Some local folks have launched a campaign, called “We are Feeling Lucky,” in hopes to entice Google to choose Greenville. This campaign includes a petition, a Twitter hashtag (#luckyGVL), a YouTube campaign and a community event – Google on Main (here’s the Facebook event page). It looks like we’re a legitimate competitor as well, as social media megasite Mashable wrote an article today featuring our entry into the race.

If you’re here in Greenville, SC, I encourage you to go ahead and get involved in “We are Feeling Lucky” – either by signing the petition, uploading a YouTube video, spreading the word on Twitter or attending Google on Main. Super fast internet speeds will be awesome for all of us, but being chosen could also potentially bring a lot of other great opportunities to the area.

I’m not sure why a person buying a consumer-grade DSLR would need something that can produce billboard-sized images. The only people really benefiting from the continuous increase in megapixels are the folks in the digital storage industry, since these images quickly eat up hard drive space. Instead of trying to constantly increase the megapixel count, I wish camera manufacturers would focus on more performance-related features, such as improved low-light capabilities (as this article from Gizmodo suggests), noise/dust reduction, focusing, frame rate and expanding on video capture abilities (since this seems to be the apparent future of DSLRs).

1. Exclusivity – I fully understand why companies like Google build a user base using “by-invitation-only” release. It allows them to scale up the load the software places on their servers by not having everyone sign up at once and also gives them a chance to make bug fixes before too many people are involved. This strategy worked great with services like Gmail and Google Voice, but it seems to have hindered Google Wave. Why? Well, with Voice and Gmail there are alternatives that could be used while users wait on invitations to the new service. With Wave, it was like a user gets an invitation…and now what? If their contacts were not also already Wave users, it seemed pretty pointless to use the service. This is the biggest hindrance to Wave, in my opinion, and could change as more and more people begin to sign up.
2. Slow – Google Wave has also been slow as Christmas to use…at least for me. Performance improvements would definitely make Wave a more attractive communications and collaboration platform.
3. Another inbox to bring to zero – Honestly, people already have enough services and websites to check and get their unread counts to zero. What I think might be nice for Wave moving forward is for the functionality to be integrated into part of Gmail and the stand-alone Wave site to be phased out.

If you haven’t had the chance to surf Google Wave, leave me a comment and I will hook you up – I still have plenty of invitations to give out.

• An improved and consistent web presence: Do you ever have something that you feel just isn’t quite the way you want it to be? That’s where I’m currently at with my presence online. Included here are another round of website upgrades, hopefully in the first part of the year, that will improve the functionality and look of this site. Also, I would like to rejuvenate the blog – to post more in-depth and thought-out entries instead of using this as just a place to share links (we have Twitter for that, right?). I’ve been posting online in some way or another for 6+ years now, but I’d like to tie it all together now and make everything consistent. I plan on getting more involved with online conversations and not just be an observer/reader.
• Shoot more: I’m sure I’m not alone on this one. I’m really excited to already have several shoots lined up for the coming year. I would also like to continue to get out and shoot anything and everything – always learning, always meeting new people and trying new things, always getting better.
• Put ideas into action: I have a couple of personal/side projects that I have been thinking about for a while now. I’d like to get some of these rolling this year.

What about you? Do you have any plans or goals for 2010?

This is the background set design that we put together for our Vacation Bible School last week at Lifepoint. I hadn’t ever worked on putting together something like this before and it was a lot of work – but it was also a lot of fun.

It’s amazing what you can do with some cardboard, duct tape, foam and paint. We were actually able to find a lot of materials lying around, or donated from someone that was about to throw it away. The backdrop was assembled from three pieces of foam, with the shack built out of a fourth piece. Although we all pitched in here and there on the backdrop, most of the painting was delegated to Ben. The boat was constructed from an empty grill box. The dock is a piece of staging with cardboard on top and the railing is made from two long cardboard tubes cut into sections. We laid down green cellophane for the water and the plants were already part of the church decor.

Overall, we put this together for less than $100, with the only expenses being the cellophane, the foam, the Spanish moss  and the paint.

The wedding was this past weekend and from what he told me, the cake was a big hit at the rehearsal dinner. I can honestly say that this is the first request I’ve received to use one of my images on a cake. Pretty cool if you ask me. Here’s the picture he sent me of the cake:

After all of this, it’s supposed to be in the 70′s this weekend. That’s just fine with me.

Direct link to Smith’s charity Tanner’s Totes.

The Spring-like weather didn’t last long enough for me. After a week of highs in the low seventies, I went outside this morning to find my car frozen over. I’m guessing that was enough to kill off any of the blooms from the trees/flowers that had emerged (like the one in our backyard, pictured above).