Brain Surgery

Sorry for not posting last Sunday……I needed to go upstate New York to see my dad. He’s 88 and has Alzheimer’s. I hadn’t seen him in a long while and he needed to go into the hospital (everything is ok). It got me to thinking about last weeks backup post. You don’t want to loose any of your pictures whether you scan them to your desktop machine, take with a camera or your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch. Did you know that Apple has a great scan utility called “Image Capture” that comes on every machine? It allows you to transfer images from a scanner, a camera, or a device with a camera, such as your phone. Works like a champ.

They’re called snap shots because they capture a unique moment in time. I came across this photo at my moms this past weekend and scanned it into my computer when I got back. I’m eight months old and being held by my two Grandmas. It was taken at Jones Beach in the summer of 1950. I scanned the below image using my old Canon multi-function Canon PIXMA MP620 which is networked. Now I have a copy of this photograph and memory and I’m confident that I have a backup using Time Machine.

Another quick snap was taken with my iPhone on Christmas day 2010 at Rockefeller Center in NYC. It’s one of my favorite “selfie” snaps of Zoe and me and our silly hats.

copyright 2012, David Leveen

Which brings me to a really bad segue, well sorta of bad, about a new app called “SnapGuide” for the iPhone. Snapguide is a simple, beautiful way to share and view sep-by-step how to guides. Everything from photography to cooking to building. It’s all done with your camera on your iPhone. You can use both pictures and videos shot with the phone and imported into the app. Check out the ones Rick and I did on photography.

I’ll leave you with this great shot of my dad that I took 3 years ago. It brings tears to my eyes every time I see it. When I visited him this past weekend he said, “hey that’s at the LPGA!”. For over 30 years my dad volunteered and ran the media tent at the Corning Classic. A great LPGA event held in Corning, NY at the Corning Country Club. By the way, Nancy Lopez was my Dad’s favorite golfer.

copyright 2012, David Leveen

Next week I’ll share a couple of secrets I learned about the iPhone from my daughter Maya and my best friend Eric. And we’ll look at a very cool app and photo sharing service from our friends at SmugMug. See you then.

Just Because: Holy Moly! Rocking the Garden for Bobby D……so many musicians plus the great great rhythm section of Steve Cropper, Duck Dunn and Jim Keltner. How great to see Johnny Cash, Ronnie Wood and George Harrison sharing the mic. Enjoy!

Man I miss Warren Zevon, but no truer words have been spoken when it comes to backing up your iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad or main machine. I can tell you from my experience with my Apple clients and my friends at the Apple Genius Bar that the sound you never want to hear is “kerplunk!” as your device falls into the toilet, bathtub or puddle. It happens frequently and without a back up you have to reconstruct all your favorite music, contacts, photos etc. from scratch to a replacement device. Always sync your device to the latest version of iTunes. iTunes backs up to your local machine. If you have to restore your device to the way it was, you restore from this back up. There are other strategies and methods to employ.

Calendar/Contacts: Get an Apple iCloud account it’s free. This enables you to sync your calendar and contacts between all your Apple devices and desktop machine or laptop. Because everything is in sync it also becomes an easy way to restore your calendar and contacts to a new device or machine.

Apps: By backing up to iTunes on your desktop or laptop when you restore your device it will also add your apps back in to your device. Also did you know that when you purchase an app on either your iPhone or iPad and then delete it, you can always go back to the app store and re-download the purchased app for free.

Photos: I always like to transfer my iPhone and iPad photos to Aperture 3 or the latest version of iPhoto when I sync. That way when I back up my desktop machine I also have a back up of my photos. Like the photo below taken with the wide-angle lens from the iPro Lens that I took on my walk last night. Loving that lens setup and the artistic filters in iPhoto on the iPad.

Music: I have over 1TB of music in my iTunes library and carry between 1000-1200 songs at any given time on my iPhone. I listen when I take my daily walks, driving to clients and when I’m cooking (using AirPlay). Because I like to rotate new and old tunes on my iPhone I created a playlist in iTunes on my main machine called “iPhone”. It is that list that I sync to my iPhone and thus manage what music ends up on my iPhone. Music moves in and out of that list frequently. That way if I have to restore a damaged iPhone to a new one I have a fast and easy way to keep the music the same.

Coming up next week: My Neighborhood! Plus a cool new app SnapGuide that Rick and I dip our toes into.

Before we start here is a new feature you may not be aware of on your iPhone that’s running IOS 5.1. You can now take pictures directly from your lock screen. You’ll notice in the picture below that I’ve highlighted the camera icon in the lower right corner, flip that up and the iPhone automatically goes into the picture taking mode. You can now grab that shot before it disappears.

It all started with a photography course I took at Ithaca College and a Nikkormat camera that my friend Paul let me use for the class. The smell of the dark room, the beauty of printing the b/w negatives and the wonder as the image appeared on the paper. Long since lost are the images I took at the Watkins Glen race track that spring but the thrill and satisfaction of looking at the world as a photographer remains. Overtime that feeling took a back seat as kids and the responsibility and time of marriage and raising them took priority. But happily the wonderment has returned in the guise of my iPhone 4S and the iPro Lens system.

The iPro Lens System works on both the iPhone 4 and 4S. It comes with a great case for your phone and both a wide-angle and fisheye lens that screws directly onto the case over the existing iPhone lens. A handle safely stores both lenses and enables you to hand hold or attach your iPhone to any tripod. I love taking pictures with the system. Below is the classic Croton dam shot that I shot with my iPhone and the wide-angle lens attached. It was photo streamed to my iPad and then I processed it in iPhoto using one of the artistic filters.

Here is a view taken from the top of the dam standing over the falls looking towards Croton on Hudson with the iPhone and wide-angle lens attached and again processed through iPhoto on the iPad.

I turned around so my back was to the above view and I was facing the actual reservoir and the spill over. This time I used the fisheye lens. I could have cropped out the edges but decided it was more fun to leave them in.

The iPro Lens System drew me back to looking at the world with my photography eyes again and gave my daughter a great excuse to take a silly fisheye shot of me at our favorite pizza place.

As promised here’s how to print wirelessly from your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch when you don’t have one of the new Air Print capable printers…..use Printopia from ecamm. Check it out.

As for the new Air Print capable printers here’s one that works well and is reasonably priced from Canon.

Next week I’ll show you how to easily get your photos from your iPhone to your iPad if you’re not using iCloud. We’ll also look at some simple backup strategies for your iPhone, iPad and Apple desktop.

Just Because: A great version of a Hall and Oates tune that I came across…..wait for the Kazoo! Nicki Bluhm and The Gramblers. Shot with an iPhone! Check out all their covers.