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Don't Have Time? Take 60 Seconds To Improve Your Photos
2007-10-16 08:12:00
idigitalphoto.com has a great blog post entitled "Improv e Your Photos 60 Seconds at a Time ". It's perfect for people like me who really don't have the time to read through a long and thorough tutorial on various photography techniques and skills.The post is broken up into a number of different sections:LightLandscapingPeopleColorCompo sitionBeing ReadyEach section has between 3-7 short "tutorials" in point form (e.g. "Framing the lines") that should take you only 60 seconds to read and absorb. Great job!Maybe only taking 60 seconds at a time is the reason why I still need to take hundreds of photos to try and get a couple really good ones.
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A Cool Way To Find And Compare Cell Phones And Plans
2007-09-27 09:02:00
I stumbled on this site while researching phones - www.myrateplan.com.The site has a cool gadget to find and compare phones and plans according to the criteria that you care about (e.g. must have Bluetooth, play mp3's, have a camera, be lightweight, look stylish, etc).From the criteria I punched in (slim, popular, bluetooth, camera, speakerphone), I was really surprised at the phones I could get for free (with a plan) or even get money back! I could get the Motorola KRZR K1 at AT&T and get $70 back!
More About: Cell Phones , Phones , Cool , Cell , Find

We're back! Apologies For The Missing Posts
2007-09-19 08:00:00
Sorry about the long time between the posts. I recently had a new baby and that takes all the time and energy that I have. I'm back now and will be posting regularly again as well as adding new products to ProductCritic.If you are currently doing research for a digital camera, camcorder, or cell phone, let me know and if the product isn't already on ProductCritic, we'll get it up there.
More About: Back , Missing , Posts , Polo , Logi

What Tech Support Problems Do People Have?
2007-08-16 14:59:00
As part of our continuing effort to make ProductCritic the most useful site on the Internet for helping you decide if you should buy a certain digital camera, camcorder, or cell phone, we've worked with FixYa to be one of the first sites to support their widget.If you don't know what FixYa is, they had recently been written up on Lifehacker. In short, FixYa is a database of user-submitted instructions for fixing tech support issues for various products. They have a pretty good database so far and are continually adding more support answers.We've started adding the widget to every new product that we enter into ProductCritic and will, over the next little while, add the widget to all the existing products that are on ProductCritic. We've already added them to the Top 10 Rated Digital Cameras. I've included a pic of what the widget looks like and you can see it on ProductCritic's page of Apple iPhone reviews.I like the widget as it adds another level of information for people wh...
More About: People , Tech , Support , Problems , Tech Support

Take Better Flash Photos
2007-08-10 23:23:00
Cheapshooter provides three easy (and cheap!) methods to modify the built-in flash on your DSLR so that the flash photos you take don't look so...flash photo-ish.I like their first method of using a white film canister to put over the flash and diffuse the light. Looks like I'll have to go hunting for a film canister though...I haven't had a camera that uses actual film in years.
More About: Flash , Photos , Lash

Now You Can Add RSS Feeds To A Rails Site
2007-08-09 15:05:00
We've recently added some RSS feeds to make it easier to keep track of changes made to the ProductCritic site. This is an easy feature to add extra value to your site and with Rails it's quite easy.There a number of ways to do this but I decided to use a straight forward method of using an XML view.First step is to create a new method in your controller. For the home page feed which provides updates on the latest product reviews on the site, I added an 'rss' method to the PageController class that looked something like this:def rss@products = Product.find(:all, :order => 'created_at desc', :limit => 20)render :layout => falseendNow all that is needed is to create a 'app/views/page/rss.rxml' file to create the RSS feed. In this example I used this:xml.instruct! :xml, :version => '1.0', :encoding => 'utf-8'xml.rss('version' => '2.0') doxml.channel doxml.title "Latest Products from ProductCritic"xml.link(request.protocol + request.host_with_port + home_path)xml.descr...
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Not Sick Of iPhone Yet? A Ton Of iPhone Links
2007-08-07 10:10:00
Mashable has once again produced one of their huge resource links, this time for the iPhone.This one has 75+ resources for the iPhone.I'm again bored of the iPhone stuff but am starting to wonder if I'm getting tired of these long lists of resource links too. Do they just get written to be dugg? I wonder if it's working.Anyways, we've made some additions to ProductCritic to make it easier for people to view all their product reviews. Look for posts about the recent changes we just made over the weekend.
More About: Iphone , Links , Sick

This Camera Was Really Dirty
2007-07-31 09:37:00
A friend of mine sent me this picture (not of him) of someone cleaning their dirty camera. Looks like I've been using the wrong method to clean my camera.
More About: Camera , Dirty , Really , Ally

Will It Blend? Camcorder Episode
2007-07-26 20:26:00
I think the Will It Blend ? videos from Blendtec are a must-see. One of the best uses of YouTube I can think of...dangerous stuff with appliances that you wouldn't want to do at home.Since we have camcorder reviews on ProductCritic, I thought I'd post a link up to the Will It Blend? video where they blend a camcorder. The results are amazing (as are all the results from anything they blend).What is even funnier is that they actually brought the blended results back to the store to try and get the warranty back on it. Unfortunately, they had to remove that video from the actual Blendtec site but it can still be found on YouTube.Does anyone know what model of Sony camcorder is he blending?
More About: Episode , Camcorder , Order , Lend

Almost 100 Online Photography Resources
2007-07-23 09:15:00
I don't know why I didn't post this when I read it but last month Mashable had a great post for photography buffs like us that listed 90+ Online Photography Tools & Resources .Read their post for the full list, but here are my favorites in each category:Online Photo Editors:Fauxto - The closest you can get to Photoshop online because it provides support for layers.Phixr - Not just editing but supports uploads to Flickr, Fotopic, Livejournal, Photobucket, and others.Photo Sharing:Flickr - Everyone is using it anyways...SlideShare - I love how easy they make it to embed a slideshow on your own page.Free Photo Hosting:Photobucket - MySpace's favorite.AllYouCanUpload - Like the name says, no limit to image size you can upload.Photography Blogs:DPreview - One of the sites that ProductCritic summarizes reviews from. Still good after being bought by Amazon earlier this year. Not exactly just a blog.Mashups:Colr Pickr - Allows you to search Flickr photos based on their color. This one is...
More About: Sources , Graph

Guy Gets Kicked Off From Amazon. Loses $400.
2007-07-20 09:02:00
Just read this really simple post about a guy who just got booted from Amazon 's Affiliate program and lost out on the $400 in commissions that he had already accumulated.Although ProductCritic participates in Amazon's Affiliate program, it is not a material part of the sites revenue. How unimportant is it? How about less than $20 in affiliate commissions so far this whole year!I'm not sure why the revenue (and clicks) from Amazon is so low. To be fair, we have mainly put in Amazon links because they have a lot of good general information about each camera, camcorder, and cell phone and is a good place for our visitors to view the features of a product (but not necessarily the reviews).Because we think the Amazon links are helpful for our visitors, we're going to keep the links available but I'm seriously thinking about using a different affiliate partner.Anyone have any good ideas?
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3 Kinds Of Successful Adsense Sites? At Least ProductCritic Is One
2007-07-17 17:30:00
Eric Giguere (the author of a couple Adsense books that I haven't read yet), has a post up on his Make Easy Money With Google And Adsense blog entitled "The 3 Kinds Of Successful Adsense Sites ".In summary, the three types he lists are:The Experience Site - a site that describes your personal experience with something.The Clarification Site - a site to better explain a topic.The Compilation Site - a site that organizes information and links to relevant websites.Prod uctCrit ic is definitely the third type of site that Eric lists. To quote his post,"The best compilation sites have lots of links to other sites. They're not afraid of external linking, and they're all the more useful because of it. It may seem counterproductive because each link out is one more chance of losing the visitor (and hence any potential ad clicks) but it?s the links that make the site valuable to the visitor in the first place and that draw in the traffic."I can't believe how well Eric describes our philosop...
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ProductCritic Has Most Extensive List Of iPhone Reviews
2007-07-11 23:23:00
ProductCrit ic's Cell Phone Reviews now lists 18 reviews for the Apple iPhone. I think we have the most extensive list of reviews you will find anywhere.Currently, the iPhone has a ProductCritic score of 87 which puts it tied for best rated phone on the site along with the Sony Ericsson K800i and the Sony Ericsson W810i.
More About: Iphone , List , Prod

Super Cool Do-It-Yourself Tripod That's Better Than Mine
2007-07-09 15:52:00
I have one of those cheap bendable tripods that you can get for your point-and-shoot camera. I've seen the Gorillapod which looks to be a pretty good improvement on my cheaper version.I saw this video on creating a cool do-it-yourself tripod though that doesn't look as pretty but would do a much better job than my cheap tripod and would also work for my camcorder. Even better than that is that it costs about $1 in materials and about 10 minutes of your time to make (if you're not very handy with tools).
More About: Cool , Super , Mine

ProductCritic's Apple iPhone Review Roundup
2007-07-03 09:32:00
We've just posted all the current Apple iPhone reviews up on our main consumer electronics review site. At this time, not surprisingly (given the hype surrounding the iPhone), it is the highest rated phone on ProductCritic (just barely edging out the Sony Ericsson K800i).Most of the reviews are from the main stream press (like USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and CNET). Over the next few weeks, I'd expect the real in-depth reviews from the more tech-centric sites.
More About: Iphone , Review , Roundup , Apple iphone

Don't Get Scammed By Online Camera Stores
2007-06-28 17:33:00
We've posted about being scammed by online camera stores in the past but yesterday we received an e-mail from a visitor of our digital camera reviews warning us about an experience with one of the worst online camera "stores", bestpricecameras.com.I just wanted to warn your readers of a "supplier" of digital cameras that I regard to to be highly suspect: bestpricecameras.comI found that they had the best price advertised anywhere for a new Canon Rebel xti 400d and for the lens, a 17 to 40mm L. All for around $960+/-. Sounds too good to be true? That's because it is. Please post this on your website so that others do not suffer the strange tactics of this company. I cannot imagine what they hope to obtain from their methods.I ordered the camera and lens (which I suspect will be of outstanding quality). After waiting a couple of weeks, I called them and they said it was on back order and that I should receive it within a week. After 2 more weeks, I called them again and got so...
More About: Camera , Online , Stores , Line

A History Of Cell Phones - In Pictures
2007-06-25 18:40:00
MSN has a nice slideshow of 15 pictures showing a history of the cell phone from the initial Motorola's (still an amazing achievement) all the way to the soon-to-be released iPhone.Makes me feel both a sense of nostalgia and awe at the amazing achievements of all the engineers that have created something many of us now just for granted and couldn't live without.
More About: Pictures , History , Cell Phones , Phones , Cell

Learn To Use Scene Mode On Your Digital Camera
2007-06-21 09:04:00
Most Point & Shoot cameras these days have a large number of "scene modes" that set up your camera automatically to take a variety of pictures in a variety of locations (e.g. "fireworks", "beach").While you might use "landscape" or "portrait" or "night shot" once in awhile, it would be helpful to learn what the other modes do. TeachMeToShoot.com has a summary of some of the scene modes:Night Portrait/Night LandscapeSports Mode Sunrise/SunsetCopy ModeBeach/SnowPanoramaParty/IndoorsBackli ghtI've seen some cameras with as much as 50 pre-programmed scene modes. My bet is that most users never use more than a handful.
More About: Digital Camera , Camera , Scene , Digital

What's Happening To The Popular Camera On Flickr?
2007-06-18 10:13:00
Since one of our main focuses is Digital Camera Reviews, we regularly look at the popular cameras owned by users of Flick r and we've blogged about these popular cameras (and their ProductCritic Scores) in the past.I was surprised when I recently looked at the charts on Flickr and noticed a distinct drop in the use of the most popular cameras. Is there a simple explanation for this? Are people just replacing their cameras with newer models and those models have not shown up on the popular charts yet? Are they switching to other brands that also don't have enough market share yet to show up on the top lists? This is happening for both DSLR's and point and shoots though.Anyone think they have an explanation?
More About: Popular , Pula

Armor For Your Camera. That's Hardcore.
2007-06-13 09:09:00
For the photographers who either travel in war zones or are really worried about keeping their gear in pristine condition (so you can sell it when you upgrade to the next hot DSLR?), get this camera armor from cameraarmor.com.I think this is so cool. The "body armor" is customized for a variety of cameras and includes a clear shield for the LCD and a hood that stretches over the lens for protection.The following cameras are supported:Canon 30DCanon Rebel XTi/400DCanon 5DNikon D70/D70SNikon D80Nikon D200Nikon D40Sony Alpha A100If you get one of these, send me a picture of how it looks being carried around and used.
More About: Camera , Hardcore , Armor

How Long Will Your Shutter Last?
2007-06-08 09:02:00
I worry a lot more about dropping my camera (or losing it) before worrying that the shutter on my Canon 20D is going to malfunction and die on me.Oleg Kikan has a cool user-contributed database of average shutter lifespans for tons of different cameras. Looks like my Canon 20D should average at least 45,000 shots before the shutter mechanism dies. If I make it that far, I'll probably be buying a new camera. Then again, with another kid coming, I just might hit that 45,000 mark sooner than expected.Definitely take some time to go to Oleg's database and input how many shots you've taken on your camera so far.
More About: Long , Shutter , Shut

Have You Lost Your Cell Phone In The Toilet?
2007-06-05 17:25:00
I found a cell phone in the bathroom at a FAO Schwartz the other day so I looked up how many people have lost their phones in this way.I'm not sure how much I believe this "research" done by SimplySwitch.com but the Telegraph in the UK reports that in the study, 885,000 people flush their cell phones down the toilet every year. Does that sound right to you? I find it hard to believe that nearly a million people don't notice their cell phone fell in the toilet before they flush it. Still, with the increasing use of automatic flushers when you stand up, maybe people just don't get a chance to realize that their phone fell before the flush happens.In addition to the loss down the toilet, 810,00 lost their phone in a pub, 315,00 lost theirs in the back of a taxi, and 225,000 lost theirs on the bus.Finally, 58,000 phones were chewed up by pets and 116,000 went through the laundry. I definitely can believe both of these numbers!As phones get smaller and lighter, they become easier to l...
More About: Lost , Phone , Cell Phone , Cell , Toilet

What Type Of Camcorder? MiniDV, Hard Drive, or DVD?
2007-05-29 15:47:00
One question I get asked quite a bit (and one I see being asked on many forums) is what kind of camcorder to purchase? One that uses older MiniDV tapes, or the newer Hard Drive and DVD-based camcorders?MiniDV:These are the small tapes that are currently the oldest form of storage in new camcorders. They are quite cheap and each tape will hold about 60 minutes of footage at the highest resolution settings. The data is still stored in digital format on a MiniDV (so transferring to another tape won't degrade the original footage). My current camcorder uses this type of storage and I like it because I can keep a lot of blank tapes with me, and they are generally easier to find and purchase when you're on vacation. They store well and have a shelf life of about 10-15 years. The are two huge negatives about MiniDV's. The first is the same problem you find with any tape-based format...you can't easily jump to any footage you have recorded. The second problem is that, because the footag...
More About: Camcorder , Type , Hard Drive

Don't Get Scammed From Online Camera Stores
2007-05-25 16:23:00
The Wise Bread blog has a post entry titled "DO NOT buy a digital camera online until you read this". The post is a detailed account of exactly what happened when he tried to purchase a digital camera from one of the most notorious online camera stores, Bestpricecameras.com.The usual way these Brooklyn-based online camera stores scam you is the simple Bait-and-Switch tactic. They lure you to make a purchase by showing cameras that are well below the prices you see elsewhere (as much as half as much). That's the bait. Then, once you place an order, you'll get a call or an e-mail saying that your order is backordered or you find out it's for the camera body only (no battery, manual, box, or anything else) and you'll get pressured to purchase a bunch of different stuff (or a different model of camera).In a previous post, I talk about how I look for these scam stores advertising on ProductCritic via Google Adwords. The only way to ensure that the visitors on your site don't go to o...
More About: Camera , Online , Stores , Scam , Line

Google's Doing Something About MFA Sites. Finally!
2007-05-23 09:36:00
As I've written about before, I hate MFA sites! They are such huge leeches on the Internet but I certainly can't blame them for taking advantage of a legal, money-making opportunity.Given my hatred for MFA sites, I was ecstatic to hear on Monday that Googl e has sent email out to MFA publishers that their accounts will be disabled starting June 1. This is great news. Although Jen from Jensense.com stated that both MFA publishers and arbitrage publishers are getting their accounts disabled, Shoemoney has a video blog post refuting the news that arbitrage publishers are getting disabled.I don't mind arbitrage publishers (that's where you buy ads for a low price and get people to visit a site where you hope they click other ads that get you a higher payment than you paid to get the click) because it's a legitimate strategy in many traditional markets (not just online ads). Although part of MFA sites strategy is arbitrage, the fact that they have absolutely zero value (they don't e...
More About: Sites , Finally , Something , Thing

The Secrets Of Taking Camera Phone Pictures
2007-05-18 17:15:00
ABC's Good Morning America did a segment on tips for taking camera phone pictures. To summarize:Get to know the camera phone settings for different lighting conditionsLearn to store your pics properlyShoot lots of picsTry black and white if you canUnderstand the limitationsTry to get enough lightGet close when scene is backlitAnticipate shutter lagSet to highest resolution you canGet a case for your phone to avoid lens scratchesGiven that the segment was on Good Morning America, I'll give them a slight break on the "absolute beginner" nature of the tips.With the cameras on phones being better and better, I'm even amazed by the quality of some pics you can get from phones now. Unfortunately, I still haven't bought a new cell phone yet and am stuck with a Motorola that has a pretty poor camera in it. Worst yet, the lens in it is very recessed so dust covers the lens over time and the placement of the lens makes it tough to clean.
More About: Pictures , Phone , Camera , Secrets , King

Amazon Purchases DPREVIEW.COM!
2007-05-16 10:15:00
On Monday, one of the largest and most-trusted camera review sites, dpreview.com, announced that they had been purchased by Amazon .Almost immediately, some in the community were skeptical that dpreview.com could maintain its objective reviews as poor reviews would mean less people would want to purchase that particular product from Amazon. Also, would Amazon ruin the site by putting Amazon links all over the place?ZDNet has a good article about the questions involved in the dpreview purchase.On ProductCritic's digital camera reviews, we weight the reviews from dpreview very high as they are among the most comprehensive and objective of all the reviews on the Internet. I hope it stays that way because they are a fantastic resource for consumers and the community in their forums are composed of very knowledgable, helpful people.
More About: Chase , Purchase , Hase

What Do You Hate Most About Cell Phone Service?
2007-05-14 17:21:00
Information Week has listed Six Things Customers Hate About Cell Phone Service .Disabled FeaturesPhones locked to one networkRestricted Internet AccessUnreliable ServiceIncompatible products and servicesCan't use phones as laptop modemsPersonally, I'm really frustrated by #1,3, and 6. The restricted Internet Access bugs me quite a bit. First of all, my phone is pretty slow in accessing the Internet, and when it does, there are many sites I can't access. I have no idea why I can't get Google maps on my phone even though the phone is definitely supported by the mobile version of Google maps.Also, I switched from my last provider because they were on CDMA instead of GSM. When I called to ask my old provider when they'd be switching to GSM, the service rep said "probably never". I said, "OK, then please cancel my service" and instead of trying something to keep me as a customer, the rep just said "OK!". Sheesh, that's pretty poor training....also the guy who cancelled my account wa...
More About: Cell Phone

Making a Friendly Multiuser Rails Database Configuration Files
2007-05-11 17:07:00
Many people and sites recommend not checking in your database.yml file directly in the subversion repository but instead check in a database.example.yml file that each developer is responsible for modifying themselves. The reason for this is because if other developers are working on the project at the same time you will both end up clobbering the file as one person changes the information to match their machine and you change yours back to match your machine.Fortunately the database.yml (along with all the other rails config files) can contain code in them. This makes is possible to write this:development: adapter: postgresql database: critic_development username: test: adapter: postgresql database: critic_test username: production: adapter: postgresql database: critic username: deployFor development and test configurations we use a local database that runs on our local development box with the username we logged in with but for the production server it runs as the 'dep...
More About: Database , Configuration , King , Rails , Friendly

A Portable Rails Development Environment
2007-05-04 09:11:00
Tony being the 'biz guy' just has to have his Windows Office Suite and thus any work he does on the site is done from Windows.Our site is built using Subversion, Ruby, Rails and PostgreSQL. All of these work on Windows but none of them are first class citizens. We did get him setup using the various installers but it wasn't easy and took some time.When I got the IM that he got a fresh laptop and needed his development environment setup again I didn't reply for 3 days. After that I got the idea of having him use an Ubuntu install on the free VMWare player. This way we could setup a complete development environment once and he could move it to any machine he wanted.We still needed to setup a working Rails stack on Ubuntu but with there are various good resources on how to do that. The free PeepCode screencast (download the free preview for the server setup video) would be my first choice if I was doing it from scratch.Once you get your virtual server running on your desktop ...
More About: Environment , Portable , Development , Table