Universal Rule

Book Reviews

Sunday, March 2, 2003

Why to blog, or not to blog -- Comment()
Yesterday I answered a questionnaire on weblogs, sent by a student doing a master's thesis on journalism. The questionnaire was rather well thought out, not too long and mostly relevant. One of the questions was "Why do you keep a weblog?" A tough question to answer. The weblogging advice by Mike Sanders gives five different reasons, of which "pleasure of meaning" and "pleasure of creating" are closest to my thinking. However, I didn't give this answer, but instead wrote "Finding new thoughts and connections". Perhaps that was also a good enough answer. In any case, I haven't yet found any sufficiently good reasons to stop blogging.

-- Comment()
Toshiba's new PDR-4300: Toshiba has today announced its new PDR-4300 four-megapixel digital camera with a 2.8x optical zoom, macro capability up to 6-inches and comprehensive manual controls." [Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)]

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Kyocera's L3V and L4V with worlds Largest LCD displays: "Kyocera has today announced two new models to its popular Finecam series, the 3-megapixel Kyocera Finecam L3v and the 4-megapixel Kyocera Finecam L4v." [Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)]

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Olympus C-740 / C-750 Ultra Zoom: Olympus has today announced the three megapixel C-740 and four megapixel C-750 Ultra Zoom digital cameras. These are direct successors to the C-730 Ultra Zoom." [Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)]

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Olympus D-560 Zoom / C-350 Zoom: "Olympus has today announced the D-560 Zoom (C-350 Zoom in Europe) digital camera. The competitively priced D-560 / C-350 offers a three megapixel sensor and three times optical zoom..." [Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)]

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Minolta DiMAGE F200: "Minolta has today announced the direct successor the the F100 (and you thought it was the F300!), the new four megapixel DiMAGE F200." [Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)]

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Mophos Moblog: "There's a new rectangle above called mophos (short for mobile photos). I put it together because I have a new cellphone that has a camera. The phone can send a photo as an email attachment - so I coded an email-to-moblog gateway. The gateway script works with my mail server and strips any attachments, creates thumbnails of any photos, and adds them to the moblog. It's fun to be able to add a photo to the site from anywhere with about 5 cellphone clicks. As you can see, the camera isn't the highest quality, but I'm hoping I can learn how to take decent pictures with it." [onfocus.com]

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Ink-jet printing creates tubes of living tissue: "Three-dimensional tubes of living tissue have been printed using modified desktop printers filled with suspensions of cells instead of ink. The work is a first step towards printing complex tissues or even entire organs." [New Scientist Article, via BoingBoing > nodalpoint.org - A bioinformatics weblog]

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Nodalpoint.org points to an introduction to personal knowledge management: "Perhaps more than anyone else, the contemporary researcher is suffering from information overload. More than a million scientific papers are published yearly, and the output rate doubles every 15 years. By the nature of their work, researchers must closely follow developments in his area and hopefully keep an eye on closely related fields. As a result, there is an increasing demand for reliable cues in selecting material."

-- Comment()
Scripting News writes: "Suggestion to Microsoft re Windows XP. Every time I restart the computer you ask me to get a Passport. I don't want one. Give me an easy and obvious way to tell you to stop asking. I think it is wrong for you to ask over and over."