November 2005 Archives

Yes, there's no nice way to put it. They suck. And in many ways.

First, their customer service representatives are typically the least trained and least motivated service reps I have encountered, and that's saying something (I research customer service quality for a living).

Second, they treat their customers with disdain, abusing them at every opportunity. Take the letter I received today as an example (emphasis theirs):

Dear Valued Customer,

According to our records, you currently enjoy Digital Cable with the Variety Tier as part of one of our old promotional packages. Effective 12/01/05, this package will no longer be supported. In an effort to make sure you continue to receive the best value, we will be moving you into our DIGIPic 1000 package so that you can continue to see savings.

DIGIPic packages simplify digital cable TV with easy-to-understand entertainment packages featuring choice, flexibility, and value in every plan. By transitioning to DIGIPic 1000 package with the Variety Tier, you will continue to enjoy all of your current services with absolutely no interruption.

The DIGIPic 1000 package priced at $52.49/mo* includes:
- Basic Tier
- Standard Tier
- Digital Value Tier
- 45 Music Choice Channels
- On-Screen Program Guide
- Access to Movies on Demand and Free On Demand

You will notice the packaging change on your December statement. In addition, the Variety Tier will now bill as a separate line item.

*Equipment priced separately

Notice that today is November 30th, meaning that they gave me all of ONE DAY'S ADVANCE NOTICE. If they were actually saving me money (per all that talk of "value"), I probably wouldn't care about the timing. But they aren't.

I currently pay $55.95 per month for my "old promotional" package. Their new DIGIPic 1000 package, the one I'm being forced into, costs $52.49, and the Digital Variety Tier (of which I really only care about the Speed Channel) is another $5.95 a month. So my new total will be $58.44, or $2.49 a month (a 4.5% increase) more than I'm currently paying for the exact same services.

"In an effort to make sure you continue to receive the best value..."

It's one thing to have a company raise its prices. It's another to have them lie in your face about it. And it really takes cojones to pretend they're doing you a favor on top of it.

And third, their website sucks. They've had these DIGIPic packages for a long time now, yet nowhere does it say what channels each includes. I had to receive a "change of service" letter to let me know what the DIGIPic 1000 line-up entails. That's just lame. Time Warner Cable's customer service reps are so very awful that I would LOVE to be able to handle everything via their website, but their ineptitude keeps me from being able to do even that.

How I hate Time Warner Cable...let me count the ways...

p.s. I'm taking a bit of vengeful joy in the news yesterday about the FCC's new stance that cable customers should be able to choose their channels a la carte. Even if it's not a good idea and won't happen, some cable executive somewhere is losing some sleep over it. And that makes me happy.

Follow-up: I've tried a half-dozen times now to reach my local TWC office to discuss the change with them, and every time I get a busy signal. No automated answering system, no hold queue, an actual busy signal. Turns out they sent out a bunch of these letters (a co-worker of mine got one as well), and it looks like their customer service capacity just isn't adequate for the flood of angry customers calling in. So, now my account will be changed and I have no way of doing anything about it. Brilliant. This is how lawsuits begin, I swear.

So I familiarized myself with the Nokia N90 over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend (see Hands On - Nokia N90 Multimedia Smartphone for initial thoughts and photos). Being as this is the first Symbian Series 60 phone I've spent any real time with, the learning curve was a bit steeper than I expected. Also, given that I'm not as much of a "phone guy" as some folks (most of my phone use involves data rather than voice), I came into it with a lot of smartphone-esque expectations (e.g., I'm very used to a touchscreen and lots of hardware buttons, of which the N90 has neither). With that said, after the jump are some thoughts from my first few days of using the N90.

The nice UPS man just dropped off a Nokia N90 on my doorstep.

You remember the N90...it's the new GSM phone with the Carl Zeiss optics, 2MP camera, video capture straight to MPEG-4 at 352x288 resolution, two-way video calls, etc., etc.

While it's warming up (don't want to risk condensation damage) and the battery is charging, I thought I'd post a few shots of what it looks like sans power (next to my Treo 650 for size comparisons). It's amazingly small...thick, but elegant.

So far, me likey. More later after I get it operational.

Continue reading past the break for the photos!

Engadget: Users report Xbox 360 "crashing like mad"

Not clear why...yet.

Just reminds me that I never, ever want any Microsoft code or components responsible for operating my car or house.

Recently, I started a list of cameras that almost met all my needs, but failed to do something I desired.

Well, after looking at all these cameras, my resolve to stick it out until someone came up with a digital SLR that took movies simply petered out. I am weak.

After looking around a bit and trying out some cameras in stores, I realized that I need image stabilization -- I just do not have steady hands. And, I wasn't very excited about dropping over a grand on a camera. So, based mostly on those two factors, I decided to see if I could find the Konica Minolta Maxxum 5D (called the Dynax 5D in some markets) for a decent price.

As fate (or advertising) would have it, I got an email from Circuit City announcing a big pre-Thanksgiving (wtf?) camera sale. Long story short, I picked up a 5D kit (includes an OK, but not great, 18-70mm lens with the 5D body) for $703 from the CC store about a mile from my house. As that was only about $15 more than the cheapest mail-order, I gave in -- my last argument for holding out was gone, and immediate gratification was just too tempting.

I haven't had much opportunity to use it extensively yet, but I snapped some quick pics of my daughter eating her dinner. So far, I'm really pleased at the responsiveness of the camera, and the images are very nice -- good detail and great color accuracy. The lens doesn't seem to be noteworthy in any regard -- it's a bit slow, but given that it only added about $50 to the price of the body alone, it was a bargain.

I haven't gotten it out of Program AE yet, so I expect this camera has a lot of room for me to grow into. More reactions will be posted here on GearBits as I use it...I promise.

According to the NY Times, the US Department of the Interior has announced its intention to remove the grizzly bears (brown bears) that live around Yellowstone National Park from Endangered Species protection.

Their stated reasoning is that that population has increased from ~250 to ~600 bears over the past 30 years, and apparently 600 animals is enough.

A spokesman for the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, Hugh Vickery, said ... that a comprehensive management plan has been completed that says how the species would be managed. "It guarantees that the species will not decline," he said. "It is designed to keep the species population increasing, or at least so that it would never become threatened again."

It's a sad and discomforting realization that we're managing the world's wildlife the same way we would manage a store's inventory. This can't be right.

In my recent post, What I Want in a Digital Camera (November 11, 2005), I listed a bunch of criteria that are important essential to me to have in a digital camera. Some folks emailed me with ideas (or posted them at DigitalMediaThoughts) so I thought I'd start a list of cameras that folks have suggested, but which ultimately fail to meet one of my absolute must-have criteria.

So, listed below, in true nerd fashion, is a table of suggested digital cameras that come within one inadequacy or missing feature of being my "ideal". The features I require (as detailed in my original post) are listed as columns and each row shows a "near miss" camera that comes close to meeting my requirements (all links go to DPReview.com).

On this day 894 years ago, do you think people found it curiously interesting that the date was 11/11/1111, or do you think they were too busy fighting off bears and dying from plague to notice?

Or, Why the Heck Haven't They Made This Yet?

Since I began my search to replace my aging Olympus C-2100 UZ (I still miss my Uzi sometimes), I've yet to find a digital camera that I'd say is close to my ideal. Even if price weren't an issue, every model offered up in the past 2 years is lacking something important to me.

So, here's my annotated "short" list of digital camera requirements:

1) Excellent picture quality. It seems obvious to me that this should be near the top of anyone's list who really cares about the camera he/she uses. But oddly enough, and contrary to the belief that technology improves with time, cameras being announced recently seem to offer us worse image quality than cameras being made a few years ago. There is much gnashing of teeth over the increasingly noisy 5-9 megapixel sensors being stuck in 'prosumer' and enthusiast non-DSLR cameras. The manufacturers seem to believe that we're willing to put up with incredibly noisy (even at ISO 100) images as long as they're really, really big. Sorry...that doesn't make any sense to me. I'd take a clean 3MP image over a noisy 8MP image any day of the week. If that means you have to make a 1" (versus 1/1.7" or smaller) 5MP sensor, so be it. Even my Canon SI 1S, which came out in 2003, turns out worse photos than my old C-2100, which came out in 2000 -- the Canon just doesn't offer the same vibrance, clarity and tack-sharp images the Olympus produced despite it being 3 years newer. DSLRs seem to be the clear winner in picture quality, but they have a different limitation...

2) Great movies. OK, I heard several of you photography purists audibly snort when you read that. Yes, I really like the fact that I can take high-quality (VGA, 30fps) MPEG-4 movies with my digital camera (the lack of this feature is why I replaced my C-2100). I'll be taking some stills of something (OK, basically just my daughter these days) and I'll think "gosh, it'd be nice to get this on video." Switch modes and bam, I'm recording live action. And it's rare (OK, never) that I want to film something for longer than a few minutes, so the HQ movie mode offered by many of the better digicams suits me much better than a miniDV camcorder. Unfortunately, none of the DSLRs available today offer movie mode. Why is that? Surely they could figure out a way to lock up the mirror and just start recording video data. I mean, other than the optics configuration, a DSLR is pretty much like any other digital camera.

3) Fast response. I want to be able to take pictures well within a second of turning the camera on and I expect the shutter response, including auto-focus, to be darn near instantaneous. Too many expensive cameras still hem and haw over focusing, especially in low light situations (why on Earth did they stop putting AF assist lamps in high-end cameras?!?), making me lose moment after moment that should have been captured. Yes, DSLRs are generally quite fast, but for other reasons I mention none fits my ideal profile.

4) Anti-shake / optical image stabilization in the lens. I have notoriously shaky hands -- so much so that my friends used to joke I'd be the first surgeon to cut out his own spleen by accident. So for me, image stabilization is a real boon. And yes, I request that this be handled by moving lens elements (a la Canon) and not by moving the CCD (as Konica Minolta does). The latter approach is much less effective at countering shake due to the physics of optics (which I won't go into here).

5) A fast fixed lens with high-quality optics. This isn't so much a requirement as a logical conclusion. I want image stabilization in the lens, but I don't really want to have to buy a bunch of really expensive OIS lenses. Plus, I don't prefer the idea of hauling around a bunch of lenses -- I used to own a 35mm SLR and having a camera bag the size of a hockey duffle always irritated me. Today's long-zoom prosumer digicams have great range -- 35-350mm (10X) is common and 35-420mm (12X) is becoming moreso. That's a lot of zoom, my friend, and except for maybe slapping on a wide-angle adapter once in a while, 35-420mm covers pretty much anything I can imagine doing on any kind of regular basis. So I'm happy to give up the ability to swap lenses if they'd give me a really good (fast with great optics) fixed lens.

6) Zoom and focus rings on the lens. Why is this concept so strange to camera makers? They seem to think we want to zoom in and out using a little thumb toggle instead of twisting a barrel ring. Well, it ain't so. Not only would zoom and focus rings make for much better (i.e., precise) control, they'd use up less battery and wouldn't add noise to movies the way that powered zooms do. Fuji's FinePix S9000 (shown) is a good example of what I'd like the barrel on my camera to look like.

7) Optical viewfinder -or- high-res EVF. I like the idea of getting back to an optical viewfinder, but unless the camera is a DSLR, this is really tough to do well. So, I'd be willing to keep an electronic viewfinder as long as it has enough resolution to let me focus manually with confidence. This is impossible to do in most digital cameras due to crappy EVFs and it's very frustrating.

8) Powered by NiMH 'AA' cells. I have a hard time justifying a camera using a proprietary rechargeable battery when four 2500mAh NiMH 'AA' cells give such great power. Sure, they take up a bit more room, but I'm not pretending this camera needs to be pocketable. Besides, isn't that what the handgrip is for -- a place to put the batteries??

9) Pop-up flash and hot shoe Yes, I want options. For snapshots and spontaneous fill flash, a pop-up flash is usually just fine. But, if I'm going to do something serious, a hot shoe for competent external flash is essential.

10) All the other little stuff. Full manual controls, including white balance and those other more obscure settings; good ergonomics; a good rear LCD (2" or larger please); an EVF mounted on the far left edge of the camera (if looking at the back), so I can avoid nose smudges all over the LCD; standard-size threaded filter mount on the lens (without requiring a special adapter or hood); a reasonable flash media format (Memory Stick and xD Picture Card do not qualify); live histogram; neckstrap and lenscap strap attachment points on the camera body; full bracketing; and some other things I probably can't think of at the moment.

You might notice I didn't specify image resolution (megapixels). That's because I don't really care that much. At least 3MP is reasonable and more than 6MP seems wasteful to me (media gets eaten up really fast with 8MP images). Big zoom can make up for lower MP a lot of the time, as can effective framing when you actually make the shot.

Yes, this ideal camera would probably be pretty costly, but you know what? It'd be worth it...to me, at least.

Update: I've started a list of cameras that almost meet these requirements at this GearBits post...go check it out.

According to InfoWorld, Palm CEO Ed Colligan has publicly reiterated his company's plans to use Palm OS in handhelds and smartphones for the foreseeable future.

"We have a rich product roadmap of Palm OS-based handheld computers, mobile managers and Treo smartphones that we intend to deliver," Colligan wrote. "We have sold more than 30 million Palm OS-based products over the years, and it is not our intent to walk away from such a strong and loyal user base."

There...I told you so.

And when Access' new Linux-based Palm OS yet-to-be-named-revision-of-PalmOS comes out, I'm sure Palm will be jumping on that bandwagon with both feet. They'd be stupid not to. And if there's anything Ed Colligan is not, it's stupid.

Over in the right menu there in GearBits' main index is a new feature I'm trying out: a Radio.Blog music streaming applet.

I've filled it with a not-quite-random sample of stuff I personally like and will be refreshing the playlist every so often. Click on the graphic to launch a Flash player applet in a dedicated pop-up window (so you can continue to browse without losing the tunes).

Let me know what you think. And if you want more info on the player applet, visit the Radio.Blog.Club website.

John Rennie's Scientific American editorial, Kansas, Where "Ignorant" is the New "Educated" is spot on.

Somewhere right now in Kansas, there is a little child who may grow up to be a brilliant scientist. She may make fantastic contributions to science, and future generations may remember her as one of the brightest intellectual lights of her time. But if so, it will be despite the public education that she received in Kansas, because today six dimwits on the state's Board of Education voted to lower the standards for how science is taught.

And...

It wasn't enough for them to undermine the teaching of biology by falsifying a scientific controversy over evolution. No, the Board of Education went as far as to redefine what science is: it's no longer just a search for natural explanations for natural phenomena. Now it's a search for... well, that's a bit hard to say. Any sort of explanation, apparently. Pixies, ghosts, telekinesis, auras, ancient astronauts, excesses of choleric humor, they all seem to be fair game in the interest of "academic freedom."

References to Aldous Huxley and the last paragraph's excellent literary construction are added highlights, IMO.

Go read it.

And for those Kansas science teachers who will now have to present this faux skepticism over evolution and offer a sincere lecture on 'intelligent design,' I encourage you to do it using a Jesus hand puppet, just to give it the proper authority and gravitas.