This being the end of the year, I’ve been doing a long overdue cleanup of some of my various information sources, the first being Google Reader. After taking a look at the over 300 subscriptions I had there, and removing all of the ones who haven’t posted in 2011, and a number of ones I simply don’t care about any more, it occurs to me that a large part of why I’ve been struggling to find things to write about outside of eDiscovery and Litigation Support is due to an utter lack of good sources of information about Tech or Photography, for example.

Of course, this seems odd. The tech blogosphere is where I first learned about blogging, and where I used to find a ton of inspiration. However, I realize now that I’ve really lost touch with it. It seems the only tech news sources I’ve been following have mostly been consumed with iPhone/Android comparisons, and Google +/Facebook/Twitter comparisons. What happened to all the folks working in IT sharing their learning experiences? Where have the tech support folks gone?

So, now that my subscription list has gone from over 300, to just about 180, I’m looking for suggestions. What are your favorite blogs? What are the best sources of information about technology, photography, and yes, litigation support and legal technology, as well?

My RSS reader needs some new content!

I hope everyone out there has a wonderful holiday weekend!

I’ve written many times that I’m very appreciative of tools that allow me to post to various networks, with one-step. RSS feeds, for example, are great to feed from WordPress to Twitter or Facebook to allow a new blog post to show up in multiple places without any extra effort from me.

In that same vein, one tool that isn’t really new, but that I’ve only recently started playing with is Instagram. On it’s face, it’s a neat little add-on for the iPhone camera, that allows you to take photos, apply some neat filter effects, and share those photos. It’s behind the scenes that I really see the value though. After taking a photo, and applying a creative effect, I am then presented some options to Geotag, and share across other networks.

In my own workflow, I can take a cool little photo of a place we are visiting, like walking around the campus at Furman.

Now I can push the photo out to Twitter and Facebook, letting folks know where I am, what kind of cool things I’m seeing right at that moment, and I can also store a copy of the photo along with my other online photos at Flickr.  And, I can do all this in one iPhone app, not by making visits to a bunch of different networks.

To me, having the ability to share information to the people who are interested in seeing it, wherever they happen to be, without me having to take extra time, is a huge benefit. Instagram gets that.

This is where I work almost 40% of my work hours, in my new home office. I don’t believe I’ve mentioned anywhere on the blog that particular change in my position. Basically, I spend about 5 hours at the office each day, drive home on my “lunch” hour and spend the evening hours (the hours where I’m supporting our West Coast offices until 5PM their time) working from home. The schedule allows me to have a quick dinner with my wife when I get home, at a somewhat normal dinner time, then retreat to the office to get back to work, and then already be home when my work day ends.

As with everything else involved with this schedule, this does provide some interesting challenges. First and foremost was creating a good work environment within our house. I think we’ve accomplished that.  It’s comfortable, but also in it’s own space within the house, away from the temptations of home. So far, it’s working out well.

I’m sure, as I go forward, I’ll be blogging about some of the other challenges, especially about how working in a centralized location, for a firm with offices all over the country, and then on top of that, not being in the office a significant portion of the day, presents challenges with building an internal network. I’d be interested in hearing any ideas for handling that challenge. If you’ve been in a similar situation, please leave a comment. Or, if you have any advice for a part time, first time, telecommuter, feel free to leave a comment too. I’m always open to suggestions!

The other day, my wife was driving us down the road and we happened to be behind a guy driving a truck with a website URL on the back of it. It was an interesting business name, and we were guessing what it was when I decided to pull out my iPhone and find out. I was met with a blank website, which led me to assume it was Flash-based, and therefore inaccessible to anyone using an iPhone. (Which seems an odd decision, given the listing of the site somewhere you would be much more likely to use a mobile device to look up, but whatever…)

Now that Adobe is completely ending development for mobile Flash, the situation I foind myself in will soon be common to Android and Windows Mobile devices as well.

So, all you photographers, musicians, and graphic artists with cool looking Flash-based sites may want to consider moving to HTML5 or some other format, or live with limiting your site’s exposure to people who are more and more viewing internet-based information from mobile devices. Seems to me that you would want to make your site as accessible as possible in order to increase the number of folks who see it, especially if you’re doing any advertising of it offline. (Business cards, brochures, signs, bumper stickers, t-shirts, etc.) You want folks to see the site when they are thinking about it, instead of having to go home and get another computer.

By the way, I did go home and look at the site, it was a recording and graphic design studio. I’m not a marketing expert, but I can’t help but wonder how much of their target audience uses iOS devices quite frequently.

I’ve never been overly comfortable taking photos of people or street scenes with people in them. I guess I’m somewhat shy about approaching people, and assume that most people would rather not have someone take their picture, so I don’t do it often. This past weekend, however, I made the trek up to Asheville for the Bele Chere Festival, because festivals are a great place to get a little practice shooting in a crowd!

There are also a ton of “stories” you can tell with your photos. Above, I can show you just how hot and sunny it was in the mid-afternoon by virtue of this gentleman’s attempt at getting shade wherever he could!

Festivals are also nice because you get two advantages you don’t normally get when it comes to street scenes. One, there are people there performing, who are actually trying to get your attention, and are easy therefore to get shots of. Secondly, because of the performers, it’s easy to know where people will be gathering, and what they will be looking at. You don’t normally get those sorts of leads when looking for shots on a downtown street!

On the other hand, there is so much going on, and so many people around, that it can be overwhelming trying to find the good stories that you can tell with a photo. I can’t tell you the number of times I caught a glimpse of something just as it was passing by, or happening, and didn’t have near enough time to capture anything! Then again, the more you get out and practice, the better you would get at anticipating those. At least I hope so!

So, if I used Photosync to automatically sync photos I upload to Flickr with Facebook, and then used Move2Picasa to copy my Facebook photos into Picasa/Google Plus, I could pretty much share my photos with people no matter where they follow me, right?

The larger question is whether it’s worth my time and effort though. As of today, I’m not convinced that it would be, but I’m keeping these links in my back pocket (aka this blog post) in case things change.

What about the other photo hobbyists out there? How do you plan to share?

Learned an important lesson during this trip. It’s hot in the middle of the day around here.

Still, the zoo is relatively small, cheap, and a good way to get a little exercise and take some photos for an hour on an otherwise free Saturday. I enjoyed it, and like having a few new photos to share!

Aside from all of the professional reasons, my wife being from the South, and the warmer weather, there is one other reason why I think moving was worth it.

As a photographer, how could I not appreciate the fact that I can drive less than 30 minutes, and take photos of beautiful mountains?

Or how about the 10 minute drive to one of the loveliest campuses in the US?

Me and my camera are going to like it here in South Carolina just fine!

Last week. while my wife was visiting, she treated me to a night at the bed and breakfast where we spent our honeymoon in Asheville, NC. (Interestingly, just about an hour from where I am now.)

As we were hiking around the grounds of the Sourwood Inn, I couldn’t help but notice how the change in the canopy of the forests really changed the look of the light. As we went from a typical North Carolina mountain tree canopy, to a large area of Bamboo growth, the light change almost made it seem like we were going from clouds to sun.

Naturally, having some interesting light gave us a chance to play around with some interesting shots, and post-processing, to create some nice shots. I’m going to have to try and find some more interesting light changes as I explore some of the nearby mountains and lakes over the Summer.