BitDepth 686, a look at the first Trini Tweetup and some tips on using Twitter is posted here...

Tags: Twitter

In February 1978, The Jacksons were adrift. They were gone from Motown, the label that had nurtured them from childhood to stardom. Now they were with Epic Records, the beginning of a long and ultimately unsatisfying period that yielded almost no additions to their significant repertoire.
In just over a year, little brother Michael would begin a trajectory of fame and stardom that would eclipse his most remarkable moments under Berry Gordy. In short order, he would emerge as the saving grace of the film version of The Wiz and record the first solo album on which he would exercise his growing production and songwriting skills.
The Jacksons in 1978 seemed very much in flux, caught between the glories of their past and an uncertain future, the band was confident in performance and capable in public presence.

My brief encounter with them during the few days that they spent in Trinidad and Tobago would forever change the arc of my own career, the photo that I stumbled into of Michael and Penny Commissiong forever lifted my profile from writer with a camera to photographer and changed my own perception of my capabilities and potential.
The Jacksons tour of 1978 didn't change my life, but it accelerated my travels along an inevitable path and gave me both the confidence to pursue a shaky professional venture and the will to stick with it when things didn't work out.

I have no doubt that Michael and his brothers forgot all about me before they even set foot on their flight back home and I will confess to have thought little about the encounter over the past three decades, but in reposting the story I sold to Owen Baptiste's People Magazine (my first major story in a magazine and pictures on a glossy cover) I hope to share something of what happened during those few days and to pay homage to the young star who passed away on June 25.

Read my reminiscing for the Sunday Guardian of June 28 here...
Read the original story for People Magazine here...

Tags: Music

Soyini Grey was a delight to work with on this clip for CNews' technology segment. Smart, funny and accommodating, she allowed me to ramble on for what seemed like way too long about Twitter, traditional media and the elections in Iran.

Some thoughts that didn't make it into the final edit include...
Twitter succeeded in Iran because it was diffuse and invisible. Traditional media was easy to find, target and neutralise. Licensed, official reporters are known to the authorities, dozens of people with cellphones and laptops are not.

The authorities in Iran tried to stop information from getting out, blocking access to the preferred social media network in Iran, Friendfeed, but young people simply switched to Twitter and went on sharing links and news updates. Multiple sources of information and multiple points of access for publishing make traditional methods of information supression more difficult, if not impossible to implement.

In embracing new media, traditional media sources need to cultivate the savvy to separate misinformation from fact, opinion from reporting. Life magazine, busy reinventing itself as a source for impactful photography on the web did exactly that by making contact with a photographer who posted some of the best imagery coming out of the protests and gathering that person's work into a striking gallery.

The photographer's identity remains unknown and has since been reported missing by their family. See those images on Life's gallery here...

Related...
BitDepth 686: How to use Twitter
BitDepth 685: Twitter 100 Days later
BitDepth 672: Tweet, tweet, twiddly tweet
BitDepth + Notes from the Twitterverse

Tags: Technology

BitDepth #685, a look at my experience with Twitter over the last three months, is posted here...

Tags: Twitter

BitDepth 684, a look at Microsoft's Bing and Google's Wave is posted here...

Tags: Google

BitDepth 683, a look at how newspapers need to manage their content in an Internet age is posted here...

View the whole three part series here...
BitDepth 681 - Newsprint, endangered
BitDepth 682 - The Dock and the Boat
BitDepth 683 - Lost opportunities, future potential

Presentation slides and audio of the presentation given by Georgia Popplewell, Mark Lyndersay and Kellie Magnus to Caribbean media practitioners in Grenada which was the inspiration for the series can be downloaded here...

Tags: Media

How do you nurture creativity? This is what I've learned about the process over the years. Read More...

Tags: Creativity

BitDepth 682, some thoughts about the dilemma facing newspapers today is posted here...

Tags: Media

BitDepth 681, some thoughts related to a talk I gave in Grenada to journalists at the Caribbean Media and Communication Conference on May 14, 2009 is posted here...

Tags: Media

BitDepth 680 a look at the new Star Trek film, is posted here...

Tags: Movies

On Thursday, Georgia Popplewell and I gave presentations on the Future of Media at the Caribbean Media and Communication Conference in Grenada. The presentation slides in PDF format and an audio recording courtesy of George Grant can be downloaded here...

Tags: Technology

BitDepth 679, a hands-on look at Windows RC1 is posted here...

Tags: Microsoft

Posted reports of launches of the new Blackberry Storm and Windows RC1 in Trinidad and Tobago to Other Writing...

Tags: Technology

The BitDepth series on maximising your website for a true Web 2.0 experience is complete. It's all stuff I've learned over the last couple of years of building and maintaining this site.

View the series here...

BitDepth 674 - The Attention Deficit
The real currency of the web is eyeballs and attention. Plan your web presence to capture them.

BitDepth 675 - Starting the web conversation
Using a blog as part of your web strategy

BitDepth 676 - Who's out there?
Using site analytics to understand your audience and plan your website's layout

BitDepth 677 - Social mixing for success
Using social media and social web techniques to make your website part of the networks

BitDepth 678 - Putting rubber to the road
Planning the crucial final steps on your web presence.

Tags: Internet

BitDepth 677, a look at how social media and web attractors can positively enhance your website is posted here...

Tags: Internet

An Interview with Angela Camacho about Microsoft's hope to work for development in the region is posted here...

Tags: Microsoft

BitDepth #676, a look at how examining your website statistics can help you plan strategy is posted here...
BitDepth 675 - Starting the web conversation
BitDepth 674 - The Attention Deficit

Tags: Internet

Moved IE8 story to Other Writing

Tags: Internet

BitDepth 675, advice on how to establish a modern web presence, is posted here...
This is the second part in a series making a real impact in Web 2.0. Find the first part here...

Tags: Web

Trying to get some consensus on what people are seeing, or not when they click on this blog page in IE on Windows. Tweaking is in progress, feeback is appreciated.
Hope folks who can't actually see this pick it up in the RSS feed or on Twitter.

Tags: Windows

The story Playing pan with powder about an entrepreneur's plan to bring durable colour to the national instrument is posted here...

Tags: Music

BitDepth 674, the first in a month long examination of website and social media strategies is posted here...

Tags: Internet

The full review of Jazz on the Greens 2009 (the review is abruptly truncated in the paper and on its website) at the UWI Centre for the Creative Arts is posted here, along with the full selection of photographs offered to the paper for publication.

Tags: Music

...at the request of some Justices who relayed concerns about security. Sorry. I really liked it too.

Tags: Web

Tribe downloads as logged by my web statistics as of March 26, 2008. The other files in the listing are small files associated with page designs on the website. Overall statistics cover two years of cumulative data. The Tribe PDF is just under 800KB and only downloads when someone specifically clicks on it.

Downloads of the facsimile document of Gathering the Tribe, my account of a year spent observing the Carnival band Tribe's production process has crossed 7,000 downloads in its first month of availability.
The PDF file of the three pages allocated to me in the Guardian's Ash Wednesday Carnival souvenir created a spike in the bandwidth on my site's servers this month, but it's a welcome surge and covered by my hosting arrangements.
Thanks for your interest.
The file, along with PDFs of the first eight in the series are to be found here...
An expanded gallery of images is posted here...


The Tribe PDF bandwidth use expressed by volume in bytes in webstats for the last two years. The first Local Lives is ahead on volume, but it's been on the site for two years, not four weeks.

Tags: Local Lives

Yes, there is Ikea food... Read More...

Tags: Ikea

Tags: Web

Tags: Web

• The appropriation of Richard Hatch and his anger about the remake into the show as Tom Zarek.
• The appearance of Battlestar Pegasus and the resulting powerplay.
• Starbuck’s capture of a Cylon raider and the discovery that the ship is organic.
• Season 3’s unflinching translation of the Iraq occupation to BSG’s universe as Cylons occupy New Caprica.
• Finding Earth. Nuff said.
• Anastasia “Dee” Dualla’s last day.
• Felix Gaeta’s rebellion and its ultimate consequences.
• Gaius Baltar, inspired villain. The lameness that is ultimate evil.

Tags: SciFi

BitDepth #673, a look back at the Ronald Moore's Battlestar Galactica, is posted here...

Tags: SciFi

In less than a week, Watchmen slunk off the screens of moviehouses in Trinidad and Tobago. Some thoughts about why a dark brooding superhero film failed to find an audience here and elsewhere. Read More...

Tags: Movies

More notes about Twitter related to BitDepth#672... Read More...

Tags: Twitter

BitDepth 672, about the growing technology Twitter is posted here...

Tags: Twitter

The ramifications of Government subsidy of Carnival run deep. Read More...

Tags: Editorials

BitDepth#671, a review of the Watchmen film, is posted here...

Tags: Movies

Creative enterprises are funny like that.
Out of nowhere, there will suddenly be two movies about a meteor endangering Earth bearing down on the box office.
Carnival can be like that too, sometimes.

The week before Carnival, for instance, I was hugely entertained by Errol Fabien’s Heart Attack, the video for which I have been granted an opportunity to share, above. Rendered a little shakily by the performer, as befits an entry in a “company calypso competition,” (Gayelle The Channel’s annual Bois), I was struck by the kind of calypso that would have been commonplace in the tents of just a decade ago.

This witty bad skylark song that would have created buzz in the listening community and drawn crowds to the tent. Fabien won the competition with the song, despite an announcer’s mix-up that gave the crown to another performer during the live broadcast.

Imagine my surprise when Hollis Liverpool, The Mighty Chalkdust, arrived on the Dimanche Gras stage with an all-new composition that struck many of the gracenotes of Fabien’s song and also won his competition with “My Heart and I.” Just another of those happy coincidences that springs up in the competitive hotbed of Carnival.

There was another surprise for me on Dimanche Gras night, as Kadafi Romney crossed the stage as Manzandaba in Flight, a costume by Brian Mac Farlane that seemed more than a little familiar.
Whenever these kinds of things happen, I remember a very generous comment that Peter Minshall shared with me years ago when he was explaining his design process.
“It’s a very limited canvas,” he said.

Minshall noted that a designer was constrained both by the shape of the human body and by the limits that a designer had to work with in terms of what the committed masquerader could carry and the average masquerader would be willing to carry.

It’s as good a bit of reasoning as any when designs overlap and calypso themes mirror each other.
Or...they could be separated at birth.

Tags: Musing

BitDepth #670, posted here, explores the potential of Palm's new Pre smartphone to reverse the company's fortunes. If you're subscribed to the current RSS feed for BitDepth, please take a moment to resubscribe. I've had to change the URL for the feed to reflect the current year.

Tags: Technology

Rereading the book before the film is formally released, I am captured once again by the obsessive detail and care that Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons invested in the Watchmen graphic novel. Read More...

Tags: Watchmen

Editorial on the romance of Carnival for the Trinidad Guardian for March 03 Read More...

Tags: Editorials

BitDepth #669, a look at the changing face of Carnival is posted here...

Tags: Carnival

Got to stop working while I'm half asleep.
Failed to recover some lost data from the Tribe story, but I did manage to fix the oversharpening on the Tribe gallery.
Much of the project is shot existing light with high ISO settings, so too much sharpening makes the images particularly cruddy.
I've also upped the resolution to 900 pixels as a bonus.
Added a text page with the copy that has accompanied all nine of the stories and revamped the design of the pages.

Tags: Carnival

The ninth installment of Local Lives is now available. The print version appeared in the Trinidad Guardian today and an extended gallery of images selected for the story with full captions is available here.
The printed version, with an excellent design by Kevan Gibbs is available for download as a PDF here.
There's a bit of background into the story of this installment of Local Lives, which took a year to produce here.

Tags: Carnival

Editorial written for the Carnival Tuesday edition of the Trinidad Guardian about the future of calypso for February 17. Read More...

Tags: Editorials

BitDepth 668, musings about the ways that technology has changed my photographic approach to Carnival is posted here...

Tags: Photography

BitDepth # 667, a report on COTT's new electronic monitoring system is posted here...

Tags: Copyright

The Viey La Cou series is now live in the Virtual Gallery. A behind the scenes account of the 1989 shoot is posted in my photo blog.
The GayelleTV gallery formerly in my portfolio has been revisited, re-edited and is now posted in Virtual Gallery format in that section.

Tags: Photography

The Viey La Cou series begins today with Dame Lorraine. I took extensive notes on these photographs in the late 1980's and have since lost them. If anyone recognises the players, please let me know so that I can put names to the faces.

In the 20 years since I shot these photos, most of these old players have since left the stage and younger players with more enthusiasm and far less history have taken their place. I was fortunate enough to have the chance to capture these images when so many of these characters were still being played by performers who had been doing the roles for decades.

I'll be posting the complete series after they appear on the front page of this website in the Virtual Gallery and putting a photographer's note in the Photo Blog.

Tags: Carnival

Notes on what happens when you press two of Canon's ETTL strobes with wireless sync into service in the middle of the St James Hosay celebrations.

Tags: Photography

The Viey La Cou series, portraits of traditional Carnival characters that I shot at that celebration in the early 80's, will begin on Friday.

Tags: Photography

Trinidad Guardian editorial about the reconstructed Savannah stage Read More...

Tags: Editorials

BitDepth 666, a look at Microsoft's new public beta for its Windows operating system is posted here...

Tags: Microsoft

BitDepth 665, the story of Derren Joseph's adjustment of his ticketing service to encompass calypso tents is posted here...

Tags: Technology

BitDepth664, a look at the return of TSTT's mobile broadband service is posted here...

Tags: Broadband

Facebook friends redefine the birthday experience. Read More...

Tags: Facebook

BitDepth 663 an update on the progress of TrinidadTunes.com and the Free + Legal campaign is posted here...

Tags: Music

The Free + Legal campaign jointly announced by Columbus Communication's Flow and TrinidadTunes.com marked a coming of age for the music download service.
As the team behind Riddums Music and Trinidad Music Store closed in on their first anniversary, Flow approached the music distributors looking for ideas on a meaningful collaboration.
Flow had first approached 3 Canal about doing a jingle, but the group doesn't do that kind of work, so the idea of Free + Legal was born, offering music for a limited time with a sponsor footing the cost.

As noted here in BitDepth, 3 Canal will be offering their new album Joy + Fire exclusively on TrinidadTunes.com until they release the CD later in the Carnival season.
The idea was stimulated by the October 2008 visit of Gerd Leonhard, a futurist thinker with a special interest in music and its distribution in the digital age.
"Flow has been amazing," said Lorraine O'Connor. "We thought that the phone companies would have jumped on this idea, but Flow didn't even want to limit it to their customers on their network."

3 Canal apparently left their meeting with Flow astonished at how open minded the company proved to be in their discussions.
TrinidadTunes hopes to start hosting music videos on the website before the end of the Carnival season.
"We're not philanthropists," said O'Connor.

"But we see that it's to the long term benefit of both our businesses to build interest in legal downloads," her business partner Roses Hezekiah continued.
"The most astonishing thing is that Flow's team is just bright, bright women and the meetings just blaze on," said O'Connor, "Rhea (Yawching, Flow's Communications chief) will just hold up her hands and bawl, 'no more ideas, no more, I have no budget left'."

Tags: Music

The full year's archive of BitDepth for 2005 is now available here...

Tags: BitDepth

Background notes and reminiscing on a favorite photo of The Mighty Duke, Kelvin Pope...

Tags: Photography

Notes about the some of the changes in play on the website. Read More...

Tags: Coding in progress

BitDepth662, a roundup of Apple's Macworld releases, is posted here...

Tags: Apple

After adding the Macintosh blog last year, I've decided to merge the contents of the Mac content with the main blog.
I'll continue to add entries and I'll be adding some navigation tools to make accessing the material a little easier.
At least it won't be so embarassing when weeks go by without an update.

Tags: Macintosh

BitDepth#661, a hands-on look at the new Macbook Pro is posted here...
Additional notes on using the notebook are here... Read More...

Tags: Apple

More notes from a presentation on Microsoft's new Hyper-V server technology.
Read the BitDepth story on the event here... Read More...

Tags: Microsoft

Messy desktop? These tools can hide it, if not tidy it. Read More...

Tags: Software

The rig I made to cool off a hot notebook... Read More...

Tags: Hardware

Software can make backup less of a chore. Read More...

Tags: Software

Running system updates on Mac OS X can be tricky business. Read More...

Tags: Update

If you need an FTP client, you’ll find many useful choices available for the Mac. Choosing the right one is a matter of matching need to software. Read More...

Tags: Software

Every warrior has a secret weapon sheathed in a secret personal space on his person. SpellCatcher and Grammarian are the hidden shoe knives I unleash on my words before releasing them into the world. Read More...

Tags: Software

Need to do more with photos than iPhoto's tools offer? Scared of Photoshop's price tag? There's a lot of good stuff in-between. Read More...

Tags: Software

The MacBook Air is slim and sexy, but is it enough laptop? Read More...

Tags: Notebook

Why a smaller, cheaper laptop made sense... Read More...

Tags: Notebook

BitDepth #660, a look at Microsoft's new Hyper-V virtualisation enabled server is posted here...

Tags: Microsoft

BitDepth 657 on the value proposition of HDTV is posted here...
BitDepth 658, the annual gift guide for tech lovers is posted here...
BitDepth 659, a look at Quantum of Solace and The Day the Earth stood still is posted here...

Tags: Technology

BitDepth # 656, a look at Google's new web browser, Chrome, is posted here...

Tags: Internet

Additional reporting on the ICT Symposium, direct from my notebook...
Related: BitDepth 655... Read More...

Tags: Government, Internet

The final posting of notes from PhotoPlus Expo 2008, notes on talks given by Joe McNally is posted here...

Tags: Business

BitDepth 655, a report on the two days of seminars of the ICT Symposium 2008 is posted here...

Tags: Government, Internet

Bheem was always kind to strangers but he doted on his children and their children. Photo by Mark Lyndersay.

Bheem Singh died on November 09 and was buried on November 12 in a quiet ceremony at St Mary's Church in St James.
In one of those curious turns that makes Trinidad and Tobago such a unique and intriguing nation, the man who returned Divali, a Hindu festival to St James with a street display outside his home at Ethel Street, was buried under Christian rites.

Bheem Singh was always kind and generous to me and his tireless patience with my efforts to photograph his work for the festival, so he was, after a fashion, the first of my Local Lives subjects.
I first photographed the work he was doing with his sons on Ethel Street for The Wire, but the photos weren't published. When I came by to apologise for wasting his time, he berated me instead for not visiting on Divali night to share in the food his family generously served to anyone who visited their home.

This year, neither Bheem nor I were at the family's celebrations. He was in hospital while the family bravely carried on with the celebrations and I was was in New York, having carelessly failed to factor in the overlap with my travel.
He was a generous, kind and cheerful man, a great neighbour in St James. He will be missed, particularly when the lights of the deyas are lit each year.

I've finally posted the last three of the published Local Lives essays, including A Light in the West.

Tags: Local Lives

BitDepth 654, an overview of the first five years of Fast Forward is posted here...

Tags: Government, Internet

BitDepth 653, a report on cable company Columbus Communications' recent press conference, is posted here...

Tags: Cable

I wrote this editorial for Monday's Guardian (October 03).
As I mentioned in a note to David's son, Brendan, his father always recognised me wherever we met with a kindness and generosity that was always touching.
David De Caires was a man of some intensity, but he had no airs and I count myself fortunate to have met him through my friendship with Brendan. Read More...

Tags: Editorial

After almost a full week of hacking my lungs up and blowing my sinuses into a rather vast assortment of tissues, I've finally mustered the energy to begin posting to the site again.
Fortunately, I'm working from copious notes from the show floor at PhotoPlus Expo 2008, so the assortment of drugs and remedies I've been ingesting hasn't quite succeeded in wiping my brain pan clean of what I encountered over the three days of Expo.

Herewith, a roundup of all the new postings to the site...
BitDepth 651 covers a panel at PhotoPlus on the way Microstock has changed the face of not just stock photography sales but the profile of contributors.
There are additional notes from that panel posted to my Photo Blog here.
BitDepth 652 covers the panel of winners of this year's All Roads Project. Just one of the winners was able to make it, and his story is a remarkable one.
Day One of my PhotoPlus expo blog coverage covers the hunt for a new sling bag.

Tags: Photography

The next installment of BitDepth (October 28) will be a report on highlights from this year's PhotoPlus Expo, but from Thursday evening, I'll be blogging my findings and notes from the show floor of the PhotoPlus Expo 2008 at the Jacob Javits Centre in New York for the duration of the three days of the show.
You'll find that coverage posted on my photoblog here...

Tags: Photography

BitDepth 650, a look at Apple's new line of notebooks is posted here...

Tags: Macintosh

Notes on the Futurist event at the Hilton Hotel on October 08, 2008. Read More...

Tags: Technology

BitDepth 649, a look at Facebook's changes and future is posted here...

Tags: Facebook

Additional notes from an interview with Gerd Leonhard and a link to the BitDepth interview with him. Read More...

Tags: Technology

A review of Brian Vaughn and Pia Guerra's epic graphic novel, Y the last man. Read More...

Tags: Reviews

BitDepth #647 a look at the Jill Greenberg - John McCain situation is posted here...

Tags: Photography

Notes about fundraising events for the photographer Jeffrey Chock. Read More...

Tags: Photography

A new entry on my photography blog explores the unoirtabce of high quality lenses on digital camera bodies. Find it here...

Tags: Photography

Sorry about my tardiness this week. BitDepth 645 was posted late but 646, which concludes my coverage of the iPhone in Trinidad and Tobago is posted here...

Tags: iPhone

A review of four novels about comics and the beginning of my coverage of comics on the blog. Read More...

Tags: Reviews

First notice of the fundraising effort in support of the medical expenses for Jeffrey Chock. Read More...

Tags: Photography

New image gallery added to the brand new section of the website, The Virtual Gallery.
This new section offers images in much higher than normal resolution (images will be 1200 pixels wide or 1024 pixels high on their long side, depending on orientation) and will fit nicely on a screen that’s 17 inches or larger.
The display is roughly equivalent to viewing an 8 x 10 inch print.

This runs counter to the traditional thinking on web reproduction, these larger files being easy targets for theft. But there’s also a very valuable counter movement, exemplified by the Boston Globe’s take on photography on the web. Which is, in summary, so what?

I’ve had exhibitions of my work in the past and I still haven’t recovered from the experience 25 years later. I’d rather risk some petty theft and display some of my collections properly than massage my ego with another show in a hurry.

Let me know what you think about the first collection. I have another, much larger “show” waiting in the wings.

To assist you in viewing the images on your screen with greater accuracy, I’ve included these colour bars. Most modern monitors offer some colour controls that will eliminate particularly obvious colour casts.

The blocks in the bar are from left to right, 100 percent of blue, green, red and black, 50 percent gray, 25 percent gray and 100 percent white (that block should disappear on this page).

The latest photoblog entry is a look behind the scenes at some recent photography for Gayelle TV that’s now on show here...

Tags: How

Trinidad Dreamscape freaks out after finding out that Noel Norton is shooting with a digital camera.

Tags: Photography

Got an iPhone and messed around with it thoroughly. Part one of my exploration of Apple’s new mobile platform.

Tags: iPhone

A new Mac blog entry on Think, software for reducing visual clutter on your screen is posted here...

Tags: Macintosh