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We bid farewell to Bill Gates as Microsoft chairman today. He needs no introduction; among his many achievements are bringing Microsoft to fame (or infamy) and helping people through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the latter of which will now become his main focus.

Here’s hoping Microsoft does well, both in development and in policy. Ballmer, the wheel is yours.

Posted by Michael at 9:38 pm under Uncategorized
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A Reuters photo by Andres Stapff has an unfortunate caption: “Uruguayan school children observe confiscated guns before being destroyed in front of Congress in Montevideo.”

One word can make a lot of difference. The reality of the situation was much more benign; the photo depicts children looking at a pile of guns that are about to be destroyed.

Posted by Michael at 3:24 pm under Uncategorized
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Sometimes the odd spam message will escape Gmail’s excellent filters and wind up in the inbox. Naturally, most spam messages feature puzzling grammar and odd spelling, making them easy to tell apart. Here’s one that I found today, just for laughs:

from microsoft ward <rwcooper@charter.net>
date Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 11:10 AM
subject MICROSOFT LOTTERY ONLINE PROMOTION 2008

CONGRATULATION
You are No(5)you won
(1,000.000)One Million Great
Britain Poundsto contact your agent microsmith1@live.com,

Posted by Michael at 7:26 pm under Uncategorized
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[Dave Shea’s Chalkwork icons]

There are a few tricks Gmail offers to filter your incoming mail. One of the most-common methods to sort messages is using the plus-sign trick (e.g., caption@gmail.com and caption+less@gmail.com are equivalent).

Turns out, Gmail gives every user an @gmail.com address as well as an @googlemail.com address. (Google was originally forced to give some countries’ Gmail users googlemail.com addresses because of a trademark conflict.)

Googlemail trick: seen on Lifehacker.

Posted by Michael at 12:00 am under Google
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Various sources (dpreview with a hands-on, tdp) announced the release of Canon’s newest update to the Rebel series. The XSi, in short, has:

• Live view on a 3″, 230K-pixel LCD and contrast-detect AF (good)
• Digic III (expected)
• Larger viewfinder, about the size of the 30D’s (good)
• Updated hotshoe (no biggie)
• Updated grip/texture/physical look and feel (expected)
• 3.5FPS vs. 3FPS on the XTi (no biggie, but always appreciated)
• 12.2MP CMOS sensor (expected; this will increase noise, but Canon usually does well here)
• 14-bit A/D conversion (same as on the 40D, mkIII)
• Improved AF system (expected, appreciated; still only one cross-type sensor)
• Highlight-tone priority, noise reduction (same as on the 40D, mkIII)
• “Auto Lighting Optimizer” with face detection (Canon’s version of Nikon’s D-Lighting)
• Spot meter (always appreciated)
• LP-E5 lithium battery (incompatibility problems, but usually not too big of an issue)
• ISO in viewfinder, ISO button on top of camera (good)
• Memory-card door open warning (same as on the newer Canons and good)
• SD memory cards (really brings down the package in my personal opinion)

That last bit about SD memory broke the deal for me. If you have a bunch of SD cards already or don’t mind using them, you’ll love the XSi. I’m actually leaning toward the XTi for that one reason alone; the rest of the XSi looks like a worthwhile upgrade. However, that would mean I won’t be able to share cards between, say, a 40D and a Rebel. (Granted, I would be able to share between a Powershot and the XSi.)

In short, for $800 (or $900 with the new EF-S 18-55 IS kti lens), you’ll get a very capable, well-designed, highly-compatible EOS camera that sadly can’t take CF memory cards.

Posted by Michael at 11:43 pm under Canon
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