A Different Perspective

Welcome to “A Different Perspective” a web photo project by Lorenzo Geraci.

A Different Perspective is a repository of meshed images from the road about life, branding, zen, people, experiences, colors, textures, look & feel, as little fashion as possible.

How it is done (mostly): pictures taken from the road with my smartphone, and emailed using my personal email to a single-purpose special email account. A WordPress install with a special plugin pulls the emails from the special email account and creates an automatic post, and tweets automatically at twitter.com/p3rspective .

For those of you who are interested in the mechanics of how this is possible, here’s a list of the ingredients used to make it possible:

• Hosting by MediaTemple;
• CMS by WordPress;
• Autofocus theme by Allan Cole;
• ecto desktop blog editing software (sometime you’ve got to make some edits here and there);
• WptoGo by Roundhill Labs WordPress editing Android App (sometime you’ve got to make edits on the go);
• WPtouch iPhone Theme plugin;
  Note 1: It installs on WorPress as a plugin, but it is actually a theme for mobile devices (smartphones);
  Note 2: It also works with the Android default browser, not just the iPhone (Safari);
  Note 3: It also works with Opera Mini on the Android platform;
• Postie pluging by Robert Felty;
• Personal email by Google for Applications {lor3nzo dot com}
• Gmail by Google (POP3 setup)
• T-Mobile MyTouch (a.k.a. HTC Magic):
  • T-Mobile MyTocuh site;
  • HTC MyTouch site;
  • HTC Magic site;
• Standard camera app;
• FX Camera app by ymst (ToyCam, Polandroid, Fisheye and Warhol effects);
• PRO Paint Camera PRO Zoom Camera 5X (upgraded Oct 1, 2009), by Pop Crowd.

All images are © Toscana Enterprises Corporation, all rights reserved. If you intend to use one of the images please contact me for licensing, let’s be fair.

F.A.Q.:

Q.: Why don’t you use Flickr or Picasa or any other photo hosting and sharing services?
A.: Good question. Because none of them offers the ease of posting just by sending an email. My Android-based smartphone came with a Picasa uploader, but it doesn’t work very well, it keeps timing out on me.

Q.: Why don’t you use a Creative Commons license?
A.: Excellent question! I LOVE Creative Commons, I use it myself. Alas there’s a perception that if something is published under a Creative Commons license, any creative Common license, it is a free lunch, and it’s not. Very reasonable and fair licensing terms are available for the images on this photo blog, contact me.

Q.: Why are your photos tilted and not straight?
A.: I grew up near Pisa.

Q.: Why did the chicken cross the road?
A.: Just because!

Q.: The dates are a mess, the dates on the post do not match the date from EXIF Data, why?
A.: The chain reaction of T-mobile 3G, Gmail, Postie, and WordPress at times is out of synch. I am using Postie V.1.3.2 which is a bit buggy, but I’ve got a few workarounds and it does its job. At one point I did upgrade to the latest version 1.3.3 and then nothing worked, so I had to downgrade, hence the void in the WP time sequence and the discrepancies with the date in the EXIF data. All in all, Postie Rocks!

Q.: The titles are messy as well, some of them say “From the Road”, some of them say “via Postie”, what’s up with that?
A.: By default Postie puts “via Postie” in all the post titles. In my first install I was able to modify the script to insert “From the road”, then when I updated and then downgraded again . . . too little time, too many things to do. Life is a work in process, so is this photo blog.

Q.: Have you read any good articles recently?
A.: Yes, Lifehacker.com’s Top 10 Ways to Get More From a Cameraphone.

Q.: Dude, where’s my car?
A. Good question, if I see it I’ll photoblog it!