OK, thanks to the non­stop CES news onslaught, I was able to find some­thing that every dad needs– Miveu or as I like to call it, “The Dad Cam.”

If you have an iPhone, get your­self this chest strap doohickey and start shoot­ing some awe­some­ness. Bet­ter yet, use those Dad Do-it-yourself skills and stap it on your tod­dler (teenagers will prob­a­bly object) and let the fun begin!

God will­ing, I will be zip lin­ing in Costa Rica in about a month and this thing is just what I need for the home video.  The pos­si­bil­i­ties are end­less.  I won­der what the guys from How to be a Dad would come up with if they had this thing?!

YouTube video of it in action:

MG Siegler puts it very nicely:
 

Apple, for all the shit they get for being “closed” and “evil”, has actu­ally done far more to wres­tle con­trol back from the car­ri­ers and put it into the hands of con­sumers. Google set off to help in this goal, then stabbed us all in the back and went the com­plete other way, to the side of the car­ri­ers. And because they smiled the entire time they were doing it and fed us this “open” bull­shit, we thanked them for it. We’re still thank­ing them for it!

I’m my family’s des­ig­nated pho­tog­ra­pher. Do you share that post? It’s not easy and there’s a lot of pres­sure to “get the shot.”

One of the things I find myself con­stantly doing when I get the pho­tos into the com­puter is post pro­duc­tion– tweak­ing them in Pho­to­shop to cor­rect all or most of my mis­takes… Get­ting the white bal­ance cor­rect is one of my biggest issues. Per­haps it’s also yours?  If you don’t get the right white bal­ance, your col­ors will be off and it’s very dif­fi­cult to correct.

I found this arti­cle from Dig­i­tal Pho­tog­ra­phy School that will help you cor­rect the white bal­ance in post pro­duc­tion if you use Pho­to­shop and shoot RAW. If you don’t know what RAW is, then this is prob­a­bly not for you.  For those that do, the use of a gray card can make your white color bal­anc­ing MUCH easier.

It looks like Apple’s event later this month is about ITunes Uni­veristy and rdu­ca­tion.  Actu­ally, my son’s school is going all iPad next year.

The new year has barely bro­ken in and the iPad 3 rumor mill has started in ernest.  I’ve been read­ing that it may make an appear­ance in Feb­ru­ary, poten­tially in two fla­vors– a less expen­sive for nor­mal humans and a more expen­sive for power users with unlim­ited bud­gets. I’m sure that we will soon be see­ing sto­ries about whether or not you need to upgrade.  Some of you will do so imme­di­ately, oth­ers will debate for a while. 
 
I can tell you that I will not be get­ting it and will remain with the orig­i­nal iPad I’m using to write this.  I don’t need a new iPad what I do need it to use the one I have bet­ter.  If you haven’t invested the time to see how to use your iPad bet­ter, I sug­gest to you it’s a great thing for you to do.  You may be sur­prised of how much value these lit­tle tablets can bring you.
 
I recently put away the yel­low pad and pen and began tak­ing notes at work using the iPad and sty­lus.  I don’t think I’ll ever go back.  I’m tak­ing hand­writ­ten notes then email­ing them to myself for incor­po­rat­ing into my Win­dows work envi­ron­ment.  
 
I’m also using Omni­fo­cus to help me keep my san­ity with all the things I need to do for work.  Com­bine Omni­fo­cus with Ever­note and you’ve got a power tool for orga­niz­ing your life and get­ting things done.  For me, how­ever, it’s all about stay­ing sane and work­ing on my attempt to com­part­men­tal­ize my life.  I can relax and trust that I am not for­get­ting about some­thing because almost every­thing gets writ­ten down.
 
To add to my uber iPad 1, I pur­chased a Brook­stone cover with Blue­tooth key­board mounted into it.  I got the soft rub­ber key one in a beau­ti­ful brown color.  I can now type at my nat­ural speed, with less errors, and almost silently.  I’m sure the guy sit­ting next to me on this plane is thank­ful I bought the rub­ber key one.  It’s awe­some and is mak­ing me more pro­duc­tive.  Time to start on that novel I’ve been wait­ing 43 years to write…
 
What plane, you’re ask­ing? The one bring­ing me back from a vaca­tion to Maine where I took tons of pic­tures. Thank good­ness I remem­bered to pur­chase the SIM card reader for the iPad so I can trans­fer the pic­tures from the cam­era to the iPad.  Once i got them in there, I was able to tweak them using Snapseed– a very pow­er­ful image manip­u­la­tion tool built for he iPad. It’s awe­some.
 
I then chose a pic­ture of the fam­ily with my wife and used it to put together a Happy New Years ecard in Red Stamp and sent it to all our fam­ily and friends.
 
Add to this read­ing my books, watch­ing episodes of Mod­ern Fam­ily and movies on Net­flix and you can see how much a part of your life your iPad can be.  I feel I’ve only scratched the sur­face of how much I can do with it.
 
If you’ve held out and have not pur­chased an iPad yet, you may want to hold out for the iPad 3. Hey, you might as well get the lat­est iter­a­tion.  How­ever, if you have an iPad 1 or 2, think twice about the upgrade.  Instead, think more about how to use what you have in a more mean­ing­ful way for you.
 
Tech­nol­ogy is a tool meant to be used.