Blog - Page 41

Here are a few photos I shot last night at the Geek Dinner:

The rest of the photos can be found in my Geek Dinner gallery.

Flickr is talking like a pirate, arrrrr:

Scott Beale just posted about ZingFu ignoring his CC license and using one of his photos for a promotional card without either asking (which is required for commercial use) or crediting him. This happens to me rather frequently, which is why I've borrowed (with permission) the wording that Scott uses on all his photo on flickr:

This photo is licensed under a Creative Commons license. If you use this photo, please list the photo credit as "Scott Beale (Laughing Squid)" and link credit to laughingsquid.com.

Of course, I've replaced his name and website with mine, but I am guessing from his results, this will still not be enough.

The last two entities to refuse to properly credit my photos, and thus violate my creative commons license, were NPR and the Flickr Blog. I have also recently been contacted by an editor on Wikipedia, who has asked me to change my license to allow for commercial usage, which I will not do by any means. I find it very unfortunate that Wikipedia forbids -NC CC photos, but here is a page in support of their reasoning.

Over the years I've made my way through various Ultra-Compact digital cameras, the latest being the Canon Powershot SD550. I don't especially like the SD500 for a number of reasons which I don't feel like listing here. What I am going to list, is what I do want in an Ultra-Compact Digital Camera:

Required:* Somewhere Between 5 and 10 Megapixels * RAW Mode * Full Manual Mode * Tripod Mount * Excellent Low-light Performance * Quick or Instant Startup Time * ≥ 3" LCD * ≥ 2x Optical Zoom * At Least 24-50mm Equivalent Zoom * Fits Easily in Pocket * Macro Mode * Video Mode * Doesn't Use Obscure Memory Format * USB 2.0

Would be Nice: * Water-Resistent of Water-Proof * Image Stabilization * Bluetooth / 802.11x * Face Recognition * Standard Sized Batteries

Obviously there is currently no camera that meets my required specs, but I'm hoping there will be some time soon. I was considering the Leica D-Lux 3, but because of its poor low-light performance and protruding lens won't work for me. If my SD550 dies before a camera with my required specs comes along, I'll probably go with the Nikon Coolpix S51, although it doesn't have a RAW nor manual modes.... ok so maybe that won't work. For now I'll just make it a point to lug around my 5D as much as possible.

Btw, this post was inspired by Scott Beale's post about his new Fuji Finepix F50.

UPDATE I have created a handy little size guide so you can get a real life idea of the size of the various Ultra-Compact cameras out there. So far I have only done Canon and Nikon, but I plan on adding other manufacturers. You can download the Ultra-Compact Camera Size Comparison Chart [66k PDF].

UPDATE 2 Hmm, I think this might be the perfect camera for me: Canon SD870 IS.

It's been a good run for me over at blogging.la, but I have decided that I no longer have the time to contribute quality, unique content. I have been mulling over this decision for some time now, and I decided to stop putting if off and admit to myself that I'm just too busy to handle all the blogging on my plate. I will now be focusing on writing for eecue.com and blogdowntown. If you're interested you can read through my 283 posts from the 2 years and 2 months I wrote for blogging.la.

Thanks to Scott Beale I now have a Yahoo! Mash profile. I also have invites if you need one. It would be helpful if mash included a way to invite from a vcard file, but otherwise it seems pretty cool.

UPDATE Ok so I know this is still in beta, but the fact that Yahoo's own service flickr's module has now broken my RSS feed link is somehow pleasantly ironic:

Invalid URL: http%3A%2F%2Fapi.flickr.com%2Fservices%2Ffeeds%2Fphotos_public...

I should point out that it did work this morning.

UPDATE 2 I have added a few friends and none of them show up in my friends list, although I show up in theirs. Odd.

UPDATE 3 Ok I get it, the friends don't show up until they've claimed and set up their profiles. There are some pretty cool little modules, I like the twitter feed.

I'm excited. My first WIRED gallery just went online! So far there are 11 images in the gallery, but soon there should be around 20. Checkout my photos in the WIRED Nextfest Gallery. =]

Update The rest of my images, totaling 22, are now up on the gallery. I ended up writing the captions for the remaining 11 images. Unfortunately, WIRED.com's gallery doesn't allow two bylines for a gallery, but Kristen Philipkoski was nice enough to allow my to have the byline even though she wrote the captions on the original 11 images. Thanks Kristen!

Here are a few of my photos from the WIRED Nextfest:

You can see the full gallery here: Nextfest Creative Commons Benefit, Nexfest Day 1 and Nextfest Day 2. If you haven't checked it out, take a look at my Nextfest Robot Roundup, which I just updated with photos. More after the jump.

I am covering the WIRED Nextfest for Wired.com. Here are some of the photos they aren't using on their site:

Here are the Nextfest stories that are using my photos:* Buzz Aldrin Beats WIRED Mag Publisher at BrainBall * Buzz Aldrin Hearts NextFest, X Prize * Lunar Rover Makes Appearance at NextFest * Larry Page: Science Has a Serious Marketing Problem * Lunar Legacy Program: Send Your Photos to the Moon * SpaceX Will Sell Launch Vehicles at Cost to Lunar X-Prize Competitors

More of my photos can be found in my gallery.

Last night I got a chance to get up close and personal with Keepon, the friendly dancing robot, at the WIRED Nextfest Creative Commons Benefit. I was hoping to see him perform live with Spoon, although honestly I'm more of a Keepon fan than a Spoon fan, but Keepon's performance was in the lobby, not on stage:

I had a chance to chat with Marek Michalowski and Hideki Kozima a bit about their robot and they even took off Keepon's pants/dress so I could get a shot of his guts which consist of 4 geared DC motors and a RISC processor to control the motors:

They didn't take off his skin, but they said they would for me during the press preview on Thursday. The did let me peak behind the curtain at the beautiful rats nest of cables, interfaces and two MacBooks being used to control the quartet of Keepons.

Marek Michalowski and Hideki Kozima showed off their robots to an interested crowd:

Evidently girls really, really, really like dancing squishy robots (I mean really):

You can see more in my Nextfest Creative Commons Benefit gallery.