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How Well Can LEDs Meet the Energy Challenge?

By Ari Salomon | Published: July 31, 2010

I just bought some LED “Ribbon Strip”  for a new version of my Motion Studies light boxes. I came across this interesting article that details why LED technology is not ready to replace fluorescent lighting in many situations. I recently read that IKEA is going to eliminate all incandescent lighting by the end of the year.

I contend the energy-efficiency argument with LEDs for all major light sources is premature at this time.

Well-suited uses

However, LEDs are well suited to replace such-small area illumination uses as retail, display, refrigeration and task lighting, but warehouses, large stores and office buildings are better served with fluorescent lights, from both cost and energy-saving perspectives.

…For illumination, increasing the unit-area brightness beyond a certain level isn’t vital. It’s more vital to acquire a brightness level that uniformly spans a broader area. Substantially increasing unit-area brightness (for example making each LED lamp brighter with either higher feed current or higher efficacy) beyond this level isn’t useful as long as LEDs themselves remain small, planar and directional.

…Some argue that when the unit area brightness is increased, meaning, when individual LEDs produce more lumens per square area without driving them harder (improving the efficacy by a factor of 2, that is, to 150 lm/W), the LED T8’s light output will be the same, or more than, that of the LFL T8.

via How Well Can LEDs Meet the Energy Challenge? | SignWeb | signweb.com.

Posted in Product Reviews | Leave a comment

Photobook competition for photographers who self publish

By Ari Salomon | Published: July 27, 2010

The Photographer and the Self-Published PhotoBook

The self-published photobook is an exciting new avenue for photographers to present their work directly to the public. In addition, the photobook itself can be a work of art.

As part of the Davis Orton Gallery’s commitment to showcasing the work of contemporary photographers, the Gallery is sponsoring a juried photobook competition culminating in a gallery exhibition and sale.

SUBMISSION DEADLINE

The Submission period begins August 1, 2010 and ends on October 1, 2010.

Entries must be in-hand or postmarked by October 1.

SUBMISSION FEE

The fee for submission of up to three books is $25

via Photobook competition for photographers who self publish | Davis Orton Gallery

Posted in Photo grants and awards | Leave a comment

Design Contest in Poland

By Ari Salomon | Published: July 21, 2010

header Design Contest in Poland

This is not a photo contest and not about a web design contest in San Francisco but it might be of interest to designers out there. I showed some of my photos at a photo event in Lodz a few years ago.

Portfolio review is a very popular and attractive form of presenting own work to specialists in a given field. The 4th International Festival of Design in Łódź – LDZIGN 2010 offers, for the first time in Poland, such an opportunity in pattern design. The event is directed to students and graduates of art schools and designers who have been present in the market for some time. Meetings with design professionals, like curators, product managers, designers and producers, give a chance to verify skills, knowledge and ways of presentation of projects. Submitting a portfolio to evaluation by reviewers creates an opportunity to verify the presented ideas and may result in the implementation of an idea into a production process, an exhibition offer or a publication. Participants will be chosen on the basis of submitted applications.

via ŁódźDesign 2010.

Posted in Photo grants and awards | Leave a comment

Grant Information: FotoVisura

By Ari Salomon | Published: July 7, 2010

Deadline and Time Frame

• The Grant competition officially begins Thursday, July 1st at 9:00 am EST

• The deadline is Wednesday, September 15th at 12:00 noon EST

• Final results will be published on November 1st, 2010

• $30 for a yearly membership, only members can submit

via Grant Information & Prizes | FotoVisura Grant.

UPDATED:

  1. deadline is now: Monday, November 1st 12:00 noon EST
  2. Larry Fink has joined the  jury
Posted in Photo grants and awards | Leave a comment

40 CMS Enabling WordPress Plugins

By Ari Salomon | Published: June 29, 2010

This is a great list although the first section might be out of date since WordPress 3 now supports custom content types “natively”.

I recently came across one plugin they list that was very impressive in it’s scope but a bit hard to use:

Role Scoper is a comprehensive enrichment for access control in WordPress, giving you CMS-like control of permissions. Assign reading, editing or administration roles to users or groups on a page-specific, category-specific or other content-specific basis.

via 40 Exceptional “CMS Enabling” WordPress Plugins – Noupe.

Posted in WordPress | Leave a comment

Arts Benicia – Artist in Residency

By Ari Salomon | Published: June 26, 2010

logo Gr390may Arts Benicia Artist in Residency

Arts Benicia Artist in Residency (ABAIR) Program for Installation Artists

Request for Proposals

Overview:
Arts Benicia will provide installation artists with an opportunity to work out installation ideas in its 2,000 square foot space from 7/20-8/20, 2010. Our gallery is located in the heart of a large artists’ community that is situated in an former military arsenal built in the 1800′s. Arts Benicia has a pristine gallery in the heart of the historic Benicia Arsenal. It is well lit, has white walls and concrete floor.

Read More »

Posted in Photo grants and awards | Leave a comment

Gravity Forms: better than Wufoo

By Ari Salomon | Published: June 25, 2010

Gravity Forms is a WordPress plugin that lets you put together online forms via a simple drag-and-drop interface. It’s not free but it’s inexpensive (starts at $39) and amazingly powerful. Not only can you build many kinds of forms but the interface is a pleasure to use and new features are added regularly and the plugin is maintained and supported actively.

The key thing about this plugin (that the other WordPress form plugins don’t offer) is that it lets you save submitted forms in your WordPress database. And when viewing within  the admin interface you can add notes and even email notes to any email addresses associated with the form. Import/export of both forms and entries is supported.

You can easily access advanced features like having form elements interact with one another. It’s smooth and easy to delve into features that Wufoo and other form tools can’t touch. One example is to have a “more info” button on a page that sends the page url or some other info into a contact form.

Other features include:

  • Role Management Integration
  • Form Scheduling
  • Bulk Add and Predefined Choices (like a list of all Countries or US States)
  • Integrate with Other Plugins Using Hooks
  • Spam Prevention – it just works…
  • Conditional Form Fields
  • Turn forms into posts – for user generated content

Click here to visit rocketgenius. (FYI this is an affiliate link)

468x60 Gravity Forms: better than Wufoo

here’s a couple screenshots…

grav forms1 300x212 Gravity Forms: better than Wufoo gf2 216x300 Gravity Forms: better than Wufoo

Posted in Web Design, WordPress | Leave a comment

Picture Berlin – intensive workshops in fine art photography

By Ari Salomon | Published: May 13, 2010

photo33 Picture Berlin intensive workshops in fine art photography

This program sounds like a great opportunity for an intensive work and training experience in fine art photography in one of my favorite cities – Berlin.

It’s like an intensive workshop only it lasts almost a full month. April Gertler is the director.

What can I gain from this program that other programs wouldn’t be able to give me ?

Picture Berlin is a unique chance to experience the international artistic community from the inside. The focus of the program is to have a feeling of what it is like to experience art and discussions about art in a context that might be new and unfamiliar to you, with people you do not know. The challenges of considering your artistic practice and simultaneously being exposed to cultural differences is an enriching experience which can further your work in leaps and bounds that might be astonishing. Participants create a portfolio ready for presentation after the program is completed, and have exhibition experience ready to put on their artist resumes. Also, each participant will gain insight in the way the European art scene works, ranging from an overview of the European artist residency network, to how to prepare a portfolio. You’ll also engage in discussions on contemporary art and gain a basic understanding of artistic practice happening in Europe today.

via Picture Berlin

Posted in Fine Art Photography | Leave a comment

Apple & Flash: closed is a closed system

By Ari Salomon | Published: May 2, 2010

bashflashbanner 300x85 Apple & Flash: closed is a closed system

Lots of buzz around apple’s Thoughts on why they don’t support flash.

BashFlash is more evidence of the anti-flash momentum.

And this was a funny take on “The pot calling the kettle black”

A blog called Hoopty Rides decided to see what would happen if you copied the text of the letter into your word processor and replaced the word “Adobe” with “Apple” and “Flash” with “closed.” The results are pretty funny.

One of the best paragraphs to do this to is in the section that specifically addresses Adobe's closed system. Here it is before the search and replace shenanigans:

Adobe’s Flash products are 100% proprietary. They are only available from Adobe, and Adobe has sole authority as to their future enhancement, pricing, etc. While Adobe’s Flash products are widely available, this does not mean they are open, since they are controlled entirely by Adobe and available only from Adobe. By almost any definition, Flash is a closed system.

And after:

Apple’s closed products are 100% proprietary. They are only available from Apple, and Apple has sole authority as to their future enhancement, pricing, etc. While Apple’s closed products are widely available, this does not mean they are open, since they are controlled entirely by Apple and available only from Apple. By almost any definition, closed is a closed system.

via Jobs Lashes Out At Adobe, Oh The Irony – Mobile Blog – InformationWeek.

Posted in Web Design | Leave a comment

IMAP in Mac Mail

By Ari Salomon | Published: April 30, 2010
Apple Mail IMAP in Mac Mail
Image via Wikipedia

IMAP in Mac Mail (aka Apple Mail or Mail.app) is flaky. But this tip saved me in trying to rebuild my setting after mail crashed and forgot (deleted) all my outgoing servers. Then older messages disappeared from folders because it was mapping to “inbox” twice – or something crazy.

The point of IMAP is to make more mail available on more devices. This was a bigger issue for me as I started to rely on my iPhone for mail. Having access to older emails can be very handy, even with iPhone Mail’s limitations.

A next step is to replicate other MobileMe “push” features for calendar and contacts.

So I started doing some more research online, and quickly discovered that I wasn’t the first person to run into this problem. The general consensus was that Mail’s support for IMAP is a little flaky, but several people offered their solutions and workarounds. One of the necessary steps is to tell Mail that the IMAP path prefix is “INBOX”; the other necessary step is to set up a mapping between the remote “Drafts”, “Sent” and “Trash” folders to the same folders in Mail.

The part that I got wrong was the order of these two steps, and to make a long story short, it apparently matters. If you define the IMAP path prefix first, it doesn’t seem to work properly. In my case, the “Drafts” folder would just disappear altogether with no way to get back to it. So wait to do that after you’ve set up the mappings. It took me most of the day to get this working, but it does seem to be OK now.

(now, a few weeks later, it’s still working although mail asks me on startup each time if i want to add the ‘inbox’ prefix)

via Setting up IMAP in Mac Mail • Blog Archive • Lovable Lyle.

IMAP in Mac Mail
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