Category Archives: Tech!

Sony Bloggie HD camera review

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Bloggie HD camera

Bloggie HD camera

I bought the Sony Bloggie HD Video Camera on a whim a few weeks ago. The TL;DR version is that I don’t recommend the Bloggie mainly because the similarly priced model from Sanyo stomps all over it.

Looking at the HD bloggie specs, you would think it would be at least a silver medalist in the entry-level HD camera arena. Unfortunately, after I have used it for twenty days, I think it should have taken a little more prep time before hitting the market.

Right up front, let’s get some test videos out of the way.

Here’s a field shot, taken at midday in 1280×720…

Same field, same time, but this one is at 1920×1080…

Right. On to the technical details!

The camera records in 4 settings. Using a standard SDHC 8 gb memory card…

  • 1080 at 30p gives you 1 hour and 15 minutes of recording time
  • 720 at 60p gives you 3 hours and 05 minutes of recording time
  • 720 at 30p gives you 4 hours and 58 minutes of recording time
  • VGA mode at 30p gives you 8 hours and 15 minutes of recording time

There is an image stabilization option for the VGA and 720 at 30p video settings, but not for the 720 at 60p or 1080 settings. This becomes extremely evident when shooting outdoor “moving” shots, or just holding the camera as you are walking. Every little bump or heavy step will make the video jump like it was broadsided by a speeding 18-wheeler semi truck on fire. If you are staying still, or just tracking a moving object, it’s not too bad though.

The camera design is similar to Sanyo’s. A USB cable under the rear panel pops out for connecting to a PC or Mac…

Bloggie 02

Bloggie 02

…but whoever designed this plug was apparently guessing about laptop heights because the camera plug is higher than the USB ports on my HP, Dell, and Mac laptops.

Bloggie 01

Bloggie 01

The camera’s USB connector does not have a swivel joint, so you’re stuck connecting it straight in. The only way to connect this camera to the USB ports on my computers was to either prop up the laptops about 1/2 inch on the USB side or to use an extender cable that was included with he camera. (Another specialized cable to carry around! Yay!) Plus it’s a port hog. Once it’s plugged in, you won’t be able to reach any usb ports near the one the Bloggie is plugged into.

Some other “bad camera!” bullet points….

  • The LCD panel useless in daylight. You can not see what you’re shooting. Check out the photos below. The LCD is on full brightness in both photos.
Bloggie 06

Bloggie 06

Bloggie 07

Bloggie 07

  • You can only charge this camera through a USB connection to your PC. There’s no wall charger included.
  • There is no flash on the camera. (The Sanyo has one on their HD camera.)
  • The optical zoom is only 5X. (Sanyo has 10X)
  • There are no manual override camera settings at all. You’re stuck with what the bloggie feels like shooting in video and in “still” camera mode. (And this is a big big big problem for me.)
  • The low light camera recording quality is very poor.
  • Any sort of nighttime imaging and recording is useless. You will get nothing but solid black. (My un-modified first generation iPhone takes better video AND still images at night than this 2010 Sony camera!)
  • Video takes a long time to re-focus on any zoom shot.
  • The still camera images seem blurry and not as sharp as images from a “regular” camera.
  • The gloss camera finish absorbs fingerprints – the camera gets dirty and ugly in seconds. (Sanyo used a matte finish. That’s a much better design!) Here’s a “clean” and “used” comparison…
Bloggie 04

Bloggie 04

Bloggie 03

Bloggie 03

  • Playback is limited to what’s on screen. There’s no “NEXT” or “PREVIOUS” option. If you want to jump to a second video while watching a video currently in playback mode, you need to back up to the menu and choose the next video. Highly frustrating.
  • The mac version of the software has no “info” options and is very limited in scope.
  • If you have anything over medium-large hands, you may accidentally cover the microphone when you hold it. You’ll have to get used to the “three fingers kung-fu grip”. The next photo shows the microphone covered, the second shows the “three fingers kung-fu grip” and the microphone on the curve of the HD camera exposed.
Bloggie 08

Bloggie 08

Bloggie 09

Bloggie 09

OK, now the good parts….

  • It does have an HDMI and Video out, so you can plug it straight into a HDTV.
Bloggie 05

Bloggie 05

  • The Bloggie does come with HDMI and RGB cables and a USB extender cable, so you can plug into anything right out of the box.
  • The camera does very well in indirect daylight and well-lit indoor areas. It’s also fairly water resistant.
  • The microphone picks up everything. Great sound quality.
  • The 720 at 60p is outstanding.
  • The 1080 setting is a knockout. Just don’t move much or you’ll get the “Blair Witch Barfs”. (NOTE; Earlier this week I recorded a recent downpour in the area in 1080 and the video made it on to the local news station. So the 1080 (or 720 at 60p) is perfectly acceptable for HD broadcast.)
  • The zoom feature, once focused after the zoom, stays focused even on moving objects.
  • It takes SDHC cards and Sony’s “stick of gum” style memory.
  • It’s a featherweight. I find myself carrying it everywhere and shooting things on a whim. Citizen/Underground journalism FTW!
  • I’m shooting more 1080 HD video and taking less still images with my digital camera.
  • Plugging it in to a PC with the window closed just charges the unit. You have to open the window to power on the unit to access the photos and movies. Good security feature!
  • Software to use the camera is pre-loaded, so you don’t have to worry about installing the Bloggie’s transfer software on new machines, but you can also just drag-and-drop the movies and images out of the respective drives that appear when you plug in the camera if you don’t want to mess with the software.

Overall, I think it is a good camera for everyday use and it works well for recording HD movies if you have a steady hand. The portability of the device makes it easy to shoot HD movies all the time wherever you go. However, despite the good points, there are superior HD cameras for the same price as this one. (IE: Sanyo’s Xacti).

The Bloggie isn’t bad at all, but I really expected better from Sony.

Three and a half out of five stars.

You can also see the Sony MHS-CM5 bloggie HD Video Camera at Amazon.

The Humble Indie Bundle – 5 games + 2 charities for any price

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There’s a pretty good Humble Indie Game Bundle going on now.

Like the video says, it’s five games for PC, Mac or Linux and a donation to two charities (the EFF and Child’s Play) for any amount you want! You can legitimately get everything for $1 if you like!

Not a bad deal!

Click here to jump to the The Humble Indie Bundle website.

26% (or 1.31 gb) gone in one night

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Way back in December, I ranted about how a 5 gigabyte limit on internet connection plans are completely unrealistic.

Late last night I was updating one of my laptops and found this in the update que.

1.31 out of 5 gone

1.31 out of 5 gone

1.31 gigabytes of core system updates. That’s 26.2% of my monthly allocated bandwidth gone in one night.

On a related note, I think it’s nucking futs that 1.31 gb of data still takes 5 hours to download on one of the major (and better) wireless companies in the United States. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is laughing at us coming in at 28th place in the internet connection speed race! You know things are bad when France is royally beating us senseless, too.

Anybody who says 5 gigabytes is more than enough for one month of internet use needs to leave the 1990’s behind and get some new tech.

Every tweet is going to be archived by the Library of Congress!

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Be careful what you tweet! A new article on CNN says that… “Twitter and the Library of Congress announced Wednesday that every public tweet posted since Twitter started in 2006 will be archived digitally by the federal library.”

Just think! “Every 140-character snippet of info you’ve ever shared publicly on Twitter will soon have a home next to the Declaration of Independence.”

My big question is if they are they going to link to the photo and web shortcuts that are occasionally referenced in all these archived tweets. Without the link of reference, a lot of tweets will lose their meaning.

I think I’ll have to come up a special commemorative tweet for the occasion! Something for posterity! How about “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rig” (D’oh! That was 140 characters!)

Here’s the link to the CNN article.

End of the (on)line for the original Xbox

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Today is D day for playing games online with the original Xbox.

According to Neowin, “as of April 15, all active servers for original Xbox Live subscribers will be shut off. This means that all multiplayer components of original Xbox games, including those available through the Xbox 360‘s Xbox Originals program, will no longer be accessible. ”

I still have my original Xbox somewhere, and I haven’t played it in years, but I do remember wasting tons of time online with Halo 2.

With everyone playing online with the latest gen consoles, this shutdown isn’t too big of a surprise. Going back and playing a previous generation console after getting used to the most recent games is really only for nostalgia.

Here’s the link to the story on Neowin.

Dear Apple: plan on iPhone OS 4 getting jailbroken because of the iAd system

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Apple just announced their new iPhone 4.0 OS will come embedded with a new addition called iAd.

According to Macintouch, “a new “iAd” advertising system that Apple is building into OS 4 for in-app HTML5 ads with “emotion + interactivity” to the tune of 1 billion ad impressions per day.”

What? Seriously?

The idea behind this, according to the story on Engadget, is “…to keep users in the apps to see interactive, “emotional” ad content as often as once every three minutes — not to “yank” them out… — while developers are rewarded with a 60 percent cut of the revenue.”

Do I mind developers getting money? Absolutely not! That’s why I have paid for 100% of the apps on my iPhone. Every single icon has a receipt from either iTunes, Rock or Cydia.

Which is exactly why I have a tremendous problem with the iAd being implemented in the core iPhone 4.0 system.

I paid for the iPhone device, I pay for cellular and data service to the iPhone, and I paid for every app on the iPhone. Why, exactly, am I going to see ads on this device? Why should the bandwidth I am paying for be diverted to the downloads of advertisements I do not want to see? What more do I need to support since I already will have paid for the device itself, the service it runs on and any apps I wanted?

The iAd is nothing more than a overt cash grab by Apple. Saying the developers will be “rewarded” with “60%” for their work is just a diversion from the remaining 40% Apple will drop straight to their bottom line.

Apple has an interesting use of the word “rewarded” in their press release. The developers invested their own time and money to make the apps in the first place, so shouldn’t they get something along the lines of 80% of the iAd revenue for their work? 70% even? “Rewarding” them with little more than half of the income they will get from people using their product is a touch greedy.

I bet the iPhone 4.0 OS will be jailbroken soon after it will be released to disable the iAd system. You watch.

Besides, the iPhone 4.0 is just catching up to what I have already been able to do with my first generation iPhone that’s been jailbroken for over a year!

  • User-defined wallpaper? Got it. (Winterboard)
  • Multitasking? Got it. (Backgrounder)
  • Spell check? Got it. (Inspell)
  • Folder filing? Got it. (Categories)
  • Video Recording? Got it. (Cycorder)
  • Book sync? Got it. (Kindle, Stanza & eReader)

Plus, my iPhone has things the 4.0 OS still doesn’t!

  • Terminal access to the root of the device and to outside sources.
  • Firewall for controlling what apps can access the network
  • Custom lockscreen(s) with upcoming appointment information and weather stats
  • Printing through Bluetooth or WiFi
  • File transfers through bluetooth
  • Google Voice
  • Grooveshark
  • Custom animated backgrounds, ringtones, and custom icon sets.
  • Custom routing of calls based on CallerID
  • Custom fonts throughout the device
  • Full icon control (5 x 5 layout on an infinite-scrolling page)

Apple also announced the iPhone 4.0 OS won’t run on my first generation device, which is perfectly fine with me since I already have all of the 4.0 benefits without any of the wasteful overhead.

So thanks, Apple, but I’ll pass on the cash grab.

Imagine how far ahead of the game Apple would be if it actually had the nerve to truly open the iPhone to all 3rd party developers. Opening the app store to all the jailbreak apps on Cydia and Rock would not only give them a much higher income source than anything the iAd would generate, but also push their marketshare far, far ahead of the newcomers.

Giant WARNING sticker on lithium batteries [PHOTO]

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So the box of batteries for my Surefire E2D LED Defender Flashlight came in, and this is how it looked straight off the truck…

Lithium Batteries Warning

Lithium Batteries Warning

Wow. Apparently these little batteries are real trouble in certain situations.

The official reason for this sticker according to the TSA/FAA is that…

“…the Federal Aviation Administration has studied fire hazards associated with both primary and lithium-ion cells… as a result of this research, the FAA no longer allows large, palletized shipments of these batteries to be transported as cargo on passenger aircraft.  The research also shows that an explosion will not result from shorting or damaging either lithium-ion or primary lithium batteries. Both are, however, extremely flammable. Primary lithium batteries cannot be extinguished with firefighting agents normally carried on aircraft, whereas lithium-ion batteries are easily extinguished by most common extinguishing agents, including those carried on board commercial aircraft.”

…and from Airliners.net…

“Lithium batteries are prohibited from aircraft because of the components of the battery require it to be sealed. Lithium reacts violently with nitrogen, and water specifically requiring the batteries to be hemetrically sealed. Because the batteries have to be sealed they become an explosion problem due to overheating from a short.”

Primary lithium batteries, the non-rechargable kind, is what I got. So if this box caught fire, it couldn’t be extinguished with firefighting agents normally carried on aircraft. That would be bad.

FedEx even has a “Dangerous Goods Specialist” that puts a  “PRIMARY LITHIUM BATTERIES — FORBIDDEN FOR TRANSPORT ABOARD PASSENGER AIRCRAFT” sticker [PDF] for their boxes too.

I really love my SureFire flashlight, but now I wonder if I will be allowed to fly with it as carry on or as checked luggage.

Is your twitter account sending out spam in your name? Try this…

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If you have a twitter account that’s posting spam messages without your permission, you should follow these 7 steps to clear it up…

#1 – Log in to your Twitter account

#2 – Go to SETTINGS on the top right of the page

#3 – In the new page that appears, click on CONNECTIONS

#4 – Under the “You’ve allowed the following applications to access your account” headline is a list of every application and website that has permission to post to your twitter account. REVOKE ACCESS on everything. (You can keep “Google by Google Inc : Google/Twitter integration”, but that’s all I would recommend.)

#5 – Now click on SETTINGS  on the top right menu

#6 – In the new page that appears, click on PASSWORD

#7 – Change your password to something new

That should clear out the ghost in your twitter account.

One possible way to keep photos on your camera from being confiscated

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Let’s say, hypothetically of course, you’re the kind of person who takes photos of foreign Law Enforcement Officers and their activities.

And let’s say, again hypothetically, those foreign LEOs in the country you are visiting just don’t feel all that pretty at that particular moment, and if they realize you have taken a photo of them, they decide to move toward you asking (very nicely, of course!) to see all the photos you just took.

I think I found a way out of a situation like this.

Hypothetically, of course.

First off, if you know you’re going to be in a foreign country, you really need to bring a new blank memory card for your camera. The risk of losing a special photograph just because it’s on the same memory stick you’re currently traveling with just isn’t worth it. Spend the $10 to $20 and have a new, blank memory card in your camera when you travel.

Second, you will need to take a series of this next image as the initial photos on your camera’s new memory card (click to enlarge)….

NO IMAGES ON CAMERA

NO IMAGES ON CAMERA

You will have to set your digital camera to capture “low light” or manually change the settings so you don’t get the “waves” on your monitor coming out on the photo. Plus you might need a tripod (or a stack of books) to make sure the image is in the same position in every photo.

When you have 7 (or more!) photos of that image, click to review it on your camera. If it looks centered and passable, you’re all set.

Here’s what hypothetically happens. As some foreign LEOs are heading toward you, press PLAY (or REVIEW) on your camera to get to the photos you have already taken. Hide every menu option that shows up on the LCD (that usually means pressing the DISPLAY button to cycle through the display options). When the camera’s LCD display is showing the photos you have already taken in full screen, press FORWARD on the review buttons to jump back to these first photos you took.

Photos that appear to say the camera’s memory card is empty.

Jump ahead 3 or 4 photos so you can cycle back and fourth.

Now here’s the moment you want to go for the academy award for best acting in a foreign film… act very apologetic. Very contrite. Right before the foreign Law Enforcement Officers get to you, say you’re very, very sorry, you didn’t know there was a problem taking photos in that area, and you have already erased the whole memory card. That’s why you were pushing all those buttons on your camera as they got closer! Show them the camera display, and press forward twice and back twice.

It really is better if your performance lets you keep the camera in hand, but if the foreign Law Enforcement Officers do grab your camera from you, and if you’re lucky, they will also press FORWARD and BACK to see if there are any images on the camera.

Nope. None at all officer!

And then, when you’re far, far away, you should immediately email those photos to get them out of your possession!

Of course, this is all just a silly hypothetical situation, and I have no idea if it will work at all in the real world. No idea whatsoever!

Best of luck, everyone!

GHOST.CC free service shutting down March 15

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I was a member of GHOST.CC, a cloud computing site which enabled you to login from their website and access a web-based desktop service.

It was really straightforward. You log in with your username and password…

Ghost.CC 01

Ghost.CC 01

..and in a few moments a workspace would appear.

Ghost.CC 02

Ghost.CC 02

You could customize it, use it as a web browser, create and work on documents… just like you were connecting an working on another PC.

Ghost.CC was fun, but I just didn’t use it that often. Not when I could connect to my personal PCs and Macs just as easily as I could this service, and retrieve my own documents from my own trusted domains and servers. It was also easier and faster to use a proxy site (or my own proxy server) when I needed to bypass any firewalls.

Last night I finally had a chance to sift through one of my older email accounts and found a notice from GHOST.CC that they are closing down for good March 15th.

From their March 3rd email…

“We hope you have been enjoying our free Ghost service. Regrettably changes in the marketplace mean that it is no longer economical for us to host the Ghost service and we will be closing down the service on or around March 15. We will instead be focusing on licensing or selling our technology to larger companies.

We advise you to migrate ALL important folders, files and emails to another secure place before March 15. You might like to consider Google Docs or Microsoft SkyDrive for files and services such as Gmail or Yahoo! Mail for email. Some instructions for migrating data are included below.

We are really sorry for any inconvenience this may cause you and are very grateful for the fantastic support we had from our community.”

Ghost.CC was a great idea, and I did get some good use of it here and there. This was an outstanding technical achievement, and it was integrated very well with every web browser I tried it in. I guess it just wasn’t the time for it. Best of luck in your next endeavor, guys.