I’ve been playing a bit with this app on the iPhone, and think it’s simple, easy, fun, and makes the iPhone pictures look better.

While the iPhone’s camera is pretty good as these things go, its pictures can be made more dramatic via this app. I tend to think of its colorization as the equivalent of using bold or italics in text. It draws the user’s eyes to what you want to emphasize:

In fact, it’s even useful for photos taken with other cameras that you’ve transferred to your iPhone, like this:

It’s brilliantly designed (the brush is your finger; since it can’t change size you make the picture itself larger or smaller), very well documented with help videos, and just works.

If you use the iPhone’s camera and share photos, you should look into this app. http://www.juxtaposer.info/ColorSplash.html

Posted via email from thesmallwave’s posterous

This is a test from the iPhone to Posterous only.

It’s my first post here, and I’m adding a picture to see how it works.

I like the idea of using Posterous and email to simplify blogging, and will expand the service to update my main blog  – http://thesmallwave.com — if it works out.

Posted via email from thesmallwave’s posterous

So there’s a new OS that’s based on the web, relies primarily on a web browser, and whose native apps are web apps. Old news, you say? We already know about Palm’s WebOS. No, I don’t mean that one. This one will primarily target netbooks. Still old news, you say, because we know a modified Android is coming to netbooks soon. No, I don’t mean that, either. I’m speaking of a Linux kernel with a modern web browser. Way old news, you say, since Linux distros and Firefox were available on netbooks even before Windows. No, no, I don’t mean that, either…

Read the rest of this article on the Apple Blog >>

I’ve been playing with Fluent News on the iPhone for a few days, and consider it a fine first effort as a news reading app. However, when it comes to sharing the news stories you’re most interested in, it falls short…

Read the rest of this article on the Apple Blog >>

Today Google removed the liability shield beta tag off of their suite of apps. Google Gmail, Calendar, Docs, and Talk are now official, supported apps.

This must have been a tough decision for Google. With the beta shield they pretty much escape serious criticism for outages, etc. since, after all, “it’s beta”. However, many people and businesses (rightly) look on relying on beta software as a problem. Ultimately, in my mind it comes down to this: When are you going to own up and have enough confidence in your solutions to stop hiding behind a beta label?

This is a good day for Google. Not just for its current apps users, but also for the new users they can bring on board now they they’re out of beta (though, no, I won’t be one of those users).

Opened 1 year ago today.

I’d say that, 365 days and 50,000+ apps later, it’s been a pretty big success.

Going to be out of town a few days over Independence Day. I’ll have WiFi and the MacBook, but not sure I’ll blog much of anything so it might be quiet around here until after the eighth.

Have a great holiday.

It used to be a Service Pack release got some press. After all, you’re fixing bugs, tightening security, maybe even adding minor enhancements. But Microsoft’s release of SP2 for Vista has not been touted much out of Redmond.

I almost feel sorry for Microsoft. The “V” word is such poison they can’t use it in their ads, don’t speak much about it in public, and now don’t even say much when they’ve released an SP that will likely continue to make Vista better than its public perception. But perception is everything, and there’s nothing Microsoft can release to fix that…

Mind you, it’s Microsoft’s own fault. Vista’s initial ridicule was well-deserved, with almost no good reviews in the first six months or more after release. Sluggish on even relatively new hardware at the time, with a raft of incompatibilities, too many editions, and too expensive. The issues then were very, very real, and most were of Microsoft’s own doing. Back then perception was in fact reality. I avoided Vista myself for those very reasons.

Sure, 2.5 years later, with hardware more powerful and a couple of SPs under its belt, Vista’s not so bad. But why waste time with it now? What Vista could have been is being released October 22, albeit with a different name.

They told him don’t you ever blog around here.
We’re forming into cliques that you’ll get nowhere near.
We wouldn’t read your posts if you bought us a beer.
So Tweet it, just Tweet it.

You have a lot to say; opinion is strong.
But no one reads a thing that’s over 10 words long.
You better make it quick, or soon you’ll be gone.
So Tweet it, Tweet it.

Tweet it! Tweet it!
Keep it short and folks will read it.
Show ‘em how pithy you have become;
Anything long and our brains go numb.
Just Tweet it, just Tweet it…

You wanna talk about a great thing you’ve heard,
But you must think in characters and not in words.
We don’t have time for sentences; don’t be so absurd.
So Tweet it, just Tweet it.

If you can keep it short then you will do well.
You might get lots of followers who think you’re swell.
With luck you might even make the SUL.
So Tweet it, Tweet it.

Tweet it! Tweet it!
All blog posts are so conceited.
Don’t put the effort in being distinct;
Much more important you be succint.
So Tweet it, Tweet it…

(From an idea by Jason Kottke. With all due respect to Michael Jackson and Twitter.)

An outside breakfast in beautiful Southern California. The food will be great, but so is this wonderful marriage of grape and citrus.

The Mimosa: Accept no substitutes.

When it comes to talking a good game, AT&T may very well be the King. I’ve lost count of the Press Releases or public statements about how fixes for their iPhone users’ greatest complaints seem just over the horizon.

• MMS? Sure, by the end of summer.
• Tethering? It’s coming as soon as we can get it.
• A better signal? Why, we’ve got this great 3G upgrade rollout that’ll solve everything.

Never mind the first two items are already available on AT&T’s network for other phones…

They keep talking about addressing weak coverage, but it never happens. Their latest spiel says that New York, San Francisco, and other large cities will get relief via “3G on 850 Mhz”, which makes use of the older frequency. Further, they’ll be adding 2,100 cell towers and other glorious things.

The technical details make sense to me, so I’m not disputing that. My complaint is they’ve been talking about various upgrades for a long time, yet the signal still sucks for the same people in the same places it’s always sucked. In short, nothing’s changed.

So, AT&T, please keep quiet and just get to work. The next time you talk about this, it should be to say “Sorry this took so long” to all the people who are finally getting the relief you’ve been promising for so long. The time for talk is over, do something, will ya?

Microsoft today made their Windows 7 pricing policies official.

The bad news is they didn’t change much, and are still too expensive in my opinion. There’s a slight reduction on Home Premium pricing (over the similar edition in Vista) but that’s it. I think Microsoft could have (and should have) done better, but time will tell. Most of the Windows 7 licenses will come from new PCs anyway — as opposed to boxed retail sales — so perhaps this doesn’t matter as much.

Despite the bad news, there is much good news:

• First and foremost, the rumor of short-term upgrade deals is true. From June 26 to July 11, one can order an upgrade to Windows 7 Home Premium online for only $49 (and Professional for $99). I’m disappointed that the window of opportunity is only 16 days, but it’s a no-brainer deal, so snap it up.
• Anyone who buys a new PC from June 26 until the end of January gets a free corresponding update to Windows 7. As I mentioned before, this covers a lot of the back to school season, and makes buying a PC “safe” for anyone starting tomorrow.

I can’t help but wonder if the short 16-day window for the special upgrade pricing won’t be extended, allowing Microsoft to act magnanimous, and get some free good press in the process. Not a bad idea, and it helps everyone. It’ll be interesting to see if we get any pricing announcements from Microsoft as we near Jule 11.

No matter, any current Vista user should hit their PC and order the upgrade for the special pricing starting June 26. There is no question Window 7 is a $49 improvement over Vista.

Lots of stories making the rounds that the JavaScript speed of the new iPhone 3GS is even faster than Apple had claimed. Most of the stories originate from this one from Medialets, but it’s simply not true the performance is faster than Apple claimed.

JavaScript speed is very impressive. However, if you compare Medialets’ results with those Apple presented during the WWDC keynote, you’ll see they’re essentially the same. Let’s take a look:

I’d say Medialets’ findings of 133/49/17 for the iPhone 3G-os2/3G-os3/3GS match up very well with Apple’s reported results of 126/43/15. Apple’s numbers are a bit better, but not excessively so. It’s clear that all Medialets has done is confirm Apple’s stated speed claims in this area.

This is a huge speed improvment, and I’m not trying to diminish it, but Apple’s claim of “twice as fast” was a generic one regarding the 3GS in general, whereas their JavaScript claims were very specific. Medialets has shown they were accurate, not underrated.

Viewsonic has announced the availability of their first PC. An All-in-One model with an 18.5″ screen called the VPC100. Resolution is tiny for such a large screen (1366 x 768), but what’s really surprising is that the specs are all essentially that of a netbook:

• Atom processor (not even the N280, it’s the older N270)
• Intel integrated graphics
• 1GB RAM
• XP Home
• 160 GB drive

Sure, it has a few more ports than a netbook but, really, this thing is just a netbook with a bigger keyboard and a screen that’s overkill for the resolution. And at $600 it’s much more expensive and not even portable. Huh? …

This makes no sense to me, and I think buyers are going to be disappointed when they find out their desktop PC is a cheap netbook in more expensive clothes. I think Viewsonic made a PC for the gullible.

Interesting story from Mary Jo Foley on Microsoft picking up more Yahoo! executive talent. It’s interesting because of this comment:

I’ve seen a few industry watchers refer to these moves as Microsoft “poaching” Yahoo’s talent. But I wonder whether this is a case of Microsoft poaching or Yahoos jumping ship (or maybe a little bit of both)

I think she has a point; it’s almost certainly a little of both.

One thing is for sure, and I alluded to this in my review of Bing, I don’t think Microsoft needs to mess with caring (or even pretending to care) about Yahoo’s search business so much. Bing is a nice service, and just may pick up Yahoo’s business without even the hint of a buyout.

Heck, Bing even got Google to sit up and take notice.