Category: Pursuits

  • Canon’s new hybrid camera: umm, wow?

    (Updated with further reports) Canon unveiled a hybrid still photo/video camera today at such a low price point ($500 manufacturer recommended) with such an insane feature set (7.1 megapixel camera plus high definition video recording and image stabilization) that it almost defies belief. The new Powershot TX-1 has a lot of smart features, from obvious…

  • Getting more info with Feedburner

    (Updated 2/19 with widget info) I added a MyBlogLog account the other day to get more info about who’s reading my blog but the hole in that strategy is that MyBlogLog only counts people coming to my web site, not those who read entries via RSS. So I’ve now switched my RSS feed sign ups…

  • Plugins to the rescue on tagging posts

    (Updated 2/22) I was complaining the other day about WordPress categories not helping me tag things appropriately for blog search sites like Technorati. Andrew Watson, who writes the blog Changingways, commented that there are plug-ins for WordPress. So I’ve dropped in Bunny’s Technorati Tags and we’ll see how it goes. (Update) Well, this week I…

  • Waiting on the WordPress 2.1 update

    I always say wait on upgrades to key software and the newest version of WordPress is no exception. Let somebody else work the kinks out while I keep getting work done. I’ll get the same new gee-whiz features a week or two later while avoiding all the disasters and head aches suffered by the early…

  • Shifting to Interarchy for online backup at S3

    Well, Jungledisk has driven me bananas for the last time. As I blogged back in October and December, I have been messing around with using Jungledisk as a front end to Amazon’s insanely cheap online storage services, S3. Want to save 20 gigabytes of photo and music files? It’s just $3 a month, plus a…

  • Google hears my long-tail e-book plea

    Back in October, when Sony’s new and fairly horrific $350 e-book reader gadget came out, I blasted the company — and some of the people who reviewed the reader — for completely misunderstanding the need for such a product. We don’t need to carry around 87 different best-sellers in an electronic format that’s inferior to…

  • In-depth review of updated Nokia web pad raves

    (Updated 1/25 with additional review) Mike Arrington’s little blog neighborhood is growing, as I noticed today that in addition to the gadget-focused blog added back in the summer (CrunchGear) and his original Web 2.0-ish site (TechCrunch), there’s now one about mobile stuff, too. It’s named — wait for it — MobileCrunch. In any event, blogger…

  • Tags aren’t categories and vice versa

    Begin rant: One thing that annoys me about the otherwise fabulous WordPress software that runs this blog relates to categories and tags. Categories, which run along the side of most blogs (look to the right), tell you about general topics a blogger has written about that might be of interest. Sort of somewhere between an…

  • Phew, that’s a mighty back up

    The year is rapidly drawing to a close, prompting the usual rush to get those last tax deductions in order, clean out the closets and, of course, update my off-site back up. As I’ve mentioned before, I have a thing about backups after having experienced hefty data losses several times, including the time when my…

  • Short-tailed Sony reader needs a much longer one

    Sony’s new e-book Reader certainly seems like a marvel of technology but it’s also an example of a company forgetting to ask the most basic question of new product development: what is the customer benefit over existing products? With a nod to Chris Anderson and his much discussed long tail thesis, the real direction for…