I love working at Google. It’s absolutely one of the most inspiring and creative places for a software engineer to be working. One of the coolest things we’ve done in my opinion is Google Chrome.  It’s fast.  It’s not just speedy.  It’s not just quick.  It’s really freaking fast, kind of precognition fast.  If you don’t have ESP, check out this really cool video put together by the Chrome team.  Using some clever visual metaphors, they really show you just how fast Chrome can be.

So with that said, “What are you waiting for?”  Experience the Internet the way it’s supposed to be experienced.  See it secure, see it simple, and see it blazingly fast.  Go Get Chrome!

I should state the obvious here by saying that I work for Google and the views I express here are my own and are not those of my employer.  That said, Chrome is still really fast.

So my friend Brandon pinged me this evening to say that Flickr had killed the DMU group, which stands for “Delete Me — Uncensored”. The way the group worked was kind of a sadistic game. You would submit a photo to the group pool. People were then invited to comment on your photo and say whatever they felt like. Their comments were literally ‘uncensored’. After praising or trashing your photo, they’d vote save or delete. As soon as your photo received 10 saves or 10 deletes, its’ fate was sealed. If it was saved, it was moved to the Lightbox,  a collection of some of the most amazing images on Flickr.  If it received 10 delete votes, it was banished and kicked out of the group completely. In order to submit a photo, you were required to vote on 15 photos first.  You effectively bought your right to be criticized by criticizing others.  Sweet, eh?

Why would be people do this? Well, everyone is a monster inside!  Haha.  But seriously, it was a place that attracted some very talented photographers, and was a place where you could get honest feedback.  On too many sites people will praise everything, or leave pointless feedback like ‘Great Capture!’.  Participating in a forum where people were brutally honest was pretty unique.  It also made it extremely rewarding when people said nice things.  You really had to have made something special to be praised.

It’s sad to see Flickr act like this.  Too bad there are no other photo services out there that have established a strong social component.  Once I find one, I’m signing up.  Social photo hosting is far from a solved problem.

Zack Arias the (in)famous Atlanta music photographer came by Google on Friday. He spent the day with a group of 20 photographers and presented his absolutely fantastic One Light Workshop. I have to say this, “If you want to learn more about lighting, but more importantly if you want to be a better photographer, go sign up for this workshop now!” Zack has One Light workshops scheduled in NYC, Atlanta, and LA. It’s worth every penny and you will leave inspired.  If you can’t make it to one of his workshops in person, Zack has One Light DVDs for sale that are the next best thing.  Zack’s zen-like attitude and approach to photography was a wake up call for me. Rather than take photos everyone has seen before, I now want to take photos that will make people see something they haven’t.

Ok, on to the photo above.  This photo is one from the workshop on Friday. It’s as simple as you can get! A single 430 EX II on full power blasting at Dan from about 5 feet away.  Can’t get easier than that, can you?

When I was in high school I worked at a small startup.  Ultimately the startup didn’t go anywhere, but I made some great life long friends in the process.  Through a series of unfortunate events we lost control of our domain name, and while it’s not something like car.com or anything like that, it had some sentimental value.  I should be clear though, we didn’t loose control of it, as much as, technically lose control.  You see, back then there was rs.internic.net for registering domain names.  They assigned everyone a NIC handle like MW2782  (which was my NIC handle).  Somewhere along the line, Verisign bought Network Solutions and then spun Network Solutions off into its own company again.  They stopped using NIC handles and ported everyone over to actual usernames.  Unfortunately the person who was the Administrative Contact (i.e. defacto owner of a domain)  was no longer available and we had no idea what username or password we could use to manage the domain.  So for the past 10 years, my friend Ed has been sending a check to Network Solutions every year as they effectively held the domain hostage.  You see Network Solutions will take money from anyone, but only the Administrative Contact can manage a domain name. Ugh.

A few weeks ago I started getting the annual renewal emails from them, and I decided enough was enough.  It took many phone calls, tons of faxing, but now I’ve been able to claim ownership of the domain and move it to my account at Go Daddy.   It only took 10 years, but it’s finally back where it belongs.  To most people this is just silly, but in a weird way, it’s a symbolic triumph that makes me happy. :-)

I called up MPEX the other day to order a few extra lightstands, swivel adapters, and more.  I know they have worked hand in hand with David Hobby and have put out some great lighting kits for strobists to use.  While I was viewing their site I saw a link for used equipment.  There was some stuff on there that had amazing prices and was only used in the sense it was demo gear in their store.  I figured after spending a few weeks in my trunk, it would be scratched and dinged anyway, so who cares?  I called up and to my dismay, they had sold it already.  :-(  The gentleman I was talking with apologized for the problem and agreed to honor the pricing of the used gear, on new gear.  Yeah, how about them apples?  Now this is customer service and a type of bait and switch no one could find fault with, not even me. haha.  After he really gave me such a break, I ended up ordering more stuff that I’ve been putting off.  I ended up with a great price overall and an excellent experience.  They seem to be a bunch of straight shooters over at MPEX.  Give em a try.

Joe McNally has a post on the fate of a life-sized set of polaroids (taken with a polaroid the size of a room!) he made of the people who he saw as the heroes of 9/11. The shots are truly amazing, and it’s a great story of the photographic community coming through in a pinch.

I just finished reading this blog post about how to post useful comments on Flickr photos.

Too many comments are like “Great Job!”, “Nice!”, “Wow, come join my group!” These comments aren’t really that helpful, are they? Are you guilty of leaving meaningless feedback too? I know I am! Read the post above and make a resolution to only post constructive comments in the future!! We’ll all benefit from this.