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Tonight I’m trying some cross processing techniques that I first saw in a tutorial from Layers Magazine.

“Cross processing (sometimes abbreviated to xpro) is the procedure of deliberately processing photographic film in a chemical solution intended for a different type of film” - Wikipedia

It’s a fairly simple process in Photoshop, achieved with a new curves adjustment layer.  The three steps were as follows:

1. Alter the red curve: raise it in the highlights and lower it in the darker portions of the photo

2. Alter the green curve: raise it in the highlights and lower it in the darker portions of the photo

3. Alter the blue curve: lower it in the highlights and raise it in the darker portions of the photo

You can tweak the curves until you get the desired effect…

If you know of any particularly good Photoshop tutorials, let me know.  I’m trying to pick it up after working with Macromedia Fireworks for years.

I saw an interesting graphic this morning, depicting the popularity of various social networks all over the world.  Some items of interest:

* Myspace still looks to be the world leader with Facebook close behind.  I’d expect this gap to grow with the announcement of the Myspace Music platform.

* Google owned “Orkut” is the leader in two major developing countries: Brazil and India.

After doing my six month stint in Europe, I came home to a mess.  I’ve been systematically checking off different areas of my place to get everything de-cluttered and organized.

Some of these before pictures are down-right embarrassing, but I think they really illustrate how far some zip ties and a shelf can go for your sanity!

A few things I’ve come to understand:

• * Clutter breeds more clutter.  Cleanliness/organization breeds more cleanliness/organization.  Think about it — you’re more likely to do the one dish when the rest of your kitchen is spotless than to do that dish if you’ve already got a stack of others piling up.
• * When you do a project like this, it’s best to focus on one area at a time.  Make a checklist of problem areas and attack them on different nights.  You’ll just get frustrated if you try to do it all
• * It’s best to gather everything from the problem area (drawer, closet, whatever) in one spot, get rid of what you’re not using, and put what’s left back in a logical, organized way.

Enough talking, here are the pictures:

Closet Declutter

After installing two shelves:

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Entertainment Center Declutter

After managing all the cords with some zip ties:

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Desk Declutter

After insalling a cork board under the desk and fastening all that clutter to it:

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And “Voila!”.  There you have it.  Let me know what you think in the comments.  If you’ve got similar projects like this, link to the pics.

I recently upgraded to the latest version of iTunes and noticed that they’ve implemented a new feature, Genius Playlists.  Now I can select a song in my library that I’m in the mood for and iTunes will suggest a whole playlist based on certain qualities of that song.  Granted, this is just like Pandora for iTunes, but I like it.  I can honestly say that I was pleased with 100% of the suggested songs…

That’s a damn good ad.

“Grand Place”

I like this photo because it abstracts the incredible structures of the Grand Place (Brussels, Belgium) and focuses on the cobble stones below. It’s always good to look at things from a different perspective.

“Pudong (Shanghai) from The Bund”

Well, how often does one travel to China? For most people, not very often. I used a tripod and a long shutter to capture Pudong, a region of Shanghai with an unforgettable skyline.

“Brussels (Parc)”

To get this photo, I used my point and shoot Casio camera. I set it on a stone next to a fountain and pointed it towards two strangers (you can see their outline on the right side). I used a timer on the shot to eliminate camera shake in the low light. I really like how the reflection turned out, and it reminds me of an ink blot.

“Le Louvre Nuit”

This is a photo that almost didn’t happen. After walking all over Paris taking pictures all day, I was ready to call it quits with no real winners. A friend of mine pointed this scene out when we walked through the Louvre courtyard. I used a tripod with a long shutter for the shot, and I think the results were amazing. With the location of the moon, the scene was almost too perfect. If you haven’t figured it out, I really like taking long shutter night shots. It’s even better if there’s a reflection involved.

“Light Bass”

This was the first time I had ever tried light painting, which is a ton of fun. Here’s an explanation of how I did it.

“Amsterdam Bicycle”

This photo was taken during Slamsterdam 2K8 with Tad. Bikes like these are all over Amsterdam and they make great photo subjects. I love a few things about this photo: The colors, the tight focus on the bike creating a bokeh effect, and the blurred out people in the background.

“6th Street Bridge”
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This photo was taken in Milwaukee. I like how the bridge structure and the light streams are framed. I used a long shutter and tripod.

“Oslo”

This photo really takes me back to my trip to Oslo, Norway. The colors came out very true to life and every time I look at it, I feel like I’m standing there, staring down the path in the brisk winter air. Awesome place to visit by the way.

“Summer Concert”

I took this photo during the Kanye West concert at Lollapalooza 2008 in Chicago. It’s one of my favorites because it captures the Chicago skyline and the details on the faces of the summer concert goers.

“De Toren”

Dutch for “The Tower”. I took this photo in Amsterdam, and to tell you the truth, I didn’t think it was anything special. Then my friend Tad made it into Black and White with Photoshop, and I really like it now.

One of the greatest things about Flickr is the phenomenal photography from the community. Here is a slide show of my favorite photos. These are a great inspiration to a hobbyist like myself.

My camera mysteriously stopped working a few weeks ago.  After sending it back to Casio and having them not honor my warranty (I won’t get into it here, but if you want the details, I’ll tell you), I have decided that I’ll probably have to buy a new camera.  My hand feels lost without one.

With all this social media at my finger tips, I decided to get some feedback from friends (Facebook) and followers (Twitter).  I put the message below out to both the networks and as you can see in the Facebook example, I had some quality feedback almost immediately!

This is very interesting because instead of going to some camera site and reading reviews from random editors/consumers, I am getting great recommendations from people I know and respect. It’s safe to say I’m leaning towards a Canon. They must be doing something right. Word of mouth is still the strongest advertising…

Thanks for all the advice!

Time check: 2:41AM … and I just finished a complete overhaul of this site’s design. What do you think?

Old design:

New design:

Mozilla, the same company that brought you the phenomenal Firefox web browser, has just announced their Ubiquity prototype today. It’s a technology that lets you bring aspects of the web together without opening different sites. For example, if you’re typing an email to a friend about dinner plans at a restaurant, you can use Ubiquity to insert a map without ever leaving your email application.

The technology looks promising… This video says it all

Everyday we’re getting slammed with information from every angle, so I’m always looking for better, more efficient ways to make sense of it all. Last week I found myself deleting dozens of email alerts and notifications from Facebook, Twitter, and various banks.  While this information is arguably important, I’ve decided that it’s clogging up my inbox and making me slower to respond to emails from friends and family.  I’ve devised a scheme to solve this problem.

Since I’m increasingly mobile, like a lot of people, I chose to use the iPhone as the centerpiece of my “Communication Segmentation” plan (note: term originally coined by Tad Johnson).  iPhone makes it extremely easy to add new Gmail accounts to your email application, so I decided to make multiple Gmail accounts - one for each of these communication types.  I registered all five accounts in one day, so it would appear that Google doesn’t care if you do this.

1. Personal Gmail: I get all my regular email here from friends and family.  I tend to filter out any kind of advertising, etc. and send those emails directly to the archives.

2. ActionsTalk Gmail: I have a few things routed here now.  Since I set up a Twitter account for ActionsTalk (my startup spotlight website), I’ve got all the alerts for that account going here.  Any new comment alert coming from the site (ActionsTalk.com), and emails from sponsors or startups are also sent here.  Lastly, I used search.twitter.com to set up an RSS feed for any time someone mentions “@ActionsTalk” on Twitter.  I pump that RSS feed through xFruits using their RSS to Email generator and voila… I get an email any time we’re mentioned.

3.  Twitter Gmail: I do all the same stuff with this email account that I did with #2, but this time I have all the alerts for my personal Twitter account fed in.

4.  Facebook Gmail: I’ve got all my alerts from Facebook here like new friend requests, notifications of wall posts, photo tags, etc.

5.  Finance Gmail: I now have all my email from any of my bank accounts sent to this email address.  This includes bill pay reminders, spending threshold alerts, etc.

Bottom line: This system took about 30 minutes to set up.  After about a week of using it, I can say that it has made me much better at reading and responding to emails.  I can clearly see how many of each type I have, and I can deal with them at my leisure. Give it a shot, and let me know what you think in the comments.

Nike (or whoever does their marketing) has been making inspiring commercials for as long as I can remember. I just found a site that lets you check out many of their new ones (Videos - Nike ).

You know you’re doing something right when people search out your ads instead of fast-forwarding through them…

As some of you may know, ActionsTalk has been evolving.  Two months ago, we set out to create a conference in the Milwaukee area that brought together three key pieces of successful tech companies:  1. Tech saavy developers/engineers,  2. business minded entrepreneurs, and 3. venture capital.  Ryan Graves and I saw the potential for the idea when we realized that such a conference didn’t exist in Milwaukee, even with the obvious potential of the community.  So what did we do?  We outlined a plan (loosely) and took action.  We called our first ActionsTalk meeting at Alterra and it felt like the idea really had legs.  Since then we’ve spoken before three local organizations (thank you!), picking up supports as we moved forward.  As we began to speak to people, to hear what they wanted, it became obvious that this would be no small under-taking.

After some serious deliberation, we finally came to the conclusion that the time might not be right for us to organize such a conference.  We revisted our goals.  We want to seek out, promote, and educate local startups and future entrepreneurs.  We want to meet the best and brightest this city (and the Midwest) has to offer. We’ve come up with a new plan…

We believe we can make a more immediate impact, and reach our collective goals by making ActionsTalk a site dedicated to highlighting the successes and struggles of the local entrepreneur.  We’re both obviously very interested in technology, but we aren’t limiting our scope there.  No startup is off limits.  By meeting the people and telling these stories, we will bring the community together.  We see this as a venue for you to check out what’s new, who’s making moves, and to learn the tricks of the trade.

A Call to Action!
* If you’re involved with a startup in Milwaukee (or know someone who is), send us your story.  If we think it makes sense, we’ll interview you, do a write-up, and bring new attention to your business.
* If you can write decently, and you’ve got a passion for this, like we do, let us know.  We’re looking for a few more contributors to energize this movement.  As a contributor, you can cover the local businesses or write relevant education pieces for our readers.

We’re excited for the new direction, and we’ll be publishing our first batch of content soon…  stay tuned.