Have an amazing idea your local bank isn’t buying into?
Today, those dreams don’t have to stop at the banker’s desk thanks to the trend of crowdsourcing, where an adoring public can fund your project one dollar at a time.
Via BestAccountingDegrees.net.
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Attending a conference can provide opportunities to network, a chance to see what others in your field are up to, and, of course, the opportunity to see the sites of another city if you have the time, but if you play your cards right, the experience can be so much more.
Allison Boyer at NMX has been around the tables more than a few times and wanted to share a few things you might not know about attending a conference.
You can get special perks by name-dropping with our sponsors and exhibitors.
Often, our sponsors and exhibitors will offer special deals to our conference attendees. The same is true at other conferences as well. All you have to do is ask. Be polite about it, but recognize that YOU are their target market, and they want to make you happy so you tell others about whatever product or service they have to offer.
For example, let’s say that you’re speaking to an exhibitor who sells a premium WordPress plugin. You might say, “I’d love to test this out. Would you be willing to give me a free trial once I get home?” Or let’s say that you’re having dinner at a club sponsoring one of the parties. When you get there, you could ask, “Do you have any specials for conference attendees?” The worst you can get is a no, and often the answer will be yes!
Want the best info and opportunities? You gotta be on the mailing list.
We make announcements and offers via our social accounts and here on the blog, but it’s pretty easy to miss that kind of thing in the stream. Want to make sure you don’t miss a deadline, discount, or opportunity? Get on our mailing list. (See the sidebar.) This is true of most conferences.
Full story at NMX.
Photo credit: Fotolia
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Today Adobe announced Photoshop CC that is only available to cloud subscribers.
Adobe should not release such lame updates to Photoshop and Lightroom to convince people that the cloud-subscription software is exciting. They should make dramatic improvements – things that photograpehrs can’t live without. Can we live without “Smart Sharpen” and “Intelligent Upsampling” with Photoshop. Err, probably. The Lightroom improvements are equally underwhelming. You know that the updates are lame when one of the top bullet points is “Include video in your slideshows!” How did THAT become one of the top-most-requested features?
It also worries me that Adobe is running out of ideas for their photography-related products. Their “big features” are, at best, incremental improvements. They are certainly not exciting enough to drive millions to subscribe to their cloud subscriptions. Their biggest idea, sadly, seems to be cloud-based subscriptions.
Business model confusion with Adobe
Adobe’s PR and marketing team has a whole list of reasons about why Cloud-based subscription is so awesome for Photoshop. They have a few good points in there, such as it is easy to do incremental updates. But mostly, the reasons are lame and not exciting to amateurs and hobbyists who can’t afford to shell out a ton of money every month.
Here is the confusion: If Cloud-based subscriptions really are so awesome for Photoshop, why do they have a completely different business model for Lightroom? They tell me, well, Lightroom is more for hobbyists and casual people, and Photoshop is more for professionals. I think that sounds kind of ridiculous, don’t you?
What is especially confusing for me is, “How do I explain this to people?” I get a bunch of people that come to this website or to the HDR Tutorial ( http://www.StuckInCustoms.com/hdr-tutorial/ — New and improved, and free as always, btw!) to get advice on what kind of software to get. We get a lot of new photographers who don’t really own any software. Now I have to give confusing advice: “Well, you really need Photoshop and Lightroom. Photoshop you have to pay every month for, but Lightroom you can just buy once.” People are like, “Whhhhaaat?” Why have two business models for such complementary pieces of software? It’s completely confusing to new people, and moderately confusing to veterans.
Anyway, these are the kind of confusing decisions that come out of committees. I hope they clarify things soon, and I also hope they have a business model that is less punitive to beginners, students, and hobbyists that can’t afford the high price of cloud-based subscriptions. It’s not like Netflix or World of Warcraft with their monthly fees. You pretty much have one kind of customer there. With photography, you have the full span of professionals and studios to ameteurs and hobbyists. In my judgment, it’s too punitive to have One-Pricing-Model to rule them all.
Photo Below: Sunset in New Zealand before the blizzard!
We are expecting a major blizzard coming into Queenstown tonight! We just got back from the grocery store to stock up. I’ve got all my cameras fully charged and ready to go… I’ll try to hit as many places as I can with the fresh snow… chains are ready and all is good to go! Super-excited.
And, speaking of the article above, I can’t think of any of my images that could have been improved if I am using the new features in Adobe’s cloud. Sure, I subscribed to their cloud (Adobe did not gift me one, nor will they probably ever because I am so critical of them), and I am using the latest of everything… but none of these new features have really found their way into my photos yet. Comon Adobe… I know you can do better.
See full article on my blog.
Can’t wait to hit the streets in that hot micro-mini, but worried about attracting the wrong kind of attention?
Though you’d definitely be turning heads in this Chinese export, this accessory will probably keep those with less-than-honorable intentions at bay better than a king-size bottle of pepper spray.
According to the Telegraph:
They first appeared on a microblogging Chinese site Sina Weibo (China’s version of Twitter), and have become a viral sensation, with one user @HappyZhangJiang describing them as ‘anti-pervert stockings’. Trend-watcher ChinaSMACK has offered them to the world, and the world has said, ‘urgh, gross.’
Or, for those with a more honest streak, “Oh, look, October through March!”
Full story at the Telegraph.
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While it isn’t unusual for those near Mexico’s Popocatepetl volcano to see signs of activity, Monday provided plenty of excitement for the 650,000 residents in the high-risk zone.
Monday’s eruption spewed ash four kilometers in the air, as can be seen in the video below, and access has been restricted in a twelve-kilometer radius of the not-so-sleepy giant.
Full story at YouTube via Outside Online.
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So, you’ve cleaned out the classics section of the library and are ready to move into a new era, preferably one with telephones, but where do you turn for recommendations?
Give Flavorwire’s list of the fifty best books for each year from 1963 to 2013, which comes complete with alternates, the only stipulation being that the same author can’t be chosen for more than one year.
Even if you don’t agree with a selection, this list should keep book lovers busy through at least the month of July.
1963 — The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath’s only novel manages to be both elegant and filled with raw, seething emotion – no small feat, and not the least of the reasons the reading world is still obsessed with her. There were a host of other great books this year, but the Plath legend (not to mention the Plath legion) still looms so large in our collective unconsciousness that this one seems by far the most essential to a modern reader’s repertoire.
Also recommended: Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak; The Group, Mary McCarthy; V., Thomas Pynchon; Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut; The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan
1964 — Herzog, Saul Bellow
Sure, Herzog is a midlife crisis book. It’s also a triumph of style, this wordy, beautiful epistolary novel, an examination of strife both existential and practical, a philosophical experiment with emotional roots. As Jeffrey Eugenides wrote, “If you’re in the market for a safe neuro-enhancer, something to break you out of your foggy-headedness, a pill more powerful than Adderall or Provigil, with no side effects other than pleasure, then pick up Herzog and open it — anywhere — and read.”
Also recommended: Come Back, Dr. Caligari, Donald Barthelme; Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl; A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway; Last Exit to Brooklyn, Hubert Selby Jr.; The Giving Tree, Shel Silverstein
1965 – The Autobiography of Malcolm X, as told to Alex Haley
This book is an influential classic of American autobiography, a required volume for anyone interested in American history, spiritual conversion, race, class, politics, or just an extraordinary read.
Also recommended: Kosmos, Witold Gombrowicz; Ariel, Sylvia Plath;Cosmicomics, Italo Calvino; The Painted Bird, Jerzy Kosinski; Dune, Frank Herbert
Full story at Flavorwire.
Photo credit: Fotolia
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Looking for a great movie marathon idea for the dog days of summer?
Then start tempting your film palate with this tribute to Alfred Hitchcock by Vimeo user Jean-Baptiste Lefournier, and prepare to be paranoid!
We assure you, the chills won’t be from the AC being on high.
Full story at Vimeo via Presurfer.
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Researchers in the UK have identified a number of parasites in the bodies of dead otters. Among the parasites is Toxoplasma gondii, which is spread by cat feces and can cause miscarriages in women.
“The project’s research on the parasites that infect otters has revealed previously unknown aspects of their distribution and ecology,” says Elizabeth Chadwick, of the Otter Project at Cardiff University. “Continued work is necessary to help us to better understand their transmission pathways and the impacts that they have on otters, other wildlife, and human health.”
Full story at Futurity.
Photo credit: William Warby/Flickr
In a laboratory test of visual searching ability, scientists found trained Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screening officers were much slower than undergraduate students and other civilians. But the amateurs were sloppier.
The test is part of ongoing research by Duke University psychologist Stephen Mitroff to understand how the brain manages visual searching, which is important not only to security but also to cancer screening.
“We gain a lot by doing things consistently,” says Stephen Mitroff, a Duke University psychologist. The takeaway is that training screeners to use methodical, consistent search patterns is the most effective way to improve performance.
Full story at Futurity.
Photo credit: IDuke/Wikimedia Commons
Today, we take the ability to print for granted, even scoffing at those who still rely on a trusty pen and paper to record their thoughts, but when you consider that Homer’s Odyssey wasn’t even written down for 300 years, our ability to hit a button and produce a physical specimen of words, body parts or even weaponry is astounding.
Take a trip through the history of printing technology with this interactive infographic from PrinterInks.com.
Via PrinterInks.
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