Tong Family (richtong.org sync)

Wow, Sony is basically using its electronic viewfinder technology to make $2K high tech binoculars (see Popphoto). It uses two 1/3.91″ (about a quarter ince) CMOS sensors that are 5 megapixels and beams them to a pair of OLED screens or you can capture the video as well. Plus compared with traditional binoculars, you get…

Scott also mentioned that the new glass coming out was getting much better because the sensors (see the post below) are getting great. Well, the first reviews of the Sigma 35mm F/1.4 DG HSM are truly amazing at $900 vs $2K for the Canon equivalent… The Sigma 35mm f/1.4 is the finest lens I’ve ever…

Thanks so much to my buddies, Bob, Scott and John. We’ve all been buying and looking at various mirrorless systems and my buddies have neatly split into three camps. NEX (Scott), Fuji (Bob) and Samsung (John). So what is a geek to think? Well the main issue is how good the products really are. They…

Linux laptops. There is a dedicated site that helps you get Linux running on a laptop. Ludwig uses the ASUS Zenbook UX31XA although the later one looks like the UX32VD. Here are the choices by a quick skim for ultrabooks notebookcheck.net. Looking at this, they rated the Macbook Air 13 inch (mid 2012) as 89%…

So I got a Foswell PTZ camera to try for $130 or so from Amazon will report on that. The IZon is working just oK, it needs something for low light is the main issue. But up at the $600 range are some pretty interesting products particularly those that are ceiling mounted and that can…

Monoprice finally has in stock the new iPhone lightening connectors. For about half the price $11 of the Apple variety. I’ve tried the el cheapo $5 ones and it broke in a day. See these items: Mini-B, micro-B and 30-pin iPhone cable. Wow has a little connector so you don’t need all these separate cables.…

Our marketing playbook has 2,000 spam users. Added  before we put captcha on. And the system still allows 2-3 users a day who are breaking through captcha (so I turned off new user adds) and I need to get rid of everyone. Here’s how…but becareful because if you set it to 999 users as I…

Now that I’ve been doing a lot more processing of digital photos, it is pretty apparent that the ability to take a zillion photos at once is really changing getting around the dynamic range and optical limitations. Here are some of the tricks that you can do with your computer, but also many vendors are…

Wow cool, Blackmagic is doing a pocket cinema camera that will shoot raw 1080p with a micro 4/3 (actually it is a super 16 imaging area 12.5×7.4mm). It is $995. That means it is capturing 220Mbps. Pretty amazing. A big boost for micro-4/3 is a nice video camera. Technically compared with more traditional cameras, raw…

What a strange consumer experience Sony has managed to cobble together. Super confusing. We are just trying to buy and download games on a PS Vita. Here is what you have to do: They have two totally different login and management systems at playstation.com and sonyentertainment.com. Sony Entertainment seems to have the purchase stuff, so…

Mac’s are just different enough it is hard to make this work. Sphinx generate documentation, but as usual, even with the vanilla Python 2.7 on every Mac, you have to install a lot of scaffolding, the easy way is to just type “sudo easy_install -U sphinx” but this uses non-SSL, so if you want SSL…

YouTube rocks. What a video series!

Been looking for a easy to use camera that works on an IP network. This is far harder than it looks. What I’d like is a system that works in Wifi, ow light, is reliable enough for 24/7 monitoring and can monitor remotely (eg outside the house) and can record video streams locally (so you…

We’ve been debating which is the right next generation camera. With Bob opting for Fuji, Rennie for Olympus and John for Samsung. But maybe this is the tiebreaker? It does seem to have every feature under the sun: Sony NEX-6 Review: Digital Photography Review Sony NEX-6 specification highlights 16.1MP APS-C format CMOS sensor 2.3 million…

It is always so hard to keep up with the Joneses. First it’s hard to spell, second, you have to acquire a lot of loot (or debt!) to do it: The average American household owns 2.3 vehicles The average number of children in families is 1.86 The average number of pets per household is 3.7…

Hey these sites are our sisters with specific purposes. Will see about making cross posting easier, but they are: The Marketing Playbook. With my buddy John Zagula about broader marketing and business strategy. Durian PC. Well the joke is that we smell (figuring out technology) so you don’t have to. Focused on PC technology. Think…

I’m getting back into WordPress and there are so many different plugins and things that it is so confusing for someone who is not a complete noob (where the defaults work well) and not a major hacker (eg a professional developer). So here are some things that I’ve learned: You want to use Jetpack. It…

In the new world, so often software has to get integrated into hardware. It’s one of toughest things to do. As soon as you get to a single physical piece you have inventory risk and also almost everything is contract manufacturing and that means a trip to China. Finding a partner there is…

Well, trying to find a decent webcam with good picture quality (1080p), low light capability (F/1.8 and fast enough), connection via Wifi, and also easy access (so it dumps the videos somewhere reasonable, like a file server and you can view it with a mobile app or through any browser). this turns out to be…