Hooray for Hollywood, or Lost in Translation? Movie-making with the Nikon D600
There has been a great deal of enthusiasm about making indie movies on Digital SLRs (and even some television -- Joe Wilcox of this parish reminds me that an episode of “House” was filmed on a Canon 5D, as was one of the BBC’s “Wallander” episodes). There are two main reasons for this enthusiastic adoption -- firstly, both camera body and lenses are incredibly low-cost compared to a conventional digital TV or movie camcorder, and secondly, they have full-frame (35mm size) sensors to give that shallow depth of field “film-look”.
While I’ve followed all this with interest, I’ve never personally been fully convinced.
Meme of the year: Grumpy Cat
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Psy's Gangnam Style may be the most popular YouTube video of all time, with 1.05 billion views, but there are other measures of popularity that say much about other things. In the old days of comedy, being mocked by talk show hosts like Conan O`Brien is one example. But in the social era, where anyone can be a comedian and the hive mind collectively produces one, memes rule. One clearly stands above all others, at least during second half of 2012: Grumpy Cat.
I blame Ronald Reagan
As the father of a precocious first grader I can relate somewhat to the children and parents of Newtown. My son Fallon goes to a school with no interior hallways, all exterior doorways, and literally no way to deny access to anyone with a weapon. Making this beautiful school defensible would logically begin with tearing it down. But the school design is more a nod to good weather than it is to bad defensive planning. The best such planning begins not with designing schools as fortresses or filling them with police. It doesn’t start with banning assault weapons, either, though I’m not opposed to that. The best defensive planning starts with identifying people in the community who are a threat to society and to themselves and getting them treatment. And our failure to do this I generally lay at the feet of Ronald Reagan.
I’ve written about Reagan here before. When he died in 2004 I wrote about a mildly dirty joke he told me once over dinner. It showed Reagan as everyman and explained to some extent his popularity. Also in 2004 I wrote a column that shocked many readers as it explained how Reagan’s Department of Justice built brick-by-brick the federal corrections system that it knew would do nothing but hurt America ever since, making worse both crime and poverty all in the name of punishment.
Best Windows 8 apps this week (Doomsday Edition)
Eighth in a series. Since the world is going down today anyway there is not really much need for today's article and while I thought for a moment about taking the day off, I'd like the idea of leaving the world with work done. So, here it is, the eighth part of the best Windows 8 apps of the week series on Doomsday.
Pssst: If the world doesn't end, and you have Windows 8, now you have something to look forward to.
An iPad lover’s review of Microsoft Surface -- you know what’s coming, right?
Arriving far too late to influence any gift buying for Christmas, here’s my review of Surface with Windows RT. The tardiness of the review isn’t really my fault. Microsoft only put its device in proper shops in the UK last Friday, and I wanted to include the shopping experience as part of the article (even though I didn’t actually spend my own money -- a friend purchased the tablet I’m reviewing).
Before we get into the review, I need to preface it by saying the following: I love Apple’s iPad. I bought an iPad 2 as soon as it was released and replaced it with the new 4th gen model a month or so ago. And even though I use Windows 8 daily, I really don’t like the new OS all that much. So, inevitably, I’m going to hate Surface, right? Absolutely loath it. Well, that’s what I thought. But surprisingly I like it. I like it a lot.
Oh, there's no place like Android for the holidays
It is that time of year. Every search engine and social media site is posting its top-10 lists. People are shopping, putting up lights and decorations and even getting their computers into the spirit with Windows themes, Chrome New Tab themes and Firefox Personas. Your Android phone or tablet can also get into the spirit of the holidays with some handy apps. The Google Play store and Amazon App Store are both resources for holiday music and and movies, but there are also a number of apps to keep your spirits high.
There are holiday games, shopping apps and wallpapers. You can track Santa's journey around the world or track the calories you consume at that big meal. No, sorry, I am not covering the latter here. You can search for those on your own.
Be the first to try SlimImage, a new PC backup and versioning tool [BetaNews Exclusive]
SlimWare Utilities, makers of SlimCleaner, is hosting a special-access beta for its newest software product, SlimImage, and BetaNews readers are invited to be among the first to try it out.
SlimImage integrates directly with Windows 8 to preserve and safeguard a computer’s operating system, applications, files and documents independently. SlimImage is like a time machine for Windows 8 devices, incrementally backing up personal documents and files through versioning, while simultaneously, but separately, imaging the Windows 8 operating system and installed applications. In this way, SlimImage solves the problem of users losing data and personal documents when reinstalling their operating system in order to correct a system malfunction or crash.
Like the Grinch, policymakers hang our gifts over the fiscal cliff
Most of us have had mentors, and when it came to becoming a writer three of mine were the late Bill Rivers at Stanford, who taught me to think and not just report; legendary book editor Bob Loomis at Random House, who felt I might be able to stack enough of those thoughts together to fill a book; and a guy most of you know as Adam Smith, who let me copy his style.
Smith, named after the English economist and writer, helped start both New York and Institutional Investor magazines while at the same time punching out books like The Money Game and Paper Money -- huge best sellers that taught regular people how the financial system really worked. That gig explaining the inner workings was what appealed to me. So 30 years ago, having been recently fired for the second time by Steve Jobs, I went to New York and asked permission of Smith to imitate him, though applying his style to technology, not finance. Many such impersonators exist, of course, but I was apparently the first (and last) to ask permission.
Did I REALLY say that? Twitter will soon let you download every embarrassing tweet you ever sent
The micro-blogging site appears to be making good on its promise to allow users to download all of their tweets -- from day one -- in a single archive. Although there’s been no official announcement yet, there have been numerous sightings of the feature which is reportedly being rolled out to a very small percentage of users.
To check if you have the option, go to Settings and look for a ‘Your Twitter archive’ section at the bottom of the page. If it’s there, clicking the ‘Request your archive’ button will set the wheels in motion, and you’ll be emailed a link when your zip is ready to download. Extract the HTML file to view your tweets in calendar format, with the years on the right and the tweets on the left.
Best Windows 8 apps this week
Seventh in a series. Welcome to another episode of what's hot and new in Windows Store. This week we have seen the release of a couple of official apps, Adobe Reader and Yahoo! Mail for instance, that made an appearance in store.
Other companies like Google or Facebook are monitoring the development of Windows 8 before they commit resources to building apps for the operating system. It is likely, however, that we will see additional official app releases for Microsoft's operating system in the weeks to come.
Google Maps for iPhone -- now that’s how you do it, Apple [review]
Soon after Apple replaced Google’s aging but accurate mapping solution with its own brand new, but woefully inaccurate alternative, I -- like many disgruntled iOS 6 upgraders -- switched to using the web-version of Google Maps (I briefly toyed with Nokia Here, but it’s not yet as good). The workaround was fine, but I only ever viewed it as a temporary stopgap while awaiting the triumphant return of Google Maps to the App Store, something that finally happened a couple of days ago.
Google Maps shot to the top of the free charts with indecent haste, further embarrassing Apple in the process, as users scrambled to install it. I installed it too, naturally, but held off on reviewing it immediately, as I wanted to make sure my happiness at its arrival wasn’t going to cloud my judgment. And the good news is, having now had plenty of time to play around with it, it’s great. Not perfect, but pretty damn close.
The future of the flame war
Anonymity serves an essential purpose; it allows us to speak without fear of persecution. But two-way anonymous communications are inherently antisocial, and are often counterproductive when trying to establish a certain level of discourse. This is the root of the comments section dilemma, and an issue online news sites like BetaNews think about quite a bit. We want you to be able to speak freely. We hate having to censor anything, but we also want civilized conversation.
Text-only communication is viewed as an "impoverished" form of social exchange, lacking all of the nonverbal nuances that help us share information on a deeper, more human level, and anonymous text-only communications are even weaker, stripping out most of the ethos of the speaker.
UK number one for internet TV, shopping and mobile browsing
Ofcom’s seventh International Communications Market Report, which examines take-up, availability, price and use of broadband, landlines, mobiles, TV, radio and post across 17 major countries, has discovered that people in the United Kingdom typically spend more on online shopping, watch more TV on the web, and download more data on their mobiles and tablets than any other leading nation.
I’m British, do all my shopping online (even groceries), almost never watch live television and access the web on the go pretty much daily, so this news doesn’t come as any great surprise to me, but even so the gap between my country and other much larger nations is a bit of a revelation (and also slightly suspect in some cases).
Zeitgeist 2012: Google is the only site to get it right
We have seen top-10 lists now from Yahoo, Twitter and Facebook. Sure, all of them provided the raw data pertaining to the most-searched for and most-talked about products, events, people and more from the past year. Google, with it's popular Zeitgeist release, did the same. But the search leader took it one step further and, in so doing, was the real winner in this 2012 popularity contest.
Google provides perspective and emotion to raw, boring statistics and creates something that is appealing to basic human instincts. The company put together a video that will jog your memory, make you smile and bring a tear to your eye.
The things people will do to get Chromebook
This morning, Amazon greeted me with email promoting the ARM Chromebook. Well, hell, back in stock is a story. But what a surprise I got clicking the link. Rather than the expected $249 price, one of the retailer's third-party sellers demanded $342.92 for the WiFi model and $448.45 the 3G. There were five WiFi Chromebooks hours ago. They're sold out now -- 3G as well from the one seller. Another has one 3G unit left for $441.90 -- or about $112 more than the official selling price.
I'm a big Chromebook fan and last week made the $249 ARM model my main PC, even though Samsung's Series 5 550 is faster. I simply like the smaller portable's ergonomics and keyboard better. But my Chromebook enthusiasm stops with paying way more than Google's selling price. I've got to wonder: Why are these people paying premium price? Is it you? Is Chromebook really that much in demand?
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