waltersanford's photoblog on Posterous

During the past week-or-so I've been experimenting with Posterous as a platform for photoblogging. The Posterous app for Apple iPhone, ideal for mobile blogging, is a little buggy (when the Posterous app is used to upload geotagged photos from an iPhone, the photos that appear online aren't geotagged) and there are some features that are conspicuously missing (e.g., the capability to add hyperlinks to a new post and edit old posts). In contrast, the Posterous Web interface works well and does not suffer any of the problems I mentioned.

The Posterous app was preceded by PicPosterous, another app from the same developer. PicPosterous is all about mobile photoblogging, pure and simple -- maybe too simple, or sometimes, not simple enough (see Editor's Note, below). While there is some duplication of features between the PicPosterous- and Posterous apps, PicPosterous enables you to add photos to an album you created already; Posterous does not.

Posterous does some things especially well, such as automatically resize photos and videos to fit the layout for your blog; multiple photos are shown in a good looking gallery. Images and videos are optimized for mobile viewing. And you can autopost content to other sharing sites such as Twitter and Flickr.

Posterous accounts are free; the PicPosterous- and Posterous apps are also free. Visit waltersanford's photoblog.

Editor's Note: PicPosterous app predates the Posterous Mobile apps (for iPhone and Android), and is showing its age! PicPosterous app enables you to upload one photo at a time to a Posterous gallery; you can add more photos to the same gallery, but again, you select photos one at a time. You can add a title and narrative text to the gallery; you cannot add tags. The user interface is very clunky and counterintuitive, in contrast with the Posterous app. Bottom line: PicPosterous app's time has come and gone; move on to Posterous app and never look back!

Microfiber cloth for a clean machine!

"Penny Lane there is a fireman. ... He likes to keep his fire engine clean. It's a clean machine." (Credit: "Penny Lane" by The Beatles.) Do you like to keep your mobile devices clean? You know you do, but it's harder when you're on travel. What's the solution? You need a microfiber cleaning cloth. My optometrist provides a free ClearSight lens cleaning kit with every pair of eyeglasses I buy, including cleaning solution and a microfiber lens cloth. The cloth works very well without the solution, and it's washable and re-usable.

Where's Waldo?

Sure, there are many ways to determine your location using a GPS-enabled Apple iPhone. But for simplicity and ease of use, I recommend GPS Coordinates, an Apple Web app utility. (Browse Apple Web apps,  All Categories.) "Use GPS Coordinates to get the coordinates of your current position. Your device will use GPS, wireless LAN and cell towers to get the most accurate coordinates, just as Maps and Compass on the iPhone do. After locating yourself you can copy your coordinates to the clipboard and use them in any app you want. Share your location on Twitter, via mail or text it to a friend who uses it within Maps to see your whereabouts." (Credit: "About GPS Coordinates" by Daniel Gattermann, Web app developer.)

Google Translate for iOS

"Translate words and phrases between more than 50 languages using Google Translate for iOS. For most languages, you can speak your phrases and hear the corresponding translations." (Credit: Apple iTunes Description.) For more details, see the following post on the Google Translate Blog: "Introducing the Google Translate app for iPhone." Google Translate seems to work better translating from English to another language than vice versa. The app is free, so it's hard to complain about not getting value for your money.

Editor's Note: "Google Translate" is available for other mobile devices; there is a desktop version as well.

iPhone Photography Tech Tips: Better Geotagging

Here's a simple tech tip for better geotags in your iPhone photographs: Launch the Maps app and verify your location BEFORE taking pictures with the Camera app. You'd be surprised how inaccurate "Location Services" can be after an iPhone has been either in sleep mode or powered-off.

The Photographer's Ephemeris

"The Photographer’s Ephemeris (TPE for Desktop) is a free application for Mac/Windows/Linux designed for landscape photographers." (Credit: Stephen Trainor, software developer.) There are two requirements for the program to function on your computer: Adobe AIR (free) must be installed; and your computer must have an active Internet connection. There's plenty of online support, including tutorials (with text and graphics) and video tutorials. In my opinion, the videos for iPad are especially well done and should help to give you a good sense of how the application works and what it can do.

Editor's Note: "TPE 2.0.2 for iOS" ($8.99) is a universal app for Apple iOS mobile devices (iPhone, iPod touch, iPad).

Free real-time traffic information

While talking with a good friend who had been stranded on the road during "Skidlocked D.C. 2011" -- a nightmare traffic jam that occurred throughout the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area during a snowstorm that began on the afternoon of 26 January -- he mentioned that his decision to return to work and hunker down for a while was based upon the free real-time traffic information available on Google Maps. As it turns out, the traffic information on Google Maps is at least as good as traffic info from any commercial service provider.

How does the Google Maps traffic overlay work so well? In a word, crowdsourcing. Huh? Here's how it works. When your GPS-enabled cell phone is turned on and location services enabled, the phone sends anonymous data to Google regarding the position of your phone. It is possible to determine the speed at which your cell phone is moving based upon the change in position of the phone as time passes. Now imagine that the position of your cell phone, as well as the positions of lots of other cell phones, happens to be co-located with a highway, and there you have it in a nutshell -- crowdsourced traffic information that can be used to display on a map both the volume of traffic and the speed at which it's moving. Very cool!

Related Resources:

• Google Maps Help
• Google Maps Help - Traffic
• Google Maps Help - Availability of real-time traffic
• Official Google Blog - The bright side of sitting in traffic: Crowdsourcing road congestion data

Tech Tips: Using the "Maps" app on the Apple iPhone: Tap the "map curl" (shown lower righthand corner of the screen) and select "Show Traffic." Using a Web browser on a computer: "To see if live traffic is available in your area, hover your mouse over the square widget on the top righthand corner of the map. A menu with available layers for your map will appear. Click on Traffic to turn on the layer and view real-time traffic conditions." (Credit: Google Maps Help)