Category Archives: Gadgets

On Engadget today. Just plain awesome.  Read it.

Let me preface by saying – I really love Canon’s ELPH digital cameras. I’ve used many competitors’ models, and have yet to find any reason to recommend any other brand higher. Yes, Fuji has some better low-light processing, and yes Pentax has Divx video built-in, but for the masses, Canon just seems to build winner after winner.

But now they are doing too much of it, and I think it’s to the point of potential backlash. My rationale here is that they are making enthusiasts and evangelists like myself frustrated by having continuously out-of-date products. I purchased the Canon SD850is the day it was released, 9 weeks ago. Today it became obsolete. It’s too much, and now when I recommend Canon’s cameras, I always add a little disclaimer pointing out their rapid release cycles.

As a secondary, but important, issue, Canon’s numbering schema became really bizarre this year. The SD line was progressing fairly “normally”, from 100 to 110, to 200, to 300, and so on. Then there was the 700is and 800is, followed by the 750, 850is, 900, and 1000. Today they introduced the 870is and 950is. Here’s the catch – the 1000 is a distinctly inferior model to the 950is, and that’s just my example inconsistency (note to consumers: only buy the “is” line, the rest aren’t worth it).

In my opinion, Canon needs to pull this process together a bit. Here are my specific recommendations:

• No more than 2 model cycles per year, preferably less. The more you cycle your models, the more you upset your “friendly customers” and the more FUD you create. By having too many opportunities to buy, you are also creating opportunities for competition. It’s not easy to remain top dog forever.
• Create some kind of upgrade program. I would probably shell out another $50 or so to get the 870is form my 850is. Further, while this might sound hard logistically, it really isn’t that much work, especially if you partner up with some online companies that have the infrastructure. Like, say, eBay or Amazon.
• Fix the ELPH numbering scheme.  Break up the is and non-is lines, start the numbers over, add a letter to the models, and be consistent.  Whether we all like it or not “higher” model numbers always imply newer/better products.

That’s it folks – again, I still like the products, but this process is at that precipitous edge of becoming frustrating and a bad experience.  Nobody likes to have a $400 item go from “newest” to “not so new” inside of the same season!  I hope my friends at Canon read this and take away something useful from it.

It’s the middle of the day here in NY, and I’m still riding that “good feeling” wave from last night’s Bug+(bar+NYC) meetup. Yesterday afternoon we had counted the comments on the blog and on Facebook and guessed that 20-40 people would show up. Instead, we had somewhere closer to 100 roll through the doors, which pretty much had me apologizing to the waitresses every 45 seconds as I was constantly in their way trying to do demos and meet everyone who showed up.

We’ve got a few pictures online here, and Peter’s written up a thank you note as well. Here are a few of my favorites:

Thanks again to everyone who made it there. As I mentioned at the event, we’ll be opening up a beta signup process in the coming week(ish – just gotta polish off the system), which we’ll announce on the blog. Also, I’ve tried to find all the links to any other writeups (some with pix) here:

• MAKE
• Gizmodo
• Silicon Alley Insider
• David Cohn (yup, the LD alum himself – this was the first time we’d met in person!!)
• Bijan
• Benjamin Stein
• SolidOffice
• Online Video Watch
• CEDX
• Zonageek

Oh yeah – I am working on some way to track incoming Bug+BLANK location requests, and will post something on the Bug blog once I have it figured out. Also should be within the next week or so!

this is only a test. if this were a real post, i’d be blah-de-blahing about something else right here.

having problems with the wordpress theme – workin on it!

still not sure why links arent displaying… very weird.

As I’ve written before, (guest) blogging has its privileges.  While at NETGEAR’s HQ last week interviewing employees for the blog, the company’s CEO, Patrick Lo, walked in and pulled from his pocket the still-in-development 2nd-generation WiFi Skype Phone!

This was quite unexpected, at the time I was getting a tour of the recently “remodeled” NETGEAR Digital Lifestyle Room from David Henry. Watch what happens at the end:

As I was scheduled to meet with Patrick after the tour, I did get him to spend a few minutes talking about the phone. As you’ll hear, there are no announced details at the time. He did spend another couple of minutes on the topic, but I’ll save that for the full interview with him, which you’ll find on the NETGEAR blog in the next few weeks. But here’s an excerpt to whet the appetite:

Whilst on the topic (yep, I said whilst), I also received confirmation from the company that the existing first-generation phone now supports T-Mobile service, which means you can use it in a Starbucks! As long as it doesn’t make it onto the planes, looks like mobile Skype is getting better and better.

Thanks for the scoop, Patrick!

Not sure if the emoticon-in-title is really the way to go, but I can’t express it any other clearer than that.  If CEBIT represents the worst in trade shows, the Maker’s Faire represents the best in them.  No other event that I know of combines the openness, creativity and resourcefulness (well, maybe Burning Man) like Maker’s Faire does.  Unfortunately, I have a personal conflict this year and won’t be able to be there.  So to those in the Bay Area who can go, please do so, and I’d like to encourage everyone to find a way to represent that creative energy independently.  Some ideas:

• Upload all your photos to Flickr – not exactly original, but the more the merrier!
• Write a blog post chronicling your favorite inventions
• Do your own video show, put it on YouTube (heck, you can be justin.tv for a day if you want)

Buy tix online here, check out photos and artwork over at Laughing Squid.

With a wife-mandated “clean up your damned room full of junk” I’m on a monthlong quest to determine what stays and what goes.  I decided to tackle my “box o cables” last night.  It turns out that 10 years of buying, building, testing, and reviewing consumer electronics devices leaves one with a “few” extra cables…

I think we counted almost two dozen sets of RCA cables and at least 10 Ethernet cables in the batch, not to mention speaker wire, mini-USB cables, 2 200′ length Ethernets, a dozen coaxial, and a fun batch of proprietary ones (my favorite was the power adapter with a serial cable attachment – I have no clue what it was for).

I’ll be giving some excess ones away at Geek Dinner tonight.  Jealous?  Thought so.