Insert Clever Title Here

From yesterday and over the next few days most Victorians will recieve “to the householder” mail from the Premier’s Office containing the FireReady information for this year.

Now I did notice a number of people in my Twitter timeline point out they lived in highrise buildings, or close to the city e.t.c and that that information was useless to them.

Sure, if you live in your house in the middle of the CBD like a hermit, then yes this information will be useless to you.  But if you live in Victoria and do go outside in summer then this information does effect you.  If you do any of the following for example: Head to the Yarra for wine tasting during the summer months, go for a BBQ anywhere close to the urban fringe, take visitors up to Mount Dandenong, head down the Great Ocean Road, go up to Healesville Sancturary, a day spa in Daylesford or just a country drive then this information is going to be helpful.

Unless you are aware of what the fire danger ratings are, who to listen to for emergency information and what signs to look out for, you could end up being caught in a rapidly deteriorating situation. During Black Saturday, the fire front was spotting 20km+ infront of itself.  This kind of situation is uncontrollable by the authorities, not being aware of how the Fire Authorities work, will lead to you being in serious trouble.

So before you go and jump on a bandwagon and criticise information that you deem to be useless, stop and think what you do during summer and realise you could be caught out.

I implore all Victorians ( and other states ) to stop and take 10 minutes out of your busy schedule to read this information.  Learn what the various levels of alert mean, learn which broadcasters will have the information on the day that could save your life.

Tags: General by Me
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Not to be a name dropper, but I do know people in Telstra, Google and HTC.  They are really smart people as well. I’d go out on a limb to say that most of the people that work in these companies are smart people. Knowing this makes dealing with the outcomes of doing a firmware update even harder.

Having all ready written about why I wasn’t going to update my firmware to Telstra Froyo until the official version came out, I can now finally deal with the firmware update. What should have been an easy process turned out to be a nightmare of usability, performance, general shenanigans and complete frustration.

From the last few weeks of miscommunication, lack of transparency and frustration about the whens and ifs of the update itself. There was a large audience of very technically literate people crying out for this update, months after Google release it, finally Telstra say it is coming.  Coming in  4 weeks, a few days, a few more days, sometime soon, we will let you know, soon e.t.c.  If they didn’t know what is wrong with saying you don’t know.  If there is a delay, what is wrong in saying what the delay is.  Being open about these processes will in most cases placate people.  Why can’t these corporations just realise that Lack of information is the main cause of audience frustration?

So finally, the firmware comes out yesterday. Now for reasons, that haven’t been disclosed, the firmware isn’t OTA ( Over the AIR ), meaning when you press “Settings: About phone: System software updates: Check Now” on your phone, it simply says “ Your Phone is up to date”. But it isn’t.  Why isn’t the system designed to handle non OTA updates?

So I know that there is a firmware update. Great, jump on the web and head to http://www.htc.com/au/, and yes HTC have a link to Telstra Firmware on the homepage.  But not so fast. This is a link to the version from 2010-04-30.  So to get the new version, you have to click product support, whats new.  Why is it so hard to update the home page?

Next, you have to get the serial number for you phone.  To do this, you have to take the back off, then remove the battery, then enter the serial number of your device.  Of course the file is now available on a number of forums without asking for a serial number to install. Why do I need to get the serial number again?

At least now I am at the download stage. Please do not be in a hurry to download.  A 173meg download taking 3 hours to download is just stupid.  I was average around 20kbs for this file. I’m sure Telstra have enough capacity to ensure a slightly faster download. Why wasn’t a local server for downloading the software available?

Now comes installing.  With 30 or so pages about the firmware update on Whirlpool talking about errors and work arounds to get the install to work. Seems that Win7 64bit and/or your choice of USB ports seems to be an issue. A random USB 170 or USB 171 error are really not helpful. This shows that perhaps a bit more real world testing of the update may have been required. Why not release a public beta version of the update to sort this out first?

So finally you get the installer to work.  Then you see the big red writing “Installing the ROM Update Utility (RUU) will delete ALL information and data on your Android phone.” Yes everything, all your settings, apps, messages, screens, everything.  Funny thing is I can update my Playstation3, my computers, my other phones ( eg Nokia’s ) without losing everything.  Of course there are backup apps.  But 3^rd party apps, that you need to pay for just to back up your phone to do a firmware update. Why can’t they just back up your settings when installing?

Sure I know have Froyo, but was it worth it? If you include all the stress, running around and fixing I now have to do to my phone, I’d say only just.  But then I won’t know for quite some time, as all my contacts have got screwed up, I don’t have any apps installed yet and have to reset all my wifi passwords as well just to download stuff.

And if you are a non techie person, I’d say phone a friend before attempting this at home.

———-

Update from HTC

To assist our customers in downloading the Froyo update for the HTC Desire in Australia, below are some helpful tips.  For any further assistance, customers should contact HTC Customer Care in Australia on 1300-482-482. An over-the-air update will be available soon for customers.

1.     Follow the installation instructions that are available on the HTC Australia support web site
2.     Before installing HTCSync remove any previous versions.
3.     Remove any HTC drivers from Windows Device manager
4.     Install the latest version of HTC Sync 3
5.     Disable any Anti Virus s/w or firewalls.
6.     Connect the device directly to the PC/Laptop and not via a USB hub
7.     Reboot the computer.
8.     If all fails try another computer

—-

The above comments from HTC’s Facebook page also puts pay to the comments below that a OTA update would be to big!.

My advice would be to wait until the Over the Air Update comes out and has been tested, this would be even more true for Mac users.

———

final update…

Great news….  via @petesymons

FroYo OTA now avail for Telstra HTC Desire. Use WIFI & have 25MB memory free. Go 2 settings>about phone>syst software updates>check now

———

(p.s this post is also on the ABC Tech site, so head over there for more comments as well )

Tags: Annoyances, HTC-Desire by Me
12 Comments »

Don’t crap on the hand that feeds you.

Of course the more “polite version” is don’t bite the hand that feeds you, but I think mine has a nicer ring to it.

This applies to most social platforms as well.  In many respects it comes down to treating your audience as you want to be treated audience may not necessarily be customers but could simply be people that you follow the public you want to follow of people that you interact with other casual basis.

In this day and age there is a good chance that somebody further up the food chain than you in your organisation is either going to be following you directly or have access to the material you have written through some means.  There doesn’t have to be anything nefarious in those means, it is just an is these days.  Say you’re having a bad day at work complaining loudly about your organisation will get you noticed in a way that you would necessarily be comfortable with.

That is not to say you cannot complain about your work but do it in such a way that you don’t bring your organisation into disrepute without realising it may be consequences for you.

Even if you only use Social Media for social interaction and have nothing to do with any job in any way what so ever, the hand that feeds you is your followers.  The relationship you have with them will define which part of crapping on the hand that feeds you something falls into.  I follow lots of people who’s material is not fit for work, or even for re tweeting for example.

If you use Twitter for incessantly tweeting about competitions inherently lowering your chance of winning a competition like all pyramid schemes you’re going to annoy lot of people.  If you consider having your timeline full competitions don’t expect the a lot of followers and certainly very little conversation, then go ahead. If you are a company getting people to re-tweet your competition,  you’re going to damage your brand not improve it doing this.  Why because your brand will be associated with the incessant re-tweeting as well as the person doing the re-tweeting.

Whether we like it or not our personal lives and our personal interactions on social media will come back to within the workplace at some point in time.  How these interactions affect us at work or even at home depend on how we conduct ourselves.

There are plenty of cases of people overstepping the boundaries in some cases it may well have been deliberate or a one off the error of judgement.  But in all these cases it still comes back to level of personal responsibility and personal judgement.  If you can justify through your history on social media that you haven’t broken the rules as a standard practice you may find yourself in a lot better place if you do overstep a  boundary.

For an organisation the audience are all potential customers and while some organisations embrace social media and the opportunities that it presents many worry about the risks outweigh the benefits.  There is not to say that social media is a panacea for every company and their woes. There are though are lots of opportunities to be had.  In this case the hand that feeds you is easy to define and the risks of making a mistake is somewhat higher.  However like above if you establish the history a single mistake can be overlooked or addressed quickly and easily.

The harder part of this policy is the common sense aspect.  People are going to complain. You need to work out if your behaviour is something that is worth complaining about. People said I posted to many photos in one go, and guess what they were right I did.  So I tweak the Twitterfeed to reduce the volume. Problem solved, this had nothing to do with work, but I took my followers as a hand that feeds me.  When I had a bad few days at work with general stress, I just jumped of twitter for a while.  I happen to like where I work and having a bad few days wasn’t going to change that. Bitching on Twitter would have.

So next time you are having a bad day, somebody has annoyed you, got under your skin, or just even themselves being an idiot, consider your response.  Is your response going to crap on the hand that feeds you. Really it isn’t that hard!

Tags: General, twitter by Me
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This is a cross post of a joint blog post from Neerav’s article…

RAW and JPG are different ways of creating photos in a digital camera. Each has advantages and disadvantages. In the Blue corner we have Wolfcat who argues in favour of the RAW file format and in the Red corner we have Neerav who argues in favour of the JPG file format.

Neerav Bhatt Photos Shown at Lumixlife Gallery Exhibition

Pro-JPG Argument

For some background so you understand where I’m coming from: I love to take photos, mostly of urban streets, wilderness and wildlife.

I take 99.9% of my photos in JPG format and have used these successfully to create A4 posters, a photo book, sold photos for use in technology websites and magazines to accompany my articles, and had some displayed in an art gallery on 32-50inch TV screens.

I understand that RAW has some technical benefits but for the vast majority of photographers out there JPG will be the best option because:

• for 99% of people JPG image quality is already far more than they need
• it’s convenient because images don’t require any post-processing
• the vast majority of keen amateur photographers don’t have the time or inclination to sit at a computer for hours after a day spent taking photos, post-processing RAW camera files into JPG photos manually one by one.
• RAW files cannot be immediately shared to the Internet because they require processing with a computer that is reasonably fast. When I take photographs at events I can share the best JPGs to Flickr within minutes using my cheap, underpowered netbook computer,
• the more affordable digital cameras used by keen amateur photographers are noticeably slower at taking RAW format photos than JPG’s. I guarantee “RAW only” hardliners have missed out on photo opportunities because their camera takes time recording each massive RAW file,
• JPG file sizes are far smaller and therefore take up less space on your camera card, in your photo archive, and when transferring them internally on your home network or on the internet.
• Arguments that storage space is getting cheaper are irrelevant. Try calculating how many camera cards you’d need to store 100 photos/day, every day for a month on holiday and you’ll see what I mean,
• JPG files can be viewed on any desktop or laptop computer as well as many electronic devices including smartphones, TV’s, dvd/bluray players etc,
• RAW encourages lazy “i can always do it properly on the computer” photography. I own Photoshop CS5 and find it useful, but much prefer to get the camera settings right first time in the camera and not have to spend time fiddling later

There are over a hundred different variations of RAW file formats needing special software to convert them to JPG. Often new cameras record in a RAW format that can’t be opened by older image processing applications like Adobe Photoshop.

If you must use RAW then DNG is the best RAW format for archival purposes. The US Library of Congress classified proprietary RAW files as “Less desirable file formats” suggesting that DNG be used instead.

The only times I would ever consider using a RAW format such as DNG are:

1. if I was being paid to do a commercial photography job. Even then I’d use DNG+JPG which takes each photo in both formats so I could use the JPG’s immediately and the DNG’s only if required.
2. If I was on holiday and paying lots of money for a unique one off experience eg: hot air balloon ride then I’d set my camera to DNG+JPG.

I leave the final word to respected amateur photographer and camera reviewer Ken Rockwell:

If you shoot hundreds or thousands of images in a day shoot JPG and don’t worry. The quality is the same for almost all intents and purposes as raw, and the raw files would take gigabytes or tens of gigabytes and resultant hours to download, convert, catalog and burn to backup CDs. In fact, if you shoot this much then JPG can give better quality since attempting to shoot this much raw will constipate your workflow and you could miss making some images entirely as your cards fill up. You’d always be running out of memory cards or time waiting for the access light to stop blinking.

If you love to tweak your images one-by one and shoot less than about a hundred shots at a time than raw could be for you. In fact, if you prefer the look you can get from raw (it may be different from JPG in some cases depending on software) you can let your computer batch process images and save the results as JPGs, too. I almost never shoot anything in raw, and when I do I never see any difference for all the effort I wasted anyway. (I can see differences if I blow things up to 100% or bigger on my computer, but not in prints.)

JPG vs RAW – Get it right the first time (Ken Rockwell)

Further reading

The RAW Flaw – Luminous Landscape

Are Raw Files Forever? – Luminous Landscape

DNG – Sustainability of Digital Formats – Planning for Library of Congress Collections

Still Image Preferences – Sustainability of Digital Formats – Planning for Library of Congress Collections

Raw as Archival Still Image Format: A Consideration (University of Connecticut Libraries)

Adobe TV – Advantages of DNG format

Pro-RAW Argument

First confession I shoot RAW and JPG. However 99% of the time I just ignore the JPG files, cause I never use them, never see them and they just end up taking up space on my harddrive.

I’m a keen landscape shooter. I like to document the world around me looking for that unique angle on this great country we live in. Whilst I shoot in colour.. I’m a huge fan on the black and white as well for real story telling.

1. There is only one kind of RAW. The kind your camera shoots. I shoot with a Nikon D90, so I get .NEF files. I really don’t care about other RAW formats. Why, because that is like saying I drive a Diesel powered car, but there are too many kinds of Petrol to confuse me.
2. Quality doesn’t matter. No of course it doesn’t, unless you care about the photo. Unless that photo is a touch under/over exposed, the white balance is out, the horizon line is a few degrees of centre, the lens you used has a certain type of distortion that throws out straight lines or the highlights are a bit over exposed. Any of these mean you are going to want to “fix” the photo.
3. Sure Ken Rockwell can shoot in full manual mode and get White Balance and everything perfect every time, never needing to touch Photoshop at all to fix any image…. But are you Ken Rockwell.
4. You’re are sure that you know what the correct colour temp for each setting is, because you shoot in a perfectly stable environment, with colour charts and controlled lighting every time. Nope didn’t think so. Guess what you are going to want to correct that photo.
5. Batch Processing is your friend. I use Lightroom3 to processes all my RAW images. If they are similar I can spend time on one image get the settings right and apply them to hundreds of photos in a few minutes.
6. Raw is non destructive, you aren’t dealing with a lossy compression like JPG you have all the information to play with. You don’t have to trust the camera to guess what you wanted, you have complete control. JPG is also 8bit colorur. The RAW files I shoot are 12bit colour.
7. Cost of storage is cheap. I have an offsite backup of my photos on a 1.5TB drive that I purchased for $98 dollars. I run a few 4gb cards and can shoot around 240 images per card. And I always take a harddrive with me on trips to backup the images anyway, that drive is a USB powered HD that is 880gb which cost me $120.
8. JPG is easier. Yes it is, but then so is buying a pizza from the supermarket compared to making one at home. The one you make at home will have all the toppings you want and be to your taste, not the cheapest food to make the pizza.
9. And finally how often do you need to “get” the shot up straight away. If you are really doing that, you are shooting from a mobile phone anyway. Most of the time you are going to have access to something to process the image regardless. ( I know I do )
10. If you only store the JPG’s in 6 months time or a years time when someone spots that great image and wants the full size image for print… what did you do with it, oh yes that is right, you compressed it put lots of effects in photoshop and compressed it again.

While I do agree that JPG is easier to use, just because it is easier doesn’t make it better. I like to ensure that the colours on my image are visually correct and that the tones reflect the mood of the image. Say I want a black and white image, shooting RAW gives me complete tonal control much more than JPG ever can. And all for very little work!

And I’ll leave the final word to these images….

The JPG VS the RAW.

JPG

This RAW took me a minute to tweak in Lightroom 3.

Further Reading

Why Shoot RAW – Photography Review

When to Shoot RAW – Macworld

Understanding Raw Files – Luminous Landscape

Photo Lightroom -Adobe

Open Source Raw Processing Win, Linux

How To Shoot RAW without Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt by Michael Tapes

Tags: General, Nikon D90, Photos by Me
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In no particular order.

1. Apple have released a new product
2. Microsoft Security Hole
3. Flash for the Iphone
4. Famous Person does something stupid
5. Silly Joke about breaking news
6. Twitter release something
7. Facebook release something
8. Google release something
9. April Fools
10. 4chan do something

Tags: Funny by Me
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I’m sure people much more articulate that I have covered this… but what the hell here is my 2cents worth on the whole #grogsgate affair.

The Australian has taken the line that it was in the public’s interest to know.  But now we all know what has changed.  Do people feel betrayed by Grog, do people question everything he has written, do we feel he has lied.  For me the answer is no, and this is where The Australian has let itself down and betrayed Grog for nothing more than a petty squabble over bragging rights.

Unlike many of the pseudonyms that have been referred to, or hidden leakers and secret “sources”, not one thing changed.  People have a name and nothing more.  Perhaps if the Australian had thought about this, the fallout wouldn’t be so bad.  IMHO the public interest test was failed.  All we learned was a name and which department he works for. Everything else is the same.  These two “facts” haven’t changed a single thing he wrote.

The Australian did play the man and not the ball.  Unlike secret emails from Treasury, or worse anonymous editorials attacking our political process and blatant crankiness that their chosen one didn’t win the election, not one thing changed knowing who he is.

Worse still is the fallout for Grog, who has been forced to defend himself for what has proved to be trumped up nothingness.  Sure some people were curious, and perhaps his name should have come out, but there are ways and means.  Perhaps it would have come out in time anyway.  But then what did it matter, when a blogger writes they have to defend themselves on their writing, not on the masthead.

It was Grog’s writing that drew people in.  Sure people agreed with him and yet people also disagreed with him.  His blog gave people an open platform to disagree and to a name.  That name may not have been real, but it was still him and he would still have to defend his words.

It’s funny how Mark Scott took his words to heart and looked at what the ABC was doing, not treating him as a threat.  The Australian, doesn’t take the critics well and instead of addressing them gave us a story that didn’t change a thing.

That is the crux, it was a non story, but a non story that will have ramifications for Grog and for media as a whole.

Grog won’t be the last to be outed, but I am sure The Australian isn’t going to like when the bloggers fight back, which they will.

And yes my name is Wolf

Tags: Annoyances, General by Me
5 Comments »

Well I never….

When I set out to make a t-shirt about the changing of the guard in #730reportland, I never figured it would be controversial. I’ve had more comments about it on twitter than any other t-shirt.

People have criticised me for who I have left off and the order they people were put in. The order is random by the way, just the way I looked peoples names up and nothing more.

Names put to me include ( in no particular order ) Me ( and no I didn’t nominate myself), Barrie Cassidy, Monica Attard, B1 and B2, Big Ted, @firstdogonmoon, David Speers, Chris Lilley, Johnathan Holmes, Laurie Oakes, Mark Colvin, Steve Cannane and Eleanor Hall, just to name a few.

If I sell a couple more… and get some more names… I might be forced to make a senate ballot paper.

So go buy the t-shirt, hoodie or long sleeve… and leave a comment.

Tags: Funny, Redbubble, twitter by Me
2 Comments »

We will take 12Mbps as the likely outcome for the majority of Australians if we don’t get the NBN. Of course the argument goes that no one needs 1gbps because there isn’t a user case for it. And even 100mpbs would be a waste because private industry didn’t build it already.

Just stop and think about the last 10 years in Australia and the tools that we use. Then after reading this think about what you are going to do in 10 years time.

Starting a bit before 10 years ago, in 1992 there were two yes two ISP’s in Australia. Telstra weren’t to switch on ADSL until 2000. And it wasn’t until 2006 that Telstra removed the cap and let ADSL1 get to 8Mbps. ( BTW how many people actually get that kind of speed)

Google which is now such an integral part of some many of our lives ( see all those ads on the side) only overtook Altavista in 2000. YouTube launched in Nov 2005, only to be grabbed by Google less than a year later for a cool US$1.65 billion in Google Stock.. Now people upload more than 24 hours of content every single minute. Google Maps which is doing a fine job of killing of map directories launched in 2007. Street View didn’t hit Australia till August 2008. Yes just a squeak over 2 years ago.

Flickr, didn’t launch until Feb 2004. It wasn’t until December 2006 that pro accounts got unlimited uploads. In this month Flickr officially had its 5billionth photo uploaded, given that the 4billionth shot was uploaded in Oct 2009, that is 1 billion photos in 11months. Uploads run to around 3,000 per minute.

MySpace… much maligned at the looser to Facebook launched in 2002. But still for the looser they are still the 32nd most visited website in the world. Which of course leads to the current behemoth that is Facebook. It didn’t launch to the public until September 2006. 4 years later it has ½ a billion users. They are now the number 2 visited website, with of course Google still number 1. (Source Alexa.com)

Of the Top 10 sites as September 2010, really only Yahoo and Windows Live can claim to have been any sort of influence pre 2000. YouTube, Facebook, Baidu, Wikipedia, Blogspot and Twitter just didn’t exist. These are content rich sites. They are not just light weight text sites, but sites with rich media, photos, HD Video e.t.c.

The big argument is about wireless taking over and making Fibre to the Home obsolete. Ignoring the obvious thing about the physics of it all and that fact that you can just your N grade wifi with many of the new devices to connect to the backbone at your home or work, let think about wireless devices.

It wasn’t until the N95 that you could get a 5megapixel camera and GPS in one device. That was March 2007. Nokia also gave us the first phone with a compass, in 2008. Apple didn’t launch the first IPhone until June 2007. The IPhone 4 now has a 5megapixel camera. The Nokia N8 is launching with a 12 mega-pixel camera, with 8 mega-pixels becoming common on high end phones. Nokia in 2008 became the world’s largest manufacturer of any kind of camera. These devices now support N Wifi, with its data capabilities of 600mbit/s. Telstra’s Next G has speeds upto 42Mbit/s. So are you going to rely on just wireless or use your local or someone else’s WiFi network.

My phone has a 1 GHz CPU, 10 years ago that was the top of the line CPU for home computers. Now I do lots of stuff on the move, but the heavy lifting as it were is done at home on the big computer, the one with 12gig of ram and 3tb of storage.

The advent of P2P has forced a dramatic change in the way we view television and listen to music as well. Napster only came onto the scene in 1999. Bit Torrent wasn’t released as a protocol until 2001, now it is estimated to be anywhere between 20-50% of Internet Traffic. Whereas previously Australia was often low down in the priority order for showing first run shows, now networks “RUSH” TV shows often within a day or less of airing internationally just to circumvent this technology. The ABC only launched IView in 2008. In 2010 is launched live streaming of ABCNews24 (chewing up around 300mb p/h ) in the process. Now all the channels offer some sort of IPTV Catch up service.

This is just a sample of various tech over the last 10 years. Many of the examples above are only 5 years old. The other big advantage of the NBN is that either end of the cable can be upgraded, so the 1gbps is an artificial limit. In some respects it happens to be the most cost effective for deployment for the whole project.

There is no technology on the horizon that is going to be able to compete with Fibre to the Home for speed. This is a rare chance for Australia to be a world leader with all the benefits that will bring. Or it is a chance for us to shy away and spend the next 10 years catching up. Look above to see what happened in the last 10 years, the clock is ticking.

Tags: apple, General, google, HTC-Desire, n95, nokia by Me
3 Comments »

I just brought myself a new 1.5tb drive for backing up my photos today for $98. That goes with the 2Tb I have in my computer the 320gb USB drive and the 880gb USB powered HD’s that I have. 10 years ago a 1tb drive would have cost me around $15k.

I remember fondly my first Zip Drive. (I have about 1gb of zip disks floating around here in the office at home somewhere as well ) That 100meg of storage was a god send for backing up working files and those huge 2meg photo scans that I had.

Back in 1999, Nikon introduced the D1. Their first Digital SLR. It had an amazing 2.7megapixel sensor and cost around 12K AUD. 10 Years later their top prosumer camera has 16megapixels and a price under 1.5K.

Of course now I shoot 10meg Raw shots, and when I can afford the new D7000 they will be near 20meg per shot for raw. And I’m only shooting DX format shots.

Even the new Nokia N8 has a 12megapixel camera. That means a phone will be producing shots that chew up as much space as from my DSLR.

A top of line the Hasselblad H4D chews up 50MB raw files for each shot for a 40Mpixel camera. All in a camera that costs 30k USD. That size will in the next 10 years be what a lot of people have access to as their image sensors..

My Nikon D90 can shoot 720p, but I have a 1080p video recorder as well. Even my phone shoots at 720p.The D7000 is a 1080p camera. The replacement for 1080p is 4k. Having seen Blade Runner with a 4k projection all I can say is wow. So we don’t have home 4k systems yet, and very few cinemas have them. Yet already Youtube will support 4k Video. So there is a business case for using 4k video for say live streaming of a concert over IP and selling tickets. Or even like with the recent World Cup, selling tickets for the Cinema.

As more people can access the technology to create cheap high definition content that they wish to share they run into the limitations of ADSL. Try and upload a video and you will see how long that takes compared to downloading. The NBN whilst not truly symmetrical will offer speeds up to 1gpbs/400mbps compared to say ADSL 2 at 24000/2500 kbps (which is the theoretical best if you live next to the exchange ).

IMHO this ability to upload the content that we are creating is the killer app for the NBN for the general public. The rise of social media, the rise of YouTube, Flickr, Facebook and their increasing ability to serve the content that we produce are what we the public will use the NBN for.

All the doubters say the NBN is going to be too fast… tell me what you did 10 years ago on the net and tell me what you do now… then think about just what the Digital Camera has done in 10 years.

The amount of data we are creating and storing is going up by these volumes, the prices for storing and accessing the data is falling at the same rate, why do people suddenly think that the demand for transferring these files via the internet will suddenly stop?

Tags: Annoyances, General, Nikon D90 by Me
3 Comments »

Here is the Show Down Table, comparing the D7000, to the D90.

These are the major features where the D7000 trumps the D90.

(Source of Table:  DP Review and Nikon- if I have missed out something let me know.)

As you can see this camera leaves the D90 in the dust.  Low light and fast photography have all been ramped up incredibly.  And for a RRP or around the $1200 USD mark it gives the non professional shooter a great camera with many Pro and Semi Pro features at what I think is a great price.

A few other thoughts….

The extra mega pixels can ensure larger printers ( although the prints I have got from my D90 at A3 are stunning), but it also gives you a bit more crop room.  You can cut that little bit more of the edges of your image that don’t quite line up and still get the same print size.  Further (somewhat reduced by the D7000 having a virtual horizon) is that you can rotate your images to straighten them as well and still get a full size print.

The extra 4% in the view finder may not seem much, yet having a 100% Viewfinder means that nothing unexpected will creep into the side of your image. I’ve got used to always checking on my D90 that I’ve got the whole shot and nothing extra, but having the 100% Viewfinder is something that just makes your life in post processing much easier.

I’d love to get my hand on the camera just for the Shutter Speed as well.  1/8000th of a second will freeze just about anything.  Perfect for insects in flight, water in motion e.t.c. The extra 2 FPS on the body is also fantastic as well, letting you burn through action.

The other great feature is the “weather-resistant” body.  There have been times I’ve had to stop shooting with just a few drops of rain on the D90, the D7000 lets you get a bit more extreme with your shooting, without having to worry about dust and a few drops of rain.

The Video feature has been dramatically expanded as well.  One thing is I am glad that Nikon have moved to H264 .mov files.  This has become the standard for video these days and opens up a lot more options for cleaning editing as well over the motion jpeg format. ( But this is something for others to comment on.  I’ve never really used the video feature on my D90, and I’d suspect that the same would be true for the D7000.

Overall, whilst the D90 maybe around for awhile yet, I’d have to say just on the specs and the initial reviews your better of getting the D7000.

Note sure on Australian released date… but US date is October… so should be sometime next month.

P.S

Please now buy some of my art work…. So I can afford it….

Some More from around the Web:

Nikon Rumors
Nikon D7000: Camera Road Test With Chase Jarvis
D7000 dpreview hands-on
Offical Nikon D7000 Site

And hands on video care of Engadget.

and a Nikon promo video….

Tags: General, Nikon D90, Redbubble, video by Me
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