Photo online – Adobe Photoshop Express

March 31, 2008 Niranjan NandakumarLeave a comment

For long I had been a “self-proclaimed” photo enthusiast. Although capturing photographs were just attempts to freeze time on those moments which I wanted to take along with me for the rest of my life, I had been attempting to put them online from the very beginning. I’ve seen the launch of Picasa as just a desktop application and flickr in its formative years as a non-yahoo entity. Over the dozens of other attempts to go online such as the Kodak Gallery , Web Shots and Yahoo Photos , Picasa Web stood out simply for its ability to provide a 1GB space, through its infinitely expanding storage at Google.

But one of the factors which stood out on all these attempts was that, in every one of them, the photo editing had to be done “outside the web” and had to be uploaded later. As the needs of the internet grew, more blogs and social networks started demanding faster and user-friendly ways of “manipulating” photographs, once they have been uploaded. And this had to happen as soon as possible.

Adobe Photoshop Express , the little I’ve tried so far, has been extremely impressive in its attempt to provide user with an “online application” (non-OS specific) to edit photos once uploaded. It can, perhaps, be seen as a rather toned down version of the Photoshop CS3. With the 2GB space that it offers for free, the amount of editing features that it has already incorporated, looks like a promising step forward. And I’m happy with the little that I get to play around with the pictures for now 🙂

Gone are the days when, the grandeur with which Microsoft attempts to “prelaunch” its products is anticipated with a lot of interest. But I must admit that the idea of Photosynth , seems promising if it actually makes it to a common internet user, although the preview being restricted to just XP and Vista users can be annoying to “8% of the population” who use Mac OSX and of course the open source community in general 🙂 .

iPhone – for common man or business enterprises ?

March 30, 2008 Niranjan NandakumarLeave a comment

It might be rather old to write on this, but it still keeps coming up whenever there is a discussion on iPhone that Apple did not manage to break into the enterprise market with its iPhone. And I keep correcting people who tell that to me saying Apple never meant to introduce it to the enterprise market back in July 2007.

It has been quite long since the Palm Treos and the Blackberrys came into existence and they have failed to break into the hands of a common man. The fact is that they always concentrated on the enterprise market, with occasional overspills into the commercial. Along came iPhone in mid-2007 and revolutionized the whole concept of smartphones, with its breathtaking widgets and multitouch. By the end of 2007, the 8GB iphone rose upto number 3 in the top selling smartphones of the year, with just MotorolaQ and Blackberry Pearl above it.

With no support for Microsoft ActiveSync and Cisco VPN in iPhone1.0, my take was that, they never had an intention to enter the enterprise user market right at the beginning. A year later, with over 4 million units sold mainly to the common man, people have grown so much accustomed to it that, they have started thinking about the possibilities that may open by taking it to the enterprise. iPhone2.0 that was announced in March 2007, was absolutely a big leap in that direction, where Apple managed to secure license for the Microsoft ActiveSync, Cisco IPSec VPN and WPA2 Enterprise support with 802.1X.

But by doing so, they did not decide on a complete shift in focus. The announcement of SDK alongside, provided common users with umpteen possibilities to build their own applications that run on the phone.

If you look at how Personal Computers emerged back in 1980s, it followed the same methodology. By the term “Personal”, it was meant for the common man, and with its widespread popularity, entering an enterprise market was just a matter of time. What PC and Microsoft (I completely despise saying this, but still…..:D ) did to personal computing, iPhone and Apple will do to Mobile Computing…..

Idle tech thoughts…

March 30, 2008 Niranjan NandakumarLeave a comment

It could be the number of technical readings that I need to do for my classes that prompted me to start this, but the thought of a blog to write about my adventures with technology, however minuscule they happen to be, has been lingering on for quite sometime now. This is just for starters, while I work on building a site of my own to “integrate” both my blogs.