In LA

“Shure I2C-MP Stereo Earphones / Headset (iPhone Compatible)” $39.69 at Amazon.com

I previously owned a pair of Shure e2c earphones, which were very nice. When used with the foam earpieces, they isolate from ambient noise and produce a very detailed sound with a decent amount of bass. I ended up listening through them at a much lower volume than I would have with less isolating headphones.

Shure makes a set of earbuds called the i2c, which are simply their e2c earbuds with the addition of thicker cables, an inline microphone, and an iPod connector (looks like a standard 3.5″ stereo jack except it has one extra conductor for the mic). As an iPhone headset, the i2c has faced some criticism due to the fact that it lacks an inline answer/hangup button. Perhaps because of this minor inconvenience, Amazon.com has recently dropped the price of the i2c headsets from $119 to about $39.

I don’t care about the button, or the mic, since I don’t have an iPhone. For a nice pair of earbuds, that price happens to be a great deal. I placed my order last week thinking that if the iphone plug wasn’t compatible with my ipods that I’d cut it off and solder a standard miniplug in its place (ignoring the mic wire). It turns out that the iPhone connector works fine in both my 1st-gen iPod Nano and 1st-gen iPod Touch. Right and left channels nicely separate, and the sound is good. The mic connector on the plug doesn’t seem to short or otherwise interfere with the contacts for the audio outputs –your mileage may vary. It’s working for me (I suspect the connector was designed to work in both iPhone and standard mini-stereo jacks, but don’t quote me on that).

If you buy a pair of i2c’s (or any in-ear monitors really) I’d recommend tossing the silicone sleeves they ship with (with extreme prejudice) and instead using compressible foam tips so that the earbuds really make a nice seal in your ear. The sound quality will be much improved, and the bass presence and detail will increase. Shure sells orange foams that works well, many on the net tout Shure’s tapered black “olive” foam sleeves for greater comfort and cleanability, and I’ve heard good things about the Comply viscoelastic polyurethane memory foam tips.

I ‘m happy to now have a nice pair of earbuds to use for running (My Future Sonics FS1’s finally died, and I don’t want to subject my FS Atrios to the same abuse). Yay. If you’ve been thinking of replacing your iPod earbuds with something better, this here’s a very good deal (on something much much better).

I received my Panasonic DMC-LZ8, and shot a few test photos today. In summary, I’d give the camera an A- for optics, an A for features, a B for user-interface (I have to click how many times to manually set the ISO equivalent?), and a solid D for image processing.

Why that low grade? Because after the camera has responded to the user’s commands, the lens has focused and zoomed, the image has been focused on the sensor, and the sensor has captured an image, Panasonic’s Venus Engine IV software goes to work. It takes the raw image off the sensor, processes it, and writes a file to the memory card. The problem is in the processing — digital images contain some amount of noise, and this noise can be reduced by applying noise reduction algorithms. But there is a downside to noise reduction, as these algorithms reduce the level of detail in the image. Every manufacturer approaches this tradeoff in their own way, but Panasonic’s decision is very unfortunate.

The Panasonic DMC-LZ8 (and apparently most other Panasonic digital cameras) suffers from an overly aggressive style of noise reduction. The user can set the noise reduction to be reduced in one of the camera’s menus, but it can’t be reduced nearly enough, and can’t be disabled. It doesn’t appear to be possible to shoot a photo that is not visibly mangled by Panasonic’s digital noise reduction.

Panasonic’s noise reduction may be useful for photos shot in low-light conditions, as such photos can have enough noise to warrant some smearing of detail in order to make the noise less distracting. Photos shot in bright sunlight should have very little noise and thus require little to no noise reduction, yet the DMC-LZ8 attacks such images with its noise reduction algorithms and leaves them noiseless but also a bit impressionistic, as if they’d been painted with a tiny brush. Definition and fine details are lost in the process. I dialed the digital noise reduction down to its lowest setting and shot a few more sample photos, but the noise reduction was still very apparent.

The problem is not limited to the Panasonic DMC-LZ8, as is attested by this internet petition which asks Panasonic to release a firmware update for several other Panasonic cameras to allow users to choose to disable noise reduction. I would also prefer to disable the camera’s noise reduction feature, because it is easy to apply noise reduction in computer to shots that really need it, and 9 times out of 10 I prefer the organic look of the noise itself to the painterly look of noise reduction.

Gripes aside, the camera seems nice in all other aspects, and for $111 I’m happy with it. It’s small, fast, cheap, and the images are reasonably good (they’d be great if not for the problem noted above). If I’d paid the suggested retail price of $179 I’d probably already be in the process of returning the camera and replacing it with the Canon SD870IS, but at $111 I’m content. I don’t intend to use this as my primary camera. Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien.

People often ask me for advice on what camera to buy for taking snapshots and other general-purpose purposes. My criteria for a point-and-shoot camera would prioritize small size (convenience is key), a well-designed user-interface, a wide-angle lens¹, reasonably good image quality², and durability.

If price wasn’t a consideration, and I needed to buy a tiny point-and-shoot camera this instant, I’d probably buy a “Canon PowerShot SD870IS ($249 at Amazon.com). I like the features, image quality, and size of this camera, and its zoom lens covers a useful range, equivalent to 28-105mm on a 35mm camera. Optical image stabilization is also a plus.

But price is a consideration, and there’s a decent Panasonic digital camera, the LZ-8, available right now for $111 including shipping. That seems like an outstanding deal for a pretty nice, well reviewed little point-and-shoot camera. Its lens covers the 32-160mm range (35mm equivalent numbers). 32mm is not as nice and wide as 28mm, but it’s actually pretty good for a digital point-and-shoot, most of which start out at 37mm equivalent or worse. For less than half the price of the Canon I’d suffer having to take one additional step backward to fit my entire family in the frame at the next birthday party.

This deal takes advantage of the fact that Microsoft is attempting to lure users away from Google’s search engine with a 12% cash back promotion on products found using Microsoft’s Live Search. So in order to get that discount, you’ll need to first search for the “DMC-LZ8″ using Microsoft’s Live Search “cashback” page. This link might skip a few hoops and jump you to the desired result. If not, just try to click your way through to the listing for that camera at JR.com. It’ll come out to $119.99 - $14.40 cashback, + $6.95 for UPS ground shipping.

1. Only a few point-and-shoots go as wide as I’d like. The zoom ratio of such cameras is usually promoted in ad copy, which is an impressive-sounding but useless metric. To me, a 3x zoom that starts at a wide angle is of much greater utility than a 6x zoom that can zoom in so close that a nice dark shot of a squirrel on a tree down the street can be taken (less light makes it through these lenses the further they are zoomed) but doesn’t go wide enough to easily shoot a snapshot of a group of people in a small room. i.e. 28-105mm equivalent is a more useful lens than a 45-260mm equivalent in a tiny point-and-shoot. [↩]
2. images aquired on all digital point-and-shoot cameras that are not the Sigma DP1 will be completely outclassed by any recent digital SLR -lens and sensor size do matter [↩]

I love my Canon RebelXT, and I actually really like the fact that the slow 18-55mm plastic kit lens that came with the thing goes reasonably wide and is very lightweight, but I’ve never been impressed with the lens’s image quality. It’s possible to take good photos with that lens, just as it is possible to take good photos with a Lomo or Diana (especially if you fetishize their lens defects and/or are a hipster), but I’d be happier if I could look at the corners of the nicer photos I’ve shot with my current 18-55mm lens without cringing at the vignetting, lack of sharpness, and chromatic aberration.

With the release of the new Rebel XSi camera, Canon also released a few new cheap plastic lenses, this time with image stabilization built in. The new 18-55mm f3.5-5.6 USM IS lens is sold separately for less than $200. Some reviewers have been shocked by the sharp images produced by this plastic lens, which is bundled with the new camera. I got the chance to play with the new 18-55mm IS kit lens yesterday, and it really is nice. Sharp, clear, the image stabilization really does work, lightweight, and relatively cheap for such image quality. It will not replace my 80-200 f2.8L or my 20mm 2.8 USM prime, but it is often nice to have a general-purpose and lightweight lens. At 7oz, it plus the Rebel XT body together aren’t that much heavier than a point-and-shoot camera, but produce much better imagery. I resolved to buy this lens and Canon’s other fantastic, cheap lens, which also happens to be fast: the 50mm f1.8.

As an Amazon affiliate, I theoretically am paid a kickback for referring people to buy products from their site. I never do that, and have earned nothing, but in this case I figured I might as well try to refer myself to their site. So I generated a couple of links¹ to the products which included my referral code, and used them to go to Amazon and buy the lenses. Hopefully I’ll be getting a 4% commission on this sale to myself. Total cost (before possible kickback): $252.66. I haven’t bought a single lens in the past 15 years for less than double that price, let alone two lenses. Neato.

1. referral links: “Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS SLR Lens” (Canon), “Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II Camera Lens” (Canon) [↩]

If you use a mac and are curious about the whole RSS thing, or already read news sites and blogs and whatnot with an RSS reader, you could do worse than download a free copy of NetNewsWire. NetNewsWire is awesome, and it’s an app I paid good money for when there were plenty of free alternatives. Now that it’s free, there’s no reason not to give it a spin.

Technorati Tags: blogs, Deals, free, Macintosh, OS X, rss, software

If you have a MacBook, MacBook Pro, Mac Pro, Intel iMac, or Intel-based Mac Mini, and would like to be able to run the occasional Windows application, there are a couple of options for you:

• Boot Camp - the only option for gaming due to the fact that none of the other solutions really support DirectX 9, but to use Boot Camp requires a reboot, a repartitioning of your hard drive, and devoting a decent slice of disk space to the boot camp partition (absolute minimum of 5Gb).
• Parallels Desktop - Runs a virtualized PC inside your Mac. Pretty quick and convenient. Can run Windows from a disk image or a boot camp partition. For a long time the only game in town. I use this.
• VMware Fusion - Newcomer to the mac from a company with a long history of virtualization products for Windows and Linux. From the sound of things, may be equivalent or superior to Parallels Desktop in features and function.

Boot Camp is free. Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion both normally cost $79, but today I see that Buy.com is selling VMware Fusion for $36.75 after rebates.

I occasionally run Windows 2000 on my Mac in Parallels to use Internet Explorer (IE) to use Chinese websites that only work right in IE, and to test websites in IE. I chose Windows 2000 because runs much faster than the bloated XP, the disk image is smaller (under 1Gb to start), and it runs the latest version of IE just fine.

If you want to be able to run Windows apps alongside your Mac apps, this does seem like a pretty good deal.

Technorati Tags: Apple, buy.com, Deals, hot deal, Linux, Macintosh, OS X, parallels desktop, rebate, software, virtualization, vmware fusion, Win2K, Windows, Windows 2000, Windows XP

Just passing these along:

• CompUSA is selling the Super Lanboy Aluminum Super Mini Tower Case for $39.99 after rebate. This is supposed to be a nice, small, quiet, semi-portable case.
• clubit.com is selling the Cooler Master DDF-S81-U1 80MM Dual Storm Case Fan for free after rebate. $3.99 Fedex 5-7 Days Shipping.

Thanks to the hot deals forum at fatwallet.com for bringing these deals to my attention. I’ve ordered the case fan and plan to use it to replace the the super-noisy fan in my server’s case. Am tempted to spring for the Lanboy case to further shrink and silence one of my computers but will have to follow tradition and think about it until the deal is dead.

This looks like a good site to read through: Free Frequent Flyer Miles.

There was once a site that listed the best airfare deals by city in its travel section. I used to check these airfare deals before going on a trip as they were invariably better fares than I could find on my own. That site is gone now, but the guy who put together the list of airfares has set up shop on his own.

At The Airfare Report, you’ll find a listing of the best last-minute airfare deals listed by airport, as well as information on price-warfare between airlines. Hopefully enough people will start visiting his site and donating or buying airfares using his referral links to keep it in operation, because it is a tremendous resource.

This place, shop4tech.com, has 200 DVD-R discs for $34.

The discs are rated for 1X-2X speed, which is very slow by today’s standards — 8X and 16X media are de rigueur with fashionable geeks these days. But apparently people have had great success burning to these discs at 4X, and there’ve even been reports of them burning well at 8X. There’s also a 10%-off coupon code that may or may not work available at the previous link.

Not bad… I’ll be backing up all my non-critical data to these as soon as my order arrives.