Leica dealer, Leica Fanatic, and good buddy David Farkas has posted his extended Leica S2 System Review based on his trip to Leica High Command (at their invitation). Read on and enjoy a well thought out and comprehensive review.
Nov 112009
Nov 032009
OpenACircle is an online collaboration and social networking site aimed at providing home-based and small-to-medium businesses with an affordable means to collaborate over the web. I was asked by them to review their service offerings. I am being compensated (slightly) for my efforts.
Using the concept of circles, OpenACircle seeks to combine social networking, desktop & file sharing and video conferencing into a simple, affordable service.
I signed up for the free account (which is more than enough for most home users) and after filling out my profile, I was present with several dialog boxes to invite all of my contacts to join — a la Facebook. Afterwards, I was presented with my dashboard which includes such sundry items as
- an event calendar
- connection/circle statistics
- meeting scheduler
- a document management system (including public and private “vaults”)
- a messaging inbox
The usual trappings of an online collaboration suite mashed up with social networking. Think Go to My Meeting meets LinkedIn and you will have a pretty good idea of what is going on here.
The software itself is Java based. You will need to install the latest JRE from java.sun.com in order to run it. Oddly enough, the system does not support Macs despite the fact that Java is supposed to be platform independent. As is usually the case in these situations, Parallels Desktop for Mac saves the day as the system works perfectly in a Windows 7 virtual machine (64-bit version no less).
I managed to setup some screen sharing and a video conference with some friends and family and found the system to be easy to use. I will perform more extensive testing and report back. At first glance, OpenACircle looks to be a very good value – especially with the free account.
Jun 092009
One of the questions I often hear from my photography students is “Why does my photo look fine on the screen, but the colors are all wrong when I print it?” The moment you ask that question (even to yourself), you have crossed over into the Twilight Zone known as colorspace management.
In a nutshell, the colors your camera sees may be more or less than what your computer can see/process which may be more or less than what your printer can print. Simple, right?
Without going into a full blown discussion of this topic, I will go so far as to say that once you have come to this bump in the road, it’s time to go shopping for a colorimeter.
A colorimeter is a device that measures the color output of your display (and in some cases, printers) and produces a color profile that is then installed in your computer’s operating system (Windows and Mac both support this) where colorspace-aware applications (like Photoshop) can then accurately map the colors from one device to the next making sure that what you see is truly what you get.
In this first installment, I got to spend a considerable amount of quality 
time with X-rite’s Colormunki Photo, an all-in-one color management solution for PCs and Macs.
The Colormunki device looks like a black 25 foot measuring tape. If anyone in your home does carpentry, be aware that they might try to measure a 2×4 with it. It is a USB powered device, so all power and data flow through one cable.
Dec 062008
The Apple iPhone has the distinction of being one of the most sought after gadgets of that last two years. My wife and I caved in this October and got ourselves a pair. With features and functions that suit the needs of an incredibly diverse audience, the svelte, smooth iPhone is the current go-to gadget on the market. Protecting this technological marvel has become a bit of
an industry with scores of holsters, skins, and hard cases available at your local Apple Store. For those folks who crave the iPhone but often find themselves in harsh environments, the designers at Otterbox have come to the rescue. The Otterbox 3G Defender case for iPhone is not so much a case as it is a suit of armor for your iPhone 3G. Think of it as Tony Stark’s iPhone case (his would be red and gold however).
The Otterbox 3G Defender is a double shell protective case that allows the iPhone to easily survive in environments that would normally be fatal and warranty-voiding. The 3G Defender uses a hard polycarbonate inner shell with covers for the earpiece, microphone, and speakers. The inner shell also integrates a cover for the iPhone’s touchscreen. If you already have a touchscreen “skin” installed, I am happy to report that the double layer of protection does not impede the screen’s operation in any way. The hard inner shell is then covered by a silicone skin that adds grippy-ness and protects against bumps and shocks. It also provide silicone covers to all of the iPhones switches and access ports, sealing out dust and moisture.
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Let me make this perfectly clear: this is not a waterproof housing for your iPhone 3G, so don’t plan on using it underwater. It does, however, ruggedize your iPhone to a point where you can feel better about using it at construction sites, factories, or anyplace else where the iPhone’s delicate features would get marred or scratched. Just don’t plan on hammering nails with it.
The holster holds the iPhone VERY securely, almost obsessively so. You have to practice removing/replacing the iPhone to get good at it. I would do that before running off into the field with it as it may cost you a couple of missed calls before you get the hang of it. The holster also has openings so as not to muffle the speakers which is a nice touch.
PROS
* Unmatched protection for your iPhone 3G
* Provides dust and moisture seals for all vulnerable points on the iPhone 3G
* Adds grippy outer cover to the iPhone 3G
* Includes cover screen for the iPhone 3G’s touch screen
* Includes latching holster
CONS
* Holster requires a little practice to remove the iPhone. May cause you to miss a few calls while you get used to it.
* Adds to the size of the iPhone, but not by much.
* Grippy outer cover makes it difficult to extract from tight jeans pockets – wear cargo pants.
In conclusion, if you want to take your iPhone 3G on a hike, out to a construction site, or you are worried about your case of chronic butterfingers the Otterbox 3G Defender is the case of choice for your iPhone 3G.
Sep 102008
Nolobe Software makes two applications for the Mac: Interarchy – a high performance file transfer program that supports mirroring, a boatload of protocols (12 in total including iDisk and Amazon S3), and can take advantage of everything that Mac OS X has to offer: Automator, Dashboard, Bonjour, iDisk, Spotlight, Address Book, AppleScript and a whole bunch more. The other application they make is Iris – an “easy to use” image editor built from the ground up to take advantage of the Mac environment.
Interarchy is one of the slickest file transfer programs I have ever had the pleasure of working with. Unlike most other file transfer application which use local and remote file viewing panes, Interarchy shows only the remote content, the local content is displayed in the Finder as usual. That’s right, the Interarchy window behaves as any other window on the Mac desktop. This ease of use can be an issue for veterans of classic file transfer applications (like me – something so obvious, isn’t).
While it gets top marks in protocol support, features and interface design, actual file transfers do not live up to the hype. File transfer speeds on this app are good, but not impressive. Nolobe claims that the only limit to this application’s transfer speed is the underlying speed of the hard drive and networking subsystems. I transferred a 700 MB AVI file from my desktop to a local FTP server over gigabit ethernet and it took 3:32s. The same file transferred using CuteFTP Mac Pro took only 2:24s.
Iris is Nolobe’s entry into the graphics market. Looking a bit like Photoshop Elements 3, the software promises to be light and fast with all the tools graphics artists need to get the job done. To bad it doesn’t. Iris looks good, but beyond that it is quite buggy and has several annoying habits. For example: all images are displayed full sized when opened. This is not an issue with most web images, but regularly deal with 10-12 Mpix files that are larger than my 30“ display.
Other functions do not work as advertised and the software has a rather odd tendency to not follow established interface and ”do things it’s own way“. The complete absence of help files does not make things better.
In conclusion, Interarchy has a rather good interface but its performance was not up to claims and Iris needs to be avoided at all costs.