The French Photographer Weblog

As a recently naturalized US citizen this was my first election in this country. So even if this blog is about photography I also wish to comment about my life in general.
It was an interesting experience. Of course being a recent citizen I was expecting to bump into some issues and I was not disappointed. When I showed up at the voting location it turned out that my ID and voter card was not enough. So I could not go through the normal electronic voting process and I had to do a challenged ballot and later visit the registration office to prove my actual citizenship. Somehow I can understand that the government want to verify that I am actually voting because I’m a citizen. Two things were quite surprising for me. First you have to swear that you won’t vote anywhere else under the same or a different name.
It’s still amazes me that a modern and advanced country does not have a way to uniquely identify a person. Something that guaranty that you exist on only one electoral list and you have only one name.
The second thing is that we vote in a church. In a country where the state and the church are supposedly 2 separate entities, the church should handle the religious business and the state should handle something like an election and there should be no connections of any kind between the two.

Separation between the church and the state is a principle that resulted from the French revolution and is very strictly enforced. I personally have no problem voting in a church but what would happen if people were asked to go vote in a mosque? After all we have the right to practice any religion. It’s one of the basics of the constitution, so there is no reason to vote in a church more than in a mosque. Still I believe that it would disturb many people if they were asked to do that.

Now a quick comment and some photos that I found interesting about the election. And stay with me you will see that it even relates to photography, eventually.
So this election was all about the Tea Party. Honestly if I were Republican tonight I would certainly be happy but also very concerned – I certainly would not like to have to deal with those nuts. I feel that today there are 3 parties in the Us, the Democratic party, the Republican party and the Tea party. And the next two years will certainly be quite interesting.
If you have a minute this article from the New York Times is an interesting read.
To me the bottom line is quite simple. The Republican lost the election in 2008 because they picked Sarah Palin as vice president and she pretty much made a fool of herself. This time they lost the senate because of the Tea party and indirectly because of Sarah Palin. At least two seats in the Senate were lost because the Republican candidates were extremist from the Tea party and they ended up with 30-40% of the votes where a traditional republican candidate would have most likely win the race. That’s enough to lose the majority in the Senate and I’m sorry but that’s a big deal. If you wonder what I’m talking about, I’m referring to Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell. Karl Rove mentioned his concern about that outcome before the election and tonight he has been proven right.
The Tea party and the damage it will cause to the Republican party is the best chance for Obama to be reelected in 2012.

Now a few photos from the elections

Christine O’Donnell – Change the background and you have an ad for a department store in the 60s. What a joke!
Photo: Michael Reynolds – EPA

Yes, this was taken in America yesterday, not in Bagdad.
Did I mentioned voting inside a mosque?
Photo: Paul Sancya – AP

I know it’s good to look like the tough girl but if you fire that gun it will break your wist
Photo: John Locher – Las Vegas Review-Journal of Sharron Angle who lost her senate race.

And now to finish if you wonder how a photojournalist can come up with a photo like this one.


Photo: Larry Downing / Reuters

Look at this other view from the same scene.

Photo: Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

You will notice on the right of the president the remote cameras on the floor.

Nice way to make an image from an angle unreachable by the photographer.
Got to get your timing right too.

The photo of course is of President Obama leaving after his press conference following the mid term election.

Back to photography now, and technology too. A note about Facebook coming up tomorrow.

As you noticed already I write about Photography but I write also a lot about Apple, Smartphones and iPhones. So I cannot avoid a word on that antennagate story.
First, monday was an interesting day for me, FedEx delivered my iPhone 4. It took me about 5 minutes to have it activated and another 30 seconds to test the infamous death grip to the conclusion that… what a bullshit!
There is simply no problem there. Ok, there is some signal attenuation. Ok, if I hold the phone tight for a minute maybe the signal will decrease but nowhere enough to drop a call. And in real life who will grip a phone like that and hold tight and not end up with cramps after a few minutes.
Come on, this is just plain bullshit.

I also watched the press conference last week about this topic and like everybody I noticed the body language and sort of contempt in Steve Jobs attitude when he announced the free bumper for everybody. And honestly now that I have experienced the real extend of the matter (sorry, I cannot call that a problem) I understand much better his frustration and his general attitude with the media.
This bumper giveaway will cost Apple probably $150 to $200 millions because of something that has been blown out of proportion by the media. That’s kind of expensive for a media interference.

So what’s the bottom line. iPhone 4 has a new antenna design, with a trade off. There is one clearly indicated weak spot in an overall excellent product. Does that make the product unusable? No. Is it a reason for a recall? Never ever. Is it a real problem preventing a normal usage of this product? Not in my experience. Actually I don’t even think about it or pay particular attention to it. I never used a case on my iPhones and I won’t use one on the iPhone 4, because I don’t like cases, because they are ugly and not convenient.

Funny thing, now the focus has shifted from the antenna issue to Steve Jobs attitude during the press conference.
And honestly I understand him. To me his answer to this problem is exactly in line with the way he thinks and not very different to his answer on the flash controversy. Listen if you have not done so yet to the interview he gave at All things Digital a few month ago. The segment on Flash is particularly relevant, basically steve’s opinion is quite simple – we think that Flash is not appropriate for iOS devices, there are technologies that allow us to get the same result without the problems generated by Flash, so we don;t need Flash and we won’t invest in it. If people agree with us they will buy our products, and if they think we are wrong they won’t!
For that matter Steve is the ultimate believer in free market. He must be a good friend of Alan Greenspan.
And when you look at the last quarter numbers, the market tend to prove that steve is right. Yesterday Apple repeated several times that they sell the iOS devices as fast as they can make them and cannot keep up with demand.
Nowadays information travels fast and social medias are powerful to build or destroy the reputation of a product, obviously the iPad sales like crazy even without Flash and people buy iPhone 4 despite the antenna weak spot. And they don’t return those products.

So what happened? There is a weak spot on the iPhone 4 antenna. Maybe this should have been clearly explained during the presentation of the product. Instead, it was blown out of proportion by the media. We heard all sorts of conspiracy theory about Apple knowing about it and having ulterior motives. at the end of the day – money talks, bullshit walks. Or maybe customers do. People want to buy more iPhone 4 and iPads than Apple can produce. They don’t return the products. They experience some dropped calls but not more than any other phone on the market.

This bullshit is over. Price tag for this media stunt – about $150 millions.

I’m a strong believer in the freedom of the media but maybe they should really focus on the important topics nowadays, not on that kind of easy crap.

It’s coming!
I’m about to split this blog into 2 parts. I want to be able to write about my ideas and opinions and I understand that this is different from the articles I write about photography.
So, part of my currently in progress web site redesign, I will split this blog in 2 different sections.
My personal posts will remain here and everything related to photography will go to the upcoming blog on Mindworks Creation Web site. This will be effective as soon as the redesign of the web site is completed.
Stay tuned.

Well, let’s keep everything relative. It’s an historic time for the computer and mobile communication industry.

Google is holding its big Google I/o conference in San Francisco this week. Apple will have the WWDC in 2 weeks and from both events we can expect big announcements like the one we saw today.

What makes it an historic and interesting time is that the market of mobile computing is still totally open with some serious competitors fighting for their share of the market. I can see at least 5 serious competitors right now:

- Apple certainly got a head start with the iPhone and the iPad. They have already sold a millions of devices (can’t wait for their announcement of the 100 millions iPhone/iPodTouch/iPad).
It looks like they cannot produce enough iPad to keep some descent inventory in their own stores (75% of the Apple Stores were out of stock as of today).
iPhoneOS 4 should be available in a few weeks with more than 200,000 apps. Those are very solid numbers. The future sounds pretty bright for Apple with maybe a few clouds in that blue sky – the long term reaction of the end users to Apple addiction to controlling everything and anything and their overall attitude toward developers and opening the platform to contents not deemed acceptable.

- Google is the strongest contestant to Apple supremacy and come to the fight with some serious weapons. Their OS is slowly catching up, their browser is solid and they recently found their line of communication by pretending to be the white knight and our ultimate line of defense against Apple dictatorial attitude. By their book Apple platform is closed and managed by control freaks, they are our last hope of freedom.
The question is: how long is this going to last? For how long are they going to give away all that technology for free to cell phones manufacturers. If you look at some past experiences, Google always use the same strategy to enter a market – provide a service comparable to what is already existing but for free. Attract a large base of users and than align the price of their service with the competitors. If you want a confirmation of that look at Google Checkout. After a couple of years it is no longer free but charge the same transaction fees as Paypal.
Google is successful because they offer a FREE solution to cell phone manufacturers who want to propose inexpensive alternatives to Apple’s iPhone with a product that look similar.
Apple has never entered the market of discounted products. They have always favored the top end of the market (cellphones or computers) hence Google will most likely win the battle of the market share. But how long will they accept to not make money on this market?

- HP/Palm certainly the best thing that could have happened for both companies. Palm is finally saved (and about to dissolve into its new owner corporate maze) and HP acquires a much needed knowledge, patent and mobile OS. This move will certainly lead to an interesting development. Historically among all the computers manufacturers Apple has been the only one to do both the software and the hardware. Now in the mobile computer market HP will be the second company to control both aspects of the user experience. This move makes them independent from a software manufacturer (like Google or Microsoft) and place them on a course similar to Apple strategy. We will see if this was the right move.

- Microsoft: even if the company is way behind on this market they just cannot be ignored. Windows Mobile 6 was a disaster of a magnitude similar to Vista. Version 6.5 was not really better. Than for some strange reason the company announced that Window Mobile would arrive in about a year and would not be compatible with the devices running the current version. That was the best recipe to make sure that every cell phone manufacturer and end user (at least the one who pay attention to what they buy and not simply listen to a sales rep) walk away from their solution. So right now Microsoft is dead on the water in the battle and all they have to rely on is the hope that Windows Mobile 7 will be their salvation. Still, once it gets available it will require all the power of Microsoft’s marketing machine to reenter the market. At this time they will have to convince cellphone manufacturers that their OS is better than Google’s even if it has very little applications and it’s not free. Talking of an uphill battle!

- RIM: Is something different in my opinion. They are very strong in the corporate world but still seriously under attack. They were there before everybody else with their own OS (sort of), their own devices with their specific design, and even their own architecture to support the devices, but… they totally missed the evolution of the market they were sitting on. It’s only after they realized that Apple was coming up with a device and an OS so strong that it was a threat for them that they finally decided to react. And it was not a very strong reaction. Basically imitating the interface that was created by somebody else but falling short on a lot of aspects. Since everybody watches them losing market share and doing very little to stop it. They come last in the list of competitors because they are simply going down. It is another typical case of a market leader sitting on its position, not bringing any innovation and slowly losing its advantage. Wonder why? Try doing the same thing on an iPhone (or an Android phone) and on a good old blackberry and you will quickly understand that one look attractive and modern and the other is some sort of dinosaur of the mobile computing.

Now I can hear some comments and I would like to address those.
Why is not Nokia on that list? Well because they have nothing so far that can compete with Apple or Google. Nokia has been making cellphones for decade but they see those as phones maybe with a few added features. Apple like I explained some months ago did not created a phone, they created an eco system that includes prominently an OS but also an App store and the tools to support that phone. Google jumped in the same train relatively quickly and now HP is trying to catch up. Microsoft had an OS but it was so bad that they more or less had to abandon it and start again from scratch. RIM had a complete system but just forgot to update it and innovate. In the meantime Nokia is still making… cellphones with a few added functionalities.
And what about Motorola. Ah good old Motorola, remind me when was the last time this company did something right. They used to make microprocessors, they drove themselves out of that business years ago, they used to make cellphones, they still do except that they position themselves in the less profitable segment of this market. They had some success with the razor but them too missed the evolution toward the smartphones pretty much for the same reasons. Lack of a descent (you can say Touch based) operating system and lack of the ecosystem to support it. During the last quarter Apple sold more phones than Motorola. Motorola currently has a catalogue of 117 devices, Apple has exactly 5 references. Call that a victory of quality over quantity!

Two days from now a few hundred thousands iPad will reach their end users but the industry has already been thinking about what innovation the device could bring to the partially dying publishing industry.

I complied 3 examples, in the form of videos, to demonstrate what could be the shape of our magazines of the future.
Will the iPad (or the tablets in general) save the magazines? You can give your opinion in the comments, anyway I found those 3 examples quite interesting.

The first video was created by Adobe and Wired Magazine. It certainly makes a lot of sense for Adobe, being the #1 provider of publishing softwares, to wonder how the needs of their clients will evolve. This is part of their vision (with a touch of self satisfaction too).

The second one is a concept for a new magazine created specifically to be viewed on a computer. Quite an innovative approach. I found that the creators have an interesting way to mix video, still photography and text.

VIV Mag Interactive Feature Spread – iPad Demo from Alexx Henry on Vimeo.

The last one is a demo of what could be the cover of your next travel magazine and I have to admit that I really like the way it looks. Because it is close enough to what we are used to, it still looks familiar but at the same time it really goes one step further and clearly provide more than the paper magazine experience.

iPad Sunset Mag Cover Spec from Jesse Rosten on Vimeo.

Are we going to buy more magazines thanks to those new way of telling stories? Wait and you will know.