Yearly Archives: 2008

Eye-fi — Not ready yet

Photographs, Technology, , ,


We were this close [imagine me holding up my thumb and forefinger about a centimeter apart] to buying an Eye-fi explore for our Ireland trip. It sounded ideal:

  1. It uploads photos from your digital camera to your photo site of choice
  2. It geo-tags the photos so you don’t have to do that

However, on further investigation, it is not “certified” (whatever that means) to work outside the US. And there are huge gaps in the areas that are already mapped.

It seems they are using a newish technology called Skyhook to map areas, and Skyhook is faulty. I downloaded their toolbar called Loki and clicked “find me”. It put me a mile or so away from where I actually am. Then when I chose to map my real location, I was asked to find my mac address. I’m too lazy to find my mac address. And, if I weren’t too lazy, what security / privacy issues would there be if I gave out that information?

I thought that Eye-fi used satellites like most other mapping devices. I’m very disappointed and won’t be spending $130 for a 2 GB card.

Back to birding – maybe

Birds,

I need to get back to birding. I mean really birding. Not just the incidental kind of birding I’ve been doing for nearly two decades.

I’ve not been on many real bird walks with real birders — once I went to Huntley Meadows with a bird group and that was educational. I’m over my reluctance to be around people who can identify birds faster than I can (I used to not allow myself to add a bird to my lists if I didn’t ID it myself). I think that being in the company of other birders would be good for me in a couple of ways. I’d certainly learn a lot more about birds than by learning on my own. Being in the company of like-minded people is always a good thing.

I’ve subscribed to a few birding weblogs and the adventures that people are having make me want to be out having adventures too, instead of reading about other people’s adventures.

I think I’ll look into joining a local birding group. I think Montgomery County has one.

No more Netflix Profiles

Entertainment, ,

Netflix just sent me an email:

Important News Regarding Netflix Profiles

Dear Dona,

We wanted to let you know we will be eliminating Profiles, the feature that allowed you to set up separate DVD Queues under one account, effective September 1, 2008.

Each additional Profile Queue will be unavailable after September 1, 2008. Before then, we recommend you consolidate any of your Profile Queues to your main account Queue or print them out.

While it may be disappointing to see Profiles go away, this change will help us continue to improve the Netflix website for all our customers.

If you have any questions, please go to http://www.netflix.com/Help?p_faqid=3962 or call us anytime at 1 (888) 638-3549. We apologize for any inconvenience.

– The Netflix Team

While this won’t bother me — I quit using profiles a long time ago because Dean and the kids would put the same movies on their queues as I had on mine and it got confusing — I imagine a lot of people are going to be upset. Especially since Netflix gives no reason except “To continue to improve the Netflix website for all our customers”. Some examples would have been in order.

Dang — these folks at Netflix are not as smart as I thought.