austinpreneur

How I use iPhoto to publish to Facebook

I have a pretty good routine down now for uploading and sharing my photos and videos on my Mac and in the cloud. Good because I'm able to do it frequently (a few times a week) and don't spend too much time on it (usually about 15 minutes). This system is actually based on a similar method for managing music songs and playlists that I use for iTunes.

I manage them in iPhoto, edit them in iMovie, and share them online via Facebook, Flickr and YouTube and also through devices such as my iPhone, screensavers and digital picture frames. I'm able to upload a lot of content with minimal time.

Here is what I do after returning from a trip or event where I took pictures and video.

First, I organize the photos:

1. Connect USB cable to camera, videocamera, and iPhone. iPhoto automatically launches and goes directly to the Import screen.
2. Click Import in iPhoto to copy photos from camera to computer
3. Hygiene - delete bad photos and duplicate photos in iPhoto
4. Tagging - Add tags to photos in iPhoto
5. Ratings - Rate all photos 3 stars in iPhoto
6. Ratings - Upgrade individual photos to 4 or 5 stars in iPhoto
7. Events - Break into Events if needed and name events in iPhoto
8. Smart Albums - Update MobileMe galleries by dragging and dropping new photos from Smart Albums in iPhoto

Next, I publish them to various physical devices and online:

1. Screensaver on my computer
2. iPhone Photo Albums
3. Digital Picture Frames
4. Facebook Photos - Publish new photos to Facebook from iPhoto, then update permissions from Facebook website
5. Flickr Photos - Publish new photos to Flickr if appropriate
6. iMovie Editing - Edit videos in iMovie if necessary (usually not)
7. Facebook Video - Drag videos to the desktop and then upload individually to Facebook and YouTube

Usually this entire process takes about 15 minutes. If its after a big trip with 1000 photos and a bunch of video then maybe an hour or two.

Do I have to use a Mac?

This is one of those places where the Mac really shines. No one has made it so simple to manage your photos, videos and music and the software is all completely free with every Mac. Everything is integrated and mostly automatic. You plug in the camera and it launches iPhoto and goes right to the Import screen. My screensaver automatically gets the latest pictures and so does my iPhone when it syncs. Everything is automatic. Everything is easy.

Tagging

I'm pretty religious about tagging my photos and videos. I have about 20 tags that I use to keep things straight. Most photos get 2 or 3 tags.

A few tags may eventually be replaced by iPhoto facial recognition - I've played with it a bunch but I haven't integrated it into my process yet. I also need to work geolocation tagging into this process.

The most common tags that I use now are:

• Family Members *
• Josh *
• Baer **
• Family **
• Friends **
• Business
• OtherInbox
• Capital Factory
• Ignite Austin
• Home 
• Holiday
• Travel
• Cars
• Dogs
• Documents (pictures of awards, certificates, etc.)

* could be replaced by facial recognition
** could be replaced by facial recognition if it had groups

I can use the same criteria to do one-off searches and I have found it to be very easy to find specific pictures I'm looking for. Usually I can just narrow it down to 2 or 3 tags and then scan chronologically to find it.

Ratings

iPhoto has a five star rating system. My default rating is 3 stars. After deleting bad photos that are out of focus and duplicate shots, I "select all" and set the ratings to 3 stars. Then I look through them for any that I want to upgrade to 4 stars or 5 stars.

• 5 stars - the very best pictures
• 4 stars - better than average, but not the very best
• 3 stars - default rating for pictures that are worth keeping
• 2 stars - below average, but kept for completeness (usually pictures from an event)
• 1 star - never show in albums, probably some special case, not usually normal pictures

By rating every photo, I can create Smart Albums (below) that contain my "best" pictures from the past few months. Or I can combine with Tags to search for the "best pictures of Cars".

 

 
 

Smart Albums

Smart Albums are like "saved searches." I combine Tagging and Ratings to create Smart Albums that update their content automatically. I then connect these Smart Albums to screensavers, my iPhone, and the albums that I publish to Facebook.

My most frequently used Smart Albums are:

• Kids Best - tagged Kids and rated 5 stars
• Kids Recent - taken in the past 3 months, tagged Kids and rated 3, 4 or 5 stars
• 3 Months Best - taken in the past 3 months and rated 4 or 5 stars
• 3 Months Recent - taken in the past 3 months and rated 3, 4 or 5 stars
• Family Best - tagged Family and rated 4 or 5 stars
• Travel Best - tagged Travel and rated 5 stars
• Amy & Josh - tagged Amy and Josh and rated 5 stars

How do I decide how many stars? Mostly be trial an error. I start with 4 and 5 stars and if that is too many then I just go with 5 stars. If its not enough then I go to 3, 4 and 5 stars.

 

 

iMovie Editing

iMovie is a simple video editing application that comes pre-installed on most Macs. It's really easy to make professional looking videos with it. You can easily cut and paste clips together, overlay slides from a presentation, add titles and effects, and more.

It is integrated with iPhoto - so as long as I upload my photos and movies into iPhoto (which is what happens by default when I plug a camera into my Mac) then iMovie can automatically see all of those media assets and I can drag and drop them into movies I'm editing.

Facebook

For photos, I usually let iPhoto organize them into Events and end up wanting to publish Events as Albums on Facebook. After all of the hygiene, tagging, and rating, I'm usually left with exactly the group of photos I might want to share. So I just name the Event the same name I would want the Album to be named in Facebook and then click the Facebook icon in the bottom right of the iPhoto window.

 

 

If you want to share your photos with Everyone or with Just Friends, its easy. You just click go and you're done. I think that somehow it even matches up the facial recognition and will automatically tag photos with your friends.

If you want to share the album privately on Facebook with only certain people, it gets a little tricky. iPhoto only gives you the option to share your album with Everyone, Friends of Friends, or Just Friends. Most of the photos that I share are only shared with certain Facebook Friend Lists and not with Everyone. So I have to publish from iPhoto to Just Friends and then immediately go to the web page and reset the privacy controls from the web after the first photo is uploaded. Even still, I've had a few times where some friends on Facebook have seen pictures (I know because they commented on them) that they weren't supposed to see (fortunately nothing embarrassing, just cute family pictures).

 

 

This only works for uploading photos to your own personal account. Once they are in your account, you can easily post them to a Facebook event. However, if you want to post pictures to a Facebook Page for your company, you need to export the photos to a folder and then use the Facebook photo upload process from the web page.

For videos, it's similar to Facebook pages. You have to upload the video files directly using the Facebook web page. I usually end up dragging and dropping the video from iPhoto onto the desktop so that its easy to find when I'm uploading it to Facebook.

Flickr

I don't really publish many photos to Flickr but it works with iPhoto a lot like Facebook.

YouTube

Publishing movies isn't quite as simple with YouTube. The maximum time is 10 minutes, so long movies require extra editing to chop them up into 10 minute chunks and upload them each separately. This is a big pain in the ass and is making me seriously consider switching the bulk of my video to Vimeo because it has fewer limitations.

iPhone

My iPhone automatically syncs the Smart Albums to my iPhone, so it always has the best and most recent pictures on it. You configure that from within iTunes.

Screensavers

You can choose a Smart Album as a screensaver on a Mac, so I usually have the "3 Months Best" album with the Ken Burns effect on my screen. Its counter-intuitive to me at first, but I find that I prefer seeing the most recent pictures all the time, not the best old ones over and over.

Just go to the Screen Saver in the System Preferences and your iPhoto Albums and Events will appear in the list. Sometimes it takes a minute for them to appear.

 

 

Digital Picture Frames

I have a Philips digital picture frame on my desk. Unfortunately the only way to transfer pictures is by connecting it to a computer via USB or using SD memory cards. This means manually dragging and dropping images from iPhoto to the SD card and physically moving around the cards or cables every time you want to sync them. I'd really like to find a good digital picture frame that would stream the photos off of iPhoto (the problem with Facebook is that the pictures are so low quality).

What about you?

How do you manage your photos? Any tips on how to make my process smoother or more automated? Have you worked facial recognition and geo-location into your process? Please comment.

My Backup Strategy for Macs

I use Macs at home and at work. Here is my backup strategy:

Level 1 - Hardware RAID

I use a redundant RAID configuration for the hard drives that store the primary copy of the data so that if there is a hardware failure it can continue to operate without any interruption. This doesn't protect you from accidentally deleting something, but it does protect from hard drive failure and ALL HARD DRIVES FAIL.

Level 2 - Time Machine

I use the built in Time Machine backup program from Apple. It's easy and seems to work well. I haven't had to restore much yet so I can't say from personal experience but I've heard that the restore is easy an reliable. I do find that it slows down my computer when its backing up a lot of data and sometimes I use the menu bar icon to cancel the backup if I'm in the middle of something. 

Time Machine is brain dead simple. It literally is like plug in your hard drive and press one button and forget about it.

In addition to being easy and automatic, Time Machine stores many 'snapshots' of your data at different times and makes it easy to browse these snapshots and restore. This does protect you against accidentally deleting something because you can go "back in time" and get the file you deleted.

Time Machine backs up to an external hard drive attached to an iMac at my house. That disk is shared so that all other Macs in the house (and my laptop when its home at night) can backup to the same disk using Time Machine. I'm currently using a 2 TB drive for my Time Machine but I really should upgrade it soon.

Level 3 - JungleDisk

But what if my house burns down? I use JungleDisk from Rackspace to backup all of my local data (and I mean EVERYTHING) up to Amazon's S3 file storage service or Rackspace CloudFiles. This way all of my data is stored securely in the cloud. 

I have over 500GB of data, so it took many months to complete the initial upload. Once that completed, I don't seem to have any problem keeping up with the new data that I bring (mostly through photos and video).

You have to be a geek to set up Jungle Disk because you need a separate account at Amazon S3 or Rackspace Cloudfiles. I would expect that its going to get easier now that Rackspace owns JungleDisk but I haven't tried setting up a new account in years.

Level 4 - Safe Deposit Box

What if my house burns down AND Amazon loses my data? Every six months or so I swap out the hard drives at home with a duplicate set in my safe deposit box. Every year or two I buy new, bigger hard drives, copy the data to the new drives, and put the old drives in the safe deposit box. This is pretty fast and easy. Each year my storage needs grow and hard drives get bigger and cheaper.

How do you backup your computer data? Leave a comment below or talk to me on Twitter here http://twitter.com/joshuabaer

iPhone vs. G1 - Forget the Internet, which is a better phone?

Lets start off simply. What's it like to make a phone call on an Android G1 phone versus an Apple iPhone? I show the screenshots of exactly what you would see and then talk a bit about my experience with the headset, microphone, and speakerphone quality. Finally, I hit on the carrier issue - because you're not just choosing a phone - you're married to either T-Mobile or AT&T as well.

Both phones have similar interfaces for the basic functions of dialing a phone number by the digits or by selecting one of your existing contacts. Making a phone call is pretty much the same. 

Android G1

 

Apple iPhone

   

(I redacted some phone numbers and email addresses)

 

Headset & Microphone

Both have loud, clear headsets that can easily be heard. Both have good microphones and everyone else can hear you. they work great as phones. The iPhone is about half as thin and lighter so I find it a bit nicer to hold, but that's a minor issue and a personal preference.

Speakerphone

Both have a speakerphone built-in, but neither would take the place of that Polycom at your office. Both are comparable, although the speaker on the G1 is a bit louder and the microphone on the iPhone seems to be a bit clearer. I remember my old Nextel had an excellent speakerphone so I would use it all the time. I don't find myself using it on these phones very much because the overall quality is just too low.

T-Mobile vs. AT&T

This is probably a bit of a religious issue. I mean, its not like any phone companies are actually GOOD are they? I have hated every phone company I've ever worked with (AT&T, Sprint, Nextel, T-Mobile). I have yet to try Virgin Mobile but I have high hopes that they could be different like the other Virgin brands.

It's hard to go wrong with AT&T. It is the original phone company after all. Coverage is really good and the 3G network is fast. There are stores everywhere. They work internationally. Even better, most of the time you don't have to deal with AT&T, you just deal directly with Apple. 

BONUS! Dealing with Apple is a billion times better than dealing with a phone company. For those of you who aren't familiar, Apple is "genius" at customer service. You can schedule an in-store appointment at their "Genius Bar" from the web for the same day. Instead of hiding it in the back of the store, it's right in the middle where everyone can see it. The Apple techs are super helpful and if there is a problem, they will often just hand you a new phone. If you do need to ship something off, its fast.

T-Mobile has most of the same benefits of AT&T. Good coverage, lots of stores, international coverage. I'm not sure if their network is as fast - I'll do a separate post comparing the speed of the two. 

The big thing they are missing is Apple - Google search is no replacement for Apple customer service. I'm sure that over time the community resources around the G1 will grow into something much better than today. However, I don't think it will ever match the Apple experience.

Conclusion

All other things being pretty equal, having Apple for customer service is the most significant factor in making me say that the iPhone is a better PHONE than the Android G1. I also like that its thinner and fits in my pocket better. So if you got rid of all the other functionality and all these could do is make phone calls, I'd go with an iPhone.

Google G1 versus Apple iPhone

I definitely would qualify as an early adopter. I bought the original iPhone on the day it came out, and then the iPhone G3 on the day it came out. I tried to order the Google G-1 phone on the day it came out but had problems ordering from the T-Mobile website and took me until early November to get around to picking one up.

I'm so torn. I love Apple and I love Google. How's a geek to choose?

I've decided to put them head-to-head. I'm carrying both around and I have my GrandCentral account set up to ring both of them at the same time, allowing me to easily switch from one to the other. Too bad neither of them will let me listen to my GrandCentral voicemail messages...

I was trying to write up one master review and after more than a month I've decided to release it in smaller chunks (so that it actually gets released). Each blog post will focus on a particular aspect, such as making calls, taking a photo, download speed, or typing.

In addition to the normal tags, everything in this thread will be tagged "iPhone vs G1".

Posting from TypePad iPhone app

I'm testing out the new TypePad iPhone application. This is a picture of the cookies I baked last night, taken and uploaded with my iPhone.

I'll be at the Barton Creek Apple store tomorrow at 7am if anyone wants to join me!

(I had to come back after posting this and reformat it from my computer to make the image smaller and remove some whitespace)

The Windows Disadvantage

It used to be that having Windows expertise was an advantage and being a Mac user put you in a severe minority. It was hard to find a job where you were allowed to use a Mac never mind where you got to be surrounded by other Mac users.

But oh how the times have changed. Macs are more popular than PCs at universities, at many technical conferences, with celebrities, even with newscasters on CNN. If you are giving a presentation at an O'Reilly conference, you can expect to see an army of Apple logos staring back at you.

Have we crossed the cusp? Is it a disadvantage for a technical person who doesn't know Mac? Are your job options significantly wider if you are comfortable on both Mac and Windows?

Getting Things Done (GTD) with Apple iCal

I don't claim to be an expert at GTD, but I am trying to integrate it more into my routine. I was already using MacOS Mail and iCal for managing my todos, and am trying to map a simple GTD like system on top of it.

First I use the iCal To Dos to keep track of my next action items. High Priority items are things that I expect to get done today. Every morning, I review the Medium Priority items and promote a few to High Priority that I want to get done today. If I want to remember something for later but its not a top priority, I make it Low Priority. When I'm waiting on someone else to complete one of my todos, I move it to No Priority.

In Mail, I created a folder called To Dos. Anytime I create a To Do for an email, I move the email to that folder so its out of my way (I don't need the email reminder because I now have a To Do reminder). When I start working on that item, I know where to find the email if I need it. Periodically, I review the To Do email folder to clear out old items.

Each morning, I read through my new emails and either delete it, delegate it to someone else, deal with it immediately, or create a To Do in iCal. Then I review my schedule for the day and my To Dos and mark the ones as High that I plan on accomplishing today.

High Priority - Deal with it today
Medium Priority - Next on the plate
Low Priority - Backburner
No Priority - Waiting on someone else

If you're currently using iCal to do GTD, I'd love to hear about your experiences!