I was an early adopter of the digital camera, having purchased an Olympus 1.3 mexapixel model back in April of 2000. We were content with our older camera, but when my wife accidentally dropped it on the hard tile of our kitchen floor, I had to fight back a smile. Now I had a perfectly good excuse to upgrade.
After much research, we purchased the Canon PowerShot A610. We read the in-depth reviews of the camera at DPreveiw.com and many of the customer comments at Amazon.com. We considered purchasing it at AbesOfMaine.com (which had great prices on digital cameras), but ended up buying it at Costco.com because of their unbeatable return policy — which was especially important since my wife has a propensity to drop expensive electronics on hard tile floors.
So far, it has met and exceeded all of our expectations. The photos we have taken so far with the new camera have been bright, clear, and crisp. The USB 2.0 connection to the camera makes transferring the larger image files quick and easy. We haven’t used the included software yet, but why would you when Picasa is incredibly useful and totally free? The My Colors mode is fun to play around with, but isn’t very practical otherwise, and the movie mode is great for quick little clips to email to Grandma.
With our older camera, we were constantly annoyed by all of the delays; taking the picture, viewing and zooming, and downloading all had built-in delays. With the Canon PowerShot A610 we haven’t noticed any delays at all — all functions are lightning fast, we haven’t had to wait for anything. I have been very impressed with the overall performance of the camera. Even the battery life has been impressive: we got the camera just before Christmas and used it heavily all through the holidays without replacing the standard alkaline batteries that came in the box.
Just as a disclaimer, I’m not a professional photographer, I’m not even a shutterbug or hobbyist. I simply want to take good picures and have solid performance and use some neat features every once in a while. Given my requirements, I can’t recommend the Canon PowerShot A610 highly enough; it’s a great piece of hardware.
January 5th, 2006
I have been using Firefox for about a year now, and now that 1.5 has been released, switching to an alternate browser for most of your web experience is definitely the way to go. At first, alternative browsers were well behind IE after it leapfrogged and then dominated Netscape. Because Internet Explorer (IE) dominated the browser market in recent years, some sites (although rare) are coded specifically for IE and might not look perfect in Firefox. I do keep a shortcut of IE handy for some IE-proprietary corporate software, but for all of my web-browsing, I use Firefox exclusively. Here are a few reasons why you should switch to Firefox.
- Separation
One scary thing about IE is how tightly integrated it is to the operating system (OS). To find out how tightly IE is woven into Windows, try uninstalling it — good luck! Web-based exploits therefore, can theoretically impact the OS, which is scary stuff. Firefox is totally separated from your OS, and doesn’t have the frightening capability of ruining your whole computer just because you visit a website with malicious intent. Firefox isn’t totally immune to bugs or exploits, but the good new is that any existing exploits aren’t going to mess up the operating system. Firefox is a much safer browser than Internet Explorer.
- Extension
Another great feature of Firefox is the ability to extend it in any way. Extensions are small add-on programs that you can use to customize your browsing experience. If you’re a weatherbug, add ForecastFox extension. If you’re a business traveler with clients in many time zones, try FoxClocks. If you’re a newshound, try Sage — an RSS reader. Flickr and del.icio.us plugins are also available if you use those services. Extensions for word of the day, random sites, and countless other diversions are easily added to your browser.
- Innovation
Tabbed browsing is another reason I love Firefox. This isn’t a totally unique feature, as many other browsers also use tabs — rumors are the next version of IE will have tabs. Tabs are integrated nicely in Firefox and while I thought at first that it wasn’t a newsworthy feature, now I can’t live without my tabs. The 1.5 release of Firefox allows you to reorder those tabs by clicking and dragging to reorder them, which makes for easy grouping of related pages. Tabs are one of those surprisingly simple ideas that will totally change the way you surf.
- Benefaction
The folks at the Mozilla project have been generous enough to give the browser away, no strings attached. Firefox is totally free of charge. It won’t cost you one red cent to switch to Firefox. You really don’t have anything to lose — you can always easily uninstall it (see Separation above).
- Intuition
It’s easy. My grandmother could install Firefox and get it running. As part of the normal install, it will offer to include all of your bookmarks and settings from Internet Explorer. After installation, Firefox is as easy to use and any other browser; in fact, it may be easier to use because the development team has given special attention to the whole user experience and made Firefox as user-friendly as possible.
Get Firefox, use it for a while, add some extensions, and thank me later. You’ll love it.
December 15th, 2005
A savvy email user knows how to write an email and write it well, knows how to squeeze every last drop of energy out of those electrons to make the email as effective as possible. Here are a few tips that can make you email savvy:
- Keep it short
Long, rambling emails are rarely read thoroughly; most people skim or totally skip over them. If you want someone to read your email, make it short. If you want someone to read the email and do something, make it even shorter. Proofread your emails and edit liberally; take out any verbose verbiage — emails should be fluff-less.
- Mind your tone
Emails don’t have context. Don’t be sarcastic or try to use any type of tone because it will inevitably be read differently than the way you wrote it.
- Reply with original text
Most email applications automatically do this, but I have received several replies where the sender has not included my original email. This is especially frustrating if I can’t remember what my original request was and the reply is along the lines of, “OK, let’s do it.”
- Use only one space
Spaces are like exclamation points — you only need one to make it work. Using more than one is unnecessary; it simply takes up more space and makes it harder to read.
- Choose descriptive subject
Don’t get too clever with your email subject line. Use a good subject that summarizes the body of the email. Having a well-written subject line is extremely beneficial when digging through old email archives.
- Keep it topical
If your email contains more than one major topic, break it up and send as many emails as there are topics. It doesn’t take much additional effort and makes it much easier keep it short and choose a descriptive subject.
- Respond promptly
This can be taken to an extreme, but just don’t let your emails sit around and get stale. Promptly may mean different things for different emails. Prioritize what you need to reply to and take care of them. Don’t let unread messages accumulate in your inbox.
Learning and practicing these simple principles will make your email life much easier, and your savvy email readers will appreciate it too.
December 4th, 2005
Presentations in a conference room with a projector are not just for executives and board members any more. Laptops and projectors are commonly used for a wide range of presentations and meetings, so it is imperative to learn proper protocol to lead such a meeting.
Whether it is a software demo, a PowerPoint presentation, or an online meeting, there are several guidelines to follow:
- Set up early
Nothing will erase credibility faster than watching someone struggle setting up for a presentation. “If he can’t figure out how to hook up a projector, how is he an expert on [Insert Topic Here]?” Arrive early (probably 20-30 minutes early if you’re unfamiliar with the equipment) and be ready to go when the first person arrives.
- Avoid distractions
The audience will be tempted enough, so don’t provide any additional distractions. Here are a few common distractions which can totally kill (the bad way) a presentation:
- Email
Outlook 2003 has a desktop alert activated by default which pops up the subject and the first few lines of each message you receive. I was in a meeting once where I spent most of my time being distracted by the emails the presenter was receiving. At one point, one with a very personal subject line popped up and I had to hold back my laughter. Be safe and simply turn off your email during the presentation — it can wait.
- Power settings
Laptops usually have default timers to shut off the screen or go to standby mode after a period of inactivity. Make sure you change those setting on your laptop when leading a presentation. In the same meeting with the email snafus, the presenter had several open discussions with the group. During each conversation, his laptop went to standby mode. (Yes, that meeting inspired this article)
- Messaging clients
Having an IM client running during a presentation is just asking for trouble. Any friend or family member may decide to send you an instant message on any number of embarrassing (and potentially career-threatening) topics. Be safe and make sure to turn off any instant messaging programs.
- Other
Simply be aware of the things that may be displayed during your presentation. If you accidentally minimize the main window, should the group really see the picture of you in your bathing suit from your last vacation? Do you have a shortcut to your Death Rock Music folder on your desktop? Do you have any other programs which occasionally send pop-up notifications? Clean up and turn anything off that you don’t want shown on the projector screen.
- Use dual screen
Although this is a little more advanced and doesn’t apply to all types of presentations, using the projector as a second monitor can be a very useful technique. Windows XP supports dual monitors by default, but you may have to tweak your video card settings to pull this off right. If properly done, this technique can really help your presentation.
Following these simple guidelines won’t make you a great presenter. You will need to master your message, voice characteristics, body language and many other factors to deliver a polished presentation, but at least you won’t look like a total rookie.
November 27th, 2005
The blind carbon copy is the least used feature of one of today’s most popular communication methods: sending email.
Every email client (local or web-based) I’ve ever used supports the blind carbon copy. It’s just as easy to use as the To and CC (carbon copy) fields; the only real barrier is that most email users don’t know what BCC stands for, let alone what it does or how to use it. That it may be unappreciated, forgotten, and unused no more, I offer a brief description and a few examples.
Suppose you have been tasked with emailing a simple newsletter announcing the next family reunion. The uninformed may choose to put everyone’s address in the To field and send the email. However, a better approach would be to put the addresses in the BCC field. That way, crazy cousin Chris can’t harvest all of the email addresses to use for her annoying “Forward this email to 100 people and you’ll get a million dollars from Bill Gates” emails.
Another worthwhile use of blind carbon copy is to follow up on an unfinished task at work. For example, let’s say a programmer has promised to deliver a custom application, but the deadline passes with no results. You could send a “Where is my application?” email to the programmer and CC the software development manager, but this will make the programmer feel singled out and may weaken your relationship. A better option would be to BCC the software development manager so he can either add additional pressure to the offending programmer or assign additional resources to get the project done. BCC is a great way to keep someone in the loop surreptitiously.
What would I do without the BCC field? I would expose email addresses to people who shouldn’t have them. I would be forced to put everyone on the To or CC lines when some may not need to know who else received the email. I wouldn’t be able to send a copy anonymously to a co-worker when replying to a ridiculous request from my boss. I would reveal email addresses to those who didn’t need to know the other recipients and risk increasing everyone’s spam traffic.
The appropriate use of the BCC field separates the savvy email user from the uninformed. Educate your friends and family about it. Don’t ever send out another mailing list without using the BCC field. Use blind carbon copy appropriately and it will help more efficiently and securely use your email.
November 9th, 2005
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