Free Outlook Add on For Photographers

I will confess that as much as I dislike Microsoft I really do like Outlook. It syncs with my BlackBerry, with Google Calendar and it does a serviceable job with IMAP email accounts.

Me and Outlook, we go way back. All the way back to Office 97. It was very much a love hate relationship back then but really there was no other option. Word and Excel did their job reasonably well and Outlook was there so I used it. I’ve always done at least one upgrade with each new version of Office until Office 2003 came out. As soon as that hit I bought upgrades for all 4 of my personal versions of Office and we bought upgrades for our 3 users of Office at the lab, leaving everyone else on Star Office or Open Office.

Office 2007 was one that I intended to pass on until one of my clients informed me that they would switch to Office 2007 on a hard date. I went through the sample spreadsheet that they included with Office 2003 using the 2007 converters and it just didn’t work well so I broke down and got an upgrade for one of my computers. Office 2007 is alright. The ribbon doesn’t bother me like I thought it would and it is a worthy enough upgrade. I’m thinking about doing the rest of my computers to get the attachment preview in messages in Outlook, but I digress.

Outlook has always been a great calendar and scheduling application. Even without Exchange it will handle invitations and responses better than anything else that I have tried. I had long contemplated using something like Studio+ to get some client and equipment scheduling features but didn’t want to spend the money for it. Instead I used methods like written notes on Post-Its or legal pads, notes in my Palm Pilot/Treo/BlackBerry or worse; my memory.

I became so sick of having to improvise, adapt and overcome a forgotten piece of equipment that I started loading up 2 Domke F2 bags with everything that I own to take on each and every job that I did. Back breaking and very risky to your business to have every piece of equipment that you own on one job site. No more.

Microsoft has released Microsoft Pro Photo Shoot for Outlook 2007 & 2003 (thankfully). It allows you to create a listing of all of your equipment so that with a click of a button you have a window that pops up where you can simply select the client and then fill out your equipment list by checking off what you need. Yes, I am aware that you can manually add these equipment items to the note field but I never did it because it was such a pain in the ass. Now it is rather trivial to get all of that data into the appointment.

When you use tools like Google Calendar to do over the air calendar sync your appointment with all of your equipment needs is uploaded to Google Calendar. From there, you can sync to other computers or more importantly to your BlackBerry and have the details with you always. Now my calendar is the only place that I go to see what I need to take with me. I have lightened my load, reduced my exposure to loss or theft of equipment and did if for no cost. All in all not a bad deal. You can get Microsoft Pro Photo Shoot at the links below.

Microsoft Pro Photo Shoot Product Page
Microsoft Pro Photo Shoot Outlook 2007 download
Microsoft Pro Photo Shoot Outlook 2003 download

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Technorati : Microsoft, Office, Outlook, Scheduling

Photocrazy Suit Update

I’ll admit that I have been very preoccupied lately. With Bob retiring and the lab closing it took us several months to get that all squared away. After a month off I had given thought about this blog. Should I move it and keep it going (there are about 400 readers every week even in the last 2 months) or just let it go. I haven’t decided what to do, but imagine my shock when my Photocrazy post got a comment from Peter Wolf himself.

That really got me back in to the swing of things in terms of keeping track of the suit. In Peter’s comment he posts a link which I think reveals a little more information than he should want released even to such a small audience. I don’t know how long he will leave that link active, but if you want to read some of the behind the scenes stuff about the patent suit and other "inner workings" head on over there and poke around.

On to the suit update. The biggest happenings since my last post is that Mr. Wolf has dismissed against Printroom (8/9/07) and DigiLabs (9/6/07). No reason is cited in the filings so there is only a guess as to why. There could be a deal in place or perhaps on review Mr. Wolf has decided that the two do not actually infringe his patented process.

Further news is that Hour Photo filed their answer and manned up. They admitted that they had in a limited way infringed and they have ceased all infringing activities. Their filing was done pro se (for self, without lawyer) which to me is the dumbest thing in the world to do when this kind of money is on the table. No further information on payment (if any) or any other type of court action is available at this time.

Brightroom and Birds Eye View were not served with notice until October 1st. I have no idea why they were just served given that suit was filed on the 8th of June but I am sure there is a reason.  Also Elizabeth M. Kreutz was served on 9/10 with an answer date of 9/19. There has been no answer filed and no motion for extension that is listed.

Next up on the clock is the answer deadline for both SmugMug and Island Photo on the 29th. Assuming that no further extension motion is filed we will have another update at that time.

 

Technorati tags: Brightroom, DigiLabs, Order Picture, Peter Wolf, Photocrazy, Printroom, Smug Mug

Photocrazy Files Suit

Peter Wolf of Photocrazy, Inc. invented event photography. Yeah, I know, but the United States Patent and Trademark Office gave him a patent that says he did invent one aspect of searching for images using identifying numbers. You can read the entire patent at Google Patent Search so I won’t bore you to death with the details. The long and short of it all is that the patent application was filed in October of 2005, years after any number of companies had begun using bib or uniform numbers to search for images in a database.

This from the patent application describes the method of associating data with an image file that will be used in the patented process to identify images in the database:

2. Associating identifying data with each photograph taken where the identifying data is AT LEAST ONE of the following:

a. A number corresponding to a number worn by a participant (, i.e. a bib number)
b. A participants name
c. A code acquired from a component worn by a participant
d. A date and time, including hour and minute the photograph was taken (automatically included in the EXIF data for digital images taken with today’s equipment)

Clearly Mr. Wolf didn’t invent any of these methods (he isn’t selling item C so it is vaporware) of image identification. Mr. Wolf didn’t invent the database, Charles Bachman did. Mr. Wolf didn’t invent EXIF, JEITA did. Mr Wolf didn’t invent bib or uniform numbers either. Mr. Wolf wasn’t even the first to think of the idea of searching a database by identifying data in an image. Kodak DP2 has done this for years on a local network as has ACDSee, ID Imager and others. I fail to see how this dog will hunt but my degree is not in law.

On his website Mr. Wolf claimed that “Patent Lawyers Confirm Validity” when SEP Society issued their opinion. I can read real good and I fail to see where that statement says anything other than the patent may cover your business or it may not so you maybe better ask your lawyer, but let’s not split hairs. It is perfectly legal for Mr. Wolf to inform people of a patent and suggest that they should look at their exposure to it.

He did manage to get a few people to pay up, but the list is short. It certainly seemed that his patent couldn’t possibly hold up (not legal advice) but who really knew until Photocrazy decided to bring action against someone. Well, we are all gonna find out just how valid the patents are because on June 8th suit was filed against 8 companies in US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. Texas seems to see an awful lot of these patent cases and here is one more against the following companies:

1. Brightroom Inc., Emeryville, California
2. Island Photography Inc., Glen Cove, New York
3. Kruetz Photography, Austin, Texas
4. Bird’s Eye View Inc., Simpsonville, South Carolina
5. DigiLabs Inc., Palo Alto, California
6. Printroom Inc., Santa Clara, California
7. SmugMug Inc., Mountain View, California
8. Hour Photos Inc. Addison, Texas

On that note, I expect the first thing filed by the defendants will be a motion to sever as you cannot join cases against defendants where the infringement did not occur from the same transaction. What that means is this. If defendant #3 possibly infringed the patent using the service of defendant #1, those cases may be joined as one because the alleged infringement occurred from the same transaction. If defendant #5 has no relationship to #1 or #3 then there is no cause to join the cases.

Mr. Wolf is likely attempting this route to save both time and money. It is much more difficult and costly to pursue 8 cases than one. The defendants will not want to be crowded in to one ship that may well sink. Best to be in your own boat and see if Mr. Wolf has pockets deep enough to run the gauntlet of a number of cases. Good luck to all involved. I will be watching this very closely.

Technorati : Brightroom, DigiLabs, Order Picture, Peter Wolf, Photocrazy, Printroom, Smug Mug

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Workflow Software. Again.

Cue up the dead horse, but this question comes up A LOT, and has been asked of me again quite a bit. Here is a listing of available options that I am aware of. Again, we all know where I stand on the subject and I make no commentary on any of the options listed. Well, there are a few slaps at one company but whatever. It’s a list and I am sure that it is probably an incomplete list but here you go:

Workflow software listing from September 2006.

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Slacker Desktop Radio

Being the huge music fan that I am I jumped on the new Slacker Music Service the very minute that they released their online music player. It's free (and ad free until the paid service is ready) and I like bright, shinny new objects. I am a heavy user of both Sirius and XM Satellite Radio and listen all day every day while at work and this seemed like a great fit for my rotation.

I didn't love their online music player. It really shot the browsers RAM usage through the roof and I was more frustrated with it than I thought I would be. Then a few days ago Slacker released their desktop radio player. This thing is cool.

It's been very light on RAM at about 10 MB when playing music but has a high virtual memory tag at about 100 MB. This doesn't slow down my system at all, but your mileage may vary. It has also been rock solid for a beta application. No hangs, crashes or other nasty happenings.

The thing about this service is the vast selection of music. My daughter says that my iPod is owned by a schizophrenic, but regardless of what I am in the mood for they have it. The service allows you to tag favorites which will increase the number of times you will hear tracks from that band as well as add in more music from similar artists. You can also mark a song as a "hate" and not have to hear it again.

I am a heavy user of satellite radio being a subscriber of both Sirius and XM so I don't know that I am willing to pay for their premium service for an as yet unannounced price. I do really like that I can tell the software what I like and what I don't like and it adjusts for my interests. I will certainly hang with the free service if the ads are reasonable in frequency and I may just go for the subscription if it isn't a killer.

You can download the Slacker Desktop Radio Player here.

Technorati : Sirius, Slacker, XM

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Inkjet isn’t so bad

Had a very long discussion today with a guy I have spoken with a number of times regarding the lab and his debate about returning to lab printing as opposed to the inkjet’s that he has done for a number of years. He wanted me to convince him that printing in the lab was better than inkjet printing and to his surprise I refused. Both methods have their strengths as well as weaknesses, but >better< is in the eye of the beholder.

Back in the early days of inkjet printers the prints weren’t so great. The color was fabulous as even the early inks delivered a wider color gamut than RA-4 papers but the benefits ended right there. Resolutions were low, paper options were limited, per print prices were sky high and the prints couldn’t stand up to a sneeze test let alone any kind of real moisture test. Kind of like the early digital camera days. Way back when $20,000 bought you about 1 effective mega pixel and the product was shit. I was at that time very anti-inkjet and it had everything to do with the longevity and print quality.

Digital cameras grew up and so have inkjet printers. The color is even better than it was, paper options are abundant and with pigment inks the prints last and last. Which is better? That’s for you to decide for yourself, but I can tell you that many people elect to do both and they do so happily. Epson, Canon and HP all make excellent printers and with proper use the results are fantastic. So, you think you want to buy an inkjet and you want to know some of the pitfalls? I’ll tell you the big ones right now and I’ll even tell you how you can avoid them.

The first pitfall is time. Print times can be 3 minutes or more per 8×10 print and this can seriously cut in to time that you might better spend doing other things. First print out at the lab is about 4 minutes or so but that is dry to dry. The first print come out in 4 minutes but the next print is hot on it’s heals. With inkjet 3 minutes x print quantity = the amount of time that you will be occupied with the process. Next, though print prices for inkjet printers have come down you must always keep in mind that when you are doing your own printing you are responsible for any mistakes that are made. Every single 8×10 print that you throw in the garbage comes right out of your profit and not the lab’s. This is the one that no inkjet salesman really talks about. If we hose 100 8×10’s in the lab the hit for that paper waste comes out of our pocket, not the photographers. Third, you alone are the responsible party when it comes to print quality. If your print come out green the only person that you can yell at is yourself. Should these two reasons keep you off of inkjet? In a word, no.

Use good quality monitors that are calibrated and profiled on a schedule coupled with proper profiling of your printer. You must expect and demand print quality from yourself that you would expect and demand from your lab. Shoot with proper white balance, work in a tightly controlled calibrated & profiled environment and your results will be there. Go in to the process without learning the basics and you will do much more harm to your reputation than you can imagine. Under no circumstances should your customer shoulder the burden of poor execution.

Monitors from Eizo or View Sonic. Profiling hardware and software from Gretag Macbeth. Workflow software like Darkroom Core or Professional. A calendar to keep track of your profiling schedule. These are some of the tools that will help you be a successful self printer and save you many hours of wasted time and consumables.

That’s really it for me on the subject. My boss reads this blog and this post really seems like an inkjet printer commercial and that isn’t what I intended it to be.

What did the guy on the phone decide? Well, I am pretty sure that I convinced him to upgrade his Epson Gemini to the latest version. He has a lot of money invested in the system and his results are really very good. There is no advantage to him or to his customers to change his method. We’ll see over the next few days what he will do. What should you do? Investigate your options. Ask a dealer close to you for a demo. Get some sample prints off of the machine that you like and compare the models. If the print quality is there for you and you can maintain your discipline give it a shot. Just remember to buy from a dealer that you know and trust. In those first few weeks you will want the support that only a professional dealer can provide.

Technorati : Canon, Epson, ExpressDigital, Inkjet Printers

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We are all software pirates.

Well, we are if you listen to what the Business Software Alliance is saying about illegal software usage in the world from this article. Here is the important part to me:

“We know, for instance, that new PCs going to consumers in the U.S. generally have eight pieces of software, four of which are free like Adobe Reader and the other four should be paid for,” said John Gatz, chief research officer at IDC. “So if you know how many pieces of hardware have software and how many pieces of software were paid for, the difference is the pirate.”

So I am a pirate. Not because I have illegal software, but because I don’t have 4 applications loaded on this computer that I paid for. Let’s look at my laptop for just a moment (my desktop has a few additional web browsers and a stone cold legal copy of Photoshop 7 along with a bunch of other free or open source software) as that is what I have with me just now to see what is installed.

1. ExpressDigital Darkroom Professional. Bought and paid for.
2. ExpressDigital Darkroom Web Edition. Freeware.
3. iTunes. Freeware. Loaded with my classic rock and classical CD’s.
4. Firefox web browser. Open source freeware.
5. Thunderbird email client. Open source freeware.
6. Notepad ++. Open source freeware.
7. Open Office 2. Open source freeware.
8. Google Talk. Freeware.
9. Pidgin Instant Messenger. Open source freeware.
10. Filezilla FTP client. Open source freeware.
11. X1 desktop search. Freeware.
12. Zoundry blog editor. Freeware.
13. UltraExplorer. Freeware.
14. Nero. Came with the computer.
15. ZipGenius. Freeware.
16. Picasa. Freeware.
17. Google Earth. Freeware.
18. FoxIt Reader. Freeware.
19. idImager Lite. Freeware.
20. How could I leave off Microsoft Windows XP Professional. Came with the pig.

Now, I do have some things not listed there like Adobe Reader and a few free applications for listening to Sirius and XM online. I also have a free Internet radio application that I never use and a trial copy of ACDSee Pro that expired some time ago and is awaiting an uninstall. A free application for reading the online version of the PMA show daily magazine and other free little goodies like Google Video Player and Winamp. There is also the standard Windows stuff like Outlook Express and IE along with Windows Media Player and some other Microsoft junk. That’s it.

You can see a trend developing from my list. I am a heavy user of open source and free software. Why? Well, for much the same reason that I don’t buy very many music CD’s any more. The music sucks. A lot of commercial software sucks.

The BSA has been playing this thief game for a lot longer than RIAA has. In the past they just assumed that everyone using a pirated copy of some application would have actually bought it if they hadn’t stolen it. Alright. I don’t agree with that, but let them have it. It is their product that is being stolen. Now they have pushed the envelope even further to state that if you don’t have four applications on your computer that are bought and paid for commercial applications then “that is the pirate”. Please.

If I couldn’t do my job without some commercial application I would not hesitate to buy it today. The one application that you don’t see on my list that might stand out is Photoshop. I have it on my desktop workstation, but not my laptop because I just don’t need it here. I am sure that the BSA assumes that I stole CS2 because the last version that I bought was Photoshop 7. No, I didn’t steal it. I took a pass because CS and CS2 both suck to me. CS2 is a memory hog that offers me no advantage over Photoshop 7. If I “needed” CS2 I would “have” CS2 in a bought and paid for >legal< manner.

The simple fact of the matter is that there are open source or free versions of most anything that you want. You aren’t stealing it. You aren’t a pirate. Even if the BSA (Microsoft, Adobe, Apple and all the other big software companies) wants to lump me in with the thieves that is fine. They know better, and more importantly I know better.

The one sure way to drive your customers to find free and open source alternatives to your product (music or software) is to assume that they are all thieves and then do everything in your power to make things as difficult for them as you can. Activations that don’t stick and require another attempt when you don’t have an Internet connection, DRM that says you didn’t actually buy that song even though you are trying to listen to it seconds after you paid for and downloaded the track, rootkits installed by ordinary music CD’s, software that attempts to dial home every time you run it to verify whatever it verifies and any other method of back handed restrictions that you force on your paying customers that gets in the way of work to be done will drive people from you.

Then after they drive you away they will call you a thief. Nice.

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New Photoreflect Features

Very welcomed list of new options.

Here are the details on the PhotoReflect update:

Ability to select different photos with multiple photo packages
    (option in Storefront Manager)
Color effects – b&w, sepia, retro
    (option in Storefront Manager)
25 new storefront styles bringing the total to 101
Advertising program out of beta
    2% reduction in e-commerce fees for rich media ads
    1% for text only ads
Improved reporting
New package sales reports – overall and by event
Improved storefront selector
Tabbed interface
New indicator on styles
Customizable shipping policy
Customizable minimum order amount
Improved paging control for thumbnails
Improved cart – displays photos used in borders and multi-photo packages
Improved order e-mails – displays shipping times, comments, multi-photo items
Cancel your storefront option in Storefront Manager
Numerous minor enhancements

Login in to Darkroom or Storefront Manager http://www.photoreflect.com/dr3

Technorati : Photoreflect

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Upgrades

It’s that time of year again. The time when ExpressDigital releases an upgrade version and raises the anger of a few people over the fact that upgrades cost money. I get the point about the cost of the software on the front side and then the ongoing annual cost of support and upgrades, but I also see the other side of the picture as well. Being a Labtricity lab I get to deal with Express often. Probably much more often than they would like, but it does give you perspective.

“Adobe doesn’t charge $495 for a Photoshop upgrade. Why should ExpressDigital?” That’s the question that I am answering here. Why should Express charge this much for an upgrade? The answer begins with the fact that you can’t compare Photoshop to Darkroom. Photoshop appeals to photographers across a very broad spectrum and even at $1,295 full retail it would outsell Darkroom by the same numbers. Darkroom isn’t exactly a niche product, but the potential audience for the application is small compared to Photoshop. Adobe is a multi national company with offices and employees around the globe which further extends it’s appeal to photographers of all skill and income levels. A full copy of Photoshop is $700 and is a true image editing application. Darkroom is a workflow management application that includes some image editing tools.

Your product is priced for the market that you serve. Look at Adobe’s own offering of Photoshop Elements. Yes, it is less feature complete than Photoshop but go buy a copy and look at all that you get for $99. I did. It is amazing to me that they give you what they do for $99 which is what I paid for it on sale at Staples I think it was. Why would Adobe do this? It’s simple really. Photoshop appeals to a very narrow audience. Compared to the numbers of PC’s (People With Cameras) out there Photoshop has a very limited audience being so narrowly focused on professional photographers. Consumers buy digital cameras at the rate of millions (if I weren’t fat and lazy I would break out the PMA report and get the actual numbers to insert here) every year and Photoshop Elements at $99 or $149 makes perfect sense. To maintain and develop Photoshop the money has to be right. Given it’s narrow focus those that need it must be willing to pay the $700 upfront price and the $149 annual upgrade fee if they want the application.

So, Photoshop is a narrowly focused application? It is when you put it in perspective and compare it to a consumer application that appeals to millions and millions and millions more people. So now we look at ExpressDigital and how this all relates. Photoshop and it’s millions of potential customers around the world are what keep the price of Photoshop as low (that’s right, I said low) as it is. If Photoshop had a potential market size as small as Ed’s Photoshop would cost substantially more than it does today. Oddly enough, just as ExpressDigital is now Adobe would be forced to earn their money by appealing to a very small subset of a very large group of people and would charge for their product accordingly. If their product appealed to a large enough portion of that subset then Adobe would be just fine. If it didn’t there would be no Adobe.

Everything in life boils down to value. Does the software give you a great enough return on your investment to justify the expense? This isn’t a hobby and every dime that you spend must be an investment and not just an expense item. Are you investing in greater productivity and enhanced services for your own customers or not? If you don’t find that kind of value in the software put your credit card back in your wallet and get back to shooting. If you do find the kind of value in the application that justifies the expense (as I do and thousands of others) you know what to do.

Oh, and as a side note I can get an upgrade to Photoshop CS 3 for $149. Microsoft wanted me to pay $249 for an upgrade to Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Outlook. At no time do all things make total sense, but this one was very easy to pass on.

Technorati : Adobe, ExpressDigital

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Cox Cable Will Block Ad Skipping for Selected VOD

DirecTV is currently who gets my money but I have thought often of going to cable because of the Video on Demand feature that allows you to watch shows that you want to watch on demand. My local cable company sends me a mailer every so often touting this feature that I cannot get with satellite.

That was interesting until I started looking in to what the service actually is. Most often what you get (all of the free VOD options in my area) is a re-run of a show that you can watch or record on the network during it's normal time slot. I love my DVR and use the thing to death. I can count for you on one hand the shows that I watch regularly so I record them all. I also add in certain things from time to time that I want to get a chance to watch later. It's called time shifting. I can't watch this show tonight at 8 so I will DVR it and watch it tomorrow night at 7. I love it.

This VOD service proposes to go one step further by allowing you to watch a program that you might have forgotten or not known about. Select it from the list and watch it right now regardless of your DVR settings. That's nice, but word comes today that Cox struck a deal to make fast forwarding through commercials a thing of the past on certain VOD content. While for today it is Cox and Disney in no time at all it will be all cable companies and all networks.

Let us not forget that cable networks are not solely reliant on ad sales to make their money like broadcast networks are. Cable and satellite networks all get a portion of your monthly charge to provide the content that you get through that cable or dish. When I watch shows at their regularly scheduled time I sit through the commercials. When I DVR I fast forward right through them. Cox has started something that will make VOD meaningless. Though Insight hasn't done it yet the fact that one greedy cable company has will keep me on the satellites.

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