Category: Lifestyle (Page 15 of 20)

      The future of the point-and-shoot (there isn’t one)

      November 22, 2010 /

      Point and shoot use on Flickr

      MG Siegler at TechCrunch has put together another interesting article, this time on the future of the point-and-shoot camera. His basic point is that the industry is behind the curve and needs to evolve quickly to catch up in the social game. Though he makes some good points, I think it’s too late.

      Siegler starts his article with an anecdote about his latest camera purchase, a high end Canon point-and-shoot, the S95, which he also says he uses five percent of the time. I can’t imagine why you would spend $400 on a camera you would use so little, particularly when the impetus behind most point-and-shoots is having pictures you can share. There are plenty of options at the prosumer DSLR level that can take better pictures for hardly more cost. If you need something more social, get a decent phone.

      Siegler mentions all of this, but I think it’s actually too late for the point-and-shoots to make the necessary changes. Phones are just too far ahead. Sure, the S95 takes vastly superior pictures to my iPhone, but the times I want to take decent pictures I plan ahead. The rest of the time, I don’t want to be carrying another device with me. My phone is plenty sufficient if it means I don’t have to keep track of another device.

      As cell phone cameras continue to improve, point-and-shoots will be more and more marginalized. Sure, there are still people buying them – a fairly significant part of the market – but dedicated devices rarely do well for everyday use. This is the same reason we aren’t going to see the Peek take off. Yes, it’s nice for checking email or tweeting, but do you really want to carry around the same device. Granted, a good point-and-shoot offers much more functionality than the Peek does, but it’s the same physical limitation. I don’t always want to have a bag with me, or worry about whether I’ll break something important if I put my camera in my pocket. I want something quick and usable, not something for taking super high-quality pictures. If I want that, I’ll take my DSLR. I don’t need an in-between.

      Of course, that’s also where Siegler’s article ends. It seems for him that the dream of a connected point-and-shoot is truly a dream, and one that won’t be realized before smartphones have killed the market segment.

      Cameras, Lifestyle, Mobile

      What to make of Facebook’s new messaging system

      November 17, 2010 /

      Zuckerberg speaking this week.Earlier this week Mark Zuckerberg held a press conference to announce a new messaging service. I say service because it’s not the email program that everyone was expecting. That’s part of the package, but it’s a small part and an optional one.

      This new system is actually about conglomerating all of your message services – email, SMS, chat – in one place. The big issue, as Facebook sees it, is that we have too many places to look for our text-based communication with one another. By building the system into Facebook, Zuckerberg hopes Facebook can become your complete social hub for the web.

      It’s more than that, though. While working on this project, Zuckerberg talked to high school students about the way they’re using email. Turns out, they aren’t. It’s too formal, which I can totally understand. I can get upwards of a hundred emails a day, and that’s a far cry from the deluge that other tech professionals will see. I don’t need to see, “Hi Jeff,” or “Hello Jeff,” or “Jeff, how are you today?” from promoters and marketers or even my coworkers. I need information, and I prefer that it’s short and to the point.

      Zuckerberg is obviously pointing at the end of email, or at least the kind of formal, subject-line message system we understand as email today. He can’t say that, though, if only because he’s Mark Zuckerberg.

      Digital Media, Lifestyle, News, Websites

      Review: Castiv Guitar Sidekick

      November 12, 2010 /

      Guitar Sidekick - Hand Shot

      I’ve spent my Thursday nights over the past couple weeks enjoying the mild North Carolina autumn on a friend’s porch. A group of us get together, drink whiskey, and play guitar. It’s a good time, and though our musical tastes span a wide variety of genres, we can usually keep up with one another. There are those rare instances, though, where I’m glad to have an iPhone. I can dig up lyrics and tabs on the go. There’s just one problem: where do I put the phone? With the well-documented fragility of the iPhone’s glass, I don’t want to accidentally drop it on a cement porch.

      Enter Castiv’s Guitar Sidekick. It’s a slick little gadget designed with this very problem in mind. The Guitar Sidekick consists of a rubber lined clip that grips your strings between the nut and the tuners and provides a cradle for your phone. The cradle is basically a spring-loaded claw with rubberized grips to keep your phone in place. It sounds tenuous, and trust me, it looks tenuous. That’s why I tested it over my bed before taking it for a porch session. I was shocked that it held so well, though if you’re really nervous about stability, just use a case along with the Castiv. The Apple Bumper, for instance, made the grip a rubber to rubber connection. My phone wasn’t going anywhere.

      My only real complaint about the Guitar Sidekick is that it can be difficult to get the angle just right. It can be tough to secure a tight lock for the claw part of the device and adjust it to the right angle. It’s not impossible, just a nuisance. The good news is that you can secure a tight lock, which is probably of greater concern.

      All in all, I think the Castiv Guitar Sidekick will be great for anyone looking to pick up songs quickly at an impromptu jam session. It’s application will be a little limited elsewhere, at least until there is a wide offering of apps across several mobile platforms.

      accessories, Lifestyle, Mobile, Reviews

      My Facebook purge has helped a lot

      September 19, 2010 /

      Defriend.Though still not a huge fan of Facebook, I decided that I hadn’t given it a fair enough shake. I was accepting just about anyone who friended me and wasn’t taking the time to manage those people into groups that received the information I wanted them to see (or not see).

      A couple weeks ago I was at the point that I needed to quit or make a big change. I went with the big change. I pared my friend’s list down to people I truly wanted to be in touch with. Goodbye high school ex-girlfriends and classmates I didn’t talk to back then. Goodbye friends of my siblings who aren’t also actually my friends. Goodbye almost everyone. I went from 350+ friends (which is a pretty small number, I know) to just under 65.

      It was the perfect move. I feel so much more comfortable sharing simple thoughts throughout the day and my news feed doesn’t get pounded with a bunch of shit I don’t care to read. Though it’s still early, I’d say the purge has helped my Facebook experience a great deal, and I don’t think I’ll consider getting rid of the service for quite some time.

      Lifestyle, Websites

      100 million Facebook pages leaked to torrent sites

      July 29, 2010 /

      Facebook Confidential.This isn’t quite as bad as it seems, but it does give you a sense of what’s possible with all of the data on Facebook. A hacker named Ron Bowes from Skull Security wrote a crawler to compile data from all the publicly available pages on Facebook. Publicly available – that’s important.

      It’s also important, though, that such a crawler could be written to grab that kind of data. Though you could just as easily search for these people and get their info, I’m not entirely comfortable with the idea that a bot could be written to compile the same. Facebook security remains a shifting target – for most people, there’s not a lot on Facebook they don’t want people to see. As Facebook continues to grow and expand its profitable operations, there could potentially be more and more truly personal data involved. In fact, that’s how Zuckerberg would prefer things. That’s why this is important.

      I’ve been thinking about kicking Facebook for a while, and every time I get a story like this, even as unalarming and completely benign as this story is, it points to the ongoing lack of attention and concern it seems Facebook gives to user data.

      Lifestyle, News, Websites

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