Category: photography

About taking pictures

A good idea gone wrong

Flickr a few months ago created a good idea: they inject a div into the landing page of login that allows them to send arbitrary messages to you that you can dismiss. I definitely think more websites should do that.

Imagine my surprise when I found this notification today:

Flickr account expired

Umm, guys according to your records and mine, my Pro account won’t expire until June 6th. It’s March 22. This isn’t exactly a good thing to be sending to your paying customers. A two word change would do wonders: “…your Pro account has expired” to “…your Pro account will be expiring soon.” As it is, it appears your messaging system clearly has the wrong Type II type error in it (erring to your advantage instead of mine).

What sort of impression does that give me of Flickr’s priorities?

Posted on by tychay 2

Ghetto tips

Mike, a friend and former co-worker pointed me to Go Ghetto. I looked at it and promptly forgot about it.

I should have read Mike’s blog closer because at Lunch 2.0 today, I found out that my friends Holly and (a different) Mike are the instigators of GoGhetto. (What a weird small world we live in.) They even gave me a bumper sticker which I had in my hand for all of 10 seconds. (They were too ghetto to let me keep it, because Mark already had one.)

Ghetto product shot

“Ghetto product shot” by tychay.
Nikon D70, Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D
f/1.8 at 1/60 second, iso 200, 50mm (75mm)

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Posted on by tychay 3

Shooting people at work

There has been a movement in Plaxo recently to make the blog “more edgy” and less bland corporate PR crap. I can only say that’s a good thing.

One little gem of that outgrowth is a wonderful entry by my co-worker Michael Rowley on photographing people at work. Actually, yesterday we had a “Haxo” day where we spend our time working on a project not related to my current work. Michael spent his Haxo Day photographing at Plaxo so in many ways this blog entry was an outgrowth of his Haxo project.

If you are curious as to Michael’s style, here is a candid he took of me:

Terry 0277

“Terry 0277” by Mnemonix
(Sony Cybershot DSC-F717) f/2.2 at 1/100 second, iso 400, 7.2mm (69mm)

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Posted on by tychay 3

The Origami hype-machine

Pity Microsoft sometimes.

What possess them to send out hype announcements just before a Steve Job’s keynote/event? I know Apple has a tiny marketshare, but in the geek world, their mind share is huge. This is why Apple’s announcements top Google News Sci/Tech section even after a mediocre product announcement.

More is the pity because Origami is actually a very interesting device.

(Be warned, the Origami website linked is pointless.)

Microsoft’s Origami

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Posted on by tychay 10

Lunch 2.0 l(a)unches

In 1999, I used to eat lunches in Novell’s offices (now eBay’s headquarters). In 2000, Dave visited me and I showed him all the crappiest food in the valley. In 2001, Dave came to the Valley and we decided we needed to visit corporate cafeteries, because the only thing you got free in the valley, post bubble, was caffeinated beverages.

That was Lunch 1.0 and it sucked.

Then Mark got fired from Google and started inviting everyone to have lunch on Plaxo.

Lunch 2.0 was born…

Lunch 2.0 @ Dot’s Café, Yahoo!

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Posted on by tychay 3