HD Photo (JPEG XR) file format: an update

Bill Crow's HD Photo Blog is an excellent information source on Microsoft's HD Photo file format. It's written by the responsible Microsoft Program Manager, and like most Microsoft blogs it's a vast improvement on the usual marketing junk.

Microsoft's stated goal is to make HD Photo into JPEG XR -- a standard they won't control. Microsoft promises a royalty free grant to patents they hold.

I'm not exactly a Microsoft fan, but I'm hoping this one works out. JPEG is really inadequate (though if you shoot raw, edit the raw, and save as JPEG you can get around some of JPEG's worst limitations), but JPEG 2000 seems to be stillborn.

I was really hoping JPEG 2000 would work, but I've read that it probably contains lethal patent bombs. (Patent holders will stay silent until JPEG 2000 is well used, then attack.)

Crow's posts also include a dense discussion of color spaces and gamma. I've read this stuff before (see also: one, two, three), and discussions come in two flavors: wrong and impenetrable. That is, most of the discussions are misleading, but the reliable ones are very dense. I'm convinced not a few famous manufacturers and programmers have messed up their color profile support because the topic was too complex for them to understand. (Trust me, very large companies can have a lot of trouble with complex topics.)

I'm disappointed though that Crow doesn't discuss metadata and HD Photo. Exif headers in JPEG have been extremely valuable -- even though there's no real standard. A wikipedia article on JPEG XR has more information:

HD Photo metadata, optional XMP metadata stored as RDF/XML, and optional Exif metadata, in IFD tags

It would be amazing if Adobe's XMP metadata standards were to make it into JPEG XR. (See also: PNG, metadata and archival formats).

If Microsoft pulls this one off as an honest broker (the devil will be the details of those patent grants) I'll have to say something nice about the Devil.

Update 1/9/10: Sadly, Microsoft waffled on its licensing. So they were true to their satanic heritage.

Jing: free screen video capture for Windows and Mac

iShowU is a great low price OS X screen recording tool. I don't know of any high quality low cost tools for XP though. Until Jon Udell pointed me to TechSmith's Jing Project.

Free for now, which is a bit odd since TechSmith sells Camtasia -- which is very much not free.

Update 12/31/07: Jon Udell mentions Microsoft's SharedView.

Update 1/7/08: Udell also mentions Windows Media Encoder will do screen cast recording. Also I see the business plan for Jing -- it's tied to a media sharing service. That makes more sense! It won't work for corporate use then, and TechSmith sells Camtasia to corporations. SharedView is similarly tied to Microsoft Live. Windows Media Encoder screencasting looks like it's SilverLight based though I'm still following up.

No breakthroughs so far!

Bruce Eckel likes CrossLoop for XP screen sharing

XP is supposed to have built-in screen sharing controls, but I guess they don't work too well. Here's an important vote for CrossLoop:

Pairing Over the Web: "My brother recently turned me on to CrossLoop, which is the simplest and most responsive one we've tried, and allows both users to easily type into the document. Kudos to the CrossLoop creators; this really is a big improvement."

The first thing I'll do after buying 10.5.3 is describe what I think of Leopard's screen sharing. The lack of discussion on OS X blogs is probably meaningful.

CH likes the Consolas programming font - and Inconsolata for OS X

Coding Horror: Revisiting Programming Fonts shows Consolas, Inconsolata, and a few others. You can install Inconsolata in OS X.

Lookout CAN run on Outlook 2007

Lookout for Outlook was the best full text Outlook search solution ever to run on XP. It wasn't half bad for handling file system search as well. The last version had some bugs, but it was fundamentally excellent.

Alas, Microsoft bought the company and killed the product. Windows Live Search (aka Windows Desktop Search) is what I use now, though I fear it has deep bugs that might be killing XP. Of course I have a completely plausible paranoid fear that every new Microsoft product and patch is designed to covertly degrade Windows XP (the noble Windows Live Writer team doesn't know about the changes being made to their code after check-in).

Microsoft wrote the encyclopedia on killing rival products by creating subtle and gross incompatibilities, and Microsoft's most hated enemy these days is Windows XP. The Dark Arts are never truly forgotten.

But I digress.

Joel Spolsky tells us that the original developer is finding ways to extend Lookout's lifespan:

Getting Lookout to run on Outlook 2007 again - Joel on Software: "...the original author of Lookout, Mike Belshe, had just posted instructions for getting Lookout to work on Outlook 2007."

Incidentally, Belshe has a blog. Today's post has him praising Windows Live Writer and cursing Microsoft's web sites. I love reading people who agree with me, so I'll add his blog to my feedlist.

Creating a backdoor for your vulnerable Google account

Google wants us to put a massive amount of data into their hands. In my case, gigabytes. Photos, thousands of blog postings, massive amounts of email, Google Checkout records ...

All tied to a userid and a password.

A few crummy bytes.

One day our mad vulnerability will seem quite loony, like the days kids used to rattle around the backs of station wagons.

So what happens if you lose control of your Google account?

Well, you're in deep trouble. For the few who will take advance action, Google Operating System has some tips:

Creating a Backup for Your Google Account

...For Blogger, add the backup account in the blog authors section ... The account should have admin privileges so that you can create, edit and delete posts...

This is all stopgap stuff. Google needs to put a biometric infrastructure in place bloody soon now.

Novatel combo USB modem and flash drive

I hadn't heard of this one.

The Pogies: Envelope, Please - New York Times:

...For $60 a month, you can enjoy the ultimate geek luxury: high-speed wireless Internet. Not just in hot spots, where your laptop is tethered to a 150-foot wireless bubble — but anywhere you can make a phone call.

You just need a cellular modem. You can get one either as a card for your laptop’s card slot, or a U.S.B. stick that resembles a flash drive.

Novatel’s idea: make a cellular U.S.B. antenna that actually is a U.S.B. flash drive. The new Ovation U727 ($80 from Sprint, $150 from Verizon, with two-year contract) lets you install a MicroSD memory card (up to 4 gigabytes) — yet it’s even smaller than its predecessors...

Nice.