Digital Home Thoughts - News & Reviews for the Digital Home

"The PowerShot G10 ($499) is the flagship camera in Canon's point-and-shoot lineup. Its highlights include a 14.7 Megapixel CCD, 5X wide-angle zoom lens, image stabilization, a high resolution t3-inch LCD, and more manual controls than you can shake a stick at."

This Canon is almost the perfect small, carry-anywhere camera for photo enthusiasts. It is fun to use, can take RAW images and has great manual capabilities. At ISO 80, the photos from this camera rival those from larger and more expensive digital SLR's. But it has one glaring flaw - low light performance. It seems that Canon got caught up in the megapixel race and by increasing the number of megapixels on the same 1/1.7 inch sensor, it increased the noise in the images which really shows up in low light photography. Canon would have been better served reducing the megapixels and the subsequent noise. If you don't need low light, it is a great camera to get.

"This growing list of backwards policies is already creating a sense of digital isolation: Canadians can’t stream the videos Americans stream, download the files Americans download, remix the media Americans remix, or tweet the way Americans tweet. With the election of Barack Obama, digital culture in the U.S. hit a tipping point, where a robust online public sphere proved itself capable of changing the world. Meanwhile, here in Canada we’re approaching our own tipping point, where a series of ignorances and capitulations threaten to turn our country into a digital ghetto."

Living in Canada, the digital climate has a direct impact on me and my concerns echo a lot of what Jesse Brown has posted. Internet access, both wired and wireless, in Canada is relatively expensive and slower than our friends south of the border. This in combintion with a growing effort on DRM restrictions makes Canada a less inviting atmosphere for innovation. One case in point mentioned in the article is Twitter recently shutting down outbound SMS messages in Canada. Canadians, well, anyone, needs to make an effort to make sure that their country strives to keep its Internet access as cheap and open as possible. With the impact that a pervasive Internet can have on our lives, it's worth that effort.

"Buying music and video software for your PC can be an expensive and confusing experience for even experienced consumers. All that is about the change with the introduction of the TrakAxPC —the ultimate multimedia creation tool. TrakAx empowers you to create professional music and video mixes in an easy-to-use and fun environment. Whether you are creating a music track for your MySpace page or a video for YouTube, TrakAxPC is the most powerful FREE application on the web."

Looks to be a nice, basic audio and video editing program. Has anyone tried it yet? If not, you can't beat the price.

"Nikon is finally ready to ship its GPS dongle, the rather lazily named GP-1. First announced back in August, the device slips into the hot-shoe connector of compatible cameras (D200, D3, D700, D90, D300 and the brand-new D3X) and records the positional information to the image. This can be picked up later for geo-tagging images, either at home (most image processing software now supports geo-tagging, including Nikon's own ViewNX) or by online services like Flickr."

This is a GPS unit that hooks into the flash connector and tags all your photos with GPS data. Most of the photo hosting sites such as Smugmug and Flickr can use this data and show where your photos were taken. This is such a cool device! I can't wait for Canon to release one.

"Adobe has released an update to its Camera Raw Plug-in for Photoshop CS4. Camera Raw 5.2, which replaces v5.1, extends support to seven more cameras, including Canon EOS 5D Mark II and Panasonic DMC-G1. The update includes enhanced color profiles, output sharpening and a new Targeted Adjustment tool. In addition, users can save all image adjustments and settings as a single snapshot for future reference."

The latest release of Adobe Camera Raw adds more than just the usual new cameras. It also adds some great new features. The targeted adjustment tool is especially useful in developing your raw images as you can adjust parts of the photo differently. Kudos to Adobe for continuing to add features to their raw processor. The only downsides I see is that you have to manually remove the beta camera profiles (the only change was to remove the words Beta 2). Some devotees still think the Nikon and Canon software does a better job of raw conversion, but, each new version from Adobe reduces the gap. ACR 5.2 is available for Photoshop Elements 6 & 7, Premiere Elements 4 & 7 and Photoshop CS4.

"For weeks now, Roku Netflix Player owners have noticed an almost universal drop in quality dots (which range from 1 to 4 in order to show quality levels), with many finding the new feeds "unwatchable." CNET recently had a talk with Tim Twerdahl, vice president of consumer products at Roku, about the issue, and according to Tim, all he knows is that "Roku didn't make any changes." Furthermore, we've seen comments in our own posts noting that other Netflix-enabled boxes are also seeing the quality drop. The worst part is that there's still no definitive solution in sight, so we suppose our only advice is to kick back and watch Netflix and Roku bicker over who's really to blame"

I don't have a Roku box, but apparently users are having issues with Netflix streaming quality, to the point that the video becomes unwatchable. This got me thinking about the fundamental differences between streaming and download services particularly as it relates to the (relatively) new category of IP set-top boxes.

Streaming services like Netflix automatically adjust the quality of the video based on the media player: bandwidth, resolution, etc. The stream is not stored, but played and then discarded. Time to playback is typically short but quality may be limited. If the connection is unreliable or unavailable, a streaming solution effectively no longer works.

Conversely, download services deliver an existing video file but may require the entire file to be downloaded before beginning playback. Since the file is stored locally, quality is consistent and it can easily be replayed. In a system with progressive download, used by Vudu and the new Blockbuster set-top box, playback is started before the video is completely downloaded. However, depending on connection speed and quality, playback may be delayed while waiting for the video download to finish.

Read more...

Data loss is brutal to deal with. Regular Digital Home Thoughts readers know that I bring up the issue of data backup regularly, because sadly most people don't take data backups seriously until they've lost something they cared about (I know I was the same way). The folks at Seagate, in conjunction with Notebooks.com and nine other Web sites, would like to give one lucky winner a head start on changing their backup habits by giving them a Seagate FreeAgent Go 500 GB portable drive, and a monstrous 1TB FreeAgent Desk drive. For those of you not so good at the mathematics, that's 1500 GB of storage space, all at blazing USB 2.0 speeds. What's not to love?

Want to win this hard drive prize package? All you have to do is answer the following question: What do you have on your notebook or desktop computer that you'd be devastated if you lost? Have you ever lost important data - what happened? Post your reply in this discussion thread, one comment per person. The winner will be chosen randomly from all the posted comments. Your deadline for submitting your comment is 11:59 PM Pacific Time on December the 6th. The winner will be announced on Monday the 8th.

Interested in increasing your chances of winning? Stop by each of these other nine great sites and enter their contests as well:

• CrunchGear
• Bleeping Computer
• Gotta Be Mobile
• Notebooks.com
• GeeksToGo
• PlanetAMD64.com
• Gadgetell
• Paulstamatiou.com
• Macenstein.com
• Bleeping Computer
  

"A typical Netbook has a 7 inch screen, an Intel Atom or Via Nano processor, a solid state (flash) hard drive and a keyboard that’s 80-85% standard size. Most have Wifi. Some have other bells and whistles like bluetooth, a camera, etc. I find Netbooks unusable for three reasons: they’re underpowered as PCs, the screen is too small for web surfing, and the keyboard is so small that effective typing is impossible. The basic problem as I see it: Netbooks are designed to appeal to two very different markets - the price sensitive and the size sensitive. The two are really mutually exclusive."

Michael Arrington has posted a scathing article on Netbooks, describing them as a inadequate for the markets it is targeted for and even takes the opportunity to plug his concept tablet. I have to disgree, as I see Netbooks happily serving many customers. On paper Netbooks definately do not impress, but their purpose is to serve as a lightweight, mobile companion. I think Arrington has fallen into the same trap that many others do in seeing a Netbook that is the same form factor as a notebook, his expectation is that it is a notebook. Netbooks fill a much different need, with customers, not techies, who just want to be able to access the Internet to check their email, IM their buddies, and twitter a bit. Netbooks are capable of a bit more, of course, but even in only serving that much, they probably fit 80-90% of what a customer needs. Does Arrington have a point? Sure. But I think he's only highlighting that Netbooks have a limited use for someone into tech. Tell me there's at least one person other than myself that have welcomed Netbooks with open arms.

If you want to maximize your chances of winning the contest Jason recently announced, you need to enter as many times as you can. You'll get your chance to enter here soon, but in the meantime, you can enter right now at these site:

Gear Live

Bleeping Computer

Windows Connected

Thoughts on Poetics and Tech

Morningside Mom

Neowin

Boston Pocket PC

"UPS just arrived with the new Blockbuster OnDemand movie rental box, by 2Wire. If you recall, $99 gets you the box and 25 video rental credits. Once those have been consumed, content begins at $1.99 a pop. Packaging is Blockbuster branded, though there’s absolutely no mention of “Blockbuster” on the unit. (Then again, the competing Roku box is also devoid of “Netflix” branding.) The AppleTV-shaped hardware feels somewhat plasticy, but it’s more attractive and has more personality than the Roku box."

On the surface, looks pretty similar to the Roku box (which I have and am working on a review of) but focused on rentals rather than the all-you-can-eat mentality of the Roku box. It does not look like this is tied to Blockbuster's on-line rental service and if it offers a decent number of new releases, it might be attractive to those that only get a few movies a month.