They posted a great list today of 10 new Instagram-related apps and sites that you can use to make your Instagram experience that much more awesome. Go check it out!

Instagram is a great little free app that lets you take pictures (or use photos already in your camera roll), apply fun filters that overlay things like Polaroid-esque 70s coloring or the distinct light leaks of a Lomo camera, and post them online. You can choose only to share in the Instagram app, or you can have it cross-post to Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, or other social media services.

I loved the app right away but, like many apps I download, I used it only sporadically. That all changed when Shawn and I took a trip to Paris back in February. This was the trip of a lifetime for me–I had been dreaming of going to Paris for over half of my life, and even though we were only there for four days I wanted to capture every heart-fluttering moment I could.

My iPhone 4′s camera was the BEST on this trip–my trusty Canon point and shoot just wasn’t good in low-light environments like the Louvre where I couldn’t use the flash, and compared to the iPhone camera it felt slow and annoying to use. My iPhone, coupled with the Mophie Juice Pack Plus to make sure I didn’t run out of juice during long days away from the hotel, allowed me to snap away to my heart’s content. Instagram allowed me to apply filters that made the photos feel even more special, then easily post them to my social media channels at the end of the day via the hotel’s wireless to share with family and friends. It was such a fantastic way to share parts of our trip and the pictures turned my amateur photography into something absolutely beautiful. I even noticed that I was taking more care to frame up shots and capture interesting things that would look awesome once I “Instagram-ed” them.

Once I came back from our vacation, I had to dive right in to preparing for a huge work trip and didn’t get around to uploading the photos from my iPhone and Canon onto our Mac Mini until this weekend. However, I kept looking longingly through my Instagram stream at some of my beautiful Paris memories. I wanted to get them printed but I hadn’t had time to go through the process of pulling them off the iPhone, uploading them to Flickr and ordering prints. Plus, I wasn’t sure if any of the online services offered square prints.

Then I saw a great new app called PostalPix. It lets you take your Instagram, Hipstamatic or other digital photos on your iPhone, easily upload them and order prints. Bonus? They just started offering 4″ x 4″ prints! I quickly grabbed a 20% off code I found online and ordered a handful of my favorite pictures from my camera roll. They arrived this weekend and they look fantastic! I can’t wait to find some square frames, or do a custom mat for a triptych of Paris pictures.

If you’re looking for a quick, easy way to get prints from your iPhone camera roll, download PostalPix today! It’s free and easy to use, which are two of my favorite things. And if you’d like to add me as a friend on Instagram, you can find me there as jfritsche.

When the Flip Mino HD came out, my intrigue was sparked anew.  I still really love the form factor, and the ability to shoot in decently high quality for a fraction of the price of expensive HD cameras is a definite bonus.  I realize you won’t get the same results as with one of those expensive HD cameras, but for what I want one for I feel that it will be more than sufficient.  I have been contemplating adding one to my Christmas list this year for a few months.

Then, I hear about the introduction of the Flip Ultra HD, which has longer recording time, user removable rechargeable batteries, and an HDMI port.  Now Gizmodo tells me that there is a Kodak equivalent to the Ultra HD coming out on May 15 that has pretty much all of the above, plus support for SDHC cards up to 32GB! I swoon!  It seems to be a better price point as well at $150 versus the $200 for the Mino HD and the reported $200 for the Ultra HD.  I would expect this means the Mino should drop to $150 as well, but for that price the Kodak Zx1 is the clear winner to me–provided the performance is good.

Hopefully someone will do a side-by-side comparison of the two cameras…if the Flip and Kodak people want to grace me with their products, I would be HAPPY to conduct the experiment myself and blog the results.  Call me, guys!

After that I tried Twittelator, Twinkle and TwitterFon, but none of them really did what I wanted them to do.  Twittelator flat out never worked on the iPhone no matter how many times I tried it.  The other two just didn’t really feel like they offered anything more than Twitteriffic did.

I hesitated on buying a Twitter app when Twitteriffic was perfectly functional and for the very reasonable price of free, but I decided that as much as I use my iPhone, I needed a more robust app to do my Twittering and Twitter reading.  I surfed around for a bit and did some custom searches, and decided that I would give Tweetie a try for 2.99.

Boy am I glad I did!  Tweetie has every feature I could have wanted–the ability to load as many tweets as you want, picture posting, location posting, DM and @ replies, retweets, auto-shrinking links, trend watch, custom searches, being able to follow or unfollow people right from the app, the ability to look at your followers and following screens, and MORE!  Plus, it was stable and speedy from the moment I installed it.  It’s been a day or so now and I’ve already used Tweetie more than any of the other Twitter apps I’ve tried.  I love it when an app turns out to be worth every cent of what I paid for it.

For more about Tweetie, visit http://www.atebits.com/software/tweetie/.

Here are my daily drivers:
- iPhone 3G
- iBook G4
- Seagate FreeAgent 500GB
- iPod nano 3G 8GB
- Canon SD750
- Eee PC 701
- Western Digital Passport 250GB

iPhone 3G: I absolutely love my 16GB white iPhone 3G.  My iPhone is my lifeline, my entertainment, and my productivity wrapped up into a sleek, small package.  It’s my most recent tech purchase and is already one of my absolute favorite pieces of gear.  I use my iPhone for email, light web surfing, reading my RSS feeds, jotting a quick idea into Evernote, keeping up with my busy calendar, communicating on Twitter, reading eBooks, listening to music, and of course making phone calls.  The 2.1 firmware upgrade has given me a great boost in battery life and I have never had a problem with 3G coverage and call clarity.  It’s the best phone I’ve ever owned.  I’ll talk about my favorite apps and iPhone features in another upcoming post.

iBook G4: I am still rocking my trusty and beloved iBook G4, which I purchased in March of 2006.  I’ve maxed out the RAM and it runs Leopard quite happily.  Right now, the iBook has a hinge issue which makes opening and closing the laptop very precarious, so it’s being utilized as a desktop rather than a laptop.  I have a 19″ HP LCD monitor and a Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse hooked up to it, while it is stowed out of sight on the small set of drawers that slide under my desk.  I also have my all-in-one HP Printer, external DVD burner, and external hard drive hooked up to the iBook via a USB hub.  I am looking to eventually replace it on the desktop with an iMac, and I plan on getting a MacBook Pro hopefully sometime this winter, but the iBook is still a solid machine for my needs at home.  I use it for work (Microsoft Office and email), converting videos to watch on my iPhone, web surfing, writing, and some web design.

Seagate FreeAgent 500GB: This is a recent purchase that replaced a 250GB external drive that went out on me.  Because the iBook only has a 40GB hard drive, having an external drive is essential for me.  My husband and I have a large music collection that lives solely on the external drive, as does our iPhoto library.  I have the Seagate partitioned in half–one partition for Time Machine backups, and one partition for music, photos, movies and other things.  I am setting everything to back up to my Amazon S3 account so that if the external ever goes out again, it will not be an emergency!  One of the things I like about the Seagate is its power-saving function–when the laptop goes to sleep, so does the external drive.  That will really help lower wear and tear and increase the longevity of the drive.  It has excellent read/write speeds and looks kind of like a menacing orange Cylon.  Who doesn’t love having a Cylon on their desk?

iPod nano 3G 8GB: My “nano fatty” is one of my all-time favorite iPods.  After seeing the leaked specs, I was prepared not to like it when it was introduced last fall, but after seeing it in person, I fell in love.  It’s so small and sleek that sometimes I lose it in my bigger bags!  It has an incredibly long battery life, and the solid-state hard drive makes it perfect for working out with.  I’ve been using my iPhone a lot lately, but my iPod will not be tossed into some dusty drawer and not used any longer.  I keep it in my purse loaded up with music and audiobooks for my workout and my commute.  I like to keep different music on my iPhone and my nano so that I’m getting more leverage out of both devices.  It’s working great so far, I just need to build my music collection back up after a major hard drive crash!

Canon SD750: I really enjoy using this camera–it has a large, crisp LCD screen, uses SD cards, has a rechargable battery, and takes great photos!  My old camera, the Canon A510, was bulkier and difficult to fit in a smaller purse or a pocket.  The SD750 fits easily in my pocket or purse, which makes it handy for capturing moments on the go.  I’m still playing with the custom CHDK firmware that I loaded on it a while back, so watch the blog for an SD750 update!

Eee PC 701: “Netbooks” are becoming increasingly popular, with new ones popping up on the horizon every day or two.  I am happily rocking the one that started the craze, the Asus Eee PC 701.  I’ve got the 4GB version in Blush Pink, which makes it not only the smallest laptop I’ve ever owned, but also the cutest.  I have upgraded the RAM to 2GB, supplemented the 4GB SSD drive with an 8GB SD card, and added a Kensington USB Micro Bluetooth Adapter.  I am able to carry it almost anywhere in almost any bag I own because it’s so light and small.  I bought it with the intention of using it as a lightweight writing and blogging tool, but it’s so much more than that.  I have gone for days without using the iBook because I just don’t need to–I can do almost any computer task that I need to do on my little pink powerhouse.  I’m running Ubuntu Hardy Heron and it works fantastically well on the Eee PC.  I’ve become a big Linux fan because of this little laptop.

Western Digital Passport 250GB: Since the Eee PC only has 4GB (12GB if you count the SD card!) of storage on board, I thought it’d be nice to get a small external drive for bigger files and backup storage.  So, I picked up a 250GB Western Digital Passport drive (also in pink) that is not much bigger than a deck of cards.  It runs completely off USB power, eliminating the need for a separate power source, and it’s so quiet you can hardly hear it run.  My entire mobile computing setup weighs less than 3 pounds and fits in my purse–how cool is that?

A lot of people have a tech bag or two that they use to cart all their stuff around in, but I stick mainly to purses.  Just because I like electronics doesn’t mean I can’t carry them fashionably!  I favor Coach leather bags for my every day and professional use, but I do have a great Manhattan Portage bag that I use for travel, the gym, or places I just don’t want to carry a nice, expensive leather bag.  I have the Mini Map Bag in pink, which is essentially a vertical messenger.  It’s great for weekend jaunts to the lake or a trip to the coffee shop to write–it easily fits my Eee PC and accessories, plus my wallet, iPhone and other essentials.  It is also big enough to stash my current knitting project, a book, and my DS Lite.

What are your daily drivers and how do you carry them?  If you’re interested in being featured in My Daily Tech, send me an email at jessicafritsche at gmail dot com.

BookSmart is a GREAT concept.  Blurb is definitely on the right track with what they’re offering.  However, the execution leaves something to be desired.  BookSmart is laggy and frustrating.  It’s a Java-based application and it took almost a full minute to open.  That’s two strikes against it before I’ve even been able to use it!  When I finally got into the program, I was expecting something like creating a book in iPhoto, only more customizable and with a lot more bells and whistles.  What I got was something about ten times as frustrating as iPhoto, which made the customization not feel worth it.

Not everything about BookSmart is bad.  It has good integration with your existing iPhoto library–as long as the files are the right format.  I had to export my wedding photos to JPG (they were in TIF) so that I could use them with BookSmart.  This rendered my meticulously organized iPhoto albums pretty useless to me.  BookSmart can also integrate with Flickr and other online photo galleries, as well as pull content from blogs.

My patience with the program came to an end before I got past creating the front cover.  I couldn’t imagine creating twenty more front and back pages of photo and text content at the slow pace I was being forced to move at.  When I would drag an image to a location on the page layout, it would take upwards of 20 seconds to load and display.  I realize that I am using an older Mac, but I have the RAM maxed out and rarely experience problems even with the latest and greatest software.  Perhaps a native application could work a little better, perform a little smoother, and create a better user experience.  Strike three, BookSmart.  I’m out.

In comparison, the iPhoto user experience is great–it’s easy and FUN to create books, cards, and more from your iPhoto library.  It’s incredibly intuitive and natural.  My beef is with the cost of the iPhoto books, which is significantly more expensive than a service like Blurb, and with the lack of true customization for people who want more than a canned theme might offer.  I’m going to continue to try to find a happy medium between ease of use and customization, but I’m pretty bummed about Blurb.

My mom keeps trying to get me into scrapbooking, and while I love being crafty, the idea of scrapbooking our wedding is daunting to me.  I want something that looks sleeker, more elegant, and won’t involve me wasting hours with glue dots and decorative edge scissors.  What could be more perfect than a customizable, professionally printed photo book?

As a Mac user, I love iPhoto and have finally gotten all the photos imported and arranged into individual albums.  I started trying out the book creation feature in iPhoto, which is a lot of fun, but honestly I am less than impressed with the pricing of the books and the lack of real customization.  This got me looking around on the Internet for a viable alternative.

Blurb is the service I’m most excited about trying out.  I have downloaded their free BookSmart software to try and I can’t wait to get started!  It integrates directly with iPhoto, Flickr and more and lets you make books of all kinds.  The best part is that it’s highly customizable and a LOT cheaper than the iPhoto books for the same quality.  They even publish a blog full of helpful tips and tricks.  There are other services out there, like all-around awesome self-publishing service Lulu, or Flickr partner QOOP, but Blurb seems to be exactly what I’m looking for.  I look forward to posting my thoughts once I have a photo book created!  I have a feeling these might be finding their way under a few Christmas trees this year…

• Shooting in RAW, with RAW Average, RAW Sum, and RAW Develop features
• Live histogram (RGB, blended, luminance and for each RGB channel)
• Zebra mode (live-view under/over-exposure subject-area alerts)
• DOF-calculator, Hyperfocal-calculator with instant Hyperfocal and Infinity focus-set, and more
• Battery indicator
• RAW and Video space-remaining gauges with custom low-limit alerts
• Scripts execution (exposure/focus/bracketing, intervalometer and more)
• USB-cable remote shutter-release
• Motion-Detection triggered photography (fast enough to capture lightning strikes)
• Customizable high-speed continuous (burst) Tv, Av, ISO, and Focus bracketing (unlimited shots)
• 99 constant bit-rate and 10 constant-quality video compression levels
• 1 Gig video-size limit removed in earlier cameras
• Zoom during video for cameras without
• Shutter, Aperture, and ISO Overrides (shutter speeds of 64″ to 1/10,000″ and higher)
• High-speed Flash Sync at all speeds up to 1/64,000 second (even faster in some cameras)
• Custom framing, cropping, and alignment viewfinder Grids (user editable)
• File browser
• Text reader
• Calendar
• Some fun tools and games

Keep in mind that the installation methods for Mac and Windows are very different.  I completed my CHDK installation with the help of my G4 iBook and an SD card reader.

Before I could even download the beta CHDK, the first thing I needed to do was determine the firmware installed on my camera.  This will help you determine which CHDK to download.  Thankfully there are very detailed instructions.  Read on for my experience with the CHDK installation.

To determine the firmware on your camera, you have to create an empty text file called ver.req and put it in the root directory of your camera’s SD card.  I used TextEdit to create my text file.  I opened a new file, went to the Format menu and selected Make Plain Text (it opened in Rich Text Format), and then selected Save from the File menu.  It is important when you save the empty file that you make sure that you change the plain text encoding from UTF-8 to UTF-16 and that you uncheck the If not extension is provided, use .txt checkbox.  Your Save window should look something like this.  Don’t forget to put it in the root directory of your memory card!

It should be noted that it is a lot easier to save files to your memory card and get CHDK to work when you use a card reader versus plugging your camera in to your computer.  This is recommended by the CHDK wiki because sometimes the camera can be very finicky if you’re using it to transfer the CHDK files and get them working.

Once I got the ver.req file transferred over, I started the camera up in playback mode by pressing the playback button on the back of the camera.  Then, I held down the FUNC SET button while pressing the DISP button.  However, instead of seeing the firmware version as I had expected, I saw a blank screen with a stylized clock on it.  Never fear–this can happen with certain cameras and the ver.req file.  This just means that the particular camera needs a file called vers.req instead!  I popped my SD card back into the card reader, renamed the file, and returned it to the camera.  I held down FUNC SET and DISP again, and the camera informed me I was running firmware version 1.02A.

After checking the wiki page for the SD750, I downloaded the correct version of the CHDK beta for my camera.  For some reason, the ZIP file for my firmware was called filename.zip.zip.  When I saved it as-is, I could not unarchive it even when I renamed it to be filename.zip.  So, I deleted it and tried again, this time saving it as filename.zip during my download, which worked perfectly.  I unarchived the zip using Stuffit Expander–one important thing of note in the wiki is that the Archive Utility in Leopard 10.5 locks down files downloaded from the Internet to not run unless you do some complicated things in the Terminal.  If you use a utility such as The UnArchiver or Stuffit Expander, you don’t have the problem.  Stuffit unarchived two files: DISKBOOT.BIN and PS.FIR.  I copied both files to the root of my SD card, ejected it from my Mac and then installed the card back into my camera.

To get the CHDK running on my camera, I again started the camera up in playback mode and then pressed the MENU button.  I scrolled all the way down to the bottom and selected the Firm Update… entry from the menu.  The camera rebooted itself, and voila! CHDK is now running on my camera.  The great thing about CHDK is that it doesn’t actually overwrite your camera’s firmware.  Unless you set it up to load automatically upon startup (more on this process later), you just load it into the camera memory every time you turn your camera on by following the steps I described above.  Now, if I can just figure out these fancy new features on my camera…

If you’re interested in installing CHDK on your Canon camera, you can check for a CHDK version for your model here on the CHDK Wiki and click on the link for your model for more information.

Next up–using the CHDK!

I’ve been exploring the different options I have for recording a video podcast, as I discussed with Cali Lewis last night on Cali Live. I jumped the gun a little bit and not only registered my vlog domain, Tech Girl TV dot com, but also linked it on the blog…and then haven’t done anything with it since! Talking about it with Cali really spurred me to get back to work on developing it, so I picked my camera research back up.

I’d love to get a new camera with all the bells and whistles, but that is really not an option at the moment. First on the list of priority tech purchases is the iPhone (only 38 days left!) and then a new MacBook to replace my aging but still kicking iBook G4. I could probably get a dedicated video camera in about 6-8 months, which should be enough time for me to decide if I really need one!

I’ve considered the Flip line–specifically the Flip Mino, since it seems to be at the head of the Flip pack feature-wise–but the more research I do, the more I’m edging away from a Flip. It really fits its niche market perfectly, but as with all other things tech, I think I might end up being more of a power user.

One thing I’ve been intrigued with ever since I saw it on Lifehacker is the CHDK, or Canon Hacker’s Development Kit. It is custom firmware enhancements that run on a range of Canon cameras. They are still in development on the version for the SD750 but a beta version has just come out. The Canon seems to have pretty good video capability as it is, so I’d love to see what the video enhancements could do to make it a really viable camera for my use until I can invest in a nicer one.

My plan is to load up the CHDK on my camera in the next few days and do some testing, then share my experiences with you! Look for more blogs to come on the CHDK and my SD750 very soon.