Taking Wide Angle Pictures and Video on the iPhone or iPad

Creating “Fish Eye” pictures on the iPhone and iPad is simpler than you think.

In the past I used to use a Sony HD handy cam for HD pictures and videos that had a fish eye attachable lens and the results were great. Small rooms seemed to suddenly open up and provide a more realistic feel of the interior of a home and make large rooms look even larger and more inviting when viewed on the web.

Recently with the development of a better quality photo on the iPhone and iPad’s camera, I have been able to eliminate the “tag along” equipment for something smaller that I can use in conjunction with both apple devices.

The item I am speaking of is from a company called “PhotoJojo” and they are located on the web at www.photojojo.com

They produce several lens products that, with the application of a sticky back metal ring to your iPhone or iPad (see below examples of the old iPhone 3gs), allows you to magnetically attach the wide angle lens to the iPad or iPhone and it works amazingly well.

The iPad 2 was a little tricky, but with a little bending of the sticky ring, it still worked. The lens works great on the iPhone 4 because of the flat surface, BUTif you are using the “flash” be aware that you might be covering this up on the iPhone 4because it’s right next to the camera lens on the iPhone.

The next generation iPhone appears to have the flash relocated away from the camera lens which solves the problem all together.

The cost was a special deal offered when I purchased the lenses, Cost was around Fourty bucks for two types, macro, wide and fish eye sold as a bundle. I find the “Fish Eye” is the only one I ever use.

Just to make you aware of one thing, not a real big deal, but noteworthy.

The lens does not self center when you stick it to the metal ring on the iPhone or iPad so make sure you look closely at the picture being displayed on the edges of the camera lens. If you see a dark line on either side it means you don’t have the lens centered. Adjust the position when you have the camera on the phone opened up and start shooting.

These are really nice lenses with a magnetic cap cover on both ends. They come from the company shipped and packaged well and their shipping is pretty fast.

I believe these will work on other phones as well but check the manufacturers page for a specific list of applications.

Have Fun!

Stew Keene – Professional Phoenix Realtor

Steve Jobs – A Brilliant Talent

We all admit that Steve Jobs Stepping Down as Apple CEO was going to happen some day and yesterday was that day.

Those of us who follow Apple and the movements of Steve Jobs or look forward to hearing him at presentations of new Apple products know that Steve will be missed.

Steve’s approach to business and his incredible insight to consumer needs and wants was uncanny and honestly almost profit like.

I can only say that I hoped Steve Jobs would be able to stay and play longer. I’m sure he feels like a young man being called in from play time with his fiends and he wants to play longer but he knows it’s time to come inside,so he reluctantly abides.

Steve Jobs passion and love for Apple and the products he helped envision and bring forward to us techies will keep effecting the world longer after Steve Jobs.

The inevitability of Steve Jobs stepping down is a good example of what we all need to keep in mind.

Eventually, we all have to step down.

Steve Jobs and Apple have personally affected me in my real estate business here in Phoenix and I know that there are others who feel that same gratitude no matter what industry they are in. Look at the airlines and medical industries adopting use of the iPad.

I would not dare to compare myself nor any other person I know to Steve Jobs, but I will say that regardless of what you do, if you work with or serve people in any capacity you can affect them in ways that you never imagined. I challenge you to try and lead the way Steve Jobs has.

Thank You Steve Jobs and Apple and all of you fine people there who develop great new products for us and for providing an example of how to pass forward something from your life that positively affects people all over the world.

We should all be so lucky. Life is short and so is our time here.

How we spend it is up to us.

Stew Keene – Phoenix and Scottsdale Real Estate Professional

iCloud and My Top 3 Reasons For Loving It

Apple recently announced that they would be replacing MobileMe and introducing a new service called iCloud and honestly, it’s about time. the MobileMe platform is past it’s prime and Apple had the vision to recognize that and provide something in it’s place that will far outperform it.

Most of you know I’m a heavy Apple product user and techno geek. When I heard about the iCloud service and it’s integration potential for all of my Mac hardware, iPad, iPhone, iMac, Mac Air I was totally stoked.

I currently use “Dropbox” for a lot of my real estate forms storage because it allows me access to that information remotely from any of my devices or any other computer at my disposal. Having signed or unsigned forms available it so essential when you’re working in the field as a Realtor.

SO, here’s my top 3 reasons I am going to love the iCloud,

Better Syncing
Mac Apple Friendly
I don’t need big memory anymore on my devices.

Syncing with the “apps” available is not always a universal type service. Too many times I have prescribed to an app only to find I’m not able to use it on either the iPhone or iPad but I have to choose one or the other. With the iCloud I can use the service between all of the devices. This makes it a Mac Apple friendly service without barriers (Thanks Apple for recognizing the need) which for most of you that use the devices actively, you know what aI mean.

The last and most important thing of all is the hardware issue VS Speed VS storage…

I know that’s more than just one thing, but it’s all tied together so let me clarify this for you. I purchased a 27 inch quad core iMac last year and it came with a 1tb spin up hard drive (that’s a crap load of storage) BUT it was lacking the speed I am always searching for. SO what I did was I replaced the spin up drive and installed a 512gig Solid State Drive in it’s place which is half the memory storage. The reason for me was obvious… SPEED BABY! But more over, I realized that I am using on line storage more and more and the only actual memory chewer I had installed on my Mac was iMovie and iTunes (they take up a ton of space). I now store my iMovie files on the spin up drive which I have plugged in to the back of the iMac in a Lacie case designed to hold that drive.

The end result was blindingly fast speed on the iMac when opening and closing programs and using iMovie editing was ridiculously fast and no longer choppy (no more stuttering cursor movement) which made me SO happy.

I believe that Apple’s intention will be to have not only music storage for iTunes “music” but also “movie” storage for the service which will totally free up a TON of memory.

With these kind of changes there will really be less and less need for high capacity hardware memory storage which will accomplish two things. You will save money because you don’t have to buy extended hard drives to store all your stuff on AND you can have a super fast high speed operating system which will be more like an instant on iPad experience.

The end of this quarter should be an unbelievable change for computers again as we use them now. With these changes, they will just get faster and faster. Faster is better!

I would expect to see that the new computers coming soon to the Apple Stores will have Solid State Memory for super speed and the spin up drives will go the way of the Do-Do.

The other notable change is the new operating system, OS-X Lion and iOS5. Between solid state drives and these new operating systems, I believe that we will experience what we all expected to on our computers and what the manufactures know we want, speed.

Look for the last quarter of 2011 to be a new major change on the computer horizon.

Stew Keene – Apple Freak – Phoenix Realtor