Pictured above are the crack team of staff from our Turner Digital Media Tech and Turner Sports Interactive teams as we relaunch the ad systems on Nascar.com today. I played a key role, bringing two dozen hot donuts (from Krispy Kreme, of course) and a humongous box of coffee. The launch went swimmingly, of course – this is a great team to work with!
So this post is going to be one of those geeky excursions into gadgetland – specifically, into the world of the new spiffy camera I bought for my birthday. I’ve been looking for a ‘run-around’ camera – when I don’t want to be bothered by the full Canon 5D and complement of lenses, but just want something close at hand to capture the kids, the world around me, that fits in my pocket, has enough pro features to keep me happy, etc. I selected the Ricoh GX100, a very pocketable, RAW-shooting, zoom-lens rangefinder.
There are a number of entries in the somewhat arcane ‘rangefinder-like’ prosumer point-and-shoot category. These are basically digicams trying to behave sort of like the Leica M-series film cameras of old, for those of us who don’t quite bring in the mon-ay to afford the $5k price tag for the Leica M8 – without a lens. The cameras I looked at all have street prices between $500 and $700 – so they are not toys by any means. Leica has their D-Lux 3, Sigma produces the impressive new DP-1 (with the unusual Foveon sensor), and Ricoh has a couple of entries – the multi-focal-length GX1000 and the fixed-lens GRs. None of these (until you hit the stratospheric M8 class) have truly interchangeable lenses – but the GX has a lovely 24-72 f/2.5-4.4. Wide enough to provide visuals rarely seen on a point-and-shoot – and an aperture range that allows (along with the hardware anti-shake feature) to grab images you might not be able to capture otherwise. The other key feature here was that the camera can capture in RAW format – in this case, the pretty-much universal DNG or digital negative. That makes post-processing a breeze in Lightroom. I’m very happy with this little gem so far. I’m not thrilled with the electronic viewfinder the kit came with – I’m going to be looking into some spiffy Voigtlander optical viewfinders a lot of enthusiasts say work well with the GX100.
Here is a gallery of some other images I’ve captured in these first few days.
So much for the lines. A buddy of mine just called, saying he waltzed into the Lenox Square Apple Store at 8pm EDT and simply asked for and was handed his iPhone. No camping required, which is a good thing, because his wife threatened legal action if any urban camping was involved in his quest for this gadget
Well, I may have to eat my words. First, ZDnet blogger Mary Jo Foley who covers Microsoft reports rumors of ActiveSync licensing to be announced at any time for the iPhone. That means, for those companies who enable this feature on their Exchange servers, OTA sync would be possible for email and calendars on the iPhone – glory be, hallelulia! I want to see Apple confirm this, but this basically blows away the issues around corporate integration. Second, uber-tech writer from the WSJ Walt Mossberg makes an offhand comment in his video review of the device that Exchange integration is possible “if your IT department cooperates by enabling a setting on the server.” Now he didn’t specifically talk about ActiveSync, and may have simply been referring to the capability of Exchange servers to support outside-the-firewall IMAP, but I am keeping my fingers crossed on iPhone & ActiveSync. Mary Jo reports confirmation in both the Times and WSJ on the issue of Exchange IMAP support, but still stands by her report that Microsoft is licensing ActiveSync for the device. And there is an outside chance the gadget fairy may bless me with one of these for testing. Now I’m interested again.
In keeping with the gaming theme of recent posts, I must share the photo above. I used a gift certificate from my sisters-in-law they sent as a thank-you for helping them with their new jewelery business (their site will be unveiled soon) to buy the much-heralded Guitar Hero II. There is no doubt this is an amazing game – do not pass go, do not collect $200 – go out and get this game if you have an Xbox 360 or the Playstation. Sam, of course, loves it as well as you can see! Amy also manages to mostly kick my butt at this one – hmm, perhaps her years in the music conservatory finally paid off? Anyway, I’m just trying to figure out how to hold the darn guitar in a way that doesn’t result in the tips of my fingers on my left hand going numb and staying that way for going on 48 hours now. It seems to be getting better, but I’m so uncoordinated that I have to mash the buttons on the guitar neck far harder than necessary. I seem to keep playing Matthew Sweet’s Girlfriend over and over again, but my scores are far behind all my Xbox Live buddies. I’m somewhere in the 350,000’s on the leaderboard, while my friend Juanita Winters is up around 25,000 worldwide. Scary, really. Can’t wait for the reported 2007 Summer release of their update with only 80s music, or the late-year Rock Band – where multiple players will be able to join together online on bass, drums, vocals and guitar.