I think about it. Could this really be an excuse for the US (and it's leaders, political as well as interest groups) to deploy troops in a foreign country again? We can not be sure if this is the case, as we can not say for certain as in the case of 9/11 (there still is no hard evidence for the 9/11 actions to be a politically planned action to invade the East for oil, as far as I know). But the Kony case does have similarities, doesn't it? One of the main differences is that 9/11 came at the brink of the millenium and Kony some 11 years later. Not a huge time span there if we shine light on it from a classical perspective. But when you think about it how the world wide web has evolved in that time, we get to see the big picture, why Kony might fail before it even starts to become reality. People all over the world are connected nowadays via the web, much more so than back in 2001. The power of connectedness is obvious in the revealing of this "scam" (let us presume, for the sake of this blog post and the point I am trying to make, that it is indeed a scam) as thousand if not millions have changed their perspective on the Phony case and might have stopped another disaster from happening. As I see it, as well as David Childerlay, this is the power of today's social networks and the internet.

Is the era of manipulation on the grand scale coming to an end? I do not dare to predict it, as people will always find a way to manipulate with the masses, but one thing is for sure... we sure will make it harder for them.

KONY 2012

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4MnpzG5Sqc

A friend of mine shared a video on Facebook today, Kony 2012. First I was sceptical and thought "Right, just another help Africa propaganda clip" but decided to watch it anyway. And I was pleasantly surprised. It supports and acts on the idea of stopping Joseph Kony from conducting crimes against humanity in Uganda. Half way through, the video got me thinking. It is stated that Facebook is becoming a borderless state of some sort, which, if combined, would be bigger than the USA (as far as the number of users goes). According to Facebook's statistics the community is more than 845 million strong. It is also stated in the video that the world as we know it is changing. The people are rallying up and starting to demand change. Online communities are a great way to do so. Many successful campaigns have prospered due to people connecting over the web, from all over the world. Is this really becoming a world-changer? Are we witnessing some sort of a new politics and world government forming before our eyes (on our monitors)?
"The internet" has a voice in today's world and is becoming ever so louder. A prime example of people stepping up and forming an idea-driven order is the IPP - the International Pirate Party. The Pirate Party has managed to enter the German parliament - talk about power of will and new media.

I bet we will be seeing more and more cases like the IPP and Kony2012, all thanks to the new world superpower - the web.

Remember analogue? I'll just google it on my super device...

Born in 1986, I was raised into the digital world. I am the generational link between the analogue and the digital. I still remember when my father first brought home a personal computer. It was a "386" something something... we set it up in the living room, next to the television. It had a "turbo" button which did absolutely nothing. Me and my sister used to quarrel over who is going to use it at a certain time... now look at us now. I have my own PC and she has her own Mac, along with multiple other gadgets which were just a dream once. Much has changed in the last couple of decades, especially electronic gadgets for personal use. Not only have they gotten faster and smarter, some completely new and ones have burst onto the market as well (tablet PCs for example) . And what is common to them all? Digital imaging. Today, almost every phone, laptop, tablet PC, music player.... you name it... it has a digital camera built into it.

Why am I writing this? Because yesterday, Nokia announced a new smartphone (or camera phone as they call it) with a mind boggling 41 Megapixel Camera Phone. This is beyond the standard smartphone with a "decent" camera built into it. This is the story of the true convergence of technologies... digital technologies. A couple of decades ago few dared to dream about having a digital camera for personal use, or a personal mobile phone for that matter (the first digital camera was invented by Kodak's Steve Sasson in 1975 and the first commercial telephone call was made in 1973, by Martin Cooper). Now, almost everyone has one or the other, most have both which is not surprising as, again, smartphones nowadays have cameras built into them. Nokia's new camera phone is, in my opinion, the future of digital imaging for the regular consumer (excluding serious photographers) as it combines the best of the two, a smart phone with a digital camera which has never before seen capabilities regarding image quality which is comparable to state of the art compact digital cameras. Point and shoot digital cameras might therefore become a thing of the past.

Not only have the devices changed, so have the digital-imaging related services online. Everyone can upload and share their photos with a click of a button. If photography was once a process (taking the photo, not knowing exactly what you captured or if the image would turn out okay, going to the photo lab to pick up the photos and being surprised/disappointed, then showing the photos to others) then we might call today's photography - instantaneous. One can immediately see if the photo turned out okay and share it with everyone via services such as Facebook, Flickr, Google etc.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that this is a bad thing... but the process has certainly changed dramatically. The principles of making a good photo still apply though... but the phases after one has taken the photo will never be the same again.

And what does the future hold for us? It's hard to say, but Nokia's new cameraphone might hold a glimpse of what is about to come. The integration of multiple devices into one super device perhaps? We will see... I might stumble upon this post in a couple of decades on one of these super devices and think to myself: "Remember digital?"