TWiP #204 – iCloud, Twitter, & Nikon

On this episode of TWiP, rumor and speculation around Apple's iCloud, Nikon sues Sigma over VR patents, and Twitter unveils photo and video sharing.

Hosts: Frederick Van Johnson, Alex Lindsay, Steve Simon, Ron Brinkmann

NEWS & DISCUSSION

Apple Set to Announce iCloud at WWDC
Apple is holding it's annual Worldwide Developer's Conference this week and is poised to release details on it's newest cloud service known as iCloud. The panel speculates on what this service will include and what importance this new service will be to photographers. Ron and Frederick use Dropbox for the majority of their online storage needs so they would love to see Apple try to come out with something better but are doubtful that they will based on their track record with cloud services (e.g. Mobile Me).

Alex currently uses his .MAC account in conjunction with Aperture for his most important images. He also uses Back to My Mac and LogMeIn for remote access. Alex thinks that if you're not using iPhoto or Aperture then the iCloud service won't be as seamless but thinks it will still be possible.

Steve would love to have a hard drive in the sky that is as easy to use as a hard drive connected to your computer. He uses Dropbox mainly for sharing large files with clients.

1923 Leica O-Series fetches 1.89 Million at Auction
A 1924 Leica O-Series camera was recently auctioned off in Austria to a private Asian collector for 1,300,000 Euros or approximately 1.89 Million US dollars making it the most expensive camera on record. If Steve was rich he would think about investing in vintage cameras. He did recently bought the first camera he ever had on eBay for nostalgic reasons.

Even if Frederick was a billionaire, he would be hard pressed to spend that much on a camera. Ron primarily collects books and has a couple of old cameras that his dad had but that is the extent of his collection.

Nikon Suing Sigma over VR Technology
Nikon has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Sigma over their use of VR technology. This comes on the heels of public backlash over the announcement of pricing for their SD1 APS-C camera at $9700. Ron thinks that there are a limited number of ways to develop image stabilization so there is a high likelihood of stepping on another companies patent.

Steve points out that Nikon was the first to come out with VR technologies and other companies can license it so that is where the real value in their company comes from. The new VR II lenses from Nikon will give you up to 4 additional stops.

Flickr Introduces a 90 Day Grace Period for Deletions
Popular photo sharing site Flickr has instituted a new 90 day grace period for accounts that are deleted either by Flickr or by a user's decision.

Previously, when an account was deleted from Flickr it was supposedly gone forever with no way to recover it but after a couple of widely publicized incidents where Flickr deleted users accounts by accident, they have instituted a new policy where the files will remain on their servers for 90 days before they are deleted.

Ron thinks this was more of an internal policy so that they could recover accounts that they accidentally deleted in the past. Steve met a photographer at Gulf Photo Expo who credits the success of his career on sites like Flickr.

Twitter Unveils Photo & Video Sharing
After several years of leaving photo and videos sharing to third-party services like Twitpic and Yfrog, Twitter finally launched its own version for sharing photos and videos. “A native photosharing experience will be rolled out to 100% of users over the next couple of weeks,” Twitter CEO Dick Costolo told the D9 Conference.

TIPS OF THE WEEK

We've suffered some growing pains with our forums so we've temporarily taken them down until we find a replacement solution. In the meantime, we're bringing back the Tip of the Week feature for the next few shows and we'll bring back the Listener Questions once the forums are back up and running.

Tip #1 – Ron: Watch the movie Blowup (1966) just because it's fun and photography related.  Sort of.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blowup

Tip #2 – Alex: Embrace prime lenses. You'll get a much faster lens and wider apertures.

Tip #3 – Steve: Turn the camera off when you're changing lenses or memory cards. That will prevent any bad things from happening.

Tip #4 – Frederick: Get inspired photographically by music.

PICKS OF THE WEEK

Ron – F4 self-fusing silicone tape

Alex – White Paper Tape & Kata Reflex E Carrying Strap

Steve – Travel light when going out shooting

Frederick – “MicroSTOCK” by Nicole S. Young

WRAP UP

Follow us on twitter.com/ThisWeekInPhoto. Join the Flickr critique group. You can also join our Facebook group.

Steve Simon – www.stevesimonphoto.com or www.twitter.com/stevesimon

Ron Brinkmann – www.digitalcomposting.com or www.twitter.com/ronbrinkmann

Alex Lindsay – www.pixelcorps.tv or www.twitter.com/alexlindsay or www.bordersac.com

Frederick Van Johnson – www.frederickvan.com or www.twitter.com/frederickvan

CREDITS

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Pre-Production and Show notes by Bruce Clarke www.momentsindigital.com or www.twitter.com/bruceclarke

Producer: Suzanne Llewellyn

Bandwidth provided by Cachefly

Intro Music by Scott Cannizzaro