demoreel postproded

Discovered at Thomas Hawk's Digital Connection whiile surfing the bits.

Folding UMPCs?

UMPC sales have been lackluster this year - they started shipping in March. The 1st year (well almost) of the UMPC feels a lot like the 1st year of the Tablet PC - again, lackluster. I hold Microsoft responsible for my over-use of the world "lackluster." Microsoft needs to find and crown a Marketing Czar that can give Jobs a run for his money. They've got the hardware, the software, and the people talent - what they lack is the marketing talent. All the hardware innovation in the world isn't going to do it - even Fujitsu's folding UMPC will go mostly un-noticed.

Taking the Origami principle to heart, Fujitsu reckon they've got the ultimate UMPC licked, with this swish design for a laptop which literally folds in half to fit your pocket. >> T3

Help Me Buy a Laptop

 

Leah Culver, who works for Instructables, came up with an ingenious idea to get herself a brand new MacBook Pro - for FREE. Smart, very smart. Congrats. Check out her laptop. Video of Leah etching her new laptop.

High School 2.0 - Calacanis / Denton Style

Dave, a Techcrunch commenter, has it right - the cat fighting between Jason Calacanis and Nick Denton is High School 2.0 and the related Techcrunch post by Michael Arrington reads like an article out of the student-run school paper. On the other hand we're all reading it so doesn't that just make us a bunch of High School students? I appreciate Mike's coverage of the spat and enjoy reading about the more colorful side of the business sometimes. The comments associated with Mike's post are even more colorful ; ) - locker talk.

Messing around with Jason, IMO, isn't smart. He's well connected, visible, smart, and rich. Andrew Baron crossed him (listen to this TWit podcast) once and I think that might have marked the beginning of RocketBoom's trouble. RocketBoom.com Flame-out.

Related:
Nick's post "Netscape: The Calacanis Effect" gets it started
Jason starts firing back with "My favorite blogger/blog of the moment..."

Reflections

I like the way this turned out. Shot here in Eugene, Oregon - by me.

Microsoft Media Center SDK Features Thomas Hawk's Work

The new Microsoft Media Center SDK includes a sample application that features Thomas Hawk's photographs. Hawk, in my humble opinion, is a fantastic photographer and I just love browsing his work on Flickr. Check his work out for yourself.

Scoble Style

My friend Pat McCarthy did a fantastic job outlining a talk Robert Scoble and Maryam Scoble gave recently at the Blog Business Summit titled Fifteen Ways to a Killer Blog. This isn't exactly new but I thought it was worth passing on.

Zune Failing

I really think Microsoft's new media player, the Zune, is going to flop. All the marketing dollars in the world aren't going to displace the iPod - at least not this time. Gary Stein recently commented on something that happened on CNN related to the marketing challenge Microsoft faces with Zune. Zune is going to fail because marketing products isn't one of Microsoft's strengths. Just look at the Zune website - the fake lifestyle shots are transparent and an instant turn-off for the demographic Microsoft needs most at this point - the kids.

I watched CNN this morning and Soledad O'Brien literally interrupted the tech-biz reporter, who was talking about the Zune, to extoll the virtues of her new, $70 iPod Shuffle. The next time the story came through the cycle, she had gotten her iPod out of her office and demonstrated how cool it was that you could clip it, and essentially un-sold the Zune, and pitched the iPod. -- Gary Stein's post

Flickr's Best

Flickr is teaming with fantastic photographers. Here are some of the best.

Blinkx Walls Rock - Here's my "Bush Terror" wall

Blinkx, the video search engine, is sporting a cool new tool that lets you post a "Wall" of video to your blog or website. The "Wall" is made up of independent looping video clips which are produced as a result of your video search query. It's a cool tool and fun play around with. The "Wall" below was produced by searching Blinkx for "bush terror." The really cool thing about this is that the wall will update itself as the Blinkx search spider finds more relevant content. Create your own "Wall" at Blinkx.

Microsoft Live Labs: Photosynth

Photosynth, a Microsoft Live Labs production, was a big hit at the Web 2.0 conference and it's easy to see why. Scoble dug it.

Our software takes a large collection of photos of a place or an object, analyzes them for similarities, and displays them in a reconstructed three-dimensional space.

With Photosynth you can:

• Walk or fly through a scene to see photos from any angle.
• Seamlessly zoom in or out of a photo whether it's megapixels or gigapixels in size.
• See where pictures were taken in relation to one another.
• Find similar photos to the one you're currently viewing.
• Send a collection - or a particular view of one - to a friend.
  
  Link to source >>

Camera Lenses

 

I'm an amateur photographer. I wasn't much of a photographer until I had kids. It was my desire to perfectly capture the moment that pulled me into the hobby.

Currently, I'm shooting with a Canon EOS 300D - an older generation Digital Rebel. I'd like to upgrade the camera but I think I've decided to focus on the primary lens 1st - the camera is good enough for now.

For years I've been using the kit lens and an inexpensive telephoto lens from Tamron. I'm finally at the point where I want to upgrade my lens. A high quality lens can really make a difference in the quality of your photographs. Mind you, composition and mastery of the basics should come 1st, before you start spending thousands on equipment but you do reach a point eventually where you want/need better equipment to take you to the next level.

I'm looking for a good general use lens to replace the kit lens that came with my Rebel - an 18mm to 55mm Canon lens. The kit lens is a decent lens but it isn't very fast and the optics are, well, entry level. It's time to move up.

I'm writing this post to share a few favorite resources for reviewing the different lens available to amateur and professional photographers. The-Digital-Picture.com is fantastic if you're into the Canon lens. They do cover a few of the 3rd party lens but they're mostly focused on Canon equipment. Photo.net also features excellent lens and camera reviews. I recommend both of these resources for learning more about the equipment available to photographers these days. And, last but not least, there's dpreview.com - the ultimate digital camera review site.

I'm not going to write a lot more about this but I will share with you the three lenses I'm considering at this point to replace the kit lens that came with my camera. If there's a lens that isn't on this list, that should be, drop me a comment.

Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM Lens (optically excellent, EF-S mount only)
Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8 L USM Lens (optically excellent)
Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 XR Di II Lens (EF-S mount only)

Happy Halloween!

IMG_5734
Originally uploaded by cale.

Happy Halloween! I took this shot with my Canon SLR while out trick-or-treating with my kids. Halloween night offers a lot of really cool low-light photo taking opportunities - I always enjoy it.