About an hour ago I was on my way back to my hotel after attending an iPhone Film Festival at MacWorld 2012 when I stumbled across a flash-mob dance party at the Powell St. BART Station. The entrance and adjoining tunnel was packed with people dancing to music from portable loud speakers which seemed to be part of a DJ booth with a guy spinning tracks and on the mic. I don't know when it started but watched for about 15min's before it finally ended.

Happening Right NOW! At the TWIT Live Meet-Up at the InterContinental in San Francisco. I ran into Leo Laporte at Union Square - we talked for a few seconds. He invited me to the meet-up....AWESOME! Several hundred people crammed into this side room / bar. Either way.....good times!

I'm at MacWorld 2012 iWorld iFanEvent and the hit of the show so far for me is the DLP Pico Pocket Projector that connects to the back of an iPhone 4 / 4s and projects a diagonal image up to 50 inches. Sells for $230 and will be available at BrookStone.com in about two weeks if not sooner.

Is it really necessary to force users to connect their Pandora accounts to facebook just so that they can add a photo to their Pandora profile? What if a Pandora user doesn't have a Facebook account, does that mean that they can NEVER upload a profile pic? Don't get me wrong, I understand the benefits of users being able to share their Pandora usage with their facebook friends if they want to, plus all the data swapping going on between Pandora and Facebook has got to be priceless....I get it. But what If I simply want to listen to music and NOT share in any way what I'm listening too - can I do that without conditions? I really don't want to give you all my facebook info so can you fix that? Ok bye!

Got an email from Vudu about two weeks ago. Vudu streams movies via the internet to devices like Blu-Ray players, TV's and other Internet connected devices. The email basically said that as of today Jan/03/2013 the Vudu service will no longer be available on Visio devices, of which I own two. We bought our Visio LED LCD 37" HD TV mid year 2011 as well as a Wi-Fi ready Visio Blu-Ray player with all the built-in apps like Facebook, YouTube, Netflix, Vudu, Blockbuster, and more. I procrastinated for months before I finally set up these streaming services (Vudu and Blockbuster On Demand). Once set up both worked perfectly - HD movies streamed instantly without buffering or stalling.....it was AWESOME! The email was a shocker because I really enjoyed the service for the few times I used it, but it gets worst! Last week Blockbuster On Demand sent me a service discontinuation letter as well. So not one but two streaming services stripped from my device after less than a year ownership. I feel as if the functionality and features of my Visio Blu-Ray player have been taken away after I've already paid for it - it's the classic bait-&-switch! I'm considering writing a letter to Visio asking what happened and if they plan to replace the removed services with other options.

My Hipstacase hack is complete. Well, the hack wasn't much of a hack. All I did was use Krazy Glue to permanantly attach the supplied tripod adapter to the bottom of the Hipstacase. Either way, it's a done deal and my iPhone 4s stands steady and ready for action!

My analog Project 2011 comes to a close in December with my Pentax K1000. The K1000 was the workhorse for school and universities students world wide due to it's high quality, rock solid performance, reliability, and most importantly it's basic features. The Pentax K1000 offered the very basics of camera operation - manually set your ISO, shutter speed, aperture, focus.....and shoot. Outside of the TTL metering there was nothing automatic about this camera which meant that there was nothing to distract the user from learning the relationship between aperture, shutter speed, focal distance, and composition. The Pentax K1000 was my first "real" camera and will always remain in my heart, and collection forever. I remember one of my favorite things about the K1000 was it's big beautiful viewfinder. It's crisp. clean, clear, and bright - offering an unobstructed view of whatever you were shooting....my feelings about that still hold true today after decades of being apart. I shot only a single roll of 400 speed color for the project due to time constraints, I don't even remember which brand I used but it didn't matter because I was just glad to have a K1000 again. I now have several rolls of Kodak Portra 400 Professional waiting to be used in my K1000....happy shooting and good times will ensue. The Quantaray 28mm f/2.8 I spoke of in the video seems to be a tight fit but once mounted worked great and may end up being the most used lens on my K1000. I don't plan on buying anymore lenses for this camera so whatever I have will have to do......and I'm ok with that. Some of the photos pictured within this post were taken by me back in the 70's with my original Pentax K1000. Back then I only shot B&W Ilford (sometimes Kodak) film including self processing and printing of my own photos.

I want to thank everyone for visiting my blog to view this year long photo project, and welcome you all back next year for more. If you have time please check out a short video slide show on my flickr photostream featuring images from my Pentax K1000 or jump over to my YouTube Ch. to learn a bit more about my K1000.

Thanks again and I hope you all tune in next year.

My Hipstacase (by Agent 18) arrived today - so now I have an iPhone 4s tripod mount that won't drop my iPhone 4s. Hipstamatic offered this case which comes complete with a tripod mount and wrist strap for 50% off the regular price of $39.95 for a limited time (the sale is now over). I'll need to glue the Hipstacase tripod adapter permanently into place but once complete the combo should work well as my full time iPhone 4s tripod setup. I have a folding pocket tripod that also includes Velcro straps to secure the tripod to most any elevated structure (pole, tree brach, railings) - can't wait to use it again. My Glif (the original Glif) will still see service as an iPhone 4s stand on my desk both at home and at work, but never again as part of an iPhone 4s tripod setup.

The best camera is the one you have with you has been the battle cry of iPhoneographers for the past three years.....and it's true. At least from the standpoint of being able to get the shot vs. missing out because you didn't bring a camera. My iPhone both old and new is with me (or near by) 24hrs a day. It has enabled me to experiment with photographic ideals on a whim, capture moments that would otherwise go un-recorded, and lastly share instantly. During this past year I captured and posted 312 iPhone images across 5 different themes based on iPhone apps like Instagram, Hipstamatic, Shake It Photo and more. All uploaded to flickr daily without fail including one iPhone video a week.

This year-long photo project was an ambitious undertaking but I'm proud of myself for completing it. Next year I'm planning on posting less iPhone photos to flickr (maybe only 3 per week) and ramping-up images captured with my micro 4/3 Lumix GF2, and many of my vintage film cameras. After doing some soul searching I've decided that attempting another weekly video project might be counter productive to everything else I'd like to complete. So video uploads captured with either my iPhone 4s or Lumix GF2 will be scattered at best with the exception of next years Analog Project 2012.

Pictured above is my iPhone 4s with an Olympus Pen EES iPhone skin applied. In the background is my Olympus Pen EE2.

I started a flickr project at the top of the year with the goal of posting a themed iPhone photo every day. I'm down to the last few weeks of daily uploads - the finish line is in sight. This project also included a video posting once a week which was actually the hardest part of the entire project. To clarify, the hard part wasn't filming the video it was choosing among the many topics to talk about. At times I would create 3-4 videos in one shot - each completely different than the next. I doubt that I will continue themed iPhone post next year but I am considering more video posting on flickr now that I can record higher quality video. My Analog Projects will continue as well but I'm gonna change the format just a bit. Currently I'm posting one half on YouTube and the other on flickr. My plan is to join them together into a single video each month with discussions about the camera while featuring photos taken with the camera. I'm also gonna try to do more lomo style photos both on Lomography.com and flickr.