Kodak

The Kodak Picture Saver Scanning System

~ randyaa ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been caught in a physical photo archival project for the better part of 5 years.  Yesterday my friend Matt shared a post on the Monroe County Library System‘s website that stated they are currently running a test of the Kodak Picture Saver Scanning System for patrons for free.  I decided I’d take the opportunity to test it out and scan a bunch of my photos in the process.

I used the Kodak Picture Saver Scanning System for the first time today and thought I’d share some of my thoughts before I forgot.

Pros:

  • Speed.  I processed roughly 300 photos (including proper rotation) in under 30 minutes.
  • Simplicity.  Drop the photos in and press ‘scan’ and let ‘er rip.
  • Stores to Flash media.  No need to wait for CD authoring.  flash media storage is a breeze.
  • Free.  Need I say more?
  • Albums.  It can create albums (or folders) on your flash media based on how you group the photos
  • Constant scanning.  Even though it can only handle 25 at a time, this limitation is just in the ‘tray’.  You can keep dropping photos into the tray and because it scans the back photos first, things stay in order and it can just keep chugging along.
  • Good-Enough photo quality.  It’s not fantastic but it’s good enough.  If you want spectacular scans you really need to go back to negatives and scan those, which requires a great deal more time and work.

Cons:

  • Works best when photos are in a big row/group.  This requires a ton of up front time before you use the device.  As a result total time savings is tough to calculate.
  • The tray where the photos drop into is not low enough.  The tray slopes down and away from the scanner and as a result sometimes the photos get stuck and you need to move them out of the way or the next photo will go underneath the current photo causing archival ordering problems.  This could easily be avoided simply by increasing the vertical distance from the scanner to the tray
  • The pricing.  Right now it’s free, but it’s very apparent from the Interface that Kodak intends to charge a hefty premium for the service.  At ‘checkout’ you get a breakdown of how many photos you scanned (at what price each) how many photos you applied some special photo editing to, how many you sharpened etc.  Each line has a price associated with it which right now reads $0.00 but this is obviously going to change.
  • Photos are stored to the device first.  This makes sense because of the apparent pricing model but means if a problem arises before you’ve ‘checked out’ it’s possible you could lose all the work you’ve done.
  • Price.  Dear lord the unit is expensive.  This makes sense I guess considering they’re targeting small businesses to put these in rather than consumers.  But For projects like mine, something like this as a consumer device would be excellent.
  • Very old Photos.  Some styles of old photo prints require one by one photo feeding because of the style and texture of the border.
  • Wallet sized prints.  Although the scanner can handle them, the wallet sized photos need to be placed off center to get gripped by the auto-feed rollers.  Also, the resolution when scanning a wallet size photo is too small to be of much use.

The women I talked to at the library seemed to think the User Interface needed some work because many people had been confused by the terms “Next” on basically every screen.  Her exact comment was “next what?”  This seemed sort of silly to me but could also be fixed very easily simply by using terms like “I’m done scanning” or “save photos” instead.  Since there’s been so many complaints this is probably something they should address even if they (like I) think it’s silly.

In Summary:

It might look like there are more cons than pros, but really, it’s an excellent system and the cons I’ve listed are all very nitpicky.  The biggest downfall of the system as I see it is price, and if you act now you’ll get what you need for free.  Don’t think for a second my love for the system has anything to do with my local proximity to the business.  If you remember… the only previous time I’ve written about a Kodak product, I wasn’t too gentle.  Maybe they’ve found a new niche they’re good at?  I don’t know, but I’ll tell you what…

I’ll be making another appointment tomorrow and I will be be going back as often as I can until I finish scanning my photos.

Kodak M1033 Review – Horrible!

~ randyaa ~ 3 Comments

Kodak M1033Wow the Kodak m1033 is an incredibly crappy camera!

The camera was so horrible, that after 2 months (1 month of which was a vacation) we returned it.  Rather than go into any lengthy detail I’ll just state my complaints in bullet-list form.  We all like bullet lists right?

  • Crazy noisy zoom.  Very audible during video.
  • Horrendous low light quality.
  • Completely inaccurate (although pretty) color representation.  There was noticeable color processing once the picture was taken.  It almost seemed like HDR photography.  I could find no way to turn this off.
  • Battery life,  at best 200 shots.
  • To ‘view’ photos the camera must first be turned on.
  • Incredibly slow.  Noticeable camera shutter lag and scrolling through photos.
  • Won’t stand up to even moderate use.
  • Incredibly poor HD quality videos except in the absolute best of light conditions.  Not any worse than expected on such a small sensor ‘HD’ video camera, but still it doesn’t do the camera any favors.
  • The battery had to remain in the camera to be charged, using a proprietary plug (not mini-USB).
  • The Camera tagged the photos as coming from the “eastman kodak company kodak easyshare m1033 digital camera” which is an insanely long name.  Most cameras are similar to ‘Canon 40D’ or ‘Sony Cybershot H5’ at the most.  While this seems like a small deal, to a power user like myself it’s actually quite frustrating.

In Summary

We didn’t go out looking for an insanely superior camera to match up to my DSLR.  Our intention was to get a mediocre camera that would be good enough for moments when I didn’t want to carry the DSLR or moments where I wasn’t with Rachel and she wanted to take a decent picture.  The features of the Kodak M1033 seemed to be a step in the right direction from the Kodak cameras I’d seen in the past, and I wanted to give them a shot, being that they’re a local company and all.  After all, $145 for a compact 10mp camera with a 3″ LCD and 720p HD video wasn’t half bad right? It wouldn’t have been, except that the Kodak M1033 couldn’t deliver.

It’s just a downright crappy camera, and I hate to say it but I won’t be buying Kodak ever again, at least not until I hear glowing reviews.

Time Warner Has a Problem

~ randyaa ~ 4 Comments

time warner chokes

The Problem

Time Warner has a few problems.

The first and most important is their bandwidth capabilities.  As my good friend Brion mentioned recently, Bandwidth is a measurement of speed, it is NOT a measurement of consumption.  It’s a simple fact that the speed you get from Time Warner is shared and therefore even though you pay a premium price for 10Mbps DOWN and 384kbps UP you’ll be lucky if you get half that at prime time.

The plain and simple truth is that Time Warner has oversold the bandwidth they can provide.  At the same time they’ve been slow to react to the increasing market demand.  Rather than concentrating on decreasing the number of users per node, they’ve concentrated on improving their end user speed ratings, which is nothing more than a marketing gimmick.  This has resulted in increasing the demand and a false representation of their bandwidth capabilities. This comes at a time when they should be decreasing the burdon on their network in order prepare for the future.

And that’s only the first problem.

The second problem is that Time Warners’ primary source of revenue is dying.  Mainstream media is slowly but steadily moving online.  Hulu now provides most of the same content you can get from network television, Netflix now allows you to stream movies and television shows directly to your PC or TV and over the air HDTV is of superior quality and easy to get.  Time Warner, and cable TV companies in general, are behind.  They’ve chosen to hold on to their old business plan instead of moving into the 21st century.  The lack of progress Time Warner has shown in adapting to their new environment reminds me of Kodak’s slow progress in moving into the Digital era.  It almost killed their business entirely and it will destroy Time Warner unless they do something.

The Descision

Time Warner has made their move.  They’ve decided to put the burdon on us, the consumer, and carry on business as usual. Everyone is probably aware of their tiered bandwidth plan by now and that’s only the first step.

Time Warner is capitalizing on the direction the world is headed in.  They recognize that everything is becoming digital.  They recognize that their current business model is dying.  Getting their pricing plan in place now puts them in a perfect position to drastically increase their profit margin in the future.

In a time when bandwidth and overall networking costs are shrinking, and the cost of running the fastest network on the planet is only $20 for each household passed…Time Warner is failing to produce.  They haven’t announced Docsis 3 for any of their markets and they haven’t decreased the households per node to a reasonable level.

Time Warner Cable’s chairman and chief executive recently stated:

the Internet as it exists today – even our networks … will require an enormous investment … a tiered approach is one way to raise that additional money

It seems to me since Time Warner is posting record profits of $1.07 billion they could already be investing in improving their network, without pushing the cost on the consumer for something they should already be providing.

The Effects

The effects on your pocketbook WILL be drastic and Time Warner WILL make more money. Lots more. They’ve reported that 14% of the customers in their first test (in Beaumont Texas) went over their limit and were charged overage fees. What they’re NOT telling everyone is that the trial in Beaumont was for new customers only. So, of new customers approximately 14% received overage charges. Of those that received overage charges Time Warner has stated that the average overage was approximately 19 Gig which equates to $19/month (Business Week Article). Remember that this was Beaumont Texas which has a total 44,361 households according to the 2000 Census. Compare that community with the Communities they’re rolling the tests out to now and you’ll have a much different picture. In Rochester NY the numbers will be far higher. The High Tech community is booming here and with the number of Technology School graduates in the area the cost for consumers will go through the roof.

Innovation will be stiffled.  Once the usage of bandwidth is being tracked and billed people will think twice about networking every device in their home.  They’ll think twice about using services that keep their computers synchronized with other computers outside their network.  They’ll think twice about running new bandwidth intensive applications such as new video streaming systems.  Whether Time warner likes it or not this IS the direction the rest of the world is going.

Families with kids (especially teenagers) and small business owners will be hit the hardest.  These days some teenagers spend more than half of their life online.  Sites like Facebook & Youtube consume enormous amounts of their time and their parents bandwidth.  Lots of teenagers have turned into minor stars as a result of these sites.  If the amount of time they are allowed to spend on these sites is rationed it’s likely some of these emmergent stars would never get started.

Small business owners, specifically those who work from home, such as photographers and videographers need to download and upload hundreds of gigs of data on a monthly basis.  Will Time Warner require these people to limit the number of clients they can help in a given month, limiting the amount of income they can generate?

Other Options

Time Warner has other options they just don’t like them. 

To immediately solve the problems they could drop the speed of their average customer.  They obviously wouldn’t like this idea because it’s a marketing and public relations nightmare.  They’ll get complaints left and right and they’ll be seen as the underdog in a market they currently dominate (fictitiously).  What this would do however; is put less stress on their network and give their customers a more consistent speed rather than the rollercoaster they have now.

Rather than tiered bandwidth usage caps they could implement more bandwidth (speed) tiers.  Currently they have 2 levels in the Rochester area.  Standard (10Mbps) and Turbo (15Mbps).  Since the average customer probably wouldn’t even notice, why not place them in a lower tier, say 5Mbps or even another optional 1Mbps?  This could temporarily solve their current problems while they take the time to improve their network.

To fix the problem in the long term they need to improve their network.  They need to begin the process of rolling out DOCSIS 3.  Upgrading is a one time cost.  If their billion dollar (net) business isn’t profitable enough to do this, then give the consumers an option to foot the bill themselves.  I’d gladly spend a small amount of money to upgrade the connection to my house to the 150Mbps that japan is getting, especially if it’ll only cost me $20.   They’re already profitable now, even if they foot the bill themselves they’ll be profitable after.

What to do Now

We need compitition.

Fortunately Frontier is taking the recent announcment of tiered broadband usage caps as an opportunity to push their own unlimited connection.  This is good news.  It means there’s a chance.  The unfortunate part is they are the only competition and they have a few large downfalls.  One, you must have a landline.  Two, your speed can vary greatly, depending on your distance to the closest node.

To really give Time Warner a run for it’s money we need FIOS.  Unfortunately Verizon does not have a connection to the main Internet Pipe in Rochester.  Rochester’s telephone network is owned and operated by Frontier and in order for Verizon to setup shop they’d need to spend an extreme amount of money to setup a main hook into the Internet backbone.  Essentially Verizon has no reason to set up shop in Rochester at the moment.

One of the best ways we can combat the plan Time Warner has put into place is to get government involvement.  Write to the leaders in Rochester, call the Mayors Office ((585) 428-7045).  Tell them to sponsor infrastructure improvements, give tax breaks to new providers that come into the area, give breaks to companies that improve their abilities etc.  Anything the local government can do to improve the Internet infrastructure will be a long lasting and visible improvement which we can see a real Return on investment, unlike the Renaissance Square (which likely won’t make any more money for the city).

Call and write to Time Warner.  Tell them how you feel and that you understand that they need to improve their network, but placing a residual burdon on their customers is not a good way to go and will only hurt them and us in the long run.

Whatever you do, don’t stand for it.  If it comes to it, vote with your pocketbook and switch from Time Warner, even if you’re not hitting their highest cap you will eventually and let them know you won’t stand for it by no longer doing business with them.

Visit sites like StopTheCap and get involved!

DO IT!

Whether you think so right now or not, this is important.  Internet usage is only getting started.

Time Warner Resources

Local (Rochester NY) Government Resources

UPDATE: Stop the Cap just posted a letter from Time Warners Chief Operations Officer with a lot of useful information.  I’ve harvested the contact information from this letter and added it to my list of Time Warner Rescources.