SuperGeekery

Navigation

Home | Send me an email. | Links

About This Site

This is the personal blog of John F. Morton. It's where I talk about the stuff that interests me. Primarily technology, marketing and pop culture. If you are looking for my portfolio of work, visit johnfmorton.com. Thanks for stopping by!

Members

Login | Register | Member List

Monthly Archives

• April 2008
• March 2008
• February 2008
• January 2008
• November 2007
• October 2007
• September 2007
• August 2007
• July 2007
• June 2007
• May 2007
• April 2007
• March 2007
• February 2007
• January 2007

Syndicate

• RSS 2.0
• Atom

Join our Mailing List

Filtered by Category: Object of Desire

Dear iPod Touch, Not So Fast

I have been anxiously awaiting the arrival of the iPod Touch I ordered, but over the past week, my desire for it has ebbed. My first hesitation was that I heard Apple has removed the ability to add events to your calendar with the iPod Touch. There is no technical reason for this. It’s simply a move to differentiate the Touch from the iPhone. Yesterday, the first reports of users getting their hands on a Touch didn’t come with glowing reviews bases on a screen that was inferior to the iPhone’s screen.

Those events, along with my suspicion that I will need to replace my mobile phone soon, lead me to cancel my order. I will get an iPod Touch or an iPhone soon, but I’m still torn between the two. Which would you get?

iPod Touch, not iPhone, Is What Got My Money. (It’s What I Want.)

I’d been on the fence about an iPhone for weeks. It looks so sweet and I’ll probably end up with one at some point, but the iPod Touch seems to have filled every “techy” itch that the iPhone filled and got rid of the sticking point for me, the AT&T phone part. It looks sweet. (If you’re wondering what song I doctored into the above photo, check it out here.)

A Cool Little $100 Video Camera.

My Canon video camera stopped working recently. It had a good run, lasting around 6 years, longer than I expect of most electronics with moving parts. Instead of replacing it with another expensive camera, I’ve bought a Flip Video Camcorder that’s about $100 for the model that stores 30 minutes of video and $120 for the 60 minute model.

The camera is about the size of a standard iPod and has a small USB plug that flips out on the side to easily import the movies you take into your computer. It’s light, made entirely of plastic, and comes with a small pouch to protect it from scratches. Their is some capability to zoom, but it’s done digitally, so the results aren’t great. Amazingly, the video is 640x480 pixels which means it’s same as standard definition television. There aren’t any tapes or discs to buy since all the video is stored on flash memory inside the unit.

It’s inexpensive enough and small enough to simply keep with you in your bag. The video is much better than I have recorded from a mobile phone or my digital camera that I use for still photos.

I recently went to see a show by The Loser’s Lounge when they performed a tribute to Fleetwood Mac. I shot some video with the FlipVideo Camera there to show you how the video looks. What you’ll see below is highly compressed because it’s undergone the YouTube process, but it may be enough to persuade you to part with $100 for an easy to use video camera. Come on, you know you want one.

By the way, if you’re on a Mac, check out Perian, the free add-on for QuickTime that I mentioned in an earlier post. I needed it to play the raw files that I downloaded from the camera.

The Latest Object of Desire: Laser Beams.

Watch this video and tell you don’t want one of these.

The Latest Object of Desire: iPhone.

I have until June to figure out how I get out of my Verizon Wireless contract. That’s 5 months to plan. In case you’re one of the 54 people who didn’t already know about the iPhone, visit the Apple site.

I’ve been at CES all week long where all kinds of amazing technology has been introduced. The only so called “news alert” I received from ABCNews.com about anything technology related was for the iPhone. I noticed people surfing for photos of the iPhone from their own now-ready-to-be-replaced mobile devices during one of the sessions I was attending.