Are we prismatic or black and white?
I haven’t been overly impressed with ReadWriteWeb lately, but sometimes they put out an interesting article. This article by 4-Chan’s creator Chris Poole struck a cord with me. His basic premise is that almost all the current popular social sites are an all or nothing way to present yourself. People are multidimenisonal and most of the services don’t allow you to convey that. I think he’s onto something here.
I’ve always had a hard time getting into the social network sites. I normally have spurts of activity then retreat away from them again. I like to view, but not really to contribute. Part of that may be my personality, but normally I just don’t feel that everyone I’m friends with is interested in what I have to say/share, so I don’t post anything at all. I thought Google+ would solve some of that, but instead it works in the opposite direction. I can choose how I want to share things with, but those lists are created by me. I don’t want to have to be the person that deals with it.
I want to be able to share things as Charles the geek, Charles the photographer, Charles the book reader, Charles the <whatever interest occupies at the moment>. None of the services allow me to do that. Strangely, the one he likes most, is the one I’m most active on. Twitter. I rarely use or check my two main accounts. There is just too much traffic, but that’s another issue. I have something like six other active accounts that get updated on a regular basis, but each has it’s theme. Not many followers, but I don’t have to worry about if they are following because it’s me, rather than what I post. No, I’m not going to list them.
The answer for this is probably creating seperate blogs with their own accounts on other services as I deem neccessary, but it just seems like too much work to setup. Maybe I should look back at Posterous to handle this type of thing for me.
Dying book stores and recommendations
When I was going through school I was a voracious reader, sometimes tearing through as much as a book a day. I think a lot of that was due to the staff at the walden books near our house. The staff there seemed knowledgable and they consistently introduced me to new authors and books I enjoyed. If you could mention a few books you liked they could produce a long list of suggestions from memory. Each new author I read would lead to two more. If it wasn’t for all their suggestions I’m not sure I would of read nearly as much.
It was a sad day in 1995 when they were acquired by Borders, but larger book stores were what was popular. At first it was great visiting those stores, but the staff changed often and they weren’t as knowledgeable. You’d get the same suggestions from different people every-time and I got used to talking with other customers for suggestions. Where did all the great staff from the smaller bookstores go? It certainly wasn’t to Borders or Barnes and Noble. Now only the latter remains and they certainly haven’t gotten any better of the years trying to compete with Amazon. It’s hard to stay in business when customers would ask for suggestions then order it online. I haven’t found anything online that is as great for discovering new authors and books as talking to other people who read a lot.
Living in Japan now it’s even more apparent as I have been searching for new authors to read. Reviews are great for technical books and rice-makers, but not so great for the latest SF novel. Amazon’s recommendation engine has failed me too many times to trust again. People likes and dislikes of books aren’t something computers can analyze easy and make recommendations. It requires an intuitive leap they just can’t make.
I’m going to have to depend on B&N now when going home, but I wonder how long they’ll be around. Do you have any good suggestions of web sites to visit for recommendations? I am nearing the end of my book with no idea what to choose next.
Neopan 400 developed in SPD printed on gelatin silver paper.
9 months ago
Neopan 400 developed in SPD printed on gelatin silver paper.
10 months ago
Japan update
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I’m posting this on Posterous, since it exceeds Facebook’s status field.
About 9:30am this morning. We are still feeling the aftershocks here, but these are what Japan experience on a fairly normal business so it’s not impacting anything. Trains are running again and Tokyo is returning to normal. Those in the north need lots of help and support.
This is the USGS earthquake page: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/quakes_all.php
Pretty much all the quakes in the high 4.x I can feel in Tokyo, so that gives some idea of how often we still feel it here. There have been about 7 instances since I woke up this morning (past 45 minutes or so). It’s normally a big less frequently. At least in Tokyo these aren’t dangerous, but it could cause problems for those closer to the epicenter, especially with buildings already weakened. I probably won’t write much more about the aftershocks unless something more out of the ordinary happens. We’ll probably be feeling them for a quite a while yet.
As far as the Nuclear reactor, I haven’t kept on news of it really closely, but western news seems to be sensationalizing it more than it deserves. It sounds like they are pumping it with sea water now and it’s under control, although they’ll probably have to decommission it.
iPad 2’s greatest feature: the new cover
What’s the last time you opened a book, magazine for news paper and hand to turn it on before you could read it? Yeah, stupid question, but that’s basically what we have to do with every electronic device on the market. Apple has changed this with their new cover. Open the cover and it automatically turns on and unlocks. Close the cover and it goes to sleep. Open it back up and you are immediately back where you started.
Such a small feature, but I think it’s going to make a huge difference to people who read a lot of material. Since it’s based in simple magnets I imagine that 3rd party cases will support it too. It’s small features like this that make Apple’s devices such a joy to use.
Apple’s new laptops, Biggest upgrade in years
Wow, Apple released a major update to their laptops today. If you’ve been shopping for a new machine be glad you waited. There are a few negatives compared to their last version, but also some important new features that make expansion of your laptop much easier and faster then before. Great news if you do a lot of image or video editing. I thought this upgrade deserved a post.
Probably the most important new feature is what Apple is calling Thunderbolt. From what I understand Apple and Intel have been working on developing this for a couple years. You may also see it called Lightspeak which is Intel’s name for it. What it is it? It’s a new really really fast way to connect devices and monitors to your computer. It basically works as both a PCI express slot and display port in one. It’s throughput is rated at 10Gbits compared to 120Mbs of USB 2.0. You could hook up a large raid array, multiple monitors and probably still have speed to spare. Disk access would be just as fast as if they were installed in your machine. Gigabit ethernet adapters or even fiber channel devices. I think a few devices are on the market now, but I expect we’ll see more soon as it appears in Windows machines. Intel just annouced it themselves a couple days ago. You can see a Intel demo here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kidmWiqKzqY&feature=player_embedded
What else is new? Big processor upgrades. The Core 2 Duo is finally gone and the 13” laptop runs dual core i5 processors now. The 15” and 17” laptops have gone quad core. The high end 13” runs at 2.3 or 2.7Ghz and the 15” and 17” have 2.0, 2.2 and 2.3Ghz options. A lot of apps still don’t support multiple processors all that well and the 13” 2.7Ghz looks like a great solution for people wanting a smaller machine. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s pretty competitive with quad core machines, especially the 2.0 and 2.2 Ghz machines.
The screens on the 15” and 17” have been upgraded to the higher resolution screens by default. That used to be an option on the previous models. The 15” and 17” models still have an option for a matte screen. The SD card slots have been upgraded to SDXC which is good if your camera supports it.
If there is a downside to all this new power, it’s lower battery life. All machines are rated at 7 hours compared to 8-10 hours on previous models. I think it’s probably a good tradeoff. This is the biggest upgrade Apple’s laptops have seen in several years.
After seeing Thunderbolt I’d probably avoid buying a Macbook Air until it sees the next upgrade. The faster interface means a lot more for that machine than is does for these, especially for an ethernet connection. I expect we’ll see new iMacs with Thunderbolt support too.
Fujifilm releases awesome large sensor classic digital. Wipe that drool off your face
Fujifilm in a surprise move has released a stunningly beautiful camera in the classic sense. Only the flash betrays the fact this isn’t a 30 year old film camera from the front. It reminds me of my Olympus 35 SP which I love to carry around just because it’s such a work of art. This camera by Fujifilm is due to be released in early 2011. It features a 12.3 megapixel APS-C sensor with a 23mm fixed lens, or 35 equivalent on this camera. Unfortunately no swapping lenses. 9 blade aperture and built in 3 stop ND filter. ( Cool! ) ISO speeds up to 6400 and 1/4000 of a second max shutter speed. SDXC memory card and it supports 720p movie modes. Ok, that’s probably enough about specs for now. (All photos from dpreview.com)
Now for a look at the top of this wonderful camera. It’s just as beautiful as the front. This is a digital camera you can use just like your old film cameras. Focusing and aperture on the lens. A wheel just for shutter speed and exposure adjustment. It does support manual exposure, aperture and shutter priority. Even a old fashioned shutter button. I just love this thing. The back of this camera gives the illusion away and you see the things you’d expect of a modern camera except for view finder. That just isn’t for show and Fujifilm has something special in store for us here. It’s not just a basic optical viewfinder, but using the lever on the front of the camera you can swap between optical (with digital overlays) to a purely digital EVF.
You can see from the diagram you can use it as a optical view finder here with the LCD overlaying information. Just flip the level and the LCD takes completely over so you can see exactly what you’d get through the lens. DoF effects and exposure. Very cool. The LCD seems like it’s fairly high resolution. I’m really surprised to see someone make this type of finder.
This is basically the Leica X1, but with the Optical viewfinder so many people wanted. It will probably be 1/3rd the price too, although that’s still $600-800 US, so it won’t be cheap. I can’t help but think if they could of made this for m4/3s, even if the optical finder only worked for a standard zoom lens they’d be selling these like hotcakes. Hell, even if it was just the EVF. I’ve stayed away from the gear forums for many months, but I can’t help but lust after this.The New Olympus E5 worthy upgrade if you shoot Olympus
Olympus officially announced the E5 last week to much wailing and complaining. It wasn’t the super camera that people had hyped it up to be. As people started to settle down they realized that Olympus has improved* pretty much every complaint they had about the E3. The E5 appears to have better high ISO by two stops. Olympus claims they have improved the low light AF as well as CAF. The latter was a big complaint with many users. It has a high resolution LCD basically the same as all the other high end cameras. It replaced Olympus’s crappy card format with a SD card slot and added movie capability. 720p, although the only people complaining it doesn’t have 1080p seem to be filming their kids at soccer practice. Do you REALLY need that? The AA filter appears to be MUCH weaker. From the (very) few shots we’ve seen so far the E-5 pulls out a lot more detail then any 4/3s camera to date. It even included a newer bigger battery and the different filters from the E-30 for fun. It still keeps everything that was great about the E-3. Weather proof case, large bright view finder, flash. They did replace the grip that hopefully solves the problems a few people had with the E-3 using it in extreme conditions. Although some are complaining about the price, about $1699 in the US it looks like a very solid upgrade for Olympus shooters. It may not compare feature wise to some of the prosumer cameras in the same price range, but it’s build much better and probably uses some better electronics on the inside. On the downside it probably won’t convert many people to Olympus. Olympus has said they will continue to make DSLRs for the foreseeable future, but we might not see much in the way of new lenses. Fortunately we really don’t much with the current lineup. Olympus thinks m4/3s is going to be the future and they are probably right. It’s still 5-10 years off, if not more. *Reviews still pending
On the right track with the Apple TV
Apple announced the Apple TV a while back and I haven’t gotten around to writing anything about it. I think they did a great job on it. At $100 it’s an easy purchase for people. Small, black and no big power brick anymore. It’s a lot more quiet than a Xbox 360 or PS3. I think they’ll sell a lot more than the old Apple TV. I don’t think that’s where the big differences lie.
On Apple’s page the first thing they mention is All Streaming. No hassle. I think this is big. Apple found that people didn’t like having to sync the Apple TV with their desktop/laptop. It’s a pain in the ass. A big change is going to an overall rental strategy instead of buying TV shows. People are starting to realize that HD video is big and storing it is a pain in the ass. One drive failure and you lose a lot of data. They don’t understand how to back it up and store it properly and it’s awfully expensive too. A cheap rental should appeal to a lot of people, especially for TV shows. Paying $2-3 dollars a night to watch a few shows is something I’d do, but $6-9 I balk at. For a buck I’d even pay to watch a favorite episode over again. I’m not sure how the consumers will react to it, but I think the networks will find it a pretty good deal. Air Play is another feature they announced, more with the iPad OS 4.2 rather than the Apple TV. I think this is going to be a huge part of Apple’s strategy going forward on how you get data to your Apple TV to display. Stream music, photos and video. Watch part of the video at lunch at work, come up and touch a button on your iPhone/iPad and it’s streaming to your TV in seconds. Are the kids watching Toy Story 3 on your phone in the car? Come home and it’s up on the TV. A lot people already have photos on their iPad or iPhone and being able to show them so quickly on the TV will be great, you’ll also have control over how they are displayed. They are already partnering with other computers to build Air Play into other devices. In a year or two I think they are going to see it everywhere. It’s been blasted a bit for only supporting 720p video, but 1080i/p is rather high bandwidth for most internet connects yet. According to what I’ve read you need to have a 56” screen or large to really be able to see the difference. It’s still not an obvious difference at that size, so this really won’t matter to a lot of Apple’s customers. Those that care about video quality that much probably aren’t streaming video off the web anyway. One thing we may see in the next year or two are apps for the Apple TV since it runs the same iOS as their other mobile devices. How the user will interact with them is still a question. I don’t think users want an email client or web browser on their TV, but I’d love to see what developers would come up with. I think we’d see a few great apps. I think it’s still going to be a hobby for Apple, but this time the hobby is going to grow.Apple’s new Ping network
Apple released a pile of new iPods last week, the second version of the Apple TV and a new social network called Ping. As far as a social network it’s pretty basic and that’s where it’s getting the ire of tech pundits. What is Ping? Looking at [Apple’s Ping page](http://www.apple.com/itunes/ping/) you can see that it has three main goals keeping with Apple’s style of making some simple to begin with. First, connect with artists and see their updates. It’s basically twitter, but goes a little further by allowing artists to post song recommendations in a Ping format. Two, follow your friends and see what music they are listening to and what they recommend. Three, it allows to keep up date date with the above two points (not sure why this is a another point), listen to previews of songs people you follow recommend, buy them with a single click and top song lists. It also allows you to see concerts in your area and help buying tickets. It’s a pretty simple service with a specific goal. The tech pundits are complaining it’s basically not like every other service. Bisness Insider’s Jay Yarrow complains that it doesn’t interact with your iTunes collection. You can only like songs that are in the iTunes store. This does make a lot of sense. It’s powered by iTunes and pushing iTunes songs, so if I like a song or suggest an album that isn’t on iTunes it really doesn’t help people since they still can’t buy it without searching other sites. Criticizing an Apple service for being based around other Apple services seems like a silly complaint. If that’s what you want, there are other blogs you can read. His second complaint is that you can’t listen to music through Ping, like another service Lala which streamed music to devices. With iTunes as your hub and ability to sync to an unlimited number of iPods, I don’t see the point of needing a streaming service.
Schonfeld from Tech Crunch complains that he can’t read people Ping’s in Twitter, Facebook or anywhere else. I actually consider this a plus. If I want to follow someone’s tweets, I’ll follow them on twitter. If I want to follow them on Ping, I’ll see their posts there. Having to read them across three services, two of which don’t provide the integration that give Ping value is pointless. He goes on to say the only time he really uses iTunes (besides syncing) is to buy music, which is exactly where Ping is aimed. You can also access it on the iPod touch and iPhone so it is rather mobile, but you can’t access it from non-apple devices like Android. If there is a problem with Ping it’s that it’s difficult to find your friends. It looks like Apple was planning on using Facebook connect, but it sounds like talk between the companies broke down. Most articles quote the load it would put on Facebook’s servers, but a single request for someone’s friends seems like a minor compared to what they have to process everyday. It will be interesting to see if Apple manages to get a foothold in this space with this version of Ping, but I’m guessing we’ll be seeing a big update in 6 months or a year.
