What Type Of Camcorder? MiniDV, Hard Drive, or DVD?

One question I get asked quite a bit (and one I see being asked on many forums) is what kind of camcorder to purchase? One that uses older MiniDV tapes, or the newer Hard Drive and DVD-based camcorders?

MiniDV:
These are the small tapes that are currently the oldest form of storage in new camcorders. They are quite cheap and each tape will hold about 60 minutes of footage at the highest resolution settings. The data is still stored in digital format on a MiniDV (so transferring to another tape won't degrade the original footage). My current camcorder uses this type of storage and I like it because I can keep a lot of blank tapes with me, and they are generally easier to find and purchase when you're on vacation. They store well and have a shelf life of about 10-15 years. The are two huge negatives about MiniDV's. The first is the same problem you find with any tape-based format...you can't easily jump to any footage you have recorded. The second problem is that, because the footage isn't stored as a "file", to transfer it to a computer, you have to play back the whole video in order to copy it to a computer.

Hard Drive:
The latest camcorders coming on the market contain an actual hard drive. The footage you shoot is stored as a file making it very easy to transfer to a computer. Also, this type of storage allows you to easily jump to anything you've shot. The problem with Hard Drive based camcorders is that you can't easily just take out the media and put it on your shelf for storage; you first have to transfer it onto a computer and burn it to a DVD (at which point you can erase the hard drive and begin shooting again). Finally, a problem with Hard Drives is that you can't easily switch between shooting different subjects (e.g. business and pleasure) as both subjects would be stored on the same hard drive (vs. switching in an out a tape).

DVD:
These camcorders record directly onto DVD's (of various sizes). They typically hold a lot less minutes of footage than either MiniDV's or Hard Drive-base camcorders. They share some of the positives of MiniDV's (easy storage) as well as Hard Drives (can jump to any point in the footage, video stored as files). While it sounds like DVD's save you a lot of time (in that you can give the DVD directly to someone else), practically, this isn't true as you usually won't just give someone all your raw footage (you wouldn't do this with any of the other types of media either). Finally, these types of camcorders, in order to store more footage onto the DVD, compress the video you shoot. From the reviews, typically, this means that the results from these camcorders are not as high quality as the other types of camcorders.

Conclusion:
Here is what types of camcorders I recommend people get in order of priority:
1) MiniDV
2) Hard Drive
3) DVD

Still, people should try out all three types and make their own choice as you will have different criteria than I do.

Don't Get Scammed From Online Camera Stores

The Wise Bread blog has a post entry titled "DO NOT buy a digital camera online until you read this". The post is a detailed account of exactly what happened when he tried to purchase a digital camera from one of the most notorious online camera stores, Bestpricecameras.com.

The usual way these Brooklyn-based online camera stores scam you is the simple Bait-and-Switch tactic. They lure you to make a purchase by showing cameras that are well below the prices you see elsewhere (as much as half as much). That's the bait. Then, once you place an order, you'll get a call or an e-mail saying that your order is backordered or you find out it's for the camera body only (no battery, manual, box, or anything else) and you'll get pressured to purchase a bunch of different stuff (or a different model of camera).

In a previous post, I talk about how I look for these scam stores advertising on ProductCritic via Google Adwords. The only way to ensure that the visitors on your site don't go to one of these scam stores is to block those ads from your site.

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Google's Doing Something About MFA Sites. Finally!

As I've written about before, I hate MFA sites! They are such huge leeches on the Internet but I certainly can't blame them for taking advantage of a legal, money-making opportunity.

Given my hatred for MFA sites, I was ecstatic to hear on Monday that Google has sent email out to MFA publishers that their accounts will be disabled starting June 1. This is great news. Although Jen from Jensense.com stated that both MFA publishers and arbitrage publishers are getting their accounts disabled, Shoemoney has a video blog post refuting the news that arbitrage publishers are getting disabled.

I don't mind arbitrage publishers (that's where you buy ads for a low price and get people to visit a site where you hope they click other ads that get you a higher payment than you paid to get the click) because it's a legitimate strategy in many traditional markets (not just online ads). Although part of MFA sites strategy is arbitrage, the fact that they have absolutely zero value (they don't even try to put up some useful content) makes me really hate them.

I can't believe it's actually taken this long for Google to do this (what happened to "Don't Be Evil"?) but at least it's finally happening. This won't completely get rid of MFA sites (since they'll just switch to Yahoo or Microsoft ads) it hopefully will put a big dent in them.....I'm getting tired of continually banning them from ProductCritic.

The Secrets Of Taking Camera Phone Pictures

ABC's Good Morning America did a segment on tips for taking camera phone pictures. To summarize:

1. Get to know the camera phone settings for different lighting conditions
   
2. Learn to store your pics properly
   
3. Shoot lots of pics
   
4. Try black and white if you can
   
5. Understand the limitations
   
6. Try to get enough light
   
7. Get close when scene is backlit
   
8. Anticipate shutter lag
   
9. Set to highest resolution you can
   
10. Get a case for your phone to avoid lens scratches
    

Given that the segment was on Good Morning America, I'll give them a slight break on the "absolute beginner" nature of the tips.

With the cameras on phones being better and better, I'm even amazed by the quality of some pics you can get from phones now. Unfortunately, I still haven't bought a new cell phone yet and am stuck with a Motorola that has a pretty poor camera in it. Worst yet, the lens in it is very recessed so dust covers the lens over time and the placement of the lens makes it tough to clean.

Amazon Purchases DPREVIEW.COM!

On Monday, one of the largest and most-trusted camera review sites, dpreview.com, announced that they had been purchased by Amazon.

Almost immediately, some in the community were skeptical that dpreview.com could maintain its objective reviews as poor reviews would mean less people would want to purchase that particular product from Amazon. Also, would Amazon ruin the site by putting Amazon links all over the place?

ZDNet has a good article about the questions involved in the dpreview purchase.

On ProductCritic's digital camera reviews, we weight the reviews from dpreview very high as they are among the most comprehensive and objective of all the reviews on the Internet. I hope it stays that way because they are a fantastic resource for consumers and the community in their forums are composed of very knowledgable, helpful people.

What Do You Hate Most About Cell Phone Service?

Information Week has listed Six Things Customers Hate About Cell Phone Service.

1. Disabled Features
2. Phones locked to one network
3. Restricted Internet Access
4. Unreliable Service
5. Incompatible products and services
6. Can't use phones as laptop modems

Personally, I'm really frustrated by #1,3, and 6. The restricted Internet Access bugs me quite a bit. First of all, my phone is pretty slow in accessing the Internet, and when it does, there are many sites I can't access. I have no idea why I can't get Google maps on my phone even though the phone is definitely supported by the mobile version of Google maps.

Also, I switched from my last provider because they were on CDMA instead of GSM. When I called to ask my old provider when they'd be switching to GSM, the service rep said "probably never". I said, "OK, then please cancel my service" and instead of trying something to keep me as a customer, the rep just said "OK!". Sheesh, that's pretty poor training....also the guy who cancelled my account was very quick and responsive...he's obviously trained well.

I'm waiting for the time to come when cell phone users in North America can get past the stone age of cell phones and be on par with the phones and service that users in Europe and Asia already enjoy. At some point, the cell phone providers must have to give up some of their control, right?

What bothers you about cell phone service?

Making a Friendly Multiuser Rails Database Configuration Files

Many people and sites recommend not checking in your database.yml file directly in the subversion repository but instead check in a database.example.yml file that each developer is responsible for modifying themselves. The reason for this is because if other developers are working on the project at the same time you will both end up clobbering the file as one person changes the information to match their machine and you change yours back to match your machine.

Fortunately the database.yml (along with all the other rails config files) can contain code in them. This makes is possible to write this:

development:
  adapter: postgresql
  database: critic_development
  username: <%= ENV['USER'] %>

test:
  adapter: postgresql
  database: critic_test
  username: <%= ENV['USER'] %>

production:
  adapter: postgresql
  database: critic
  username: deploy

For development and test configurations we use a local database that runs on our local development box with the username we logged in with but for the production server it runs as the 'deploy' user.

There is no need for passwords because the database servers are configured to not accept connections from remote sources.

For our small development team we find this solution works great and there is no need to special case our deployment to the production server by having a step to copy the production database.yml file. It may not work in some cases but for small development teams this might make your life a bit easier.

A Portable Rails Development Environment

Tony being the 'biz guy' just has to have his Windows Office Suite and thus any work he does on the site is done from Windows.

Our site is built using Subversion, Ruby, Rails and PostgreSQL. All of these work on Windows but none of them are first class citizens. We did get him setup using the various installers but it wasn't easy and took some time.

When I got the IM that he got a fresh laptop and needed his development environment setup again I didn't reply for 3 days. After that I got the idea of having him use an Ubuntu install on the free VMWare player. This way we could setup a complete development environment once and he could move it to any machine he wanted.

We still needed to setup a working Rails stack on Ubuntu but with there are various good resources on how to do that. The free PeepCode screencast (download the free preview for the server setup video) would be my first choice if I was doing it from scratch.

Once you get your virtual server running on your desktop you still have one more item to take care of before you can use your Windows tools for doing development. That is mounting your home folder from your virtual server to a drive letter in Windows. There is a fantastic piece of software called SFtpDrive which lets you do just that. It isn't free but it comes with a great 6 week trial period which gives you plenty of time to decide if it's worth it.

So there you have it. A first class development environment for doing Rails development under Windows. You get the power of Linux with the familiarity of Windows.

(Disclaimer: I don't have any personal interest in these products. I've used them and have found them to be high quality and useful tools.)

Unbelievable - People Love Cell Phones As Much As Internet

Jacobs Media has released the results of their 2007 Tech Survey on Cell Phones. Despite some people thinking that the cell phone is the worst invention ever, the Jacobs Media survey tells us that for ages 18-34, they rate cell phones as high as the Internet for tech they can't live without! That really is surprising to me since I could easily do without a cell phone but would have no idea what to do with myself if there wasn't the Internet.


Also, while the cell phone manufacturers keep including more and more features on their cell phone offerings, the top 3 features are text messaging, calculator (!), and taking pictures. I'm very surprised that "listening to mp3's" is near the bottom. My impression is that the cell phone companies are really focusing on the mp3 feature (now that every phone can take pictures) and there's some fantastic mp3 phones out now like the Sony Ericsson W880i.


Finally, what is interesting is the percentage of people who only have a cell phone and no longer have a land line. I've certainly been contemplating that switch. No wonder phone company stocks are climbing higher...where they used to make money off one line per house, they now make money off one cell phone per person!