GrandCentral

I've been using GrandCentral for a few months now, both for home and work purposes.  It works great.

I noticed a posting on TechCrunch in the last couple days that Google was apparently in acquisition talks with GrandCentral.  I'm a bit surprised, but not completely.

I hope if it is true that Craig and Vincent and the guys I've dealt with get treated fairly, and I also hope that GrandCentral doesn't crash burn and die under Google's reign.

I'm rooting for you guys.  not because I use the service, but because they seem like some of the good guys of the VoiP space.....

 

Technorati Tags: GrandCentral, Google, TechCrunch

Megapixels and print size

There is lots of talk on the 'net about megapixels and purported "max print size" that you can print from said megapixels.

Well, I was one of those folks who thought "more megapixels, the better".

Until a few days ago.

My kids are part of a softball league here and they had team pictures taken in early May/Late April.  We were out of town at a wedding, and so my kids missed the pictures for their respective teams.

I offered to take team pictures with all the kids present.  Cool, worked fine, got pictures of the team with all the kids.

Another team heard that I was doing this, and decided that they too wanted pictures as they had completely missed their picture time.  So I came out one evening before one of their games, took a few individual shorts (for memory mates) and also took a team picture.

Two of the moms (co-coaches) have daughters on the team who have been friends since the age of three.  One is a pitcher, one is a catcher, and they wanted a photo of the two of them together.

So, we took that photo, and the mothers both saw it online and loved it and one decided that she would order a 16x20.

I had never printed a 16x20 from my camera before.  I've got a Digital Rebel (original) and it's a 6.x megapixel camera.  I was a little concerned.  But it was a good, in focus photo, shot at ISO 100, little to no noise.

I got it back from the lab I used and it looks OUTSTANDING! I mean, really really stellar.  I was thinking that if I was going to do more of this size that I'd want to move to a 30D or a 5D or whatever. 

But after printing that photo (twice), I think that the myth of megapixels and print size are pretty much a myth and that's it.

Technorati Tags: Megapixels, Print Size, Digital Rebel

Email is mission critical. But is Outlook?

For me, I live in Outlook 99% of the time when my computer is on.  Whether I'm at my day job, or at home, Outlook is almost always running.

I've been running Outlook 2000 for many years now, and have many, many, many messages in Outlook.  Yes, I'm a packrat.  I've heard there is a 12 step program for that, but I'm not enrolling at this point.

Anyway, I was running Outlook 2007 for a while, but found it to be very slow on my machine.  I loved the multiple account in one profile setup, but the speed degradation on my machine was just too much to have to bear, so I went back to Outlook 2000.

Tonight, I got home from work, after softball practice (my two older kids made all stars, very cool), and after the girls had gone to bed, I fired up my laptop to check my email.

I started Outlook, as I normally do.  And waited.  And waited.  I waited some more.  Nothing.

Thinking that I had some kind of weird memory issue, I rebooted.  After all the processes finished loading, I started Outlook again.  Waiting.  Waiting....

Nothing.  Twenty minutes later, nothing.

For me, I'm an Outlook fanatic.  I *love* Outlook. I've tried other clients.  But I keep coming back to Outlook.

But this might be the straw that breaks the camel's back, so to speak.

I've installed Thunderbird.  It has multiple account support.  It supports multiple sending accounts (so I can send from myhomeoffice.org or fourangelsphotography.com).  Very important.

It doesn't support two applications that I have used in the past and find very useful:

Newsgator - I was a beta tester of this product before v1, and had used it every since.  It currently is on v2.6x . 

Skylook - I was a beta tester for this product.  It's pretty indispensable for Skype usage and works great with Outlook.

 

To get over my Newsgator addiction, I've switched to FeedDemon, which will read my feeds from my newsgator.com account and download feeds.  It's certainly not as convenient as the Outlook integration of Newgator, but I think it will work.

For my Skylook needs, I'm not sure what I'm going to do.  I've started looking at CallBurner, which will record Skype conversations just like Skylook will do.  It works quite well, and I recommend it.  It's not integrated with Thunderbird however.  But it's a really well done application and I like it alot.

So, we'll see after a few days how my Thunderbird experience goes.  I have high hopes.  But I also have high expectations....wish me luck.

 

Technorati tags: Thunderbird, Outlook, CallBurner, Skylook, Newsgator, Email

Telecommuting becomes the rage due to gas prices

As I mentioned before, I believe that gas prices will help promote telecommuting.

I saw this article on CNN.COM this morning which illustrates the point quite nicely.

Check it out.

I'd love to be able to telecommute 2-3 days a week. 

Technorati tags: telecommuting

Removing digital "noise" from your photos

I frequently find myself taking photos in low light situations where my default lens (a 70-300 4.5/5.6) isn't optimal at low ISO speeds).  So I find myself pushing the ISO to 400,800 or even 1600 to get the shutter speeds necessary to get good photos.

This can cause problems with "digital noise".  It's problematic and can make for really bad looking enlargements.

Recently I was made aware of a product called Noiseware, which would read your JPG file, detect what camera it was shot with, and minimize the noise seen in the photo.

I thought, it's a free community supported product (in one version), so why not give it a try.

You be the judge.  The first photo shown below is without the noiseware solution.  It was shot last Friday night inside Richland's Toyota Stadium at my niece's high school graduation.  at 300mm, 1600 ISO:

 

 

After Noiseaware was applied (default settings)

 

It may not be as noticeable in these two pictures on here, but if you were to look at the original and the de-noised version,  you'd be convinced.  The have both standalone versions available and Photoshop plugins.  I don't use Photoshop, so the standalone version works really well for me.  They have a free community version (which is what I'm using) and a commercial version you'll need to pay for to utilize.  I highly recommend at least the free community stand alone version.  It has worked wonders for my photos shot with a Digital Rebel XTi.....

 

Check out NoiseAware here

 

Technorati tags: Noise, Digital Noise, NoiseAware

USB versus NAS devices?

I'm a big believer in backups.  Multiple forms.  USB drives, network attached storage, DVD (dual layer), etc.

As I accumulate more photos, my storage needs have grown.

Currently, I have the following:

• 80 gig USB - 5 gig free
• 60 gig USB - 15 gig free
• 160 gig USB - I *think* 15 gig free

At some point in the future, I'd like to get a new device, probably 500- 1TB in size.

I'd like to use this as my main offline storage facility for my photos. 

I'll still continue to do DVDs as well, but will hopefully be able to purchase a copy of Adobe Lightroom for use with this external device for archival/digital asset management use.

I'm torn, at the moment, between a device that plugs into my LAN (and therefore always on) or a USB/Firewire device that only gets turned on when I need it.

Thoughts?

Technorati tags: NAS, USB Storage, Archival

I think I'm melting

My niece graduated from high school this past Friday.  We went to the Tri Cities to attend the graduation.

Keep in mind, it is June 1st when the graduation is going to take place.  It gets hot in the Tri Cities, but not normally until July or late June.

As we drove to the graduation it was 99 degrees.  The next day, as we drove to the outdoor picnic that her mother had arranged to celebrate the graduation (attended by many far flung friends and family), it was 103 degrees. 

I thought I was going to melt.  Good to be home in "normal" weather.

My niece, after graduation.  Yes, holding her diploma upside down... You go Britt!

Technorati tags: Global Warming, Graduation, TriCities