Twitter Friend Scrape - You have to log into Google to get to the post, but here’s the gist: “I’ve gathered a massive scrape of the Twitter friend graph: about 2.7M users
(and slowing, meaning I’m starting to find the edge), 10M tweets, 58M edges,
with pretty-near complete edge data for users with more than a dozen
followers.”
Ten stories you may have missed in 2008 - Discovery.com gives you 10 interesting stories you should check out. Somehow, though, they missed the announcement of the discovery of three planets orbiting a sun-like star from November.
iNetMania - Came across this via another Phoenix techie on Twitter and I’m definitely going to play with it.
Also… a quick note to those who have participated in the New Media Super Contest: The contest has ended and I’ll be awarding prizes early next week. Stay tuned for another contest to start this weekend.
Posted in reviews, video by Joe on the January 1st, 2009
Just before the Christmas, Chiinavasion, an electronics wholesaler, sent me a unique little video camera to review. It’s their MPEG4 digital video camcorder with “telescope style 8x optical zoom lens”, and it turned out to be more than I anticipated at first glance.
The box everything came in was nondescript, small, and was packed with everything needed to get started. Included was the camera, the 8x optical zoom lens with a lens cap, a US plug converter, an AC power cable, battery, USB cable, TV out cable, remote control, headphones, software, manual (in Chinese and English) and a carrying case. The camera includes a built in microphone and speaker, a 3 inch TFT LCD screen that folds out to view and can be flipped 180 degrees for self-protraits, a 5 Megapixel CMOS image censor and a 12 Megapixel max resolution (interpolated).
The big marketing draw for this camera is, of course, the 8x optical zoom lens, so I started playing with that right away. I quickly reminded myself how useless that level of zoom is in my house, so I headed to the top of a building. The camera’s built-in lens is threaded, allowing the zoom lens to simply screwed in. Once attached, the lens focus is adjusted to get a clear picture. In the video below, I pointed the camera at a nearby neighborhood, attached the zoom lens, and pointed it back at the neighborhood, revealing a lot more detail than before. I tried to edit the video, but Windows Movie Maker hates me today. You can also take a look at the unaltered video file right here (22MB). This camera also has built-in 4x digital zoom controls on the back. Unlike the attachable zoom lens, which is 8x or nothing, the digital zoom is adjustable, but I generally dislike using digital zoom as it tends to pixelate the image.
The camera does more than just video. When you turn it on, you can switch it from “Video Camera” mode to “Camera” mode for some pretty decent still images. I took a few to show the color and clarity with and without the optical zoom lens attached, but I also wanted to know how this camera measures up against my Sony DSC-P41 point-and-shoot camera and my new Canon Rebel XTi DSLR camera. None of the pictures below will win any awards, but they offer an interesting comparison. The LED flash from the Chinavasion camera puts out a pretty bright, whiter, light, leaving me with a whiter photo.
Sony DSC-P41
Chinavasion
Canon DSLR
One thing I found unique with this camera is the included remote control. With it, I can take a group photo and be in it without trying to sync up to a timer. Better still, I can take 4 or five in a row without moving, just to make sure I get it right.
Beyond video and still image capturing, this camera includes four additional functions. You can play back videos and images, record just audio, and play MP3 audio files, essentially making it a full personal media player as well as a video and still camera. The MP3 player doesn’t offer any special features beyond choosing a track and playing it back, but it IS a video camera, so just playing the MP3s seems like it should be enough. The audio recording is simple enough, as well. You enter the “Record” mode and hit the shutter release button to begin recording. Then hit it again to stop. Since the audio files are stored in the same folder as still images and video, you have to head to “JPEG” mode to review what you’ve recorded.
A final mode is “Setup”, which allows a lot more custom settings than many cameras. In the Setup mode, you can change the flicker frequency, beep alerts, time, media selection, language, power settings, TV mode (NTSC/PAL), logo display, brightness and format the storage. Additionally, you can hit the menu button to reveal even more settings for resolution, frame rate, audio and white balance when dealing with video capture. The still image capture menu allows you to modify capture mode (with timer option), date stamp, flash mode, scenery, EV (for a darker or lighter image), quality, resolution, white balance, color (normal/sepia/B&W), and quick preview. In JPEG mode, you can rotate, lock or delete images from the menu, and the menu button changes the playback mode for MP3s.
The camera itself has a good weight to it but it’s still comfortable enough to carry around. Because of the weight, I’d hate to drop it as I’m guessing the plastic casing would crack if dropped from standing eye level. Although the zoom lens comes with one cap, I’d love to have one for each side, or maybe just an extra space in the carrying case for the zoom lens to keep it protected. After two weeks, I still haven’t tried every feature and function, but I’ve seen enough to consider it a pretty good deal for the price (about $110 wholesale from the site).
Christmas may have come and gone, but by lights are still up and I’m still in the holiday spirit like many of you are. That’s why I wanted to take a minute and talk about the heroes at home Wish Registry established by Sears. Your donation helps Sears provide military families with gift cards that will help them over the holidays.
One hero is hoping to be able to get a video camera for his family so he can watch the first moments of his little boy from afar. That’s just one of the hero stories and there’s a lot more of them. Even though the contribution is not tax-deductible, just the thought of a new father stationed far away from home getting to see his new baby boy walking for the first time makes me want to give. Giving is pretty easily done through the site. You just enter the amount you want to donate, confirm it, and check out. Many other wishes often include children’s shoes and pajamas. Imagine your donation helping to provide a child with some much-needed new shoes.
Another way to give is with badges to show your support. They offer a few choices of badges to display on popular sites like MySpace and Facebook. If you have a profile or your own blog, you can show additional support by just adding a badge.
If you haven’t yet experienced the joy of giving to those in need this holiday season, this is a great way to do it.
Ben Spark - I’ve been a reader for a while, but I wanted to throw Ben in today’s bookmarks because he’s provided an iPod Shuffle I’m gonna give away next week.
Flash analog countdown clock at FlashDen - I had to grab one of these for a client’s site and it was really easy to put in action, although I had to edit the FLA file to change the background, but still good for $8.
Darth Vader’s Twitter - This is a must-read. Not everything is hilarious, but most is.
Achieving Your Childhood Dreams - This is a seriously motivational speech that I haven’t finished, but keep heading back to. I need to watch it start to finish this weekend.
Google Code - By no means new, this is a great resource for coders of all flavors.
Robosapien Hacks and Mods - It’s not updated very often, but it’s a good source of info and how-tos for the Robosapien hacker.
Meggy Jr. - This is a handheld game development kit and my awesome wife bought me one! Watch for a post about my epic success or failure with it soon.
That’s it for this week. As always, drop me an email to suggest future bookmarks.
Posted in Just Cool by Joe on the December 14th, 2008
Back in July, I upgraded my single parallel port tattoo to add on Fire Wire ports and a bar code. Underneath the bar code was my name in binary code and for those who don’t know binary, I wanted the bar code to scan properly to display my name, just in case. Below is the picture I posted online of my new ink.
When I told Jordan at Americana Tattoo that I had put off the bar code for years because it seemed everyone was doing one, I added that I finally decided to do it because I found a way to make mine unique. He told me how a surprising number of people ask for a bar code and just give him any random bar code to copy. Apparently, there’s a lot of people out there who, if thrown on a checkout line scanner at the supermarket, would likely come up as a $0.99 bottle of filtered water. Hearing that made mine seem so much better, but I never got around to scanning it until Friday, when a friend told me he scanned the picture of my tattoo with his T-Mobile G1 and it worked. Of course, I immediately headed to Jared’s office to borrow his G1 and try it myself. I took my video camera:
In case you’re wondering what got me thinking (and talking) about my tattoos again, take a look at some of the recent blog posts that I noticed popping up that were talking about it. I love that it inspires people to write about it.
There was another link in Spanish that I can’t find at the moment.
With all this tattoo action buzzing, it also got me thinking about what’s next. I know I want more ports, but I also want to move forward with the beginnings of what will be a whole cyborg theme. The ports are just a start. What’s the best geeky tattoo you’ve seen? Any suggestions on what I should do next?
Joe on the January 2nd, 2009 
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