Month of Mobile Journalism pt. 4

The Juice Bar Solar Charger holds a ton of power, holds it for a long time, and gives it out quickly. However, for all the good that it does, there are some negatives that go along with this particular charger that make me wary to suggest it to anyone.

Like several other external batteries we’ve tested, the Juice Bar charges via USB cord. It’s not a quick charge, but it’s not entirely too slow. Just don’t expect to have a full battery in an hour or two. You’ll need probably 4 hours of solid charging to get every bit out of this thing, which can be a long time to drain your computer, if that’s what you’re connecting to for charging purposes. It also has a solar panel on the top of the device. Like every other solar charger, it’s slow. However, it’s another way to charge, and it does make the power you put into your mobile device last longer, if you’re using your phone in sunlight.

Once it’s fully charged, however, the battery will keep filling up your phone for well over two hours of use. When I used it, my phone sat idle for only a few minutes, and it still took my iPhone from 20% battery to full.

Now we get into the drawbacks. Like many other devices we’ve tested, this is an external battery that has to be toted along with the mobile device. It’s attached via cable, giving you a little more leeway, but your phone is still tethered to the Juice Bar. Luckily, it’s slim and lightweight, otherwise this would be a serious issue. However, this isn’t my biggest problem with the Juice Bar. This battery, when it’s being used, gets hot. I’m not talking like, put it in your gloves in the winter to keep your hands warm hot, I’m talking painful to keep your skin on it hot. Which means you’ve got to be careful where you put it while using it. You can’t leave it on something vulnerable to heat, and you definitely don’t want to have it in your pocket where you might accidentally put your hand only to get a little bit of a shock. Trust me on that one.

In all, this battery isn’t bad. If you can figure out a way to insulate the battery so you don’t burn yourself and also a way to charge while still being able to effectively use your phone (because of the connection), then this battery is great. Having a solar panel to accentuate your charging capabilities and expand the category of areas where you can use this device is also a bonus. But I feel like there are better choices for you to purchase.

Month of Mobile Journalism pt. 3

The SmartLens 2 in 1 lens is a fun little gimmick of a device. It probably works better with a 4G or droid, where the curve of the phone doesn’t interfere with the camera. On a 3G, though, it actually worked surprisingly well for me.

The only real negative to using this lens is that you’re going to have to apply a magnetic ring to the back of your phone using the adhesive already on the ring. I haven’t attempted to take it off, yet, because I don’t know that the glue is sticky enough to put it back on, and the lens only comes with one ring. Moral of the story is, attach it to something you want to use long-term.

After that, you don’t have to worry about the lens NOT working, which is maybe not a great way to look at it. I didn’t notice a huge improvement in quality by using it, but at the same time, it didn’t hurt. It doesn’t bend the picture like the wider angle on the Bubo does, and the macro lens is decent. Sometimes it won’t work, and it’ll just be fuzzy, but if you can get close enough (often nearly touching) then you might be able to get some cool details.

The best part is, this thing is incredibly easy to put on and take off. So, attach the magnetic ring, put the lens in your pocket, and head out.

Month of Mobile Journalism pt. 2

Hipstamatic is my personal least favorite application, which is odd because as far as features for photography (NOT editing) go, versatile barely describes it. Part of the reason I’m so negative is because it takes a lot of getting used to, you really can’t jump into it and go. Also, it comes with a pretty bare shelf of features for the money you invested in the application’s purchase. How do I get more features, you ask? A dollar at a time, I say.

Open the app and it may take you a moment to orient yourself. You can click the flash to activate the camera’s “flash”, and it will make the charging noise and take a moment to get set (you can shoot while it charges, the charge is just for aesthetic appearance). The slat on the left will tell you what film you’re using, and you can view your pictures buy tapping on the bottom left.

To get into the meat of this thing, hit the arrow in the bottom right corner. If you’re a photographer, it’ll take you a moment to realize you’re in familiar territory. If you’re not, make sure you play with this application for several minutes to figure it out. You can select different films, and by tapping the film you can see the effect it will have. Same for flashes, and then for lenses. Want more choices? Go buy them, cause they don’t come free. On this screen, you can also change the quality of your pictures by adjusting the lever in the center of the main screen. Once you’ve mixed and matched to take the desired style of picture (good luck if you don’t have any training, here), go back to the camera taking screen and get after it.

Hipstamatic looks the best. It does. It’s got this old timey, film and dark room feel to it, and in theory having the ability to choose all the aspects of your picture taking process would be awesome. And if you know what you’re doing and have experience with these tools, then I would imagine it’s intriguing. But it’s just too complicated for a lot of journalists to take this into the field without any experience using it. You’re not going to get an image you can use for news, most likely, because all the “equipment” it comes with will cause all different tints. And even though it’s only a dollar each, to spend the money to figure out what does and does not work costs too much cash and time.

There are two details about this program I DID really like. Your photos can be grouped into “stacks” for easy organization. Not a big deal, but it’s often overlooked in photo programs, and it’s something that makes life easier. Second, Hipstamatic hosts contests, and you can submit your photos to these contests. Not something you would normally do while out in the field, but I’m sure photographers would enjoy the ability to submit their work. I can see this particular feature carrying this application, especially if photographers and Synthetic Corp. (makers of Hipstamatic) take it seriously.

Simply put, Hipstamatic is a cool idea, and has a lot to offer to the feature writers and artists of this world who know how to work a camera. If you don’t fit that criteria, steer clear.

Month of Mobile Journalism pt. 1

CameraBag is an extremely easy to use photo application for the iPhone. It uses the built-in camera on the phone to take pictures, so you don’t need any extra equipment (although lenses and flashes wouldn’t hurt), and it’s pretty cheap to buy.

The specialty of this application is to put filters on the pictures you take. There are several different ones, although some, like color cross, I can’t see anybody using for professional reasons, and others look very much the same. But there are enough different, useful filters that this application deserves a download and a look.

CameraBag doesn’t require that you use the application to take the pictures, and in fact the application works better if you just take the pictures and put them on your camera roll. If you have it open when you’re shooting, each picture will open on the camera, and before you take another, you will have to click on the phone to open our camera back up. Instead, you can go out and take your pictures, then upload them to CameraBag.

Either way, once you have your picture, it’s a simple process of flicking the screen from side to side to see which filter works best for what you’re using. Helga has ended up being my favorite, but really the story would warrant the filter, if you use one at all. Once you’ve chosen, you just have to tap the save button and your picture will be saved to your camera roll, so that you can text, email or upload it like any other picture you take.

In all, the application is a pretty neat little deal. It’s certainly something you wouldn’t use every time you go into the field, but if you were working on a story that was a bit more featurey than normal, I could certainly see it coming in handy. If you do use it, it’s simple and quick, and getting the pictures off your phone is virtually effortless.

Month of October becomes unbearable

Hello everyone. I know I originally said that I was going to use this blog to talk about my education abroad internship and experience. And I want to. The truth of the matter, though, is that I severely underestimated this semester in terms of workload and time consumption. As such, I'm going to have to devote the majority of my time next month to working on my capstone project so that I can graduate. That's not to say that I'm not going to be continuing with my internship, I am, but it's going to be in a mitigated role. It will consist more of sitting in on advisement appointments and helping the guys organize the students by making spreadsheets for them, because that's really all I have time for.

In that light, I thought it might be interesting for some of you to see what all I'm doing with my Mobile Journalism Tools capstone project. Essentially, we're testing out tons of equipment, writing reviews for them, and them putting them online. Each week I'll be posting a review I've done, so that you can get a feel for how we do it here at Mizzou. I'm going to call it Month of Mobile Journalism. I hope that you enjoy!

As far as the internship is concerned, I'm learning lots. There's just so much to wrap my head around, and it seems like they work at 100 miles an hour every second of every day. Still, they laugh a lot, and the atmosphere is light, so I can't complain really. Just looking forward to helping out with some of the big orientations. I feel like that's going to be the most useful. I wish I could go to NAFSA this year, but I doubt I could swing missing three days of school for an education abroad conference. Sad days. Still haven't told the parents really about my future change of plans. I'm sure that's going to be a fun conversation.

Yay, glad I'm thinking about that now...

Internship heats up

Things are really starting to get interesting. I'm noticing more and more how much they need me over there in that office. It's not that I'm just doing menial labor, like they can't think of anything for me to do, so they just set me to a random task. This is stuff they would have to be doing, and frankly, I'm not sure when they would find time to do it. No, I'm taking a lot of heat off of them.

But that's not the interesting part. I contacted the ISC to discuss the Health and Safety Orientation, and I discovered that they would rather just pass the materials to me and let me go. So I'm going to be giving this presentation mostly on my own. It's a little bit nerve-wracking, because this is a pretty important orientation, but it's also very, very exciting. I'm taking the lead on this, and nobody seems to doubt or mind that I'm going after it. I just hope that I'll be able to manage it.

Something that's been on my mind, and I've suddenly started discussing it with other people. I think I may stay an extra semester. John and Kip have told me that they will continue letting me work with them. And I could work full time to put some money in my bank for when I do go. But I DO need to go. I don't enjoy pushing this date back, because a little part of me is afraid that now, it's going to keep getting pushed, but I have to believe I'm going to go. If I don't, I know in 20 years it will be the single greatest regret of my life.

Parent Visits

Not much on the internship front this week again (I'm promised that things get more interesting next week) so I'm going to blog about something else instead. Parent's Weekend!

It's a little bit of a tradition for my parents to come visit me on Parent's Weekend. I know that usually it's just the freshmen that have anyone come visit them, but it also has to be said that most students here get the opportunity to go home more than twice a semester. There have been some semesters where I only had the chance to go home once. So this is their chance to get out of the city for a weekend and see me.

Lame as it may be, I quite enjoy it when they come up. We always go out to eat as soon as they get here, we always go to the comedian the school has lined up. And we always go to the football game, which is always a blow-out over a no name school (although Miami-Ohio is slightly more memorable than some past games).

This year, my aunt and older brother traveled with them (it was the first time my brother had ever been up here) and my cousin and her two kids came over to see me as well for the game and dinner afterword. It was, in a word, lovely. And it made me remember why I live such a charmed life.

My family is amazing. There are over 50 family members (that I can name and see at least somewhat regularly) who live within 20-30 minutes of my house in Dallas (with the exception of my grandma, aunt and cousin, who live 2 hours away in East Texas). We're all very tight, we have massive family game nights, we look out for each others' kids, we have big garage sales, we help each other move in to new houses. It's something I've always missed since I moved to Missouri. It's quite difficult to leave such a tight-knit community and travel "afar". But looking from the outside, I've seen what I had. The best thing I can compare it to is realizing I loved my home state. It was only after I got to Missouri I realized Texas was the best state in the Union (I may be a bit biased).

And, with the realization that it's still such a heavy toll to live so far away comes another, more grievous one. I'm planning on moving to New Zealand in less than a year. Probably about half a year. There aren't any spring and summer breaks in the real world. There won't be any going home to visit. It's going to be one of the harder things I think I'll ever have to do in my entire life, to live so far away from that connection for so long. Skype is a wonderful tool, but it's still artificial, and I doubt that anyone can disagree with me when I say that face to face contact contains so much more in the way of communication and emotion.

When I leave, I'll be opening a gulf between myself and my family. Not one of anger or dissapointment, but literally a gulf. Of all the things weighing on my mind about my decision, that is the greatest. And it's the one I'm the least decided on. Good thing I have all the time in the world to work it out...