I’m noticing a growing number of sites giving play to cell phone photography (there’s even awards for this now). Obviously, the quality is less than that of a good digital camera, but you might be surprised to see what a good eye can do with an inferior lens.

I’ve been playing with this on my iPhone a lot lately, and also have discovered some tools to make image calibration right on the phone easier. The photos below were taken on my phone and then worked with Photoshop.com which provides a very friendly interface for filters, cropping, and even uploading. In some these photos I’m also experimenting with some tilt-shift effects (to varying degrees of success).

Here are some cool links:

http://iphonephoto.us/
http://www.ippawards.com/
http://www.philcoffman.com/blog/photography/iphone-photography/

And some cool tools:

Camera Bag
Best Camera
TiltShift Generator

written by Christopher Murray

This is big news (if you’re a geek like me). “Dropbox is the easiest way to store, sync, and, share files online. There’s no complicated interface to learn. Dropbox works seamlessly with your operating system and automatically makes sure your files are up-to-date. Available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.”

It really is that simple. Dropbox places a folder on your desktop. Anytime you drag another folder or file into the Dropbox folder it is instantly synchronized and available to your other machines running Dropbox. In addition, you can also right-click on any file or folder and create a private URL to that resource. Sending that URL to someone gives them instant access to that resource. In addition, and by default, if a folder contains images, they are displayed in a very cool gallery format.

Signing up for an account gives you 2GB storage. If you recommend friends and they sign up, you get additional free storage. Larger storage options are available for a reasonable fee.

I now have Dropbox running on my workstation, my Windows laptop, my Mac laptop, and now my iPhone. Brilliant.

written by Christopher Murray

I’ve recently noticed several posts mentioning mind mapping and other forms of defining process and capturing ideas. I can’t tell you how many tools I have used over the years for this purpose, Visio being my absolute least favorite. (I’ve also run the gambit of note-taking applications, from OneNote to EverNote, my current favorite.) But mind mapping is a simple and cool visual way to illustrate how a process or system might work. This little example below was quickly done on my iPhone using SimpleMind, which I then saved as an image, then imported into this post (using the WordPress iPhone edition). It’s a simplified example but it does show how easy it is to diagram the initial stages of thought for a project. I’m gonna kick this one around for a while, and see if there is a more complete version for the desktop.

There’s not much more to this application. You create related boxes and can move them about the screen. You can change the color scheme and either export it as an image or export it to the paid version ($6.99). For free, this is definitely worth trying out, especially if you’re like me and finding your phone a bigger part of running your business.

written by Christopher Murray