iPhone PWNed

Ah, finally. Everything opened up. Perhaps permanently. No more worrying about whether the next iTunes update will lock your phone and render it useless.

It’s a no-brainer now. Get the 3G iPhone. PWN it. Stay with T-Mobile. Use an international SIM card when needed. Be happy!

Read more here. Oh, and gotta love the music to the video – it even syncs up perfectly with the visuals!

Film festivals and the online audience

The Tribeca Film Festival will start in three weeks in NYC and I hope to attend parts of it. However, there are wonderful festivals around the world that I would love to attend but can’t. For example, I’ve wanted, but been unable, to attend Sundance for the past couple of years.

I am sure this is true for many people. Wouldn’t it be incredible if the film festivals showed their programming online?

I know that there are lots of issues around rights for the films and filmmakers may not want to hand over the online rights to any one festival. While it would be very cool to have the films available online for weeks or months, it may not be possible. So let’s make it easier – the festivals would have the rights to show the films online only during the festival itself – they could tie up with iTunes to make the downloads accessible only for a limited time. That means while Sundance is going on in Utah, I can be sitting in NYC and watching the same films at home.

Cannibalization could be a worry, but it is solvable. Festivals could charge the same fee (ticket price) to watch online. That would solve the monetary aspect of cannibalization. They may worry about loss of audience – valid concern. However, the people who make the time attend festivals in their city or those travel to festivals want to see these movies on a large screen. They want to hear the filmmakers talk about their films. They want to meet other movie buffs. Those people would still go because you can’t get that experience online.

So why is no one doing this?

If the goal of festival programmers is to highlight little indie gems to as broad an audience as they can, making the films viewable online is the way to go. I, for one, would love to watch the programming at Berlin, Toronto, Sundance, Tribeca and a whole host of others.

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Shoot! The Blog

If you are interested in photography, add the PhotoShelter blog to your feed reader and to your must-read list.

But first, let’s talk a bit about PhotoShelter¹. If you are a serious amateur or a professional, this has to be a service that you get very excited about.

PhotoShelter has two parts to it. The Personal Archive is where a photographer can manager her photos and her business. Incredible amounts of storage to upload and back up every picture you’ve ever taken, watermarking, rights management, ecommerce modules,  download protection, lightboxes and other powerful tools to manage your images.

And a few months ago, they launched the PhotoShelter Collection – a marketplace for images where the photographer can set the price. The PhotoShelter Collection has the capability to fundamentally change the market for stock photography by giving power and importance back to the photographer.

To be able to find and buy great stock images, a photographer has to be able to make money. Enough money to earn a livelihood, put food on the table, pay rent, and continue to take great photographs. Pricing stock photos at a dollar is just plain silly. A great photo is worth more than that and if you want continued access to such wonderful images, you understand that. That’s why the Collection is an effective and, very importantly, sustainable source for buyers to find unique images.

Last week, PhotoShelter started blogging² and I love it. The blog talks about emerging trends, what buyers are looking for, contests and features some incredible photographers.

It is on my daily read list. And if you love photography, it should be on yours.

1. Full Disclosure: I am on the board of PhotoShelter [↩]
2. There’s always been a corporate blog to interact with the community, share upcoming changes etc. [↩]

This blog…

is proving to be a way to preserve my sanity in times of extreme stress and sleep deprivation.

Handwriting

The digital age has destroyed my handwriting. I used to have a really nice flowing handwriting that was, if not beautiful, at least attractive.

But besides writing meeting notes and class notes by hand, everything else is on a keyboard and has been for years. Since I type much faster than I write, so I usually choose to type if given a choice.

Now, writing thank-you notes, it is quite horrifying to see how my handwriting has devolved.

But there’s something to be said about a handwritten note that is mailed… it feels more personal. Like there was more effort put into it than dashing off an email thank you.

So I am working hard to make mine look pretty.

Change colors in the K2 theme

I wanted to play around with the colors of my Wordpress K2 theme (the presentation layout that you currently see). Stuff that should be easy – the header colors, the background of the overall page (currently grayish), the white body background, the color of the text, the links etc.

The only way to do this, however (at least as far as I can figure out), is by getting into the CSS file and manually tweaking each element. And the basic file is very long and has tons of elements.  But I tried for a while. I made the header blue, the background black, the body background dark gray and the text white. But wait… I noticed that the header colors for each post was a bit too dark. The blockquote background was wrong. The link colors needed changing. Okay. I went in and fixed each of those by searching through the CSS file. Then I noticed more elements where the colors were off. At that point I gave up and reverted back to my old CSS file (which I had fortunately saved).

This should be a lot easier. There needs to be a WYSIWYG editor to tweak your theme. Each element (let’s say there are 25 or 30) should be listed with the option of changing the color by entering whatever hex code you want. At the bottom of that page, there needs to be a sample post where each change is reflected.

Sounds pretty straightforward to me. A plugin could do this easily I would think. Why doesn’t this exist? Of if it does, where do I find it? If I could code, I would build this myself!

Lasik – not always crystal clear

If you are thinking about Lasik, read this article in the NY Times first.

Little did I know when I chose Lasik surgery that I would not end up satisfied like the friends and acquaintances who raved about their post-glasses existence. Instead, my days are complicated, since I am dealing with side effects that are far more bothersome than being unfashionably four-eyed.

I explored getting Lasik. Fortunately, I went to a reputable doctor and clinic (at Stanford). My biggest requirement was that if I didn’t qualify for any reason, I wanted to know. And I got my wish.

I was told that my corneas are too thin. In fact, I don’t even qualify for the more conservative PRK procedure. Fabulous, at least I know.

I also learned that Indians are genetically predisposed to having thinner corneas. Apparently at the time they started to do the procedure in India, the corneal measurements weren’t as stringent. But they found that Indians had problems at a rate significantly higher than the rest of the world. That’s when they got stricter about the corneal thickness requirement.

And yes, like the woman in the article, I also know tons of friends who are ecstatic with the results of their procedures.

Stunning painting…    

Stunning Surendran Nair painting at the Saffron Spring Auction.
The rubber ducky makes the painting even cooler!

Why Do the Wives Stand There, Next to Their Men?

NY Times:

Some of the Internet chatter on Tuesday suggested that Ms. Wall Spitzer’s silent presence at her husband’s side represented a dark day for feminism, with one writer railing, “Someone needs to tell his wife that ‘stand by your man’ does not apply here!!! … She needs to have some pride.”

But others turned the feminist argument on its head, detecting ample sexism in the notion that Ms. Wall Spitzer was dragged to the podium against her wishes.

“To me, a lot of this commentary seems patronizing to her,” said Suzanne B. Goldberg, a professor of law at Columbia University and director of its Sexuality and Gender Law Clinic. “She might have felt this was the best strategy in a terrible situation for protecting her children or her own reputation. We have no basis for assuming that she’s a mere pawn here.”

I agree with the latter perspective. She’s a strong woman and is likely making what she thinks is the right choice for her family.

This post sums it up nicely:

It is one thing to walk out on your husband privately, another in a public forum.  I give Silda a huge amount of credit for standing up their on the podium with her husband.  Time will tell what decisions she makes for her future and her childrens but I am not sure you can do anything after 25 years but step back and be very methodical.  After all, her husband certainly hadn’t been thinking with his head.  Believe me, I’d leave but it would be so incredibly painful that I am not sure I would be willing to not stand by my man, for my children, at least for the moment.

[Updated] And here’s Charlie’s take on it – LOL!!

Dear Future Wife (Whoever she may be)

If you should discover that, after decades of marriage and a meteoric career, I have spent $80k on high priced hookers, please dump my ass…

…right on the street…

…in public…

…right in the middle of my press conference.
Do not be supportive.  I do not deserve it.

Do not keep my kids around me.  They’d be better off if I wasn’t around.

Tumbling on Wordpress

Tumblr has an incredibly easy user interface. Right from the signup process on, things are very simple . In addition to working great, it looks wonderful – clean and elegant. And there are a number of cool features that make re-blogging something very easy.

For example, the “Share on Tumblr” bookmarklet allows you to quickly share a photo, a quote, a link, chat or a video. And all from the page you are on, without having to log in to your blog at all.

This is a big deal for me. I often see something I’d like to share quickly with a comment attached, but the thought of having to log into my blog, compose, copy and paste the link etc. makes the bar too high for a quick post.

I could move to a Tumblr blog to get this feature, but I really like a lot of the Wordpress plugins that I use (and want to keep). So I did a quick search for Tumblr and Wordpress and what do I find? A plugin that does the exact same thing as the “Share on” bookmarklet.  Called QuickPost, the plugin looks and works great.

Another reason I love Wordpress.

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