Posts tagged ‘iPhone’
More Artistry with the iPhone’s Camera
In our May/June issue, we did a photo essay spotlighting the photography of Ted Anthony ’95. Ted isn’t a photographer by profession—he’s an assistant managing editor for the Associated Press—but he happens to have a really good eye. And what’s especially interesting about his photos is that they were all shot with the built-in camera on his iPhone.
Many times Ted modifies the photos using one of the many available camera apps—like ShakeIt Photo, Camera Bag, LoMob, and Plastic Bullet. In any case, I just love his artistic take on ordinary objects and everyday scenes, and I love that he produces this stuff without a fancy camera.
Now Ted has uploaded more than 200 of his iPhone photos to an online gallery. You can check out the full collection here, and watch a slide show of about 20 of his images below.
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Tina Hay, editor
‘Roaming’ Around Europe, Electronically Speaking
Note: This post is full of talk about laptops, iPads, iPhones, and international roaming plans … if that doesn’t interest you and you want to skip this one, my feelings won’t be hurt!
The France/Bavaria/Oberammergau trip was the fourth Alumni Association trip in the past five years on which I’ve kept a blog, and each time the technology has advanced enough that it’s a little easier, logistically speaking, than the time before. I didn’t have to seek out Internet cafés, except in Oberammergau—most of the time I could blog on my laptop from the comfort of my hotel room. And even in Oberammergau I was able to use my laptop for blogging; I just had to pay €3 per hour, or about $3.90 U.S., to be able to access a wireless signal.
A few months before the trip, I acquired an iPad, and for a while I wondered if I could use that for blogging and leave my laptop at home. But (more…)
Giving the iPad the Old College Try
The iPad is cool, right? You know you want one. That’s how all Apple products are. You see it, and you want it. But what exactly is its purpose?
Cole Camplese is trying to find out. Camplese is Penn State’s director of education technology services, and he’s carrying his new iPad around this month — meaning no laptop or iPhone, both of which he usually relies on — to see if it belongs in students’ backpacks. He’s still using his laptop in his office, but other than that, it’s all iPad. You can follow the experiment on his blog.
Camplese cites a blog by Christopher P. Long, associate dean for undergraduate studies in the College of Liberal Arts, for the reasoning:
The iPad is much less intrusive in collaborative contexts than either a laptop, which tends to come between members of the group, or an iPhone, which isolates individuals, severing each from the dynamics of the whole.
The Chronicle of Higher Education sees the use in campus life, too. “I’m writing this column on an iPad, sitting on a couch with it propped, very casually, on my lap,” Christopher Young writes. “Either I’m learning how to use it, or I’m unlearning habits picked up from so many years with a mouse. But one thing that is clear is how casual and unobtrusive it is compared with a laptop.”
According to The Chronicle, George Fox University and Seton Hill University have announced plans to hand out iPads to freshman next year to see how it goes. Who knows? Maybe some future class of Penn State freshmen will find an iPad waiting for them when they arrive on campus, too.
Amy Guyer, associate editor
Find a Heart Defibrillator—With Your iPhone
A physician at Penn State’s Hershey Medical Center has developed an iPhone app to help you find the nearest heart defibrillator. Now that’s an iPhone app you probably hope you’ll never need—but you’ll be glad you have if you ever do.
The free app is the work of James Leaming, a staff physician and faculty member in emergency medicine at Hershey. You can find it here.
Amy Guyer, associate editor
They’re Happy at Paternoville Tonight
I was on my way out to Wegman’s this evening to pick up a fruit tart for a tailgate tomorrow morning, and I passed by the stadium and Paternoville, the student campout that starts several days before the game.
It’s a clear, pleasant evening with temperatures in the low 70s, and the students were feeling good. Three of them were at the fence, cheering lustily at every car that went by. So I pulled over and took their picture with my iPhone.
From left: Alex Weiner, Cody Miller, and Josh Perreault. Alex told me he’s had about three hours of sleep in the past couple of days.
On my way back from Wegman’s, I passed by the stadium again, just in time to see two or three police vehicles parked along the road, with an officer unloading a police dog from one of the vehicles. I’m hoping that turns out to just be a routine visit.
Kickoff against Temple is noon tomorrow, with the Big Ten Network providing TV coverage.
Tina Hay, editor
Steven Levy on the New iPhone
Penn Stater Steven Levy ’74g—who used to be the top technology guy at Newsweek but got lured away to Wired magazine last year—has written a review of the new iPhone 3GS, which he says “introduces a long list of improvements, big and small.”
The new iPhone will be released tomorrow, but if, like me, you already have an older iPhone (or an iPod touch), you can download the new 3.0 software for your current device any time now. The software upgrade has many, though not all, of the bells and whistles that the new device has. I did the software upgrade last night and can already tell that I’m going to like the Voice Memos app, the spotlight search, and the ability to turn the thing sideways while typing e-mails in order to get a bigger keyboard.
Levy says if you’ve already got an iPhone and you’re not yet at a point in your contract where you’re eligible to upgrade to the new 3GS, there’s no rush about getting the new device: “…the wise thing for those more recent buyers to do will be to install the new software and stick with their 3G iPhones at least until their contracts run down.”
If you don’t want to read the full review (which isn’t that long), you can read a quick-hit summary of it at Wired’s “Gadget Lab” blog.
Tina Hay, editor
Ax-Perlman-Ma at Penn State
Photo by Annemarie Mountz ’84
I was at State College Choral Society rehearsal last night (we’re working on Haydn’s The Creation for a concert at Eisenhower Auditorium in early May) when I got a text message on my iPhone from two friends who were missing from the rehearsal:
Hey you should hear these cats rock!
Dan & Cath
It turns out they (and a lot of other Choral Society members) were skipping rehearsal to attend the Ax-Perlman-Ma concert on campus. Pianist Emanuel Ax, violinist Itzhak Perlman, and cellist Yo-Yo Ma were performing together for the first time ever—and doing it at Penn State. It’s one of only two shows they’ll do, the other being tonight at Carnegie Hall.
You can see photos from last night’s concert here.
Tina Hay, editor
Alumni Center in Snow
I had to stop into the office briefly this afternoon, and the alumni center looked especially sweet, covered in snow in the late-afternoon light. So I took a shot with my iPhone. (It would look better without the car in the driveway, but oh well. And no, that’s not my car.) Click on the photo to see it bigger.
We got about five inches of snow yesterday. You can see an album of Public Information photos from the snowstorm here.
Tina Hay, editor
Alan Furst on my iPhone?
I love my new iPhone, but I’m not sure I’m quite ready to use it to read books just yet. Still, several traditional book publishers apparently are banking on this as a new market for their work. A story in Publishers Weekly and other news media says Penguin and Random House are the latest to offer books via iPhone. Among the authors whose work Random House is making available is none other than Alan Furst ’67g, the mystery novelist whom we profiled in the magazine in May-June. His latest book, released right around the time our story appeared, is The Spies of Warsaw.
Tina Hay, editor
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