Winter tires

15486440305_a5f213f45b_k

Having enjoyed very much my 610v2 for 466Km this summer, I picked up a pair of 610v2 Goretex for my winter walks.

…and there was me, standing in a puddle to test my new water resistant shoes, with a big grin ;)

iPhone magic

I dropped by the Apple Store last week in London to see the new iPhones. I was hoping for the “instant lust” that usually goes with Apple’s new gadgets, but it didn’t happen.

Now, to be fair we should admit that smartphones are becoming a commodity and we can’t expect to be amazed with every new iteration. The iPhone 6 is a perfectly nice phone, most likely it’s going to be my next phone when my contract on the current 5 will expire (not the Plus, it’s just ridiculously huge imho), but I’ll just sit and wait for the upgrade without any exceptionally big expectation.

I’m just hoping that the Apple Watch will provide that little bit of extra excitement that keep all of us going ;)

PS: while I think that most of those “Steve would have not done this” posts are pure BS, I must admit that the bulging camera lenses are a bit odd.

3 things about Apple Watch

10601946_282245031982988_938530037_n

One

I think that the heart rate sensor is the most relevant feature of this product. It’s not just about fitness: with the right software having a constant monitor of heart rate and other activities will soon start saving lives. In a few years this class of products will have an impact on the healthcare budgets. It’s big.

Two

Remember iPhone 1.0? iPod 1.0? iPad 1.0? Holding my first iphone today, it looks and feels like ancient technology. The current Apple Watch looks a bit chunky, but in no time it will become much sleeker. This is a 1.0.

Three

Is it “Apple WATCH”? ALL CAPITALS? REALLY?

Automatic photostream

Here’s a great story about finding yourself in somebody else’s photos.

Today Facebook has access to my timeline on Moves (which they bought), which means that potentially they know where/when I was for the last six month with a good degree of precision. 

They also have access to billions of geotagged photos. Cross referencing this information Facebook could easily generate a timeline of photos taken around me. And this is with today’s technology.

There all all kind of privacy issues to discuss, yet there are quite exciting possibilities with photography. Just ahead.

Life after Aperture

IMG_5111

It has been quite evident for a while that Apple had little love left for Aperture, but now it’s official: the photo editing software will be retired.

I’m sure that Photos, Apple’s new photo management app, will be nice and perfectly integrated in Apple’s ecosystem, but most likely it won’t have the kind of professional tools I need.

Which leaves me with just one possibility: move to Adobe Lightroom.

I have many friends who love Lightroom, and recently I have given up and started paying for Adobe’s subscription plan, so technically I already have Lightroom installed on my Mac.

But unless I’m missing something, once I will have moved all my photo archive to Lightroom I will have to keep paying a ransom to Adobe every month just to be able to access my photos, on my computer.

Yes, I appreciate that all my files are there, but there’s a whole lotta metadata and work associated with those files which depends on Lightroom and will be lost if I don’t pay the monthly fee.

The future of our digital photos is something we should start paying much more attention to. Right now it doesn’t look very bright.

PS: as some commenters pointed out, there is an option to buy Lightroom as a standalone application which I had not been able to find. This makes the whole migration option much more likely to happen soon. Thank you all :)

Know where I’m going

Screen Shot 2014-05-14 at 09.17.01

This map shows all my movements from January 1st 2014 to right now. The data were collected by the app Moves and the map generated by Move-O-Scope.

To me this is absolutely awesome.

Running Moves significantly reduces the battery life on my iPhone 5, but it’s something I have been willing to live with because I just love the data that gets collected and the way Moves displays it.

Walking patterns in our neighborhood
Walking patterns in our neighborhood

Then Moves was bought by Facebook.

When Facebook bought Instagram I thought: “Oh, well… the pictures I was posting to Instagram were public anyway”. I was a bit annoyed with how they treated the integration with Twitter, but this was pretty much it.

When Facebook bought Whatsapp I thought: “Oh, well… I have never used Whatsapp anyway”.

But I do feel uncomfortable about Facebook buying Moves and having access to their data. Strangely enough giving all the information about my moving around to a tiny and unknown Finnish company felt better than giving it to a huge American one.

My walking patterns in London
My walking patterns in London

I haven’t deleted the application yet, but I guess that I will do as soon as I will find a replacement which works as smoothly as Moves. Or maybe I will just live with it.

What is certain is that I will keep running a tracking application on my phone.