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?