Antioch Road

SmartMoney.com’s 10 Things Not to Buy in 2010: Why No Love for the Compact Digital Camera?

SmartMoney.com gives us 10 things that are heading into the obsolete category and thus we should not buy in 2010. (Link via TruePravda.) Most items on the list make sense.

CDs: While providing better sound quality than alternatives, it’s clearly more convenient to listen to online radio. When I want a track permanently on my computer, Amazon's MP3 store usually provides what I need.

External Hard Drives: Ones I’ve owned have been so fickle and unreliable that I don’t plan on owning another. Backups on CDs or DVDs, networked computers in the house, flash drives, and online solutions work for me. I highly recommend paying Flickr’s relatively cheap yearly fee for online photo backups.

Smartphone Also-Rans: It’s down to Blackberry, iPhone, and Android. I love my Blackberry. My wife has less affection for it.

Newspaper Subscriptions: I’ve never had one and I would say a lot of people my age have never had one.

But then SmartMoney.com’s list includes this curious one: compact digital cameras. They say Digital SLRs are increasingly popular and, impliedly, what to purchase going forward. Digital SLRs may be the tool of professional photographers, but for most people, compacts meet our needs and are more practical and economical. The bestselling digital SLR on Amazon right now is the Canon EOS Rebel T1i. It costs $664. It is 8 x 12 x 7 inches and weighs 1.6 pounds. Compare that with the Canon PowerShot SX120IS, which costs $200, takes fine pictures for amateurs, and is much easier to transport with dimensions of 4.4 x 2.8 x 1.8 inches and one-third the weight of the Rebel. It’s hard to see how SLRs are the better option for how most people use their cameras.

Google Offers Free Wi-Fi in Two Initial Locations

I'm with The Motley Fool's Seth Jayson: Google Wi-Fi adds to Google's creepiness factor.

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Google Seeks To Store Your Life

Opera Browser Goes Free

The world's best internet browser, Opera 8, today removed its greatest impediment to a higher than 1% market share: it went free without ads. (Hat tip: Opera Watch.)

Also, for those of you who have considered starting a blog / photo sharing site, but don't want to pay the hosting costs for your own site, it's hard to beat Opera's newly updated community page, which offers blogs and photo albums with 300mb of storage space, all for free.

Google Seeks To Store Your Life

CBS MarketWatch quotes (Frank Barnako, "Google photo program boosts other services") Bill Gross, whose company created the photo managing software Picasa and sold it to Google, as saying, "I think Google wants to be the place where you store your life." I think so, too. I like Google's products, but I'm not that excited about it storing my life.

Microsoft Exec Talks Firefox

BetaNews has an interesting interview with Gary Schare, Director of Windows Product Management at Microsoft, discussing Internet Explorer and the encroachment of Firefox in the browser market. (Tip via Frank Barnako's "Internet Daily" column at MarketWatch.com.) Much of the interview relates to security issues and the rationale for why IE doesn't provide as many new features as Firefox does (e.g., tabbed browsing, which is actually no longer that new in Mozilla based browsers and in Opera).

The lack of innovation in IE is largely explained away by noting that IE strives to be backwards compatible, whereas each Firefox release necessitates the updating of any third-party components (extensions, themes, etc.). Interestingly, though, Microsoft is now actively promoting on its web site third-party tools that increase the functionality of IE, seemingly recognizing the threat of Firefox.

Firefox Reaches Its Goal in Newspaper Ad Campaign

The Firefox browser is launching version 1.0 soon (it's in beta at the moment). To help spread the word, Mozilla launched a campaign for donations to take out a full page ad in the New York Times announcing the launch. ZDNet reports Mozilla reached its goal in just three days, a week earlier than the foundation had hoped.

But why the New York Times? Both USA Today and the Wall Street Journal have higher and more national circulations.

Google's Ad Policy: Anti-Anti-Anything

After noticing this WorldNetDaily article on how Google took down Stand to Reason's advertisement after deeming them a "hate site" for their biblical stand on homosexuality, I got curious as to what Google's ad policy was. According to a San Francisco Chronicle article (Verne Kopytoff, "Google's ad rules complex, controversial," 8/9/2004) picked up by Religion News Blog, Google essentially does not allow ads from any sites that are anti-anything.

So in striving to not allow any ads that are anti-anything, Google has made itself anti- anti-anything. In other words, they take a stand on taking stands.

Will Google Surpass Microsoft?

Jay Currie paves a possible path, at The American Spectator, for Google's taking over the internet, overtaking Microsoft as the dominant computer company. Google already has the search engine, the email, Blogger, etc. "Stitch those offerings together with a Google browser which fully integrates blogging, Gmail, a personal photo album, instant messaging, a world class search engine, and off site data backup, and a future begins to open up." It could build its own browser, or partner with Mozilla. If Google were to then develop (presumably internet-based) word processing, spreadsheet, bookkeeping, and basic image editing programs, "What would be left for Microsoft to do?"

All this sounds a bit far-fetched to me. Mr. Currie doesn't even mention Yahoo!, which already offers some of the things -- photo album, instant messenging -- he says Google could one day offer. Certainly Yahoo! and Microsoft are not going to sit idly by while Google takes over the computing world.

Duke to Give "Free" iPods to Incoming Freshman

CNN/Money reports that Duke University will be "giving" "free" Apple iPods to its 1,650 incoming freshman this year. School officials say "the popular MP3 music players can be used for educational purposes as well as entertainment. The school has set up a Web site modeled on Apple's iTunes music site that will allow students to download recorded lectures, audio books, language lessons and other course content. The students can also use the site to purchase music."

Undoubtedly, the iPods will not really be "free," as their cost will surely be included in the price of tuition or other "student fees." And from an educational standpoint, this appears ridiculous. It makes Duke look technologically forward without addressing any real pedagogical concerns. It also appears to be a nice little way for Duke to bring in some extra revenue, per the Duke provided download site.

An Alternative Browser (sort of)

For those of you who like the pop-up killing and tabbed browser features of Mozilla or Phoenix, but still want to keep using Internet Explorer, check out Avant Browser.  It uses IE, but has some additional features, and is quite slick.