The Digital Camera "WOW!" Factor

Click for a larger view.Dateline: New York City, 2001. At an InfoTrends breakfast briefing in New York City I was told that digital cameras would be available for about $100 within 10 years. It was Wednesday, June 27, 2001, in the grand ballroom of the Manhattan Center on 34th Street. I recall thinking that this might be possible if the manufacturers used low-end CMOS sensors and limited resolution to about 1 megapixel. I was half right.

Digital cameras are available for $100 or less. CMOS sensors turned out to offer far more quality than expected and even many high-end cameras now use them. But those $100 digital cameras offer resolutions in the 8-to-12–megapixel range instead of just 1Mpxl. In the final quarter of 2010, I purchased two consumer-grade cameras. One was an upgrade for the camera I carry in my briefcase and the other was an upgrade for the camera my wife uses. I was surprised by the quality of cameras available at the lower end of the consumer camera range.

Click for a larger view.For Phyllis, I bought a Nikon L22 (red) to match her Ipod Nano (red).
I was looking for something small and light but with excellent image quality.

Click for a larger view.To carry around in my briefcase, I selected a Canon SX130 even though the SLR I use for "serious" work (the scare quotes are warranted) is a Nikon and I've used Nikons almost exclusively since the early 1970s.
I would have liked the ability to shoot in camera raw mode, but that's not a feature available at this price.

Let's consider the specifications for each of these cameras.

Nikon L22 Canon SX130
Resolution 12MP (4000x3000) 12MP (4000x3000)
Sensor 1/2.3" CCD 1/2.3" CCD
Stabilization Digital Optical
Zoom (optical) 3.6x 12x
ISO 80-1600 80-1600
Memory SD and SDHC SD, SDHC, SDXC, MMC, MMCplus, HC MMCplus 
Battery 2AA 2AA
Video 640x480 1280x720
Size 4"x2.5"x1.5" (15 in³) 4.5"x3"x2" (27 in³)
Weight 6.5oz 9.25oz
Price Under $100 Under $200

The overarching point, though, is that both cameras are capable of creating high-quality images.

Click for a larger view.An image from the Nikon.
This is part of Christmas dinner at Kayee's house. I used the "food" setting to capture this image. The camera was hand held, without benefit of a tripod or any other device to steady it. I've always been fairly good at this, but the lack of motion blur on this late-afternoon available-light image surprised me.

Click for a larger view.An image from the Canon.
Here are Chloe (right) and Percy (left). This was also a hand-held shot using the existing light.

And This Means ....?

If you're among the small number of people who haven't yet converted from film to digital photography, now is the time to make the change. Digital photography offers so many advantages (cost, speed, and usability to name the first 3 that come to mind) that it's difficult to find reasons for hesitation.

For less than $200 you can obtain a camera that's more capable than the point-and-shoot film camera you've been carrying around. Film and processing costs don't exist in the digital world. And your choices are astonishingly broad. In just the $100–$150 range, B&H Photo lists nearly 100 choices.

An Entertaining, Educational Waste of Time

The Internet Archive does more than just archive the Internet. You'll find old versions of websites in the Internet Wayback Machine, movies, audio files, old radio programs and commercials, audio books and more. Everything on the site is either in the public domain or has otherwise been cleared for legal downloading. Let's take a look around.

The Wayback Machine used to have some old Technology Corner pages that dated back to 1996 (just 2 years after the Web was invented), but those are gone now. There's an immense selection of old-time radio programs and some historical broadcasts. You can listen to most of them online or download them.

For example ...

Visit the Internet Archive.

Spokeo: Too Much Information?

Our lives are not private. A great deal of public information has always been available from various government offices. But until recently, if I wanted to find out the value of your home, your age, or just about anything but your phone number, I would need to visit a court house and request the information. Now it's as easy as using your computer. And sometimes the information is even right.

Spokeo says it's Click for a larger view."Not Your Grandma's Phonebook" and it's not. Because much of my personal information has been available online for many years and because I use the Internet a lot, it seemed that investigating myself might not be particularly useful. So I selected an acquaintance who doesn't even own a computer. I gave Spokeo her name and the city where she lives.

Here's the result:

If you don't know the person's name and city, but you do have an e-mail address, phone number, or user name (wow!), Spokeo can help. User name? "Spokeo's username search finds online profiles with similar usernames. Spokeo's username algorithm searches across social networks, blogs, photo albums, dating sites, music networks, video sites, e-commerce stores and other public web services to help locate the owner's profiles, names, photos and other public information associated with the username. Spokeo's username search is free to use without registration. The top people search names on Spokeo this week are Steven Johnson, James Jones, Karen Martinez, Susan White, James Lopez, and Mark Jones."

Phone Tag

You Have E-Mail

How About User Names?

When I gave Spokeo "techbyter" ...

Worried?

This kind of open access may worry you or you may think that it's perfectly normal.

Either way, it probably doesn't matter very much what you think. This kind of open access exists. While the ability to obtain this kind of information isn't new, the ease of collecting it is new.

Short Circuits

Checking Out

I was standing in line at a grocery store the other day when I noticed a sign that said the store would stop accepting checks and traveler's checks on a date early in 2011. They'll take credit and debit cards and they'll still accept cash. But no checks. The check's slow descent into oblivion seems to be speeding up.

We still need checking accounts, of course, although I learned this week that about 10% of US citizens don't have a checking account. Wow! So we need checking accounts, but not checks. I write maybe 10 checks per year. Nearly everything I buy goes on a credit card and, when the statement arrives, I transfer the funds online.

Even the Internal Revenue Service is doing away with checks. If you owe money, you can pay electronically. If you have a refund coming, the IRS can deposit it directly to your bank account. But what about those people who don't have a bank account?

This year the IRS will provide some refunds by adding the refund to the taxpayer's debit card. Using tax refund debit cards will eliminate the cost of printing and mailing paper checks and will make it possible for those who have no bank account to get their money sooner.

The IRS plans to send letters notifying about 600 thousand eligible taxpayers about this year's pilot program. The tax refund debit cards option will also be offered to nearly 2 million US workers who are paid via a payroll debit card.

Printing checks was once a solid, profitable business but that is changing fast.

Shorter than Short Circuits

I ran across a few things this week that are worthy of mention, but aren't long enough even for Short Circuits. So here they are.