Step 1 - GoPro HD Firmware Update - Download and Transfer (watch video)
Step 2 - How to Install Firmware
Exciting news for outdoorsy people: The GoPro guys released a new firmware for the GoPro HD camera (v02.05.11) that adds new functionalities to your sports cam.
If firmware sounds strange for you (as it did for me) then let's call it software. What this means is that you can now enjoy new menu features on your camera just by installing the new version of the firmware (why didn't they call it companyware or, if the company is big and has a bunch of old men dressed in expensive suits as execuives, corporationware?).
What you need to do?
Visit this page and enter your name and email address in the form at the bottom of the page. They say the email address in needed for support purposes (as if they are going to know when you're in trouble - perhaps they'll email you first). Oh well, you'll be on their email list so you'll be notified when a new companyware is released.
After downloading the zip file to your computer follow these instructions.
What are the best new features?
One Button Mode
One Button Mode simplifies recording video and photos with your HD HERO. With One Button Mode, your camera will start recording video or photos automatically when you power the camera 'ON' and will only stop recording when you power the camera 'OFF'. The shutter button is deactivated in One Button Mode. You can only turn the camera on and off, making it the perfect setting for loaning it to friends or newbies.
Upside Down Mode (UPd)
Now you can take videos and photos with the camera mounted upside down without having to rotate the files later. In UPd, all videos and photos will be saved to your SD card right-side up.
Waterproof - Shooting the cliff jumping videowas so much fun. I never thought I'd have the chance to capture underwater footage with a relatively affordable camera.
Small - A flip cam is easier to store in your chest pocket but yet a flip cam cannot be mounted on your helmet or bike and it doesn't have the wide angle lens. Being a sort of a cube the Gopro HD is still a small camera for what it can do.
Video Quality - As long as you shoot in good daylight you will be amazed by the footage quality. The HD 60fps mode means you can render smooth slow motion action with no head aches.
If you want to take your action sport clips to a next level you can shoot your GoPro Clips with a DIY steadicam for a cool gliding video effect.
Do you have any GoPro videos that you'd like to share? Leave a link in the comments.
Perhaps you won’t be surprised to learn that most outdoor apparel and mountain gear brands manufacture their stuff within a few factories in China. Just as the most important bicycle brands manufacture their mountain bikes in a few factories in Thailand.
If you’ve heard of Mountain Hardwear, Mammut, Lafuma, Timberland and wondered where exactly they manufacture their Gore Tex jackets, T-shirts, fleeces and back packs then here it is:
The apparel company offers custom samples (paid) and international shipping via DHL or TNT.
OUTDOORSKY's commitment to performance, innovation and quality has ensured a worldwide reputation for producing performance clothing. We manufacture raincoats, jackets, outerwear and trousers, which are all waterproof & breathable and suit for foul weather. Our product range includes sailing collection, motorcycling collection, skiing collection, mountaineering collection, fishing collection and hiking collection. Wearing OUTDOORSKY ensures you benefit from leading fabric technology, innovative design, style and above all, a commitment to quality that is recognised wherever you go, whatever you do.
There you have it. If you plan to launch a new mountain apparel & gear brand, you know where to find the best manufacturer of sports technical clothing in the world.
Here's the thing - a classic hobo stove has a few advantages over an open fire, especially when it comes to cooking and preparing food outdoors. But there are also a few inconveniences to the wood fueled stoves that make an alcohol stove irresistible.
You don't have to be against old school DIY camping stoves. It's just that an alcohol hobo stove seems to do so much more with less effort on your side. And think about this: when you're out on a serious mountaineering tour, you want to cook your meal as fast and as clean as possible. There's no time to gather wood or maybe there is no wood whatsoever if you're high up in the alpine zone.
Why an alcohol hobo stove is a cool thing to have
1. It makes no smoke → no soot on your pot.
The alcohol burns without producing any smoke. No more smelly clothes and now - a big plus - you can cook inside your tent if the weather is bad. Not to mention the sticky bad smelling black soot that you used to get on your stainless steel pot with the wood stove - it's all history! Gone! Forever!
The sticky black thing on the pot comes from the resins of the spruce, alpine pine and fir tree wood that you burn inside the hobo stove. Now, the clean flame will offer tea that tastes like tea (not smoke flavored water).
2. Works with cheap fuel.
The nice thing about the alcohol stove is it's versatility. It works with any type of alcohol that burns.
You can get it in a pharmacy (blue alcohol used in medicine), a home improvement store (technical or industrial alcohol), a supermarket, etc. Not only you can find it everywhere but it's also cheap. And who doesn't like cheap fuel?
If you're done cooking and you have some alcohol left in the burner (beer can) then you can reuse it in your next occasion to master the art of making hot instant soup. A thing you cannot do with wood - just got to let it burn to ashes (unless, of course, you want to carry the wood).
3. You don't need a pressurized bottle.
The only thing you'll have to carry is a small plastic bottle. No more metal pressurized bottles that occupy valuable space in your backpack.
When you run out of fuel (alcohol) you can reuse the bottle for carrying water or you can simply press it and throw it away at the first garbage bin.
4. Fast and convenient - highly flammable and yet safe.
No need to gather wood. You can light it fast - just light the match and it's on (baby).
Unlike the pressurized metal bottles, you won't have to worry about punctures or explosion when you carry a bottle of medicinal alcohol.
5. It's not weather dependent.
You need dry weather for finding dry wood and cooking outdoors. Oh no you don't! Not with the alcohol stove.
You're independent of the weather conditions and, heck, if you run out of fuel you can always come back to the classic hobo stove function.
How to make an alcohol stove
There's not much to do, really.
Cut the bottom third of a beer or soda can and that's your burner. Make sure to fold inward the sharp margin of the soda can as not to cut your finger skin when handling it. The thicker margin also allows you to grab it using the aluminum pot handle (pot lifter).
Place the burner inside a hobo stove or create an adapter for holding the pot (see video below). Add alcohol in the beer can and light it up.
Extra tips:
Use a sleeping mat as a windshield if you're cooking outside on a windy day. Make a tube from the mat and place your stove and pot on the ground inside the vertical tube.
Let the alcohol burn for a minute or two until the burner gets hot. If you have a small setup (small hobo stove) and you place your pot on it too early, you'll smother the flame and put it out eventually. Let the system preheat and then start cooking.
Here's a video that shows you how to make coffee on an alcohol stove. Notice the stainless steel burner with lateral holes and the home made steam coffee pot. Brant Dempster (the guy who made the video) runs a rope access blog and he's a master when it comes to DIY projects.
Are you an outdoor enthusiast who likes to carry cool gadgets? If so, this one is for you!
Win a Goal0portable solar panel to power your outdoor adventures. You can get a Nomad 7 with which you can charge your hand held devices (iPhone, smartphone, camera, GPS, radio, etc.) while roaming in the wild.
In this article you'll learn the most important SEO (search engine optimization) practices when it comes to uploading pictures to your website or blog. What you'll get is more traffic to your blog from Google Image Search which basically means more visitors, more subscribers and, why not, more money from advertisers.
Too many bloggers (especially beginners) are doing this wrong and they keep asking why their blogs aren't getting the desired traffic?! Well, it's all about the reader, isn't it?
Let's start with you. When was the last time you typed in Google's search box something like IMG.00543? Or JPEG.23? I'll take the liberty to answer that: NEVER (or maybe just 0.01% of the times).
You are just another consumer of information like any other internet enthusiast. You really shouldn't look further than yourself to discover a pattern of how people think when they're searching for something on the web (be it images or webpages).
Have you ever wondered how does Google and other search engines know what images to render for a specific query? It is because the webmasters and bloggers who run those websites (displayed in the search results) did 3 simple things to tell search engines what their images are about.
To have a sense of how much you need to implement the SEO for your images, ask yourself this question:
Do I use lots of photos/images in my blog?
If you're running a photography blog then the images are a big part of your website. If you write highly specific articles on DIY projects and gear reviews then again you're likely to use pictures for accompanying your written explanations. If you're an artist then your paintings, graphic designs and hand made items are all presented on your website through pictures.
So here are the three smart rules you need to follow when adding images to your blog:
1. Give a proper filename to your picture.
Leaving your photos or graphic images untitled is just not good... IMG.00543 doesn't mean anything even if the picture is one of the greatest mountain landscapes ever caught on a DSLR camera.
What you can do instead is give a relevant, keyword rich filename to your images. Keep the filenames as short as possible (up to 5 words) and think about the words you'll use if you'd like to find such a picture in the image search results - use those words in the filename.
Example: climbing-free-solo-el-capitan.jpg or mountain-bike-vector-t-shirt-print.png
You don't have to use hyphens between words, you can leave blank spaces without any loss in terms of SEO. Remember that using underscores (like_this) is interpreted as if the whole title is a single word. However, you'll find images in the search results that have their filename words linked with underscores so the sigle word thing doesn't always apply.
Highball Blog works with blank spaces or hyphens and it seems to work beautifully for all the free vectors.
2. Use the alt tag in the HTML code of the picture.
The alt tag or the alt attribute of the image is the piece of code that tells browsers and search engines what your picture is about. That is of course if you describe your picture well within the inverted comas (the value of the alt attribute is the text description that you must add).
Remember those times when your internet connection was too slow that the images didn't load? In some cases, instead of the images you got blank white squares with some text in each square. Those pieces of text are the alt tags. If the images didn't have alt tags you would see just their filenames (too many times, names like IMG.00543 which didn't tell you anything about the content of the picture).
Example: alt="Climbing Vector Design for Your T-shirt" or alt="Deep Water Solo Climbing in Bulgaria"
Even if your readers can't see your images, at least they have a hint about the content so they'll have a reason to come back later (when the internet connection is better).
Just like the filenames, keep the alt tags short and relevant and try to use synonyms. That is, don't copy the filename in the title tag.
Example: filename DIY-glidecam-for-GoPro-camera alt="Home Made Steadicam for GoPro HD" These two pieces of text are different but they convey the same message: the picture shows a do it yourself camera stabilizer for GoPro.
The ideea is this: use simple words that your readers are likely to type in the search box when they are looking for a solution to their problem.
Matt Cutts Discusses the Importance of Alt Tags - Video
3. Add a title attribute to your image
The title attribute of the HTML image code is the message you see when you hover your mouse cursor over an image (or link). This is the only text, attached to the image code, that your readers will see, so use it as a way to communicate with them. Offer an explanation just like you would in a caption.
Example: title="Google Image Search for Mountain Bike Vector"
Scroll up to the begging of this post and you'll see this title suggestion when you place the hand cursor over the image. The image shows the results for mountain bike vector.
Now, you may ask: What the hell is an alt tag?!?! And the answer is: you don't really have to know. As long as you know what it does (tells search engines what your picture is about) and you use it correctly, you'll get more traffic to your blog.
Adding the alt and title attributes means you have to work within the HTML view of your blogging software. You'll do this after you upload the picture. The final result (in Blogger) should look like this:
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeLHEn_i-b7BZ9QulzxQwioudkK_tckD80H6S9L-QXhoerqFcC_KOaoE3bLV8561wV3E8pprwkUpfjFFC6PiaoX8HCeeSPX8Xb5ng0DGSCjKiNGuvJX7X46fB7JdreXIfGdCYvZKSNJgcO/s1600/MTB+Vector+Google+Image+Search.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img alt="SEO for Images - Google Image Search" border="0" height="206" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeLHEn_i-b7BZ9QulzxQwioudkK_tckD80H6S9L-QXhoerqFcC_KOaoE3bLV8561wV3E8pprwkUpfjFFC6PiaoX8HCeeSPX8Xb5ng0DGSCjKiNGuvJX7X46fB7JdreXIfGdCYvZKSNJgcO/s400/MTB+Vector+Google+Image+Search.PNG" title="Google Image Search for Mountain Bike Vector" width="400" /></a>
The green code is of no interest to us now. This is the link that leads to the picture shown in full size (opens in a new tab). The orange and red lines of code are the alt and title attributes of the image tag (<img ... />).
Remember that this works with any what type of blogging software you may use: Blogger, WordPress, TypePad, Tumblr, Posterous, etc. If you're not publishing your content on a blog and you have a custom build website, the image SEO tips still apply. Actually, Google advises webmasters to have clear descriptive alt tags for their images.
So there you have it. Apply these three SEO tactics for your images and you'll get more traffic to your blog from Google Image Search.
How To Master Your GoPro Camera Like a Pro (even if you don't know anything about shooting or editing videos)
+ How To Make Money on YouTube (Bonus Section)
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+ You'll Also Get These Extra (FREE) Materials:
How To Get Free Outdoor Gear from Sponsors
How To Make Viral Videos - 3 Lessons from Devin Graham (King of YouTube)
3 Cool Ways To Get Paying Clients as a Videographer
How To Be Creative without The Pressure
You Don't Have To Struggle To Learn How To Shoot and Edit GoPro Videos on Your Own. Take The GoPro Video Editing Course and Easily Publish Your First Video without Mistakes.
Hi! My name is Constantin and I'm an outdoorsy dude who enjoys shooting and editing action sports videos. Here you can learn GoPro tips, how to build DIY video gear and you can also read our outdoor gear reviews. More about me here.
Testimonial
GoPro (the company) on my DIY Steadicam Tutorial:
"An advanced How To for the hardcore film makers"
is the preferred gadget to have when you want to shoot your 
