Digital Home Thoughts.com

Canon Rebel XSi Review Roundup

Suhit Gupta — Tue, 13 May 2008 05:00:00 GMT

http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/09/...review-roundup/

"We've already seen it unboxed, but if you've been waiting for a slightly more thorough look at Canon's new Rebel XSi DSLR (otherwise known as the EOS 450D) before you drop $800+ on it, you can now get your fix thanks to a steady stream of reviews that are now pouring in. Among the earliest to get its hands on a unit was Digital Photography Review, which reserved final judgment because it only did a preview but nonetheless provided one of the most exhaustive looks at the camera, complete with comparisons to its predecessor and its nearest competitors. Offering more opinions was Camera Labs, which found the XSi to be a "worthy successor" to the XTi, although it warns that new buyers should consider whether the upgrades are really worth the extra cost. The folks at LetsGoDigital were a bit more enthusiastic, calling the XSi a "perfect camera for everybody," although they were slightly disappointed by the camera's plastic casing."

The Rebel XSi has been one of the most sought after DSLRs ever since it was announced and now a few lucky people have had the pleasure of being able to play with it. Here are a number of reviews of the new Canon EOS Rebel XSi.
Read - Digital Photography Review (dpreview)
Read - Camera Labs (88%)
Read - LetsGoDigital (82%)
Read - Digital Camera Review ("a fairly conservative upgrade")

The reviews appear to be mixed at best. Some are calling this a 'conservative upgrade' while others are applauding Canon for raising the bar for entry into the DSLR market. The first review, i.e. the one from dpreview is probably the one to start with if you are seriously thinking about this camera.

Sumitomo to Launch 40" OLED TV

Suhit Gupta — Tue, 13 May 2008 03:00:00 GMT

http://www.oled-info.com/sumitomo/s...duction_in_2009

"Sumitomo Chemical Co. <4005> said Friday that in 2009, it plans to launch the production and sales of large-screen organic electroluminescence display panels for use in televisions of 40 inches or larger. President Hiromasa Yonekura said his company is considering forming alliances for the development of such organic panels. EL panels are thinner than liquid display panels and consume less power. Sumitomo Chemical is developing so-called macromolecule-type organic EL panels. Because these can be produced through an ink-jet printing process, it is possible to lower production costs and make large displays, a company spokesman said."

The photograph above is of the Samsung OLED TV just to give you an idea of scale. Large format OLED TVs, if this story were to be believed, will be available in 2009. No word on pricing yet. Though I seriously wonder about the picture quality to price to length of life ratio between OLED, plasma and LCD TVs. Of course, regarding the first variable there, I hope someone does a real "blind taste-test" between the three to give an objective analysis on the pros and cons.

New NAS Drives from Plextor

Chris Gohlke — Tue, 13 May 2008 00:00:00 GMT

"It's been a hot minute since we've seen any fresh new kit from Plextor, but the firm has just rolled out a new pair of NAS drives for those on the hunt for -- what else? -- networked storage. The StorX PX-NAS500L / PX-NAS1000L drives offer up 500GB and 1TB of capacity, respectively, and each unit includes a gigabit Ethernet port, one-touch USB back-up button and the ability to grow thanks to a pair of USB 2.0 sockets. Beyond that, you won't find much else special about the new duo, and your guess is as good as ours on pricing / availability."

Not many details on this, but I really like that these network drives are starting to include USB for expandability. Now they just need to start making matching USB enclosures for the additional drives and then they might be on to something.

Eye-Fi Adds Geotagging

Chris Gohlke — Mon, 12 May 2008 19:00:00 GMT

http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/12/...agging-explore/

"Eye-Fi's expanding from a single card to a family of three tonight. All are the same 2GB as before, but now we've got the new flagship Eye-Fi Explore ($129), which includes geotagging courtesy of Skyhook (the same WiFi-based location system that helps the iPod touch and iPhone find their way) and on-the-go WiFi via Wayport. Then you've got the Eye-Fi Share ($99) -- basically the same card we used to know simply as the Eye-Fi -- and finally the Eye-Fi Home ($79), which appears to only be able to upload photos through desktop software using your home network. Expect 'em all on sale come June 6th."

I think geotagging is going to be the next big feature in digital cameras. Imagine being able to share your photos on-line and being able to search by location. I'm betting that long term this feature will be built in to most cameras, but if you want to get a head start with your current camera, check out this new card from Eye-Fi that manages to fit 2GB of memory, wireless, AND GPS into a standard SD card.

Olympus Mju Stylus 1030SW Review - It is Waterproof!

Suhit Gupta — Mon, 12 May 2008 08:00:00 GMT

http://www.digicamreview.com/olympu...30sw_review.htm

"Announced on the 22nd of January 2008, the Olympus Mju Stylus 1030SW is Olympus' latest ultra compact "tough" digital camera - it's designed to withstand the elements, and is waterproof, shockproof, freezeproof, crushproof, dustproof, scratchproof, and therefore also childproof! The camera features a 10 megapixel sensor, a wide angle 3.6x optical zoom lens, a 2.7" screen that works in the sun, and a VGA video mode. The Olympus Mju 1030SW is available from around £215 which makes it great value for money. The camera is enclosed in an extremely tough metal body and is available in black, silver, or green. The camera measures approx. 93.2 x 61.4 x 21.3 mm (excluding protrusions), and weighs approx. 173g. excluding battery and memory card."

What an excellent idea! My favorite part about this review was reading the following in the specs - Crushproof up to 100kg, Waterproof to 10m, Shockproof up to 2.0m, Freezeproof upto -10 C, Scratchproof, Dust resistant body. Although honestly, it is the waterproof part that caught my eye. Firstly, it doesn't just say water resistant like most watches do, so you can actually go under water with this. Second, since it is waterproof to about 10m, that makes it ideal when going snorkeling. The review also states that the image quality is quite nice so all in all this seems to be a really good camera.

But here is the weird thing - I was going to say that this camera is a little expensive if one plans to use this only as a snorkeling companion when I saw the price quoted in the review (GBP215) but when I started looking on pricegrabber and Windows Live Product Search (in order to see what the cheapest price I could find for it was), all I could find was a $189 underwater housing for this camera. So the waterproofness fo the camera is suddenly a little suspect to me. I guess the housing is simply to increase the depth to which one can take the camera.

Of course, Olympus' site (UK site here) certainly shows this to be a legitimate camera with the right set of features and accessories so this just may be an issue of the camera not having made it out to most online retail stores yet. Estimated retail in the US is $399.

Yet Another Video Streaming Player?

Suhit Gupta — Mon, 12 May 2008 06:00:00 GMT

http://www.popcornhour.com/onlinestore/

"Popcorn Hour A-100 allows you to pull in digital video, audio and photos from various sources for your enjoyment on your HDTV or Home Theater setup. You can stream or playback your digital media content from a variety of sources, such as your PC, NAS, digital camera, USB mass storage devices (Flash drive, HDD, DVD drive), internal HDD and even directly from the Internet via the Media Service Portal. It also serves as a NAS and a BitTorrent peer-to-peer downloader to eliminate the need to switch on a PC or other device for this purpose. The Popcorn Hour A-100 supports the latest high bitrate video formats (MPEG2 MP@HL, H.264 HP@L4.1, VC-1 AP@L3 in TS of at least 40Mbps) to give you up to 1080p high-definition videos."

It is quite suprising to me that this little device doesn't support DVI. While most of my devices support HDMI now, I wonder how many other people have that ability and instead still have older devices that only do DVI. Also, I was thinking that for $180, this is pretty good until I realized that the hard drive is not included. That still doesn't make it a bad deal but it is just something to be aware of. Having said that, this little box does seem to support a lot of functionality. But given the big players in the market, I wonder if it will survive. I do have to say though that the name of the device is pretty amusing.

Turn Your Canon Point-and-Shoot Into a Super-Camera

Tim Williamson — Mon, 12 May 2008 03:00:00 GMT

http://lifehacker.com/387380/turn-y...-a-super+camera

"If you're using a consumer grade point-and-shoot Canon digital camera, you've got hardware in hand that can support advanced features way beyond what shipped in the box. With the help of a free, open source project called CHDK, you can get features like RAW shooting mode, live RGB histograms, motion-detection, time-lapse, and even games on your existing camera. Let's transform your point-and-shoot into a super camera just by adding a little special sauce to its firmware."

Ever since I bought a Canon PowerShot SD870 IS, I've been a little disappointed that Canon didn't offer "advanced" features such as the ability to manually set the aperture and shutter speed (you'd think a $300 camera would have these features). But it looks like my disappointment can finally come to an end now that I've discovered CHDK! CHDK (which stands for Canon Hacker's Development Kit) adds manual aperture and shutter speed settings, plus about a thousand (not really) other features. Plus for those of you worried about messing up your factory ROM, don't worry about it, CHDK doesn't overwrite your current firmware. It loads onto a memory card and you choose when to activate it. So what are you waiting for? Unlock the full potential of your Canon P&S! Let us know how it works out for you.

31 Days of the Dragon: We're Giving Away an HP Pavlion HDX9200 Notebook PC + Software + DVDs ($5500 Value)

Jason Dunn — Sat, 10 May 2008 21:23:00 GMT

The time has finally arrived (yeah, sorry for being a bit late): we're launching our 31 Days of the Dragon giveaway contest today. All the details about what's in the giveaway bundle can be found here, but the short version is that it's a pimped out-to-the-max HDX9200 notebook PC worth about $5000 if purchased at retail. The laptop features an Intel Core 2 Extreme X9000 CPU (2.8 Ghz), 500 GB of storage (2 x 250 GB hard drives), 4 GB of RAM, integrated HDTV tuner, fingerprint reader, nVidia GeForce 8800M GS with 512 MB of RAM, a 20.1 inch WUXGA screen (1080p, 1920 x 1200), and lots more. The software bundle includes Office 2007, three Blu-ray DVDs, and more. I'm reviewing it, but when I'm done (on or around the 17th of May), I'm giving it away to one of YOU.

*** The Official Contest Rules ***
OK, so you want to win this awesome prize bundle. I've been doing more YouTube videos lately, and as such I want to bump up our profile there. You know how YouTube works: the most popular videos and channels got there by first getting some exposure. I'd like you to help me with that! Here's all you need to do:

If you don't already have a YouTube account, create one (it's free and fast). If you have one already, you're golden.
Jump over to the YouTube page where the HDX9200 unboxing and first impressions video is posted. Watch the video, rate it, and post a comment on the YouTube page. Your comment should answer this question: "How will the Dragon rock your world?" Meaning, if you were to win the HDX9200, how would it change things for you? Would it allow you to get rid of your current computer, monitor, keyboard, and speakers? Would you come up with creative uses for a powerful workstation that could be moved - could you finally launch that mobile music recording studio business, be a wedding photographer and edit photos on the spot, or would it allow you to achieve some other goal? Or would you just revel in the sheer power of being able to play games and edit movies faster than ever before? Tell me how you'd use this powerful computer!
After you've posted your comment (only one comment per YouTube account), click on the yellow Subscribe button to subscribe to the Thoughts Media YouTube Channel.
If you want to double your chances of winning, also post your comment here on Digital Home Thoughts as a reply to this post. Please post your YouTube username as well so I can verify that you've subscribed to our YouTube channel and posted a comment there. If this is your first post to Digital Home Thoughts, please allow up to 24 hours for your post to appear.
I'll randomly select one person from the combined total of all the YouTube comments and the comments here. That person will win the laptop. Boom! Anyone in the world can win this laptop, thanks to the generous support of HP and Buzzcorps - it will be couriered to you.

The fine print about how I'm doing the random selection: When I do the random drawing, I'll do it from a combined total of all the YouTube subscribers and all the comments posted here on Digital Home Thoughts. Each YouTube subscriber and each comment posted here on Digital Home Thoughts will be assigned a numerical value, and I'll use random.org to pick a random number from the total. That's why if you post a comment both on YouTube, and here, you'll double your chances of winning. When I select the winner I'll be checking it against the comments, so make sure you fulfil all the contest requirements. If the person that is randomly selected hasn't followed my instructions, another winner will be chosen.

If you have questions about the contest, please don't post them here, only post your contest entries - send me a message with your questions using our contact form and I'll update this post with further details if I've forgotten anything. I hope everyone has fun with this contest!

*** UPDATE: PLEASE READ THIS. *** I just finished approving 65 (!!) new posts for this contest, and over 10 of them were duplicates. ONLY POST ONCE. You will not see your post right away if it's your first post to this site. It's held in moderation, then will be approved and will show up. Post ONCE, then come back in 24 hours and confirm your post is here (it will be). Anyone who has more than one post in this thread will be disqualified.

*** UPDATE #2: PLEASE READ THIS. *** If anyone posts more than once to this contest thread, or to the YouTube comments, they'll be disqualified. I just spent 30 minutes cleaning up more than a dozen posts in this discussion thread from a single user. I appreciate everyone's enthusiasm for this contest, but because each post is an entry, I can't allow more than one entry per person per location (one entry here, one entry over on YouTube). When I randomly select the winner, I'll be searching through all the discussion posts and if that person has posted more than once, they'll be disqualified and I'll pick another winner. That's the only way to keep this contest fair.

And That's a Wrap: Hope You Enjoyed The Contest!

Jason Dunn — Sat, 10 May 2008 15:00:00 GMT

...and we're done. That was one of the biggest contests, I've ever put on for any of my sites: 46 different prizes from13 different companies, totalling just over $7000 USD in prizes. Whew! I hope all of you Digital Home Thoughts readers enjoyed it, and that you'll return here again and again to read our news, reviews, and contribute to our community. One of the challenges in running a site with such a broad focus like this is it can be hard to build a critical mass of community - this contest was a mechanism to get people posting, get them involved in our forums, and get them reading the site. Keep coming back if you like what we do here!

A big thank you goes out to all of the companies that donated awesome prizes to this contest: Microsoft and the Windows Vista Team, Orb Audio, LumaPix, Kingston, HP, Audioengine, Corel, Cyberlink, Pinnacle, Proporta, PPC Techs, Roxio, and NTI.

And you'd think I'd be all done with contests for a bit, but nooooo, it's time to ramp up for the 31 Days of the Dragon giveaway event. Check back later today for the rules on how to enter to win an awesome $5500 prize pack, the centerpiece of which is an HP Pavilion HDX9200.

Re-Launch Contest: And The Winner of the HP Elite Autofocus Webcam Is...

Jason Dunn — Sat, 10 May 2008 14:00:00 GMT

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage...d=1205450856509

OK, to wrap up the $7000+ Digital Home Thoughts Re-Launch Giveaway Contest, we have one final prize: a last minute donation from HP of their brand new HP Elite Autofocus Webcam (it turns out to be a Best Buy exclusive, which would explain why I couldn't find any real information about it on HP.com). The winner of this 3 megapixel webcam is tregnier. Congratulations to the winner! I'll be sending a private message through our forum system, and the winner has 14 days to claim the prize or it's forfeit.

Canon Vixia HV20 HD Camcorder Grand Prize Winner...

Jason Dunn — Sat, 10 May 2008 13:30:00 GMT

The winner of the Canon Vixia HV20 HD camcorder (a Certified for Windows Vista Device), donated by by the Windows Vista team, is EscapePod. Congratulations to the winner! I'll be sending him/her an email and a private message, and a response is required within 14 days or the prize is forfeit. Big thanks to the Windows Vista team for the donation of this awesome prize!

And that wraps up our...hey, no, wait a minute - that's right, we have the missing contest #19 for the HP Elite Autofocus Webcam. Guess I'd better pick the winner for that, right? Ok, coming right up...

Orb Audio MOD1 PLUS Home Theatre Speaker System Grand Prize Winner...

Jason Dunn — Sat, 10 May 2008 12:30:00 GMT

http://www.orbaudio.com

The winner of an Orb Audio MOD1 PLUS Home Theatre Speaker System, donated by Orb Audio, is dbng. Congratulations to the winner! I'll be sending him/her a private message via the forum system, and a response is required within 14 days or the prize is forfeit. Big thanks to Orb Audio for the donation of this awesome prize!

Our Dragon Contest is Coming Soon...

Jason Dunn — Sat, 10 May 2008 11:40:00 GMT

http://www.31daysofthedragon.com/

[image courtesy of digitalmediaphile]

Because of the server move we had to do last night and this morning, things are a bit back-logged on me getting the 31 Days of the Dragon contest up on Digital Home Thoughts. It will happen today for sure, but it won't kick off until tonight - sorry about that! Watch for it. In the meantime, here's an updated list on some of the contests that are still going on, and some that are ending very soon:

iTunes - Pay More Get Less

Chris Gohlke — Fri, 09 May 2008 21:00:00 GMT

http://weblog.raganwald.com/2008/05...han-amazon.html

"For example, Bach: Goldberg Variations, BWV 988 on 256-bit DRM-free MP3 is just $9.99 from Amazon. The same album is also $9.99 from Apple, but you get DRM. And there are tons of tracks on Amazon that are actually less expensive than on iTMS, so you get better music for less money without the DRM hassle. So is Apple screwing the customers? In a word, no. The reason you can find more music on Amazon at a lower price is that the Record Labels want it that way. Do you think they charge Apple and Amazon the same price for each track and Apple simply charges you more and pockets the difference as a higher markup? The labels would like you to think that, but they actually charge Amazon less for each track, and that’s how Amazon can charge you less."

There is some interesting logic to this article. There were no references, so I have no idea if the labels actually sell to Amazon for less than Apple. I certainly follow that the record companies want Amazon in the game to keep Apple in check. However, I disagree that this will let the record labels take back control AND allow them to keep DRM. I think at this point they have to choose either/or. If they want to keep DRM in place, then they are stuck with Apple calling the shots. If they are willing to go DRM free, then competition can at least keep Apple in check .

Why Are There No Digital Cameras That Recharge Over USB?

Jason Dunn — Fri, 09 May 2008 15:35:00 GMT

We were discussing this issue in our forums a while back: why aren't there any digital cameras that recharge their batteries over USB like we do with our phone and MP3 players? It's a hassle having to remember to bring one power adaptor for my Canon SD870, and a different one for my Nikon D300. I can charge almost every device I own other than my laptop via USB so why not my digital cameras? I emailed a contact I have at a PR agency that represents Nikon and asked them to pass my question along. My contact was careful to point out that this is not an official Nikon Canada statement, it's just a personal opinion from someone working there. Here's the response I got back:

"I believe the reason stems from the power requirement issue. What I am getting at is that the typical user wants to remove the batteries to recharge them in a "rapid" manner, which cannot be afforded by a USB type interface. A cellphone is typically required to be available for use all the time which a USB interface charging method offers conveniently. Further a cellphone does not require as much operating current at any given time than a camera requires when it is in use."

Would you be willing to not be able to use the camera when it was recharging via USB? I sure would. I wouldn't even care if it took 200% longer to recharge via USB - I usually recharge my devices over night. I'm sure there are reasons why no one has tackled this issue yet, but unless they're insurmountable, I think the camera manufacturers should be looking very seriously at this problem - it would certainly be a differentiating feature that would set apart whichever camera was able to offer it first.

We're Moving Servers, Expect Some Down-Time Tonight

Jason Dunn — Fri, 09 May 2008 11:00:00 GMT

What's that? Another server move? Yes. The long and the short of it is that when we moved to our new server back in December, I was focused on the CPU and RAM capabilities of the new server – and didn’t think at all about the hard drives because, hey, we were going from five-year-old SCSI hard drives to modern SATA drives, so they should have been at least as fast, it not faster right? Nope.

Some blame for that can be shared around, especially with The Planet (who's advising sales person didn't bother to point out that issue to me), but it doesn’t change one fact: the SATA hard drives we have on our current server are incapable of the throughput needed to run full site backups whilst still keeping the sites themselves running. Ultimately the blame for this falls squarely on my shoulders since I'm the one with the credit card renting the server. We’ve had sporadic down-time over the past month for exactly this reason: anything that’s disk intensive has the ugly side-effect of bringing down the sites.

You’d think the solution would be to simply upgrade the hard drives, right? Well, The Planet is unfortunately completely inflexible in this regard, and they say the only solution is to order a new server with the hardware we need, and move everything to that. So that’s what we're doing: our new server is an Intel Kentsfield 2.13 Ghz quad-core machine, the same as our current server, and it also has the same 8 GB of RAM, but we’ve gone from two 500 GB 7200 RPM SATA drives in RAID1 to two 300 GB 15,000 RPM SCSI drives in RAID1 – the fastest and biggest they have. If we run into disk throughput issues after this upgrade...then we have a different kind of problem.

Sometime this evening (Eastern Standard Time), we'll be initiating the move. You can expect all our sites to be down, but we’re hoping this will be a relatively quick process. By Saturday AM everything should be back to normal. And I swear by Thor’s Hammer this will be our last server move for quite a while…I hope. ;-)

Sharing Event Photos Just Got Easier With Shwup

Jason Dunn — Fri, 09 May 2008 09:21:00 GMT

http://www.shwup.com

"You know the problem: it's a party, or a sports event, or a vacation. Some people took photos. Maybe someone brought a camcorder. One guy promises to email his shots around. Somebody else plans to post their pictures online. The third person swears he'll send everyone a DVD, as soon as he edits his video. And do you ever get to see any of those pictures? Yeah, we already know the answer. That's why we built shwup. We make it fall-off-your-chair easy for you to get everyone's photos and videos together online in a shared private album."

It sur3 s0unds lik3 Shwup pw0ns th3 pr0blem of event ph0t0 sharing! Sorry, I couldn't resist throwing in some l33t-speak there; Shwup is such a silly name, it sounds like a move in a FPS game. I guess all the cool names are taken. ;-) Silly name or not, Shwup looks like it might help solve the photo sharing problem from a different angle - on their Learn More page I read that after you invite people to your private album, they don't need to create an account or sign in to view it. Nice. And, better yet, if they want to contribute their own photos or videos to your album, they just need to reply to your email and attach their photos - Shwup takes care of the rest. Granted, there's still the problem of your aunt trying to attach 150 MB of JPEGs to an email, but Shwup can't take care of everything for you.

The biggest problem I personally face is integration - for years I'd switch from one photo sharing service to another, eventually settling on hosting the photos on my own server, that that grew tedious as well - so I locked in on Smugmug and have been quite happy with them...yet they don't have functionality like Shwup, and there's no easy way to integrate the two (where photos added by Shwup would flow back to your Smugmug album). Shwup does make it easy for you to import photos from Flickr though, so that's a start.

A Poem to Blu-ray: Let Me Count The Ways In Which I Loathe Thee...

Jason Dunn — Thu, 08 May 2008 16:42:00 GMT

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inqui...les-tank-reason

"Blu-ray player sales are sucking wind as well they should. According to Cnet, sales of the DRM infected format players are dropping like rocks. The not so bright people out there had expected sales to skyrocket once the format war was done, but it didn't. They thought was people would ignore the massive defects of Blu-ray and buy like the dumb sheep that they are, handcuffing themselves to the Sony bank account. Surprise, it didn't happen. US consumers are still dumb sheep, but this time they are realizing what is being done to them and they aren't biting. Sony's hope of having 50% of disc sales this year be Blu-ray are more likely to happen because of falling DVD sales than rocketing Blu-ray."

It's official, Charlie Demerjian is my new hero. Why? Because he wrote this article that, with all the subtlety of a wolverine tearing into a pack of bacon, points out (with a sharp, bloody stick) the problems that Blu-ray has. Some of these are similar to what HD-DVD struggled with (high disc prices, marginally better quality), and some are uniquely Blu-ray issues. This delightful article will be sure to get your blood boiling if you're a big Blu-ray fan, though if you are, I'd love to hear your counter-points.

SanDisk's Sansa Clip: A Great Little Player...If You Don't Get a Lemon

Jason Dunn — Thu, 08 May 2008 07:00:00 GMT

I've had two different SanDisk Sansa Clips, and both have given me radically different experiences, so this is going to be a strange review. I bought the first Sansa Clip when I was in Las Vegas for CES 2008, because I knew I was going to start working out when I returned home and wanted something as small as possible (the Zune 8 is too big for my needs). I picked up the 2 GB version (they didn't have the 4 GB at the time) in red, and was quite impressed with the brightness and clarity of the little two-colour, four-line OLED screen they managed to put on it. I liked having the voice recorder because it allowed me to make a voice recording of my lock combination code, and yes, I did have to use it when I forgot what the combination was. The sound quality is pretty good as well (loaded up with 128 kbps WMA files), although it doesn't go loud enough when you're working out at a noisy gym. I've used it with both the Super.fi 5 EB and the Metro.fi 2 Ultimate Ears headphones, and I have no complaints about the sound.

One of the main reasons I bought it was for the integrated clip. I had a Zen Stone but refused to spend nearly as much for the clip as for the player itself, so I figured I'd get a new player instead. My wife uses a second-generation iPod Shuffle and she loves how she can simply clip it to part of her workout outfit and go - I clipped the Sansa Clip to the waistline of my gym shorts and it worked pretty well, though on two occasions the Sansa Clip disconnected from the clip and fell to the gym floor. Not all that impressive. Anythingbutipod.com has a detailed review that talks about all the features if you want to dive deeper. Back to my tale of techno-woe.

The Sansa Clip's specifications (which I'd link to if they weren't part of an all-Flash site - I hate that) state that the battery life is 15 hours. Assuming the normal exaggeration that companies make about battery life, I'd expect to reasonably get 12 hours of battery life. How much battery life did I get the first two weeks using it? Three hours and it was dead. I kid you not. I was constantly having to recharge it, and it seemed like every morning when I was heading to the gym it was dead - thank goodness for the Lil' Sync USB Mobile Power Pack. I called tech support and they suggested I update the firmware. After the firmware update, things were improved: I did a full battery rundown and I was getting over 14 hours of playback. The bad news? The standby time was atrocious; if I charged it fully on Friday morning, by Monday morning it would be completely dead without having played a single song. I compensated for this flaw by recharging it constantly, but I was pretty ticked off - why couldn't it work as well as the iPod Shuffle?

I eventually called tech support again and managed to convince them something was wrong with it. I had to fight with SanDisk to get a replacement unit cross-shipped because what they wanted me to do was ship my unit back, then they'd ship me a replacement. Total turnaround time? About four weeks. I was using this player every weekday at the gym, and music is the only thing that makes working out bearable, so I eventually managed to talk a manager into doing a special override and shipping me a unit, secured with my credit card. I feel SanDisk's policy of refusing to cross-ship devices as inexpensive as the Clip is ridiculous - almost every consumer electronics company I've dealt with has had cross-shipping policies. If I'm giving them my credit card number, why not cross ship?

When my replacement Sansa Clip arrived, the first thing I did was charge it up, and try to put some music on it. For some bizarre reason, Windows Media Player on one of my computers had a hard time getting music onto the player. I'd queue up a few albums' worth of songs, click the start sync button, and after maybe six songs it would stall out - the transfer would get suck at 24% and not go any further. I tried it on another PC, and it worked without a problem. One I got some music loaded up on it, 128 kbps WMA files, I started my playback test. I set the volume at around 80% of maximum, which is the volume I have it set at for the gym. The results were impressive - after 11 hours of playback, the battery was at about 50%. There's no exact percentage reading for the battery, so I'm just guessing - but it seems clear that the Sansa Clip should be able to hit the quoted 15 hours of playback without much trouble, and perhaps beyond that.

I've been using the replacement Sansa Clip for a few months now, and the battery standby time is fantastic - I haven't recharged it in four weeks and have used it for about 8 hours of music. The battery meter is still showing about 70% power. The volume on this second Clip is also louder than the first one, so I have no complaints about hearing it at the gym, and the belt clip hasn't come off once. I hated the first Sansa Clip, and I really like the second one. So as long as you don't get a defective unit, the SanDisk Sansa Clip is a solid little player.

Jason Dunn owns and operates Thoughts Media Inc., a company dedicated to creating the best in online communities. He enjoys photography, mobile devices, blogging, digital media content creation/editing, and pretty much all technology. He lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada with his lovely wife, and his sometimes obedient dog. He wishes laptop battery life was measured in days, not hours.

Beware Of Photographic Flattery: My Picture.com Story

Jason Dunn — Wed, 07 May 2008 15:49:00 GMT

We all enjoy approval and encouragement, even if it comes from strangers. Sometimes especially if it comes from strangers, because it can seem more genuine (hey, your mom is supposed to love you no matter what). This is a cautionary tale for photographers. About seven years ago (yeah, this story goes back a ways) I saw a banner ad for a photo contest, and I thought "What the heck, I'll enter one of my photos and see what happens." It was a Picture.com contest, which they seem to be still running at the time of this writing.

When I submitted my photos, I thought it was a pretty good image - it was a picture of my young cousin smiling, and it's hard to take a bad photo of a child smiling. At the time I took this photo I had a Canon Powershot S100 (no digital SLR yet), and I was just starting to get interested in photography. I didn't think my image was "award winning" by any stretch, but sometimes all it takes to be the winner is for no one else to show up, so I thought I'd give it a try. Below is the image I submitted for the "contest".

Figure 1: Aww, ain't she cute?

A week or two after submitted the photo, I received an email message from the contest organizers. If memory serves, it was from the prestigious-sounding "International Library of Photography". They said my photo had been accepted into a forthcoming hardcover photography book that would be published within a few months. I was elated! I thought that getting one of my photos published in a book was quite an accomplishment, so when they sent me a link to an online form to order the book, I ordered two - and passed the link on to my uncle and aunt so they could order a copy of the book as well. They might have passed it along to others. After shipping and customs fees to get the books to Canada I think they ended up costing nearly $80 each (the book itself was around $50). I didn't care about the cost - my photo was in a book! When it arrived, it was a nicely-bound hardcover book that looked like a work of quality...until I opened it up and looked at the photos inside.

Figure 2: The book of "award-winning" photos that my photo was included in.

The book was quite thick, and on every page there were six small photos - and once I started seeing the quality of the photos, page after page, the sudden realization of what this book was came to me: every single person who submitted a photo for the contest was "winner". Every "winner" was told that their photo would appear in this hard-cover photo book, and every winner was given the opportunity to purchase a book for $50. Now if you had entered your photo in a contest, and told it was a "winning entry" and would be published in a hard-cover book, wouldn't you buy at least one copy? Sure you would - you'd want to have a record of your winning photos and and 30 seconds of fame knowing that you were in a book. I bet at least 80% of the "winners" purchased one or more copies of the book. There were 207 pages of photos in the book, six photos per page, so roughly 1200 photos. Let's say of those 1200 photos, the photographer bought an average of one book - some would certainly buy more, some might not buy at all. Some quick math tells us that this book might sell $60,000 worth, easy. If Picture.com does this six times a year...well that's quite a tidy sum garnered from the "winners" of their photography "contest". Here's an example of what kinds of photos were included in the book:

The bottom two photos might be considered "nice" photos, and perhaps even award-winning if the playing field was small enough, but the top two? The top two images are simply bad photos in every sense of the word. They might represent wonderful memories for the photographers that took them, but there's really nothing compelling about them from a photographic point of view. I flipped through the book, feeling a sense of disbelief: photo after photo, most of the images were like these top two. Sure, every so often I'd come across an image that was decent, but over 90% of the photos in the book were poorly framed, grainy, low-resolution, and certainly wouldn't win in a real photo contest, even if it were the only only entry.

Picture.com suckered me in with their "contest", and it looks liked they're still at it - look at this gigantic list of "winners"; there must be thousands of names there. While some of the images I looked at were quite good, others were...less so. There's nothing illegal about what Picture.com is doing, but I don't consider if ethical in any way - hopefully by publishing this article you'll know to be wary of this company and their "contests".

Jason Dunn owns and operates Thoughts Media Inc., a company dedicated to creating the best in online communities. He enjoys photography, mobile devices, blogging, digital media content creation/editing, and pretty much all technology. He lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada with his lovely wife, and his sometimes obedient dog. He still feels a bit sheepish he was scammed like this.