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technology

Radio Popper

Mar 19th, 2008
by Jim Reverend.
10 comments

Radio Popper is the new kid on the block when it comes to wireless radio strobe triggers. In fact, they are so new you can’t even buy the product just yet. But, when you can, the promise the difference will worth the wait. And I, for one, believe them.

There are basically two product types Radio Popper is offering. The first provides wireless TTL flash. Yes, you probably already have this if you have modern equipment and mated flashes. However, you don’t have it like this. With the exception of 1 or 2 very expensive 3rd party options, to my knowledge, all of the big names in camera technology handle wireless TTL flash using IR. This works great if all of your flashes are close by and you have a line of sight to each of them. When you don’t, or if things change, this fails drastically. Radio Popper is changing that. You’ll still need your modern equipment and mated flashes. Radio Popper will sit in between your camera and those flashes and retransmit those IR signals over RF. This means that, suddenly, they’ll work through walls, behind your subjects, when not visible to the camera, and from very far away — up to 500 feet away. To my knowledge there is currently no other product that does this in this way and, when considering all options, no product that does this in such an inexpensive way. The cost is $175-$225 per transmitter or receiver. You’ll need one transmitter for the camera and a receiver for every flash you intend to use.

The second product being offered by Radio Popper has been on the market for quite some time. Radio Popper is just doing it cheaper and better. For photographers looking for wireless flash triggers who don’t need the TTL features, there have been three options on the market before now.

First, the expensive PocketWizard. They can fire both strobes and camera, work from a great distance, and fire every time. These are standard equipment for many photographers. They run $180-$300 per transmitter or receiver.

Second, is the dirt cheap eBay and Gadget Infinity Radio Slaves. They fire strobes, work for about 300-500 feet, and fire about 80-90% of the time depending on closeness and batteries. These are standard equipment for most amateur photographers and those who aren’t willing to plunk down the PocketWizard cash. They run $15-$25 per transmitter or receiver.

Third, is the middle ground. Lots of manufacturers have made products ranging from $50-$150 per transmitter or receiver that falls somewhere in between the functionality and the reliability of the above two options. I know of very few people actually using them, however.

Piggybacking off the requirements and research for the Wireless TTL model above, Radio Popper will be offering a non TTL variety capable of a 2000 ft range and promising much fewer misses than that “eBay Radio Slaves” for $25 per transmitter or receiver. With this, the usability, affordability, and reliability of this product will have all jumped leaps and bounds.

Finally, even if you aren’t a fan of wireless TTL, the wireless TTL version will be capable of syncing at very high shutter speeds which means that overpowering the sun just got a lot more possible.

Products are slated for release in the Summer of 2008. I’m counting the days.

not a good day

Mar 17th, 2008
by Jim Reverend.
No comments yet

I took today off as well knowing I would want to spend some time with Jess and Celeste to make up for the weekend as well as getting my bags unpacked, all my equipment cleaned, and my images at least mostly processed.  It’s not starting off well.

First, I realized that my mobile blogging method wasn’t working and, what’s worse, that it was leaving HUGE posts filled with gibberish in my journal. I still haven’t figured out why it broke or what it’s trying to do. I think I’m giving up.

I’m also fighting with metadata between the 3 different applications involved with managing my large photograph collection. Lightroom isn’t always updating the XMP on disk, my other applications are expecting that it will, there’s constant conflict between the two, and everything is just not fun.

On top of that, I think my data/backup drive enclosures are screwy. I’m regularly having to unmount them, power cycle the enclosures, and then remount the drives to get them to be responsive. I’ve also seen a few bits of corrupted data here and there. Not good.

Once these problems start to weigh on me, all the problems I’ve already pushed aside start to show their face in my mind again.

I need to get to Wolf and get my long lens repaired. Without it, I don’t have one.

Somehow, another of my commonly used lenses managed to break yesterday as well. The zoom ring no longer functions. Thankfully, I have two prime lenses and a wide angle zoom that I can use in place of this lens, though it isn’t as convenient. I need to contact Sigma/Competitive Camera and see if it’s still under warranty from Sigma and, if so, see if this damage is covered. I can’t think of anything I could have done to it to cause this. It must just be bad luck.

While I really like the backpack I bought for this past weekend, it’s too large and too rigid for my uses as a daypack/travel pack. I end up keeping 80% of my gear attached to the straps and belt of the backpack and the actual pack itself remains mostly empty. Lugging around a huge backpack that’s mostly empty is just silly. It’d be great for a warm weather overnighter, so it might be worth holding on to. I’m just not sure. I might have to go back to REI and see if I can find something else I’d prefer.

Jess and I were supposed to take Celeste for a nice walk by the lake early this morning, but Jess isn’t awake yet and I don’t have the heart to wake her myself. Even if she was awake, I don’t know if I could pull myself from this data nightmare knowing it was left in this very vulnerable state.

I hate it when all these little things just stack up until I feel like I’m going to collapse.

Disqus and OpenID

Mar 13th, 2008
by Jim Reverend.
5 comments

Disqus announced the addition of OpenID support yesterday. YAY!

But they get it all wrong. BOO!

They have implemented OpenID through the use of another site, ClickPass. This is where the problem lies. Instead of implementing OpenID themselves and allowing additional functionality through ClickPass, ClickPass has basically become a required stop in the chain of event required to use OpenID.

With there current system, using OpenID works something like this:

0) Write my comment and then realize I can “login” so then erase my comment (this assumes a user even recognizes that “login” applies to them. Otherwise, OpenID is never even considered)
1) Click “login”
2) Click on hard to see “Open ID” icon that doesn’t even look clickable
3) Fill out URL
4) Press submit
5) read note about Clickpass
6) Press submit again
7) Verify OpenID Identity
8) Tell Disqus I don’t have an account yet
9) Confirm my information
10) Press Submit
11) Write my comment
12) Press Submit

The “OpenID” bit should be automatic based on the “website” or “URL” field. The OpenID logo should be displayed next to it to show that it is enabled there. Having to press “login” is not intuitive since commenters don’t know that they have an account to “login” to. If the URL box is filled in when the user submits the comment, Disqus should then do some magic to see if the URL is OpenID capable, and, if so, log the user in and work whatever magic they want to at that point. The comment should be saved immediately if the URL is not OpenID capable, and should be saved as soon as the OpenID is authenticated if it is OpenID capable. This way, all steps after authentication are optional. With this in place, the new path is:

1) Write my comment
2) Fill out URL field
3) Press submit
4) Verify OpenID Identity
5) OPTIONAL stuff that is not required like Clickpass, Disqus account, picture upload, blah, blah

I hope they fix this soon because, with the way it is now, it may as well not be a feature.

Filtering Thunderbird for Starred Mail

Mar 6th, 2008
by Jim Reverend.
10 comments

This little tip just changed my life… I swear. I’ve been looking FOR-EV-ER for a way to filter my Thunderbird Inbox so that I see only the “starred” messages. Despite my poking and prodding and searching I couldn’t figure out how until today.

When you’re building your filter/custom view/folder criteria, “starred” is not an option in the first drop down (like Flag, Tags, and Junk Status are). Additionally, despite the fact that the mail server knows all about whether a message is “starred” or not, it’s not in the header of the email either

In Thunderbird, Starred is a STATUS!

That’s right, a STATUS. Drop the first box down and select “Status”, drop the second box down and select “is”, then drop the third box down and select “Starred”. That’s it, you’re done.

A new Gallery Host?

Feb 25th, 2008
by Jim Reverend.
2 comments

As some of you may know, I’ve been using ExposureManager for quite some time now. I’m not 100%  happy with them and never have been, but, they seemed to be the best option for me at the time. Things may have changed.

I’ve recently been introduced to Zenfolio and I feel they offer a very compelling service.  I know what my thoughts and opinions are but, quite honestly, when it comes to purchasing prints, making my potential customers happy is the top priority.

So, if you have a few seconds, I’d appreciate you taking a look at these two offerings and letting me know which one you like more. Looks are one thing, but, the feel and operation of the site should be examined as well. You can go as far as the screen where a credit card number is being asked for without actually buying anything for testing purposes. And, even if you do buy something, I can cancel the order if you email me right away.

Visit: Arranging Light on ExposureManager

Visit: Arranging Light on Zenfolio

I’m very appreciative for your assistance. After I hear back from you, I’ll give a full write up for those of you making the same or similar choice.

Disqus vs IntenseDebate: wrap up

Feb 24th, 2008
by Jim Reverend.
28 comments

I’ve had each of these commenting systems installed in various places in my network of blogs. Additionally, I’ve used the blogs of other people using these services to get a feel for the user side of it. I’ve also tested a handful of other systems brought to my attention, none of which were as personally useful as these two.

After all this, which system do I like best?

The short version: Discus. Read on for the longer version.

The product offerings are very similar and function in much the same way. For most uses, I feel that either is a vast improvement over standard comments. Intense Debate has a couple of features that best Disqus. However, it also has one flaw that Disqus gets absolutely perfect and that was the deciding factor.

First, what’s better about IntenseDebate? To start, it looks nicer. I prefer the clean interface of  Disqus admin interface, but, for the appearance on the weblog that it’s being used in, IntenseDebate wins my vote. Of course, this is a matter of taste, but I’d bet most people would agree with me.

Secondly, are the importing features. IntenseDebate has an import feature, Disqus currently does not. Of course this is really only half a point because the standard importer version doesn’t work all that great and actually failed to import my comments in full. I was offered a beta version to test, but, I don’t really feel like undoing everything just to turn around and redo it to get a feel for how the systems work so I didn’t bother. From what I was told about the beta version, it probably works better though, it does so in a fairly strange manner that may not be the greatest for everyone.

Finally, there’s OpenID support. IntenseDebate has it, Disqus does not.

So what’s so great about Disqus and so flawed with IntenseDebate that it would trump these two things? Ease of use in regard to comment responses.

If you have a weblog with a very active comment board, just scrolling through the comments to find what you’re looking for can be difficult. There are two ways to solve this. One is to provide a link in the notification that takes you back to that specific comment on the blog. Then finding the comment you are replying to is easy and replying is a snap. The second way is to allow the actual comment notification to be replied to directly. Disqus does BOTH of these things. IntenseDebate does neither.

Without a simple feature like this, it makes replying to a comment on an active comment board a real chore, and most certainly deters users from participating in discussion. It’s this small thing that makes all the difference to me.

For the future, IntenseDebate says they are adding reply-by-email features. Before then, adding a more proper comment link in the notification email would be drop-dead-simple. So it’s not like they have a long way to go to catch up. Of course Disqus says they are adding OpenID support and importing. What’s really going to seal the deal on these systems tomorrow is their ability to import as well as their ability to innovate additional features in this young market niche.

I’m signing on Disqus’ dotted line for now and hoping that, in the end, they prove to be the most innovative.  But I’ll be watching IntenseDebate very closely as well.

I’ve got a lot of ideas that would make either one of these services really stand out and I certainly understand the value of being the first as well as the most popular. After all, I’ve got years of experience doing those very things. Based on this, depending on who does what first, it’s still anyone’s game. And, I’m sure there’s enough room in the market for a close second.

Where’s Jim/Daniel/Daniel James/That Hot Guy?

Feb 19th, 2008
by Jim Reverend.
12 comments

Lately, I seem to have rekindled my public internet voice. It’s not that I ever stopped writing, it’s just that I practically stopped writing anything of importance to anyone outside of my circle of friends. But, I feel change coming, which is a good thing. Furthermore, as time goes on and the face of the Internet changes, the places that I’m publishing content changes with it. Therefore, here’s a list of the places where you are likely to find content from yours truly. Along with each item is a description of the kind of content you can find there, or, will be able to find there in the near future.

revjim.net: The topic is, officially, anything that interests me. Generally speaking this contains longish articles that have to do with one or more of the following: Technology, Science, Photography (and other Art), Fatherhood, The Great Outdoors, Gadgets, the World Wide Web, Software, Books and Movies, Music, Poetry, and Local News and Events. Occasionally I even post regarding life events of a public nature. I intend for these to be well-written, polished articles suitable for publication in a magazine, newspaper, or trade journal. Thankfully, I use a content engine that allows me to divide my media into categories so you can pick and choose which parts you’d like to follow.

Daniel James Photography : Someday, this will contain a listing of my photographic services, model requests, photo adventure announcements, a portfolio, and a print gallery.

Arranging Light: One photo per day, taken by me, posted 5 to 7 days a week. Content can range from landscapes to portraits and from polished work to experimental images. Commentary will accompany each Photograph and will vary from a description of the image, to some history about the location or event, to a piece of poetry or prose to accompany the image.

Flickr: All of my images. They are broken down into Collections and Sets to make it easy to find what you’re looking for if you’re looking. All the work found at Arranging Light will be found here, as well as additional images, larger sets of similar images and personal photographs. The “privacy” features of Flickr are used occasionally so being a member of the site and listed as one of my contacts there certainly doesn’t hurt.

Jim’s Tumblr (for lack of a better name): I’ve been using Diigo to keep track of the various links, photos, comics, videos, and music that I find interesting. However, I don’t really care for the service. This Tumblelog will be a replacement for that. I’m not sure if it will take on a scheduled feel (new Foto Fridays, Tight Tune Tuesdays, etc) or simply be a log of what I found when I found. This is still a work in progress.

LiveJournal: LiveJournal is basically a required element in today’s online society, though I’m really not sure why. I have an account. However, in as long as I can remember I’ve only made one post directly to it. Everything else you see there was published first in some other location. I find LiveJournal to be a decent service, however, it’s not particularly awesome at doing any one thing. It has blogging, a friend reader, photos, communities, etc, but none of those services are the best of breed. It’s simply one service that has managed to combine them all together in a fairly decent fashion and happens to be quite popular amongst my circle of friends.

However, I also realize that there are aspects of my life that should probably be kept more private. Therefore, I intend to use LiveJournal for its “friends-only” features. It’ll be a lifeblog, of sorts. You’ll want an account there and you’ll want to have me befriended, otherwise, you’re not likely to get much out of it. If you know of another service that provides this same “friends-only” feature, I’d love to hear about it.

Lots of my friends use LiveJournal and make “friends-only” posts. As much as I’d like to be able to read those posts outside of LiveJournal, everything that is possible isn’t any better. So, my friends list is full of the LiveJournal’s I choose to read as well as those that I wish to allow access to my content.

Twitter: I use this service as a mobile microblog. I update what I’m doing when I’m doing it and expect the same from those that I follow or I’m not likely to follow for very long. I get my updates from this via SMS and I assume that most people who follow me do as well. If you aren’t interested in the minutiae of my life, then this probably isn’t for you. In the future, this may become private.

Facebook: This is the only “social networking” site that I check regularly. There are hundreds of others (Linked In, MySpace, Friendster, etc), many of which I am a member. However, none of the others seem to get it as close to right as Facebook. The service is not at all useful, but it’s silly and fun and a nice way to keep in touch, and that’s basically its purpose. Leave me a silly wall post, drop me a Facebook mail, poke me (but only if you’re female and attractive), leave a note in my honesty box, send me pictures that’ll have me turning off my monitor at work and then checking to make sure no one was looking. Whatever makes you happy. I have to have one of these sites on my list and this is the one I choose. Hate it if you want. I don’t care.

I also need a place to put short, lifeblog style entries that I intend to leave public. Maybe that’ll go in the TumbleLog. Maybe that’ll go in LiveJournal.

Maybe I’ll find another place for that stuff. Thoughts? Options?That probably seems like a lot of sites to you. Maybe it is. But that’s the current state of my online affairs.

What do you think? Your opinion matters… sometimes.

by the awesome power of my readership

Feb 18th, 2008
by Jim Reverend.
12 comments

Clearly, the sheer abundance of my loyal revjim.net readers and their eagerness to test this new commenting system has overloaded the poor monkeys that power the Disqus servers as the entire site now seems to be down.

This presents the first problem with a centralized comment system. As a result of the combination of Disqus now being down and the way the Disqus plugin for my content engine (WordPress) has been written, my site, revjim.net, now also appears to the outside world to be down. I know it isn’t. I’m writing this post now using it. But it sure looks that way.

Feel free to discuss these circumstances… just as soon as Disqus comes back up (or I get tired of waiting and get rid of it).

Centralized Comments: Intense Debate vs Disqus

Feb 18th, 2008
by Jim Reverend.
30 comments

A centralized comment system takes the commonly seen discussion portions of a weblog, online journal, or other such device and offsets it to a centralized service. In other words, instead of using the comments built into WordPress, Flickr, Tumblr, LiveJournal, or whatever other service you might use, that functionality gets offset to some other centralized service. It still appears in all the places it used to and makes it easy to group the discussion with the original content. But, additionally, it provides a lot of extra functionality for both the content creator and those participating in the discussion.

To those participating in the discussion, it provides a clear path toward having a single account (or only a handful of accounts) for comment creation. For those that regularly comment on many blogs, this will be a huge timesaver and a reduction of frustration. It also allows users to keep track of what they write in various places online as well as those comments that have been replied too. Additionally, it allows them to keep track of comments that their friends and other respected people may have left on other blogs.

As a content author and media creator, the concept of a centralized comment system may not seem immediately useful. However, providing a clean, consistent interface to commenting and making it as easy as possible to do so fosters more participation — and more participation only means more traffic. Additionally, it can save you some server load as you no longer have to host the meatier portions of those features. Finally, it can allow you to provide features you may not have been able to before including adding comments to a site that wasn’t even comment-enabled before.

Currently, there are two centralized commenting systems that seem appealing: Intense Debate and Disqus.

Intense Debate seems the most interesting to me at this time. First, it supports OpenID making it that much easier to get people involved. There also seems to be more momentum behind the project than with Disqus and the developers seem to have a similar mindset to how I would build it if it were mine. There is a planned API (so that Javascript is less required) and importers planned for many platforms. It’s not all the way there yet. Without the API, content authors can’t benefit from the Google-Juice that is provided with the discussion being a part of their site. And the current wordpress importer simply doesn’t work for me. It formats the comments poorly, and fails to import all of my entries. But, it’s a work in progress and I understand that. I should be getting a beta version of the comment importer later today to test.

Disqus is more independent. You could use discus as a threaded discussion forum without an accompanying website, if desired. For some, this is a “pro”. For others, it doesn’t matter at all. There’s no OpenID support in Disqus either and they don’t even have broken and/or experimental comment importers to test. But their API is complete and they seem to have a nice handful of features planned for the future.

Unable to decide which is better, I’ve decided to give them both a test drive.

I’ve installed Disqus at revjim.net. I’ve installed IntenseDebate at Arranging Light. As soon as I put the final touches on my TumbleLog, it’ll be using IntenseDebate as well.

Let me know what you think of these tools. After all, it’s as much for you as it is for me.

microblogging platforms: Tumblr vs Pownce (and Twitter too)

Feb 14th, 2008
by Jim Reverend.
2 comments

In case you were waiting for it, Pownce no longer requires an invite to join. For some time, this has been a limiting factor toward wide spread adoption of this particular microblogging platform. Despite that, it has racked up quite a few impassioned users. Opening the doors will only bring it more success.

Microblogging — short entries formatted for multiple media types — is becoming more and more appealing to me. It is often too much trouble or just seems silly to post a single link, or one tiny picture, or a silly quote in my “blog”. While my writing here at revjim.net hasn’t been all that structured or well-thought as of late, that is sort of the goal with a site like this. Adding short posts in the middle of these well thought essays just doesn’t seem right. Microblogging is an answer to that.

As mainstream microblogging is a fairly new concept, there are really only two high profile contenders in this arena today: the above mentioned Pownce and Tumblr. While having an account on both is annoying, if you know enough people on each of the two platforms it just makes sense. But updating both on a regular basis just seems ridiculous. So, how to choose which one to adopt for my own purposes.

Instead of going with the most popular option, or the option that was around first, I’d prefer to weigh them by their merits and hope that the popularity will follow. There is a certain subset of features that both of these platforms have. I will not get into that list. Instead, here is a list of Features each platform has that the other does not, as well as a list of annoyances present in that platform.

First, some links: My Tumblr. My Pownce. (And My Twitter too.)

Filters. In Pownce, each note can be directed at the public, at all of your followers, at a subset of your followers, or at a single person. While this in some way starts to cross over into the “email” territory and, due to the lack of instant notification (outside of email notification) doesn’t offer any distinct advantages in that regard, the ability to be “private” in some way is certainly useful from time to time. Tumble does not have this feature.

Templates. With knowledge of HTML and CSS, Tumblr allows its users to format their Tumblelog in any way they can imagine. This is not possible with Pownce. A fairly extensive list of tags and a clean templating engine makes this a very flexible platform. This also means that including Google Analytics stats, generated content from other systems, and various widgets into your Tumblelog is entirely possible. With Pownce, if the feature wasn’t built for you, then it’s simply not available. In the event that you’re not so HTML-savvy, just like Pownce, pre-made templates are available too.

Comments. Part of what makes publishing on the web rewarding and fun is the response it creates. And comments are the easiest, most public way of getting that response. Pownce provides the ability to reply to any note built in. While Tumblr does not offer comments explicitly, Templates allow you all the control you need to integrate 3rd party commenting systems like Intense Debate or Disqus with ease. Comments are not the primary service being offered by these microblogging platforms and, because of that, they may not be as full featured as some of the 3rd party offerings. For some, like myself, this will be considered a PRO. For others, this will be considered a CON because, despite the features and flexibility, additional work is required to make it happen.

Content Types. Tumblr supports 7 different content types compared to Pownce’s 3. However, Pownce’s “Link” content type is smart enough to determine the use of popular media hosting services (like Flickr, YouTube, etc) and format those notes in a special way. However, if you use a service outside of those known services, Pownce offers nothing but a plain, boring link. Tumblr, on the other hand, allows for customization for each of these content types. While not as automated as Pownce, this allows for a lot more compatibility and customization.

RSS Reading. While both services produce RSS feeds of the content you create, Tumblr will read in RSS feeds and update your Tumblelog automatically when the RSS feed updates. Using some clever HTML/CSS tricks, you can even customize the way information from certain feeds looks when it is added.

Domain Customizing. It’s not really “useful”, but it sure is fun. Tumblr allows you to point a domain name (or a subdomain) at its servers giving you your own brand name even in the URL bar.

File Sending. While Tumblr will allow you to share Video, Photos with your followers, and will even allow you to upload some of these media types directly to their servers for sharing, Pownce will allow the sharing of any file. This additional freedom opens the gates to providing application downloads, entire folders of information in a zip file, torrents, and much, much more. Tumblr will allow you to post a link to anything, including the above mentioned media types, but you have to host the media yourself, which adds to the complexity.

Tags. Tumblr allows you to tag your posts. At this point, you can’t sort by them or filter by them. However, you can use these tags to format those posts in a special way. In the future, tags may offer a whole new set of features that Pownce doesn’t offer.

Conclusion!

If I need to share a file that Tumblr doesn’t host, I’m fully capable of uploading it myself and linking to it. And I’d prefer to use a feature-rich, centralized comment system instead of whatever little bit might be provided by the microblogging engine. And, being a hands-on, control-freak kind of guy, being able to format my media types in anyway that I desire trumps the little but of automation that Pownce provides in this arena. And, while I really, REALLY, really like the ability to filter who is reading what I’m sharing and be a bit more private from time to time, I probably wont use it all that often. So, with that, for me, Tumblr makes the most sense.

What about Twitter?

There seems to be a common misconception that Twitter is a microblogging platform and is in direct competition with the likes of pownce and tumblr. I’ve actually seen blog posts comparing Twitter with something and indicating “having posts longer than 140 characters” as a “pro” for the non-twitter system.

There are lots of different ways to use Twitter. Some of those ways come close to the same usage pattern you might see in Pownce or Tumblr. But, where it really excels, and what those other systems do not challenge, is as a personal mass communication tool. Twitter is a more accessible version of the “away message”. It’s a Facebook status outside of Facebook. It’s updateable via SMS, Instant Message, and even Email. No matter where I am, I can usually update Twitter. And, because Twitter also sends out SMS messages, I know that using it means that I’m updating lots of people in a very immediate way. This is far different from the way Tumblr or Pownce was meant to be used.

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