For now - check out the I ran across recently. It’s a GREAT compendium of a few of the best gift ideas as well as a guide

Anyone want to move into my basement and pay rent for a 200 person company?!

By the way - the chart below shows the relative speeds if you’re more visually inclined. Pretty easy to see the difference…

If you’re into carrying your camera wherever you go, and have always just thrown it in your purse, pocket, backpack or wherever - read no more. This is one big camera - heavy, large, and expensive. You need the Nikon S6…

But, if you’re keen on getting a good depth of field, already have some Canon lenses, you EVER shoot sporting events, or just have a crapload of money and are just itching to spend it - well, this camera is definitely for you. It has 8.2 megapixels of crystal clear images, shoots onto either a CF or SD card (or both, separating RAW and JPG files to one or the other card), it shoots 8.3 muthaf**ken frames per second up to a max of 48 frames at a time! It has no built-in flash, a nice big 2.5″ LCD on the back and a very nice auto focus system.

It’s really a whopper of a camera, and I’ve had a blast shooting with it combined with my 100-400L IS lens, a provided 16-35 2.6 L lens and my 28-200IS lens, and this camera will not only show you the imperfections in the lenses you give it - it will compensate to some extent very nicely. For example - my 100-400L lens is image stablized, but it’s aperature is 3.5-5.6 so at big zooms - the aperature is pretty small. Image stablization helps, but being able to boost up the ISO in the camera to 800 without worry of undue noise really helps me crank out fast shutter speeds. Of course, if I were doing anything professionally, I’d opt for a large fast L lens but I don’t want to spend $3000 on a lens after spending $3600 on a camera.

You know - that’s just about all I have to say about this camera. There’s a TON of reviews about it, and they’re all very favorable. But most of my readers just wouldn’t be into this kinda camera, so go out and get a Canon 30D or Nikon D200 if you’re a “prosumer”.

Besides the fact it has 6 megapixels, the 3x optical zoom is all internal via folder prism arrangement (therefore no lens sticks out of the camera) and it’s small with a huge 3″ LCD on the back - this camera has a couple other goodies of serious note.

The first is the built-in WiFi transmitter. This is a super-nifty feature allowing you to simply turn on the camera when you get home and it will automatically send the photos to your computer wirelessly (if you have a wireless network) or even to print to a wireless printer. Very cool, and it’s much easier to setup with a mac but it’s still easy enough on a PC (you just run the included CD to set up the “profile” on the camera).

The next feature that I like is the “one-touch portrait mode”. It’s activated by a button on the top of the camera and has a very spooky face recognition algorithm that displays a smiley face on top of a face it detects in the photo. This comes in really handy when you’re taking photos of people but they’re not exactly in the center of the picture. Ever notice when you get photos back that the person in the image is out of focus and the camera decided to focus on the grass in the background or something else in the photo? Well, one quick click of this button will let the camera figure out where the face is in the frame and then focus on that no matter where it is. So, if you’re visiting the Lincoln Memorial and have a person in the foreground but off to the side of the photo - the camera will still focus on the person. Very cool. Very easy.

Another feature I’ve been a fan of since I had an HP camera (the R707) and like it - Panorama assist mode. This basically lets you take a panorama by creating a ghost image of the previous image on part of the screen so you can line up the next photograph more easily. I haven’t played with the Nikon implementation after taking the photos, but it was easy enough to take the photo. My only complaint is the ghost image depends on the aperture of the current image. For example - I just sat in my chair in the office and spun around taking photos of the whole office. Since I was inside, most of the photos were taken in relative darkness but when I got to the outside door - the exposure was really bright. Then the ghost image was very bright in the following photo. Probably not a big deal when you take “real” panoramas - outdoors where the images will all be the same relative brightness, but HP’s implementation was better - it just gave outlines of the previous photos in a kind of wireframe.

All in all - it’s a pretty nifty camera. Very nice image quality, quick startup, good resolution, nice functions, easy to use, small form factor but still accessible. I’d give this one 4 thumbs up if I was two people…

They have a really neat feature called “smooth slow motion” which is just the lens capturing a bunch more images per second than normal, so when you playback - it slows things way down. This is the correct way to do slow motion (unlike just taking 60 frames per second and stretching them out - you lose a lot of information). Anyway - the have an icon on the screen of a golfer taking a swing, and I bet this would be a great way to analyze a golf swing (or just about any sport). An example is available here. I haven’t tried it myself yet, but looking forward to.

So, the bad news? Well, actually I’m not sure I can point to any directly at this camera. When I first plugged in the camera to the component video inputs on my Dell 24″ LCD, the image came through pretty squished. It’s clear looking at the screen on the camera that it’s MUCH wider than it is tall compared to the Dell. I thought the Dell was a 16x9 aspect ratio, but a quick look at the Dell website shows it’s a 16x10 ratio. Bummer. When I hooked up the Sony to my Runco 50″ plasma, it worked like a champ.

Then, I noticed the picture on the Plasma was a bit grainy and slightly pixelated in the transitions of different shade levels. Oops - I was standing about 2 feet from the display - pretty sure that’s not an ideal viewing distance. Lo and behold - when I sat on the couch about 7 feet away - BLAMO! An awesome picture was on my display of my kid learning how to ride a bike. Very cool.

I recognize that having 8 hours or so with this camera hasn’t made me an expert. Hell - I haven’t even tried shooting inside, so I can’t say anything about it’s standard or low light capabilities (I read some grumblings on the net about low-light performance). But, most of the time I actually want to capture video - it’s either outside or a well-lit interior. For that - this camera out-performs others because of it’s signifcantly higher resolution!

So, for the price and considering there are no other HD camcorders that record direct to a hard drive - this is about the coolest, best image you can get in a consumer class camera.

I won’t even try to take any still images with it. Partly because I don’t like the quality of pictures that come from any small camera, and partly because Sony has NEVER come out with a still camera that takes great still images. But, that’s a different blog entry entirely…

About eight weeks ago, I obtained a second-hand Harmony SST-768 remote. Logitech renamed this model the H768 when they acquired the Harmony line, so I’ll use that name for the rest of this review. The remote has its flaws, but
it is a substantial improvement over my former multiple-remote situation. The H768 is not a current model, but I imagine some of the H768’s characteristics are shared by other Harmony remotes (such as the way it is programmed), so I’m hoping some of my impressions will be useful to people considering current Harmony models.

I have a relatively low-end audio-visual setup. It’s based around a Sony STR-K840P receiver that came as part of a “home theater in a box” package. I’ve also got a Panasonic DVD player, Panasonic stereo VCR, and Sanyo standard definition TV as a video monitor. I use the DVD player to play CDs, and I usually have an iPod dock hooked up to the receiver’s CD input. The devices don’t have the connection options I’d like. For example, the VCR has only composite video output; the receiver has only composite video input and coaxial and composite video output. I do use a component video connection between the DVD player and the TV, but this means that I have to switch the TV input between the composite and component inputs depending on whether I’m using the VCR or the DVD player.

Over the past two years, we’ve replaced our old TV, DVD player, and VCR, but it was the TV which motivated me to look into universal remotes. About a year ago, my visiting father-in-law decided he couldn’t see the football games on our old TV and bought us the Sanyo set as a gift. Before this, we used the multi-device (non-learning) remote that came with the Sony receiver to control all of our devices. There was some device functionality which wasn’t available using this remote, but it worked well enough. When we got the new TV, I couldn’t find a code for the remote which allowed even minimal functionality. Because we use the TV as a video monitor only, we were able to use the receiver remote for everything - except selecting the TV input. This shouldn’t have bothered me as much as it did, but it was enough of an annoyance that I started looking for a one-remote solution.

When I started looking, my list of requirements for that one remote was pretty short. I wanted it to: control all my current devices, be a learning remote (to protect against future upgrades to my home theater setup), be easy-enough to use that my wife and five-year-old daughter could/would use it, and be relatively inexpensive. For the most part, the H768 satisfies all of my these requirements.

I had little trouble programming the H768 to control all of my home theater devices, but I can see how it might be confusing to someone without a strong background with computers. Programming the H768 involves logging into Logitech’s Harmony Remotes web site, configuring a “virtual remote” on the web site, downloading the configuration to the local computer (the one you’re using to browse the Logitech web site), and using a Harmony communication program on the local computer that writes the configuration to the “real” remote control via a USB cable.

One of the big selling points of the Harmony remotes is that they are activity-based as opposed to device-based. For example, instead of telling the remote to “turn on the receiver and set it to the video 1 input, then turn on the VCR, then turn on the TV and set it to the video 1 input”, you tell the remote you want to “watch TV.” The remote makes whatever changes that are necessary so that each component is doing what it is supposed to be doing. If the TV is already on and set to the right input when you say “watch TV,” the Harmony doesn’t send any commands to the TV. Although the activity-based concept was foreign to my wife and daughter at first, they now seem to really like it.

When programming the remote, you describe your components and then define the activities you want the remote to control. The Harmony web site includes a large database of components, selectable by manufacturer name and model number. The database included all of my devices except the Sony receiver. When it became clear the database didn’t have an entry for my receiver, the web site downloaded a script for the Harmony communication program that, when run, asked me to point the original remote at the H768 and press three or four buttons on the original remote. The H768 apparently delivered the infrared commands it detected to the Harmony communication program, which sent them to the Harmony web site and looked for a close match to some device in its database. For my receiver, it found a near match.

Harmony (or Logitech) has done a good job in trying to smooth the programming process, but it is still complex. Worse, when something goes wrong it can be very difficult to identify what failed and how to fix it. In my case, at some point updates to the remote’s configuration stopped working correctly. The update would start successfully, but the communication program’s progress bar would stop at 90%. I tried everything I could think of to fix or work around the problem including resetting the remote by removing all devices and activities, but that left the remote in an unusable state. Finally, near the end of February an entry was posted to the Harmony web site’s support forum that described the symptoms I was seeing as a problem with the remote’s firmware that caused the update problem during February. The problem went away March 1, but it was entirely unclear what was going on until I saw the entry in the Harmony forum. My wife is quite computer savvy and likes the Harmony remote, but I think she would revert to using multiple remotes before she’d figure out how to program the remote.

Earlier I described the activity-based nature of the Harmony remotes, and how the remote will not issue commands to a component if it is already doing what it should be. Because the remote can’t ask each component what they’re currently doing (at least with my devices), the remote has to keep track of what each component is doing. That is, the remote has to keep track of each component’s “state.” For instance, when I tell the remote to “watch TV,” the remote relies on whether it thinks the TV is currently on when deciding whether to send a “power toggle” command because it can’t ask the TV whether it is on or off. This scheme works perfectly well if the remote is *always* used to control all components, because then the remote’s idea of the state is in sync with the actual state. However, if someone controls a component without using the remote (for instance, when my five-year-old turns the TV on by pressing the TV power button), the remote’s idea of the state is out of sync with reality. Depending on exactly which component is out of sync, and how they are out of sync, the remote might issue commands that do the wrong thing, such as turning the TV off instead of leaving it on. In a household like mine, this seems to happen often - we aren’t disciplined enough to use the remote always to control everything in our home theater.

Thankfully, the Harmony designers expected the “out-of-sync” problem, and provided a workaround. The remote has a “Help” button that, when pushed, asks yes/no questions via the remote’s LCD screen about the state of each component. If the component isn’t in the right state, the remote issues a command to change the component’s state and then asks the question again. After this sequence of yes/no questions, the remote’s idea of the components’ state and their actual state are again in sync. Again, my wife likes the H768 and is quite technically savvy, but after eight weeks with the remote I have yet to see her use this Help feature to re-sync the remote’s state.

For me, the remote’s functionality is much more important than how it looks and feels. I get the impression that isn’t true for everyone, so here are my thoughts about this remote’s physical characteristics. The H768 is relatively short and thick, with an black-and-white LCD screen, all hard buttons, and a scroll wheel on the right side. The scroll wheel is the main mechanism for navigating through lists shown on the LCD screen - it can be pressed to select an item. I like the hard buttons, but they are not easily distinguished by feel so I can’t easily change channels or adjust volume without looking at the remote. One strange design choice was to put the LCD screen at the bottom of the remote instead of at the top (like a cell phone). Most people at our house end up holding the remote backward at first. I haven’t had to replace the three AAA batteries in the eight weeks I’ve had the remote.

When we got the remote, I had read about the Harmony’s activity-based nature but my wife hadn’t, so while it was a surprise for her it was not a surprise for me. One feature that was a surprise for both of us was the remote’s ability to store up to two weeks’ worth of TV listings. Using the Logitech web site, I configured the remote for my local cable company’s channel listing, picked a subset of those channels as my favorites, and said I’d like to store TV listings for two weeks. I really like this feature, but it does mean that I have to use the web site to update my remote’s configuration every two weeks.

In the end, our situation with the H768 is substantially better than without. We really like the activity-based nature of the Harmony remotes, and the TV listings were a nice surprise. The fact that the remote easily gets out of sync with my home theater components and the complexity of getting them back in sync are its two biggest drawbacks. Perhaps the bottom line is best illustrated using my last requirement - that the remote be relatively inexpensive. Although I received the H768 at no cost to me, after a few weeks with the remote I asked my wife about her impressions of the remote. The upshot: she wouldn’t pay even $100 for a remote with the Harmony’s features, I’d have no problem.

I seem to be doing a bit better with visited states, though:

create your own personalized map of the USA
or check out theirCalifornia travel guide

This is to be the centerpiece of the athlete’s digital life, acting as the server for audio, video, photos and games. Click through to see how it fares…

The first thing I noticed when unpacking is a few features I hadn’t ever really thought were such a great idea. First - there’s a CD storage case at the top. As much as this is useless for audio CD’s - for games, it a big bonus. All you really have to do is have the first CD of any game when you want to play it to authenticate you own the game. As we’re installing about 8 games on this system - I’ll crack a couple of them so he doesn’t have to put the CD in whenever he wants to play, but the rest - I’ll just leave the first disc in the storage compartment. Nifty. Kinda like a cup holder in a car.

Next - it has all sorts of “accessories”, like a multi-card memory card reader for digital camera memory cards, a special “Light Scribe” CD/DVD burner that will also let you etch an image and text on the non-data side of a disc you just burned. It also has a few front ports for USB and 1394, as well as a second hard disk port. Granted - the hard disk port requires you to buy a proprietary HP cartridge for the second disk, but it’s a nice way to have a backup solution that’s hard-drive based (not a crap-load of CD’s or DVD’s lying around).

The purpose of this machine is as a media center computer, even though it doesn’t have the classic home theater PC form factor (that makes it look more like a piece of stereo equipment, rather than an ugly tower PC). With that being said - it’s not a tremendously capable gaming machine with the included X300 video card. It’s pretty apparent this is exclusively designed around media center work, and as such - playing a DVD or movie, listening to music and printing or browsing email will never tax this box. It’s simply designed for lots of computing - which playing a DVD and doing multiple things at once is a perfect scenario for this computer (and maybe most dual-core computers).

I have a gaming machine as my main computer, and used to have an actual 2-CPU computer. I miss it terribly. I do almost exclusively multi-tasking, including playing iTunes while browsing and emailing, and occasionally installing something or doing video conversions. Whenever I do something CPU-intensive, I regret not having a dual-core or dual-CPU computer.

So, just something more to think about when buying your next computer - you’re better off from now on getting a dual-core system. The manufacturers all realize this - Apple announced dual-core cpu’s in their laptops, and most manufacturers are abandoning single-core CPU’s in the next year or two.

Or at least that’s what I’ve always been told. More than 300,000 geeks decend on the City of Sin and spend all day and late into the evenings drooling over geek toys, spending very little time in the casinos or at the bars. No revenue from all those visitors, so they jack up the prices of hotels ($467 at the Howard Johnsons!) and invite porn stars to the town at the same time (www.avnawards.com).

So, what did I do? Well, I didn’t see a single porn star, didn’t spend a single penny at the casinos, and didn’t buy a single meal from my own money. But, I did see a TON of new gadgets. Here’s a few highlights of what I saw…

One of the biggest buzz-generators was the Toshiba/Canon SED display. Plasma and LCD are currently duking it out for dominance in the flat-panel markets of the first 10 years of the millenium, but I’d wager neither will win against the SED displays that are coming in the next year or two. SED has higher resolution, bigger size, better picture, incredible brightness and lower power/heat that the other two flat panels. The only issue I saw with the SED is a distince flicker in the bright white scenes, reminiscent of CRT TV’s 60hz displays. I definitely don’t think SED’s will overtake sales of plasma or LCD anytime soon (before 2010) but they have the potential to unseat both from a pure quality of picture perspective. Engadget has a good article about it on their site.
For the geeks reading: Toshiba showed off several prototypes in the demo. Specs: 37″, 720p versions with 100,000:1 contrast ratio and less than 1ms refresh. The first production run will be 55″ 1080p displays.

To nicely complement a brand new SED display late this year or early next year - may I suggest a Sony Playstation 3? Oh wait - what about the Microsoft Xbox 360? I recently bought a 360 and have been playing it for a week straight. It’s LOADS better than the older models of non-high-def gaming machines, and gets the backgrounds and non-human stuff quite right. Alas, the faces, hair and the really complicated stuff that make people look real just aren’t there yet, and seeing the PS3 demos at CES was no exception. I was hoping the Xbox 360 would be a great leap forward and the PS3 would blow it away. Doesn’t look like it… And since the PS3 launch will come in the spring, if the availability of Xbox 360’s is any indication - you won’t be able to buy a PS3 until Fall anyway. Just in time to mate it with your new SED is you have $10k to blow.

So what did Sony do right? Well - they innovated with their new “Reader”, an electronic text/graphics reading device that replaces the Libre. This thing allows you to read text or graphics on a screen that doesn’t use battery power to display (only to turn pages). Pretty nifty, and they claim it will last for 7,500 page turns on one charge with 10,000 launch titles to purchase. It doesn’t need any backlighting, so it works just like a book. If you can find a light source to read a book with - you can read with this thing. One caveat - the prototype had a bit gray look to it (rather than the nice crisp contrast of a white paper and black type). The engineer I talked to said this would be improved by launch.

Other winning items at CES include the announcement of HD-DVD players available in March from Toshiba for $500 or $800 with 30 movie titles. Toshiba also had a new personal media player for those households who love to take their video on the road. These devices look VERY nice compared to other iPod video competitors, and since they seamlessly integrate with the Microsoft Media Center edition - they should allow very easy, intuitive transfer of recordings to
your palm player. Also available in March.

Pioneer showed off their AVIC-Z1 car navigation (and everything else) system. This sucker was amazing. Bluetooth capability for integrating a phone wirelessly into your stereo. iPod docking to allow you to bring your music with you without having to load stuff into the car. Of course, it has a hard drive built in, in case you didn’t bring your iPod. The HD also loads up all the maps you need for driving, and the unit receives XM traffic broadcasts so you can navigate around those nasty pileups on the 405. Of course, the touch-screen GPS system is out of this world - it translates text to speech meaning you don’t have to listen to “Turn left in 5oo feet” - it will tell you “Turn left onto Rappahannock drive”. It’ll cost you to own all this integrated/converged goodness - upwards of $2k for the base system and add-on units for XM, iPod dock and Bluetooth. Not available until Spring, but I think it’ll be the unit to beat for a while.

If you don’t wanna fork over 2 dozen Benjamin’s - the Garmin offerings are starting to look pretty nice again. My personal favorite is the Nuvi. It’s a totally portable (slightly larger than a cell phone) GPS that also does text-to-speech for voice prompting ease, and touch screen. It doesn’t have a hard drive, so you have to load maps on manually, but it does allow for an interface to a traffic receiver (for a few extra hundred bucks).

Something completely off the beaten track - if you like high powered lasers and star wars, Versalaser has a $10k system that allows you to cut and etch just about anything (except glass, some metals or rock). They were taking photos of people, and then etching those photos into a ceramic tile - a very cool process. I can easily see a mall kiosk or home business around these devices.

Looking over my notes, and the length of this post - I’ll submit another post in a few days when I compile my next batch of nifty devices. In the meantime - enjoy the ideas above for this year’s gift-giving ideas for birthdays and holidays.

I won’t have a ton of time to write about what I’m seeing, nor should I - other people are far better at covering news than I am equipped.

So - check out these sites to see the latest happenings:

Engadget
C|Net
New York Times
Gizmodo

Those are the ones most worth reading. There’s a ton more out there, but who cares. Not me.