Archive for October, 2006

the other day, I was talking with Frank about exceptional software programmers able to influence notably a whole company by their own activity or impossibly better than the rest of the programming crowd. This person is the one you need to hire when you have an exceptional entrepreneurial project or the one you want to identify, protect and feed while waiting for such a project. Weirdly, I just read a random article that gives a more detailed description of the phenomenon and gives it a name: The Free electron.

Worth reading. Worth keeping.

I had already told you about Yotophoto, the image search engine allowing you to choose the kind of copyright or legal rights associated to the image (and, thus, giving you an east way to find free images for your web site, while keeping you in the legal high road).

Today, Yotophoto disclose another very interesting and complementary development. You will be allowed to search images by its dominant color (They simply call this feature Search by color). The few already existing experiences in this direction were limited to choosing between red, green or blue - not enough to be of any use. But, here, you get a color picker to choose your color from. You get teh exact fine color tone you need. This way, you will be able to select your images in order to keep your fine WordPress post as elegant as requested by the high quality of your web site.

All the details are presented in the promotional page for this search feature. But, it’s as easy as selecting Advanced Search and using the color picker at the bottom right to choose you prefered color.

After several weeks of companies lining up to recall portable PC using Sony Lithium-Ion batteries (Dell, Apple, Lenovo/IBM, toshiba, etc.), the Japanese manufacturer decided to move boldly: In order to avoid further spontaneous combustions and explosions, all laptop PC batteries using the Lithium-Ion technology from Sony are subject to a worldwide recall.

There were already 7 million batteries recalled, but the figure is sure to climb quickly knowing that Sony is the leader in Lithium-Ion batteries and produces for a number of other companies that only rebadge the original product.

Side note: After a first move of prohibiting laptops on a brand-based rule (by three airlines already after last week incident in Los Angeles airport), Virgin Atlantic has been starting to limit flight only for those models at risk: You may be flying with your old Dell on Virgin if its battery technology is different.

When you are managing a Unix machine (it is about the same thing for GNU/Linux machines), you are often interested in maintaining a good level of security. For this, one of the most important things is to ensure that the process list (the list of all activities) is containing only secure processes. Checking this is often a bit more difficult than beginners would like: So many questions to ask and we are a bit unsure about the important ones.

Today, I found a checklist easy to use to perform this quick security audit (online version)on your *nix machine. Also, I prepared word-processed versions of the checklist (see the box on the right).

Undoubtedly, this should not be the only security measure on your GNU/Linux machine, but it’s an easy one to start with and it will give a better grasp of the basics for beginners.

This is the product offering of an American company (TreasureKnit). You can ask them to knit a plaid, or the surface of a pillow or a blanket starting from the photographic image that you would provide. Even better than the large format prints, here comes tailor-made tapestry.

I doubt it will always produce fine art of the best taste but we can now print our photos on nearly any kind of surface.

Notice: Deliveries are only possible to the United States of Amercia and Canada, for the time being.

Posts about EOS 40D: EOS 40D initial scoop All of them

Canon seems to have its hands full with the presentation of the low-end Canon 400D (Rebel XTi) and nothing is seen about any future replacement of the ageing 20D and 30D high-end SLR.

Some are now saying that there would be no 40D, but a lower-priced full-frame solution heir to the superb (but too expensive) Canon 5D.

This is really the feeling you have when you visit the web site of Christine and Michel Denis-Huot where you will find some of their best images or those that were most successful, from their work as wildlife photographers.

I heartily recommend the images primées (awards).

Michel and Christine spend months out of their home (several month per year in Kenya, in the Masai Mara Park) to ensure the best possible conditions for photography and bring their own bright eye to offer image series as they can be regularly published in the press (both printed and TV).

Here it comes! Sigma finally made its new camera public. The SD14 is the serious successor of the SD10 digital SLR camera. The Sigma web site tells us much more than the teaser it was presenting in the recent weeks.

As could be expected, the center spot of the show is the Foveon X3 sensor bringing 2652 x 1769 pixels of 3 colours (where the competiton is taking only 1 colour per pixel and has to interpolate missing data, Sigma Foveon literally piles up 3 pixels of different colours in a single pixel), leading to a total of 14 million pixels. This is not only more than the current competiton (Rather in the 10 M-pixel ballpark), but it makes without additional calculations and interpolations that always produce some little more or less visible coloured effects. Hurrah for fine colours!

Moreover, the SD14 - at long last - brings JPEG format images to ease life of most amateur photographers. In this context, Sigma is specially proud of its new supporting software Photo Pro 3.0.

Another feature where Sigma heard the same call than its competition: Dust management. This time, there is no cleaning of the sensor but a protection located far enough from the sensor to avoid any dust left to be visible.

But the two big advantages - to my eyes - come from the shutter and the viewfinder. The first is protecting well the sensor and bring a very long life time of 100,000 exposures (let’s not forget that today’s digital photographers are shooting infintely more than their analog predecessors). The viewfinder is served by a superb pentaprism (certainly bringing a very clear view), with 0.9x magnification, an 18mm eye point and –3 to +1.5 dpt dioptric adjustment for those of us with less than perfect eye-sight.

What is left for scrutiny in the upcoming test models: The autofocus with only 5 measuring zones may prove limited compared to richer offerings from Canon or Nikon; 3 image/second continuous shooting is only capable of 6 images at the highest quality.

All in all, Sigma is certainly participating in the race for the best digital single lens reflex camera of Year 2007.

So, you don’t want to spend too much time checking benchmarks and prices before buying your next PC graphics card. Tom’s Hardware has a nice solution in an article that gives the solution: The Best Gaming Video Cards for the Money: October 2006. The selection may change in time (this market is a real ground for testing competition and fast evolution), but it gives you a quick shot at a good graphics card for your budget (even in AGP and PCIe technologies).

For some time now, I use a small plug-in that I feel is quite nice to help me manage specifically the advertisment banners from Google AdSense on my web site. You may have already noticed one or two of those ads that appear right in the body of a posted article. Usually, it is quite difficult to do this when you publish using WordPress, but AdSense-Deluxe is flexible enough to allow this.

I hope that the ad banners so produced are not too unpleasant. On my side, I feel that they play a positive role in the financing of this little publishing activity of mine (your clicks on the ads bring me a tiny revenue; But small sums can pile up).

Anyway, feel free to tell me if you are uneasy with too much advertisment here.

Currently, the wonder kid of AMD microprocessor sockets is the AM2. But, up to now, it was a bit difficult to find comparaisons between the available motherboards. This is what Tom’s Hardware corrects nicely with its “Socket AM2 Motherboard Summer Slam“. There is no winner (only good motherboards), but with a lot of different feature sets.

• Asus M2 Crosshair
• Asus M2N32 SLI Deluxe
• Biostar TForce590 SLI Deluxe
• Epox MF570 SLI
• Foxconn C51XEM2A
• Gigabyte M59SLI S5
• MSI K9A Platinum
• MSI K9N Platinum

You are thinking about moving from Microsoft Office (expensive commercial bloatware ;-)) to OpenOffice (free). A few questions you can ask to orgniaze your transition, before you jump ahead.

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