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	<title>Jed Pittman</title>
	<link>http://www.jedpittman.com</link>
	<description></description>
	<pubDate>Sat, 10 Jan 2009 17:18:23 +0000</pubDate>
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		<title>Sony Cybershot Digital Camera is a Snap</title>
		<link>http://www.jedpittman.com/archives/19</link>
		<comments>http://www.jedpittman.com/archives/19#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 10 Jan 2009 17:18:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jed Pittman</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.jedpittman.com/archives/19</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A few weeks ago I was lucky and got a new digital camera for Christmas. As I wrote about a few weeks ago, I was able to actually start getting back into taking pictures because I knew that the camera was of higher quality. I was even lucky enough to take some pictures of some [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img src="http://www.jedpittman.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/dscw150.thumbnail.jpg" title="Sony CyberShot Camera" alt="Sony CyberShot Camera" align="left" width="128" height="84" />A few weeks ago I was lucky and got a new digital camera for Christmas. As I wrote about a few weeks ago, I was able to actually start getting back into taking pictures because I knew that the camera was of higher quality. I was even lucky enough to take some pictures of some amazing Ice Sculptures from New Years&#8217; Eve.</p>
<p>In order to understand the difference, I&#8217;ve learned that it is not enough to simply look at megapixel count. Much of this focus on number of megapixels is not necessary. However, my original camera was only about 2 megapixels and the Sony Cybershot is about 8.1 megapixels.</p>
<p>There is a difference when you make that much of a move. Now when organizing my pictures with <a href="http://www.jedpittman.com/archives/18">Picasa</a>, I&#8217;m able to easily get everything into a picture and not worry about zooming or cropping and ending up with an inferior picture.</p>
<p>One of the other things that I really enjoyed about this camera was how intuitive the controls and the features were. There was a simple lightning bolt symbol for the flash and a clock logo for the timer. And it has newer features that I haven&#8217;t seen before too. There was even a face-detection feature and real optical zoom, as opposed to the digital zoom on my prior camera. Sony Cyber Shot Camera</p>
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		<title>Picasa 3 is a Great Deal &#8212; Free</title>
		<link>http://www.jedpittman.com/archives/18</link>
		<comments>http://www.jedpittman.com/archives/18#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 10 Jan 2009 16:22:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jed Pittman</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[technology]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.jedpittman.com/archives/18</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;ve always been someone who was fascinated by the world of pictures. From back in the days when I took my semester abroad, I&#8217;ve always enjoyed taking large amounts of pictures. The downside of pictures with old-fashioned film is the fact that there are so many throwaways. I suppose that one way of thinking about [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I&#8217;ve always been someone who was fascinated by the world of pictures. From back in the days when I took my semester abroad, I&#8217;ve always enjoyed taking large amounts of pictures. The downside of pictures with old-fashioned film is the fact that there are so many throwaways. I suppose that one way of thinking about it is that there is a certain skill to develop and a practice that brings you to actually enjoying the act of taking a picture.</p>
<p>For me, I think that there is something even more enjoyable about digital cameras though. I can take pictures by the hundred and then save only the ones I want, without having wasted lots of money on film for blurry or backlit photos. Furthermore, I can fix red eye and sharpen and so on.</p>
<p>All of this has been a great switch to digital pictures, but the real problem is that I couldn&#8217;t find a program that was simple enough so that I could encourage people to take pictures, even when they didn&#8217;t have lots of time to perfect taking pictures. Even now I still find it a struggle to get people to take pictures. Enter Picasa.</p>
<p>Recently, I&#8217;ve finally started to use <a href="http://picasa.google.com/">Picasa</a>, a program that Google has created for organizing digital photos (and videos). It is a great program and you have the ability to be able to get pictures organized and cleaned up and even add captions and tags to them. I think that this is one of the best things about Picasa and Google in general. They have not sat on their laurels since the program was developed.</p>
<p>Instead they use all of their money and resources and continually improve their projects. Furthermore, these are offered for free and then are able to be given to people for everyone&#8217;s use. This is another example of a great product from Google with tons of <a href="http://picasa.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=93773">features</a>.</p>
<p>The portability of Picasa is the best part of it. It is available on the web using a web-sync version so that the pictures are easy to share and are saved for the future. Furthermore, there is no worry that if you switch the brand of digital camera that you won&#8217;t be able to use the program for merging and organizing your picture library. Instead, Picasa is entirely independent of the platform where you take the pictures. This alone is a great selling point.</p>
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		<title>Internet Search Disappointing</title>
		<link>http://www.jedpittman.com/archives/17</link>
		<comments>http://www.jedpittman.com/archives/17#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 25 Jun 2008 02:16:38 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jed Pittman</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[games]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.jedpittman.com/archives/17</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[This weekend I found that I had some free time. In the near future, I will be able to take a week off from work and hang out around the house. One of those days, I have been hoping to play a round of golf. It has been years since I played so I decided [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>This weekend I found that I had some free time. In the near future, I will be able to take a week off from work and hang out around the house. One of those days, I have been hoping to play a round of golf. It has been years since I played so I decided I should try to find a driving range. However, I could not find a driving range within a reasonable distance from my house. Even a call to a local country club was no help because I ended up in voicemail hell and didn&#8217;t get to speak to a real person.</p>
<p>Thankfully, I didn&#8217;t need the internet to solve this problem. The solution was found by accident later on this weekend when I stumbled on to a golf course in my travels. Since it was open I decided to see if they had a range and once they did I found out it was open to the public. Of course, that feature is not advertised on the internet. This is something I plan to let them know about when I visit this weekend.</p>
<p>In the end, this speaks to not just the quality of search available. Because I feel like search engines are pretty good at this point and their algorithms are amazingly complex. But for the average person, the real issue is lack of good content. In this case, <a href="http://www.southersmarsh.com/photos/cranberries/">the golf course</a> that I was interested in had a website, but it did not say that the driving range was open to the public, I found that out only by asking.</p>
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		<title>Apple Has a New IPhone</title>
		<link>http://www.jedpittman.com/archives/16</link>
		<comments>http://www.jedpittman.com/archives/16#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 15 Jun 2008 20:23:52 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jed Pittman</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[technology]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[news and events]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.jedpittman.com/archives/16</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Keeping up with technology seems like an absolute must at this point. I have to admit, even though I am under thirty, I never even considered that this would be the case given that about 20 years ago, the Internet and computers were still so new.
For example, this week, Apple announced that it was going [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Keeping up with technology seems like an absolute must at this point. I have to admit, even though I am under thirty, I never even considered that this would be the case given that about 20 years ago, the Internet and computers were still so new.</p>
<p>For example, this week, Apple announced that it was going to be doing a lower price ipod. Of course, this was interesting because it generated several interesting stories as a result. The first story and issue was that Steve Jobs is basically carrying Apple. And the <a href='http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/2008/06/12/apple-has-no-comment-on-steve-jobs-health-rumors>health rumors about Steve Jobs</a> are not really helping.</p>
<p>The price of the new iphones looks to be affordable at around 200 dollars. Especially since gas is now 4 bucks a gallon. But, the AT&amp;T doesn&#8217;t miss a trick when it comes to <a href="http://blogs.zdnet.com/mobile-gadgeteer/?p=1176"> making the money back</a> on the deal. And that doesn&#8217;t count the additional <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_message_service">text messaging</a> costs.</p>
<p>Personally, I still resist big cell phone plans and contracts. I prefer a pay-as-I-go model. I think that the idea that I would have to have a contract is ridiculous. I want the freedom and flexibility to leave if the service starts to be awful.</p>
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		<title>Get An External Hard Drive</title>
		<link>http://www.jedpittman.com/archives/15</link>
		<comments>http://www.jedpittman.com/archives/15#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 11 Feb 2008 04:13:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jed Pittman</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.jedpittman.com/archives/15</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Recently I bought an external hard drive by Western Digital which is extremely easy to use and worth the money. I bought the model that was 160GB which is more than enough to store my files, backups and music collection. More than the size though, I really like the ease of use.
Traveling on the train [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Recently I bought an external hard drive by Western Digital which is extremely easy to use and worth the money. I bought the model that was 160GB which is more than enough to store my files, backups and music collection. More than the size though, I really like the ease of use.</p>
<p>Traveling on the train and working for clients, I often find myself looking for ways to transport increasing amounts of data about the projects I&#8217;m working on and the portable hard drive works for this purpose quite nicely. The higher capacity makes it superior to the flash drives out there and the fact that it is entirely powered via the USB cable means that I am able to get it powered without worrying about where to plug in an AC adapter.</p>
<p>The bottom line for many people is that if you are more than an occasional user, a portable hard drive should be high on your list in terms of items to get soon. They are quite cheap as the prices on technology continue to come down. Some can be had brand new for around 80 dollars. This is a great value when compared with the price of storage just a few short years ago.</p>
<p>For the average home user with a drive like this one, backing up files is a matter of drag and drop; there&#8217;s no need for special products/software/configuration. Furthermore, the backups can be used anywhere and are easy to retrieve. Using other solutions often means compression, special files, and sometimes even storage via the Internet. I like the approach of an external hard drive because of its portability.</p>
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		<title>100 Dollar Laptop = End of Microsoft?</title>
		<link>http://www.jedpittman.com/archives/14</link>
		<comments>http://www.jedpittman.com/archives/14#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 29 Oct 2007 13:23:48 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jed Pittman</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[news and events]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.jedpittman.com/archives/14</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The time of the laptop has come. With the advent of the 100$ laptop project, many people in the IT world scoffed at the notion. However, it was the vision of some that the power of the personal computer and the internet would be available to everyone in the world, regardless of economic status. As [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>The time of the laptop has come. With the advent of the 100$ laptop project, many people in the IT world scoffed at the notion. However, it was the vision of some that the power of the personal computer and the internet would be available to everyone in the world, regardless of economic status. As someone who has been using the internet since age 14, I can personally attest to the importance of being exposed to the Internet and the computer from a very young age.</p>
<p>I would argue that the benefits of the internet for the young and developing mind far outweigh the dangers and the other costs. The internet has become more and more sophisticated as time goes on. Back in the late 80s and early 90s, there were those that felt that Virtual Reality was going to become something that was the mainstay in terms of computing. In some ways, it has. World of Warcraft and other MMORPGs have made huge inroads among personal computer users even as the original draw to the internet that was AOL continues to take a downturn (not before tons of people cashed in on the stock though).</p>
<p>In the current age, we have considerably reduced the costs of the components that go into a basic personal computer and I truly feel that we have hit somewhat of a floor. Personal computers that are capable of running decent programs and word processors will not drop much below current rates of about 400 US$. The reason for this is the fact that there are so many people within the personal computer supply chain that require a piece of the pie, as it were. The largest cost for computers at this point is the software, not the actual machine.</p>
<p>This fact is the very reason why people are so convinced that Windows will be overrun by linux. However, I am not convinced. Microsoft still does many things right. Furthermore there are many people who have invested thousands upon thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours studying in order to become certified for Microsoft products. These people&#8217;s livelihoods depend on Microsoft products and it is unlikely that they will change or push others&#8217; who are &#8216;in the know&#8217; to go to non-microsoft products or platforms. Furthermore, the support network for non-microsoft users is much smaller that the microsoft users. This type of battle was fought when it came to Apples and PCs and the PC won. I personally don&#8217;t feel that this is going to change any time soon.</p>
<p>The near-term threats to the PC will not be able to surmount the barriers to entry: buy-in of the IT professionals, ease of use and support for the user, hardware support and buy-in, and migration of data/process to new systems. I don&#8217;t feel that Google is going to shut down Microsoft. Nor do I think that Linux will do it. Each is defeated for different reasons, but at the core, Microsoft&#8217;s business remains solid and they continue to innovate. Granted it might not be as noticeable as Google, but with literally hundreds of products, its fairly difficult to keep track of what these MegaCompanies are doing, day-in and day-out.</p>
<p>Cheap computers is a great step for developing nations with developing minds. But I don&#8217;t think it will significantly impact the landscape of desktop computing in the near-term. Perhaps another 10-15 years out, there may be some fallout if this project and similar projects take off, but that is a long way out to be worrying about. The current life cycle of innovation in Software and the Internet is frequently under a year. So why waste time as an average person thinking about  things that are 10-15 years out. In general, for things like that, it only makes sense if you think you have a great idea and can get way out in front in order to cash in.</p>
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		<title>The Seeker: Better Left Unsought</title>
		<link>http://www.jedpittman.com/archives/13</link>
		<comments>http://www.jedpittman.com/archives/13#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 20 Oct 2007 21:46:51 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jed Pittman</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[news and events]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.jedpittman.com/archives/13</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[This weekend I went to see The Seeker: The Dark is Rising. I was excited to hear there was a film coming out because this was a book that I had really enjoyed reading when I was little. Now it&#8217;s become a screenplay/film, adapted from a children&#8217;s book written by Susan Cooper decades ago. Unfortunately, [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>This weekend I went to see The Seeker: The Dark is Rising. I was excited to hear there was a film coming out because this was a book that I had really enjoyed reading when I was little. Now it&#8217;s become a screenplay/film, adapted from a children&#8217;s book written by Susan Cooper decades ago. Unfortunately, unlike other series in the children&#8217;s sci-fi/fantasy genre, this one comes up short for die hard fans like myself.</p>
<p>The original story had a fantastic plot. A young boy with amazing abilities comes into amazing power and responsibilities on his fourteenth birthday. His job is to unite a series of signs which will allow him to fight the Dark and save the world. This baseline along with the names of the characters is just about all that is salvaged from the book. Everything else is written in off the cuff.</p>
<p>The adaptations of stories to fit film is not uncommon. And this is an issue that has surfaced even with the recent Harry Potter films. Films rarely satisfy the most hardcore fans, even if they do run long and stick with the storyline. However, even the name of this story was changed. The original book was titled <em>The Dark is Rising</em>, not <em>The Seeker: the Dark is Rising.</em></p>
<p>The change could quite possibly be the need to make the story about the boy rather than the struggle. This serves to internalize the struggle into the child rather than the world that he is fighting for. Perhaps this does a better job of selling it to the masses, but I am not convinced. Surely the boy is important, true.</p>
<p>The special effects do more to hurt the plot than help it at times. In the story, the power of the cold is downright frightening, without any special effects or CGI. And the major betrayals and complete character writeouts do much to water down the plot to nothing more than a chase scene for 2 hours.</p>
<p>In Cooper&#8217;s story there are rules and rhymes. An entire mythology was created for these characters and very little was left to the imagination for someone who read the entire 5 books in the series. Instead, the adaptation introduces strange information about a twin, a physicist father (which smacks of Madeline L&#8217;Engle&#8217;s A Wrinkle In Time series) and strange demonic possession.</p>
<p>The special effects really do make the movie worth seeing and it does flow fairly well if you like popcorn. But don&#8217;t expect it to follow the book in any way, it doesn&#8217;t. And if you feel that bad adaptations ruin books, then avoid this one like the plague and use the 2 hours to reread the book. You&#8217;ll enjoy it much more.</p>
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		<title>The End of the Traditional Software Model?</title>
		<link>http://www.jedpittman.com/archives/12</link>
		<comments>http://www.jedpittman.com/archives/12#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 17 Oct 2007 01:05:56 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jed Pittman</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[news and events]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.jedpittman.com/archives/12</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Not too long ago, I stumbled upon a blog by a young developer named Ben Casnocha. His enterprise software entry was particularly interesting. I happen to agree that we are experiencing a shift toward two types of software, with web software becoming more and more prevalent as web 2.0 becomes more of a given and [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Not too long ago, I stumbled upon a blog by a young developer named Ben Casnocha. His <a href="http://ben.casnocha.com/2007/10/enterprise-soft.html">enterprise software</a> entry was particularly interesting. I happen to agree that we are experiencing a shift toward two types of software, with web software becoming more and more prevalent as web 2.0 becomes more of a given and less of a novelty.</p>
<p>The progression seems important to follow, not just for developers like myself, but also for those in the related industries. Getting ahead of the upcoming trends could provide some seriously lucrative opportunities I think.</p>
<p>Factor in the <a href="http://www.xogiving.org/?gclid=CP-z8uXdlI8CFQV4HgodWRDLTQ">100 dollar laptop</a> program as well as the movement toward faster, more environmentally friendly computing, and it becomes a seriously interesting world indeed. Even my hosting provider has <a href="http://blog.dreamhost.com/2007/04/20/were-green/">gone green &#8212; to carbon neutral</a>!</p>
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		<title>The End of World Of Warcraft</title>
		<link>http://www.jedpittman.com/archives/11</link>
		<comments>http://www.jedpittman.com/archives/11#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 07 Oct 2007 13:56:07 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jed Pittman</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[games]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.jedpittman.com/archives/11</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[About six months ago, I received a free-trial of the newest expansion to the World of Warcraft game. It was something that I didn&#8217;t really bother with because I knew how expensive it would be to buy it and I had really lost the zeal that I once had for the game.
World Of Warcraft is [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>About six months ago, I received a free-trial of the newest expansion to the World of Warcraft game. It was something that I didn&#8217;t really bother with because I knew how expensive it would be to buy it and I had really lost the zeal that I once had for the game.</p>
<p>World Of Warcraft is a MMORPG. MMORPGs are massive, multi-player, online, role-playing games. In this game you create a character and run around and do quests to build your character up. For some people, it can become seriously addictive. I really enjoyed playing the game for about a year, especially for the camaraderie that I felt when playing with a large group of forty players working on a single quest together.</p>
<p>People who play MMORPGS in large groups in a serious fashion often use technology that allows all players to communicate just like a telephone using Voice over IP while playing the game. Its funny because we generally all look like telephone operators or aspiring singers while talking into our headsets or the microphones in front of us.</p>
<p>The free trial of World of Warcraft wasn&#8217;t all that exciting. The game hasn&#8217;t changed much. Certainly there is new scenery and there are new quests to explore. However, it is not as simple as that to hold my interest. When I logged on to the trial I found that most of my gear was obsolete since I had not played in a while. Furthermore, the guild experience takes months to develop. I didn&#8217;t want to invest that kind of time again. In the end, it was not for me.</p>
<p>Certainly the game will continue for quite a long time. I know that there is still a huge demand, but I cannot say as to whether or not it will last really long term. I think blizzard makes great games, so I will remain quite loyal to them for that. But when it comes down to it, I personally don&#8217;t want to spend all that time on something that is just 0s and 1s and has no real lasting result.  So, when I want to play a game now, I am content to play something that I enjoy, but with a reasonable time limit, measured in hours, not months. And then I can finish and say I enjoyed it without regretting what I could have done if I had that time back.</p>
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		<title>The Trouble With Comments</title>
		<link>http://www.jedpittman.com/archives/10</link>
		<comments>http://www.jedpittman.com/archives/10#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 29 Sep 2007 22:41:05 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jed Pittman</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[Site News]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.jedpittman.com/archives/10</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[It seems obvious, but as the various mediums for communication grow, so do the means for spam (unwanted, needless messages). Today, again, I notice that there is a comment on my blog here, but I noticed that they were nothing but spam.
These used to be more commonplace when dealing with newsgroups and message boards because [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>It seems obvious, but as the various mediums for communication grow, so do the means for spam (unwanted, needless messages). Today, again, I notice that there is a comment on my blog here, but I noticed that they were nothing but spam.</p>
<p>These used to be more commonplace when dealing with newsgroups and message boards because the concept of blogging was not too popular at that point. Now, blogging seems to account for a large portion of the content on the Internet.</p>
<p>Introducing captcha (a mechanism whereby a user has to enter a specific series of letters or numbers when posting) does help. However, there is a new breed of spammers that effectively hire out the job of spamming to other countries where cheap labor affords the ability to get around captcha mechanisms.</p>
<p>Since this blog has multiple audiences, I feel it is best to keep the unwanted comments out. Therefore, I monitor the comments before they are allowed to be posted. Other than disallowing comments completely, I am not sure if there is a good solution.</p>
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