What to wait for in Digital Cameras

It's always amazing how technology changes from year to year. You find something great, and its obsolete in a matter of a few years. Some improvements are well worth the wait and others, perhaps not. In the world of Digital Cameras, as time goes on, we get more and more resolution in the way of megapixels. Although once you have reached 6mp or more, the amateur or recreational shooter should be satisfied with all but large, enlarged pictures. 6mp is more than we need for 95% of our regular shots, but for those interested in high-detail and/or large print-outs, its best to shop for 10+ megapixels. Much of this is not news and that alone is not worthy of a blog late in 2008. I want to address features you should look out for in your next purchase. Goodies that might make your world of photography just a little better than before.

One great feature is the inclusion of WiFi. WiFi built into a camera will allow a traveler to simply find a hot-spot and upload the data to a web-based picture hosting site such as Flickr or Picasa. One such camera doing just this is the Lumix DMC-TZ50. Panasonic, which makes the Lumix line, has struck a deal with T-Mobile for use of their HotSpots for use with these camera's and it seems this is just one of those features you didn't crave, but will likely not want to be without once you've used it. Of course any WiFi connection will do.

You may also look forward to full frame sensors that actually take advantage of the entire lens and capture the same field as 35mm film, so when you look through, say, a 50mm lens, you get the same as you would on a film camera, not to mention the benefits of a larger area to fit in all those mega-pixels. The Sony camera pictured above is a new Pro level 24.6MP full-frame DSLR.

Another great technology making its way into Digital Cameras is GPS. Imagine shooting pictures anywhere in the world and your camera stores metadata in each picture (Geo-Tagging) including time, date, and exact GPS coordinates for that particular shot. There are already some high-end cameras with this technology and there is even at least one company ( Jobo ) www.jobo.com/web/Photo-GPS.221.0.html that will allow you to add it to an existing camera.

The consumer digital revolution in photography from film, is complete, but digital evolution will always be.

When You Just Want Your Shit To Work!

**Please read end for problem resolution***
I'll admit, I'm lazy, but technology fascinates me to no end. I'll get to the lazy part in a bit, but I simply have to know how everything works, and when I do, I then need a new challenge. I know more than 99% of the human populous about PC's, XP, Vista and, well... even 2000, 3.0, 3.1x and even DOS. Now my latest quest as of this year is all things Apple.

Six months ago, I didn't so much as own an iPod. Yes, I had MP3 players, but just not an Apple product. Today, nearing the end of 2008, I own (in this order) an Ipod Nano, 24" iMac, MacBook, (had an iPhone for 10 days but sent it back because ATT's calls had more drops than Murine and Visine put together) and now my latest acquisition is the iPod Touch. Regessing a moment, if T-Mobile had iPhones, I'd be on that faster than Jerry Yang would say YES to another Microsoft offer.

Getting back to my iPod Touch, I'll tell you why I posted this blog, and why that title. I mentioned I have a Nano, and although its only 8gb, it actually does everything I need, only the screen is too small for my taste. Enter Touch. If you are a loyal Apple user, you know all about things working. Even though Apple's OS X is not perfect, the small shortcomings are not near annoying enough to move back to any PC, for me, and likely for most of you. That being said, my iPod Touch should work at least as well as my Nano no? It does what it does pretty well, but what it doesn't do is play my synced video podcasts. I get audio with a frozen screen where video should be. Same sync to Nano yeilds perfect video, albeit tiny in comparison.

Yes, I'm a tech, and yes there is likey a solution, but the "Genius" at the apple store told me to force the settings on all videos in the individual settings so it sees it as a video. Now, lets get this straight: My 8gb $199 Nano knows how to distinguish everything perfectly, but my $499.00 Touch can't figure it out? As I opened this Blog, I've admitted that I'm lazy. Especially when I need to dedicate a fair amount of time getting Album Art for about 10% of my music library which is a complete time bandit if ever there was one.

I have a strange way about me sometimes. If I can't correct this easily, I might just throw in the towel and return the Touch and go back to my trusty, true, and tiny Nano. Surely there are many other ways I can spend $500.00. What can I say? I just want my shit to work!

***Problem Solved***
Well, lets just chalk this up to slightly bad ergonomics of the unit and lack of logical thinking when I needed it. The unit works, and does so very well, but here is where I went wrong, and where Apple can make a bit of an adjustment.

Going into 'Music' on the iPod Touch, there is a section for Podcasts. Although Podcasts are not music, this is the buttons name. I guess Audio is not sexy enough. This Music button is where I kept going into to find my grand list of Podcasts, audio and video. They are all in there. When I select an audio Podcast, it works fine. When I select a video Podcast, I'd get only the audio portion with the begining image of the video frozen on screen. For this reason, I never looked elsewhere to make it work.

The resolution is, in order to see those video Podcasts, you need to go to Video from the main screen. When I did this, I had a list of my downloaded videos, but when I scroll down, beneith the downloaded videos, there is a section called Podcasts. There, again, are the listings of all the Video Podcasts, only now, from this section, they simply work.

Why apple allows these videos to be indexed in the audio section of 'Podcasts' is beyond me. The Touch is a great and powerful unit, but a bit more thought could be put into the clear seperation of video and audio PodCasts. I say, just have a completely seperate Podcast main button, and seperate Audio and Video folders within. Then even a linear thinking logical person such as myself can operate the entire unit without the hand holding of instructions.

Microsoft Live Want's More Of Google's Pie

As Microsoft aims its sights in directions other than desktop software, it's clear to them that the web is where longevity lies. They are going after Google in the ever important search market with Windows Live, and apparently making a lot strides, technically speaking. The challenges Microsoft have are not only Google's dominance, but also their universal appeal and the fact that Microsoft's reputation will be hard to shake. It's a bit like the school bully that has taken your lunch money since the 2nd grade now want's to sit at your table and trade a cupcake for Twinkies. Microsoft will have to work extra hard and do things much better than Google, in my opinion, to make a dent in that market. Good thing for Microsoft, they have a few dollars in the bank. Even capturing 1/3 of that market means huge cash flow, but like all else Microsoft, they are not striving for just 33%


There are of course some Microsoft hard-core loyalists that bow to Gates and anything he puts forth, but Google has positioned themselves as the Goliath in search and done it in the "awe shucks", "little engine that could" way, and as we all know, the word Google is as much a verb as it is a noun. You may have found this blog by "Googling" it.

Microsoft is a company that still feels like daddy wont let us grow up, they still want to tell us what to do and we are just all trying to be independent now that we're grown. If Microsoft were really smart, they would spin off a new division that was less Microsoft-like. You know, stuffy, tie-wearing big brother looking and just be young and cool, hip, and fun. That approach never hurt Apple, in fact they thrive on it. It's hard to forget, there was a day that to do any type of computing, we all had to toss our coins in the Microsoft toll-booth and that has created a few hard-core rebels that are grown, out of the house, and don't want to talk to daddy anymore.

I suspect most people will go about their online day, doing what they are used to doing, searching the way they usually search, and if Microsoft has something really special, they might give a looksie, but Google is a comfortable shoe for most, and they are no doubt kicking back doing nothing.

The Web 2.0 will march on, with or without Microsoft at the ships helm.

Jim Alden
TechFrog,