Carousel was unveiled at Adobe’s Photoshop World 2011 conference this morning. It’s a new app for iPhone, iPad and Mac that will leverage Photoshop Lightroom technology to offer image fine-tuning and adjustments on all platforms, as well as automatic syncing, sharing and browsing of your collection via the cloud. Increasingly, the cloud is becoming the tent pole of mobile software, as we’ll see discussed in detail at Mobilize 2011. If you take a picture on one device, it should be available on all others immediately and automatically, according to Adobe. Edit on one device, and those edits are also shared, but your originals won’t be lost since Adobe’s tech uses non-destructive editing tech.

The catch is that Carousel won’t be free. When it launches later this month, it will cost $60 per year or $6 per month as a subscription service. That’s the introductory price; it goes up to $100 per year or $10 a month after Jan. 31, 2012. That’s quite a bit more than the one-time fee associated with most existing iOS or Mac photo editing apps, and it’s more expensive than the similar iCloud service, which provides free syncing of photos through Photo Stream, as well as the ability to purchase more storage for between $20 and $100 per year. Google+ also offers basic mobile photo syncing for free through its iOS application, though in a far more limited form.

Adobe’s offering provides more powerful editing tools, as well as sharing options that allow up to five non-Carousel members to collaborate on individual photos or a library of photos for free. Non-subscribers get a special download link for a single install of the app of their choice and can view and edit photos in shared albums. With Photo Stream, your options for collaboration are more limited; you can share through external social networks, but that’s about it, and Carousel has that angle covered, too; you can share to Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr from within the apps.

Carousel definitely offers more than Photo Stream, but it also isn’t integrated at the OS level like Apple’s offering will be, so you’ll have to go to apps to use it. It also might be more muscle than the average mobile photographer needs, at a higher price than they’re willing to spend, though I can easily see the appeal for pro photographers who need to work with distributed teams on a regular basis. But Adobe is clearly targeting consumers, and talks mostly about uses average folks might have for the service, like creating and sharing family photo libraries.

You can sign up now to be notified when the service goes live, and Adobe is offering a 30-day free trial before you have to start paying for Carousel. Anyone interested in getting this level of control over your personal photo cloud, or are Apple’s upcoming built-in iOS features good enough?

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Collecting GPS information

Two important pieces of info are required for adding GPS data to your photos. The first is the latitude and longitude where the photo was taken. The second, equally critical piece of information, is the date and time the camera was at that location. This is the key to automatically matching up the GPS data with photos.

When it comes to figuring out where a shot was taken, there are three main sources that myTracks can use:

1. GPS data logger. One way to collect this information is to invest in a GPS data logger. There are several Mac-friendly GPS data loggers on the market to choose from. These standalone units will keep track of where you and your camera have been without draining your other device batteries. myTracks can then import the location information directly from the logger itself, or indirectly through GPX or KML files. Under the hood, myTracks uses the open-source library LoadMyTracks to support a wide range of GPS devices. If you find that your device is not supported, you may need to use a utility like HoudahGPS to convert the data to a format that myTracks supports.

2. iPhone sync. If you have an iPhone, then you already have a basic GPS logger. In fact, I’ve found the tracking capabilities of the iOS version of myTracks to be great, and it offers a built-in sync feature that will allow you to transfer location information directly from your iPhone to the Mac version of myTracks. If you prefer using a different GPS tracking app, then you’ll need to export the data and import it into myTracks using either the GPX or KML file format.

3. Track from photos. The simplest way to collect the location information you need is to take a series of reference photos along the way with the default camera app that came with your iPhone. Provided you are adding location information to your photos on your iPhone, myTracks can create a track from your iPhone’s library. From the Tools menu in myTracks, select “Create track from photos…” and select the photos you want to create a track from.

Adding GPS Information to your photos

Now that you have your track loaded into myTracks, the first thing you will want to do is ensure that your camera’s clock is in sync with your GPS data, as well as any of the other cameras you may use. Once you’ve made any time adjustments to your photos, you’re ready to add the GPS info. MyTracks supports adding GPS location information to photos in iPhoto, Aperture and Adobe Lightroom as well as any folder of images on your Mac. The following steps are for iPhoto ’11, since that’s the program most will likely use:

1. After importing tracks into myTracks, select the track that has the GPS information you want to sync.
2. Open iPhoto and select the photos you want to add the GPS information to.
3. Drag the photos from iPhoto onto myTracks.
4. Make any final adjustments in myTracks’s Pool of Photos to align the GPS track info with the photo time stamp.
5. Click Start in myTracks Pool of Photos and select the GeoTag option.
6. In iPhoto, select the photos you tagged, and from the Photo menu, “Rescan for Location.”

Reviewing and sharing your mapped photos

Once you have added the GPS information, using it to help illustrate your life’s adventures is much easier. You can sync your track and photos to the iPad version of myTracks, or post the images to one of the many online photo sharing sites that support geotagged photos, including Flickr.

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The iPhone camera has come a long way. In the early days, many complained about the quality of the camera. It started off with just a 2 megapixel sensor, and with a barebones stable of features. The iPhone 3G didn’t even update the camera’s megapixel count, though it does appear to have ushered in some slight improvements in picture quality. Finally, with the 3GS, we got a spec bump to a 3.2 megapixel sensor, but the real advantage with that generation was that it brought in touch-to-focus controls. The camera also seemed to just generally take better photos, in all but low-light situations, and it gained the ability to take videos (without jailbreak).

When Apple revealed the iPhone 4, it was clear that the camera was one big area of improvement. It gained a 5 megapixel sensor (which was also larger, and its the size and megapixel count combined that create better images), and one which is backside-illuminated, allowing for better performance in low-light situations, as did the new LED flash. Reviews of the photos taken by the iPhone 4 were almost unanimously positive, with many being quite free with the superlatives. The iPhone 4 also introduced HD video, and a front-facing camera for greater flexibility with video calling and other applications, like checking your tie just prior to a job interview.

But Apple is also clearly dedicated to improving iPhone camera software, mot just the hardware. iOS 4.1 introduced high dynamic range (HDR) photos built-in to the photo app, which takes three photos in rapid succession with three different levels of exposure, and then combines them to prevent photos from looking washed out. And, as mentioned above, iOS 5 brings many new software features, including quick access to the Camera app from the home screen, which shows Apple is aware that photography is a priority for many iPhone users. The new grid feature for framing shots, white balance correction and editing and enhancement abilities bring the iPhone even closer to feature parity with consumer point-and-shoots, without even the need for any additional app downloads.

The next iPhone is rumored to be getting an 8 megapixel camera, and possibly dual LED flashes, which should make it even less necessary for people to carry around another camera, unless they’re looking for DSLR-level quality. The iPhone 4 has already replaced point-and-shoots for many, apparently, since it officially became the most popular camera on Flickr on June 21, and was probably unofficially atop that list for much longer thanks to photos shared to Flickr through apps like Instagram.

The iPhone’s success is the result of how all of its parts work together, providing an overall user experience that can’t yet be matched by competitors. But the camera, with its steady stream of value-adding improvements designed to improve the once-dismal experience of using a camera phone, may be one of its biggest, and least talked about strengths in the ongoing battle for smartphone supremacy.

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Last week, Cisco made waves by announcing the closure of its recently-acquired Flip mobile video camera brand. The Flip brought cheap, portable, decent-quality, HD video recording to the masses and rode the wave of YouTube and online self-video publishing to become a popular portable device. But then smartphones, including the iPhone 4, gained similar-quality, HD video recording capabilities, and the Flip was no longer the hot commodity it once was.

The iPhone topped Flickr’s list of user cameras in 2009 following the release of the iPhone 3GS, and that was back when the best iPhone camera boasted only a 3.2-megapixel resolution. The iPhone 4 has a 5-megapixel sensor, but leaving aside tech specs, many agree that it performs better (on paper) than some of the more powerful cameras found on Android and other devices. The iPhone’s camera is another example of Apple’s philosophy that user experience trumps a hardware capabilities arms race every time.

This time, though, the data specifies the iPhone 4, not Apple’s entire line of iPhone devices, which speaks to the popularity of Apple’s latest smartphone. It’s also significant that this time around, Flickr-released data shows point-and-shoot cameras are steadily declining in popularity. The takeaway is that smartphones are nearing the tipping point in terms of camera quality when it comes to the needs of most average users (professional and prosumer DSLRs continue to do well), and the iPhone 4 is leading that charge. Phones provide a much more convenient on-hand camera experience than do dedicated devices, and the trade-offs in terms of quality and feature are becoming less significant all the time.

Android devices, despite the growing market share of Google’s OS, aren’t appearing in the top rankings for a couple of reasons. First, Android’s market share is far more spread out across a variety of devices, whereas new iPhone users have only a couple of choices when it comes to handsets. Second, Apple’s camera is still celebrated as being among the best available for mobile devices, despite its relatively low megapixel count.

Based on this data, and on general usage observations, I’d say the iPhone is about one or two updates away from rendering point-and-shoot cameras all but obsolete for most consumers. It’s true that really good analog zoom will likely remain out of reach for smartphones, but consumers who really want those features will increasingly gravitate towards the prosumer end of the DSLR spectrum, while everyone else will be well served with their mobiles. Expect a lot of disruption still to come from Apple in this area.

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The only real problem is a dearth of quality photos for the screensaver. My own photos aren’t up to scratch, and the limited ones Apple includes get old pretty quickly. What I really wanted was a screensaver with a large and constantly renewing set of high-quality photos.

Flickr Integration

The first thing I did was to have a look at the included Flickr integration to see if that provided a solution. You can use saved searches, and pull photos from Flickr contacts, but neither of those options really solved the problem. A saved search limits the scope and reduces the overall quality of the set, while contacts, no matter how good or prolific, just can’t provide enough material to keep things interesting. Eventually, I realized that the photos showing up on Flickr’s Explore page were the ones that I wanted.

Things Get Interesting

If you’re not familiar with how photos get picked to be featured on the explore page, it all has to do with a mysterious algorithm cooked up in the Flickr labs that calculates a photo’s interestingness. No one’s really sure exactly how a photo’s interestingness score is calculated, but it’s thought to involve some alchemical mixture of a photo’s tags, groups, comments, views, traffic, favorites, and other sundry properties. Whatever the exact ingredients may be, the top 500 interesting photos that end up on the explore page every day seem to be exactly what I’m looking for.

The problem is that there’s no real way to tell the Apple TV to use just those “interesting” photos for the screensaver. So, inspired by a couple of old and now defunct attempts to overcome this very same roadblock, I decided to write a quick PHP script and take advantage of the nice Flickr API to make it all work. I created a dummy flickr account named TABScreensaver which, thanks to my script, now marks each of the day’s most interesting photos as a favorite.

A Solution

Now, anyone who wants a large and constantly renewing collection of interesting photos for their Apple TV screensaver can simply add TABScreensaver as a Flickr contact and choose it’s favorite photos for the screensaver. Every evening, the set will be automatically updated with those photos picked to be featured on the Flickr explore page.

In the long run, I’d really like to see Apple improve the photo sharing features on the Apple TV so this kind of workaround isn’t necessary. It would be great if we could subscribe to RSS feeds with image enclosures, or add Flickr groups, or pull images from a Twitter stream, or combine sources, or lots of other cool stuff I’m too dim to think up. Who knows? Maybe if we get an App Store for it, our biggest problem will be sifting through a glut of Apple TV photo sharing apps trying to find the right one. It’ll be a nice problem to have.

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I downloaded the demo of the 1.0 release and ran it through its paces. The demo lets you have all the functionality of the full version, but you’re limited to running three different services or accounts. Which, honestly, isn’t much of a limitation for many users, myself included.

All Your Services, One Place

Socialite covers all the major bases, including Facebook, Twitter and Flickr. That would be enough for me, but it also will log you into Digg and Google Reader, or let you track RSS feeds yourself manually. For many people I know, opening Socialite first thing in the morning would clear their to-do list for the day.

Facebook integration lets you access status updates and photo albums, both yours and those of your friends. You can upload photos and update your status, but inbox access is still not a part of the deal, until Facebook opens that up to the API. Twitter gives you access to your timeline, mentions, and direct messages, and allows you to view your lists and lists you subscribe to. You can’t create new lists or modify them in this version of Socialite. Flickr includes contacts photos, but also Interestingness, which is one of my favorite parts of Flickr, so I’m glad it’s included.

Many Features, One Simple UI

None of these services share the same UI in their native formats. That’s why Socialite’s interface is so impressive. It manages to make the process of working with multiple services in the same shell incredibly intuitive and relatively painless. Well-designed icons, and consistent function placement across the board help make this happen.

Best of all, if you’d rather just deal with things as one big mess, you can work with updates from all your services at once in the macro view “Unread” menu, and all of the appropriate actions for each separate service still appears in the options section for each. And clicking on any update automatically brings up the quick input field related to that service.

Jack of All Trades, Master of None?

Socialite is a great program, and well designed, but it can’t take the place of Tweetie on my Mac. The problem is that since starting to use Twitter, I’ve become less and less dependent on other social networks I belong to. Facebook I can check twice a day really, if I feel like it, and Flickr is something I never really used to begin with. No matter how well Socialite does Twitter, Tweetie still does it better, and with a much smaller memory footprint.

Still, if you like to frequent many social sites, and especially if you’re a Google Reader user, Socialite could be the perfect program to help keep things organized and nicely aggregated in one convenient location.

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I have always been curious about what kind of tools people have used to liveblog events (especially those involving Apple). As many of you readers know, Apple recently held a media event on 9.9.09. I jumped on the opportunity to attend and represent TheAppleBlog. Naturally, one of my responsibilities was to liveblog everything.

Here’s the plan that was put together:

Hardware

• Macbook Pro
• iPhone
• Canon G10
• Eye-Fi Pro card

Software

• CoverItLive
• Text messaging
• Email
• Flickr
• Adium
• Eye-Fi Manager

Josh Pigford, TheAppleBlog’s editor, manned the computer to keep up a constant stream of updates on Twitter and  CoverItLive, an awesome liveblogging tool. Before I had access to a Wi-Fi network, I used my iPhone to send Josh text messages and email photos. I was warned by several other attendees that Wi-Fi never holds up during events. The proof? Everyone there appeared to have a 3G card for their laptops. I was extremely concerned, but at least I had my iPhone as a backup.

Once the press were allowed to check in and move closer to the building, I whipped out my Macbook Pro and jumped on the Wi-Fi network. I had to configure the Eye-Fi card so my Canon G10 would automatically upload photos as I took them. Configuring the card was quick and easy (thanks Eye-Fi!). The photos would be uploaded to Eye-Fi and then immediately sent to my Flickr account for Josh to grab.

Eventually we were allowed to enter and take our seats.  The end result was a comical combination of high and low tech. While photos were uploading (over the surprisingly reliable Wi-Fi network) I typed out virtually everything said on stage to Josh over AOL Instant Messenger (Adium). It was his responsibility to interpret and publish my never-ending stream of consciousness writing style into something you could read through via CoverItLive. I was surprised to see how much he let through (including my comments about Phil Schiller dancing in his seat).

I hope you all enjoyed the coverage, and if you have any suggestions on how to improve for next time please leave a comment.

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Around the time I first got my iPhone 3G, I used to use Exposure (now called Darkslide) for Flickr browsing, and I was well satisfied, until it became rather buggy with later versions. Not sure what the state of that app is, but I’m glad to see Yahoo finally step forward and release an official iPhone solution for the photo sharing site.

The Flickr app is available now in the App Store for the lovely price of free, and allows you to upload your own photos or videos to the site for publication. On first use, you have to enter your credentials if you want to upload or view your contacts, but Flickr takes you to Safari and then immediately back to the app afterward, resulting in a painless process.

I didn’t even bother doing that for probably my first five minutes using the app, though, because I was too busy just watching the home screen. By default, Flickr for iPhone shows a Ken Burns-style slide show of random photos from the site’s entire public archive. It’s a simple trick, but for some reason on the iPhone’s screen it looks so good it’s absolutely mesmerizing.

When you do log in, which you must do if you want to use any of the app’s features besides Search, the slide show on launch features only photos from your own and your contacts’ photostreams. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, especially if you have lots of contacts who are active Flickr users, but I would like to see a settings option in future versions that lets you pull from the general pool. It may not even be intended as a feature, but it’s the most visually pleasing thing the app has to offer.

Generally speaking, Flickr for the iPhone does a good job of looking good. It shows you when its loading using the familiar logo animation it shares with the regular site, and the UI is well and smartly designed. My only complaint is that in comparison to other apps like Darkslide, it actually does very little.

Like many non-photographers I know, I don’t actually use the site for uploading my own content, and I have very few contacts. What I do like to do on Flickr is just browse aimlessly, because while I may not take many photos, I appreciate a good one when I see it. Darkslide (the version I used to use, anyway) provides great features for browsing photos outside of your contact pool. This Flickr app does not, short of searching for keywords.

If you’re a Flickr user who takes a lot of mobile shots with your iPhone, then this app is for you. If you’re a casual appreciator like myself, you may want to look elsewhere for your Flickr fix, at least for the time being.

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My interpretation of minimalism in the home office is removing all distracting items that are not constantly utilized. For software, this is both easy and cheap. Becoming a hardware minimalist is slightly more expensive and time consuming and I recommend reading Apartment Therapy’s Unplggd for recommendations.

Minimal Mac

I recently discovered a website called Minimal Mac, and it is rapidly climbing the charts as my favorite blog. Naturally, it has a simple design that utilizes plenty of white space. Reading this blog has inspired me to clean up my iMac by reducing the clutter. Below are a few quick and easy steps to help you reach software bliss.

Clean Up Your Desktop

Open Preferences for the Finder and deselect everything. Organize your files in the Documents folder. Doing this will remove all files, folders, hard drives, etc. from your desktop.

Empty Out Your Menu Bar

Do you always use the same Wi-Fi network? Remove the Wi-Fi icon in the Network System Preferences. Time machine backs up every hour automatically, so there’s no need for the icon. Are you unsure if it’s AM or PM? First, get more sleep. Second, remove it in the Date & Time System Preferences. Use your keyboard to change the volume? Remove the Volume icon in Sound System Preferences. You get the idea.

For extra credit you can remove the Spotlight icon using Onyx, a thorough maintenance and optimization tool.

Warning: disabling the icon also disables the hot key to activate Spotlight. Only do this if you don’t use Spotlight or if you’re satisfied with using Command-F in the Finder.

Simplify Your iTunes Controller

The built-in mini controller for iTunes is simple to use, but it’s definitely too large and distracting. I recently discovered the perfect app for reducing your iTunes controller to a single line of text. It’s called Bowtie. It offers a variety of cool themes, but the one that is consistent with this post is Simple Bar. It provides previous and next buttons, the artist, the title, and rating controls.

I don’t usually rate songs in iTunes, so I got fancy and removed the stars from the Simple Bar theme by modifying its plist and html files.

Forget About iChat

Start using Adium. It’s extremely customizable and it supports a slew of networks (including Twitter). Below is a screenshot of my preferences that made my buddy list virtually unnoticeable.

Empty Out Your Dock

Leave only the most essential applications in your dock. For me that’s Mailplane, Adium, Safari, Google Reader Fluid app, iTunes, and Tweetie.

Search for a Desktop background

Find a desktop background that is both soothing and non-distracting. For me, that’s a nature-related black and white photo. Here’s the one I chose. You can find more by searching Flickr.

Ten Minutes Later

Below is my new desktop after following these steps. Smaller dock, quiet buddy list, empty menubar, serene background, clean desktop.

What are some ways you keep your Mac minimal?

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I have been using Mobile Fotos since its initial release for uploading photos to Flickr. It’s both easy to use and powerful. However, since purchasing the iPhone 3GS, the one feature I’ve been really excited about is uploading videos to Flickr without using email. Prior to the recent software update, if you wanted to upload videos to Flickr you had to email them to your Flickr specific email address, or email them to your computer and use software or the Flickr web site to upload.

Adding video recording and uploading functionality makes this the ultimate Flickr app. The iPhone’s API allows Mobile Fotos to not only record and upload, but also trim videos exactly like the built-in Photos app.

Uploading photos and videos in Mobile Fotos has all of the options one would expect: title, description, tags, privacy controls and location. Below are two screenshots from the app’s thorough upload process.

The Settings area is where you set up multiple accounts, Twitter integration and upload connection settings.

Mobile Fotos is definitely worth $2.99 if you share your content with Flickr. If you’re not interested in uploading videos to Flickr (maybe you’re a Twitter addict, or just looking for something cheaper), then you should check out TwitVid. Sharing a video is done in three steps: sign in to Twitter, record a new video (or select an existing video) and enter text for a tweet. Your Twitter account is instantly updated and the video is ready to view. Here’s an example tweet and the resulting page on TwitVid. It doesn’t get any easier than that.

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