Like a good tech-geek, you struggle-on and make the most from what you have, and dutifully, I’ve found some good advantages to having a camera in my pocket that’s connected to the web.

Recently, with a little inspiration, ive been taking more photos that i like with the camera and getting to know it better.

Work area - Swinhoe Industries - Taken with the iPhone

As you will read if you visit his site, Chase Jarvis is a photog. of the most epic proportions, shooting for the biggest names in the sports, leisure and tech world. He is especially well known for his use of his iPhone to post daily pictures that come under the category “Chase Jarvis takes better shots with an iPhone than I do with a Hasselblad“.

And as he says, “the best camera is the one that’s with you”.

But there are a few other tips, supplied by Chase, to make the photos coming off your iPhone that bit better, and I too have enjoyed the benefits of them.

Camerabag is a truly great app, having received huge accolade from a number of places, and ive used it on the shots in this post.

The doggie being shy.. (there is extra 'grey' on the base of this from the filter)

Hanging about - taken with iPhone - tweaked with Camerabag

I like them. The filters come out well generally and make the photos taken much more usable and distributable.

Chase Jarvis is a savvy guy, follow his blog if you take photos regularly, but he’s not only about photos. He has mastered the world of  Social Media, using it to connect with his audience and web users in a full-frontal attack.

He’s on twitter, he blogs – regularly, he posts RAW video posts to Youtube, he’s on Facebook, he podcasts (iTunes link)…

The guy has been posting from New Zealand for the last week whilst he’s been shooting a job. Its great to follow him and the crew and get the insights to how things happen.

Im still in the iPhone, alot, and with a selection of decent shots coming from the camera, im not hating using it anymore.

Go shoot something…

One of my pet-projects at the moment is the information site for Beadnell Bay – http://www.beadnellbay.info.

On it Ive created a page specifically for the surf report that im providing for the area (http://www.beadnellbay.info/surf-check/), and Ive been looking for an efficient way of running the content.

Its really not that hard, you go to the beach, take a photo, go back to the office, upload the image to the web server, and hey-presto, you have a surf report. But, doing this every day will take up more tim than is ideal, and is very repetitive.

So how can we make the process more streamlined ? how can it be easier ?

I had tried a few ideas, and had searched for the best solution online, and the best I had come=up with was to use Yahoo Pipes to push the latest image from a Flickr group into the page. The pipe is here if you want a look -

http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=tgsFay003hGYXDqQBR50VA.

However this is not really what I wanted. The images do not display large enough, and whilst its nice running it through Flickr, linking out to the set is not ideal.

Enter technology and the perfect solution.

Apple iPhone

Im already using my iPhone to take the photograph and push it to the Flickr group, so ideally I wanted was something as easy to use but with a btter web presentation.

Enter the right application, and a little bit of AJAX.

FTP Picture upload provides a simple and easy way to FTP any picture from your iPhone to the web server of your choice. With a little tweaking, it was up and running in 10 minutes and i had the right image on the server.

On the page I could now print the latest image as uploaded form my iPhone. Fantastic.

However the image being displayed could not be identified as recent. How where users to know that the shot was taken today ? or even this week ?

What I wanted was a script that could find out when the shot was taken and print that to the page, telling the users the image was recently updated.

JavaScript alone can not do this, but the helpful people at http://twitter.com/javascripthelp quickly pointed out that the XML Http Request can grab the Last Modified date from the header of any file on your server.

With that, I searched, found the right piece of JavaScript and then set it all in motion. (code is below).

The surf report image now displays, is enlargeable, and has the upload date and time printed next to it. And all automated via the iPhone.

Along with this, I post a text update via Twitter and you get a pretty decent surf report.

******************  Example Code ******************

<script type=”text/javascript”>

var xmlhttp=false;
try
{
xmlhttp = new ActiveXObject(“Msxml2.XMLHTTP”); /* for IE < 5 */
}
catch (e)
{
try
{
xmlhttp = new ActiveXObject(“Microsoft.XMLHTTP”);
}
catch (E)
{
xmlhttp = false;
}
}

/* mozilla & opera */
if (!xmlhttp && typeof XMLHttpRequest!=’undefined’)
{
xmlhttp = new XMLHttpRequest();
}

var upDated

function getUpdated(){

xmlhttp.open(“HEAD”, “MyPic.JPG”,true);
xmlhttp.onreadystatechange=function() {
if (xmlhttp.readyState==4) {
upDated = xmlhttp.getResponseHeader(“Last-Modified”);
document.getElementById(“theDate”).innerHTML = upDated;
}
}
xmlhttp.send(null)
}

</script>

</head>
<body onload=”getUpdated();return false;”>
<img src=”MyPic.JPG” alt=”MBP_box” width=”500″ />
<br/>Picture updated on – <p id=”theDate”>Updating…</p>

Now, just need a few hours to fiddle and setup all the bits and pieces…  where did that firewire cable go ??

The arrival of the new OS, combined with my acquisistion of a new MacBook Pro, specced-out to the max, will be a glorious day. Im sure there is enough propaganda on the web already regarding the joys of the new software, so i wont repeat them here, but still, a new machine, a new OS… tomorrow is gonna be fun.

Speak to you in a week…

The new iMac – yum – but im not sure i will be buying one just yet, the price for a mid-range model is still about £1000. But i would want to spend alot more. I am loving the look’n'feel though. Thin is good.

Drift Magazine – Jamie Bott – a good friend for many years – is now the photo editor for this fine fledgling Surf mag. Im loving what hes been doing. They also produce a video Podcast, ive jsut grabbed them all now, so will let you in on the secrets if i find any..

Fake Steve revealed – The Fake Steve Jobs blogger has been revealed. Well, im glad thats over. Now, back to Forbes with you ! – some of us have work to do (yawn.).

RDU ROCKS ! – These NZ music maestros are keeping my blood moving on a daily basis at the moment, go show them some love.

and..  Ive recently organised a whole heap of playlists on the iPod. I hadnt really used them before, but with 70GB of tunes, im finding that its very useful to stack-up these playlists, nesting them from album lists etc.

MMmmmm.

So over i go to Twitter to give that a kick (i dont use Twitter much, mostly because of time constraints and not knowing other heavy-users..), once it was setup, i get it working from my mobile, and from Gtalk.

Then i figured out that i can integrate the task calendar in RTM with my local iCal.. yum..

So, im now happily spamming myself ffom all-angles.. SMS, web-log, IM and email all converge on my task/calendar..
I’ll report back with how i get on…

bp

However, I do look forward to playing with it..  and having a go blending it..  what an inspired piece of broadcasting.

Sorry Steve…