Feb 25
News, twitter 1

This you??? Anatomy of a Twitter Phishing Attack

Over the last couple of days I’ve gotten at least 10 Direct Messages from Twitter friends – most of which are pretty well versed in modern web technologies and even one that calls herself a “social media expert”. The messages are all the same, the text “This you???” followed by a shortened link. The link takes you to a web page that looks a lot like the Twitter.com login page but when you log in your password is stored and passed on to evil people with eviler intentions yet to be unveiled.

Targeting (and hooking in) the pros

Twitter phishing attacks are nothing new but this one is a bit different – and all the more disturbing for it: It targets and manages to hook in Twitter power users more than any other exploit before it. This is done by taking advantage of the fact that most heavy Twitter users don’t actually use the regular Twitter.com page but rather a Twitter manager like TweetDeck or HootSuite. And whereas a person just using Twitter.com would immediately know something was up when they were redirected to the login page even though they were already logged in, a TweetDeck or HootSuite user would probably not be logged in and could potentially enter their information in a momentary lapse of reason.

Unknown agenda

Another thing that is disturbing about this particular attack is that unlike most other attacks which immediately start spamming people with badly disguised ads for teeth whitening, weight loss or other affilliate marketing junk, this one – at least for no – is only out to perpetuate itself sending out the same message over and over. This means there is probably some larger plan in progress, and so far we don’t know what that plan is.

Even more disturbing a lot of people use the same password for many things including their social media networks like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, MySpace and whatever other timewaster fits their fancy. That means if someone gets a hold of their Twitter password they are likely to also have access to their other accounts, not to mention Gmail or Hotmail accounts!

How to aviod being phished (and what to do if you are a victim)

Twitter.com’s help has a comprehensive breakdown of how to reset your password, sever connections and get your account back if you are the victim of a phishing attack or your account has been hacked. If you think your account has been compromised it is paramount that you follow these steps immediately to protect your online identity. That link again is here.

Here are a few simple steps to avoid becoming a victim of a Twitter hijacking:

  • Have a complicated password. If you can’t think of one, here are a few ideas: Do like Mulder from The X-Files and swap out words with numbers. His password was “trustno1″ where the word “one” was exchanged for the number 1. Do like my friend Craig and show your support for a sports team. He’s a big fan of the Vancouver Canucks and hates the Toronto Maple Leafs. His password is “canucks>leafs” i.e. Canucks bigger than Leafs.
  • Change your password regularly. By “regularly” I mean every 6 months or so.
  • If anything unusual happens, change your password immediately.
  • Don’t use the same password for everything. That may sound like a lot of work but I use an algorithm based on the site name that changes the first and last character of my password so it’s not that hard.
  • Don’t give your password away.
  • Check the URL in the address bar before you enter your password. If it doesn’t say Twitter.com but something else, it’s not Twitter.com.
Post a job. Find one. authenticjobs.com
Jan 20
News, WordPress as CMS, services 1

Design Schooled Kids – Pushing WordPress to the edge

dsk1A couple of months ago I got a tweet from Tracy Sullivan of Design Schooled Kids about creating a web site for her line of stationery for kids. It was an interesting project both because of the products themselves – stationery that teaches kids to read and write – and because it posed some unique challenges where design and development was concerned.

Well, actually the design portion was already handled by Tracy herself. The challenge in that regard lay in taking Tracy’s clean and exact designs and making them appear on the web as they did on paper. As for development the main challenge was that although this was to be an online store she wanted it to look nothing like an online store.  So basically the project consisted of taking a new site concept from a paper mock-up to a fully working website. Exactly the kind of stuff I like to do.

Taking WordPress right to the edge

dsk3The result of a lot of hard work is a website that in my view takes WordPress right to the edge of what it is capable of. Every element of the site is custom built from my basic WaveFront theme to create a look, feel and operation that in no way resembles or even hints at WordPress or a regular e-commerce CMS. That said there is no real reason why any site, WordPress blog or otherwise, should look a certain way. A CMS is after all just a HTML generator that spits out whatever you want it to, and once you have the HTML you can use CSS to display it any way you want. The true challenge here was centered around getting the e-commerce portion to look, work and feel less like a boxed e-commerce solution and more like something classy and custom even though it was built on top of the WP eCommerce plugin. So while on the back end this is a fairly standard WordPress installation with pages, a blog (upcoming) and an e-commerce component, on the outside it looks like a custom site with all the bells and whistles built from scratch. Which is exactly what both Tracy and I wanted.

Ultra-clean designs pose unique challenges

dsk2Tracy is a designer of my heart: Obsessively detailed and extremely picky. (To be honest I don’t think you can call yourself a designer if you don’t fall into these categories, but that’s just me.) Her designs looked easy enough, but the true challenge lay in matching her static pages created in InDesign to live dynamic pages on the web. With such a rigid frame to work inside all the regular cross-browser problems like padding- and margin widths, positioning, font sizes etc that we normally choose to ignore or just tweak till they fit within acceptible buffer zones were all of a sudden make-it-or-break-it points that had to be done exactly right. The most notable example was that when each page loaded, whatever page content was in the “content” section of the layout had to line up perfectly with the topmost menu item. Sure, that’s easy enough if all the content is the same, but in this case we were working with four fundamentally different types of pages: Plain text pages for general info (home, about etc), dynamic index pages for each product line consisting of a header image plus a series of thumbnails for each product, single product pages with a larger image off the top with product stats and purchase buttons on the right and info underneath and finally shopping cart pages.

dsk4This meant the site demanded entirely separate style codes for the different elements depending on the type of page (or more specifically page template) was being displayed. And all these styles had to be flexible enough to be applied to the same item in different ways depending on the current template. Normally this would be easy enough to solve by using custom page templates, but in this case we were using the WP eCommerce plugin which generated all the product indexes, single product pages and shopping carts. As a result I had to dissect the eCommerce plugin pretty much line by line to find where all these elements were generated and how to go about repositioning them. What I found was a plugin that although it looks amazing on the outside was actually quite messy behind the curtain. I won’t write any further on this topic here – suffice it to say if you want WP eCommerce to do something that’s not just basic implementation you better prepare yourself for hours of decrypting bizarre code layouts and counter intuitive solutions. More on that in a different post.

In the end I created multiple theme files for the theme itself as well as the WP eCommerce plugin that allowed for micromanaged control of all the different pages. Not an easy task, but more than doable given enough time and some good background music.

Overall I’d say DesignSchooledKids.com has been my most challenging project to date, not because of the design or development elements of the baisc site but because the WP eCommerce plugin falls short in way too many places. In the end I made it all work the way it should but that was only because I spent an enormous ammount of time fixing or all together rewriting the code in the plugin so it would behave properly. It’s a bit of a disappointment really but now that I know how all the pieces fit together I should be able to reproduce it in the future.

Visit Design Schooled Kids and check out both what WordPress can do and what Tracy has to offer.

Jan 06
Events, Expression Web, Speaking Engagements, WordPress Themes 3

MIX10 Proposal: I Reject Your Stylesheet and Substitute My Own

I reject your stylesheet and substitute my own t-shirt

Ever since I was invited to attend Microsoft’s web design and development conference MIX in 2008 I’ve been itching to submit my own session proposal and get on the podium to share with other developers and designers my experiences working with Expression Web and WordPress. The plan was to submit a proposal for MIX09 but life and work intervened and made it impossible for me to even attend (truth be told I was going to a wedding in Hawaii the same week so I really shouldn’t complain). But this year March is wide open and I’ve jumped in head first and submitted a talk with the modest title “I Reject Your Stylesheet And Substitute My Own – Rapid site design and prototyping with Expression Web 3 and WordPress” to the OpenCall portion of MIX10. And now I need your help to get my proposal accepted so I can get in and do my thing.

OpenCall is literally a popularity contest: The ten most voted on proposals get a slot at the conference and the rest are left by the wayside. As far as I can tell my proposal is the only one focusing on Expression Web (at least it’s the only one that shows up on a search) and also the only one talking about WordPress so my hope is that both those interested in the web authoring application and those interested in WordPress specifically or open-source or CMS design in general will find it compelling and want to vote for it. Only time will tell.

To vote for I Reject Your Stylesheet and Substitute My Own visit the OpenCall ballot page found here and click the Add session to ballot button. You can vote for a total of 5 sessions with one ballot. The rest of the sessions can be found here. Once you’re done voting, spread the word and get all your friends to vote for me as well. Voting ends on the 15th of January so there’s little time but I am certain with your help my name will appear on the roster alongside the many other fantastic speakers at MIX10.

Oh, and if you’re interested the extremely limited edition I Reject Your Stylesheet and Substitute My Own T-shirts are available in green, blue, tan and black sizes S, M and L (Fruit of the Loom, heavy cotton) for $20. Contact me with your name and mailing address and I’ll wrap one up and send it to you.

Dec 16
My Opinion 4

Does feminism have a place in the web design world?

Men With PensLast Monday a groundbreaking essay was published on Copyblogger with the somewhat puzzling title Why James Chartrand Wears Women’s Underpants. In it blogger, writer and owner of the famed design firm MenWithPens James Chartrand outed himself as a woman in a man’s name. This linguistic sex change itself was far from revolutionary. After all cross gender pseudonyms are hardly anything new in the writing world and on the internet with it’s relative anonymity, it is hard if not impossible to know if the person you are presented with is the person behind the screen at the best of times. What made this article so important (and so incindiary) was the reasons for this seemingly insignifficant charade and what it led to: By writing under a man’s name, James discovered that not only was her copy more accepted by her peers but she was paid almost double for the same ammount of work. Which leads to an uncomfortable conclusion: Sexism and gender bias has found new fertile grounds in the otherwise modern and forward thinking web.

A woman’s work is never done

I grew up in Norway, a country where women are constitutionally treated as equals, where stay-at-home moms are often frowned upon and where International Women’s Day on March 8th is celebrated by parades of women carrying huge red flags. And yet even in my home country women are frenquently short changed both in terms of pay, promotions and hirings, not to mention the stil prevalent problem of sexual harrassment and deliberate alienation. True, the situation for women in the work force today is vastely different from the one of women only 20 years ago. But to claim that women are now equal to men, that gender no longer plays a part in the hiring process, project appointments and salary negotiations, makes you the proverbial ostrich sticking its head in the sand. We may be converging on equality somewhere down the road, but we are far from there.

The problem now faced by women in the workplace (and everywhere else for that matter) is that whereas in the past the bias and discrimination was blatant, explicit and counscious (watch just one episode of Mad Men and you’ll get the idea) the sexists of today are for the most part not even aware of what they are doing. Asked up front why a manager chose to send Jack on assignment rather than Jill he may answer “it’s because Jill has a family to take care of” thinking this is a perfectly reasonable explanation. It’s not: it is supressed gender bias. “But it’s true!” you might say. Is it? What if I said that both Jack and Jill are married with two kids. The argument would still be put forward and would still be just as sexist. Our society is rife with inbred assumptions about gender roles such as the established fact that women are responsible for their children. But this is not a fundamental truth, it’s a social invention. Why can’t Jill’s husband take care of her kids while she’s away on business like Jack’s wife is expected to do? This is but one very basic example of how sexism has gone under ground.

We all make assumptions, most of them wrong…

What James experienced while writing under her own name was a version of the hidden sexism I just described, one that is present on the web as well as in real life. Due to perscribed gender roles taught to us by everyone from our peers to our parents to popular culture we have a built in tendency to make assumptions, purely based on gender, about how well people are able to do things. And while women are often thought to be more creatively inclined – more artistic if you will – the skill set necessary to do more technical tasks, be it a car mechanic, a program developer or a person dealing in the ruthless world of commercial blogging, tends to be attributed mostly to men. And for this reason we tend to trust men more than women when it comes to searching out information in these fields. Just think about it: Make a list of all the blogging, web design and technical writers you know and read and you’ll find a major male dominance. And I bet you’ll also find that more often than not the women writers are more focused on design and aesthetics. But this isn’t necessarily their choice: My theory has long been that there are scores of female writers out there who in spite of their skill can’t get a foot through the door because of this gender bias. And with James revelation my assumptions have, at least for one writer, been confirmed. Now I’m left to wonder how many other women in men’s names there are out there.

Feminism and the art of shooting yourself in the foot

In the days following Chartrand’s revelation the debate has been raging on the web. But not over what you think. The most inflammatory debates have been over whether James really is a feminist or if she betrayed her sex by taking on the role of a man. And this latter stance, professed loudly and often obnoxiously with vile accusations of gender abandonment, is the one taken by militant feminists. In fact this type of reasoning is one of the staples of feminism and is, in my opinion, one of the main reasons feminism, and with it equal rights for women, is not gaining ground as rapidly as it should. To put it plainly I believe feminism has become a dogmatic belief system rather than a fight for equal rights. And I think that’s why a lot of women who want to call themselves feminists also hate feminism.

male not equal to femaleWhereas feminists of the past were fighting for the right to be treated as men’s equals, modern feminists have a tendency of veering towards the extreme view that apart for a few minor anatomical differences men and women are exactly the same. “Gender is a societal invention” they say “and the ideal world is a society witout gender”. (To me that just sounds like Maoist China and I seriously would not want to live there). And from this dogmatic and quite bizarre stance follow some logical but irrational conclusions, from which the criticism of James is based:

If men and women by nature are exactly the same and gender is a societal invention (created by men to suppress women), women who operate within the confines of these societal inventions are in fact enforcing them and thereby hindering the progress of women’s rights and equality.

In other words, the only way the ideal equal society feminists want to achieve will ever come into existance is if women start behaving as genderless entities and men realize they are wrong, shed their evil sexist ways and conform to their new roles as equals.

Which is completely rediculous.

This attitude is doomed from the start. Not only does it have a premise that is ludicrous – that there is no qualitative difference between men and women – but the strategy that it derrives is horribly counter productive: Rather than showing men that women are their equals, this strategy portrays women as weird and disconnected angry people with a chip on their shoulder the size of a small planet.

James got it right – and that makes people angry

Let me turn this on its head for one minute and consider the plight of women as a product with men as it’s primary demographic. How do you sell a product? By making the target demographic feel like they need it. And how do you make them feel like they need it? By making them identify with the characters in the commercials and posters – the ideal customer.

Following this simple principle, the best way of marketing gender equality is to make the target demographic, the oppressive man, identify with the product, the oppressed woman and thereby understand his mistakes by seeing himself from the other side of the glass ceiling. But this is a pretty tall order: You can’t start underpaying all men or subject them to systematic demotions to favour female employees. A version of this strategy, affermative action, has been used extensively throughout the world to even the playing field. But although it has been effective in balancing the workforce numbers where gender, ethnicity and other visual minorities are concerned, it has also caused an unintended negative bias that now colours all these groups: Many people not included in these groups now believe that the groups of people that need affermative action to get ahead are in fact inferior by design and therefore not worthy of their jobs.

What James did was, allbeit inadvertantly, approach the issue in a more indirect way wedging herself into the “good old boys club” to prove her worth. I can’t help but think of her as a covert infiltrator trying to bust up an organization of biggots but that would do her a disservice and paint her peers in an unneccesarily bad light. She just did what she had to to get ahead, and in doing so she proved a point in a way few others could: As a woman she was ignored and underpaid, but as soon as people saw her as a man she was treated as one of the best, because she is. In other words gender trumped quality! But rather than just sit on this astounding and disturbing fact she chose to go public with it. And by doing so she forced her male peers as well as her many thousands of readers to come to an uncomfortable conclusion: Gender really does matter. Way more than it should. Because who amongst us can say that the revelation that James wears women’s panties didn’t immediately change our understanding of her as a person as well as her writing?

In one short essay James succeeded where feminists have failed for decades: She made men identify with her and realize that they are undercutting their female counterparts for reasons that have nothing to do with talent or productivity and everything to do with gender bias and downright sexism. It’s a bitter pill to swallow but one that we can no longer leave on the side of our plate. Now the publishers, editors and readers of the world are faced with a some painful questions: How many of the male writers I read every day are actually females writing under male pseudonyms to be taken seriously? And why  does the gender specification provided in a name alone change my understanding and acceptance of a piece of work so entirely? After all to borrow some words from Shakespeare, what’s in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Why not so also with the fruits of our creative minds?

Nov 26
Photography, hardware 4

Gorillapod review – the perfect companion for any camera?

teeteringNormally I limit my writings on this site to topics surrounding web design and development, but since we are approaching the Christmas season and people are starting to scratch holes in their heads wondering what to give as presents I thought I’d break with form and provide a review of Joby’s Gorillapod camera supports of which I tested 4 on our crazy roadtrip around the USA. And come to think of it, this is somewhat design related. After all I use my cameras extensively when creating websites so although on the fringe it is still topical enough.

Full disclosure here: When we went on our roadtrip I asked the people at Joby if they would supply me with a new Gorillapod that would hold my Canon EOS 5D-MKII and it’s enormous and rediculously heavy pro lens. In response they sent me not one but four different Gorillapods to play around with. Now, a lot of product reviews you find on blogs these days are heavily biassed because the blogger feels obligated to give the product a good review simply because they got the product to try. I’m not one of those people. If someone sends me a product and it sucks, I’ll make damn sure everyone knows just how crappy it is so that noone buys it and the company stops making it. I really hate crappy products. I’m telling you this because I want you to understand that what you are about to read is my professional opinion as a photographer and tech writer, completely unbiassed and without reservation.

The search for proper support

gorillapod artOne of the many challenges a photographer faces is proper camera support. As anyone who has ever tried to take a photo in poor lighting conditions or with a large zoom will tell you, without proper support your photos will end up blurry no matter what. Why? Because the human body just isn’t capable of holding a camera steady enough to get the necessary exposure. Though there are many alternatives available, from sand bags to monopods to tripods, photographers (and videographers for that matter) often find themselves on shaky ground because the support they have doesn’t work in the conditions they are in. This is especially true when it comes to placing your camera in an unusual location, be it on an uneven surface, in a tree or on a fence. And if you wanted to hang your camera from something, duct tape is usually the only option.

Gorillapod SLR – my first impressions

I found myself in just such a situation a couple of years back when I stumbled upon this new camera support called Gorillapod. Basically it was a small tripod where each of the three legs were comprised of a long chain of articulating joint. As a result the legs could be bent and shaped to grip, pry or lean on practiaclly any surface. And with that a whole slew of new camera placements became possible. At the time there were only two of these GorillaPods available, the standard one for small point-and-shoot cameras and the Gorillapod SLR for medium sized camereas and small SLRs. I got the bigger one and it turned out to be exactly right for my Canon EOS 10D with a standard consumer lens.

The Gorillapod SLR quickly became a permanent resident of my camera bag and I used it a lot – so much in fact that some of the joints started getting loose. I also lent it to one of my friends when he went on one of those bike rides to raise money for cancer and he used it to strap a Flip video camera to his bike with great success.

The SLR can support a camera up to 800g (no, I have no clue what that is in stone, pebbles, liquid ounces or any other archaic imperial measurement) which basically means any point-and-shoot camera and most consumer SLRs as long as they don’t have massive zoom lenses on them. Anything heavier and it’ll just buckle under the weight or the grip will slip if you’re hanging it off anything. In other words don’t use it to hang your $4000 prosumer video camera from a lamp post! It’s fairly small and has a detatchable base plate that you attach to your camera so you can snap it on and off easily. The only downside to this is that the baseplate is not threaded on the bottom so if you want to mount your camera to a different tripod you have to take it off which is a bit cumbersome unless you have a key or a big coin lying around.

Like I said, I used the Gorillapod SLR so much it’s gotten a bit slack in the joints, but it’s still perfectly useable even 3 years later. I would say this is a great buy except shortly after I got mine Joby created a big brother to the SLR called the SLR-Zoom which is a much better buy.

Gorillapod SLR-Zoom

Like the name suggests, the Gorillapod SLR-Zoom is a larger version of the SLR designed to accommodate heavier cameras and especially large zoom lenses. Considering how quickly Joby rolled out this version of the pod after the original SLR I can make an educated guess that a lot of photographers were having issues with the relative weakness of the SLR and wanted something stronger and more sturdy to work with.

joby ballheadThe SLR-Zoom is noticeably bigger than the SLR and supports cameras up to a full 3kgs which at least on paper is enough to hold my big clunker of a camera. We’ll get to that in a bit. The SLR-Zoom differs from the SLR in that the top plate is mounted directly on top of the three legs whereas the SLR has an additional articulating joint above the legs. This makes sense because it was that last articulating joint that caused the most problems when I used the SLR with heavier cameras. It ships in two versions: One which is just the pod itself and one which also includes a ballhead that lets you turn and position your camera at angles up to 90 degrees from the plane. The ballhead in turn comes with a baseplate that has a small water level on it to help you balance your camera correctly. This ballhead and water level combo is an absolute must-have and I don’t think Joby should be selling the SLR-Zoom without it.

The combination of the SLR-Zoom and the ballhead is close to perfection when it comes to medium-size camera support. Not only does the combination allow you to position your camera pretty much anywhere (I hung it off a fence, in a tree, on the door frame of our car and even used it to take long exposures of the night sky over the Nevada desert) but it provides rock solid support in a small and convenient package. It’s also light but strong and because it is so flexible it is relatively easy to pack away.

The only problem I had with the SLR-Zoom was that although it is technically strong enough to hold my large camera, it is too light and the legs are too short to achieve a good balance. As a result when using it as a “regular” tripod (rather than wrapping the legs around something) I found myself having to adjust and re-adjust the legs several times to find a position that didn’t either slip or outright topple. I gave it a full week on our trip and took around 100 shots with it before taking the ballhead off and moving it onto the newest and biggest brother in the lineup, the monsterous Gorillapod Focus.

On a sidenote, when I talked to the Joby guys they were unsure if the ballhead would be strong enough to hold my camera. From the pictures and the description I was under the impression that the ballhead would be made of the same plastic material the Gorillapods were made from. That turned out to be wrong. The ballhead is some form of metal construction and is extremely sturdy and resilient. Once I’d positioned the camera in the desired weird angle and tightened the big knob it was rock solid and I never experienced it slipping even once. So either they haven’t done their testing or they are overtly careful when telling people what it can and can’t do. I’m not saying it is the best or strongest ballhead in the world but for the price ($39.95 US on its own) it is well worth it.

Gorillapod Focus

gorillapod lineupAt the top of the foodchain in the Gorillapod family you find the Gorillapod Focus, a massive steel contraption that looks more like something dropped from an alien spaceship than a camera support. I had it stuffed in my backpack when I went to the Smithsonian museum in Washington D.C. and I had to physically take it out of my bag and demonstrate it to the guard before he would let me in.

The Focus is significantly larger in every way and also weighs more than the other pods because all the joints are metal rather than plastic. In return you get support for cameras up to 5kg which means you can strap a standard video fluid head and a prosumer video camera on it without any problems. That in turn means you can now put your expensive video gear up on tree branches, strap it to your car or hang it from lamp posts without worrying that it’ll fall down. Which any videographer will tell you is pretty damn awesome.

The only real downside of the Focus (and this goes for the SLR-Zoom too) is that the mounting screw has a really weird concave screw slot on the bottom that is too wide for a normal coin and pretty much impossible to use with a screwdriver because it is concave. As a result it is very difficult to fasten things well with it. A twonie actually works pretty well but it’s annoying to have to have a twonie handy just so you can mount your camera!

Like I said earlier the SLR-Zoom fell short when it came to supporting my Canon EOS 5D MK-II and it’s enormous lens so I took the ballhead off and put it on the Focus instead. This turned out to be the perfect combination. The Focus with its longer and heavier legs is more than adequate to hold the camera in any position and against any surface and has now become a permanent companion to my camera. The little baseplate with the bubble level has also turned out to be a great addition to my camera even without the tripod because it helps level my notoriously slanted photos.

The original Gorillapod and Gorillamobile

In addition to the big boys Joby also sent me the original Gorillapod and the new Gorillamobile. They are actually the same Gorillapod but the Gorillamobile comes with a set of different baseplates including a standard screw mount for cameras, a suction cup and two adhesive plates you can stick to your handheld devices.

The pod itself is tiny – about the length of my open hand – and extremely flexible so it’s easy for storage. Like the original Gorillapod SLR it has an articulating joint above the legs which enables you to tilt the camera (or other device) in relation to the base of the pod (just so it’s said, it’s way too small to mount the ballhead on so don’t even bother). The Gorillapod takes up to 325g which means it can handle most point-and-shoot cameras as long as they don’t have massive protruding lenses.

Because it is so tiny and versitile I’d say it is probably the best companion to a point-and-shoot I can think of. With the Gorillapod in hand you can easily improve on the dreaded MySpace pose and also place or hang your camera in places you never could before making for some great angles and shots. As long as noone steals the camera that is.

The Gorillamobile comes in two varieties, the Original and the Gorillamobile for 3G/3GS (because aparently no company is complete without having an Apple-only product). Not surprisingly the latter has specialized grips for the iPhone. Regardless if I was out to buy a Gorillapod for someone with a point-and-shoot I would go for the Gorillamobile just because it allows you to mount other stuff like a GPS or your cell phone to the pod. Why would  you do that? Off the top of my head I can see people using the suction cup to attach their phone or PMP to a treadmill or bike while working out.

Oh and I almost forgot, the original Gorillapod now comes in 7 hideous fun colours (grey, yellow, red, green, blue, pink and orange) just for the hell of it. Mine is bright red…

A Gorillapod could be the perfect gift for your photographically gifted friend

all the gorillapodsWhat’s my conclusion? I think it’s pretty obvious: I really like the Gorillapod as a product and I think that if you get the right one you’ll like it too. Here’s how to pick:

  • If you have a small point-and-shoot camera and you want a small stand to prop it up when you take pictures with the self-timer of  yourself and your friends/family, go with the Gorillamobile.
  • If you have one of the bigger point-and-shoot cameras (weigh it if you’re unsure) or one of those new small video cameras or you want a stand that can do some cooler stuff like hanging from a tree, go with the Gorillapod SLR.
  • If  you have an SLR of any size, go with the Gorillapod SLR-Zoom with the ballhead. It may seem like overkill but the ballhead makes all the difference.
  • If you have a large SLR camera with a heavy lens or a large video camera, go with the Gorillapod Focus and opt for the ballhead (or another ballhead) to increase the flexibility.

For its use the Gorillapod is the best (possibly only?) option out there and it is well worth the money. So if you have a photographer or videographer on your Christmas list and you don’t know what to get them, a Gorillapod that fits their camera is an excellent option. That’s not me blowing hot air, that’s my honest opinion.