Decent Video Gets Cheaper & Cheaper. Here’s a $25 SD demo.

Some fellow video friends of mine has been sharing some surprisingly good video from a Coby camera that they purchased for around $25 as an impulse by at a drugstore checkout. They’ve attached this camera to their motorcycle and aside from the glaring CMOS “jellocam” the image and sound quality is surprisingly good.

Wanna make some noise? There’s an app for that: Linear Time Code.

JumpStart LTC generates a Longitudinal Time Code audio signal. It provides a convenient interface for setting dedicated timecode devices (deneke, sound devices, zaxcom, etc).

Many of these devices, as robust as they are, often have no way to manually set the time – and if they do, it usually involves pesky dip switches or something similar. Some start at Hour 0 each time they are powered up with no way to resume a previous timecode. But now there’s a solution for that too!

iPhone 4’s 960×640 pixel screen as camcorder monitor?

A lot has been said about the iPhone 4 screen’s incredible resolution.

Packing a 960×640 (o.6 MP) resolution into a screen that small means it is 326 pixels per inch. Unless you have perfect vision, reviewers have said that you’ll just not be able to make out individual pixels. This is a very high resolution for any portable LCD screen, and when shooting HD video, a high resolution monitor is critical. 

Apple v. Adobe. – FCS v. CS5. – The choice is pretty clear.

Adobe has really been pushing the limits when it comes to what the software package can do. From CS3, which was nice, but had a few carryover PC apps from a recent purchase, to CS4 which broke new ground in terms of authoring DVD’s for Flash, video in a PDF, and more.

Now CS5 jumps a whole new direction with 64-bit ONLY computing. This cuts some old computers off, but with a decent system, you can access tons more RAM. Add to this the new Mercury Engine using GPU to handle video processing and you can handle multiple streams of heavily compressed video where one stream used to choke a computer. Specifically I mean H.264 and AVCHD, which seem to becoming defacto standards in tapeless acquisition these days.

In an article in EventDV Magazine, Jan Ozer does a pretty nice head-to head comparison and

Apple lays off 40 from FCP team, before NAB?

Apple laying off 40 people from the Final Cut Pro software team has been noted on Twitter, but not corroborated anywhere else as I can find.

But if the layoffs are actually true, it begs us to wonder what Apple’s long term dedication is to high-end computers, and professional apps— especially considering that the vast majority of profits come from: iPods, iPhones, iApps, iMacs, iBookstore, iTunes music & TV shows, laptops and soon- iPad.

Apple MobileMess

This week, Tech pundit David Pogue make some excellent points about Apple’s new endeavor to provide Microsoft “Exchange for the rest of us” with Apple’s new MobileMe service. Not only did they give former .Mac subscribers the option to NOT take part in this new service and keep other service that are no longer offered, but Apple has had interminable problems with the new service.

The worst part is, however, the cold shoulder that Apple gives to those who get screwed.

One step forward – two steps back.

As reported by AppleInsider, Apple’s iPhone 2.0 software enables secure erasure of your personal data, however, it also moves Apple away from iSync compatibility and into their own little cloud of interoperability.

Remember iSync?

Back when Palm dominated the PDA world, and Apple had zero inkling of their own phone hardware, they got the bright idea to make hooks in the software to sync phone numbers, addresses, calendars, notes and more between Apple computers (remember those?) and phones and PDAs from other companies.

Chat Much? Is it secure?

Declan McCullagh has a great overview of the security of Chat. And by chat, I mean computer and cell phone instant messaging.

The question of whether your IM chat is secure is really several questions:
Are you wireless, and is the wireless connection secure?
If you are wired, was there a secure log on?
Does it provide complete encryption?

If you’re discussing your thoughts on the latest action film, the security probably isn’t top of mind. But if you use IM for business and discuss proprietary ideas, work-for-hire, or use it to get other sensitive information- like logins or passwords to something else, then the security of your chat is paramount.

Cell Phone Security- is NOT!

As I mentioned back in December, your life on a cell phone is not as secure as we would like it to be.

A recent iPhone Atlas article, that TUAW reported, and Engadget noted, tells of iPhone guru and author Zdziarski clearly demonstrated how difficult it is to truly erase your data, even when you want to, let alone, if your phone just gets misplaced or stolen.

Macworld Expo 08: let the rumors begin.

As much as I lament the demise of Macworld Expo East in NYC (Boston was just too far for people from the NYC, Phila, DC, Baltimore hub to easily travel to, compared to NYC) the annual January Expo remains and has actually become stronger in recent years with Apple’s expansion into new electronic markets, and growing strength as a computer company (even though they dropped “Computer” from their name.)

Once the holidays pass, the next event geeks like us focus on (aside from CES) is the Macworld Expo. The rumor mills are already abuzz with ultralight laptop, movie rentals, 3g iPhone, and a whole lot more…