Neema's Posterous
when 140 just doesn't cut it.
when 140 just doesn't cut it.
There's a new app for the iPhone that I have been playing with for a little while now and I thought I would share my experience. This is the Hipstamatic photo app and it is a lot of fun to shoot pictures with, because you never know what you're going to end up with. Based on an actual camera by the same name, produced by Bruce and Winston Dorbowski back in the early 80's, the app allows you to combine a selection of lenses, film and flashes to produce an almost infinite array of outcomes for your pictures.
I've been using this app for almost a month now, and it seems like every time I shoot a photo it's something new. Aside from manually selecting your options for lens, film and flash, you can also shake your iPhone while in the app to assemble a random selection or you can even select from your previous photos to use the same settings again.
When you purchase the app you receive an initial selection of lenses, film and flashes, which are more than enough to take some great photos, but if you want to experiment even more, there are also a few other in-app packages you can download to have more options. I think with the initial app and all the extra options you're still looking at no more than six dollars in total, a great deal for such a fun app.
Once you have taken your photos, you can upload them to Facebook and Flickr right from the app, or email them to your friends to show them the cool shots you got. They even have some contests that you can enter your photos in, but I think this area needs some improvement, so we'll see what comes with future updates.
I've included some of my favorite shots here, and you can check out my Flickr page for even more.
There may not be drastic changes that we can see and feel in our everyday lives, but the Obama administration is definitely making progress on the crap that was inherited from the previous eight years. When I see something like this it strengthens my confidence that by the end of his first term, Obama will have made some really impactful changes.
So it looks like Whole Foods is now offering a greater discount to it's leaner and healthier employees. According to a recent article published on Slashfood, all employees receive a 20% discount, but depending on their health levels, they can gain up to a 30% discount. On one hand this is a great incentive to their employees to be conscious of their health in order to receive a greater discount. However, it doesn't help the less healthy employees, who are working for probably not much more than minimum wage, afford the overpriced items that Whole Foods sells.
That's always been a problem I've had with the food industry in America: It costs much more money to eat healthy food than not to. I would love to do all my grocery shopping at Whole Foods, picking through all the 'organic' produce and meats and filling my cart with all sorts of supposedly good for you goodies. It would be great to go to specialty food stores and get the best quality ingredients to cook with and buy organic items at the farmers market. Who wouldn't love dining at the best restaurants serving only finest ingredients in their dishes? Unfortunately I can't do this all the time, and I make an above average income, so good luck to the majority of the population living on barely more than minimum wage.
I guess it would be great to think that offering such an incentive would encourage Whole Foods employees to get healthier, and in turn receive a greater discount. In my opinion it will only drive them to look for cheaper alternatives which will continue to keep them unhealthy. There need to be more accessible options for people to eat healthy and mass education about the dangers of all the crap that's found in cheap food. We need to help people get there, not just help them once they're healthy.
The Universal Record Database, or URDB, is the Guinness Book of World Records 2.0, allowing anyone to set their own unique flavor of human achievement, with the community playing the role of approval committee. How did the site come about, well i'll let them explain.
URDB is an evolution of a Burning Man theme camp created in the summer of 2004. A group of friends, including URDB co-founder Dan Rollman, sat down in San Francisco to brainstorm theme ideas for their camp. Eager for a concept that allowed community participation, Dan suggested a Burning Man Book of Records, in large part due to his lifelong Guinness Book obsession.
Here's the basic judging information from their FAQ.
People submitting records will provide as much evidence as possible of their attempt, including video, photos, witness information and so on. The community will look at this evidence and collectively vote on whether a record should be validated.
Over time, we expect a deeper set of rules and guidelines to emerge, all shaped and defined by the URDB community.
A couple of the most recent records set are...
and I'm not sure why you would want to do this, but here's one more
You can follow the links above to check out the videos of these and other record setters and maybe even come up with your own unique record to add to the database by clicking below.
Here's something from the Washington Post that helps you know what President Obama is up to. They call it the 'POTUS Tracker'. Click here to go to a better version of the tracker straight from their site.
Here's a quote I came across on the Minimal Mac blog, and being the Apple fanboy that I am, I thought it worthy to share with everyone.
To create a new standard, it takes something that’s not just a little bit different; it takes something that’s really new and really captures people’s imagination — and the Macintosh, of all the machines I’ve ever seen, is the only one that meets that standard.
