Category: Web/Tech

Google Earth images are updated every 12-18 months – that’s the answer to Why isn’t Beirut burning in Google Earth? | News.blog | CNET News.com.

I got a new camera!  I’ve had it for about a week and I love it.  I ended up buying the Canon SD450.  It’s about the size and weight of the Panasonic I was looking at but without the extra zoom (it has 3x zoom) and with a viewfinder.  Now that I have it, I realize that with such a nice screen on the back, I’m not likely to ever use the viewfinder.  So next time I don’t think I’ll make a viewfinder a requirement – that way I could have gotten more zooming power.

What’s nice about having a Canon is that all the menus and buttons work pretty much like my old Canon so it was really easy to get up and running.

If you are interested in how long it takes digital cameras to actually take a picture (remember I was looking for a camera that took the picture when I hit the button, not 5 seconds later), CNET has the best reviews.  Click on Review and then on Performance.  Remember to check how long the camera takes to come on, how long it takes to take a picture without the flash and how long it takes to take a picture with the flash.  (A friend of mine has a little Fujifilm and he’s really proud of how fast it turns on and takes a picture, but if you use the flash, it’s really slow.)

Canon PowerShot SD450 Reviews. Digital cameras Reviews by CNET

I’ve been talking about buying a new digital camera for years now and it’s time.  However, comparing the all of the features is difficult.  My primary requirements are:

• Small.  The smaller the better as I’m much more likely to actually carry it around and take pictures.  (If my cell phone camera were better quality it would work great.)
• Fast pictures.  I want to hit the button and have it take a picture right then, not 2 seconds later.

Nice to have would be:

• Easy to use.
• Lots of optical zoom.
• Lots of presettings, like outdoor, close up, etc.

So far I’ve found two:

• Casio Exilim Zoom EX-Z850: Digital Photography Review.  Very small.  Fast shutter speed.  Can take three pictures in a second.
• Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ1: Digital Photography Review.  Small (but twice as heavy as the Casio), fast, and it has all my "nice to haves" but NO VIEWFINDER!  And I always look through the viewfinder. Could I live without it?

Comments?  Suggestions?  Other cameras you like?  Other places to look for reviews?

If you are as anxious for the Google Calendar as I am, you might enjoy these screen shots of the Google Calendar, TechCrunch � Exclusive Screenshots: Google Calendar, allegedly leaked by a Yahoo employee who was a beta tester.

I am looking forward to a calendar that allows me to easily share my schedule and invite people that don’t use Outlook to events that I plan.

The latest rumors say that GMail might get voice mail, Evite integration and a calendaring system.  The one I’m most excited about is the calendar!  I hope it has good sharing capabilities and good integration with existing systems.

� More code foreshadowing perhaps? | Googling Google | ZDNet.com.

Google recently added a bunch of reports to its search history.  Now I can go back and see what sites I most commonly visit on Saturdays or what things I searched for the most in September.  Oh yeah, in September I was looking for sailing shoes for my sailing class.  Pretty fun stuff.

Google – Search History

My favorite podcast is Science Friday: Making Science Radioactive.  I listen to it (free) for several hours each week.  They talk about everything from embriotic stem cells to genetic testing to apes to hurricanes to string theory.  I always finish wanting to buy the guest speaker’s book to learn more …

There’s an interesting article in the New York Times Magazine about how interrupt driven our lives are, Meet the Life Hackers – New York Times.  One interesting concept was that we like the interruptions because the make us feel needed:

This can actually be a positive feeling, inasmuch as the constant pinging makes us feel needed and desired. The reason many interruptions seem impossible to ignore is that they are about relationships – someone, or something, is calling out to us. It is why we have such complex emotions about the chaos of the modern office, feeling alternately drained by its demands and exhilarated when we successfully surf the flood.

The article went on to talk about the ways computers could help us deal with the interruptions by figuring out when we were busy (and therefore should not be interrupted) and when might be a good time to deliver all our email.

There was also a study that said that having a bigger computer screen where you could see all your active tasks might decrease your stress and allow you to finish tasks 10-40% faster than on a small screen!

Sometimes I think I’m the last one to hear about some of
these tools and I wonder how you are supposed to find them all.  Del.icio.us is a website that lets you store all
your bookmarks online so that you can access them from any computer. You can
also share them with others (anonymously if you want) and search other people’s
bookmarks by keyword or popularity.  If you use more than one computer
it’s a lifesaver!

My top web tools right now are:

• Bloglines – a tool I use to read news and blogs
• Flickr – for sharing photos
• Del.icio.us – a tool for keeping track of all your bookmarks in one place
• Gmail – email
• Amazon – books: information, reviews and recommendations

Maybe I should get a job as a T-Mobile rep.  I know more than the folks that answer the phone.  I called T-Mobile today to ask
what roaming cost in the BVI and Puerto Rico.

The first guy told me calls from BVI would be free.  The web said
$2.99/min.  So I called back and it took the woman 10+ minutes to
confirm that yes it was $2.99/min.  (Took me less than 30 seconds to find it via Google.)  Then she told me text messages were free.  I asked her to
check because I thought they were 35 cents/message, and she confirmed,
"oh, wow, yes they are 35 cents each!"   (If for any reason you want to check it out yourself, here’s the web page: International services.)

Reminds me of the time I was talking to a United rep and he was trying to convince me that the longer trip was better because it had a shorter layover.  (Like I want to sit on an airplane any longer than I have to!)  I finally asked him in frustration if he’d ever flown on an airplane and he said no, he hadn’t!