Melastmohican's Blog

As an every day commuter I am really happy to see this happening. The bike directions take a lot of factors into consideration:
designated bike lanes, tries to avoid areas with lots of hill climbs and drops, busy roads and intersections. In giving estimates on trip times, Google uses an average person at an average Body Mass Index level, peddling up and down the terrain. Let’s take a look at my usual morning route. I checked it with GPS logger and it is 9 miles which takes me about 35 minutes. According to Google Maps it is 11.6 mi and takes 1 hour. This feature is still in beta so I hope they will make some improvements

Tags: beta, bicycle, biking, directions, Google, Internet, maps, News, route, Software, web

Canon today pre-announces the release of a firmware update for the multiple award-winning EOS 5D Mark II. Originally announced in late 2009, the update adds 24 and 25 frames per second (fps) recording to the camera’s EOS MOVIE video function, and will be available as a free download from the middle of March.

Tags: 5d, camera, Canon, eos, firmware, Hardware, markII, Photo, upgrade, video

Popular web-based photo editing service Picnik was acquired by Google. Picnik does a great job of cropping and touching up photos, and it comes with a lot of fun effects. It looks like nothing changes today. They will keep supporting existing partners, including Flickr and Facebook. I just wonder how they going to merge it with with Picasa?

Tags: acquire, edit, facebook, Flickr, Google, Photo, picasa, picnik, service, web

This was a good month overall. Slightly less (-16%) than previous month which was BME if you look at total revenue. It happened because 123RF did extremely well. This time it did very good so it grabs second place but it was half of what was in January. I am happy to announce new record from SS after 18 months from the last BME. Also I am observing increase from IS. It’s very slow but they keep growing few percent every month and this month it gives them 3rd place. It is mostly because my other top 5 performers did not increase contributions very much. For DT and FT it was OK month so they have to do better than that. SXP stop contributing at the beginning of month so in result they dropped from top 5. It does look like transition to ThinkStock has happened yet. I am keeping my fingers crossed, it is good start of the year but you cannot tell if this trend will last.


Feb Feb/Jan
SS 63.37% 123.86% BME
123RF 15.34% 40.42%
IS 5.77% 157.75% BME
DT 5.25% 116.42%
FT 4.41% 118.93%
SXP 3.03% 50.98%
BS 1.75% 150.00%
CSP 1.09% 254.55%
Total 83.88%


Tags: bme, camera, microstock, Photo, photography, pictuures, selling, shuttoerstock, Stock

You can set it to post a daily summary when your images or videos are accepted to Shutterstock, a daily summary of your Shutterstock sales stats, or both. It works with both images and footage, and you can set it to make posts automatically, or you can make them manually. You will also earn referral fees when your posts lead to subscription sales.

Shutterstock Facebook App

Tags: camera, microstock, Photo, photography, pictures, selling, shutterstock, Stock

Surprise. I did not expect somebody needs picture of California gull for commercial purposes I guess, you never know.

The California Gull Larus californicus is a medium-sized gull

Tags: camera, microstock, Photo, photography, picture, selling, Stock

Map displays temperatures as measured from stations across Weather Underground’s extensive reporting areas, but you can also switch to Precipitation and Cloud views (you can even play back cloud or precipitation movement over time). In the bottom-left of the window you get an overview of current conditions and a four-day forecast.

Tags: forecast, Google, maps, weather

It took me 20 months to reach this number.

Floor Games

Tags: camera, Dreamstime, microstock, Photo, photography, pictures, selling, Stock

This image become quite popular across few agencies I am submitting right now which proves that it was done right. It was whole family cooperation as you see, I am on the picture with my daughter Maya and my wife shot it

Assisted walking

Tags: camera, family, lifestyle, microstock, Photo, photography, pictures, selling, Stock

Last month I sold EL for slightly different image of San Francisco Mission on 123RF. Now it was sold on SS.

Mission San Francisco de Asis

Tags: camera, microstock, Photo, photography, pictures, selling, Stock