Travel Photography: Krome Photos service edits pictures for you

by Amy Chen on

A funny thing happens to my travel photos after a trip. After uploading select pictures to Flickr or Picasa, my photos often languish unedited (and unseen) on my laptop. I tell myself that when I finally carve out some free time, I’ll go back and properly edit the rest of the pictures and create a photo book or scrapbook to remember my vacation.

Unfortunately, the photo folders keep multiplying and I never seem to find the time. Luckily, there’s now an affordable online service that can edit your photos for you: Krome Photos.

How It Works
Sign up for a free trial with 25 photo credits and 1GB of storage at www.kromephotos.com. Another special introductory offer gives you 100 photo credits for $2.50. See here for more pricing plans, including monthly subscriptions.

Download the Krome Photo Uploader to your desktop, and upload any photos that you want to be edited. Go off, live life, and about 24-36 hours later, you’ll get an e-mail notifying that your photos have received the “Krome Treatment,” or the talents of a personal photo editor who may improve your pictures with color correction, red-eye correction, cropping, or other tweaks.

You can accept or reject the photo enhancements; a photo credit is deducted from your account balance if you download or share an edited photo. Though it’s nice to have someone else’s perspective on your photography, if you don’t like how a certain photo is cropped or edited, you can easily undo the Krome Treatment. For each photo that you undo, a photo credit is refunded.

Need help deciding which edited photos to keep? You can click on a Before/After button to see the original picture and edited version side by side.As with iPhoto and Picasa, there are also tagging tools to help you organize your pictures.

You can e-mail a high-resolution edited copy to friends and family straight from the Krome Dashboard, which also has easy access to the requisite social-networking tools of Facebook and Shutterfly.

The Bottom Line
Though Krome Photos is not a replacement for Photoshop, Lightroom, iPhoto, or other photo-editing programs, the photo-editing service is a time-saver and could be just the thing to motivate me to edit the rest of my photos myself. As for creating a photo book, that’s still on my to-do list.

New amenities for Amsterdam Airport Schiphol: Wi-Fi and golf!

by Scott Carmichael on

Amsterdam Airport Schiphol has been considered one of the best airports in the world for as long as I can remember – even when I flew in and out of it every week back in early 80’s, Schiphol had some of the best airport shopping of any airport.

In recent years, the airport added a casino, loads of new restaurants, a spa, shower facilities, 2 hotels and a museum.

And now two more amenities can be added to that long list; free Wi-Fi and a golf course. Wi-Fi arrived at Schiphol almost ten years ago, but was always a paid service. Now, users can connect to the “KPN” Wi-Fi network located througout the entire airport, landside and airside. The only downside? Access is only free for one hour. After that, you’ll need to purchase more airtime. When on paid access, you can also print for free, and collect your documents at one of the KPN Internet Centers at the airport.

The golf course is located away from the main terminal, towards the north. When completed in 2012, it’ll be a full 18 hole course with a driving range and club house. No word yet whether you’ll be able to use the course during a layover at Schiphol, but knowing how smart the airport operator is, it wouldn’t surprise me if shuttles are provided.

If only U.S. airports paid attention to their international cousins to see how a real airport should look. Schiphol gets a golf course – and we need to settle for a Sbarro. Sigh.

[Photo from Flickr/on1site]


Check out this list of five airline amentities making a comeback

Merry Christmas from Lonely Planet: 13 free iPhone city guides

by Scott Carmichael on

Lonely Planet just unwrapped an early Christmas present for us all – 13 of their popular iPhone city guides went from $9.99 to $0. The guides are on sale until 1PM December 23rd, so grab them while you can – and remember, even if you don’t need them right away, once purchased, you’ll always have access to them for free.

Here are the 13 guides (iTunes store links):

This is the second time they’ve made the iPhone guides free – last time was to help stranded passengers during the volcanic eruptions in Europe. And don’t think that Lonely Planet forgot about Android users – the Android versions of these apps dropped to 99 cents. Not quite free, but still very generous!

TSA your holiday … or, “What Santa Claus looks like under the scanner”

by McLean Robbins on

Ever wonder what Santa Claus is really hiding under that big red suit, or what he “sees” in Mrs. Claus? Thanks to new website TSA Your Holiday, now you can. Mr. & Mrs. Claus, Frosty, Scrooge, and even Ruldolph take to the scanners (no opt-outs here!) for their big reveals.

Says the site:

In a scoop of WikiLeak-ian proportions, Curley & Pynn has secured highly confidential images of holiday icons (sorry, Santa and Mrs. Claus), which we are releasing for public consumption.

If nothing else, the site provides a bit of much needed levity from a nation already wary of TSA policies.

Thanks to top tweeter @BrooklynNomad for the tip.

FourSquare is everywhere … even North Korea

by Tom Johansmeyer on

Whether you tweet or not, log into Facebook or skip it, you know that social media is everywhere. You just can’t get away from it. There are references on prime-time television, news stories all over the place and special deals at stores large and small. If you think you’re surrounded by this stuff, brace yourself: it’s more pervasive than you realize.

As I was scanning my Twitter stream this week, I saw a tweet by social media company FourSquare, a service that allows people to “check in” at different locations, track their friends and, if they choose, share their locations with the world.

The tweet contained a bold claim, specifically, that the service had recorded check-ins in every country in the world in November … even the most reclusive one:

With 8 check-ins in North Korea, foursquare users visited EVERY country in November! Bouvet Island, you’re one of just 5 territories left…less than a minute ago via webfoursquare
foursquare

%Gallery-109277%While FourSquare has yet to accumulate the user base of Twitter (175 million) or Facebook (550 million), it has grown quickly in the past year, going from a mere 725,000 in March to 5 million only 10 days ago … and it’s adding 25,000 every day.

In addition to letting your friends and followers know where you are, FourSquare has some tools that are useful for both occasional and frequent travels, including the ability to record and share tips at each of the locations you visit. While it’s fun to get check-ins at places that are prestigious, fun or remote, nothing says “for the win” – #FTW in Twitter parlance – quite like a North Korea check-in.

So, are you on FourSquare? What’s your craziest check-in? Leave a comment below to get the ball rolling! I have to admit: mine aren’t all that adventurous, but I am the mayor of an Upper West Side bodega. Okay, that doesn’t compare to a DPRK check-in!

[photo by yeowatzup via Flickr]