If you’d like to purchase a print, laptop skin, iPhone skin, or t-shirt version of this art, feel free to visit my store.

With the release of HP’s Envy laptop line earlier this year, many consumers who had previously considered the old “Hewlett Packard” brand as being a fading Dell competitor began to see glimmers of brilliance. The knockout combo of form factor, power, and suave design mimicry allowed HP to parachute back into the international game to compete in elegance alongside Apple and some of Sony’s devices.

Now that the iPad is seeping into the market, HP has another shot to strike while the iron is hot by spending a lot of money to upgrade and prepare their purchased Palm webOS for everyday tablet use. Keep in mind that HP did a great job converting over Voodoo’s Envy for its current Envy line back in 2008. As long as they continue to pay attention to the details, I’ll be a fan waiting on the sideline before jumping straight into an iPad purchase- especially since webOS doesn’t ignore the valid existence of Flash, unlike the iPad.

HP Taiwan reportedly reaffirms pre-October launch for webOS tablet — Engadget.

HP Taiwan confirms plans for WebOS-based mobile devices

According to separate studies released by StrongMail and ShareThis, links placed in emails have a higher conversion rate than links placed in Facebook, Twitter, or web badges. Although emails tended to lead to a higher percentage of conversions (i.e. sales and subscriptions), email links also had the highest percentage of actual link ignores where users more often ignored email links.

Quick thoughts: one can conclude from the studies that email may best serve conversion-based goals where medium related trust weighs in heavily in the conversion process (ps duh), leaving user base expansion goals best served by socially visible links on facebook or twitter (pps duh). Also of consideration is the difference in a rich visual experience that each medium provides combined with the general assessment of the medium as a communication tool vs. an advertisement. It’s easy to see that web badges can appear in spaces that are typically shared with advertisements, leaving the medium (the badge + its real estate) as being more associated with advertising than communication. Twitter links are bare when it comes to a visual experience (hurting conversion opportunity as visuals serve an opportunity to further convince and sway).

I wonder why they didn’t study the link conversion opportunities in Google Wave? Just kidding.

Woman in Clouds in Appalachian Mountains

Skyline Drive, Shenandoah National Park, Virginia

Warehouse Window

I was walking around an old abandoned warehouse the other day and happened upon this colorful window. All I had with me was my 3mp kodak point and shoot that I use for work, but I had to get a picture of it.

Pearmund Cellars Grapes VA Winery

Oh the Remnants

I’m excited to post my newest work. It’s a collection of pieced memories from Helena AR, Scotland, Warrenton VA, Melbourne FL, Los Angeles CA, Estes Park CO, London, Bay St Louis MS, and Arlington VA.

Most of us have used the standard music players. Winamp is relatively light weight and has some really cool features such as Winamp Remote (full streaming web access to your entire music library from anywhere…including your mobile phone). iTunes is crisp, well thought-out, and works great with your iPhone too, but is almost ridiculously slow when run in Windows. And then there is the standard-shipped Windows Media Player. Microsoft has been attempting to up-the-ante on it for years now, but it’s just not that great and shows slow growth and improvement. Are there any other options worth taking a look at?

I’ve tried out many alternative media players and have been disappointed every time, crawling back to my Winamp/iTunes hybrid experience where I use one or the other depending on what I want to do. Until now.

I’ve installed and stuck with Songbird for a few weeks now. It can run on your operating system (Windows, Mac, Linux), it’s Free/Open Source, and happens to be a web-browser as well. If you enjoy using plug-ins on the FireFox web browser, you’ll love Songbird too. Songbird is a new favorite of mine for a few key reasons:

1. It has quality plug-ins. There are numerous useful plug-ins that make using Songbird more efficient and more fun.
2. It has an active developer community. Songbird is improving all the time- the community of developers actively resolves bugs, updates their plug-ins, and innovates the player.
3. It’s got an attractive, skinnable interface. In addition to being able to download “feathers” to change the look of Songbird, one can also install “Pure Player” which provides a great interface that is somewhere between the main player and the mini player.
4. The rating system will write to the MP3 tag instead of purely storing it in a local database. This is great for those of you who want the option to take your ratings with your files in case Songbird dies or you begin using another player that flexibly reads those ratings.

I’ve really enjoyed Songbird, but don’t want to forget to point out some of the weaknesses:

1. No CD-Burning yet.
2. Not light on the RAM.
3. Almost too customizable for tech-novices.

All in all, I think Songbird is a great media player to buy into. If you find any bugs, just let everyone know at their support site.

Consider installing Songbird and giving it a try. If you do, you’ll want to install my top 10 Songbird plug-ins listed below.

TOP 10 SONGBIRD PLUG-INS

• Last.FM Scrobbler – keeps track of what you listen to, recommends other artists, etc.
• MediaFlow – shows album art like iTunes above the library
• Smarty Pants – highly customizable tool for automatic playlist generation based off of a song selection
• Amazon Fetcher – grabs large album art for your MP3s
• Releases – tells you of upcoming releases for artists in your library
• Concerts – shows you if artists in your library are playing near you any time soon
• The Exorcist – helps to find and rid your library of broken/missing tracks
• SongbirdRemote – Allows you to control Songbird from your iPhone
• PurePlayer – not the mini size, not the full size…right in the middle
• LiveTweeter – annoy your friends with automatic notifications of what you are listening to!

The Urban Maypole

Fixing a major but unacknowledged bug in the operating system, last week’s iPhone OS 3.1 update has rendered most iPhones and all iPod Touches incompatible with Exchange 2007 servers that require on-device data be encrypted, a standard safeguard used by businesses.

In other words, Apple has fundamentally betrayed its iPhone users and the businesses that have either explicitly or implicitly supported the device.

Apple betrays the iPhone’s business hopes.

The Three Soliders Memorial in Washington, DC

View the Full Photo Gallery

Couple Kissing at WWII Memorial

Although the only version of the moon landing viewed by the public is the live broadcast view, John Sarkissian, a CSIRO scientist, has been on the lookout for high quality back up tapes of the footage. No luck so far, but they have released enhanced video that cleans up details in the live broadcast.

See the other videos for yourself over at NASA’s website.

NASA releases enhanced moon landing videos.