One Step Backward for Compatibility

When we were visiting with relatives over the holidays, my wife's sister broke out a photo album. The album had a bunch of pictures from when the kids were young and she lived near us. I offered to scan the pictures in and give her back a CD with the scanned pictures on it. I figured it would be an easy exercise, given that I have a fairly capable HP ScanJet 5500c.

My first challenge was finding the power supply for the scanner. I tore up my office, but I eventually found the power supply. Only 45 minutes more into it than I thought I would have to spend.

I recently updated my Mac Pro to OS X Lion. While this is overall a great thing, it turns out that HP no longer supports my scanner for Lion. I bought the scanner in 2003 (judging by when reviews were published PC Magazine's website). Does it make sense that the scanner would be completely abandoned after just eight years? The old HP software was apparently written for OS X 10.4, but hasn't been updated since. HP's website suggests in one location that you should be able use it through Apple's built-in image capture program. No dice. Further research revealed that my scanner was just not supported. In the end, I will have to say that I'm not impressed at all with HP.

In any event, the only way forward was backward. What do I mean? I'm a bit of a pack rat, and I never got rid of my G4 tower. I booted it up, downloaded the most recent (10.4-compatible) HP software and started scanning. Three pictures at a time, but it did work flawlessly.

FAT!

I decided that I would add a new set of pictures to cycle through my digital photo frame. I've taken quite a few over the last year, all processed and edited through Aperture. I flagged the very best and then exported to JPEGs that fit into a 1024 x 768 pixel space (the native resolution of the photo frame).

For some reason, though, I couldn't add any more files when I tried to add them on my mac. I got a somewhat cryptic error, telling me that there wasn't any space left on the 2 GB card. There were only about 307 files totaling 55 MB on the 2 GB card. It wasn't adding up - I figured it was a PC formatted card and my Mac wasn't playing nice with it. I had a flash of brilliance - I just needed to copy the files from Andrew's desktop computer onto the 2 GB card.

I went to Andrew's computer (running Windows 7) and tried to copy files over. I got a slightly different error message on Windows and chased it down. I found the right advice here. Turns out that my 2 GB card was formatted at FAT16. Seriously? How does a device made in 2010 get formatted with a technology hailing from 1984?

Seriously, it was formatted as FAT16, like the file format that shipped with MS-DOS. That format limits the number of files in a directory to 512. The root directory is even more limiting. After a quick reformat to the fantastically current technology of 1995 that is FAT32, the pictures copied over fine.

Does HDR matter?

My new S100 comes with an HDR mode (along with a bracketing mode). Here's the differences:

• HDR Mode: JPEG only. Camera shoots three times and then processes the images into a single JPEG. No options for adjusting the mechanics of the HDR processing, but super simple and complete solution.
• Bracketing Mode: After choosing this shooting type from within one of the manual modes (M, Av or Tv), the camera will take three pictures bracketing the exposure with +/- 0.5 to 2.0 AEB levels. This would then allow the user to post process using specialized HDR software like Photomatix.

I took a few pictures this morning of a pretty high contrast scenes. Here is the first pair of results:

The first in all auto mode


The second with HDR scene mode

I think that the obvious place where HDR mode excels is the tree branches. They are severely washed out in the auto mode picture. While this can be partially corrected after the face by tuning the highlights down, you will end up with an unnatural green tint around those branches. HDR mode wins!

Here is another comparison, which involves more work using the bracketing function and HDR software:

Another Reason to Love Amazon

I'm a big fan of the notion that we should be in control of our own data and vendors that make our data more readily accessible to their customers will have a competitive advantage. Although this is probably conventional wisdom in the B2B or commercial space, I don't think that its well enough recognized in the consumer space.

On Amazon's site, you can choose: Your Account > Your Orders > Order History Reports and download a pretty complete summary of activity on your account in csv format. We are very satisfied Prime members and feel like we use Amazon a lot. We ordered 108 items on Amazon last year, making our per unit cost of prime less than $1. Some were food related (on subscriptions) but many were books and electronics. A great deal for us.

Some quick thoughts on extensions:

• Grocery Store: How cool would it be for you to be able to download an entire year's worth of food purchases. You know that they are collecting this information about you for their convenience. Why not make it available to you for your convenience? Layer some analytics on top of it. Sure, it will be an incomplete list of things you purchased, but it would also give you incentive to only shop at one chain, to ensure all of your purchases are saved in one place, making the analytics all that much more powerful.
• Drug Stores: Big missed opportunity here. CVS and Walgreens should be providing a means for people to print out receipts for all HSA/FSA eligible items that they've purchased over the previous year. This would be perfect for people like me who are not very careful to save their receipts, but then want to file all at once. Generate a PDF and you are good to go and submit.
• Home Improvement Stores: Another big opportunity missed: when selling a house, you can write off the gains, all of the money that you've put into the house. Why not let people track what they've spent on improvement projects (over long periods of time) with purchase order trackers for the individuals. This would allow them to separate out capital improvements from the purchase of lawn fertilizer, which is obviously not allowed.
• Discount Stores: Why doesn't Wal-mart or Target allow us to see how much we've saved by shopping there (relative to our store of choice)? This seems like an obvious way for them to reinforce how "everyday low prices" they really are.

I really can't think of good reasons for these types of retailers to not do this. Are they afraid that customers will suddenly notice that they've spent a lot of money on a particular category of items? Or is there just a profound lack of creativity on the part of companies with respect to the usefulness of customer data to customers?

Thoughts on an S100

I bought a Canon S100 for myself for Christmas. I've been working my way through the user's manual (over 250 pages) for a few nights while watching TV. Its been reasonably slow going as a result. I will be posting individual posts about features (and example pictures), but I also wanted to post some overall thoughts here:

• Lots of features: this camera can do a lot. The user guide is a bit long-winded with lots of pretty pictures and icons to illustrate, but this camera can do a lot.
• Why does pre-programmed have to equal JPEG? Argh!!!! Why does Canon limit me from saving to RAW when I use the scene or auto mode? I find this to be a deal-killer for using these modes. Many of the modes can be better done in post-processing (like color enhancement or blurring for a miniature effect), but some, like shooting in snow, would be great to shoot RAW instead of JPEG. It would make me much more comfortable, too. I would trust the special scene modes that much more, knowing that I had more flexibility to fix any potential problems after the fact.
• Reviewers are not joking about the short battery life: It doesn't last too long. Get a backup. Amazon has one (a Canon NB-5L) for only $35.
• I like GPS tagging as much as I thought I would: Its super sweet when it works. Just don't expect indoor shots to have a tag. The satellite icon lets you know where you stand. It does take a few minutes to find a signal, but once it indicates that the signal has been obtained, it will tag your photos.