Hundreds of thousands of people showed up to the Women’s March in NYC today, beautiful event, lots of love being spread, lots of strength, lots of passion.
Looks like this weekend was the tipping point, I know that I am certainly partly responsible being that I have not uploaded pictures from my Nikon or Leica in a long time.
The Official Barack Obama Portrait
It’s cool to see the Peter Souza is shooting digital (but of course) and keeping the EXIF data intact so we can all see all the juicy data 🙂
Some of the Meta data
Very cool, Mr President is living up to one of his promises from the very first day, a more open government, with a blog and user feedback, take a look at this blog posting for more information. I’m liking the new site as well.
The three statements in the post are this
Communication – Americans are eager for information about the state of the economy, national security and a host of other issues. This site will feature timely and in-depth content meant to keep everyone up-to-date and educated. Check out the briefing room, keep tabs on the blog(RSS feed) and take a moment to sign up for e-mail updates from the President and his administration so you can be sure to know about major announcements and decisions.
Transparency — President Obama has committed to making his administration the most open and transparent in history, and WhiteHouse.gov will play a major role in delivering on that promise. The President’s executive orders and proclamations will be published for everyone to review, and that’s just the beginning of our efforts to provide a window for all Americans into the business of the government. You can also learn about some of the senior leadership in the new administration and about the President’s policy priorities.
Participation – President Obama started his career as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago, where he saw firsthand what people can do when they come together for a common cause. Citizen participation will be a priority for the Administration, and the internet will play an important role in that. One significant addition to WhiteHouse.gov reflects a campaign promise from the President: we will publish all non-emergency legislation to the website for five days, and allow the public to review and comment before the President signs it.
I spend my weekends in Montauk and have been for the last 8 years or so, I have a lot of friends that are both locals and weekenders. I did a little calling around about The Montauk Monster and not to my surprise, no one knows anyone who has see the alleged Monster.
So I decided to take a closer look at the picture
I opened it in PhotoShop and took a look at the Embedded meta data, there is none, someone took the time to strip out all the meta data, except this one line
JFIF Ducky Adobe d
compared to the first few lines from mLeicaca
Exif II* LEICA D-LUX 3 H H Ver.1.0 2008:06:23 16:16:07 PrintIM 0250
The first few from a created PhotoShop files
JFIF H H Exif Adobe Photoshop CS3 Macintosh 2008:07:31
and what happens when you open an image and resaved in PhotoShop
JFIF H H Exif LEICA D-LUX 3 Adobe Photoshop CS3 Macintosh 2008:07:31 13:57:03 PrintIM 0250
Next I took a closer look at the image itself, starting with the neck
Notice in the zoom the resolution appears to be different than the surrounding pixels and they are slightly smoother than the other pixels
Then take a look at the front leg some strange pixel stuff going on here
And some more pixel mischief on its back
and then the beak
I can see some more manipulation here
So a clever hoax? I belive so.
Interesting week, after last weeks much publicized deal dump of Microsoft’s acquisition of Yahoo, we get CBS swallowing CNET, Comcast chomped Plaxo, and today Conde Nast slurping up Ars Technia.
Some thoughts, as a shareholder of Yahoo, I would of made out well in the MS Yhoo deal, as a user of Yahoo, I feel better that they are still who they are. I don’t know if they could remain a leader in their space, especially upon hearing the news that Google past Yahoo today in popularity. So maybe it would of been a good deal, I have been using Yahoo as my start page since like forever, I don’t think I’ve ever looked at MSN other that for keeping tabs on what they were up to.
WTF, Comcast buys Plaxo, I haven’t done it yet but I will be deleting my Plaxo account. Comcast motto, “Be Evil” I’m outta there.
CBS and CNET. a struggling network picks up a struggling website, seems fitting. I never watch CBS and I hardly ever go to the CNET site anymore, the few time I have in the past couple of years the content was mediocre and the experience, poor. Good riddance.
Conde and Ars. disappointed, I really like Ars! I had become a daily reader of the site and even followed them on Twitter. Like CNET I never (well almost never) visited the Wired.com site. Just never found value in it, maybe it is because most websites that are derived from paper magazines suck, and it just kinda lives on in my brain, I will give the new Ars a chance I hope they don’t fuck it up.