Wish lists coming soon

My Wishlists for 05' are coming soon - this year I hope to have two lists - A list of things I want people to buy me :) and a list of things I hope to see people invent. I will also review last year's list and see what came true and what didn't.

As if the formats themselves weren't enough...

I have lamented in the past about the myriad of different flash memory formats out there. Of course, the technology you buy I guess has some bearing on the format you use. For example, I own a Sony camera, and it only uses memory sticks. So it should just be simple then, walk into any electronics store and buy and old memory stick, except even then, there are too many choices.

Do I by the standard or Pro Memorysticks? Do I by the 'ultra' Memory sticks? What about the 'Shoot and Store?' Memory sticks? It's enough to drive a person mad. I finally called up SanDisk and ask them them difference between all of their models. Here is the general idea:

- The Memory Stick Pro is the standard for most Sony Cameras.
- The High speed Memory (such as the ultra and extreme lines from SanDisk) will really only benefit those people who's cameras support their faster read and write speeds.
- The 'Shoot and Store' models are cheaper memory cards that are not reliable to continously write to.

Maybe I should just get a canon?

Dale is Back

One of my Favorite sites on the web was Dale Coffing's PocketPC passion. It was a great site that talked about handheld devices. Unfortunately, this past summer, Dale's server had a major Hard Drive failure, and went offline. Today I went back and discovered that he has been back online for several weeks with a new retooled site - called MobilePassion at the old url - http://www.pocketpcpassion.com.

Welcome back Dale, looking forward to reading your articles and reviews!!!

Am I the only person left without an MP3 Player?

There was an article in today's Wall Street Journal about the apparent shortage of iPod's this season. Even Costco, which normally has all kinds of items at discounted prices is selling the Ipod mini for about $20 over it's SRP. It's not just the iPod that is selling like hotcakes. Creative's Zen Micro 5GB drive is also selling over its SRP, that is, if you can find them. Most e-shops and retail stores are backordered.

I wonder if this will make the lesser-known and less-popular brands of MP3 players to bottom out after the holidays are over?

Picasa - First looks

I recently downloaded Picasa's image tool from www.picasa.com. This is probably one of the best digital imaging tools you will ever get - paid or free. First and foremost, you can set it up to actively search your drives or specific folders for new pictures and albums. Previously, I had stored the images in folders under the "My Pictures folder" within a minute or two, Picasa had automatically picked up all of the images and categorized them into albums. Picasa also has basic photo editing tools that allow you to do the most common tasks such as rotating, cropping and red eye reduction, as well as an automated picture enhancement tool.

It plays automatic slide shows of your images and has a unique timeline feature that allows you to go through your photos chronologically. It has fairly decent print options that will let you print full-page photos on standard-sized photo papers - i.e. 4x6, 5x7, 8x10, etc., as well as the ability to create picture packages on an 8.5x11 photo sheet and contact sheets.

It also has some cool features that a lot of its competition do not:

- It's e-mail tool will let you e-mail pictures not only through your standard e-mail program, but through a 'quick' interface as well.

- It has an HTML export tool that will help you export albums to a website

- It integrates with a tool from picasa called 'Hello' which is an image-sharing IM client (as if we needed another one).

- If you ocassionally use your digital still camera to take short video clips or combine video and stills in your albums the slide show and browser tools will play the video automatically without the need to launch a separate player!!!!.

So far it seems like a cool tool. I haven't tried the 'Order Prints' feature yet, but I am curious which site it takes me to.

I will try to do a more complete review in a couple of weeks including a review of the Hello Client