Taken from NYC Oct 2007

For a man with his very own, um, thrusting edifice in the heart of Manhattan I was surprised to notice that Donald only has one prominent ball at the base of his tower ;)

Looks like he's a man with nothing to prove (though I have to wonder about the terrier on his head!)

I've got a new camera so here comes the obligatory new toy rave! It's my first Digital SLR after a life time of point-and-shoot (110, 35mm, APS and then digital cameras ranging from 1.3mp to 6mp ... all costing about the same!)

After getting frustrated with shutter lag (have you ever tried to photograph a dog or 8 year old ballroom dancer! I decided I could live with the added weight and tourist factor of slinging an SLR around my neck. It had to be digital of course!

Both my boss, our wedding photograher and other talented friends recommend Canons at varying price points but the Sony Alpha (DSLR-A1000) had one huge plus over the Canon Rebel XTi... Super Steady-Shot. For some reason I have an inability to hold a camera steady and while some of the Canon lenses include anti-vibration technology the fact it's built into the body of the Sony helped the Alpha edge ahead.

Now of course I have to learn how to use it! With great options comes great confusion - though luckily enough it's straight forward enough that I could just pick it up and have a go.

Lots of test photos of the dog (that 2GB memory card was a good idea when shooting at 10mp) and I'm going to practice on the ballroom technique in the coming week. I was even inspired to take my first ever arty sunset shot!

Any suggestions on the best way to shoot good shots of fast moving ballroom dancers in a competition... most welcome!

Every day millions of people probably look at this image on the right. It's one of the more restful options supplied as part of the default Windows installation.

How many people have been soothed by the restful colors without ever really thinking more deeply about the source of the image.

Who was the photographer?

Where did they take it?

Was it really Autumn or was it a photoshop job on a carefully staged scene?

Was it taken in the US, or England, Japan or Russia?

Well, I like a million other people never really thought more about this image or where it came from or the story behind it... luckily for us Nick Tosches at Vanity Fair did get a bee in his bonnet and started on the long and sometimes tortuous task of finding the origins of this much loved but at the same time overlooked picture.

I somehow feel better knowing the story... but now I'm wondering about some of the others...

Update: for some background images check out this collection (pure coincidence that the photographer in question is my boss!)

The camera on my aging K-Jam (HTC Wizard) isn't too bad. It's lower resolution than on more modern phones and thanks to a couple of drops not quite the quality of when I got the phone.

The camera app in Windows Mobile in the "raw" version of the operating system is pretty sparse (most Mobile Operators who brand the device - from HTC to T-Mobile etc - add an upgraded camera. Because I dogfooded WM6 to help make it better for you I'm stuck with the minimal camera functionality) and there's no way even when tethered via USB to use the camera in a phone as a webcam.

Life has got a lot better since I discovered CoolCamera and WebCamera Plus from Ateksoft.

The first app adds a very quick responding and easy to use camera that's over and above any of the pre-installed phonecam applications I've seen to date. Makes me wish I had a few more pixels!

The second adds the ability to use the smartphone camera as a webcam, connected back to your PC via a USB, Wifi, Bluetooth, 3G/GPRS or LAN connection. You can control the settings and functionality from either the phone or the PC app and if you're using something like Windows Live Messenger then the phone can become your connected webcam

So, imagine the scenario. You're walking down a busy street and you see a poster for a band, movie or an event that catches your eye. You don't have time to stop and write down details. Even if you do you've got to remember to look it up on the web when you get home.

Now imagine being able to take a picture of the poster with your camera-phone, click a button and get information there and then.

Well, it's not imagination any more thanks to a new Microsoft Research project called Lincoln.

Thanks to some very powerful image libraries and clever server side technology doing the heavy lifting they now have the ability to do pretty fast image recognition with some pretty average comparison images - my phone has a 1.3mp camera with a pretty dirty lens. No zoom, no flash etc, but I was able to take a snap of a poster on the wall at work and seconds later have details of the even available to me. It even worked when I downloaded the image to my machine and took the picture of what was displayed on my screen!

The lookup works on images uploaded and made public by anyone, so it's not limited by what Microsoft choose to upload but anyone can put up an image of their event poster, CD release, DVD cover along with relevant information and when a user searches for it in the real world they can find out about your event or see Amazon reviews of your DVD.

I know there have been efforts like this before to connect the real world to the interweb, but most have relied on QR Codes or invisible (to the naked eye) printing - but they require on specific printing techniques or compromises on the artwork, whereas this can be used retrospectively to webify existing material.

I'd love to see magazine advertisers do this as well - so rather than having to look for and remember their URL when I read the magazine in a reception area I can simply snap a quick photo and look up all the details when I have a moment.

I can slot a DVD into my Xbox360 and watch it just fine. I can slot the same DVD into my Media Center PC and watch it just fine.

When I buy a DVD for my daughter I can rip a backup to my Maxtor HDD and file the original away to keep her sticky fingers off it but let her watch it on the Media Center. But what happens if I want to use the Media Center and have her watch the DVD in the other room on the Xbox... I've gotta go find the original disk again.

Why? Because while the Media Center is quite happy to stream a DVD image over the local network from the network connected Maxtor (or maybe soon a Windows Home Server) the Xbox only lets me do that for photos and music.

IMO this is a real limitation, a pain, and thorn in the idea of connected home entertainment. I'm not going to argue the legalities or the technicalities, just the user experience.

In his CES keynote this year Bill Gates talked about the connected media experience. I want it, and I want it all and now!

Well, in order to live the dream for the moment I have to make some sacrifices. Namely quality and convenience. While the Xbox won't let you stream a DVD to it, you can transcode it to WMV and it will let you watch that.

There are two solutions - live transcoding and manual. While Live transcoding seems like it should be the best solution it's fine for me, but a little hard for my daughter to control so I've gone the manual route at home.

The live solutions are Transcode 360 (for WinXP MCE and Vista) or TVersity. The former requires a Media Center machine, and the latter runs under any flavor of Windows XP or Vista.

Transcode 360 plugs into the existing Media Center interface or can be accessed as part of My Movies and is fairly simple to use though (in common with other on-the-fly solutions) you're at the mercy of a remote transcoding queue. Movies are selected from the usual user friendly UI within the Media Center Extender display and you then elect to start the transcoder to play it.

TVersity is another good solution (and doesn't need MCE - it works on any PC) that works pretty well (with the same caveats as Transcode 360) however the selection of available content is from within the Xbox Video list - a text filename list... so it has the added disadvantage for my daughter of no pretty pictures.

With both the live solutions I've had problems with the queues not starting/stopping as expected and the software getting itself tied in knots. As I say... okay for me, but not a good user experience for the wife and daughter.

So, that leaves manual transcoding. After looking around at a few I've settled on one that's fairly quick, easy to use and a good price.

Mobile DVD from SPBSoftwareHouse is intended to take your DVDs and transcode them for portable devices (mainly aimed, like most of their apps, at the Windows Mobile platform). I tried it because I use some of their other apps every day and think they're very good developers. With some tweaking of settings the resulting movie is as good a quality as pretty much anything I've seen via a transcode (and their forums indicate that support for a specific Xbox profile might be in the works).

This solution enables me to keep the original DVD in their jewel case and just transcode the main movie to a WMV, attach a pretty JPG to the folder and present the movies to her in the Media Center interface and she can use the Xbox just like she would the Media Center. I do however resent the extra work and storage space (as some movies we keep in DVD archive format as well because we want the special features and are happy to usually watch on the Media Center machine)

Note: With Transcoding you will loose extra material, multiple audio tracks, subtitles, etc., and a transcoding process always degrades the quality some

Update: Wii users can brag... Orb makes their life even easier!

One of the really cool things Microsoft has formally unveiled at CES this year is SideShow. This is a sub-PDA functionality set used to produce smart, low power, functional devices. For instance imagine being able to check your calendar without turning on your PC, or view the weather forecast or stock tips.

SideShow devices can be really small and stand-alone, or built into other bits of hardware - keyboards, speakers or remote controls - to extend their functionality in new and useful (not just cool) ways.

What makes them so neat is that with minimal changes they run Gadgets built for Vista, so apparently no complicated development path. Obviously because they don't have the same levels of connectivity as a PC (they rely on the host usually to talk to the web, though there is at least one device with a built-in WiFi stack and VoIP client) but the framework helps take care of that.

The architecture is new, but based on the .net microframework which has been around and evolving as part of the Microsoft SmartWatch platform.

Both Asus and LG have revealed neat new laptops with SideShow devices built into the lid so you can check information and play back music without powering up the PC. With both of these you can sync 1GB of music to the device or, if the laptop is powered up, access the full Windows Media experience as a remote control.

MSI have unveiled a Companion Device - a small credit-card sized device which syncs wirelessly to your PC and you can access your information anywhere... anyone remember Rex it's all grown up now ;)

They also demonstrated a number of Universal / Windows Media Center remote controls - allowing you to manage the TV guide without interrupting what folks are watching, or cue up music without turning on the TV - I really want one of those devices!

There was also a demonstration of a Logitech G15 keyboard and Z10 speakers hacked with SideShow drivers... official support for Q2 2007. By next Christmas I'll have so many ways to control my music I won't know which way to turn!

The one thing that doesn't seem to be available, but IMO would be really cool is have a SideShow app that can be downloaded to legacy PocketPC devices like my K-Jam... Maybe someone will be able to knock something up soon...

Check out the video demo at on10, the official blog for the team developing the product and a great (unofficial) site with heaps of information. Once you get your hands on a device you'll want to check out the Gadget Gallery for cool things top do with it.

Update: The folks at engadget spotted this really cool SideShow device embedded in a messenger bag!

About a year ago I found a report that Korea was looking to mandate standard cellphone connectors. A great idea that was long overdue as mini USB adapters, cables, car chargers are now easy to come by.

A year on and we've got the happy situation in our house that my K-Jam, Storms Dash and our 'spare' RAZR all share USB chargers.

Looks like the days of Nokia and Sony having their own chargers are even more numbered with China getting in on the act as well.

This will all be good as long as everyone can agree on which of the 3 mini-USB plugs to use, and stop messing about adding proprietary lumps to the connector (Fuji, I'm looking at you and your really annoying cameras that won't charge off a standard cable but require a dongle as well).

Next step will be to standardize headphone/headset connectors so I can find good accessories and re-use them. I'm happy to use the mini-USB jack for that as well (especially as Brando have a good mini-USB to headphone solution) that at least makes listening to music on the device a little less of a trial. Longer term I'm hoping to find a simple Bluetooth headset that operates as a mono single ear Borg attachment for phone calls when I'm walking around but when I'm at home and want to use my PC (to listen to music or for Skype) I can attach the second earphone (ideally with a frame to support the weight rather than my ear) and listen in comfort wirelessly - but still answer the phone (or Skype) without fumbling.

Ah, standards. Steps on a road to happiness I suspect. It's just sometimes it's a very long and difficult road!

The saga is over and Natalie has proven her talent as a photographer.

After a few problems (even in the final stages when Nat sent the DVD it initially went astray in Australia and then when it got back on track it too ages to catch up with us in the US).

Looking through the 650+ images on the DVD she's done an amazing job capturing the feel and the fun of the day - even the group shots look candid and natural (now we just have to go through and Photoshop out my bald spot!) 

They say good things are worth waiting for. I don't know who they are, but once again they're right.