Photography
Why does Amazon punish mobile users?
Sitting on my sofa this evening, reading through some tips and tricks for selling photos for use in magazines, calendars, postcards and the like, my Photos That Sell book made a number of references to the Freelance Photographer's Market Handbook which gives details of publishers and publications that are on the lookout for photos to use.
Curious to find out more about the different ways to crack into the freelance photography market, I reached for my iPod touch and tapped out the address for Amazon into its Safari browser. Amazon had detected I was on an iPod (well, it thought it was an iPhone) and gave me a nice mobile interface to work with.
I found the book with ease and added it to my basket. Wondering what the minimum order was for free shipping, I went into their help section to try and find out. It was then that I noticed that they punish people for using their new mobile interface, stating 'All items ordered from your mobile device will be shipped standard shipping, unless you are an Amazon Prime customer.'
Why make it easier for customers to buy products from you but then not give them the shipping option that must have attracted them so more customers over the years? Admittedly, they do give the option to use their full site instead, but it's not as convenient on a mobile device.
In the end I resorted to using the laptop, so Amazon didn't lose the custom, but it would be nice if they'd give the free shipping option as part of their iPhone/iPod beta site.
Welcome, iPod Touch
Last week I added a new iPod to the family - the iPod Touch. This is not just an iPod in the sense of music, but an iPod in the sense of a truly portable network device with a sexy interface to boot. The iPod is no longer the music player that it was when it was originally released, with music now just playing a much smaller part of the product.
When planning my purchase I was torn between the iPod Touch and the iPhone, the only differentiating factors being the camera and the phone capabilities (and therefore its ubiquitous data connection). At basically the same initial price for both, it didn't make sense for me to go for a mobile phone with an 18 month contract that had a below par camera when I could also go for a free Nokia N95 and its embedded 5 megapixel camera while paying around the same amount of money on a contract. Thanks to my employer I already had a chance to try out Nokia's internet enabled camera and loved its quality and ability to post photos directly to the internet and am looking forward to being able to do that again in the near future.
There's quite a bit of overlap between the iPod Touch and the N95, but the Touch has an interface that's just so much nicer to use than the N95, for mail and web browsing especially. Talking of overlap, at eight gigabytes the device isn't big enough to hold my entire iTunes collection, so I don't think I'll be ditching my 80 gigabyte iPod Classic any time soon.
Despite being very pleased overall with the Touch, there are a few things that I'd really love to see added to the device:
- Media streaming from other iTunes libraries on the network
- Wireless syncing with host computer
- Jabber chat client
- Video plugins for Safari to allow viewing of RealPlayer content (e.g. from the BBC)
- Email search in the Mail app (server-side)
Without a cellular data connection, the wifi on the device is very important for those times you want to access the internet when out and about. There are a number of UK companies and organisations starting to provide free wifi in their premises (e.g. Wetherspoons pubs, McDonalds, local libraries and other places) and in public spaces which is great, and the Cloud has dropped their monthly fees for iPod Touch owners to a price that mirrors what you'd pay for a single hour at most wireless hotspots.
It's also amazing how many other venues have wifi available in them thanks to some unknown third party provider. This is a grey area when it comes to the law though, with wifi theft already being punished under the Communications Act 2003 in a number of cases. I say it's a grey area because there is often no easy way of telling if an open wifi hotspot has been intentionally provided free of charge either by a venue or by someone else actively sharing their connection for passers-by.
Art Auction for Age Concern Isle of Man
A group of Applied Business students from St. Ninian's High School in the Isle of Man is holding an art auction on 29th January in aid of Age Concern. Over 40 local artists have donated artwork for sale in the auction which will hopefully produce a nice donation to charity as well as a great thing to put on the organisers' CVs.
The organisation of this event significantly trumps my involvement in a Young Enterprise group as part of a similar scheme when I was at school. We managed to make some novelty items and Christmas decorations as well as coming out with a slight profit for members of the group, but nothing quite on the scale of this.
If you're going to be on the Isle of Man next Tuesday, go and put a bid in for a piece of local artwork, perhaps a photo of the Point of Ayre Lighthouse ;)
Stuttgart Flickr Meetup
On Friday 26th October there is going to be a Flickr meetup here in Stuttgart. We'll be meeting at 6pm in the Calwer Eck pub in downtown Stuttgart. All are welcome to come along, just leave a comment or add yourself to the event on upcoming.org if you're interested.
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Am Freitag 26. Oktober kommt ein Flickr treffen in Stuttgart. Treffen wir uns um 18h in Calwer Eck. Jeder ist wilkommen! Kommst du auch? Bitte hier Kommentar einlegen oder unter upcoming.org anmelden.
Maps of Stuttgart
Taken at Buechsenstrasse 54, Stuttgart, Baden-Wuerttemberg, 48°46' 45" N, 9°10' 15" E
The state surveying office (Landesvermessungsamt Baden-Wuerttemberg) here in Stuttgart has a display on the outside of their building showing satellite imagery covering the length of the Rhein with a number of examples of maps from the places across the region over time. This old map shows some of the area around the Black Forest, or Schwarzwald, just south of here.
