My GPS Camera Phone

And I’m not talking politics.

My GPS Camera Phone has been going strong for well over a year now, much to my satisfaction. I’ve been able to exercise my right brain with photography while feeding my left brain with website management. While this worked for most of the time, I’ve noticed that my mind is looking for more. What started as a hobby has slowly become something bigger, causing both sides of my brain to look ahead for the next big thing. What that big thing is will be revealed in time, but maybe not on this blog.

Given this, I’ll be posting more mobile-related news and events, turning more to industry news, while keeping the original personality of the site intact. In other words, I’ll continue to post photos, albeit more selectively, while posting sarcasm-laden news about iPhones being sold at Wal-Mart. You get the picture. (Wow, a pun! Move along, nothing to see here…)

What does this mean to you? Well, it means that you might notice a little less of a personal feeling, but that’s about it. Even if My GPS Camera Phone did go all corporate, I’d still strive to keep it real. Anyway, look for more changes in the months ahead.

I welcome suggestions and guest posts (in the realm of mobile technology), so if you have something interesting you would like to share, just let me know and we’ll talk. Aside from that, I’d just like to thank everyone for helping me achieve something that I’ll never forget about, no matter what becomes of it.

A minor miracle occurred yesterday after a casual tweet to Guy Kawasaki regarding the humor of people complaining about his Alltop promotional tweets on Twitter. He agrees and then says my feed is now in the Alltop directory, at which point I fall out of my chair and administer CPR to myself. Needless to say, his tweet about my site’s addition to Alltop sent traffic through the roof yesterday, which is always a nice thing to witness.

If you haven’t seen Alltop yet, go check it out. It’s Guy’s latest project which entails sorting sites in a way that resembles a magazine rack. There’s a load of topics now and the list keeps growing. My site feed was placed in the Gadgets section alongside sites like Engadget, Boing Boing, Gizmodo and many other high-profile sites. For my site to even be considered is an honor. Getting listed is beyond words.

I’ve placed a feed on the right column for the gadgets section that provides the latest posts from the member sites. Go check them out if you can. Thanks again, Guy!

Welcome to the next incarnation of My GPS Camera Phone! I’ve got a new template (edited just a bit from the original) thanks to Jai at Blog Oh! Blog, and a new phone thanks to Nokia Productions.

I decided to go back to a dark theme in an effort to place more emphasis on the photos, since most of the posts these days are short on words. The theme is still in need of some tweaking, particularly on the single post pages, but it’s coming along well. You’ve probably noticed the missing header also – I’m working on it.

As for the new phone, well, it was a total surprise, to say the least. I received a package last week addressed to me from a place I didn’t recognize. Long story short: I entered some pictures and video footage in the Nokia Productions promotion for the 5310 XpressMusic, which also happens to be a phone I reviewed. After the promotion wrapped up, I gave it no more thought and carried on with life as usual. Much to my surprise, I had won a daily prize drawing.

Inside the package was a brand new, unlocked Nokia 5310 Xpress Music (purple), a really awesome Bluetooth headset/headphones and a card for some music downloads (which didn’t work, but whatever). All the accessories were included as well, encased in a cool film reel can. While the camera is average, the mp3 player rocks. So I’ll be using it to listen to music and snap photos alongside the trusty Casio G’zOne. Many thanks to Nokia Productions!

If you want to see the final version of the movie for the promotion, check it out here (once it loads, go to “watch” and “the film”). Fellow blogger Drew was a winner and got to fly to LA for the premier. Stop by and say hello if you can.

Anyway, it’s been a good week and I’m looking to make this site even better in the months to come. How? Well, I’m not sure yet, but I am optimistic that something good will happen. Enjoy the new site!

Disclaimer: No compensation was received for this post nor is there any affiliation between Nokia and this web site. Statements made herein are mine and are not intended to reflect those of Nokia.

It’s been a busy few weeks at work, with the pending rollout of a new company web site. While I enjoy doing big projects like web site re-design, it takes a lot of brain power and I’m usually drained by the end of the day. I can post an image or two, but that’s about it. The rest of the time is spent slumped in a chair and then going to bed.

Anyway, I had an outing with my oldest daughter this weekend while my youngest was at a birthday party. While she ran around the park, I did a mini photo walk. You’ll get to see some shots from that this week and next, so stay tuned. I’m hoping to be less busy in the near future, so don’t take it personally if I’m neglecting your comments. I’m reading them and I thank you for your comments. Stick with me, I’ll be around.

Notice the watermarks on the pics – thanks to Dan for reminding me to get on that.

Camera: Nokia 5610 MusicXpress

At long last, I have finally gone and started another blog. As much as I love this blog, I have to say that the topic confines me to 1) photography and 2) camera phones, which isn’t a bad thing, but it prevents me from being my normal smarmy self.

BRAINdisTRUST was born from the “un.cropped” Tumblr blog I was erratically posting to. The feed for that blog was pulled into this blog on its own page, but it has since been removed. Now I can stay focused on the niche of camera phone photography here and get my all-other-topics fix over there. A rather nice arrangement.

What you will find on BRAINdisTRUST:

• social commentary
• creative stuff like design, fonts, Photoshop brushes, etc…
• photography of the non-camera phone type
• parenting experiences
• videos that amuse me
• tech stuff, be it software, hardware or a web service
• quotes from the web
• spam poetry
• all things stupid (think “Darwin Awards”)
• whatever else strikes me as blog-worthy

What’s with the name? So glad you asked! I’m a word geek and adding “dis” to the term “brain trust” seemed amusing. See I told you – word geek. It’s like a double-entendre.*

Here’s the good part. If you go visit my new blog and subscribe to the RSS feed, I will think very highly of you and tell all of my friends how cool you are. Seriously. I might even throw in a link to my inaugural visitors because everyone loves them some link love. I know I do.

Eventually, I’ll add an Entrecard widget and maybe some other stuff, but for now it’s a pretty basic blog. More things to come in the future, guaranteed. And don’t worry, this blog will keep on truckin’ like always.

Now go visit the BRAINdisTRUST!

*Note: It’s not really, I just wanted to use “double entendre” in a post. Remember? Word geek?

Just a quick note that I’ve got the honor of being interviewed for Discovering Dad, a great website for parents. Stop by and check it out! (Thanks, Jeremy!)

And a big WELCOME to all of the Discovering Dad readers!

I said I wouldn’t do it. But here I am, doing it.

Recent activity in the Second Shotz group on Flickr, combined with the awesomeness of my Sony H3 and the abundance of high-res photos on my hard drive has pushed me over the edge into non-camera phone photo inclusion. It had to be done. There’s too many good shots being held hostage that deserve to be made known.

There is a slight risk in doing this, however. In order to minimize that risk, I’ll only post a photo each week (at most). Also, they will be in a new category, far removed from their camera phone brethren. I’m hoping that the photos coming out of the hi-res camera will compare nicely with the camera phone shots, thus reinforcing the idea that a good camera isn’t always the source of good photography.

Yes, the quality will be much higher than the camera phone shots, but that’s expected. Instead of dismissing the camera phone shots, look a them as acceptable alternatives taken at those times when you didn’t have the nice digital camera with you. Taking that approach, I’m sure you’ll see that the mighty camera phone still has a place in today’s photography. The importance of that place is up to you.

Come back later for the first photo!