When is knowledge enough to be useful or enough to be dangerous?

I have been asking myself that more and more these days. As I flick through the RSS feeds for the umpteenth time that day seeing the same ‘news’ on multiple feeds, and I listen to Sky News doing their ‘all the news in 15 minutes every 15 minutes’ bit for the 6th time in a row I think I know what is going on. I have heard it so many times, read the headlines until I can quote them backwards and standing on my head (while drinking a glass of wine on a good day!!).

OK, so this may seem a little strange but the background to this post is twofold:

1. I have just gone through a cleansing of my email folders and removed in excess of 20 emails related to review items that I have been offered (and had confirmed) but that have not arrived yet. Believe it or not I had at least seven (7) from the same PR agency, some dating back to October 2007,

2. During CES I blogged a huge amount for one of my clients and got incredibly frustrated at the way the Press Releases were presented.

I know that we had a lighthearted exchange of views over Canon v Nikon in one of the recent posts, so I thought that this article on MacWorld may be of interest?

The conclusion?

“Not to put too fine a point on it, but after being away from Nikon for the better part of a decade and having been immersed in the Canon gestalt since then, I was frankly surprised at the extent to which current Nikon cameras offer feature and function advantages over Canon. While some of the ones mentioned above may not be relevant to any one photographer’s needs, there are bound to be several which can be real productivity aids, if not just downright fun to have and use.

To understand this article you need to understand my approach to photography, and what I am aiming to achieve. I have little doubt that everyone has different objectives, priorities, reasons and more importantly outputs for their photography, and depending on what they are will determine which applications that you use most regularly.

I take photographs to satisfy two objectives:

• To support the blogs that I publish
• To satisfy a personal desire to get better

First up an advance warning – I am really after your participation through this post!

I have never really got into digg. In the past I have had days when I have visited it a lot, and then months when I don’t bother at all. I initially perceived it as a ‘cult’ type activity, and I still pretty much feel the same. I admire tremendously what they have achieved, but I feel that the ‘desire to be dugg’ has overtaken the desire to post good content, and I find the commenters tend more towards the smart arse, put you down type of comments than the constructive, insightful or helpful. In short, it comes over as a club that people are desperate to be members of, but that aren’t that respectful to new members.

I have been mulling over the ‘best’ backup strategy now that we have Time Machine and really cheap storage to hand. I have a sneaky feeling that a lot of people will have thought that Time Machine would be the answer to all their problems, and on the surface I can see how that would be the case. It would certainly be attractive if that were so!

Sounds great, but not 100% convinced, but according to the Daily Telegraph a beer after playing a game of football, a long run, or a strenuous round of golf can be good for the body, scientists say.

“In a rare piece of good news for those who like a pint, Spanish researchers say beer can help someone who is dehydrated retain liquid better than water.

Prof Manuel Garzon, of Granada University, also claimed the bubbles in beer help to quench the thirst and that its carbohydrate content can help to replace lost calories.”

As you know the iPhone eventually arrived and I have used it for 5 days now, so I thought I would share my opening pictures and initial thoughts.

If you read my initial impressions you will know that I immediately saw it as a ‘fun’ device rather than a ’serious’ tool. By that I meant that it was fun to have, but not necessary, or if I am honest particularly useful. I would go so far as to rate it as 8/10 for fun but 4/10 for usefulness.

From time to time I get asked what applications I use most on a day to day basis. That is a really tough question as my ‘day to day’ changes pretty much day to day!

If I am reviewing an application I will use it for everything related to its purpose, even if I have a personal favourite that I use normally.

Never thought I would be writing this, but I am actually considering an iPhone now that the iPhoneSIMFree is available on line for $50.

Let me explain myself before you shoot me down in flames:

I will in all probability buy a new iPod Touch, in which case I will be paying either £199 for the 8GB or£269 for the 16GB.

However because of the current exchange rate I could get an iPhone for $349 for a refurbished 8GB, $299 for the 4GB or $399 for the 8GB. When I add the $50 for the SIMFree license that makes the prices $399, $349 and $449 respectively.

Another question from Wayne.

Wayne’s Story

OK, currently, my workflow for a new movie or TV show is this: I convert into a mp4 h.264 file. This is for iTunes, basically. I then add metadata using Lostify or MetaX, because they only add metadata to mp4s and no other format. Now that’s all nice and handy, but occasionally I want to add chapters. There are two programs that I know of that add chapters easily. Metadata Hootenanny or Movie Chapterizer. Whenever you use these programs, though, it changes the extension of the file to .mov. So, that’s it for adding metadata afterward, can’t do it. Also by the process of encoding the file it will destroy any chapters you may have put in!

From time to time I get emails asking for suggestions and advice. I always respond and am happy to do so, but with this one from Darren I thought I would open it up for discussion, as I think the topic is one that many will be considering as we approach the launch of Leopard.

Darren’s Story

It’s my birthday soon. This year I’ve really wracked my brains to see what Mac gadget I can convince my wife to buy me.