My old digital camera is the Canon PowerShot S110 Digital Elph, and it has served me well over the years. Back in 2000 or so when I bought it, it was one of the better digital cameras you could get for the size and price.  But by today’s standards, it’s a little bulky and at 2MP, low resolution.

Although I have a Canon Rebel XTi for more serious shooting, it’s too big to carry around. Even lugging around my PowerShot at the World Series last week made me want to upgrade to something new.

With perfect timing, I got a good deal on a Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T20 (MSRP $300) which is a whopping 8.1MP and packed with features, as well as a good deal from Best Buy for a SanDisk 4GB Memory Stick Pro Duo for $69.99.

The most obvious difference is the Sony is sexier, thinner, the LCD display is larger and it doesn’t have a viewfinder.  I liked the viewfinder on the Canon when I was taking a shot in total darkness because the LCD would show just black.  However, the Sony has a red (IR?) light that comes on automatically to let you see where things are on the LCD even when it’s pitch dark. Nice touch.

Some of the cool features of the Sony are high-res (640 x 480 at 30 fps) MPEG movies, HDTV aspect ratio stills, on screen real-time histogram, super steadyshot, face detection, macro close-up mode, and automatic red eye reduction.  For some reason, the MPEG video plays properly with the Quicktime Player but not with Windows Media Player.  Weird.

The first thing you’ll notice about the Sony is that it makes sounds. To take pictures, you slide the front open to reveal the tiny lens and flash. It boots quickly and is ready in about 1.5 seconds, which is nice when you want to take those action pictures.

You can create folders on your memory stick with the camera to separate family friendly vacation pictures from your pr0n pictures with your friend with benefits.  It also makes it easier to copy an entire event to your computer later via the included USB cable, which makes the camera look like a hard drive.

Upon taking some test pictures, I noticed the tiny flash is amazingly bright for such a small camera. There’s a lot of smart code running on the camera (e.g. face detection) which will make sure the correct areas are properly focused and exposed.  For example, if you take a picture of a bright object, it doesn’t cause the rest of the picture to look black.  So much is going on behind the scenes to make your pictures look great automatically.

Something that my more expensive XTi has, which the Sony also has, is burst mode, where you can take multiple pictures while you hold down the shutter button.  Another feature is automatic exposure bracketing, where it will take 3 pictures (under exposed, normal, and over-exposed) with just one push of the button.  I use this feature on my XTi a lot.

After you have taken the pictures, there are several nice touches they’ve put into this little Sony.  You can select multiple photos for deletion.  You really need this if you’re using the burst mode.  Also, like the more expensive Xti, you can zoom into the stored photo to make sure the focus is good.  There’s also a bunch of in camera manipulation (soft focus, fisheye, crop, starburst, red-eye elimination) that you’d normally would do on your computer.  But for people who want to print directly from their camera, those are nice features.

If you really want to bore your friends and neighbors, the Sony has an overkill feature. Connect your camera to your TV with the provided cable and watch a feature rich slide show with special effects and even background music.  It looks a lot like those super busy myspace pages with slide shows.

In theory, the display is large enough and the speaker is loud enough for you to watch videos on it.  But I don’t think too many people are going to be using it for that purpose. But in a pinch, you could show a video on a TV this way.  It’s a lot easier than carrying around a DVD player for presentations I guess.

Overall, I’m very happy with my new Sony. I like that it’s easy to use but so much is going on behind the scenes to produce some great looking pictures. It doesn’t hurt that it looks cool and sexy too.

I had to work today, July 4th. The good news: No traffic. The bad news: No customers. But that’s not what got to me. The day time valet parking guy had an iPhone. Yup. You heard me.

Here I am, trying to figure out if I can justify the $599, not to mention the penalty for switching to AT&T, and the valet parking kid has one already. He stood in line the first day. How much money do these guys make anyway? I guess the change in the cars must add up.

Well, all the hype of the iPhone is over and according to one lady I met at the Bicycle Casino with an iPhone, there was about 2,000 people at the Glendale Apple store on Friday. Reports are now that they are not sold out and there’s no longer any lines. So the people who stood in line for 2 or 3 days could have just waited. But then, they wouldn’t be on TV.

So since I’m with Verizon, and all my friends are with Verizon (read: free calls), I don’t think I’m going to be able to get an iPhone. If I were to get one, I’d have to keep my Verizon phone, which is the Verizon LG enV (aka VX9900), shown above being licked by Juliet. Why is she licking it? No reason, except that I didn’t have an iPhone for her to lick, and she refused to lick something else.

One thing that I like about my enV is the full QWERTY keyboard. It makes answering text messages a snap. In the past, I’ve tried answering using my old Motorola phones, and I got to dread having to do it. Now, I love it. Otherwise, the screen is kind of small, and I don’t understand why the time on the front screen is so tiny, I have to put get a magnifying glass to be able to read it. Also, Verizon has disabled the Bluetooth connection to my laptop so I can’t download music that way. I hate Verizon.

The lady I talked to had trouble with her headset plugging into her iPhone with the clear plastic casing that she bought at the Apple store. She had to remove the casing to get the headset plug to be able to plug in all the way. She also told me that it took 17 hours for her iPhone to get activated via iTunes, probably because of all the people trying to activate their phones simultaneously. She was in love with her iPhone.

Later, I was at another table with a guy with an iPhone. He was not in love with his iPhone. He told me the iPhone didn’t match up to the hype. As a matter of fact, he said he uses 5 cell phones and his friend uses even more. They each had 2 phones on them at the table. His friend has the Helio Ocean which they both love. He let me play with the iPhone and the Helio and I have to say that the Helio is easier to hold. The iPhone is just slightly too wide and too thin to be comfortable. But the screen did give me a boner.

So will I get one? I’m going to wait for my friend to get one. He’s married to Apple but I do trust his opinions on gadgets.

After evaluating the Cable DVR against the Tivo, I decided to close my Tivo account to save the $13 per month.

Before calling Tivo, I checked the GetHuman “get around the phone bots” list and Tivo was listed so I used his trick.

“Amy” the Tivo rep grilled me with questions. I told her that I couldn’t get the Amazon unbox to work, chanel changing was slow because of the IR connection, my Tivo only has one tuner, and some other complaints that I had.

She didn’t have answers for any of them except for the one tuner, which she said the more expensive Tivo model did fix. I told her I didn’t want to spend any more money.

Just when I thought I was going to be able to close my account, she said that she could lower my monthly rate down to $6.95, which would be good forever, even if I got the new HD Tivo box in the future. That made me stop and think about it because although the HD Tivo box costs something like $300, I know it’s a good box. Amy added that I could use the Tivo as a backup in the bedroom. Hmmm.

Then, Amy said, “And you can always still cancel at any time.” This was true.

Damn it. I got talked into keeping my account open. Amy had talked me into it. To top it off, after I had agreed, she even kept telling me other reasons why I should keep the Tivo service. I almost changed my mind again because it sounded like a guilty perp telling cops why his alibi is okay.

Well, I guess I’m going to keep my Tivo for a few more months.

Apparently, there was this same expo last year but I never even heard of it until this year. They changed the theme a little to add girls and gadgets to the gambling. Wait a second. This expo is the same theme as my blog! I guess that means…

From the exhibitor list for this year, it looks like a few Vegas strip clubs will be representing their wares. Among the listed are Library, Olympic Garden, Saphire, Seamless, and Treasures. On the floor plan, there was a “Rhino Vegas Basketball,” but I don’t think that’s the Spearmint Rhino. Too bad.

I don’t get the impression that it will be like the AVN expo or even the old CES, back in the day but I’m ready to see what stuff they have since I’ll be at the World Series Main event anyway.

Look for my double report of this expo and the goings on at the World Series of Poker 2007 Main event.

Gaming Life Expo 2007
July 5-8, 2007
Rio Hotel and Casino
Las Vegas, Nevada

Let’s get ready to rrrumble!

In this corner, the disputed champion of DVRs, Tivo Series 2. And in the other corner, Time Warner Cable’s generic DVR with 120Gigs.

As you can see, the remotes look pretty different. Most of the regular functions are the same.

Let’s start with the power button. On the Tivo, it always turns on/off the TV. On the Cable DVR remote, it will turn off the DVR, or your DVD player, or your TV, depending on what device was selected. So to watch a program, you have to push the “TV” button, push the power button to turn on the TV, then push the “CBL” cable button just to get started. What a pain in the ass. This round goes to Tivo.

Next, let’s take a closer look at the remote. What I love about the Tivo is the shape and position of the play, pause, foward and rewind buttons arranged in a circle, and are relatively large and easy to find without even looking at the control.

Alternately, on the Cable remote, even the play button is hard to find and you have to look down at the remote to find the buttons.  Also, there is no jump skip button like on the Tivo. Tivo takes this round.

On the Tivo, you can jump in increments of 15 minutes. Also, there’s a secret hack that lets you skip 30 seconds at a time. I love this feature for skipping commercials. No such feature on the generic DVR. So to get to near the end of a show, you have to fast foward all the way, which basically takes about 1 minute per hour of recorded programming. Tivo takes this round hands down.

Speaking of fast foward, on the Tivo, if you fast foward all the way, it will automatically pause, then you can press reverse to go back, or press the left arrow to go to the menu to delete or keep the program. On the Cable DVR, you are simply given the choice of delete or keep. If you wanted to see the very end of the show, you can’t do it. If you press “keep,” it takes you to the menu where all you can do is start play again and start from the start of the show. Tivo wins this round by far.

Tivo gets it’s show lineup via the Internet so either you need a phone connection or a WiFi (via USB) or ethernet connection to your router. Cable DVR gets it’s show lineup over cable so you don’t need any extra connections. Cable takes this round.

One of the biggest features of the Cable DVR is it has 2 tuners. I’ve heard rumors that the Tivo actually has 2 tuners in it but there’s no way to access it. In any case, the Cable DVR allows you to record one program while watching another. You can trick your Tivo to almost do that by using the tuner in your DVD player but you won’t be able to see all the digital channels.

Something cool you can do with the Cable DVR is to watch 2 shows simultaneously, and pause one, push “Swap”, watch another show, then pause that show, then go back to the first show and play from where you left off.  No way you can trick a Tivo to do that. Cable wins this round hands down.

Tivo has some nice search features, as well as keyword searches. You can only do simple searches on Cable. Tivo has very consistant user interfacing, like always going back to the previous menu by pushing the “left” button. Cable has a “last” button but it doesn’t always work and sometimes, there is simply no way to go back to the previous menu. Very inconsistant and confusing. Tivo wins this round.

Tivo has a slick user interface. It looks like a graphic artist designed it. The Cable DVR has a 70′s interface that looks like the interface embedded inside your TV set. Ugly. But they do allow you to change the color of this ugly interface. I’ll call this round a tie.

Tivo seems to have a lot of areas where “Please wait” messages come popping up because it’s so slow. When you change the order of your season pass, the wait is measured in time so long, you have to leave and come back later. Even just getting the list of channels can cause the dreaded “wait” message. So far, the Cable DVR is much more snappy and rarely has a pause and I haven’t seen a “wait’ message yet. Cable wins this round.

Tivo has some kind of tricky (probably patented) way of fast fowarding where when you push play, it rewinds back a little.  At first, I didn’t like it but I got used to it and eventually, learned to love it. The Cable DVR is more like a VCR and when you push play, it starts from just about that point. Sometimes, you overshoot and you have to push the “replay” button which goes back 15 seconds. I like the Tivo method.

Also, anytime you pause on the Cable DVR, there seems to be some type of small delay when you push play. It’s a little annoying to me. The image is coming from a hard drive. Can’t they buffer it or something? What’s with the stutter guys? This round goes to Tivo for sure.

As for sound, Tivo has cute sounds that it makes when you push buttons. It can get annoying but you can turn it off. I never realized how much I used this to let me know what was going on until I tried the Cable DVR, which has no indications at all. I can’t tell when it’s accepted my command.  In fact, when you delete shows, sometimes it takes a while and since it doesn’t make any sounds, you have no idea if it’s working or not.  But as far as the actual audio, I may be wrong but I think the Cable DVR sound is louder. Don’t ask me why that would be. I’m going to still give Tivo this round anyway.

When you go into a function or setup, Tivo shows that screen only and you can only hear the audio from the show. With the Cable DVR, you get a picture-in-picture of the show in the upper right corner so you can continue to watch the show while you do setups, and changes. Cable DVR wins this round.

As for the box, they are both basically the same, except the Cable DVR can record HD programs and has an HDMI output. If you have HD, this is a big difference, but otherwise, who cares. I’ll give this round to Cable DVR.

And finally, my Tivo Series 2 was $50 with mail in rebate. Later, I saw it for free with mail in rebate. I don’t know how much it is now. My monthly fee is about $13, but I see on their website that it’s now $17 for a 1 year plan. The Cable DVR is free and the monthly fee is $13. Cable wins this final round.

So with the score at 8 to 7, the fight goes to… drum role please…

Tivo! But at 8 to 7, it’s really close. And if you have an HDTV, it’s a no brainer for the Cable DVR because the HDTV version of Tivo is expensive.

How Things Work and Not Work.

I hardly ever use my land line so to save money, I decided to switch to Vonage.  For those who have not seen their TV ads, it’s a company that provides VOIP (voice over IP) via your broadband internet connection.  I wish I could get rid of a land line completely but I still need to FAX and buzz people into the building. I wasn’t sold on the idea but decided to try it.

Got the box in the mail in 2 days, plugged it in as per the instructions, and to my shock, it worked the first time with no problems whatsoever.  Even my FAX worked.  It gives you a voice mail and all the other usual goodies (caller ID, forwarding, call waiting, etc) and unlimited long distance calls.  Nice.

I was so amazed at how easy this was to get working, I decided to continue my tech trek.

I have a Tivo so I decided to sign up for the Amazon movie/TV show download program called “Unbox”, which gives you $15 for free when you sign up.  The way it works is, you choose a movie you want to “rent” and it downloads it to your Tivo so you can watch it on your regular TV (instead of having to watch it on your computer).  It all sounded good and it’s free so I tried it.  After 2 calls to the Amazon Unbox customer service (waiting about 20 minutes each time), it still doesn’t work.  I decided to give up on it.

So I’m 1 for 2. That’s 50%.

Then, I read on Engadget that Verizon (my old landphone carrier) sued Vonage and won an injuction for infringing on their patent to connect phones via the Internet to other phones.  Not only does Vonage have to pay like $56M, they might have to close up shop. Son-of-a-$(%#!

So now I guess I’m 0 for 2.

MS decides to not make the Zune compatible with the other MP3 players and music websites.  It came out this week.  Zzzzzz

PS3 comes out at the end of this week.  Blue-ray, blue-tooth, blue-balls. It’s all blue. As “Gears of War” comes out for the 360 this week, Sony says they might not be able to deliver the measly 400k units for the U.S.  So the retailers are scrambling telling their pre-order game fanatics they may not get their PS3, but they get a free DVD.  Huh?  Why does Sony even bother to have billboards and TV commercials for the PS3 when it’s already sold out of units!

Nintendo’s Wii also comes out this month.  It actually will have some “real” games on day one, unlike the PS3.  I guess Nintendo knows games.

MS dropped the part in Vista that was going to change the entire file system to be a relational database to make searches faster.  To see how this makes a difference, I’ll give you a perfect real life example.

I needed to look for a specific file that I knew the name of on my WinXP based system.  I used XP’s explorer to do a search for the file on my drive “C”.  No wildcards.  A specific filename.  Chunk, chunk, chunk. Anytime this decade would be nice.

After about 5 minutes of waiting, I got bored and opened up a browser window and googled my own address for fun.  In 0.41 seconds, I got a list of websites that had my address in it.  One was an article written by somebody at the same address about some weird scientific stuff.  Another one was a website that had a game that was a copy of an old game I wrote in the 90′s.  Some other weird ones that looked at too.

In the mean time, my search for the file continued.  After doing some other work, I noticed the hard drive went quiet so I looked and sure enough, after about 20-30 minutes, XP finally found my 1 file.

There you have it.  The difference between XP’s (and presumably Vista’s) file structure for searching vs. Google.  Is this a fair comparison?  Not really. XP only went through about 5k of directories, maybe 50k-100k of files in 30 minutes.  Google found my results from several million websites on the Internet in 0.41 seconds.  Hmmm.

In XP’s defense, their system does not take up any space on the hard drive, whereas google’s method would probably take up about 1G of hard drive space.  Will I give up 1G to save 30 minutes?  With the way prices are with hard drives, the answer is now yes.  10 years ago, no.

So I look forward to Vista’s release in 2007.  It will be slow and beautiful.

Oh, sorry.  Have to go do another search.

According to slashdot, the new Microsoft Zune (supposed iPod killer) is not going to support “Plays For Sure.”  Playsforsure.com was Microsoft’s way of making music sites, MP3 players and Windows all compatible and they got Napster, Creative, AOL and others to join.

Now, they come out with their own MP3 player, and they are not supporting their own “Plays For Sure?”  What the “F” is this?  I hate Microsoft.  Just when their XBox 360 was starting to make me like them, they do this crap.