"Around 2015 is the time when the cost of sending a separate 1080p video signal to every Internet-connected viewer -- or POTENTIAL VIEWER -- will be the same as using a broadcast model and sending that signal through the air. After 2015 there will be no scaling limits, no processing limits, no decoding limits. And since individual video streams mean individual commercials with a requisite CPM (cost per thousand) bump of up to 10X, commercial television as we know it will die, replaced by consumers choosing from a menu or recommendation engine what they want to see when they want to see it. Just follow the money."

I always enjoy reading Robert X. Cringely's writing; not because he's always right, but because he has an interesting perspective and thought-provoking ideas. Some of what he's alluded to is already here: for a couple of years now I've been slowly migrating away from my phone company, and today pay my cable company (Shaw Cable) for TV, Internet, two phone lines, and a fax line. It was a liberating feeling getting away from the phone company (Telus). My cable Internet service is rated for 10 mbps, but when testing against a Shaw server I'll usually see speeds in excess of 20mbps (and Speedtest.net reports speeds in the 15 mbps range). Upload speeds are limitd to 1mbps. DSL offerings in my area, on the other hand, top out at 7mbps with most being in the 5mbps range - and upload speeds limited to 640 kbps. In other words, cable is in the lead, but there's plenty of room for competition: in some ways I'm paying for the same service three times over (Internet, TV, phone) because it all runs over the same copper connection. I wouldn't mind so much if I felt like my cable company was aggressively improving their service - what I really want it faster uploading speeds. 1 mbps is fine for email, but when I'm uploading 500 MB worth of photos it just does't cut it. I've heard Verizon FiOS speeds are 3 mbps upstream - man, I wish!

"Fujifilm are calling the new FinePix S100FS "its most advanced DSLR-styled camera to date", and a glance at the headline specs quickly reveals why. The S100FS offers a 14.3x 28-400mm manual zoom lens, optical image stabilisation, 11 megapixel 2/3” Super CCD sensor, 2.5-inch tiltable LCD screen, electronic viewfinder, ISO 100-10,000, 3fps continuous shooting, wide dynamic range of 100-400%, and a range of Film Simulation modes. Phew! With no entry- or mid-range DSLRs in their product range, Fujifilm have developed the S100FS from the ground-up to challenge the likes of the Canon EOS 450D, Nikon D60 and Olympus E-420 DSLR models. And it certainly has a similar price-tag - the official £529 / $800 is a lot of money for a compact camera. Gavin Stoker discovered if the Fujifilm FinePix S100FS is a viable alternative to a true DSLR."

This camera really does look like it could be a vialbe DSLR stand-in. There are some downsides - slightly slow performance, poor battery life and a high price point to name three. So given these negatives, which are normally deal breakers for most people, the fact that the camera still got a 4.5 score out of 5 got me intrigued. I have not played with this camera yet (might have to go down to Adorama or B&H this weekend to see it) but it seems to have excellent usabillity, image quality and supports most features that someone who would want an entry-level DSLR.

"Five affordable DSLRs vie for honors in the "step-up" class. If you're a serious shooter looking to move on up to a better DSLR -- with more resolution, faster firing, advanced features like in-camera image fixes and live view -- but have been scared off by the $1,000 price barrier, fear no more. An entire class of DSLRs has appeared at this intermediate level, none of them more than $900, street -- with a kit lens. And every one of these five comes with image stabilization right out of the box, through either a shifting image sensor or moving elements in the included lens. These models, whose resolution ranges from 10MP to 14.2MP, are also ideal for the first-time DSLR buyer who wants more camera than you get in entry-level 6MP or 8MP cameras. And, for those weaned on digital compacts, three models have live view. They're not perfect, to be sure: All have plastic bodies, not designed for really heavy-duty use, and they rely on menus for many controls. Still, on balance they are excellent values."

The article compares the Canon EOS Rebel XSi, Nikon D60, Olympus E-520, Pentax K200D, and Sony Alpha 350 in a relatively rigorous and objective head-to-head comparison. The new Canon XSi comes out on top, but it is interesting to see some of the excellent value the other cameras bring as well.

You know how they say the best things in life are free? Well, sometimes the best technologies are the simplest, at least in terms of how easy they are the pick up and use. The Soundtech Lightsnake USB Instrument Cable falls into that category. It's essentially a sound card on a cable with an input designed to connect to an instrument that uses a 1/4" jack (typically a guitar or bass, though other instrucments can have 1/4" jacks). Here's how easy the Lightsnake USB Instrument Cable was to use: I took it out of the plastic blister pack (which took some careful cutting), unwrapped it, plugged it into the front USB port on my computer, watched it light up and waited a few seconds as Vista installed the drivers for it, went into the Vista sound panel and selected it as the recording source, then I fired up the Vista sound recorder and recorded this quick test. The hardest part of that whole process was getting the package open.

The cable is 10 feet long, which in some ways is a bit much to handle if you're just connecting it to your PC and sitting in front of it, but it's better to have it be too long than not long enough. The tech specs: it boasts 16 bit 48/44.1KHz audio, a dynamic range of 81.6 dB, frequency response of 48KHz: 20 - 19.2KHz, signal boost gain of +20 Db, and it uses power from the USB port. It has a pass-through 1/4" connector on the top so you can run a feed to your amp and hear yourself as you record. It will work with any computer running Windows 98/SE, Me, 2000, XP or Vista, Mac OS 9.0.4 or higher, and even Linux. Some of those might require drivers, so it ships with a driver CD. Also on the CD are demo versions of Sony Acid, Sony Sound Forge, Sony Vegas and other Sony software titles. If I had any criticism of this product, it would be that most people would find it valuable to have a "lite" version of Sony Acid or another program to get started with, or even Audacity (ugly thought it might be). Then again, with it only costing $39.99 USD from Amazon.com [Affiliate] right now, you could pick up Sony ACID Musid Studio 7 [Affiliate] and still have the whole package cost less than $100 USD. It would also be nice to hear the output from the computer speakers for those that don't have an amp handy.

If you're looking for an inexpensive way to connect your musical instrument to your computer and start experimenting with home recording, the Soundtech Lightsnake USB Instrument Cable is a great solution.

Jason Dunn owns and operates Thoughts Media Inc., a company dedicated to creating the best in online communities. He enjoys photography, mobile devices, blogging, digital media content creation/editing, and pretty much all technology. He lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada with his lovely wife, and his sometimes obedient dog. He's no Victor Wooten, but he can hold his own on bass.

"Unveiling the new Home, Sony revealed that video rentals and purchases are finally coming to the PS3. Video will be fully integrated into the PlayStation Store, which will have a new video section. And you can transfer them to your PSP via USB, and have them on multiple devices at once! Standard and high def, with rentals running $3-$6 and $10-$15 for purchases. It takes about an hour to download a two-hour movie. Most of the major studios are on board (Kotaku has a partial list in their liveblog), and it goes live tonight!"

That is great. I was planning on buying a PS3 in the next month or so, to address the guitar hero and rockband addiction that is taking over all of my friends. :) So getting the ability to buy and rent movies as part of the package would just amke it sweeter. I am guessing the pricing will be comparable to that of Netflix (I hope). Most of the major studios other than Universal seem to be on board as far as I can tell right now . I wonder whether this functionality is going to come to the PSP as well or are we still going to be stuck with UMDs?

"There's a whole new way to make movies today. Real movies. Polished, tightly edited movies that tell your story with perfectly-timed movement, close-ups, even music that feels just right in every frame. You can do this and more using the all-new muvee Reveal. In minutes, muvee Reveal takes your video, photos and music and automatically edits them to make the movies you always wanted to make."

The people at muvee told me they were working on something new, and it looks like this is it! Reveal looks to be what AutoProducer had been inching towards for a few versions now: a full-featured video editing suite, but with the muvee twist of auto-producing as the main method of assembling your videos. Manual controls include automatic brightness, color correction, rotate image, red eye reduction, focusing in on specific details, image sequence, and more. They've also added support for 720p and 1080p HD video, and video output in WMV, WMV-HD, QUICKTIME, MPEG4, H.264, MPEG2, MPEG1, AVI, 3GPP. Video input formats are WMV, Quicktime, MPEG4, H.264, MPEG2, MPEG1, DV-AVI, 3GPP, AVCHD, HDV. Nice to see AVCHD in that list since so many HD cameras not shoot in that format.

I hope, more than anything else that they've added, that they've improved the speed and stability of the software. muvee autoProducer has always been an impressive piece of software from a conceptual point of view, but with every version it got slower and more unstable - the recent version has crashed on me more times than I care to remember, and even on powerful hardware it was extremely sluggish. Speed and stability are more important than any one single new feature. It's also worth noting that autoProducer is no longer being sold - Reveal completely replaces it. This summary screen explains:

I feel sorry for anyone that invested a lot of money in muvee autoProducer styles (they were a bit pricey too!). You can download a 15 day free trial of Reveal, or you can purchase it for $99 USD.

"Amazon announced today that it plans to launch its online store for movies and TV show rentals and purchases. Amazon also says that the films will require no downloading to watch and will be stored on a special page for the customer at the Amazon.com website. This will do two things for Amazon's service. First since the films never reach the consumer's hard drive thanks to no need for download, issues with security for the movie publisher are lessened. Second, the customer can begin watching their movie immediately without having to wait for the download to complete like you do with Apple TV rented movies from iTunes."

Amazon continues their full-press assault on iTunes with the addition of this video streaming service, and seeing some serious competition is a great thing - although it seems like Amazon.com won't have any device-side story if this only works in a browser. They do mention a partnership with Sony's Bravia Internet Video Link - but I think they'll need to include the Xbox 360, and other hardware devices, if they want to make any traction in this market.

"Shooting with a wide angle lens attached to your camera can help create some memorable shots when you’re doing portrait photography. At very wide focal lengths you can create some wonderful distortion. It might not be the type of shot you take of your wife or girlfriend (unless she’s in a playful mood) but using these focal lengths will enlarge parts of the face or body that are on the edge of the frame more than what is in the centre. It can also give a wide open and dramatic impact when your subject is in an impressive setting."

Some nice tips on taking great pictures. I personally think that this article is better than most because most of the advice and tips are pretty clear and easy to follow. If you like, you may also want to read 10 other tips by the same author.

"AMD's 12-core and 8-core processors get a new home in 2010. AMD's newest roadmap reveals a major shift in early 2010: the company will once again overhaul its socket architecture to make way for DDR3 support. The new socket, dubbed G34, will also ship with two new second-generation 45nm processors. The first of these processors, 8-core Sao Paolo, is described as a "twin native-quadcore Shanghai processor" by one AMD engineer. Shanghai, expected to ship late this year, is AMD's first 45nm shrink of the ill-fated Barcelona processor."

12 cores? I say bring it on, but I sure hope that software developers get their butt in gear and make their programs work smartly with multiple cores - my article on this subject showed that right now very few programs can use even four cores, so having 12 cores and watching my video editing program use two of them would be depressing. One would hope though that by 2010 software developers will have clued in to the fact that multi-core computing is here to stay...

"It’s very easy today to take more pictures in a single week long vacation than ever imagined possible ten years ago. For one thing, not many people had digital cameras ten years ago and those that did had a lot of problems with ample, cheap storage. Compact Flash and SD cards weren’t as inexpensive and voluminous as they are today. And yet today, images coming directly out of the camera can regularly exceed 10MB or more. As I see it, there are two main paths to take when a vacation is planned and the camera will be tagging along. Either purchase more memory cards or purchase a digital storage device. I’d like to take a look at both options and lay down some pros and cons to help you decide which path might be right for you."

So there are a couple of options presented in this article -- a portable storage device vs. a bunch of cards (reminds me of JBOD - just a bunch of drives, so this would be JBOC). And I am definitely in the JBOC camp. Granted I still have my EOS 10D which is a 6MP camera and I bet when I upgrade to the EOS 5D successor (if it ever comes out) then my 2 1GB cards will not be sufficient. But I personally think it beats carrying around yet another device and a charger than a few extra cards. And addressing the issue of possibly mixing up the cards - c'mon, buy a sketch pen and write some numbers on your cards. Yeah, yeah, not tech savvy enough but gets the job done.

"Online video is catching on among the masses, and in a big way. Viewers in the US watched 12 billion videos this past May, according to data from comScore, a 45 percent increase from a year prior. comScore's data shows healthy growth in online video viewing, not just from user-generated video sites, but those that provide streaming TV shows as well. Almost 142 million unique users watched video in May, which comScore says is a whopping 74 percent of the total US Internet audience. Users watched an average of 85.3 videos per person during those 31 days for an average of 228 minutes of video. Unsurprisingly, the most popular online video property was "Google Sites"—that is, sites owned by Google like YouTube and Google Video, which made up 35 percent of all videos viewed during that time period. comScore says that 4.2 billion videos from YouTube were viewed in May and made up over 98 percent of the videos viewed from Google's properties."

So it is not like I am not "with it" or anything like that (though I am sure I am proving the reverse just by saying that :-) ), but I probably watch about a maximum of 10 videos a month online through almost any source. This is not because I don't like the technology or anything like that, just that I don't have the time. Maybe it is just the long hours that I work. In fact, I don't understand how other people have the time -- but I digress. With the advent of YouTube, I can totally see why people are watching so many more videos online. And I think that now that I have an iPhone, I might start viewing more of them too. It would have been nice if comScore had broken down the numbers by device as well because it would have been nice to know if the trend is headed more towards watching videos on mobile devices.

Gametrailers.com has a great overview of the new Xbox 360 dashboard, and it's in glorious high-definition (I think their server is getting slammed, it took a while to buffer for me). I have a better impression of it now than I did at first: I'm glad that the cheesy avatar stuff isn't as omniprescent as I first thought - I really dislike it. It just seems to "kid like" to me...if I wanted a Wii, I would have bought one.

Microsoft has opened up their Live Mesh service to the general public in the form of a "tech preview" which is a nicer way of saying "mostly still beta". I've been using Live Mesh for a couple of months now, and it's a pretty cool service. You set a folder to be "Live Meshed" and not only will it be kept in sync between multiple computers, the contents of the folder will be kept in the cloud (where you have 5 GB of storage). I think there's a lot of potential here, especially since they've stated they'll be targeting mobile devices. I've been dreaming of having my FlexWallet file be pushed to my device when there's a change in it, because connecting my device with my desktop computer is something I just don't do anymore. I was hoping for years that the FolderShare team would release a Windows Mobile client, but they're still struggling to get the service stable, so no joy there. If you have a desktop and a laptop, and haven't checked out Live Mesh yet, you should.

"A few weeks ago, I was asked if wanted an opportunity to review a new software app under embargo that is designed to solve one of the great remaining problems with any music library - fixing album art and metadata. Over the years between WMP/Zune/iTunes conversions of my library, converting all of my tracks into 160kbps MP3, migrating between HDDs and just plain idiosyncracies with ID3 tags and where album art gets stored, my library has become a severe mess. TuneUp promised to fix it and I have to say aside from a few minor nits, it does a commendable job and is now available for download in two versions: TuneUp and TuneUp Gold."

Very interesting, and timely, for me at least. After years of resisting and sticking with my simple iRiver iHP-140 (which by the way still rocks), I switched this past weekend to an iPhone. Since most of my music was in WMA and OGG, I now have to go through the tedious process of converting everything to MP3 VBR so that it will work with the Apple product, and am using a converer from 4musics.com. But it would be nice to run TuneUp on the library after I am done to update my ID3 tags because they are woefully managed so far. I should be able to report back in a week or so on tihs since I am still in the process of format conversion, but in the mean time, if someone else gives this a try then please report back.

For me, Amazon's MP3 store represented a chance to finally get into purchasing MP3's. Prior to this, a majority of my collection came from ripped CD's, but over say the last 5 years, I've hardly purchased any CD's because frankly there was not much out there that I liked well enough to buy an entire CD. When Amazon's store first opened, I purchased a couple of tracks just to try it out and then kind of put it on the back burner. Well in the last few weeks, I've rediscovered their store and wanted to pass on some of the great deals that they run. First off, as you know their tracks DRM free, and run mostly around $0.99 each (with some of the more popular songs at $0.89). I find myself just buying tracks of songs I like from the radio without giving the price a second thought. Of course that is old news for those of you that have been buying from iTunes for years. What I'm really liking is that Amazon runs daily specials on entire albums for really cheap prices. For example a few days back I picked up Beck's “Odelay” for $3.99 and today I picked up “The Best of John Mellencamp: 20th Century Masters” for just $1.99. Additionally, on Friday's they offer 5 albums for $5 each. Sure, they might be taking a loss on some of these, but they are getting me in the habit of checking in daily to see what they have to offer, and of course as long as I'm there, I may end up picking up a song or too. Overall, I'm not sure if I should be happy or sad that Amazon has come up with yet another way to separate me from my money, but you live in a territory that offers it, be sure to give Amazon's MP3 store a second look.

"Kodak's got a new one for the semi-casual point-and-shoot crowd, the EasyShare Z1015 IS. The 10 megapixel Z-series camera manages a 15x optical zoom, a 3-inch LCD, HD footage at 720p and 30 fps, and Kodak's Perfect Touch processing. Naturally the IS implies optical image stabilization, but the 6400 ISO should help out in the shaking department as well if grain is not an issue, and full manual controls should help out all the in-betweens. It'll go for $350 come September."

This really appears to be a nice looking camera, especially if it will sell for around $350. I am thinking that this will be a good competitor to Canon's G series. I only wonder what the manual setting capabilities will be. From what I am reading here and in a couple of other articles I found, it looks like the camera comes with Kodak's smart capture technology, but also exposes a number of 'tweakable settings'. I read that as exposing manual controls on ISO, WB, shutter lag, etc. but that may just be wishful thinking. i will definitely be checking this camera out in September when it is released.

"The upcoming Dell E mini notebook may finaly make its appearance next month and may be one of the least expensive, claim alleged insiders. The 8.9-inch portable will have the same 1.6GHz Atom processor, Linux, and flag storage storage of many similar devices but will purportedly sell in August for just $299, or $80 less than the Acer Aspire One that has held the price crown in the class for just a matter of weeks. The most recent leak suggests Dell will reach the low price through a model known as the E Classic, which will have just 512MB of RAM, 4GB of storage, and Linux; the more popular model will likely be the more expensive E Video with doubled RAM, storage, and a built-in webcam."

Well unless this baby sprouts some warts, I think I'll be picking one up to replace my Eee. Since the specs are equal to or better than the Eee in every way, I imagine it will outperform it as well as have a much better screen. It is really all down to the Linux distro then end up with and how well they optimize it.

"Instead, it's (once again) Netflix realizing that the future of the the rental business isn't in the brick-and-mortar and probably not even in the mail sector. It's Netflix that's adapting to the changing times by streaming movies and TV shows to its Roku box and, now, the Xbox 360. And in one fell swoop, Netflix has once again made Blockbuster irrelevant. What other recourse does Blockbuster have now other than to keep plugging away with its brick-and-mortar business and hope to stay afloat long enough to sell it off to the highest bidder? It's not only the loser in the rental business, but now that it's slow to the streaming game, how can it capitalize on the market?"

Blockbuster could of course team up with Sony, but I find that unlikely. Blockbuster may very well be snuffed out of existence in the next few years. Netflix may well own the streaming market which greatly diminishes the top end of the market. Meanwhile they can always go for the low end of the market that is years, if not decades away, from really being ready to stream. But on that end, they are going to get squeezed by kiosks like the ones going in Wal-mart that rent movies for $1 per day.

I'll start off with the process for copying files. For this example, let’s say I have a directory with 50 files, “foo01.doc” through “foo50.doc”. In XP, if I copied “foo20.doc”, it would be automatically called “Copy of foo20.doc”. I’ve never liked this because in a sorted list, I would prefer the copy to be next to the original. Vista makes a small change by instead naming the copy “foo20 Copy.doc”. Much better in my opinion. Often when I copy a document, I’m doing so just to use it as a template for something similar, so right after making the copy, I usually rename it to something appropriate for the new document. In XP, if I went to rename the above file, the entire “Copy of foo20.doc” would be highlighted and I would have to made sure to retype the extension. Under Vista , when I choose to rename the same file only the “foo20 Copy” is highlighted by default, but I still have the option of changing the extension if I like. Much smoother.

What are some of the other little things you’ve discovered in Vista that you really like?