When will we have 160 megapixel camera?

Engadget highlighted the Seitz 6x17, a $30K plus panoramic camera with 48 bit color (TIFF, RAW is 16 bit, so the "48 bit" might be hype) and up to ISO 10,000 sensitivity. The multi-GB images are dumped by GB ethernet to a Mac mini.

That's a lot of money, but not that much more than an 8 megapixel camera would have cost in 1996. It's not hard to imagine that a prosumer, slighly less immense, camera will have similar imaging capabilities for about $800 in 2016. It'll be pretty easy to zoom in on that acne scar ...

Replacing Safari

Since resolving that Safari must perish. I'm been playing with alternative browsers. The acid test, of course, is Google. OmniWeb actually shows the RTF text controls in Gmail, but they don't work. Spreadsheets rejects OW immediately.

Of course Firefox 1.5 works. So does Camino, the Cocoa Gecko browser. Camino doesn't have all the FF extensions I use (no Google toolbar, no Google bookmark synchronization, etc), but it does have features of its own:

Camino incorporates features that use Spotlight, Address Book, the Keychain, the Finder, the Dock, Bonjour, Services, and System Preferences.

I'll try alternating FF and Camino for a while and see which I like better.

Update 9/24/06: Camino is impressive. It's much faster than Firefox on my old G3 iBook, it works with all FF sites, and I don't have to deal with Adobe's kludged PDF integration -- Camino just downloads the PDFs. I like the fine touches, like the "Search this site" option in the embedded Google searchbar. I love the Keychain integration -- that makes up for all the missing Firefox extensions I can't use. It's my browser for now.

Update 9/24/06: Still enamored with Camino. It uses Gecko 1.8, same as FF 1.5. (FF 2.0, due to ship RC1 on 9/26 uses Gecko 1.9.)

Timed webcam s/w: hidden in PowerToys for XP

For some time I've been looking for a simple app that would take a webcam shot every 2-3 seconds and save it for me. I've had an awful time finding anything that worked and wasn't infested with a worm or virus. By chance, I discovered I've had it all along ...

Microsoft PowerToys for Windows XP

Webcam Timershot:This PowerToy lets you take pictures at specified time intervals from a Webcam connected to your computer and save them to a location that you designate.

Well knock me over. I'll try it at work and update this post.

Burn , Disco and Toast: extending OS X built-in CD burning

CD burning works reasonably well in OS X 10.4, albeit with a bit of an obscure UI. It doesn't, however, support multi-sessions CDs (which I never use anyway, CDs are cheap). A TUAW post and comments list 3 alternatives, Toast ($80), Burn (free, open source) and Disco (not yet out, expected to be inexpensive, from the AppZapper team).

Disco sounds just like it will be right for me, but if I need something before it comes out I'd try Burn.

OS X save as dialogs

I'm shamed to note I'd not noticed the spotlight feature, but the rest of this hint is noteworthy and new: Show full file paths in Save As... dialogs. It really annoys me that Spotlight hides hierarchies and enclosing folders from its lists. Dumb. Hierarchy is a valuable piece of information.

iTunes 7: smart playlists not updating

OUCH. MacOSXHints has discvoered that Smart Playlist in iTunes 7 don't auto-update. This is the first iTunes 7 bug that would likely impact me (I'm still on iTunes 6). I won't be updating until this is fixed.

The VGA connector: Dan's history

Dan's Data reviews the 52 year history of the VGA connector, and incidentally says some very interesting things about analog signals and bandwidth. Only the most serious of geeks (often radio people) can say anything about analog signaling. I wonder if a digital connector could handle the bandwidth scaling the VGA connector experienced ...