Gadget: Sony MHS-PM5

This is far from a full-on review. More like an acknowledgement of participation by the newest tool in my arsenal of gadgets. All of my video from Augmented Reality Event (ARE 2010) was shot with my new Sony HD Bloggie MHS-PM5. While much of it was shot hand-held, I also brought along a Manfrotto 709BR Digi tripod. Originally bought to use with a 3M MPro120 pico projector, I had it with me to practice my presentation in my hotel room, and realized it could do double-duty (shown in the photo above).

I debated for a while whether to go with the CM5 or the PM5. It largely came down to a debate over compact-convenience vs optical zoom. I ultimately decided that I would get more use out of the PM5, being smaller and able to comfortably toss in my pocket without carrying a bag. Of course, there is always the possibility that it will be made instantly obsolete when I get the new iPhone 4, but it served its purpose for ARE and I’m certain to get more use out of it (Hey, it could be my iPhone camera’s #2. Power to the people.).

The mini-tripod combo worked well. In some presentations, I was able to get a desk seat, set up the camera on the tripod, and then not have to pay much attention to it (while, for instance, I geeked out live tweeting).

Extreme ease of use, I bought it only a day before my travel to Santa Clara, and did not take the time to experiment with it even once, for even a second until the moment I went to use it in the field for the first time. After leaving it on the charger over night, the following morning I turned it on for the first time mere moments before recording my first video, and knew intuitively exactly how to use it. It gets an A+ in ease of use.

There is one serious limitation to this device that any potential buyer must be aware of in advance: It can only record 29-minutes at a time. Even with a 16G SanDisk, which could hold several hours of video, it won’t record beyond the 29 minutes. You can record many multiple files of less than 29-minutes each, and you can begin recording another clip just seconds after saving the prior one, but 29-minutes is the time limit. The salesman at B&H explained to me that it had to do with EU import regulations — there are apparently extra import taxes on video recorders that can be avoided by being sold as a “still camera”. In the EU, if the device records for 30 minutes or longer, it is considered a video camera, but if it takes pictures and also video clips of less-than 30 minutes, it is designated as a “still camera” with a video “feature”. And Sony apparently wanted to avoid EU tariffs, but didn’t want to make a separate model just for the US market. Anyway, that was the story I was told at B&H. The reason this matters, besides being an annoying, arbitrarily imposed limitation, is that I once lost track of time, and let it run longer than 30 minutes (while recording Blaise Aguera y Arcas’s Keynote), and the device froze-up. Worse than that, the video file was corrupted, so I didn’t even get to keep the first 29 minutes. This was further disappointing because I was told explicitly that, if it reached the 30-minute limitation, that the device would just save the file and stop recording. In other words, that is simply would not do precisely what it did.

In the grander scheme of things, I think the situations where I will record more that 30-minutes continuously are exceedingly rare, so I’m giving it the benefit of the doubt… for now.

While certainly not the quality of an optical zoom, the digital zoom performed better than expected, especially at full 4x zoom (where my expectations were very low). And when used with no zoom, the image quality was quite crisp. The steady-cam feature also worked better than my expectations, when used handheld.

Another nice selling point is the ability to flip the camera lens back towards you. This means you can record interviews, keeping yourself in the frame, and still see the video playback screen for composition.

I almost forgot to mention the battery life. Amazing! I forgot to get a spare battery when I purchased the device, so I tried to get one at JFK on my way out. No luck. No luck at the San Francisco airport, when I arrived, either. I was very concerned that I would run out of battery life, and be left without the use of my device for the second half of each day. Turns out I had nothing to worry about. Not only did the charge last all day long, the battery indicator never dropped below “fully charged”. I did put it back on the charger for the night, for the second day of the event, but still. It has now been a full week since I returned, and I have yet to see it indicate anything but a fully charged battery. Amazing battery life.

As the cheesy marketing name suggests, the “Bloggie” is marketed to bloggers such as myself. While the 29 minute record limit (and especially so, the corrupted file) were a big disappointment, I can still recommend the camera, based on its other features, so long as buyers are made well aware of this limitation going into the purchase. I really am the ideal target for such a product. As I aim to incorporate more-and-more video here at GigantiCo.tv, I expect I will get a lot more use out of the device. Perhaps I may come back and add my own comment to this post, after I’ve put it through the paces for a few months.

Oh, and as for the Manfrotto tripod — love it. Great ball-joint mounting head, sturdy, well made. Small enough to fold up and stick in your back pocket. Pretty sleek industrial design, too.

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Disclosure: All product links include my Amazon affiliate tag.

New Year Endorsements

Putting a wrap on 2008, I set a goal to get my own online efforts organized. I had websites scattered across several different hosting providers. In conjunction with the launch of my new website, this was the right time to review my existing arrangements. Having done so, I’m now making some new year endorsements.

MediaTemple for Hosting
My research on hosting providers eventually led me to MediaTemple. So far I’m very pleased with their entry level Grid-Service package that includes hosting for 100 domains, 100 GB of storage, 1 TB of bandwidth and 1000 email addresses, for $20 a month or $200 a year. Their dashboard has the slickest interface I’ve seen in the business, and they also have a sweet iPhone version to manage your websites on the go. Their customer support has been impeccable. I actually got a recording that told me, “your approximate wait time is… one minute.” The other three times I’ve called a technician has answered on the first ring without even going into a queue!

GoDaddy for Domain Registrar
Several years ago I had a similar issue consolidating my domain registrations. I went with GoDaddy, and I’ve been pleased with the decision. The interface is well organized, and has plenty of automation tools to manage my domains. Though the up-sell e-commerce efforts on their website can sometimes be overbearing, their email and phone support are top notch. Amazingly, they’ve also managed to take a service which has, for all practical purposes, become a commodity and add premium value to their offer. They don’t do this to command a higher price— they do this all-the-while remaining one of the industry’s most price competitive vendors. It is no surprise that they remain the world’s #1 registrar. Their cheesy marketing efforts not withstanding, I chose to stick with GoDaddy.

Clicky for Site Analytics
The next service providers on my list to research were site traffic analytics tools. I was using a very dated stats service I’d been with since the 90s. I knew there were better products on the market, but stayed with them out a familiarity. After checking out many products in a very competitive market, I narrowed it down to two choices— Clicky and Mint. Clicky’s filtering tools and iPhone integration were persuasive, but its built in ability to track Flash events and file downloads was the deciding factor. It also doesn’t hurt their case that their interface is smart and slick and easy to get to the information I need quickly.

Squarespace for Blog Platform
There was no debating my choice to stick with Squarespace for my blog platform. I cannot evangelize their their product enough. My site here is but a tiny glimpse of the platform’s capabilities. If you haven’t yet had a look, take a peak at their homepage video demo. To call Squarespace a blog platform is almost an insult. It is a very robust content management platform with the best user interface and customization tools on the market anywhere at any price.

Viddler for Online Video
Earlier this year I switched to Viddler for all my video content needs. It produces better quality video, and less bug-prone uploading than YouTube, and the uploads are exponentially faster. There are also tools for book-marking the timeline, and other value added features, as well as a slicker interface and more professional looking video controller than YouTube. It also gives users the opportunity to monetize their video content with a commission on ad sales run with their video, and several parameters of control over what ads will be run with their content.

Tramsmit for FTP & AASync to Archive
These last two products I’m going to endorse are not web services, but I don’t want to neglect mentioning a couple of the support applications that I depend on to get work done. A hosting provider is useless without file transfer capabilities. For this I use Transmit. It was not a recent decision, I made the move a couple of years ago, but I did audit my options as part of my overhaul. Much like my recent step up the ladder with my stats platform, I had been using a legacy FTP app out of mere familiarity, and finally got around to upgrading to a top flight product. More recently I began using a very minimal backup application called AAsync to archive my files, including my websites, to an external drive. It isn’t a solution that I would expect to scale, but for a small operation like myself, it is very efficient for my needs. It has an intuitive interface that is super easy to use— I tell it what I want to back up (down to the level of individual folders), from which drive, to which drive. I set it on a timer, and don’t have to think about it again. If I’m not here and the computer is off, it will start up the computer itself, and run its backup routines completed automated.

So that wraps up my web service endorsements for the new year. I’ve never felt like I had my online efforts so buttoned up as I do today. Pretty much across the board, competition has driven improvements in quality. If you have not recently audited the offerings of your current providers against the competition, the new year could be the time to do so.

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SHAMELESS SELF PROMOTION™
At that, I will segue back into the launch of my new website, the original impetus for this overhaul. There are still several more projects I need to load into the portfolio, and like every site, it will always be a work in progress. My next step is promoting the site, which I can start by inviting you to have a visit at: ChrisGrayson.com.

Applications used in the making of the new website include: PhotoShop, Illustrator, Flash, Swift 3D and BB Edit; as well as Pages, InDesign and Word for the downloadable PDFs and DOC file.

I owe a special thanks to my friends on Facebook who helped me bug test the new site. I’m on a Mac, and don’t have access to a PC in my home office. So I did a little experiment— I called on my Facebook friends to assist me in cross-browser/cross-platform bug testing, and a dozen or so jumped right in to lend a hand. A few glitches, that could have been embarrassing oversights, were found and addressed. Chalk another one up for crowd-sourcing.

Happy New Year, Everyone!

Everything Bad...

Everything Bad is Good for You:
How Today’s Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter

Last week I read Steven Johnson’s, Everything Bad is Good for You. A couple of years late is better than never.

The basic premise, as the name would imply, is that video games, television and other consumptions of our mass media culture are not dumbing us down, but making us more intelligent. If you have any doubt, his arguments are very persuasive. He cites the perceived contradiction as being a general confusion between content and structure. Because someone finds the content of a movie, tv show, or video game to be base- full of sex and violence, and without social merit, one assumes that the media is therefore “dumb” or plays to the least common denominator, hence dumbing us down. Turning this conventional wisdom on its head, he convincingly argues that once content is disregarded, and we focus on structure, it is apparent that our entertainment is becoming much more complex. And not just more complex, but more complex in precisely the manner that forces us to give our brain’s pattern recognition muscle a workout (just the sort of problem solving logic that a standardized IQ test measures for). He then uses James Flynn’s research into rising IQ test scores to bolster his argument.

I’m not a serious gamer myself, but I can attest, from what gaming experience I do have, that the software that must be mastered in order to be proficient at any of the contemporary hit video games is astoundingly complex, and easily more mentally challenging than learning most mainstream business software applications (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, et al.).

At 238 pages, it is a quick read- I put in a leisurely day and a half, but it could easily be read in one day on a plane. I enjoyed the book, and I recommend it to all. It is both thoroughly researched, and yet easily accessible.

The paperback edition has an endorsement on the cover from Malcolm Gladwell, and if you like Mr. Gladwell’s work, this title should also be to your liking.

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My most recent prior read was The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More by Chris Anderson, former Editor-in-Chief of WIRED magazine. My current read is also from another WIRED alumni, former Executive Editor, Kevin Kelly— his 1994 Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World. At 13 years, it is still quite relevant, and all the more impressive, given the time of change, directly related to its subject matter, that has transpired in the interim since its original publishing. I may post more when I’ve finished the book.

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Maybe I should add a recommended book list after my right column link list.

Nam June Paik

Nam June Paik has long been recognized as a master and pioneer of video and electronic/technology based art. He was also a close associate of composer, John Cage, whom he was known to collaborate with. I’d seen one piece of his in the James Cohan Gallery collection on a prior visit, and have always had an appreciation for his work. The literature provided by the gallery describes Paik’s work as critiquing “culture consumed by technology.” In this way, Paik’s work is very self referential. His technology is not just a critique of, but also an example of “culture consumed by technology.” Often working with the housing cabinets from mid-century TV sets, in the case of all but one of the pieces in this exhibit, with their picture tubes removed and contemporary TVs set into their cabinets. Paik built sculptures- houses, figures, totems, walls, and environments from these cabinets and screens. Later he created work using only contemporary TVs. Television screens were the staple of his work. Of the pieces in this show, his humanoid primitive sculpture, Karen Blixen Robot (shown above), caught my interest most. Though I enjoyed the show, and had built up much anticipation in attending, there was something off that I could not at first put my finger on. Perhaps I went in with my expectations too high. But I think perhaps a combination of factors worked against the exhibit for me. For one, the idea of a wall of TV sets is so reminiscent of any consumer electronic store’s TV department, that nothing about the presentation is particularly riveting, losing some of the impact the approach may have had during the time of some of his earlier work. Although the picture tubes in the TVs had been removed, and “modern” TV sets had been placed within the vintage cabinets, these so-called “new” picture tube TVs have themselves become obsolete, in these days of HD flat-panels. Pioneering as it was in its day, I think Paik’s work suffers the fate of a lot of technology based conceptual art: As technology moves forward, if the work’s impact, no matter how conceptual, is most dependent on presentation rather than interaction, the work itself becomes “dated”. Some of Paik’s work qualifies as immersive, but in this exhibit W3 would be the only example, and by my estimation, the least inspired piece of the show. Tower is certainly monolithic. Perhaps it is the curse of being recently old. Once Paik’s body of work is as old as the mid-century cabinets he used, the perspective will be different and the timeliness issue will not be as it is now. I am glad to have had the opportunity to attend, and I appreciate the James Cohan Gallery for supporting such art.

jing

Yesterday I attended a small opening titled Asian Delights!! by a Singaporean photographer who only goes by the name Jing, in the lobby at DraftFCB (where I consult for the Hewlett-Packard account).

The opening showcased two recent photo series !!!FOOD PORN & SINGAPORE IDOLS!!!. With gratuitous use of exclamation points. The first, Food Porn, is a series of close-up shots of food, especially wet food, meats and vegetables in heavy sauces, reproduced as large format prints. While predominantly asian cuisine, the obligatory McDonald’s hamburger is present as well. The second series, Singapore Idols, showcased a mix of “stars” from the everyday culture that is contemporary Singapore- cyclist teams, construction workers, armed forces, fashion models and dance troupes, a broad swath of present day Singaporeans are represented, mostly in the form of large staged group portraits.

In spite of the stale crackers, cheap wine, 70s disco music and florescent lighting, the show still carried it’s own. The work is fresh and entertaining.

Though photographed through a lens that is more kitsch than propaganda, the photographs, especially from the second series, aspire to the lofty role of Singaporean cultural ministery, documenting a freeze frame of actors in the drama that is modern Singapore. Indeed, Jing’s photography was recently featured in a limited edition book printed for a 2006 IMF meeting in Singapore.

Jing’s work can also be viewed as part of a group show at The Exchange (640 West 28th St., 9th floor) titled Tiger Translate. A show of “emerging Asian artist and designers.” The opening will be this Saturday, March 31st. You can view the invite here.