Tom Karlo - Karlo.Org

Google+ Photos with Auto-Awesome

The new "auto awesome" feature on Google+ photos is pretty damn amazing. Upload a string of photos from your motor drive, and it'll make an animated GIF out of them, spontaneously. Upload a series of group photos, and it'll combine them into a single image where everyone looks good, automatically. Upload a bunch of headshots in front of a similar background, and it'll composite them.

It'a a pain getting animated GIFs to show up on Typepad - it likes to convert them to jpegs. Go to G+ to view a bunch I took of the last day of my kickball league and dumped into Google+ to test out the new feature.)

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No Parking

In December 2008, I built isalternatesideparkingineffect.com over the course of a weekend, on a whim. It was a nice little Rails project with a cleanly defined use case. Initially just a one-page web site, it soon added a daily email blast and a twitter feed so folks could get their parking information.

Since then, we've delivered over 15 million emails to an average of 10,000 subscribers, and the site's been featured in The New York Times. Not bad for a weekend project.

But it's time to move on. Back when I started the site, the New York City Department of Transportation was still communicating parking status the old-fashioned way, mostly by notifying local mass media. Today, you can sign up for email updates, check the 311 web site, or follow the official Twitter feed. (Ironically, the logo for the official NYC Parking twitter account seems to have come from my feed.)

Given the city's online progress, there just isn't as much of a place for a one-man service to add value. As of June 1, 2013, I plan to shut down my service, archive the server, and turn it off for good. Thanks to everyone who subscribed all these years, and best of luck finding your next parking spot!