Doc Pop wears many digital hats: iPad musician,  visual experimenter of mobile apps, blogger, yo-yo madman, game developer/designer, painter, illustrator, etc. etc.

He’s was also my first follower on the (primarily) iPhone (only) social photo app http://instagr.am.

The good doctor does a Daily App Experiment where he takes an images and applies manipulations using different iPhone apps.  He used a photo I shot and posted to Instagr.am yesterday to make #48 in the series.

Daily App Experiment #48: “Nettled Birds” – Saw this pic in @dippold’s instagram and asked if I could play with it. Using TypeDrawing, I added one trillion birds to his original image. I’m really happy folks are willing to let me alter their images. (Taken with Instagram at Daily App Experiment) ~Doc Pop

Make the jump to see my original image and read more about Doc Pop and Instagr.am

My original Instagr.am image, the starting point in his Daily App Experiment #48.

If you don’t have an iPhone, or aren’t ready to download the free app yet, Doc Pop feeds his Instagr.am photos and images into a Tumblr for general viewing.

Another noteworthy and recent project of his is the electronic-pop-ish record “Beats and Smudges,” recorded exclusively with mobile applications.

A CD laser lens scrapped from a CD drive of an aged laptop

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Quick and nastily taped onto a iPhone 3GS

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iPhone macro lens

Close up of an Arduino board

Close up of the back side of a one hundred dollar bill

After the jump, a write up about this hacked-up/modded iPhone camera rig and a gallery of some shots taken with it.

This contraption is a discovery by my brother Aaron, came across while dismantling an old computer and popping off the lens — or covering — to the laser on a CD drive and placing it over the iPhone’s camera.

He suggests using different washers of varying thickness to act as spacers between the CD lens and the iPhone to achieve more magnified, better quality images.

This entire home-brew innovation is born from attempting to replicate the more legit and interchangeable Fisheye, Macro, and Wide Angle Camera Phone Lenses from PhotoJoJo that mount onto a magnetic ring you affix to the body of the iPhone.

Other DIY iPhone macro lens projects abound.  Most use other camera lenses, cases and mounts. But this CD lens method seems the least expensive and most novel macro lens photo method for an iPhone thus far.

Side note: a different CD lens used for the photos below was somehow magnetized and stuck to the iPhone without the tape job shown in the recreation above.

Jon Rafman is behind the 9 Eyes Tumblr, blogging strange, often exquisite images captured from Google Street View.

A digital zoom into the hand-covered breasticles portion of Sandro Botticelli’s, “The Birth of Venus,” from haltadefinizione.com

Full zoom into the high res photo of Sandro Botticelli’s, “The Birth of Venus,” at haltadefinizione.com

Boing Boing offers this quote about the famous photo-goings-ons-of-famous-paintings at haltadefinizione.com:

Their more recent image of Botticelli’s La Primivera consists of 28 billion pixels, about 3,000 times the resolution of a consumer digital camera. The pixel density (pixels per inch, or ppi) has also increased, from 580 to 1,500ppi (magazine and book printing are typically 300ppi).

In contrast to the “gallery view” afforded by the online Monet exhibit (in which you can see individual brushstrokes wonderfully), these images are more like a “conservator’s view”, allowing you to zoom in to a level as if observed under a magnifying lens.

You need to be patient with the image as it loads, but once loaded, the interface is remarkably responsive as you zoom. The images are watermarked, but that’s a small quibble considering what they are offering, and you can work around the watermarks by altering the magnification level and scrolling a bit.

To commemorate October 10, 2010, Heather Champ is encouraging people to take a photograph. There’s no direction. Just snap the photo and submit it to the Flickr group dedicated to this 10/10/10 photography.

Heather sez:

On October 10, 2010, take a photo (analogue, digital — whatever your pleasure) at a time that’s convenient for you. There’s no specific theme, direction or time requirement.

When you’re ready, share your photo in this Flickr group where we’ll collect the photos:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/tententen

The group pool will open noon pacific on October 10th and will close on October 20th at noon pacific. You’ll have 10 days to contribute your October 10th photo. On October 11, we’ll begin to randomly display contributed photos here. That’s it!

Here’s the project’s Flickr pool with over 2,000 photos:

Yesterday Columbia, Missouri, saw contrails woven into the morning sky.  I took a couple pics and tweeted:

The mid-Missouri sky is filled with contrails this morning. Good morning conspiracy buffs. http://twitpic.com/2ulj99

The tweet got these three responses:

• @imshelledin: @dipps You noticed that too? I found it rather odd, something I usually only see when I am in StL.
• @shanjoy: @dipps yeah i was just wondering why kind of chemicals they were dropping on us this morning.
• @PIPIL4LIFE: RT @dipps: The mid-Missouri sky is filled with contrails this morninghttp://twitpic.com/2ulj99•Stratospheric Aerosol#Geoengineering•

Part 1 of “The dreaded ‘Idea’” spouts freely new notions concerning Twitter and iPhone/iPod Apps & iOS along with a short treatise-like rant on ideas.

Media

• Monetizing great content stuck on crusty websites

An opportunity exsists for acquiring old, but authoritative content that ranks good.  This written treasure is often buried on neglected websites.  There’s plenty of great information hiding on pages two, three and four of Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) that could be providing more benefit.

Some would just offer to buy the whole site and domain outright.  But dealing with some of these codgers is tough.  They’re often sentimentally attached and want far too much money.  And trying to strike these deals is a time suck.

Why not go after smaller slices of the pie?  Go after the valuable content and leave the relics and ruins of entire sites designed in 1998 to Gramps.

A service company could “crawl” (old) websites for good, well ranking content. Offer to buy (the rights for) it. Both buyer and seller sign a (mostly pre-formatted, pre-made) contract and payment is rendered.

The purchased content “goes to work” for the benefit of the buyer and will hopefully reach a wider, improved audience. Value for all involved.

Doing this manually wouldn’t be worth it.  Either an automated program could seek out the content, or go the other route and get content holders and publisher to come to your site and sell good articles to you.  Some sort of valuation system and/or algorithm would be ideal to kill the many man-hours of sifting through content to determine worth.

• Web video channel

The great video programming on Cable and Satellite TV comes with commercials and it’s expensive.  The Internet offers way more video entertainment options than Cable, but herding all the sprawling internet video is often difficult and time consuming.

The move is on now to make traditional TV more Internet interactive-like while the Internet players — like Apple TV, Boxee.net, Google TV – continue with vast menu systems.

I say go the reverse direction.  I want to fire up an Internet video channel that’s just like an old TV station.  Hit play and walk away.  That’s it.  No sign up, no account.  Instant, continuous Internet Boob Tube with zero interaction.

Unless you want interaction.  (Stop reading here if you’re already sold, but it’s not likely because viewers will probably want some control.  Some other stuff to do.)

Just hit a button and an interactive, overlaid interface could come up (– and/or this interactive interface/menu would show up on a mobile phone app that could also double as a remote.)

Naturally this optional menu for the video channel would contain all the lofty features we’ve come to expect from our Internet media applications:

• learning your view tastes and preferences
• ability to share what your are watching
• skinning & customizing appearance
• fetching programming info and recommendations
• option to integrate and merge with other media sources and service

How will this happen?  How the hell should I know.  That is why nerds exist.

A master/parent channel would be set up and programmed by the company who creates it.  This tech could be used as a platform for others to build and program their own (custom, branded) channels.

The general idea here is switch on an internet TV channel and plop down on the couch.  Less choice, less control, less hassle is the primary intent.  But that won’t fly for everyone who may like it, so also offer hidden menus and controls that’d also empower a premiere, TV-like Internet video channel with a more meaningful interactive experience.

• Video mute button

Add a Video Mute Button to web video players.  Press it and the video folds down, or hides, but audio still plays.

Perfect for the workplace where you want to listen but not watch or fiddle with minimizing, maximizing, resizing, popping out, or otherwise hiding video.

• Simple mass photo sharing

Most everybody wants widespread sharing of their photos and there’s a slew of photo sharing services. But everyone is not on the same photo sharing services.

Why isn’t there a decent service to distribute your photos to all the popular (online) photo places?

We need a web service/app where you upload your photos once and your photos go all over: Flickr, Facebook, Twitpic, Photobucket, Picassa, etc, etc.

The user process would be simple:

1.) Sign up.
2.) Link up the photo sharing sites you’re already on to this new service — either using openID/OAuth and/or old fashion usernames and passwords — and give options to sign up for additional photo sharing sites.
3.) Upload photos once.
4.) Photos appear at the sites you’ve just approved. Like:

• flickr
• photobucket
• webshots
• Picassa
• shutterfly
• smugmug
• snapfish
• Twitter
• Facebook
• Posterous
• tumblr
• WordPress
• Blogger
• ireport

After upload is complete, there could be and option to:

• Email your photos
• Ofter to try to sell your photos — to perhaps Getty Images, Stock photo sites, etc. This proposed service could take a cut.
• Crawl/search for local, tradional media outlet (websites) to submit photos to.
• Send photo(s) as picture text (MMS)
• Fax your photographs to Grandma and insurance companies (Ha!)

Also, a setting to put copyrights/copylefts on all your pictures, like Flickr does would be vital.

• One-click micropayment button

Professional content creators bitch and moan how no one wants to pay to read.  But if rich people would get on it, they could overcome the hurdles of micropayments, namely, the high cost of individual transaction fees.

Once micropayments take off, there will likely be a button next to content and article teases/previews/summaries to click.  The button could say something like: ”Pay $0.005 with dippold@gmail.com (via Google Checkout) & read.” Click and you’ve just instantly paid for what you are now reading.  That’s it.  No other bullshit in the way.  If there is, people won’t do it.

Warning screen preference and all user settings could be configured from something like Google Checkout.

Subsequent installments of The Dreaded Idea will address reading, music, Computing/Internet/Telephony, and miscellany not fitting neatly into a category.

Panoramic of the Jay Pritzker Pavilion at Millennium Park, Chicago,IL.

The Sonar Festival‘s first year in Chicago ran from September 9-11, 2010.  I took off from St Louis Thursday, September 9th, via Amtrak, in hopes to catch a few acts that evening and head back early the next morning.  But the Amtrak broke down for over three hours in Shipman, IL.

All was not lost.  Saw a few acts, including The Slew with Kid Koala at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion, danced (actually my dancing is just me unstiffening a tad) and yukked with a couple friends, took pictures, etc, etc.

More bore time after the jump with “vacation” pics and videos of Millennium Park, Amtrak views of IL, Chicago, Sonar Fest. Stuff of that sort.

Inside the Cloud Gate or “The Bean” at Chicago’s Millennium Park

Panhandler on the Chicago L-Train

Graffiti outside the Amtrak close to Chicago

Crossing into St Louis, MO, from East St Louis, IL via Amtrak

Star Trek ride at the 2010 Missouri State Fair

I’d never in 31 year attended a state fair.  We arrived too late to see any livestock, but State Fair livestock is for city folk.  I only got a chance to stumble around the carnival rides section.

So go grab a pillow and be prepared to get bored to unconsciousness with my Missouri State Fair photos and videos, after the jump.

I’m a country fella from Missouri and have only been to NYC once.  Even so the appearance of The City’s underground has changed quite a bunch from the 80s, especially if movies like The Warriors and these pictures from 24Flinching — “detailing life on and in the New York City subway in the 1980’s” – have even a shred of truth.  Can you tell the pictures shot in the 80s from the two subway pics I shot in 2005? Dumb question.