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ScanCafe Comes Through Again

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I recently sent a batch of very old 110 and 126 negatives along with a variety of developed paper photographs collected over the years (some going back over 20+ years) to have them scanned and preserved digitally.  Many of my negatives and paper photos were showing signs of age and I decided I better do something about it while I could.

Once again, I used my favorite digital photo scanning vendor ScanCafe.  They have come a ways since I began using them a couple years ago.  They have gotten better at what they do and more efficient.

I am thrilled once again to experience a time warp visually reliving the moments those photos captured.  In many cases, it is a better experience to view them onscreen in high-resolution than to see them on small paper photos.

I have uploaded all of my digitally-taken and the scanned photos to my favorite online photo hosting service, SmugMug as a backup in case my computers die and/or I lose the photo DVDs.

I am Boycotting the Stock Photo Industry

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This article first appeared on “The TurnKey Publisher’s Blog”

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Because of my personal distaste and dismay of the Stock Photo industry which started with the Getty Images Extortion Demand Letter, I have taken steps to personally boycott the Stock Photo Industry and advocate not using stock photos altogether. The stock photo industry seems to be rapidly consolidating into two companies: Getty Images and Corbis, as they buy their way into near-monopoly status with them setting outrageous rules, policy, and pricing.

This article will not give you all the information necessary to entirely eliminate the need for stock photos in every situation. However, this article will give you some ideas and strategies to wean yourself and perhaps altogether eliminate your need for stock photos.I firmly believe that if you put your intentions behind the idea, you can make huge strides towards eliminating the need for stock photos altogether.

The very first thing you need to think about is whatever media project you are working on is, do you truly need a photo at all? Chances are that you are working on a website, book, magazine, brochure, news story, banner, or some other media project.Alternatives to photos might be diagrams, cartoons, illustrations, and drawings that you or a graphic artist you hire can create.Can you take your own photo to fit the need?

If you hire a graphic artist to create your own artwork, do not hire anyone in China or India where there is very little respect for intellectual property.They may be inexpensive but you can never be assured that their work is original. There is little recourse for their bad behavior because they are so far away. I recommend hiring graphic artists from the U.S. because as a professional community, they have a greater respect for intellectual property than their Chinese or Indian counterparts.They will think twice before using pirated material.

I would avoid hiring any company that outsources their work to graphic artist worker bees.In other words, I always want to deal and negotiate with a graphic artist professional themselves, not some agent or agency that farms out graphics art work.

If you do want to use and take your own photos, I highly recommend investing in a good digital camera so that you can begin taking your own photos.I also recommend getting to know amateur hobbyist photographers who have access to good cameras and enjoy taking photos.Very often, amateur photographers with good cameras are trying to find a way to justify the costs of their hobby. By hiring them inexpensively, you can get some great looking photos but also help the amateur photographer pay for his hobby.Make sure they understand that you are they are working for hire and that you will have full ownership and rights to the photos.

Professional photographers can be expensive depending on what you want and who you use. For these folks, I recommend bartering with them for exchange of services if you have talents in your profession. I find many professional photographers finicky. They will sometimes not give you full ownership or rights of the photo even though you paid them to take a photo. They are quite protective and their thinking is aligned to many in the stock photo industry. Admittedly, this is a broad generalization and based only on my experience. I am simply not optimistic that you will get good value from a professional photographer but it certainly does not hurt to try and negotiate with them.

Another source of quality photos is product photos from product manufacturers. Often, they are happy to have their products publicized and placed in a positive light and will give you free rights to use their photos. Product companies mostly police and control their photos because they don’t want their photos used in a manner they did not intend or in a way that paints their company or products in a negative light. Many will grant you free usage of their photos if you approach them the right way. However, large companies can be a challenge sometimes because of their size. They may be so large that they may not even get back to you.Again, it never hurts to try. Product companies are in the business selling more of their products, not sue people who use their product photos.

If you choose to take your own photos, invest in a digital camera that can take a resolution of 4 megapixel images or higher. You want to take high-resolution photos as your master copy.You can then “downsize”, crop, and enhance the photos for your websites or other uses.I recommend buying an easy-to-use photo editor such as Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 or Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 that allows you to crop and resize photos easily. The photo editor can greatly enhance the quality of the master photos you take. You can also enhance colors and adjust lighting with the software.Special effects such as blurring, stretching, pixelating, framing, adding captions, etc. are included with photo editing software.

I truly believe that with the increasing power and technical capabilities of digital cameras, cell phone cameras, and camcorders, the value of stock photos and stock photo companies will eventually decline. It is going to be a losing business to be in. This whole notion of extorting your way to profitability is distasteful and eventually will fall by the wayside much like what has occurred in the music recording industry. One only has to look to RIAA for that lesson.

Along the “do-it-yourself” philosophy, you should have the mindset that you will fit images or photos you create to your media project, not let your media projects deciding the specific images you need.Stock photo companies are trying to brainwash you the idea that THEY have the “perfect photo” for your particular needs. If you are creative, imaginative, and resourceful enough, you will almost always find an alternative or work-around solution that does not require the use of stock photos.

If you want to show the stock photo industry you don’t need them, the best way is to simply generate more of your own photos to devalue theirs and then use your own.I have published two books recently and have been able to successfully avoid using stock photos of any kind.I used my own photos as well as authorized product photos.I created my own artwork.If more publishers, graphic artists, and graphic designers started doing this, I truly believe the stock photo industry could be brought down to their financial knees very quickly.

Many years ago, people said that we would run out of .com domains available because all the good ones were taken. It is true it has become more challenging to find a good .com domain name. However, I have made it my policy to not deal with any domain speculators or domain squatters. I won’t be extorted into paying thousands of dollars for an available domain I can register for less than $10. And because I have set that restriction and policy for myself, I have always been able to find many suitable .com domain names for my various websites.

It is the same principle here. Think abundantly. Think creatively. Tap into your imagination. There are many ways to implement a visual concept besides a specific photo you might have in mind. There are many ways to implement a concept visually. Do not let the stock photo companies brainwash you into thinking you have to use their particular photos because there are no other ways of finding an image for your particular website, logo, banner, sign, book, magazine, or other product.

The best kept secret that the stock photo industry hates are government websites and their photo collections.Great public domain photos can be found from U.S. government agency websites. “The people” own the photos, not any one individual or organization.USA.gov is a government-operated website that was launched to help U.S. citizens have better access to various government agencies and resources.Specifically, USA.gov has a page called U.S. Government Photos and Images which contains links to government agency websites that have public domain images.The diversity of images available is quite impressive.An off-shoot of that page is the State Photo & Multimedia Galleries which links to public domain images at the State level.

Some of the more notable ones I like and found impressive are listed below:

Are you impressed with these websites? I was. It is all free and much of it is available in high-resolution.However, you should realize that not all images from government websites are public domain. You will need to seek out the image usage rights notices on each website. As I said USA.gov is a great starting point to a wealth of high-quality public domain photos.

If there are any other great public domain or government photo sites, please let me know and I will add them. If you have any additional tips to stop using stock photos and boycott the stock photo industry, send them to me and I will incorporate them into this article.

My Review of Amazon’s Kindle eBook Reader

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Since coming back from the 2008 Book Expo America in Los Angeles, I have been wanting to write my review on Amazon’s Kindle.

My relationship with Amazon is multi-faceted.  Like most book lover, my first relationship with Amazon is as a customer.  In my opinion, Amazon has the best website to research and search for books.  It also has the best book community support.

Secondarily, I am an Amazon reseller.  I resell my books and titles through their Amazon Advantage and Amazon Marketplace programs.  Overall, it is a good business relationship.

Essentially, I have grown to like and appreciate Amazon over the years.

With the launch of Amazon Kindle, I find myself as both a publisher and a book reader evaluating the merits of Kindle.  At nearly $400, I am resistant to buying an electronic device to read books.  Although, I love my computer and everything it does, I still like to read old-fashioned books.  I just like the convenience of flipping through pages and basically jumping around at a moment’s notice.  I am still resistant to the idea of being depending on any electronic device to read.  What happens if the device is damaged or lost?

What I don’t like about books, however, is that they are subject to wear and tear.  They are bulky and take up a lot of shelf space when you have hundreds of books like I do.  They are a terror to move when packed into boxes.  It is an annual ritual to purge books and either sell them or give them away.  And it is difficult to find specific content within a book even with an index.

As a publisher, I would like to do away with the printing of books and sell more content electronically.  There is no hard printing costs, no warehousing costs, and it saves lots of trees environmentally. Having said all that, you will have a sense of my inherent biases and internal battle with Kindle.

At BEA, I was quite happy to see Amazon with their large Kindle booth.  Amazon intelligently and insightfully understood that there is still a huge portion of book readers who have never physically seen and fiddled with the Kindle.  Unless you are on the cutting edge and don’t mind blowing $400 on an untried device, most people including me did not want to spend that money without actually having some hands-on experience with it.

The folks at the Amazon Kindle booth seemed friendly.  They were ready to engage anyone interested in playing with a Kindle.  I awkwardly too the device and admired its design.  It was light and clean looking.  It had a relatively simple and elegant look.  The quality of the reading screen even when viewed at a steep away angle was quite good.

For the most part, Kindle was easy to navigate.  I goofed a few times but I attributed that to my user unfamiliarity.  The browsing of Kindle-titles was easy.  The Amazon employee pointed out that there were still many titles not available on Kindle but work was aggressively being done to get more titles.  As a publisher, I agreed with that.  Amazon has been heavily courting publishers to release their content on the Kindle format.  For me, I am interested but I have taken a wait-and-see attitude.  I will get into why in another post.

Back to the actual Kindle device, what I did not like about Kindle were the placement of the long page-turning buttons on both the left and right side of the device.  I am guessing the idea of having a long elongated button is to accommodate different ways and styles that readers would hold Kindle.  Unfortunately, I found it difficult to hold and adjust the Kindle with accidentally pressing one of the side buttons.

There simply was no easy way to hold the Kindle in my left or right hand.  If I wanted to adjust my seating position or get up, I found myself accidentally hitting the side buttons.  The Amazon employee said that once you get used to it, that would no longer happen.  That may be true but I feel the side buttons are too exposed.  The designers gave too much space.

My view of Kindle, like other electronic hardware or software, that this is a version 1.0.  I asked about future revisions and that subject seemed to make the person helping me uncomfortable.  I am guessing her job was to focus on selling the Kindle in the here and now, not focusing on a possible Kindle 2.0.

I speculate that there will inevitably be a Kindle 2.0.  There will be design enhancements and improvements to the hardware based on the feedback Amazon is receiving.  Perhaps this review will be one they will refer to.  They are likely to improve the battery life and viewing options such as including color.  However, I believe color will come in Kindle 3.0.  I think it is too much of a jump from Kindle 1.0 to Kindle 2.0.  I don’t think Amazon is quite ready to so quickly obsolete Kindle 1.0.

Overall, I enjoyed my user experience with Kindle.  I understand why there seems to be a growing bubble of support for it.  It really is a good device.  But the downsides is still a deterrent for me.  Kindle has to come down in price more.  Even at 50% off, it would be $200.  I am not sure I would still buy it at that price point.  There has to be more titles.  And the annoying side buttons need to be resized, relocation, or redesigned.

It is ironic that I do want Kindle to be successful.  And yet, for me as an individual reader, I still greatly prefer my books.

ScanCafe: A Photo Collector’s Best Friend

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In the entire history of this blog, I do not think I have been moved to make a stellar recommendation about any vendor I have no personal relationship with.

Today, I will be doing exactly that. For years, I have had stacks of 35mm negatives sitting in various envelopes stored in a box in my closet. These are photos I have taken since the early 1980’s up until a few years ago when I finally made the move to all-digital photos.

I love photos because they can tell a story about how one lives life. It also allows you to relive those special (and not so special) moments in life. It is also great if you are building a legacy to leave behind. I have photo albums assembled over the years. However, in later years, the photos simply accumulated because I did not put a high priority in organizing them into albums.

I find that while having photo albums are nice for yourself, they are not conducive to sharing with others. Also, physical photos deteriorate and degrade over time.

I am not sure how it came about but I started researching companies that could scan in photos into digital JPEG format. There are many companies that do so but I ran into one that was exceptionally inexpensive compared to its competitors. It was ScanCafe. And for that inexpensive price, they offered a LOT. Normally, I am skeptical so I try to do my homework. After doing so, I took a chance on ScanCafe by sending 100 photos on 35mm negatives.

After a very uncomplicated process of selecting which photos I wanted to discard from scanning, I was left with a selection of photos that were going to be sent to me on DVD-ROM in high-resolution format. I have to say that photos from the DVD are amazing! It is like traveling back in time looking at these 15-20 year photos that look so clear and colorful. I have definitely changed in appearance from 15 years ago! (Look at the photo and you will see what I mean!) I was definitely moved by the experience of looking at these photos which are 15-20 years old.

I was so impressed, I assembled another batch of 800 photos on 35mm negatives to send to ScanCafe. That is 8 times the number of photos I sent during the initial trial run.

If you are 30 years old and over with older photos, chances are you will love and appreciate what ScanCafe has to offer. People under 30 most likely jumped directly into digital photos. They have limited experience in 35mm photos.

I don’t personally know anyone at ScanCafe, get no referral fee, and simply a happy customer. But I am so absolutely hooked that I am scrounging around for more photos to send to them. Having high-resolution photos of old photos at my disposal is amazing. I can print and email any of them at will. I am no longer constrained by envelopes and photos albums.

Go check out ScanCafe. I think you will want to dig out old photos and negatives once you do. They are an awesome vendor with a great service.

Those Charming Mac vs. PC Commercials

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Mac vs. PCI am not sure when the commercials took hold in my brain but after nearly 2 years of seeing Apple put on different “Mac vs. PC” commercials, I decided to go to YouTube.com to find more of those “Mac vs. PC” commercials to view.

Can you imagine that? I actually went out of my way to go view MORE commercials! I guess the ads appeal to two sides of me: the techno-geek and the entrepreneurial marketing sides.

I have long listened to both the PC and Mac sides fight for their side. I personally use the PC and Windows XP simply because there are so many more hardware and software options to choose from. Yes, I admit I have had my share of of PC and Windows problems over the years. But, at the end of the day, it is very much in the majority and well supported.

In any case, I don’t have a lot of emotion either way. However, I found it interesting that there were some very negative comments regarding the same commercials I found quite funny and charming. I know the commercials are supposed to be in favor of Macs. Duh, it was made by Apple. And yet, some of the PC-mongers are bent out of shape because they think the commercials are “malicious” and “hateful”. Are you kidding me?

Yes, there are friendly jabs at the PC but I found them to be honest and truthful. What I like about the commercials…. it is consistent, simple, and humorous. It doesn’t take itself too seriously. As a student of marketing, I thought it was genius.

According to Wikipedia, there are 3 dozen versions of the “Mac vs. PC” commercials. Yikes, that is a long series of commercials. I think through YouTube.com, I saw at least 20 of them.

Anyhow, here is a batch of 15 short commercials from YouTube.com. (The videos were deleted from YouTube. You can do a search on “mac vs. pc commercials” to find samples to watch)

Do you agree with me that they are funny and charming commercials? Or do you really think, they are truly “hateful, malicious, and offensive”?