Okay, so as you may already know I’m a big fan of any software solution that does what I need in a portable and platform agnostic way, particularly if it does it “in the cloud“.

What you may not know, is that I’m addicted to Twitter and I’ve been going through desktop based Twitter clients faster than my Cadillac beer bongs fuel!  My affair with desktop clients started with TweetDeck, since it’s used by a lot of my friends on Twitter and it seemed to be a front runner.  The problem is that it’s in beta, and it’s a bit buggy still.  Worse yet, it doesn’t run on my linux box.  In fact, no decent Twitter client does work on my linux box.  I’ve also tried Twhirl, and DestroyTwitter.  Both of which lack all the features TweetDeck has, and none of which work “quite right” on my linux box.

And, as if to add insult to injury the company I work for has recently been acquired by a MUCH bigger company which is imposing a lot of new restrictions to the use of our desktop computers.  Meaning I’ll likely not be able to install a Twitter desktop app on my computer in about a month.

Enter TwitterGadget, pictured above.  It’s an iGoogle gadget so it runs in my browser, on windows or linux, without installing!  And it’s quite featureful too! It has built in URL shortening which is one of the features I miss most from other desktop apps.  The one feature I hope to be included soon is TweetShrink integration, but I’ll live without it.

Hopefully I won’t have to change Twitter clients for a while now! 

Okay, first..  This post/rant was inspired by a few tweets from Chase Jarvis.  That said, I’m not throwing stones, or trying to start a fight.  The topic just got me thinking and I wanted to share my train of thought.  Chase, and any other professional who shots tethered, I’m actually jealous.  I wish I could shoot tethered.

Read more after the break…

So, the gist of the tweet(s) was about shooting tethered with the Nikon D3x and Aperture on a MacBook.  At first I thought "curse you Chase and your justifiable budget for fancy gear cause you’re a professional".  But then I thought, isn’t this just the professional expensive version of chimping?  If you’ve not heard of chimping, wikipedia has the best description I’ve seen here.

See, since I got my dSLR I’ve been reading a lot around photography communities, forums, and the like.  In that time, I’ve been able to gather that "chimping" is considered a weakness, and that "real professionals" don’t do it.  I don’t really subscribe to this mentality, afterall the manufacturers put the LCD on the back for a reason right?

I’ve recently shut off the automatic review of photos on my Nikon D80, for a number of reasons.  For one, it’s distracting to have the LCD glowing into your eye when you’re shooting a lot of shots in a dark situation, like in our living room at night capturing something our son is doing.  Also, the dials on the camera change function when the LCD is on to move back and forth between photographs, and the info that’s overlaid.  So if you shoot a shot, and keep the viewfinder to your eye, but try to change the exposure it’s ineffective and you just scroll through the pictures.

That said, when I’m doing anything other than "snap shots" I find myself pushing the play button to see the shot I just took.  Needless to say I’d gladly shoot tethered.  At the moment I have nothing but Windows and Linux based systems, and I haven’t commited to software for a RAW workflow or other tools that would allow me to shoot tethered, but I can assure you when/if I have all the tools necessary I’ll probably do it too.

So, I say to the critics of chimping…  Is tethered shooting really just an expensive version of chimping?  Is it "OK" for a professional to shoot tethered, and if so why is it any different than us mere mortals looking at the LCD on the back of our camera?  I submit that you are just jealous, like I am so you fabricate reasons that this practice is "bad" and makes you "weak".

Comments?