Posted Sunday, October 03, 2004

Talk Amongst Yourselves: I'll Be Back Later this Month

I'm off to Europe for a couple of weeks of vacation sans computers. Unless, of course, you count two digital cameras, two digital wallets, and an iPod. Here's a look at what I'll be cramming into my camera bag.



Frequent visitors to this site will recall that I've been researching a variety of digital wallets for storing the photos that my wife and I will be shooting.

The winners? The Archos Gmini 400 and a Smartdisk FlashTrax. I'll be taking both so I have redundant backup for our photos. And having learned an important lesson from a friend, I'll be carrying and storing them separately, so if one gets stolen or lost, I won't lose everything.

Although my iPod will be along for music duties, I won't be using Belkin's Digital Camera Link. It's a bit too slow, although it's much faster than Belkin's Media Reader for iPod.

After working with these devices for a couple of weeks, I'm convinced that gizmos like these are the future -- we need portable devices that enable us to store and play back not only music, but also photos and, to a lesser degree, video.

I'm also convinced that there's room for improvement -- both devices have shortcomings or annoyances that I'll write about upon my return. This is a market that needs Apple's touch.

I leave you with a few links for your surfing enjoyment.

rawformat.com. A recent addition to the Avondale Media network, rawformat is the place to get the skinny on the new Digital Negative photo format and on the advantages of shooting in -- yes, raw format.

Web Design World, Boston. I'm the Conference Chair of this three-day event, which takes place December 6, 7, and 8. Some of the Web world's most brilliant designers and teachers will be there -- join us!

The Macintosh iLife '04. Yup, it's my baby, and although I'm biased, I think you should have it. Nearly 300 gorgeous, full-color pages on all five iLife programs, and a two-hour companion instructional DVD -- for $20.99 on Amazon. There isn't another book like it. Check out the PDF and video excerpts, and see why one reviewer called it "the best computer book ever, bar none."

And with that shameless bit of me-commerce, I'm outta here. Be good to each other, don't burn the house down, and don't anthropomorphize your Macs. They hate that.