Before I head to Germany in July, I definitely needed to find myself a quality snap-and-shoot digital camera. While I wasn’t looking for a professional SLR, I did want to be able to take high quality pictures and learn a little bit about photography. I’ve long wanted to try my hand at photography, but unfortunately it is an expensive hobby.
After some shopping around I was led to the Panasonic DMC-FH20, and I haven’t been disappointed. This camera comes with several nice features, including the intelligent auto (iA) feature and the ability to record HD video.
Form Factor
It’s not the slimmest camera on the market, so if you’re looking for something that is going to fit in your skinny jeans you might want to look elsewhere. The button layout strikes a great balance between having an overwhelming amount of buttons and so few that navigation becomes cumbersome.
Features
I’ve had a great experience becoming familiar with this camera. The user interface is very intuitive, and provides a variety of options. The iA feature provides good shots, as do the 25 different scene settings, and boasts an 8x optical zoom. You also have the option to shoot with three different aspect ratios: 4:3, 3:2, and 16:9.
The HD video was one of the reasons I decided on this particular camera. It records in 720p, or if you’re looking to conserve some space you can use the VGA and wide screen VGA modes. Note that you cannot adjust the zoom while taking a video. Check out the video to get a better idea of the video quality.
Other Notes
The video mode restricts the maximum length of any video you record. I have an 8 gig SDHC card (it supportds SD and SDXC as well), and while recording in HD I can only record about 8 1/2 minutes consecutively. Video also creates extremely large file sizes, a 5 minute video is going to run around 800 megabytes.
Video Demonstration
Final Thoughts
So far I’m very happy with the camera, and highly recommend it. I’ll make sure to post updates with some pictures from my trip. Meanwhile, check out some photos below and my Flickr Stream.
I just returned from my first viewing of Toy Story 3. This post might be a waste of time, because anyone in their right mind has already seen this movie. I feel the need to apologize to someone for being 10 days late for this masterpiece. Pixar… Internet… Someone hold me accountable!
I’ve grown up with Andy, Woody, Buzz and the whole gang. If I were to compare my own age to Andy’s I’m only a year or two older, and that might be why I connect so deeply with the film. Anything that could be written about Toy Story has already been scribed in the 10 days of my life that I wasted by not seeing this movie repeatedly, so I hope you excuse my unobstructed love for Toy Story’s last hurrah.
If you want to see a cheesy, manufactured sequel, don’t see this movie. If you want to see a fantastic trilogy come to a picture perfect ending, see Toy Story 3. If you have a soul at all, see Toy Story 3. If you want to smile for two hours straight, see Toy Story 3. You get the idea.
Thank you to the creators of this film who truly created a special piece of cinema.
For the longest time the only way to try out Google’s new product Google Voice was to be invited, but I never took the time to seek out an elusive invite. Yesterday Google Voice was finally made available to the public, and being a willing participant of the Google takeover, I set up my account.
Setup
Setup was super easy, if you have a Google Account (which you should), there is nothing more to signing up than typing in your password and choosing a phone number. You can choose your phone number by typing in your area code, or typing in a phrase that you want, and it lists all available numbers. For example, I first tried searching for “austin”, but there were no corresponding numbers available. This isn’t too surprising considering Austin is a six letter word, and you’re searching for a seven digit number. I then tried “hutch” and found several pages of options to choose from.
Features
Initially I wasn’t exactly sure how I was going to use Google Voice, and what benefits it would provide. Seeing that it is free, I decided to grab my number and start playing around. I’m sure Google Voice does a lot of little things, but I’ll highlight the stuff that makes it valuable to me personally.
Voice mail
Any call that is placed to your Google number can either be accepted or sent to voice mail (duh), but trust me it gets a lot more interesting. Voice mails are tied to your account, and you can access them from anywhere you can connect to the internet. They are saved and transcribed automatically. No more going through an annoying menu in a hopeless attempt to find a voice mail that actually was deleted three days ago.
Texting
All texts that are sent to your Google number are archived on your account, making it the easiest way to back up your texts available. You literally don’t have to do anything, other than make sure that people are texting your Google number and not your original number.
Connecting Phones
When someone calls your Google number, you can easily set it up to ring multiple phones. For example, the service can ring both your cell phone and home phone (what’s a home phone?) if someone calls your Google number.
Layout
The layout similar to a Gmail account, with a voice mail inbox, a text inbox, and a contact list. Your contacts can be imported from multiple types of contact organizing software such as Outlook.
Overall
I can say I’m excited to see how I use Google Voice in the near future. Google has really hit the mark with this service, and I can see this being a useful tool for both personal and professional use.
On more than one occasion I’ve had my unfair share of issues with updating my flash plug-in on my browser of choice. Adobe gives detailed instructions on their website, but for some reason something goes awry and I am never able to simply follow the steps they provide.
Instead I thought I’d provide my fail-safe way to update your flash player in Firefox, or any browser for that matter.
At the bottom of this page links for the executable files for IE and Firefox are given.
In my opinion, these links provide a much easier solution than going through the update process. I don’t think it’s kosher for me to post direct links to the files, if you know the rules behind this feel free to enlighten me!
I just returned from my first viewing of Toy Story 3. This post might be a waste of time, because anyone in their right mind has already seen this movie. I feel the need to apologize to someone for being 10 days late for this masterpiece. Pixar… Internet… Someone hold me accountable!
For the longest time the only way to try out Google’s new product 
