tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15724451334607338112024-03-13T06:13:04.287-07:00C.ChapmanAnd here you'll find me talking about things I like. This may or may not include photography, videography, or just general technology. It will include whatever random thoughts I'm having at the moment.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16637491807427685898noreply@blogger.comBlogger17125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1572445133460733811.post-72887829231722816202012-08-05T06:46:00.001-07:002012-08-05T06:46:14.791-07:00Sent - Global Encounter 2012 [Projects]<b><u>The Video</u></b><br />
<br />
I had 2 videos to create for Global Encounter this summer. The first was a goofy intro video to get the students (hopefully) laughing and in a good mood for the opening service of the week (you can check it out <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNb-C_6H77o&feature=channel&list=UL" target="_blank">here</a>). The second was a more serious video conveying the overal theme of the week, which is what I'm going to talk about here.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/rbdDpixR4EQ" width="640"></iframe>
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<b><u>The Plan</u></b><br />
<b><u><br /></u></b><br />
Brad Russell (College Pastor at FBCA and one of planners for Global Encounter) wrote up a script for the video. My job was to give it some motion and energy. He showed me a <a href="http://vimeo.com/27455848" target="_blank">Dan Stevers video</a> to give me an idea of what he was looking for.<br />
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The way I went about building this video was basically this:<br />
<br />
<ol>
<li>Find and cut down audio</li>
<li>Determine length of each "slide" or set of words</li>
<li>Throw it in after effects and come up with a transition for each "slide"</li>
</ol>
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This actually worked pretty well, but the end result doesn't really have a lot of continuity.</div>
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<div>
The effect I used for all of the flying particles is called CC Particle World. I'm relatively new to the effect, but after researching a whole lot about it I've found it to be really powerful for an effect built right into After Effects.</div>
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<b><u>Audio</u></b><br />
<b><u><br /></u></b><br />
For this video I actually went through a couple different songs before I landed on a song called <a href="http://soundcloud.com/jimmyferrufino/divine_knowledge" target="_blank">Divine Knowledge</a> I found on SoundCloud. The original song is almost two minutes long, so I ended up cutting it down to just over 1 minute.<br />
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<b><u>Closing Notes</u></b><br />
<b><u><br /></u></b><br />
I still found it very difficult to work with music and After Effects. I tried to use some strategies from one of <a href="http://vimeo.com/31470425" target="_blank">Dan Stevers' tutorials</a> but I still found it to be difficult to get that tight audio video connection that I'm used to in Final Cut Pro.<br />
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My wife actually came up with the idea of stubbing the whole video out in Final Cut Pro beforehand with just simple text and then using that video as a template in After Effects. I'm excited about trying this one out on my next video, and I might try to make a tutorial on it if it really works for me.<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16637491807427685898noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1572445133460733811.post-3527069516448335302012-08-05T06:15:00.001-07:002012-08-05T06:19:38.240-07:00Nehemiah: The Build [Projects]I know it's been a while since I posted here, but that's because I've been really busy this summer. I've worked on a bunch of video's that I'd like to write about here, but I just haven't had the time. I'm currently waiting for a wedding video to render, and figured now would be a good time to get started.<br />
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My goal is to build up some reference material for myself if I ever want to look back at how I did something, and also for anybody else out there trying to teach yourself how to create videos.<br />
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<b><u>The Video</u></b><br />
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One of the things I've been trying to learn better lately is After Effects. Fortunately I've been able to help build a couple sermon series intro video's for my pastor that are pretty much done entirely in AE.<br />
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The latest series is called Nehemiah: The Build. It follows the story of Nehemiah as he leads the Jews in rebuilding the wall of Jerusalem. The main goal with this video was to portray bricks, and building material and what not. Here's the finished product.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Y9OMixZ2y9o" width="640"></iframe>
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<b><u>The Plan</u></b><br />
<b><u><br /></u></b><br />
Because of a couple other videos on my plate, I only had about 3 days (after work) to create this video. Due to that restraint, I ended up scrapping my original (and more complicated) plan and decided to just go with dynamic moving text. To keep with the theme, I found a bunch of royalty free stock photographs of different types of bricks and went to work.<br />
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<b><u>Audio</u></b><br />
<b><u><br /></u></b><br />
I found the music <a href="http://soundcloud.com/janmorgenstern/trailer-music" target="_blank">here</a> on Soundcloud. I would recommend checking out Soundcloud for all your video music needs. In the advanced search options, you can check off that you want music using the creative commons license so that you can use it royalty free. This song endup up being the perfect length, so I didn't even have to cut it down at all.<br />
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<b><u>Closing Notes</u></b><br />
<b><u><br /></u></b><br />
Working with music ended up being a much more difficult task than I thought it would be in After Effects. I was pretty rushed and you can tell there are a few transitions that don't go with the music very well.<br />
<br />
My other mistake on this video is the animated outlines on the text. I didn't set them correctly on the last two sets of words, so they don't really animate while on screen at all.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16637491807427685898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1572445133460733811.post-2270343957936280512012-03-14T19:47:00.001-07:002012-03-15T04:45:50.446-07:00Toler Wedding Video [Projects]<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/6zpVST5F65s" width="640"></iframe></div>
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I finally finished the Toler Wedding DVD. This is the highlight video of the reception. I'm going to try to get into the habit of writing up a post of projects I finish, mostly just so I remember what I did in certain situations for future reference.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Gear:</span></b><br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-o5hbiFbTznY/T2EyDaHxl9I/AAAAAAAAF1Y/RFAFpk7P81E/s1600/VM_5BestBuys_14.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="126" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-o5hbiFbTznY/T2EyDaHxl9I/AAAAAAAAF1Y/RFAFpk7P81E/s200/VM_5BestBuys_14.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
Sony HDV 1080i (Borrowed from church)<br />
+ Shotgun mic (also borrowed from church)<br />
+ Fluid Head tripod (borrowed from church)<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-2001nOTqjvA/T0Wkx0o1feI/AAAAAAAAFmc/l4CsDCJnZj8/s1600/t2i-1200.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="176" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-2001nOTqjvA/T0Wkx0o1feI/AAAAAAAAFmc/l4CsDCJnZj8/s200/t2i-1200.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<br />
Canon T2i (Borrowed from Matt Peterein)<br />
+ Canon 50mm 1.4 lens<br />
+ Sigma 28-75mm 2.8 lens (I think)<br />
+ Ball head tripod (Borrowed from Matt)<br />
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<br />
<br />
<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Setup:</span></b><br />
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During the wedding ceremony, I was set up with the Sony on the Fluid Head tripod in the second row on the left side of the auditorium. This way I could pick up everyone walking down the aisle, and then turn to get the everyone on stage. Matt Peterein captured a consistant wide angle shot from the balcony with his Canon T2i.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-rJUQTo7oh6A/T2E2gPwzIPI/AAAAAAAAF1o/Mdvw0mL2YrY/s1600/SonyHQFrame.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-rJUQTo7oh6A/T2E2gPwzIPI/AAAAAAAAF1o/Mdvw0mL2YrY/s400/SonyHQFrame.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
From the Sony the angle wasn't the best so I could really only see the Groom and the Pastor's face. The auditorium was way to dark for this camera, so I had to gain up a lot (which introduced a LOT of noise). It was even darker down the aisle, so the noise level in those shots were really bad.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/--mRQWCJfgpQ/T2E2g1JFERI/AAAAAAAAF1w/M43wY9gaZak/s1600/SonyLQFrame.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/--mRQWCJfgpQ/T2E2g1JFERI/AAAAAAAAF1w/M43wY9gaZak/s400/SonyLQFrame.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Notice how bad the noise is in the black suit.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
The Canon was a different story. Matt was using the Sigma 28-75mm 2.8, but because the light was so low he switched to the Canon 50mm 1.8. This ended up being a life saver, and as you can see, produced a much higher quality shot.</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-e_SPUHVF3Vw/T2E2ey_TmAI/AAAAAAAAF1g/1bWwd794Lrc/s1600/CanonFrame.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-e_SPUHVF3Vw/T2E2ey_TmAI/AAAAAAAAF1g/1bWwd794Lrc/s400/CanonFrame.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">It wasn't as wide as I would have liked, but it was worth it to get the low light.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
The reception (video at the top) was shot entirely with the Sony HDV camera. I need the ability to quickly zoom in and out, and I had to mount the shotgun mic to pick up the guest speeches. The shotgun mic performed much better than I expected. While shooting, I couldn't hear the person talking myself sometimes, and I was afraid none of it would be usable. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the audio was actually pretty good considering the loud room it was shot in.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Editing:</span></b></div>
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All of the video was shot in 1080i and 1080p, so the file sizes were huge. All in all my project files are about 30Gb. I worked off of an external hard drive formatted with fat32 which means I have a 4Gb single file size limit. The wedding video when rendered out at its highest resolution is well over 4 gigs, so I had to render it out in standard definition (which ended up being 3.48Gb). This isn't a problem right now, since it's getting put onto a DVD anyway, but I'll have to re-render the video from the Final Cut Pro project whenever I eventually burn it to Blu Ray.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Closing Notes:</span></b><br />
<br />
This was my third wedding filming and editing, and so far all three have been completely different (that's what happens when you borrow all of your gear). I learned a lot, and I think this will really help me out for future weddings. Based on what I learned here, I think I'll definitely use a DSLR for the reception, but I for sure need a shotgun mic to capture people's voices. <br />
<br />
Now that I have my own DSLR, I should have a little more consistency and flexibility with wedding videos. Low light is definitely key, but I also need some flexibility in zoom for certain angles. Hopefully I can eventually get to a 3 camera setup so I can capture both the bride and groom, and keep a wide shot to help with editing.<br />
<br />
Hopefully, I'll have one or two more opportunities to get some practice this wedding season... and maybe help pay for some gear to increase the quality as well.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16637491807427685898noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1572445133460733811.post-11339171098433600792012-03-12T18:53:00.001-07:002012-03-12T18:53:55.836-07:00Photography for Beginners: How to Buy a Camera (Part 1)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QDwTkHUTz5c/T07SuCJr3cI/AAAAAAAAFpM/9ccDnNHVH2w/s1600/BunchOfCameras.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="290" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QDwTkHUTz5c/T07SuCJr3cI/AAAAAAAAFpM/9ccDnNHVH2w/s400/BunchOfCameras.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
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<div style="text-align: left;">
The consumer camera space has exploded in diversity since the fall of film (<a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/19/us-kodak-idUSTRE80I08G20120119" target="_blank">and Kodak</a>). With so many choices it can be very confusing for consumers who just need something to capture fun family moments and post them to Facebook. When I worked in the photography department at Circuit City my job was to try to guide people to the camera that would best fit their needs for the lowest cost. That's what I'm going to try to do here.<br />
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In this guide I'll walk you though the different classes of cameras, and try to help you determine what type of camera you should look into. In the near future, I'll try to write a buyers guide for each type of camera. In those posts I'll go through the specs that matter, and let you know what to look out for. As I finish those posts, I'll add links to them here, so this can be a central hub for all of my Camera Buyer's Guide posts.<br />
<br />
That's enough explaining what I'm going to do. Here we go.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Camera Phone</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
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</div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-s7sz2ylZDbA/T1KGoEaPdtI/AAAAAAAAFt0/UY8PzbEGGBQ/s1600/CameraPhone.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-s7sz2ylZDbA/T1KGoEaPdtI/AAAAAAAAFt0/UY8PzbEGGBQ/s320/CameraPhone.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<b>Advantages:</b><br />
- Free (if you already have one)<br />
- Ultra portable<br />
- Extremely easy to share pictures<br />
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<div>
<b>Disadvantages:</b></div>
<div>
- Lower resolution (small sensor)</div>
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- Bad in low light</div>
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- No optical zoom</div>
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- Usually little manual control</div>
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This one might seem silly, but the way smartphone cameras have progressed, there might not be a reason for you to buy a separate camera (provided you already have a smartphone). Many smartphone cameras are now around 6 to 8 megapixels in resolution, which is more than enough for making standard sized prints or uploading to the internet. </div>
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<div style="float: left; width: 300px;">
The obvious huge advantage to using your camera phone is that it's always on you. Most smartphones also make the process of sharing your pictures painless. If you have a Android smartphone and use Google+, you can set it to automatically upload your pictures (set to private initially), as this commercial (right) for Google+ shows, this could be a life saver. There are also Facebook apps for most phones that allows you to upload pictures.</div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="150" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/8aCYZ3gXfy8" width="320"></iframe>
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Smartphones are not dedicated cameras however. They have small sensors, and small lenses. This equates to a lower resolution than most dedicated cameras, and generally very poor low light ability. You're also not going to have any real (optical) zoom to speak of. And usually you won't have very much control over the settings used. I would imagine that an app could be made that gives the user more control over typical camera settings, but I haven't seen one myself.<br />
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If you are just wanting to capture events to upload to facebook and maybe print a few to put on your fridge, then your smartphone might be plenty of camera for your needs.<br />
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<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Point & Shoot</span><br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7XUiYSKAzdE/T1QONy6vYWI/AAAAAAAAFvI/bcnnIdwD0IU/s1600/sony-cybershot-dsc-w580.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="224" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7XUiYSKAzdE/T1QONy6vYWI/AAAAAAAAFvI/bcnnIdwD0IU/s320/sony-cybershot-dsc-w580.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<b>Advantages:</b><br />
- Cheap<br />
- Very portable<br />
- High resolution<br />
- Many cool specialized features<br />
- Usually easy to use<br />
- Many capture video as well<br />
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<b>Disadvantages:</b><br />
- Limited zoom range<br />
- Poor optical quality (not great lenses)<br />
- Poor low light<br />
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Point & Shoot cameras originated in the film world as very simple cameras with fixed focus points, zooms, and a built in flash so that all the user had to do was simply "point" and "shoot." Moving to digital, these cameras had a bunch of new features to help serve that same purpose. Electronically controlled lenses allowed for autofocus. This innovation allowed consumer friendly cameras more zooming options without worrying about pictures being out of focus.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-4_EOcY3k-vM/T1t6VpRSIUI/AAAAAAAAFvc/-dmNfBFkhTI/s1600/underwater_dogs_3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="212" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-4_EOcY3k-vM/T1t6VpRSIUI/AAAAAAAAFvc/-dmNfBFkhTI/s320/underwater_dogs_3.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This was actually taken with a DSLR (<a href="http://littlefriendsphoto.com/index2.php#/gallery1/1/" target="_blank">Seth Casteel</a>),<br />
but it shows how awesome underwater photography can be.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Since moving to digital, the point & shoot market has exploded. With so many players in the space, company's have had to find ways to differentiate themselves. This has led to many really cool specialized features for different cameras. Some are waterproof, dustproof, dropproof and whatever type of proof you can think of. Others can shoot high speed video, or can even upload directly to your computer over wifi. And most of them will shoot fairly high quality video as well.</div>
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Point & shoot cameras are going to be the cheapest digital cameras you can find. And other than cameraphones, they are going to be the smallest cameras, many will fit right in your pocket. The other main advantage to point & shoot cameras is that they are very simple to use. The automatic settings on these cameras will give you adequate images almost every time. You probably won't be blowing up these pictures to poster size, but they'll be fine for documenting your kids birthday party and posting them to Facebook.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="150" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/NNBwd9s5_kg" width="300"></iframe>
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<div style="font-size: 80%; text-align: center;">
This <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Canon-PowerShot-ELPH-300-HS/dp/B004J41T7Q/ref=sr_1_5?s=photo&ie=UTF8&qid=1331393544&sr=1-5">$179 Canon camera</a> can shoot video at 240 <br />
frames
per second. Perfect for analyzing a golf swing.</div>
</div>
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Image quality on these cameras will okay at best. The lenses on these cameras were designed to be small first. They sacrifice zoom range and low light ability for the sake of size (Although you will find some point & shoot cameras with huge lenses on them). The other disadvantage, again related to size, is the sensor itself. The smaller sensor sizes on these cameras compared to SLR's make it much more difficult to capture highly accurate low light scenes. This means that indoor shots taken without the flash on will be very pixilated looking.<br />
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Due to the highly specialized nature of point & shoots, there could be many reasons to buy one. If you have a pool and you want to take underwater pictures, want high speed video of your golf swing for analysis, or simply want a cheap camera to document life's events a point & shoot camera might be your best bet. As long as you aren't looking to make really high quality pictures and don't mind giving up most of your controls to the automatic settings, you probably will be fine with a standard point & shoot camera.<br />
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<br />
This ended up being much longer (and taking much longer) than I expected, so I'm going to break it up into two parts. In a week or so I'll release part II which will include superzoom camera's, DSLRs, and maybe I'll unravel where these new micro 4/3 cameras fit in line with the current consumer lineup.</div>
</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16637491807427685898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1572445133460733811.post-84498330869981594022012-02-29T18:30:00.002-08:002012-02-29T20:18:48.946-08:00Are Point and Shoot Camera's Going Extinct?<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">When working on a post on how to buy a camera, I was looking for some statistics on camera ownership. I couldn't find anything good that was recent, so I decided to check out <a href="http://www.google.com/trends/" target="_blank">Google Trends</a> (tool that shows number of searches over time) and the results were not what I was expecting.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I entered "digital camera" and what I got is a very steady decline in searches since 2004.</span><br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oLvBlMtS6vs/T07YmhQQXfI/AAAAAAAAFpU/nlKDoZ_mwWU/s1600/%5BTrend%5DDigitalCamera.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oLvBlMtS6vs/T07YmhQQXfI/AAAAAAAAFpU/nlKDoZ_mwWU/s1600/%5BTrend%5DDigitalCamera.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">At first I thought this must have something to do with the use of the word "digital camera" declining rather than actual interest in digital cameras declining. But then I saw an article from 2004 (where the little "A" flag is) that was called <a href="http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/emerging-tech/2004/03/17/sharp-forecasts-the-death-of-the-consumer-digital-camera-39149359/" target="_blank">Sharp forecasts the death of the consumer digital camera</a>. Basically the article states that the growing quality of cameras attached to phones will eventually kill off the need for consumer digital cameras.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Well, it's 8 years later, and consumer digital cameras have not yet gone the way of the dodo But smartphone camera's have come a long way from the 2 to 3 megapixel cameras the article was talking about, to Nokia's recently announced <a href="http://www.engadget.com/2012/02/27/nokia-announces-808-pureview-belle-os-4-inch-display-41-megap/" target="_blank">41 megapixel behemoth</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Another interesting trend I found was the oposite graph generated from searching "DSLR".</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">It seems that people's interest in learning more about photography beyond the consumer level has not waned. I would even go so far as to say that many people probably get started taking pictures with their phone and eventually move on to a DSLR.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">What does this all mean? Well pretty much, it's just an observation of the evolution of technology. We used to have separate mp3 players and phones. The smartphone revolution pretty much did away with the need for a separate music playing device for most people. In the very near future, we might be saying the same thing about point and shoot cameras.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16637491807427685898noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1572445133460733811.post-55571921332851718542012-02-27T19:22:00.000-08:002012-02-27T19:23:17.955-08:00Act of Valor [Movie Review]<div style="text-align: center;">
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I've always been a sucker for a good war movie. I think being thrown into a world that is unfamiliar to me is one of the things I love about the movies, and little is more foreign to me than war. </div>
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Now to me, the best war movies are the ones that successfully engross you in the day to day reality of a specific set of soldiers. Saving Private Ryan for example, captured the epic scope of WWII by following a small group of soldiers throughout some of the biggest battles in recent history. The Hurt Locker was a great example of the slow nerve-racking intensity of the Iraqi war.</div>
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Act of Valor attempts to capture the versatility of possibly the greatest fighting force in the entire world... the Navy SEALS. The producers of this film worked with the Navy to create a fictitious story that weaves through multiple missions based on real Navy SEAL missions. The idea is, everything that happens to the characters in this film, has happened to real Navy SEALS.</div>
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This leads to two things to point out about this film.</div>
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<li style="text-align: left;">The acting leaves much to be desired (although really isn't as bad you might think).</li>
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The action scenes in this movie are absolutely phenomenal. It's hard to explain how unique if feels than other action/war movies. The way my wife described it afterwords is that "it just seemed so professional." Once the mission began, there was no witty banter, no funny one-liners, and in general no characterization. Most of the time, you didn't know who was who since all of the SEALS had on so much camo. It was very plainly good guys vs bad guys.</div>
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Now normally that would be considered a bad thing, but the strategy involved in the missions themselves were so intriguing that taking the time to develop characters would simply be distracting.</div>
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The story itself left much to be desired. The bad guys were pretty generic as was the overall plot line. The first 15 to 20 minutes were pretty slow, and didn't really do much to go into depth of the characters. I will say that, despite plenty of cheesy dialogue, I really found myself liking the two main characters a lot (although this probably has to do with their "good ole boys" accents than anything else").</div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Rating: <span style="color: red;">7</span>/<span style="color: #6aa84f;">10</span></span></div>
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Overall this movie was fantastic, and I would definitely recommend it to anyone who likes war movies. It's definitely lacking it some areas, but as a way to experience what it's like to be a Navy SEAL you will not likely find anything better.</div>
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<a href="http://www.hurlbutvisuals.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/image14-1024x885.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: left;"><img border="0" height="276" src="http://www.hurlbutvisuals.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/image14-1024x885.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<b>Beyond the Screen:</b> Another amazing thing about this movie, is it was primarily shot using a Canon 5D Mark II DSLR. That's absolutely amazing that a camera designed for photojournalism could perform so well on the big screen. </div>
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This also allowed for some crazy angles that wouldn't be possible with most modern filming equipment. Now, I know 5D's have been used for specific shots in movies (Iron Man 2 comes to mind), but I think this is the first film to make it to theaters with a DSLR as it's primary camera.</div>
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Here's a behind the scenes video on how Act of Valor was created.</div>
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Also, if you are at all interested in creating films with DSLRs you should definitely check out Act of Valor cinematographer Shane Hurlbut's blog <a href="http://www.hurlbutvisuals.com/blog/2012/02/22/act-of-valor-reinventing-the-action-genre/" target="_blank">hurlbutvisuals.com</a><br />
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</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16637491807427685898noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1572445133460733811.post-73830327891808162152012-02-24T20:03:00.003-08:002012-02-24T20:21:32.751-08:00Control your Canon DSLR with your Android Phone/Tablet<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--kKgNcdWI04/T0hdbDiknYI/AAAAAAAAFoU/F5q3gXGQBCA/s1600/dslrcontroller.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="312" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--kKgNcdWI04/T0hdbDiknYI/AAAAAAAAFoU/F5q3gXGQBCA/s640/dslrcontroller.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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Ok this is awesome. Probably the most difficult thing about shooting video with a DSLR as apposed to a standard camcorder is proper focusing. The screens are just not quite big enough or high enough resolution for proper focusing, and most DSLR's don't have a proper continuous autofocus during video (except for the Sony SLT's). This combined with the razor thin depth of field SLR lenses can accomplish, and you have a problem.<br />
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There are many solutions, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/LCD-Foldable-Viewfinder-Magnification-Magnifier/dp/B004TDXMHM/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1330141819&sr=1-1" target="_blank">some</a> cheaper than <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Digital-Shoulder-Follow-Camcorder-RL02FSET/dp/B005CKAPR6/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1330141776&sr=8-2" target="_blank">others</a>, but I have yet to see anything as awesome as this (or as cheap). <br />
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Meet the <a href="http://dslrcontroller.com/" target="_blank">DSLR Controller</a> app for Android. This app allows you to connect your android device directly to your Canon EOS DSLR, and gives you a multitude of features. For starters, your android device becomes a live view monitor for your camera. Depending on the resolution and size or your phone or tablet, this can be fantastic, and aid significantly in focusing.<br />
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Another feature the DSLR Controller app boasts is tap to focus. Personally I don't think this would be that helpful, since the autofocus on Canon DSLR's while the mirror is flipped up (it's in live view) is terribly slow. One of the features that is apparently being worked on however, is the ability to set focus points that you can jump to. This could be a huge deal as it could be used as a follow focus that's detached from the camera.<br />
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I haven't had a chance to try it yet as I have to order the proper cable to connect my phone to the camera (mini usb to micro usb). There are all sorts of other features already implemented, or currently being worked on. The app is currently labeled as beta, so it probably still has some kinks to be worked out. But you can't beat the current price, and the developer says you'll be able to upgrade for free once it moves out of beta.<br />
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If I can get this working with my phone (which is technically on the supported devices list) then I'll post a review once I get the cable in. Until then check out this video demonstrating some of the features, and then hit up the source link to try it yourself.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/lnxvFYza6Y4?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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UPDATE: It looks like my phone won't work. Or at least I'm not willing to go through the trouble to make it work. Turns out, your phone must support USB Host mode (OTG mode) so that you can plug usb devices into it using a USB host cable. While there are some kernels for my phone that support this (and I'm fairly comfortable loading them), they currently require an outside power source to make it work, which kind of kills the appeal. </div>
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This does make getting a <a href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/p/nook-color-barnes-noble/1100437663?r=1&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Device%20Specific%20-%20NOOK%20Color&utm_source=google&cm_mmca1=39f0e4bc-b573-9289-a392-00005ab840fa&utm_term=nook%20color&cm_mmc=Google-_-Device%20Specific%20-%20NOOK%20Color-_-NOOK%20Color%20(exact)-_-Nook%20Color" target="_blank">Nook Color</a> more appealing though, as it's officially supported on the DSLR Controller website, and it's pretty much the cheapest android tablet available right now.</div>
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Source : <a href="http://dslrcontroller.com/">dslrcontroller.com</a> : <a href="https://market.android.com/details?id=eu.chainfire.dslrcontroller" target="_blank">direct link to market </a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16637491807427685898noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1572445133460733811.post-39951771806067523892012-02-22T19:50:00.000-08:002012-02-22T19:57:01.377-08:00Photography for Beginners<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Everybody is a photographer these days. The digital age has made capturing images incredibly easy, and sharing them even easier. More and more people are now becoming interested in capturing higher quality pictures, so I've put together a little guide to the basics of photography. <br />
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Depending on your camera you may not have the option to control all of these settings, but even most of the cheap point and shoot cameras I've come across have had at least some of these controls.<br />
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This is going to be very basic. I'm not going to explain why this works, I'm just going to give a simple cause and effect for each setting. Click on any of the images to expand them so you can see what I'm talking about better.<br />
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Bigger Number - More light, More blur</div>
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Small Number - Darker, Less blur<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">On a tripod, a long shutter speed can allow much more<br />
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If your shooting handheld or a scene with a lot of movement, you will probably want shutter speed to be set to a lower number (remember this is a fraction, so the denominator is actually higher). If you have a tripod you can get away with a longer shutter speed to capture more light.</div>
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<br />Bigger Number - Less light, Bigger Depth of Field (More is in focus)</div>
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Smaller Number - More light, Shallower Depth of Field (Less is in focus)</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Notice the thin line of carpet that is in focus.<br />This is the result of a very narrow depth of field.</td></tr>
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The Apature is one of those things you probably don't have a lot of control of if you have a cheap point and shoot, but there are still many consumer cameras that have a least some control over Apature. </div>
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If you can set your Apature to something like f2.8 or below, you can usually get a really shallow depth of field. This means that only a very narrow area of your image is actually in focus, which gives you those nice really blurred out backgrounds. The obvious disadvantage is that it's harder to get your image in focus.</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><u>ISO</u></span> - Measure in hundreds, ie. 200</div>
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Bigger Number - Brighter, Noisier image</div>
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ISO is simply the sensitivity of the sensor. The higher the ISO, the more sensitive to light the sensor is, but also the more junk you will see in your image. Some cameras can handle higher ISO values than others, so this one requires a little experimenting to figure out.</div>
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So there you have it. Hopefully this makes sense to everybody. If something I said doesn't make since, or is glaringly incorrect leave a comment and I'll fix it before the lies spread.</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16637491807427685898noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1572445133460733811.post-5575975998628188712011-08-24T19:55:00.000-07:002012-02-23T07:21:35.042-08:00Mac OS X Tips and Tricks (Getting Started with OS X)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Alright, so one of my good friends from college recently switched from his old Windows XP laptop to a new Macbook. I told him I'd make a little list of helpful apps and tricks I've found in my couple years of OS X experience, and I figured I might as well post that here. <br />
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Because my list got kinda long for one post, I'm going to split it up into two. The first will go over getting started with the switch to OS X. This will cover things that are already built into the Mac operating system out of the box. The second will go through a list of applications I've found to be extremely helpful over the years.<br />
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Now keep in mind, I haven't switched over to the newest release of the OS called Lion, so some of these tricks may not work exactly the same way. Alright, lets get on with it.<br />
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<u>What's different</u><br />
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One of the first things people notice when using a Mac for the first time is that the "X" button is on the top left corner instead of the top right corner.<br />
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While this difference is only cosmetic, the functionality of the 3 buttons are different than their windows counterparts. For starters the red "X" button does not close your program. This is one of those things that really throws people off. The red "X" button only closes your window, not the application itself. To close the application you can click the application name in your toolbar and then click "Quit" or use the shortcut command Q.<br />
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The green maximize button is also confusing to people. Instead of going full screen like Windows, OS X maximizes to the applications highest usable resolution. Sometimes that is the entire screen, and other times, such as web browsers, it's not.</div>
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There are applications that can convert these buttons to behave similar to the Windows counterpart, but honestly I don't even use them very often. I almost always use the command Q shortcut to close programs, and I use an awesome application for my window management that I'll explain in more detail in my next post.</div>
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<u>Dock</u></div>
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Another big difference between OS X and Windows is the dock vs the start bar. The dock doesn't really show you a list of programs that are open, as much as it shows you a list of commonly used programs. I won't really go into detail because most of it's pretty obvious, but I will show you what settings I use, and you can decide for yourself.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">You can get to these settings by clicking the apple logo in the top left of your screen and highlighting Dock and then clicking Dock Preferences</td></tr>
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Personally, I can't stand having the dock not automatically hide. The dock in OS X takes up to much screen real estate for me to not have it on my screen all of the time.</div>
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<u>Active Screen Corners</u></div>
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One of my personal favorite features of OS X is called Active Screen Corners. This allows you to assign commands to each of the corners of your monitor that are activated whenever you put your mouse in that corner. You can set a corner to make all of your open windows visible at once in smaller form, and you can click on the one you want.</div>
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All of these settings are available by going to your System Preferences and clicking Expose & Spaces.</div>
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<u>Spaces</u></div>
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Spaces is an awesome feature that I used to use all of the time, but have kind of fallen out of practice with. It essentially allows you to have multiple "desktops" that you can quickly switch between. Personally expose eliminated the need for spaces for me, but I encourage you to try it out for yourself and see what you think.</div>
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<u>Trackpad</u></div>
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Let me just start by saying I believe that the multitouch trackpad on my macbook pro (which is admittedly a little old) is the absolute best feature that I can't get on a Windows machine (that I know of). I'll go into this a little deeper in my next post whenever I talk about BetterTouchTool, but the things you can do with the trackpad are amazing. </div>
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For this post I'll just say that I would enable the three finger swipe to navigate. This allows you to swipe instead of hitting the back button in your browser, and it's absolutely amazing.</div>
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<u>Leftovers</u></div>
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I guess I'll end this post with a few little extra tips that I've found to be pretty helpful.</div>
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<li>Hold option + shift for more incremental controls on volume and brightness. (I've heard this doesn't work right now in Lion. Hopefully they'll fix that soon.)</li>
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<li>Hold command and hit shift. This brings up spotlight, which essentially lets you search the entire computer for anything. This is great for opening up applications quickly, or finding and opening a file that you can't remember where you put.</li>
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<li>One thing I missed about windows is the programs list in the start bar. Sure you could open up finder and click applications on the left, but I wanted something on my dock that let me look at all of my applications. So I utilized a feature in OS X called stacks. Just drag your applications folder into your dock. Now when you click on it is should pop up with a list of all of your applications. If you right click on the stack you can set a couple of options that give you different layouts.</li>
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So this is just scratching the surface of what OS X has to offer, but it pretty much sums up what features I regularly use that have really helped me be more productive. My next post will go into a couple of the applications I've downloaded that make the Mac experience even better. Hopefully I'll get that post up sometime in the next couple of days.</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16637491807427685898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1572445133460733811.post-2765241575620169102011-08-23T20:06:00.000-07:002011-08-23T20:06:36.408-07:00Lake Norfork 2011Check out the video from our annual summer trip to Lake Norfork in Arkansas. I took out the Casio high speed camera and got some pretty cool slow motion footage of some crashes.<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16637491807427685898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1572445133460733811.post-43189270916507030742011-08-06T18:57:00.000-07:002011-08-06T18:57:17.569-07:00New Name, New Blog, New Chapter In My LifeIt's been a while since I last posted here. In my last post I said I would write a review of my CR-48 Chromebook within two weeks. That was March 7. It is already August, and a lot has happened in the last 5 months. I am now a graduate of Southwest Baptist University, I got a job as a programmer analyst at a company in St. Louis called Gateway EDI, I'm coming up on 2 months married, and I've moved into a new apartment.<br />
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All of these changes mark a very distinct new chapter in my life. I think it's only appropriate that my blog changes as well. In trying to come up with a name, I thought about what I want this blog to be. For some, a blog is like a public journal where they talk about what they do in their day to day lives. For others it's a way to communicate new fresh ideas to a community that is interested in the same things they are. As I am neither a middle school girl nor a very smart person, neither of these approaches are very useful.<br />
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After giving it some thought (the little that I have), I've decided to use this blog to document my ongoing stumbling through life. Dictionary.com defines the word stumble with this: <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px;"><span id="hotword" name="hotword" style="color: #333333; cursor: default; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.25em; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; position: static;">to</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px;"><span id="hotword" name="hotword" style="color: #333333; cursor: default; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.25em; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; position: static;">discover</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px;"><span id="hotword" name="hotword" style="color: #333333; cursor: default; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.25em; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; position: static;">or</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px;"><span id="hotword" name="hotword" style="color: #333333; cursor: default; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.25em; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; position: static;">meet</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px;"><span id="hotword" name="hotword" style="color: #333333; cursor: default; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.25em; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; position: static;">with</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px;"><span id="hotword" name="hotword" style="color: #333333; cursor: default; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.25em; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; position: static;">accidentally</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px;"><span id="hotword" name="hotword" style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.25em; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; position: static;">or</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px;"><span id="hotword" name="hotword" style="color: #333333; cursor: default; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.25em; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; position: static;">unexpectedly. </span></span>This blog will be a great place for me to share all the random things I've stumbled across on the internet, or just life in general.<br />
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Hopefully, I can muster up the motivation to post here regularly. The only hope I have is that my wife (yes, somebody married me) is soon going to get tired of my constant ramblings about how IE6 is far more damaging to the country than any debt ceiling, and my constant drooling over every new thing Google comes up with. Maybe, just maybe, I'll give her a break and write it down in this blog to be read by somebody who accidentally ends up here on a bad Google search.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16637491807427685898noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1572445133460733811.post-47741513691387174482011-03-07T18:08:00.000-08:002011-08-06T18:17:27.417-07:00Experiment with Google Chrome OSI've mentioned it in this blog before, but a couple of weeks ago, I received a free, brand new, shiny laptop from Google running their in development Chrome OS. It has been wonderful to have at school since my Macbook Pro's short battery life makes it useless to bring to class, and it's been fun being part of a beta program, testing and logging bugs.<br />
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Unfortunately, my Macbook Pro has taken a turn for the worse and won't even turn on. Right now it's in the shop, and it may be more expensive to fix than it's worth. No matter what happens with that situation, I'll pretty much be stuck only using Chrome OS for the next two weeks. This will give me a chance to really flesh out the things I like and don't like about the OS as it is right now.<br />
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At the end of the two weeks, I will try to write up a review of Chrome OS, and the computer that Google sent me (called the CR-48). We'll see if that actually happens, but hopefully I'll have time to do it. If Chrome OS takes off as a successful consumer product, I would like to have a record of what I thought of it initially.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16637491807427685898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1572445133460733811.post-26530511361314104682011-02-24T10:02:00.000-08:002011-02-24T10:02:31.196-08:00Why I love GoogleAlright, so I'm obviously really biased towards Google. I try not to be, but they keep on doing things to make me love them more.<br />
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A couple weeks ago, without warning, I received a brand new, experimental laptop running Google's new Chrome OS. Google sent out thousands of free laptops running development builds of their new software for free, and somehow I got in. <br />
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This is a genius idea. By sending out free computers Google is building up a huge fan base that will eagerly preach the word about their new OS to everyone around them. All of these users are also perfect beta testers. They all know it's experimental so they won't complain about bugs in the system, and they will gladly report all bugs they find because it makes them feel like they are part of the process.<br />
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Easily the most universal question I have gotten when showing people Chrome OS is "How do you use Word?" That's my queue to brag on Google Docs. Personally, I like Google docs much more than Microsoft Office. I understand it's not as robust, but for me the benefits easily outweigh the cost. Constant syncing to the cloud means I can access all of my documents from any computer, which is a big deal since I switch my computer from Mac to Windows frequently. Being able to have multiple people edit a document live at the same time has been an extremely valuable asset as my fiancée and I have been planning our wedding living over 3 hours away from each other.<br />
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Today Google announced on it's blog that its releasing a product called Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office. Essentially, it's a free plugin that gives Microsoft Office all of the functionality that I love about Google Docs. It stores all of your files on the web, you can access them from anywhere (It uses Google Docs if you don't have office on your computer), and it allows multiple people to edit a document at the same time.<br />
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This is why I love Google. Sure, this still promotes their overall goal of getting people to use the web more, but the fact that they are helping out the competition so that the end user has a better overall experience is pretty sweet. They do the same thing with Android. Many of Google's apps that give Android an advantage over the iPhone (Google Voice, Google Goggles, ect.) are ported over, by Google, to the iPhone. And that is simply awesome.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16637491807427685898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1572445133460733811.post-4530760422740344072010-10-26T15:23:00.000-07:002010-10-26T17:58:13.635-07:00Google Docs gets more awesomeOne awesome thing about web apps is that they seem to constantly update. And one of the best companies at doing this is Google. They've updated Google Docs Spreadsheet app today, adding a bunch more functionality to the Charts Editor.<br />
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<object height="264" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/70O0RQhuiSI?fs=1&hl=en_US&color1=0x2b405b&color2=0x6b8ab6"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/70O0RQhuiSI?fs=1&hl=en_US&color1=0x2b405b&color2=0x6b8ab6" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="264"></embed></object><br />
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Two big things I noticed. One, you can now add interaction to some of your charts. I haven't played around with it yet, but in the video he could move through a timeline similar to a youtube video and the graph changed based on what time he was at. The second awesome thing was embedding charts. Obviously this wouldn't have been a huge deal in the past since you could just make a picture out of it, but with these new interactive charts, embedding them in a blog or something would be pretty sweet.<br />
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I found a sample chart that shows how useful these charts can be (If your on Google Reader you need to click on the title to go to the actual blog to see the chart). You can check out the data at http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pCQbetd-CptE1ZQeQk8LoNw<br />
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<script src="https://spreadsheets.google.com/gpub?url=http%3A%2F%2Foj0ijfii34kccq3ioto7mdspc7r2s7o9-ss-opensocial.googleusercontent.com%2Fgadgets%2Fifr%3Fup__table_query_url%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fspreadsheets.google.com%252Ftq%253Frange%253DA1%25253AG358%2526key%253D0AkLylQtIFJRAdE5PbHNGaVg4VDNoZ0ppVFlLd3NvbXc%2526gid%253D0%2526pub%253D1%26up_title%3DUS%2520States%2520Metrics%26up_state%26up__table_query_refresh_interval%3D0%26url%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.google.com%252Fig%252Fmodules%252Fmotionchart.xml%26spreadsheets%3Dspreadsheets&height=529&width=425">
</script><br />
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For those of you unfamiliar with Google Docs, it's essentially the internet's version of Microsoft Office. It has features such as access from anything with an internet connection and real-time multi-user editing. It has enough features that I would use it exclusively if it weren't for compatibility issues due to school only using Microsoft Office.<br />
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EDIT: It appears that the chart embed isn't working right in all browsers. It's working for me on Firefox and Safari, but it got locked up in Chrome. I don't have time to see what the issue is, but I'm sure Google will get it figured out soon.<br />
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Also noticed that the chart doesn't show up at all in Google reader. If you want to see the chart you have to go to the actual blog post.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16637491807427685898noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1572445133460733811.post-51855766133530168782010-10-15T14:47:00.000-07:002010-10-15T14:47:43.533-07:00Apple is holding "Back to Mac" event October 20th<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2010/10/mainimage.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2010/10/mainimage.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
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This Wednesday (October 20th) Apple is holding an event they're calling "Back to the Mac." This event will, obviously, be focused on the Mac operating system, and, according to some rumors, the announcement of a new Macbook Air.<br />
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Although it's starting to look more and more likely that a new Macbook Air will be announced, I'm still thinking that the new OS will be announced as well. The lion peeking around the Apple logo points to the new version being called lion? Some people are thinking it may be called Simba. I personally prefer the latter, but hopefully we'll find out on Wednesday.<br />
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Snow Leopard was announced a full year before it was actually released, so we still have a wait ahead of us, but I'm hoping for some interesting improvements in the non-mobile department of Apple everybody seems to have forgotten about.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16637491807427685898noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1572445133460733811.post-1842988987927656632010-10-13T12:51:00.000-07:002010-10-13T12:51:03.570-07:00The Future According to IBMI've often thought of what the future will be like in terms of everyday life. People always say things like "20 years ago, we wouldn't even be able to imagine [insert technology here]." Could people 20 years ago even fathom what normal people can do today with a $200 phone? <br />
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When I actually sit and think about it though, I don't think I would be in that much disbelief. The only major invention that has happened in last few decades is the internet. Everything else has mainly been improvements and combinations of what already exists.<br />
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I think that we can probably predict what our world will look like in the next couple decades. Sure some insane new invention could come along and change everything, but aside from that I think we can look at the way technology is moving and make a pretty strong prediction on where it will go. IBM put this video out explaining where they see the internet (and all technology for that matter) going in future. I think that this could all easily happen within the next decade or so.<br />
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<object height="260" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/sfEbMV295Kk?fs=1&hl=en_US&color1=0x2b405b&color2=0x6b8ab6"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/sfEbMV295Kk?fs=1&hl=en_US&color1=0x2b405b&color2=0x6b8ab6" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="260"></embed></object><br />
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To put this in perspective, here's an advertisement from 1993 that AT&T put out talking about the future. Aside from some obvious design differences, they were surprisingly accurate.<br />
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<object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/TZb0avfQme8?fs=1&hl=en_US&color1=0x2b405b&color2=0x6b8ab6"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/TZb0avfQme8?fs=1&hl=en_US&color1=0x2b405b&color2=0x6b8ab6" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16637491807427685898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1572445133460733811.post-37521259206769437762010-10-12T21:45:00.000-07:002010-10-12T22:01:41.835-07:00First PostAlright, so I've been talked into starting a blog by my roommate. I've toiled over what I should write about, and eventually settled on writing about what's happening in the technical world. I know this is really broad, but I think that's going to be necessary for someone like me to keep this going. I'll go through a phase where I'm really interested one thing, and a couple months later I'll be obsessed with something else.<br />
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Right now it's phones. Smartphones to be more specific. I find the industry to be captivating. I've been following the market basically since the original iPhone came out. I think it's one of the few topics that I can somewhat predict based on market trends I've witnessed myself. <br />
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Another phase I'll probably go through again is video. I love video editing, and I'll go through phases where I'll watch a ridiculous amount of video, trying to teach myself new tricks. If I'm still doing this at that time, I'll probably post a bunch of video's showcasing some random technology or video trick.<br />
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I don't know how much I'll actually post here. I could see myself getting addicted to it and posting a lot one week, and then getting bogged down and hardly posting anything on another week. We'll just have to see.<br />
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I'll end this first post with some big news in the tech world. Microsoft announced the new Windows Phone 7 mobile OS today. It looks like it's actually going to be a different mobile experience than what Apple, Google, and RIM are currently offering. At first glance though, it doesn't really look like there is very much in terms of new features. In fact, it's missing quite a bit of features that should be standard on any mobile OS nowadays, such as copy and paste and multitasking. <br />
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<object height="385" width="640"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/FUg2VvkY5vs?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/FUg2VvkY5vs?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="350" height="230"></embed></object><br />
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Microsoft is coming in on an extremely competitive, saturated market, and they're late in the game. If they can't differentiate themselves from the more mature OS's out there, they are going to have a difficult time surviving. One thing Microsoft does have is the money to back a massive marketing campaign, and business partners already set up from the old Windows Mobile days. With companies like HTC and Samsung making hardware, they will have some highly competitive phones out in time for this Christmas season.<br />
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Alright, well I'll try to keep my posts shorter in the future. It already looks like I can bore people with writing just as easily as I can with talking. Thanks for reading, and comments are definitely encouraged (for both of you reading this).Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16637491807427685898noreply@blogger.com0