Steve Jobs Impressed by Lytro
On the first episode of GadgetReport.TV, I said Lytro’s light-field camera was my favorite innovation of 2011. A new book called Inside Apple by Adam Lashinsky tells a story that suggest Steve Jobs may have thought the same thing.
The company’s CEO, Ren Ng, a brilliant computer scientist with a PhD from Stanford, immediately called Jobs, who picked up the phone and quickly said, “if you’re free this afternoon maybe we would could get together.” Ng, who is thirty-two, hurried to Palo Alto, showed Jobs a demo of Lytro’s technology, discussed cameras and product design with him, and, at Jobs’s request, agreed to send him an email outlining three things he’d like Lytro to do with Apple.
Who knows if Apple and Lytro reached a deal, but a Lytro can take an immediate photo without the need to focus so it makes sense that Apple would want that tech in future iPhones.
Adam Lashinsky’s new book about Apple is based on interviews with Apple insiders. In 2008 Fortune cover story, Lashinsky predicted Tim Cook would succeed Steve Jobs as Apple CEO. The book is available for pre-order from Amazon.com.
Read MoreHigh Resolution Red Lunar Eclipse Photo
Last week we had a unique eclipse in which Earth’s position between the Sun and Moon cast a shadow that made the Moon appear red. The best place to see the entire eclipse was China. This high resolution composition photo by Wang, Letian shows the eclipse in five stages and begs to be downloaded and used as a desktop wallpaper.
(click the image so see it in glorious ginormosity … and without the ad)
Bacon.TV Bacon Photos
I know what I want to do with Bacon.TV, but I don’t have the money to produce it. It’s better to start where you can than not start at all, so this weekend I shot the first bit for Bacon.TV. I’m editing it right now and thought I’d share some bacon photos I took while filming … glorious, beautiful bacon photos!
To make GREAT bacon, you need to have a cast-iron bacon press. If you LOVE bacon, this is the one I recommend: http://neal.fm/baconpress
Read MoreApple Store, Grand Central 360 Degree Gyroscopic Photo
I would like few things more than to go to New York to visit Apple’s largest store at Grand Central. I’ll get there eventually, but not this year.
Apple took advantage of the gyroscopes it put in recent iDevices to show off how the store fits in the gigantic train terminal. If you have an iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPad 2 or iPod touch 4G, take a minute to open Safari and go to apple.com/retail/grandcentral/ and click the litte box on the bottom left of the photo you see of the new store … the one that says “view more photos.” A photo window will pop up. You can click through photos, but the coolest one is the last one that says 360°.
Tap that on an iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPad 2 or iPod touch 4G and when you move your phone, you’ll get a 360° look at the new Grand Central Apple Store. Pan up and you can look at the constellations on the blue ceiling. It’s like a one-minute mini-vacation for Apple fans.
Read MoreDesaturated Santa
San Francisco has an annual conference called SantaCon. This year a woman who calls herself Brody S. of Berkeley created a grayscale Santa suite and had makeup formulated to match. While hundreds of Santa’s dressed in vibrant red and white surrounded her, she appeared in black and white.
She says no post processing was involved in the production of these photos. Only make-up and care not to smear anything.
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El Dorado, Arkansas Court House
This is one of my favorite photos I took in 2011. It’s the court house in my hometown, El Dorado, Arkansas. I shot it with an iPhone 4 using the Hipstamatic App.
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