Microsoft's amazing WLW team also did Onfolio?!

I was happily scanning the release notes for the sure-to-excel WLW 2009 release when I came across a surprise note ...

Windows Live Writer 2009 RC released « whateverblog.

... On a more reflective note, this was the first full milestone (Beta to RC) we did without Charles Teague, our dev lead and voice of reason since the earliest days of Onfolio...

Onfolio is the only Windows app besides Windows Live Writer that I use and admire. I'm quite sad that Microsoft bought it only to kill it.

So one team did both products.

They must be Minnesotans.

I hope Microsoft is paying 'em very well!

Windows Live Writer news: 2009 and Blog This for Firefox 3.0

The really big news on one of my favorite apps from any vendor is that Joe Cheng has released a version of the "Blog This" add-on for Firefox 3. So we don't have to follow Joe's prior workarounds. Unfortunately it's in "sandbox mode" and won't be generally available until it collects a number of positive reviews.

So take a moment, register as a Firefox add-on tester, and contribute your five star review with a big thank you to Joe. My guess is he had to make time from his Microsoft duties to get this out.

In comparison, the announcement of a new version of WLW is a minor detail: Windows Live Writer 2009: Release Candidate. I mean, it's not like WLW 2.x was missing very much. The only WLW version news that would excite me would be a Mac version, which falls into the hell freezing category.

There's nothing in the features list I care about. Really, what I'd most like is a way to search against the titles of the post history list, and have other ways to manage the list of past posts. [See updates. Turns out the preview has some nice fixes to minor bugs and some great new features – like searching the list of retrieved past posts.]

WLW 2009 is bundled with "Windows Live Essentials", but I think you can choose which to install.

I'll wait for the release version. It's hard to improve on something as fine as WLW 2.x. Except, of course, by releasing the Firefox Blog This add-on.

Update: Joe commented that Firefox "Blog This" is a certified Microsoft product, not solely his project. Joe also tells us that the new version of WLW has the title search feature I wanted, implemented as filter.

Guess I'll have to test earlier than expected!

Thanks for the correction Joe, and thanks for your work and that of the WLW team.

Update 12/23/08: Blog This! is still stuck in the sandbox, so it needs more reviews. Works great, of course. WLW 2009 preview looks very good, so I’m glad I didn’t wait. I love the “filtering” feature – but I think it’s better than title filtering. I think it’s searching entire posts. They’ve also fixed the minor but annoying bug where the display of some labels/categories/tags for Blogger was truncated. The problem’s been long understood, but it wasn’t serious enough to justify a patch outside of this update. You have to uncheck a few things, but the new Windows Live installer will eventually agree to simply update WLW 1 and the IE toolbar.

LifeHacker's 2008 favorite features

Best Of 2008: Most Popular How-To Features of 2008

I especially like slipstreaming SP 3 into XP Installs.

Reason over fashion: Yellow iPhone cases

I like my Clarifi case with macro lens, but since it turned my white iPhone black it's darned hard to find around the house.

Turns out, Reason is not quite dead. There are yellow iphone cases for sale. There's even a fire engine lime yellow-green case (several, actually) that would really make my phone easy to find.

I'm impressed.

The state of webcam-based low cost business videoconferencing

ver in Gordon's Notes, where I keep my ravings, I've opined on the root causes of the very slow development of useful and reliable low costs business videoconferencing.

Not for the first time, a solution seems to be almost in reach. It's been a longtime coming.

We've almost got reliable 640x480 (or more) 15fps point-to-point video with reasonably sharp edges and decent management of suboptimal lighting. That's enough to support facial expression tracking, and to enable sharing physical white boards.

Here's my summary of the state of the technology based mostly on my personal experience:

1. There are now reasonable quality USB 2 webcams, but focusing beyond 10 feet can be a real problem. Autofocus, even when it exists, is slow and unreliable.
2. Current webcams have very limited dynamic range. They seem to be tuned to keep from blowing out the high (right) end of histogram, so contrast extremes produce a lot of dark areas. Glare from reflected lights are a real problem. We need next generation sensors to improve the dynamic range.
   
3. Our CMOS (vs CCD) webcams have surprisingly good light sensitivity, even with small lenses and tiny sensors. I often find better results with relatively dim but indirect lighting.
4. I'd like to see some levels on the webcams to help with orientation. Oh, and a $%!$! tripod screw too. Velcro tape and black tape are most helpful, yeah, just like in the movies.
5. Relatively modern laptops seem to have just enough horsepower to do at least 640x480 at 15fps with the newest variants of adaptive h.264 compression. That seems to be the current practical limit.
6. Our networks are a problem. Attacks on BitTorrent seem to be taking out iChat, and possibly other video conferencing software. Comcast gets a lot of criticism; but it may be regional and it's not clear that DSL is always better. Comcast @Work may be better, but I have no real evidence yet. [see update]
   
7. Gmail based Google Video Chat (Vidyo technology) has given us the image quality we need on both XP and OS X. It hasn't, however, been very robust. [1] GVC is point-to-point, no multicasts. It also has voice quality that's sometimes excellent, but we prefer to use standard phone conferencing.
   
8. Stack Overflow likes Oovoo and Adobe Connect. Both have some multi-user support, but in our tests OOvoo had a lot of dropouts. On the other hand, we've had GVC issues as well.
   

I'll update this post as I learn more.

[1] Incidentally, Google's help forums are a waste of time. I think the XP to OS X connections have problems when a corporate VPN or firewall is involved, the XP to XP connctions seem more resilient.

iMovie '08: Official support for FLIP Video camcorders

I wish it had happened six months ago, but for the past month or two editing clips from our Flip Video camcorder in iMovie 8 (on a MacTel machine) has been painless.

Today Apple provided official documentation on how to import the videos (mildly messy): iMovie '08: Pure Digital Flip Video MinoHD camcorders. (Directions are same for all FLIP camcorders.)

With iMovie 8 the imported AVI files are not transcoded, they can now be natively edited. I don't know about iMovie 7 and I've not tried on my G5 PPC machine.

Microsoft LifeCam VX-7000 vs. Logitech 9000 and VisionPro -- it's in the focus

I bought my LifeCam VX-6000 two years ago. For most of that time it sat on my shelf.

Now, thanks to Google Video Chat, and several Microsoft updates of the incredibly botched device drivers, it's finally useful [1].

It's a pretty plain webcam, but it does 800x600 video and that's more than our infrastructure seems able to handle these days. Even 640x480 over Google Video is enough to make a small but close whiteboard readable.

The killer feature of the VX6000 is the manual focus ring. It's chintzy, but it makes all the difference.

Which is why Microsoft's current top-of-the-line webcam seems ... stupid:

LifeCam VX-7000 (Windows only)

...The webcam is always in focus – no fine tuning needed. Focus depth of field is from 21” to 60”...

Right. Always in focus. Uh-huh. They still sell the VX-6000 by the way, but they don't mention the focus ring. Gotta love marketing.

By contrast the competition does autofocus -- sort of ...

Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000 (windows only, 960x720 video, aka 720p [2])

Premium autofocus: Your images stay razor-sharp, even in close-ups.

Except from (excellent) Amazon reviews we learn that the VisionPro's autofocus is controlled by the computer, not the camera. So it's sluggish and slow. It also sounds like some VisionPro's can focus further than others, and anything beyond 8 feet is pretty iffy.

There's no manual focus ring on either the Logitech or the LifeCam. Grrr.

Lastly, we have the one and only webcam sold for OS X:

Logitech VisionPro (OS X theoretically, but see this.)

...Premium autofocus: Your images stay razor-sharp, even the most extreme close-ups...

There's about zero information on Logitech's site, much more in their press release

To deliver image-perfect detail and clarity, the Logitech QuickCam Vision Pro webcam for Mac combines Logitech’s premium autofocus technology with Carl Zeiss optics. The new Logitech webcam uses a voice coil motor for its autofocus system, instead of a stepper motor. Focusing is fast and fluid – crisp even in extreme close-ups only 10 cm from the camera lens. Logitech’s autofocus system compensates for changes in image-edge sharpness and refocuses images in less than three seconds.

and on Amazon we get very mixed reviews of the autofocus, from this to this. I wouldn't expect to get much out of this camera on a non-Intel system, so it's really an accessory for the Mac Mini (other Intel systems have built-in not-to-bad webcams). One review that impressed me claims that this camera does its own autofocus, not relying on the computer and gives us the low down on resolution ... [see update]

Autofocus and autoexposure (light level) are done purely in hardware. There's no software to install. This is different from the earlier Logitech QuickCam 9000, which depended on Windows software to do the focus and exposure, which lowered the price of the webcam, but forced you to use Windows. The microphone is pretty good for a webcam, but you'll still want a headset for clear conversation. Frame rate is very fast and smooth, 30fps at 640x480.

... The included stand is very wobbly, and falls down easily. When set on top of the monitor, gravity's the only thing holding it on, it will slide off easily. Unlike the older Logitech webcams with flexible plastic that could mold into place, this camera has stiff plastic, so it doesn't maintain as good a grip. No zoom. Frame rate gets much slower if resolution is increased beyond 640x480. At 960x720, it's 15fps. At the maximum 1600x1200, it's only 5ps. Anything above 960x720 is just hardware upscaling, as the true optical resolution of the webcam is 960x720.

Now that's a review!

The ability to work without drivers on XP is very interesting.

For my purposes I may stick with the LifeCam, but buy one or the other of the Logitechs for our other team members.

[1] The process of establishing a trusted chat relationship is nuts. See update to my Google Video Chat post for what I think works.

[2] Be careful. You may find your chat software won't allow anything beyond 640x480, so this number may be pointless. iChat peaks at 640x480, and practically speaking, that's the limit for everything today. I think to do better we'll need dedicated hardware based h.264 compression on the camera.

Update 12/19/08: (posted as comment on Mr. Krellan's initial review)

I had to order several XP webcams as part of a corporate order, and based on this review I ordered one VisionPro and several Pro 9000 cameras.

... On my XP SP2 laptop the camera took a few seconds to register. In Windows Explorer it then showed up, next to my drives, as a "USB Video Device". (In properties it's "manufactured by microsoft".) Clicking on the "USB Video Device" in Explorer opens a video window. In this display is no "mirroring" or zoom since we're just seeing unmodified output.

The camera focused clearly at 6" (rather better than claimed) and at about 30 feet.

Adjustment to light levels is automatic and impressive.

The dynamic range (ability to deal with glare, bright and dark areas) is vastly better than my 1-2 year old Microsoft VX-6000.

It's a solid device. Mr. Krellan is correct that it doesn't mount very securely but I think will suffice.

Impressive.