jeffhester.net

I’ve always loved maps, even since I was young. Google Maps is my current fave. I can access it via my iPhone. I can get a streetview of my apartment building. And I can get real-time traffic updates.

But what if I want to know what the traffic will probably be like a few hours from now? I was just checking the live traffic for my trek to the airport, when I saw that you now have the option of seeing what traffic is generally like at any time of day and any day of the week. Sweet!

Of course, it’s just a guestimate based on historical data, but hey, it’s better than nothing! Thanks again, Google!

This has been a long time coming. Flickr now allows video uploads. They show up in your photostream alongside regular photos. They can even be played right in thumbnail mode and embedded on your own website, like this:

 Nicely done!

Yes, to day is my 46th birthday. My friend Steve sent this along, and I was compelled to share.

Thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes and greetings!

The good folks at Wordpress have officially released WordPress 2.5. It comes with a long list of nice enhancements, including a completely redesigned administration console that looks and feels great. I upgraded this blog in exactly five minutes, including the time required to upload the new files and upgrade the database. It worked like a charm.

One of the things I like best so far is the ability to auto-update plug-ins via FTP. It worked perfectly, and simplifies the process tremendously.

So far, the only plug-in that I’m not able to get running with 2.5 is also unfortunately one of my favorites: Ankur Kathari’s Gregarious social bookmarking plug-in. Everything else has worked like a charm!

Already running an older version of WordPress? Here are the famous three-step upgrade instructions.

This week’s Photo Friday challenge is a grab bag called emotions. Emotions, especially the difficult ones, are difficult to capture on film because of their spontaneous nature. Sports photographers usually capture quite a few, but then they are trained on watching the “joy of victory… and the agony of defeat.” I sifted through some of my own photos, and most of the emotions captured came from happy or joyful moments. The few exceptions were usually contrived. Which isn’t to say that I haven’t experienced darker emotions… just that I’m less inclined to whip out my camera to preserve the moment.

So I went for the dogs… and a happy moment. This photo was snapped on our walk at Badlands Park above Laguna Beach, and the girls here (Maggie and Lucy) are two very happy bitches. We could all learn a lesson or two in contentment from our dogs.

Adobe Photoshop has long been recognized as the premier tool for image and graphics editing, but the cost was prohibitive for many people. Adobe first offered a slimmed-down version of Photoshop at a lower cost, but now you can use Photoshop for free! Zero. Zip. Nada. Nothing.

Adobe has introduced Photoshop Express, a free, web-based version of Photoshop. Photoshop Express is available now in beta form, and apart from the required Flash 9 plug-in (also free), you don’t need to install any software on your PC. This means Photoshop Express will run happily on your Mac, your Windows PC or even your Linux computer.

On top of that, Adobe is providing 2 GB of storage for your work, also free. So now you can edit images from pretty much anywhere with a PC and an Internet connection.

While graphic designers and image pros will still need the full desktop client, most people will find Photoshop Express more than meets their needs. Even pros will find it useful for those occasions when their own PC is not nearby.

And it’ll probably make law-abiding citizens out of a lot of would-be pirates.

This week’s Photo Friday theme is Found Objects.

Have a good weekend! In between family and fun, I’ll be diving into Joomla this weekend.

You are remembered for the rules you break.

Douglas MacArthur

Animoto is a terrific service that creates video presentations combining photos and music with some great visual effects and very little effort on your part. The beauty of Animoto is that it works with the photos you probably have already uploaded. Animoto can retrieve your photos from Flickr, facebook, smugmug, Picasa or photobucket. You select the photos you want to use, including any special photos you would like to highlight in the video.

For music, you can upload your own or choose from a very nice selection in a variety of genres. For the video above, I chose one of the Indie Rock selections.

That’s about it! Animoto then creates your video automatically. When it’s done, you’ll have a code you can use to embed it on your own blog, or Animoto will automatically embed your video on facebook, myspace, blogger and several other sites. You can even automatically upload the video to YouTube, or download a Quicktime version to your computer.

All of this is free… as long as you’re happy to limit your videos to 30 seconds in length. Longer videos can be created at a cost of $3 each, or you can pay $30 for an annual subscription that let’s you create an unlimited number of “full-length” videos.

The results speak for themself. I was pleased, given the amount of effort that went into it (almost zero).  Check out Animoto.

It’s been a while since I’ve participated in a Photo Friday challenge. This week’s challenge was “The Good Life.” I was looking through some of my photos to see if I had something that captured the essence of the theme, and I’m happy to report that life is good! And while this might bend the “rules” of the challenge, I submit to you the following collage.

Here’s to the good life!