The Big Gold Box

OK, here comes a change in attitude.
For years, I have deservedly so, ragged on my home town's major player Kodak.

There are just so many things to bitch about pollution and environmental policies that makes you think that Sherman's March to the sea or the cratering of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were GreenPeace events. Or their decline due to managements arrogance thinking that making film that was better than any other on the market made a flip worth of difference to the consumer when it was priced 25% higher than say FUJI. Or how the company, that was the hands down image leader in the WORLD, whiffed when the digital revolution wave crested over the Rochester NY HQ.  I got more bitches about Kodak than one can imagine but and here folks, here is the "change in attitude" mentioned above, they may have "Gotten it" at last.




I know nothing more than the consumer "look" at this product. I don't know who makes, it where it is made or what the profit margins are. What I know is that this, possibly last gasp before going belly up, well it hits it right on the head. This product is awesome, as good as a new instamatic  for the digital age. The product is the Kodak Easy Share C1450 camera and it is awesome, not groundbreaking but awesome none the less.  We have an all white (Avail in Red Black and Blue as well) kind of sexy looking palm sized camera with 5x optical zoom. With a very large LCD screen on the back that is bright. It is powered by two AA batteries which eliminates the plug in charger or forces the purchase of an extra battery for about $40. Nope, need power just stop in any roadside store and you can pick up power for your camera, heck go to the dollar store and you get 5 recharges for a $1.



Ease of operation is built in. Plug it in to your computer with the USB cable supplied (OK they lose a point or two for making it a proprietary USB connection) and it walks you through how to share your photos with all the social network sites, with all the big e-mail sites and makes custom connections something my 91 year old Mother could probably figure out.  Flash, Red eye, facial recognition, good low light, Self timer and all the yaddda yadda's you would expect and oh did I mention that it is a 14 MP camera.  14 FREAKIN Mega Pixel, 5x optical zoom camera with bells and whistles. One button share function. This is a beautiful competent camera.



AND ITS JUST FORTY NINE DOLLARS AT YOU LOCAL WAL-MART. 
$49 $49 $49 $49 $49 $49 $49 $49 $49 $49 $49 $49 $49 $49 $49 $49 $49 $49 $49 $49 $49 $49 $49

Go get your Casio, Sony, Canon, Panasonic, or what-evers and stack them up to this camera.
(Full disclosure here demands that I tell you that it will handle any capacity SD card you want to plug in but it does not come with one. It comes with a set of Batteries, The Camera, a carry strap and the USB cord and that is all.) If hope that the Kodak batteries are from UltraLife, another Rochester area company but probably not. They sell, on the same POS display, a nice case for $5.



Image quality is superb. One button transfer to my computer and one button upload to Face Book or anywhere else in the social network maze. However you need to custom step up to Google Plus and this causes them lose another point from me.


WHY on earth it took this long for this great company to come to the party I don't know.

Most of the other Easy Share line is just "me too" marketing. Flip a coin and you would probably not go wrong no matter which brand you choose. But I saw no other offers within $50 of this cameras price point in Wally World. As a matter of fact I passed up the display once simply because I thought it was a disposable, One time use, digital camera. It is, in a sense, because at $49 you really are OK with using the camera in risky environments like water sports, amusement parks, hiking, biking etc. Its almost affordable enough to throw one in the glove box, and one in the back pack, bike bag, gym bag etc.



Also one button set up to throw your images to a print maker of your choice Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Walgreens etc. All set up for one button transfer and ordering prints (where Kodak hopes to make their money I'm sure). This is the old Gillette: give them the razors and make money on the blades marketing. Why it took this company to be on its deathbed to employ the same method that they pioneered with the Instamatic and the disposable 35mm cameras, I don't know.



I'm just glad that somewhere in that big, almost empty State St. Rochester NY HeadQuarters building that brought such wealth to the area and quality products to the masses, somewhere in there, well there is still someone with some marketing hutzpah to get this product done. I salute you whoever you are, now I recommend that you go send your resume to Canon NA or Nikon NA cause the ship is sinking fast.



NOTE: I now see that it was a Black Friday "while supply lasts" sale at WalMart. In fact both Sanyo and Fuji have similar products at the $59 price point.  And this camera is $69 while the same camera with a SD card but 3X Zoom is at $59 with the two other competitors. So it turns out my optimism for the Gold Box company turns out to be just another "me too" deal.  Please go ahead and sink the ship and stop torturing us.



I just thought of something else.  Kodak HQ Building has a visitor every year to its tower, its a Perigrine Falcon named  "Unity" who should be the mascot of the company cause like its tower owner Unity lays a bunch of eggs every year.

http://rfalconcam.com/rfc-main




On another note check this out, I want one badly
http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/8/view/11255/cornelius-comanns-bufalino.html

Reading Material

My recommendations

If you are caught up in the George R.R. Martin Song of Ice and Fire series which is real good and you are longing for more Dragon intense fiction you are in luck:

A Game of thrones
Clash of Kings
Storm of Swords
A Feast of Crows
A Dance with Dragons

Then pick up Naomi Novik's six book series Temeraires good as Martins series maybe better



 

His Majesty's Dragon (Temeraire, Book 1)

Throne of Jade

Black Powder War

Empire of Ivory

Victory of Eagles

Tongues of Serpents

Who knew there is a book 7:  Crucible of Gold

Need more:  child prodigy, Christopher Paolini:  Eragon, Eldest and newly released Brisingr are awesome

AND then if you still are not sated go back to the Dragons of Pern series by Ann McAfferny
But on to other genres

SCI-FI:

Robert Charles Wilson's Hugo winner: SPIN and AXIS are top notch.

As is Greg Bears: Hull Zero Three

Mystery/Cop genre, Well my favorite author ever James Lee Burke has got: Three relatively new books:
Rain Gods, and its sequel A Feast Day for Fools both Billy Bob Holland novels
and
Glass Rainbow, A Dave Robicheaux

In non fiction:

Walter Isaacsons Steve Jobs is very good, Hey my fingers were crossed before, no pic needed.

There is Michio Kaku - Physics of the Impossible for the other person in the universe that cares.

I've gone back and reread two Seth Godins Books: Purple Cow and Tribes because they are important to understand marketing and people.



And I recommend Malcolm Gladwells Outliers which I went back and re read the Beatles chapters and the Hockey chapters. Great book if you want to know what made the Beatles, Wayne Gretsky and others great as well as why most NHL players are born in just three different months. It wouldn't hurt at all to check out Tipping Point and Blink for great Biz incites

OK Then, Beware I also listen to a lot of obscure Music and that's coming soon.

Just a little more

Since my last post, a requiem for Steve Jobs, I have read the amazing biography of Jobs by Isaacson. Unlike everything else in his life, Jobs ceded total control of te book to Isaacson.  I don't think Jobs ever even got to read it. The resulting work is a compelling, human view of Jobs warts and all.  Its a great read and gives you a good insiders view of the Valley and its players over the last 30 years.  I highly recommend it.

There is no doubt that Jobs was an asswipe at times. That his ego was huge. That he was a maniac at times, ruthless to those he did not respect.  But, I don't think that he could have got his vision produced any other way. He got more out of people than they thought they were capable of doing. He bullied entire industries to his focus.

When he came back to Apple and introduced the iMac, still in CEO of Pixar he was a little more mellow. How much he influenced and changed is immense.

I know that many think he was the great Satan for his methods and the way he stymied competition and strapped everyone to his products and your feelings are entirely valid, however, He was the one guy out there that was focused on the customer experience as first priority. The rest were out to make money, Jobs was out to change the world. Money found him.

Some things I didn't know or didn't realize:

Bill Gates investment in Apple when Jobs came back helped keep Apple in business. The word was that Gates was protecting his very profitable Microsoft Office for the Mac business. Nope that wasn't it.  Jobs found that MS had infringed on a number of patents, blatantly. He called Gates (Gates acknowledges this deal) and told him they could resolve this in a couple of ways. A lengthy court battle where Apple would eventually prevail or Gates could take a 500 Million dollar equity position in Apple and the infringement would get licensed. Gates agreed and received 500 Million in Preferred NON voting stock.

At Pixar and at Apple he was constantly taught the lesson tat you need to control the entire process production to consumption otherwise someone is going to upset the whole thing.  Michael Eisner of Disney almost screwed up Pixar/Disney deal. Motorola-OSX, Adobe refused to port Premier for the Mac, which led to Apple making Final Cut and later refusing Flash.  The record industry refused to do Apples FairPlay digital rights system, instead Sony, Universal, EMI and others splintered into several different incompatible systems.  Jobs went to the artists. He showed them how they would get paid something instead of losing everything to piracy. He brought the whole thing together as a system player/digital hub/itunes/and the itunes store. 99¢ a song with digital rights. Gates was in awe that no one else had done anything similar ad in fact was even close.

Gorilla Glass was invented by Corning in the 90's but there was no market for it and they weren't producing any at all. Jobs found out about the product and ordered as much as they could produce in the next 7 months for the iPhone. Luckily Weeks, Cornings "Can Do" CEO saw the opportunity and got his best and brightest to figure out how to change gears and produce G.Glass that fast.

I guess this is what it boils down to:  If we didn't do it Steve Jobs way, we probably would not have it today.  And that applies to everything touching the computer segment and a lot out side of it. Did this stomp on competitive ideas. Sure. Did this stifle innovation. Ya but it poured gas on innovation along the lines of Jobs thinking.

His being put up for adoption certainly screwed him up. Just as his dropping acid, his Buddism his minimalists, his hippie college years, Bob Dillon, Joan Baez changed his life's direction.

Things I though Unique about Jobs

He hated PowerPoint presentations and kept telling people "If you need slides you don't know your material or shit about the subject" and KeyNote does it better anyway.

He micromanaged his passions. The ads right down to knowing when the agency had eliminated 3 frames out of an iPod ad. He stopped the roll out of the iPhone because he and Johnny Ives  decided that the back of the iPhone was to elegant and took away from the display.
Jobs thought it had to be right from the start. No introduce it and fix it later. You only had one shot to get it right and that was the first.

He felt he was an artist. He was in tune with his materials. A great quote is the "Michelangelo was not just a great sculptor but he knew how to quarry stone"


 I wish he were a nicer guy but I wonder if Michelangelo, Thomas Edison or Mr Vertically integrated himself George Eastman weren't a bit of an asshole as well.

 OK, No more about Mr. Jobs, I promise (fingers crossed behind his back)

RIP Steve, Ya done good.

I know that everyone and their  uncle is got a piece to say about Steve jobs. But this man touched and influenced my life and today I'm very sad.

Some may disagree but Steve Jobs, to me, was an amazing heroic figure.

Steve changed my world in a very real sense.

The Macintosh and the LaserWriter allowed me to accomplish, in-house, what before only an advertising agency could do. This made for very quick time span between idea to campaign to results. There was many days when I would walk out of a Organizational meeting with a vision of what was needed and by the end of the day with the help of in house personnel have an ad in hand reflecting that vision.  This was a huge advantage over our competition and melded with an aggressive advertising philosophy nicely.  In fact, I named that first in house advertising agency "Advision".  But that advantage came to us in an affordable machine through the work of Steve Jobs and the Macintosh.

Jobs for me was also a model. He was driven by his ideas. He lived the customer experience. He knew what he wanted to do and didn't let to many people move him away from his vision. I tried to emulate that in my career but it's a lot easier to do when you run the company than it is to accomplish from within. But I had success at it.

How valuable was Jobs, when he left Apple for 12 years they almost went bankrupt. He left because the company he founded and the guy he brought in to run it had decided to veer away from Jobs  vision.  SO they fired him. This was a real trial by fire for us advocates of the Mac. But Apple brought him back. All he had done in the meantime is build the finest animation house in the country at Pixar and develop the NEXT brand computer. Next was literally the software that allowed networkability, a Jobs vision and the one that Tim Burners Lee built the internet on.
Jobs came back to Apple and took charge and the rest is history.  The Next OS became the basis for the Mac OSX. Great Products were released that didn't come out of committee, couldn't have come out of a committee but were the results of one mans passion to make the customer/user experience exceed their expectations. And with his passion and drive he changed the world.

You can argue that it would have changed anyway but think of how the personal computer as a home computer has changed your life, a lot of that was influenced heavily by Steve Jobs. Then Apple pushed the laptop market. Easy internet access, entertainment light business all done with style and an elegance just missing from competitive products. iPhone changed the telecom world bringing mobile computing to your pocket. The iPad took the step one more step making a bridge between laptops and phones. The iTunes store brought a whole new distribution model for electronic wares.

The recording industry, the advertising industry, the total publishing industry, the movie industry all had to change direction to adapt to the new way Jobs pointed the computer industry and the way it was sold.

This man in my humble opinion may just be the most important man in the last 100 years. Our lives for good or bad, but I think for good, have been ushered down the road of Steve Jobs insight and vision.

I used to be the only guy within a quarter mile radius with a Mac. A mile radius with a Mac portable.
Today Apple Computer is the most valuable company in the country. Today, in this coffee shop where I am writing this there are 8 laptops visible and 6 are Macs.

Rest in Peace Steve ya done good!

Little gems rise from the ashes

PAIN

We never know how much we are addicted to something until we are deprived of it.  I have had that happen a couple of times in my life, to be deprived of something that I took for granted and then found how much a part of my life it inhabited.
I found myself in computer hell.  The anxiety I felt, the itchy feeling, the fidgeting that I experienced was on par with a minor opiate withdrawal.
My computer is my source of news, an outlet for my info addiction, entertainment,  communication,  as well. And all of a sudden it wasn’t there.  And I was adrift.

This particular lesson in life came when I was performing maintenance on my computer equipment. I have two laptops both Macs, one about four years old and one about two years old.  The older one is the warhorse that I used for most of my trip across the country a couple of years ago. The “A” key doesn’t work (a coffee spill in Memphis) then the shift keys gave up along with the enter key. I solved all of this in creative ways but finally bought a $10 USB keyboard and found a good used  Mac Book to take up my computing needs.

I use four external USB hard drives that backup data and warehouse the stuff I have not gotten to yet. That’s a bunch! About 1.5T. On my laptop alone, I have over 10,000 songs in my iTunes library, 50 audio books,  probably 150 e-books,  and about 50 movies.  I have 3 three  ipod nanos with different content on each. I watch no TV, listen to no radio ( I think I have a portable radio somewhere besides the one in the van)
SO my computer equipment takes a higher priority in my life that in most peoples.
I try to keep it all cleaned up and purring nicely inside and out. I was defragging my laptops 500G hard drive when WONK. The screen went dark and the machine froze.  I felt my stomach churned and I tried to figure out what happened.  It took three days to resurrect the laptop.  Not a hardware problem thankfully but all the system software drivers were toast.  I had to download a 7 Gig system and that takes time over borrowed Wi-Fi connections. Then figure out how to make a boot disk on the old system that was 3 generations of software older than my ruined one.

Pleasure

It wasn’t pretty but I finally got it going, the electronic equivalent of a push start with a cross-wired ignition. Then I took the opportunity to look at some of the stuff I had on the machine that I forgot about.
So, I decided to take a couple of jewels out of this mess and share them with you.  These are just some random samples of stuff on my machine, kind of the dust bunnies of my room.
This is old but it was recently accessed as I was remembering Beatles tunes with a friend. I dug this out and shared it with them and then with another, it was neat to see it again even if you saw it years ago. This was viral before the word viral was defined. It is a YouTube clip of a juggler named Chris Bliss. Chris does stand up for corporate activities and then closes his act with this juggling routine that he does to the Beatles songs Gloden Slumbers/Carry that Weight. Great act with Great music that reminds us that the Beatles were a lot more than the Musac tunes we hear today. Here is your link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8f8drk5Urw

Then there was the chalk. Street Chalk = artists extraordinaire. The depth and aspects of this art is amazing. Here are some examples but a simple Google image search keywords "Street Chalk Art" will keep you gawking for hours. This is all on flat sidewalks, proving perspective is everything. Check out some of the time lapse stuff.





Just amazing stuff I would like to see some of this sometime.



















Then there are the “Demotivator” posters kind of the Opposite of all those “Teamwork”  “Live your dreams”  “Achievement”  “Consistancy” posters that hang in corporate offices everywhere. Again here is a sample just Google “Demotivator Posters” and enjoy a few chuckles.  I have about fifty stored on my machine to help make my point in e-mails and some forums that I post on.

Ahh yes people of Wal-Mart. Google "People of Wal-Mart" click on photos and see what the "not so beautiful" beautiful people are up to. Here is a sample.

And those pics reminded me of my chicken finger sucking,  lip smacking "Slurp Sisters". Well it happened again and I stared at them but they didn't stop making the disgusting slurping sounds. So I moved but I did however, pull out my phone and capture them practicing there eating habits and them exiting. Here they are:

OK I guess this is long enough, I started with computer Jonesing, then reconnected and rediscovered pure gold buried under a ton of data in the mines of my hard disks. So just remember: