OS X Mountain Lion
Apple has unveiled some of the new features of OS X Mountain Lion. As many of us expected, it shows Apple further blurring the distinction between its desktop operating system, now called OS X instead of Mac OS X and the mobile iOS system. More iOS Features On Your Mac Mountain Lion further embeds the [...]
iPhoneography 101
Two years ago I expressed my love for taking photos with the iPhone or, as it has come to be known, iPhoneography. Since then things have exploded. Taking photos on the iPhone (and other smartphones), developing them with in-phone apps and sharing them instantly via email or social media platforms have become a daily habit [...]
The Cult Of Collaboration
Susan Cain is the author of an upcoming book called Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking. She recently penned an excellent NYT op-ed piece entitled The Rise Of The New Groupthink. I’d encourage you to take a read of the article as it covers a lot of important ground [...]
Living Without TV
For the past six months, we’ve lived without television, at least in the conventional sense. There are two TVs in the house, but neither is connected to a TV service, either free-to-air, or cable. You can’t just turn the TV and watch “something” or “channel surf.” Why Have A TV? It’s a pretty bold countercultural [...]
Generation Slash Revisited
Chase Jarvis recently posted a copy of his interview with Juxtapoz magazine. It’s a great read if you are into photography, fine art of just the whole big creative thing. A few lines really stood out for me, “And for what it’s worth, I’ve been told my whole career that being a hyphen, that not [...]
Do You Code
One of the reasons I dislike going to networking events and conferences is my aversion to answering the “so, what do you do” question. I know it must seem odd for a blogger to say that they hate talking about themselves. But, answering the “so, what do you do” question in a concise (i.e., non-boring) [...]
Finding Your Voice (As A Blogger)
I’ve had a number of comments in the past few months, regarding changes on this blog. Am I becoming more professional, chasing readers or in some way changing gears? The short answer is, no, not really. My reasons for blogging haven’t changed much over the years. However, my voice, as a writer has changed. The [...]
Does Your Blog’s About Me Matter?
As I mentioned last month, I was surprised to learn that in 2011, the fourth most read page on this site was the “about me.” I’m not even sure I had an about me page when I relaunched this blog in 2004! Then & Now Back then, blogs tended to have fairly stable readerships. You [...]
A Year Of Blogging Highlights
For the first time since 2006, I’m ending a year feeling good about the state of this blog. My blogging goals for 2011 were simple; double the average daily traffic and put up at least 150 posts (this is the 172nd post of the year). I figured, in the most basic of ways, that more [...]
Don’t bring demos – Bring product
This morning I was reading Eric Beall comment on Berklee’s recent Perfect Pitch music and songwriting event. What Berklee is trying to do (as always) is prepare musicians and songwriters for the realities of the music business they will encounter. In his post Eric made this startlingly honest comment, “In case you didn’t get the [...]
7 Kinds Of People You Need In Your Creative Universe
Sustaining yourself in a creative endeavour, be it photography, music, design, writing or any other art, requires relationships. You can’t do it alone. People won’t just “discover” your work and you’ll struggle to bounce back from the inevitable setbacks and disappointments. Moreover you’ll need folks that can help you stay true to your goals, focussed [...]
Plans For The End Of The World
2010 was a great year for me, loaded with fulfilment, adventure and a surprising degree of success. By contrast, 2011 has been a grind. It hasn’t been a bad year; though at times life and work have been hard to manage. Of course, that’s partly self-inflicted; changing country while taking on a lot of work [...]
Why I Love Mondays
I woke up today in Adelaide. Next Monday I’ll wake up in Oaxaca, Mexico. The following Monday I’ll be in Miami and the following Monday, I’ll be back home in Singapore. Four Mondays, four different cities in four different countries. With a schedule like that it’s kind of easy to say “I Love Mondays!” But, [...]
Steve Jobs
I can clearly remember the first time I used an Apple Computer. My High School only owned one computer and although I don’t recall how our maths department came into possession of an Apple IIc (bolted into an ergonomically unfriendly cart on wheels), I do recall the thrill of using that computer and I’m thankful [...]
My Cube Hunch
Speculating about potential Apple products is always a hazardous affair. Apple are known for being innovative, secretive and unpredictable. But, I’ve got a hunch (and it’s no more than that) that we will see some significant changes to the top end of the desktop range and, possibly, the end of the Mac Pro. Ever since [...]
Changing Lanes When There Are No Lanes
We live in an extraordinary era, with the economics of communication totally changing. What do I mean by that? Well, when I was young, we would tune into television or radio and hope to hear people that were interesting (to us), talking about things that were relevant (to us). It was a pretty inefficient process, [...]
Change
If you had told me, ten years ago, that I would now be sitting in my home office printing documents wirelessly from my notebook computer, while using a mobile phone to control music playing in my living room that is stored on a computer in yet another room, all communicating on a wireless network – [...]
Your Creative Mix
A few months back I mentioned Corwin Hiebert in a blogpost about Generous Marketing. I’m a fan of Corwin’s work and was excited to see him releasing a
Just Leave
There is, in my view, no cliche more asinine and unkind than when someone replies to a criticism, of a place or culture, by saying, “…if you don’t like it, just leave.” If only life was so simple. For anyone with commitments, a career, or a family, the option to “just leave” is not straightforward. [...]
500px
500px is a community based, photo sharing website; much like Flickr. In fact, there’s a growing chorus of articles comparing the two sites and suggesting that 500px might just be a better service for serious photographers. Here is a sampling of recent opinions, Move Over Flickr — Hot Shots Love 500px 500px is not Flickr [...]
My Approach To Twitter
Over the past few weeks I’ve had a few people ask me about my approach to Twitter. I’m loathe to write anything too concrete on the subject because a) I’m neither an expert on the subject, b) I’m not really “successful” on Twitter. Moreover, there is a whole body of “how to use Twitter” literature [...]
Reboot For April
As I mentioned last week, March was a bit of grind, health-wise. In fact, my theme for April is “re-boot,” since I’m restarting, or reconfiguring a lot of the projects I started in January and February. Last week was a bit of a mess, but the pieces are starting to fit together and the next [...]
Hong Kong Favourites (10-6)
Hong Kong is a bustling, noisy, crowded and constantly vibrant city. Industrial and heavy transport estates are surrounded by densly packed high rise and neon-lit shopping precicints that are not infrequently compared to Ridley Scott’s vision of the future in Blade Runner. But, like any city, Hong Kong has places where one can find a [...]
February Highlights
February was a hectic month. There were a lot of good things happening, but my thoughts were mostly with my father, who was taken to hospital. He is home now, recovering, but looking back I realise how distracted and concerned I was for most of the month. So many of the skills I use on [...]
Fernando Gros is a musician, photographer & writer based in Singapore. Born in Santiago de Chile, Fernando grew up in Sydney and has also lived in London, Delhi and Hong Kong.