No cat posts for me but sometimes I want to post about my non-SEO work (Mountain Biking, Digital Photography, Kayaking, Sailing, Hiking). I’ll keep it to technology, though, because I do have another blog for family stuff.

Those who know me as a photographer have likely heard my rants about how computerized (digital) cameras  provide easy excuses for manufacturers. They have become so complex with so many variables effecting image quality that we feeble users can’t really hold the manufacturer’s accountable for quality any more. You don’t know if your camera is a lemon, and even if you sense it might be, you can’t prove it. Sometimes you can’t even test it unless you’re an engineer with a home testing facility. When you drop $2k on a DSLR body and experience back focus issues or sharpness “problems”, what can you do? Pro shops know of these issues — visit a serious equipment room and there are certain bodies that kick around the lab looking like new because everyone knows “don’t take that one”. For every 5 totally beat up EOS 10Ds there is one that looks like new except for one major dent: the dent caused by the guy who slammed it on the counter after it cost him yet another crucial shot. Bite me once.
I’ve been shooting a 10D for 4 years and I’ve been waiting for the Canon 1DMkIII for two years.  Fast, robust, with clean sensor technology and > 8MP resolution. Now that it’s here, I’m agast at the reports. Back focusing problems that make it less desirable for action than the MkII? This can’t be!

I shoot hockey and if you don’t know what that means, it means low-light, off-white, fast-action that strains the best equipment, the most artistic talent, and the keenest eyes. Oh, and in digital camera world, where vertical and horizontal lines are used to define “focused”, there are goal nets and face masks to distract the autofocus systems.  In the world of Canon Digital SLR cameras, that also means you are almost guaranteed  a miss-focus because Canon’s AF system seriously (too seriously?) favors the cross of a vertical/horizontal line for focusing. Shoot a kid behind a face mask and you get a sharply-focused face mask. Shoot at wide aperture, which you have to do because of the fast action and low light conditions of youth hockey, and that 2.5 inches between face mask and face virtually guarantees an out-of-focus face. To shoot kids hockey, you need better technology than the world has so far. Until the Canon 1DMkIII, that is.
The MkIII has less low-light noise than any other camera. It shoots at higher ISO with less noise, which means it shoots faster in lower light. That alone is enough to make it purchase-worthy, but Canon’s engineers also put to work the magic of digital and gave us progammable focus offset adjustment. In situations like mine, where you can predict a needed offset from the focus point (2.5 inches beyond it, to focus on the face instead of the mask), you can now program that offset into the camera! That’s what I needed… it’s the perfect camera!

Alas but the real-world reports are coming in, and just a mnth or so after delivery the AF system on the 1DMkIII is failing the real world tests. Not only is it reportedly not  focusing properly (it seems to choose it’s own AF point instead of the one you preset even though it reports that it used the one you preset), but it’s inconsistently back and front focusing. Sometimes back focusing, sometimes front focusing. There is nothing worse than variability when it comes to precision…. that behavior makes the offset programmability completely useless. Ouch.

At more than $4k  for the body, this is ridiculous. At least we have the efforts of these hard working testers to show us before we waste our money. Otherwise, what do we have? Claims made, promises made, and individual users’ experiences that may disappoint but can’t be easily explained or demonstrated. I am SOOOOO glad I didn’t buy an MkIII yet. Again, hopefully, the consumer web is helping us hold manufacturers accountable for their claims (because apparently no one else is doing that).
I hope Canon USA answers these raised issues promptly and smartly.  I need a faster camera, and would greatly appreciate a programmable focus offset. It would be enabling for me, as there is simply no other way to get the hockey shots.

It’s time to install a home theater and video game projection screen. I’ve been projecting against a white wall for a few years now, but the kids are spending more time at other kids’ houses and starting to complain about my less-than-stellar “projection wall”. I looked online and now I am starting to appreciate the high-end home theater consultants working the market. There are a LOT of options when choosing a projection screen, and they can get expensive.

Whenever I look at one-time purchases like a projection screen, I ask my peers what they have done. Or at least this *should* be a one-time purchase (unless I get the wrong one!). So before I hit the forums, how did you choose your projection screen, which one did you pick, are you happy, and what would you do different next time?

From my initial research I there are popular home theatre forums:

And some tutorials with advice on choosing a projection screen:

And some of the projection screen companies offer excellent online resources:

BUT those are obviously biased. The online projection screen vendors also seem to avoid addressing many of the common concerns when choosing a projection screen, such as white screen or grey screen? What level of “screen gain” is appropriate for my room and my projector, and what effect will viewing angle have on image quality? I understand why they would avoid some of that, because it complicates a purchase decision that has a high barrier for return (shipping a projector screen is not a simple matter). But then again the local home theater specialist is a TON more expensive than Internet shopping. Someone should be able to be the Zappos.com of projection screens, but I haven’t found them yet.

So I wonder, would you buy a projection screen online? Would you build one yourself? Or would you hire a local home theater consultant? I am considering since I will get to see actual products before picking one. I also don’t see any clear winners in the home projection screen market, based on consumer reviews.

My set up:

• Projector: older InFocus DLP projector, like this 750 lumen one but sub-1000 contrast. I will buy a new one soon, but not right away unless that is really important for choosing a screen.
• Room: not a theater by any definition, it is a living room. Light colored walls, high celings with skylights, light colored carpeting. About 25′ x 16′ “theater” area.
• Environment: I live WAY NORTH, so it stays light until 10 o’clock pm in the summer, and the summer is some 17 weeks long. Yes, obviosuly the skylights and wall colors are becoming an issue for me. Yes, of course there are picture windows as well. Lots of them. Hey, it’s beautiful out there!
• Use: Projected games and DVD movies. I don’t subscribe to television, so it won’t be used very often compared to your typical American home projection TV room.

There are more than a few manufacturers of projection screens, whcih makes buying one all the more difficult:

• 3M
• AccuScreens
• Adeo Group
• Arisawa
• AVers
• Beamax- check out the videos http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EfYwRwXnTo
• Carada
• Celio
• Custom Display Solutions
• Da-Lite
• dnp Denmark
• Draper
• Dukane
• Elite Screens
• Euroscreen Bjurab
• Goo Systems
• Grandview
• HoloDisplays
• Hurley
• Large Screen Displays
• LP Morgan
• Meler
• Optoma
• Planar
• Projecta b.v.
• RP Visual Solutions
• Saaria
• Screen Innovations
• Screen Research
• Screen Tech
• SCREENMAXX
• Severtson
• Stewart Filmscreen
• The Airscreen Company
• The Screen Works
• Vutec

Google says I should also look for

• portable projection screens
• projectors
• draper projection screens
• home theater screens

Bored? Staring at yet another day of SEO from your desk or laptop, and less than thrilled with the idea? To much grunt work awaiting, so no time to explore and refresh the curiosity brain cells, yet feeling less than stellar in the productivity department due to that blah-zay boredom? Yeah, me too.

Truth is, obligation stifles creativity. But creativity drives productivity for many SEOs like me. The thrill of a “brilliant idea” can spawn highly-productive spurts of activity that outperform competitors, even when they spend weeks buying links. In SEO, the smart strategy outperforms and outlasts all but the most aggressive brute-force methods. So how to you break free of the doldrums while remaining productive? The little things count.

For me today it is my new coffee glass. A simple addition to my desk… it’s a Bodum Pavina thermal goblet. Winner of European design awards, it is elegant and simple. It’s a double-walled, clear thermal glass made of the same high-termperature silica quartz I used for materials testing back in my first engineering job out of college. Light as a feather, it feels like a wine goblet in my hand. It’s cool to the touch, yet filled with steaming hot coffee.

Did that sound like promotional copy? Suspect a “sponsored post” ? Nah. I paid full retail ($20) at a local store I shall not name. I have no connections at all to Bodum. How could something so simple be so motivating? That doesn’t really matter, does it? It feels good, and it’s just for me, and that’s apparently what I needed at the moment.

Related info: I only drink french press coffee at home. I have a Bodum french press, and have had several of them over the years. Starbucks sells Bodum french presses, but not the Pavina glasses. I found them at a local high-end home store… look for a place that sells things like Reidel stemless stemware (another great feel-good addition to the home, by the way).

I write a blog post about PHP, and in the sidebar should be a link roll of PHP jobs.

I write about SEO and in the sidebar should be a link roll of internet marketing jobs.

If I were hiring a web designer, I would target a beautifully rich long tail of attractors for my job listing. I imagine I would appreciate a system that combined these automagically, according to some smart ruleset. I bet, given the vast experience of the contextual advertising engines and the relative uniformity of job offerings, that it would be cake. I bet it would be amenable to optimization, too.

Job click thrus convert as resumes, or at least a conversion lead better than most. And job link click thrus don’t have to go direct to specific jobs… they can go through a lead refinement filter, which, of course, would be like an MFA page, helping to land the job prospect onto the optimal match of a job. “So you like the PHP job, did you see these PHP + MySQL jobs, and these PHP + Perl jobs? Which do you like best (chose one or more…” Taguchi doesn’t apply, cause each lead is unique, and so why rely on initial page context, trying to match perfectly when job seekers expect to seek anyway? That’s why PPC doesn’t pay for individual jobs. Instead, use contextual ads to draw them in… but not into a monster job site. Draw them in to iterate the contextual job text link (MFA) system recursively… it doesn’t break any rules (if the initial job exists), and lets the seeker navigate the way nature intended.

Job placement recruiters get what, 6-10% of the first year’s salary at least?

So in 2007, where are the contextual ads for jobs?

I’ve decided to offer a new service called JohnAnswers.com. It’s like Yahoo Research and Google Answers and wikipedia, because it basically answers your questions using Internet information. You ask a question, and the service checks the internet, compiles and answer, and spits it back to you authoritatively. No “if’s”, no “might be” and no “some say”… just  definitive statements based on stuff found on the web, as if it were all true.
Of course none of it is guaranteed to be accurate, unbiased, factual, or anything more than statically evident (just like with Google, Yahoo, and wikipedia). What you’re getting for your $5 is the convenient external validation that you want, pure and simple.
See a need, fill a need.

Just thought I’d let you know where I’m at.

Update: for those looking for Super Mario hints.

It’s Holiday Blog Tag time, where if you get tagged by another blogger you write five things most people don’t know about you and then tag five others so they can do the same. I’ve been tagged several times over the past week so I give in.. here’s my 5 Things:

1. I worked for Publisher’s Clearing House (PCH) back in the day of the big magazine subscription sweepstakes, before Ed McMann put his face all over an American Family copy-cat. You might say that was my introduction to marketing (although I was just a kid working the night shift for beer money). By the way, Robert H. Treller didn’t exist, and you really didn’t need to buy magazines to have a chance at winning. I learned about corporate spying while with PCH, and alot about the competitive side of marketing. I also got to see first hand how someone working in the mail room gets to know almost everything and every one in a business.
2. I started my first real job when I was 14 years old, working as a dishwasher in a French restaurant on the Miracle Mile in Manhasset, NY (Brasserie St. Germaine). I lied and said I was 16. By age 15 I was a bus boy. I remember when the waitresses would bring me along to The Chalet in Roslyn after work (after 10pm) so they had someone with them besides the fresh-of-the-boat French chef trainees, who were hard-to-handle. Beer, women, and crazy French sous Chefs in bars at age 15… is there any wonder?
3. I have shot perfect 25 while trapshooting twice in my life, both times costing my dad a round for the boys at the yacht club bar. The first time he was happy to pay the bar bill, because he was proud of his kid. The second time, I am not so sure. I haven’t been invited back for a third opportunity yet, but I did get invited on their annual Sporting Clays outing last spring. I shot the high score. And by the way, just to keep it interesting, I shoot trap and sporting clays with a made-in-Japan Browning pump shotgun.
4. I once walked 50 miles in one day. No, it wasn’t for boy scouts, but it was during high school. I earned a patch, but there was no way I’d put that sucker on my junior varsity Lacrosse jacket. I did it to show I could. In case you were wondering, the first 24 miles are the easiest. Oh, and if you ever try that yourself, learn from my mistake and do not pack a salami sandwich and chocolate milk as your lunch. There are better choices.
5. Finally, because the idea of marketers who don’t watch TV is odd but also oddly common, I’ll admit that we tossed TV out of our house almost 3 years ago. Except for pro sports and late night infomercials from which cocktail party jokes are made (”…aw honey, sandwiches again?”), I don’t miss it.

Now to pass the Holiday BlogTag baton to 5 others… I tag Susan Torrico, Chris Snyder, Jeff Loiselle, Steve McArthur, and Hans Kaspersetz.

At Pubcon I was a lucky winner of a Nintendo DS Lite from the Opera booth. I have to admit, I didn’t even know what that was, but I have always loved the Opera browser and especially on my mobile device (Windows Mobile 5). The Opera Mobile browser automagically re-renders an html page to fit the device window, which makes it virtually impossible to tolerate Pocket IE which requires you to scroll all over the place to see a page. Honestly, as I told the Opera people, Opera Mobile beta came out at the time I got my XV6700 and I use dit before even using Pocket IE. When the beta expired, I was left depending on using my PDA phone for web and had to try IE and ….. well it was minutes at most before I was downloading the full version of Opera. There was no comparison in speed or ease of use.

Now I have this cool little white clamshell “game boy” and it runs Opera Mini. Fast, easy, and amazingly well integrated with the DS, this thing detects and signs in to hot spots like I wish my laptop computer could. In Vegas my Thinkpad was sent off for IBM service, leaving me with only the Nintendo. There’s this little ice cream shop inside the Wynn that has free wifi and dang if it wasn’t just seconds to get online and browsing. Awesome. Starbucks? Piece of cake. Secured wifi at home? Just as easy… no worries, found the MAC no problem, added it to the control list and it and worked the first time I put the key in.

The holidays are coming and I can recommend the Nintendo DS Lite as a perfect gift for your kids, provided you also buy the Opera Mini cartidge and are able to confiscate the DS Lite whenever necesary for bad behavior, inadequate school performance, sub-optimal attention to chores, or even less-than-completely-respectful-comments if you are desperate enough to get online.  It just takes a “Hey. That’s your salad fork. Use your dinner fork like I taught you for the main course. That’s it. Give me that Nintendo back. You’ll get it back when you learn to mind your manners”, and that baby is all yours.