BullsEyePhotos Blog of Indecision

Time has come for Coppermine Photo Gallery to stroll in to the blogging world. Abbas Ali, a CPG Dev Member has set up a WordPress blog called CPG Dev Team Blog for the devs to post about programming, web applications, technical stuff and all-things-coppermine. I’m very proud to be considered a member of the Dev Team but my main accomplishments have been porting several WordPress themes to Coppermine so that users can seamlessly use WordPress and Coppermine together in the same theme. True I do support the users through the support board and occasionally develop a hack or two (Comment List for CPG for example) but the real magic is in the easy to install and use features of Coppermine that come from all the selfless hard work of the coders and support devs. Coppermine is a free open source application so if you’re looking to display or share any type of media (images, photos, music, video, etc) online, give Coppermine a try.

\\ tags: Code, Coppermine, Development, open source, php, software, Technology, Web, WordPress

My friend who is starting her own consulting company was looking into getting an iPhone but AT&T coverage here in central NJ just isn’t cutting it. I have another friend, Angie who comes out east quite often on business from CA and she isn’t happy with the iPhone service here either so I do have a solid reference to go on. Besides, cost of the phone and data service is way over priced. I came across the Peek from a USA Today article today and thought this is a cool alternative to a smart phone. Price is ~$80 and can be bought online or at Target and the service is only $20/month including texting. Eat that cell service providers! Ummm… maybe I’ll turn in my Moto-Q and save a bundle on monthly expenses for my company!

\\ tags: cell phone, email, peek, Technology

I don’t watch much television because frankly I can’t stay awake during the commercials. I have a TIVO but it’s not HD quality and I’m no longer investing money into technology that only does one thing and not all that good to boot. I do enjoy watching movies and since I travel a lot for my job, it’s nice to have them on my MacBook Pro or iPod Touch. I came across VisualHub after watching an episode from one of Leo Laporte tech shows and thought that is exactly what I need to transfer movies to my iPod. After shelling out the $23.32 (yes, I save my receipts!) I found that this was one of the best tools around for compressing and combining video files. It’s so easy to use and depending on the processor of your Mac, it can convert a 2 hour movie in under an hour. While not exactly speedy it does a good job on the quality which is more important to me.

Sadly, Techspansion’s website has been shuttered and the products have been discontinued. Tyler Loch (Techspansion’s founder) left a note on Techspansion: “After much soul-searching (it’s not you, it’s me), for personal reasons, Techspansion is closing its virtual doors.” His choice is understandable, but we will definitely miss VisualHub (not to mention the laugh-out-loud funniest release notes in software history). Best of luck to Tyler.

The good news is that the source code from Tyler’s projects are now up on SourceForge so hopefully we’ll see great software resurrected into an even greater open source application for all to enjoy. Thank you Tyler!

\\ tags: Apple, compression, Leo Laporte, Macbook Pro, software, Techspansion, video, VisualHub