June 2006 Archives

It's time we said good-bye to the "D" in "DSLR". DSLR, short for Digital Single-Lens Reflex, refers to the fact that these upper-end cameras no longer rely on film.

The majority of cameras sold on the planet haven't relied on film for years now (since 2003, to be exact), so why do we need to refer to these things as digital cameras or digital SLRs?

We stopped carefully calling them electric drills and electric typewriters a long time ago -- now, you have to explicitly specify the manual version of either if that's what you mean, as electric is assumed. It's the same with electronic calculators (when's the last time you saw a mechanical one?).

Therefore, I propose we start referring to digital cameras as just "cameras" (and, accordingly, digital SLRs are just "SLRs") and begin referring to film cameras, as the minority in the category, explicitly as such.

So...can I sell you my old FSLR?

Per CNN.com, the US Surgeon General today released a report making it clear that the dangers of second-hand smoke are beyond a resonable doubt and should be considered settled as fact:

Steer clear of smokers and any of their drifting fumes. That's the advice of the surgeon general, who on Tuesday declared the debate about the dangers of secondhand smoke over.

"The science is clear: Secondhand smoke is not a mere annoyance but a serious health hazard," said Richard Carmona.

There is no safe level of secondhand smoke -- even a few minutes inhaling someone else's smoke harms nonsmokers, he found. And separate smoking sections, even the best ventilated ones, don't protect enough.

Read the rest of the story.

I really wish city leaders would stop bowing to the pressure of local restaurant and bar owners to water down smoking controls in public places and entertainment/dining venues. History has shown that such bans do not have a significant deleterious effect on such establishments, and in fact, in some places there have been elevated levels of business within a year after bans took effect.

Well, for a 30-day period, ending today, I deleted no spam/phishing emails on my Gmail account. Total after a month is 759, or an average of 25.3 spams a day.

I received 825 valid emails in that same period, or roughly 27.5 per day. So, spam made up 47.9% of email entering my Inbox in the last month.

While I'm appalled at the 759 number, I'm actually surprised it's below 50% -- I had expected higher.

And Gmail's spam filter works quite well. I'd estimate that only roughly 50 of the 759 spam messages, about 7%, weren't appropriately flagged and filed automatically.

Thanks, Gmail.

The Houston Chronicle has a story from the Associated Press that discusses how a new Canadian study offers broader, statistically significant evidence that homosexuality in men is likely the result of effects prior to birth.

Men with several older brothers have a greater chance of being gay -- whether they were raised together or not -- a finding researchers say adds weight to the idea that sexual orientation is based in biology.

One day pretty soon, I suspect, there will be amassed so complete an evidential trail that homosexuality is an innate quality, akin to gender, height, and eye and skin color. When that happens, I expect people like those in the Center for Marriage and Family Studies ("We don't believe that there's any biological basis for homosexuality," Dailey said. "We feel the causes are complex but are deeply rooted in early childhood development," as quoted in the article) will fall into two camps: (A) the deeply apologetic that gays have been so maligned (e.g., constitutionally prevented from marrying) who will work to counteract these prejudices and social injustices, and (B) the offensively ignorant who will continue to refute sound science (as they have with global warming, evolution, and a host of other topics) and "believe" that this subset of the population is unfit for society. And unfortunately, those falling in camp (B) have had a lot of practice preaching intolerance already.

Working to eradicate a social problem (e.g., ignorance or poverty) is charity; working to eradicate a biological trait in those who don't want to change is genocide. Learning to tell one from the other is apparently something that many in our society haven't learned how to do yet.

Read the full news story.

I recently purchased the Canon PIXMA MP830 All-in-One Printer/Scanner/Fax/Copier and, after a few weeks of use, have been thoroughly impressed.

One of the features that initially caught my attention is the MP830's duplex (two-sided) scanning, copying, and printing. I do a lot of scanning paper documents to PDF, and having to manually collate the PDF pages of two-sided originals gets old in a hurry. The MP830's duplex function works like a charm. Sure, it adds a few seconds to each page as it sends it through for a second pass, but the paper handling has been rock solid so far.

You can read the MP830's specs a lot of places, so I won't bother with them here, but suffice it to say that it offers just about everything you could want in a multi-function device: color LCD for menus and photo previews, borderless photo printing, PictBridge, card reader slots, two paper sources, flatbed AND auto document feed for scanning, and, above all, duplex paper handling (the only function duplex doesn't work in is faxing). The MP830 isn't networkable, but sharing the printer through a PC's USB connection makes it accessible to everyone on the LAN.

A very nice borderless 4x6 photo print takes less than 30 seconds to emerge, and scanning a stack of 10 double-sided pages into Acrobat takes only a minute or so. The speed is impressive.

Perhaps the thing that makes this printer especially tremendous is that you only have to spend about $260 (or less) for all this functionality! I got mine from Newegg.com, who even shipped it for free (which is a good thing since this is one heavy box!).

I came from a long line of HP printers (still own two of them). I wish I had found the Canon sooner; similarly spec'ed HP multi-function printers cost more while providing (in my opinion) much crappier software (HP Director is just awful!) and cartridge problems that border on fraudulent. The Canon uses dedicated cartridges for each color and black, meaning, for example, that if you print a bunch of letterheads with blue logos and your cyan cartridge runs out, you only need to replace that one, which is much cheaper than replacing all three colors as you're forced to do with HP units. In my opinion, the control panel layout of the MP830 puts HP's all-in-ones to shame, too.

So, if you're interested in a very competent and reasonably priced printer/fax/scanner/copier multi-function, I'd strongly recommend the Canon PIXMA MP830 all-in-one. Just make sure you have a spare USB2.0 cable handy (or pick one up), as one isn't included with the printer.

I really like subnotebooks (or sub-notebooks or subnotes, as you prefer), yet there are still far fewer to choose from than larger-sized laptops. The June, 2006 issue of Laptop Magazine had a cover story entitled "Featherweight Champs", which compared six notebooks under 4 lbs. They crowned one a "winner," but, as usual, it wasn't clear to me precisely why it won.

So, to help escape the problems inherent with such subjective methods, I'd like to propose a new metric for comparing small notebooks -- the GearBits Subnotebook Scale (or GSS).

The concept is pretty easy: compare some good aspects with some bad aspects and derive a numeric score as a ratio of the good to the bad.

Good Things (numerator):
- Screen resolution (in megapixels)
- Screen size (diag., in inches)
- Optical drive on-board (Yes = 3, No = 1)
- Battery life (actual, with wireless on, in hours)
- Keyboard pitch (horizontal, in millimeters)

Bad Things (denominator):
- Size (square root of width X depth)
- Thickness (average thickness, in in.)
- Weight (in lbs., as configured above)

Calculation Example: Panasonic Toughbook W4 (shown)

(1024x768/1000000) • 12.1 • 3 • 6 • 19   3254.4
-------------------------------------- = ------ = 88.4
        (10.6x8.3)1/2 • 1.4 • 2.8         36.8  

Here is how some of the more popular subnotes compare:

Sure, the GSS is not comprehensive. For example, it doesn't differentiate a basic internal DVD/CD-RW "combo" drive from a full-blown internal 16X Dual-Layer DVD-R/W -- either would contribute the same to a laptop's GSS score. So, consider the GSS just as a starting point...feel free to customize it as you see fit, depending on your priorities and needs. Here's a pre-made Excel GSS calculator if you want to tweak the GSS for your own use.

I would suggest that for every "must have" feature beyond those listed above (e.g., Bluetooth), add 20 (or less) to the model's GSS score, depending on the feature's value to you. For example, if you deem Bluetooth to be an indispensible feature, give it a bonus of 20 points -- the Fujitsu P7120 above would have a revised score of 96.3 rather than 76.3, making it a top contender for you. Just remember to add similar adjustments to other laptops with the same feature(s). Sum up these add-ons and compare the revised GSS scores.

And while I designed the GSS to rate subnotebooks specifically, there's no reason you couldn't plug in the specs on any laptop. Just remember that it will likely favor smaller, lighter laptops over bigger, heavier ones even if the larger units offer better performance.

So, how does your laptop score?

Update: A couple of friends with Mac laptops emailed me specs (see table below) -- the GSS seems to work regardless of laptop size (or OS ;-), but it does tend to favor smaller notebooks.

In two previous posts - Treo 650 SD Slot is teh Fastar (February, 2005) and SanDisk Extreme III Secure Digital SD Card (March, 2005) - I compared the speeds of four Secure Digital cards in three Palm OS devices.

Well, it's been 16 months and newer devices and higher capacity cards are now out, so I thought I'd run some more comparisons. This time, however, I'll be using the new Palm Treo 700p along with its venerable brothers, the 650 and 600.

The four SD cards being tested here are:

L to R: Adata 150X 4GB, SanDisk 133X Extreme III 1GB, SanDisk Ultra II 66X, SanDisk 512MB

Here are the results using VFSMark v1.1 (notice that the 4GB Adata card was not tested in the Treo 650 or 600 -- those devices do not come with support for FAT32 file systems required for 4GB cards):

I think a few conclusions can be made from these data. First, the SanDisk Extreme III is a very fast card. At a rated speed of 133X, it bested even the 150X Adata card overall.

Second, the added expense of their Ultra II line above and beyond the price of SanDisk's standard (blue) line of SD cards appears to be wasted if used in a Treo. There's just no appreciable bump in speed. Maybe on a PC -- didn't test that here, so can't generalize -- but not on a Treo.

Third, the 700p looks like it has faster access to SD cards than its predecessors, which is good news. Not only can it handle FAT32-formatted cards (up to 4GB), it reads faster than the 650 and 600 and writes much faster than the 600 (but about the same as the 650).

So, if you rely on card-intensive apps, you may want to consider the combination of a Treo 700p and a SanDisk Extreme III as a pricey, but effective, upgrade.

A colleague turned me onto the excellent Logitech Cordless 2.4 GHz Presenter (pictured). As its name implies, it's a wireless controller for PowerPoint and other presentation software. It's good, so I thought I'd review it.

Why I like it can be summed up in three reasons:

1) It just works, no muss, no fuss. Pop the little USB dongle in a free USB port and the device is nearly instantly in control of your presentation app. No drivers are loaded (or, if they are, it happens very fast and very painlessly, at least on Windows XP machines).

2) It's designed very well. The aforementioned USB dongle is stored in the back of the handheld component, so you're less likely to lose it. The device only comes with a few buttons, so it's easy to hand to someone else without a lot of explaining. It does Forward, Backward, Blank Screen (excellent!), "F5" (which starts or escapes from full-screen mode), and the laser button (yes, it has a red laser pointer). It even comes with a snazzy little neoprene Velcro-close case that fits it just perfectly.

3) It has a countdown timer! I've been looking for this feature for forever. You can set the device to count down from any increment of 5 minutes (up to many hours, in case you're that long-winded), with time remaining displayed on the very readable LCD (which also, quite handily, displays the unit's remaining battery power). You can even have it vibrate at 5 minutes and 2 minutes remaining -- excellent for those of us who lose track of time and don't wear watches.

Anyway, this thing is awesome. I've tried it on several laptops and it's worked flawlessly every time. Since it's on 2.4GHz, you won't get interference from cellphones (although the odd cordless might share its frequency). It's sturdy and, at less than $60 at Amazon.com, it's quite reasonably priced. So, if you give presentations a lot and don't want to be tied to your notebook, give the Logitech Cordless 2.4 GHz Presenter a try...you'll love it.

As a lifelong fan of soccer, er, football, um...you know, that sport the rest of the world loves so much, I've been looking forward to World Cup 2006 for a while. I've always wondered why Americans generally don't care as much about the game, but I just noticed another correlate: the US press coverage of soccer is pretty lame, and that's putting it nicely.

Where a US news outlet might write that the player "kicked a shot wide," anywhere else might say something like "rocketed a disappointing miss left."

Take this comparative example of coverage of today's US drubbing by the Czech Republic.

First, some of ESPN's coverage:

U.S. captain Claudio Reyna came closest to scoring, hitting a post midway through the first half. But Rosicky scored on a soaring 25-yard shot in the 36th minute, and the Americans never got back into the game against the Czechs, semifinalists in the European Championship two years ago.

Rosicky hit the crossbar in the 68th and added a goal in the 76th minute, getting past the U.S. defense off a through pass from Pavel Nedved, Europe's 2003 player of the year, and beating Kasey Keller on a breakaway.

Eddie Johnson, who entered at halftime, provided some energy, missing just wide in the 70th minute and high in the 76th.

Now, read a bit of the BBC's take, which exemplifies the European rest of the world's passion for the game:

With five minutes on the clock Nedved fed in Grygera and the full-back's inch-perfect right-wing cross was clinically headed home by 6ft 7in Koller.

USA enjoyed plenty of possession, but the Czechs - and the brilliant Nedved in particular - always had another gear to move into.

His outrageous outside-of-the-foot cross landed on Grygera's head, but he could only nod over.

The Americans so nearly made them pay moments later, Reyna drilling a 25-yard daisy-cutter that crashed back into play off Petr Cech's right-hand post with the Chelsea stopper beaten.

Granted, superlatives and hyperbole aren't regularly welcomed in journalism, but maybe, just maybe, if Americans were more regularly presented with coverage of soccer that exuded that much savvy and enthusiasm, we might care about it more.

Or, maybe we need to care about it first before ESPN ever will. But then again, our apathy for watching people play cards on TV didn't stop them from spoon-feeding us the World Series of Poker six hours a day, now did it?

Business trips often provide nice opportunities for some travel photography, so taking both my camera and my laptop -- something none of my current bags can accommodate -- was becoming increasingly desirable to me. So, I began searching for a backpack-style bag that would safely house my DSLR and lenses while also providing room for my notebook.

I found the Case Logic SLRC-4 SLR/Computer Backpack. It's nice and quite a bargain (I found it for about $70 delivered -- the next cheapest similar alternative was a LowePro bag for about $140).

Granted, if you have a lot of gear and/or really big lenses, this may not be the bag for you. If you want to use it for toting both a camera setup and laptop (with accouterments), you'll be limited to one DSLR body, 4-5 small-to-medium-sized lenses, and up to a 15" notebook. A jumbo 300mm f/2.8 (or larger) lens just isn't going to fit. The inside is very reconfigurable in terms of allocating space for different equipment, so as long as you're not heading off to a month-long safari, you should be covered.

Build quality seems very good -- definitely better than I expected for such an inexpensive bag. Another benefit is that there is nothing about the bag that screams out "expensive technology inside!" making it less attractive to thieves.

So, if you have a modest DSLR setup and need to take your laptop with you often, check out the Case Logic SLRC-4 backpack...a good bag and a great value.

CNN.com has an interesting article, Tattoo nation -- the U.S. is getting inked, which summarizes the findings in a new survey.

Here are some of the statements I found interesting:

...about 36 percent of Americans age 18 to 29 with at least one tattoo...

...24 percent of Americans between 18 and 50 are tattooed; that's almost one in four. Two surveys from 2003 suggested just 15 percent to 16 percent of U.S. adults had a tattoo.

"Really, nowadays, the people who don't have them are becoming the unique ones," said Chris Keaton, a tattoo artist and president of the Baltimore Tattoo Museum.

The survey also found that what your mother may have told you about who has tattoos is true: People who drink, do drugs, have been jailed or forgo religion are more likely to be tattooed.

Nearly one in four [with piercings] reported medical problems, including skin infections. Among those with mouth or tongue piercings, an equal proportion reported chipped or broken teeth.

So I'm becoming more unique the longer I go without getting inked or pierced? How odd...it always seemed that proving uniqueness and individualism was why people got it done in the first place.

By the way, here's one example why tongue piercings aren't such a hot idea.

When I fly, I tend to try and notice what smartphone* devices people are toting along to the airport. I just got back from a 3-day work trip to California and here's my informal count on the way back (SJC --> DFW --> CVG):

RIM Blackberry: 19

Palm Treo (Palm OS): 16

Windows Mobile (all): 3

Nokia: 2

* Note: only devices with thumbboards are included (I don't consider anything lacking a QWERTY keyboard to be a true "smartphone")

Granted, these are totally my counts based only on what I saw people using or wearing, so anything stuffed in a bag or pocket was not included (obviously). But, I don't think those ratios are too outta whack with reality -- the market has pretty much decided, at least in the US, that it's Blackberries vs the Treo (and, as I didn't see a single Treo 700w, it's pretty much just Palm OS Treos at that).