Is the iPhone camera the only camera you need? Not me

WSJ has a post on how the iPhone is dominating digital photography.

Is the iPhone the Only Camera You Need?

If you're armed with the right photo apps, editing tricks and shooting know-how, it just might be

By KEVIN SINTUMUANG

F. Martin Ramin for The Wall Street Journal (cameras, phone); Lisa Corson/The Wall Street Journal (sunset)

The iPhone simplifies the photographic process—you can shoot, edit, share and order prints using one device.

I, POINT-AND-SHOOT, hereby call to order the inaugural meeting of the Secret Society of Digital Cameras That Are Sick and Tired of the iPhone. Ultra Zoom. Micro Four Thirds. Budget Digi Camera that takes AA batteries. Thanks for coming.

I think everyone knows why we're here in the basement of this abandoned Circuit City in Ho-Ho-Kus, N.J. I mean, it's in the name of our club: the iPhone. A lot of you have been sitting in junk drawers, so I'll bring you up to speed. It ain't just a phone. It has a camera. And not one of those 1.3-megapixel numbers from a decade ago. This is the real deal. People have already started documenting their breakfasts with it. We're in trouble.

Have you checked out Flickr lately? The iPhone is the site's most-used camera. Instagram, an app that let's people share photos, reached 27 million users to become one of the world's biggest social networks. It hit that milestone purely with the iPhone. Last time I checked, we took photos. Where is our piece of the zeitgeist pie?

For many, who are not camera snobs the iPhone works fine.

I am a camera snob and use a Canon S100 as my pocket camera.  It takes awesome shots which gets close to the quality of Canon 7D where I use mainly 24-105 f/4 L IS lens.  One of the things I learned working with Professional photographers is lens makes a big difference.  This lens is $1,000 and I am spoiled.

651 of 669 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Canon EF 24-70mm vs. 24-105mm IS: Read this if you are a hobbyist, November 19, 2009

By

va1800 (Baltimore, Maryland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 L IS USM Lens for Canon EOS SLR Cameras (Camera)

I am a hobbyist and this review is for people like me. What I mean by that is that I take pictures for fun and nobody buys my pictures. I mostly shoot landscape, nature, and portraits of family, friends, and relatives. I will refer to 24-70mm as the 70, and the 24-105mm IS as the 105. I first made the mistake of buying the 70, then I returned it with a hefty restocking fee and bought the 105 - I don't have the slightest regret and I could not be happier. I'm taking my time to write this review so that you can spend your hard earned money wisely. Let's analyze the trade-off between the two:
* Both lenses have excellent build and image quality. So these are not differentiating factors.
* The one and only advantage of the 70 is the one smaller f-stop. For me, this means more blur when I shoot portraits, so this is all good.
* The advantage of 105 over the 70 are as follows:
- You get an extra 35mm, which is 50% more zoom. I like this.
- You get a 3-stop IS. For me, this is a great advantage, because I rarely use tripods and IS saves the day. I would choose the 105 over 70 for the IS alone.
- The 105 is 10 ounces lighter and close to half an inch shorter.
The last part is the most important part: that additional 10 ounces make a heavy lens TOO HEAVY, and that extra length makes a big lens TOO BIG. Carrying the 70 on my 50D was a pain. I can assure you, the 70 is just too heavy to walk around and take pictures for fun. The keyword here is "fun". The 70 is a pain, the 105 is fun. The 105 is still heavy, but not too heavy. It's still big, but not too big. After having the 70 for a few weeks, I lost all my joy for shooting. It just made me very uncomfortable (and I'm 6-foot 2). When I replaced it with the 105, it did make a difference. I enjoy taking pictures now, once again. Pros might like the 70 because they need it for their professional work. But if you're shooting just for fun, stay away from the 70 and get the 105.

The iPhone camera is with people all the time.  But, if you want to print a photo you'll want something better.  Yes, my wife likes to frame the family pictures.

I shot this with the Canon 7D at 8 frames per second.

and he scores

5 parts of a Successful Team, ideas to think about in your data center project

There are a few enlightened individuals who have focused on building better data centers teams to transform their IT services.  I found this presentation that articulates an approach that I think some of these people use.

The above link has a video with this framework.

1. The team is a Real Team

-       Clearly bounded task and everyone on the team has a clear idea of who the team members are
-       Team member have the authority to manage their own work
-       Stable membership
-       Clear model of working with their task structure (shared, independent or interdependent)

2. There is an Enabling Structure for task achievement

-       Task design that supports completion of work and is intrinsically motivating and meaningful to team members
-       Team members have strong task related skills
-       Team members have adequate interpersonal skills
-       Team is the right ‘size’ for the task
-       At the group level the team has a good balance in terms of heterogeneity and homogeneity
-       Team norms to shape and support behaviour

3. The team has a Compelling Direction for task achievement

-       Clarity in terms of the task or outcome of team work
-       The outcome or direction is both challenging and consequential
-       The task objective is clear
-       Means of achieving the task is self-directed or managed by the team
-       Clear measures of success

4. There is a Supportive Organizational Context that ensures team success

-       Team identity reinforced by the organisation e.g. rewarding and reinforcing excellent team performance (pay, benefits)
-       Information system that makes data required to plan team work easily accessible to the team members
-       Educational system that provides training [interpersonal and technical expertise] when required
-       Team is provided with sufficient material resources to do their work

5. That Expert Coaching is available and delivered by both the team leader and peers to:-

-       Improve group process
-       Reinforce individual behaviour
-       Improve interpersonal relationships
-       Eliminate unhelpful interventions

Whether you are a team leader, coach or consultant we can offer you expert supervision so you can learn how to set up and use the TDS. You will then be able to implement successful team interventions using the TDS Team Report as the foundation of your own team feedback process.

Hunt for Data Center Talent, if you think it is a popularity contest you'll be surprised

Last year, I had the pleasure of moderating a panel with Jack Glass, Joe Kava, and Mike Manos on the Hunt for Data center talent.

Hunt for Data Center Talent panel at 7x24 Exchange - Jack Glass, Joe Kava, Mike Manos

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2011 AT 7:41AM

The folks at 7x24 Exchange gave us the opportunity to discuss a topic that does not focus on the technology.  So, if we don't discuss data center technology, what should we discuss? Our idea was to discuss the #1 issue that defines the operations and design of a data center, the people on the data center team.

We had an awesome panel with a good perspective on what talent is needed in the data center.

Jack Glass, P.E.
Director - Data Center Planning
Citi Technology Infrastructure

Mike Manos
Senior Vice President, Technical Operations
AOL

Joe Kava
Senior Director, Data Centers
Google

Now that I pay more attention to the topic of data center talent it is amazing how many times people make the wrong decisions on who to hire.  Well wrong in the opinion of people who work on data centers.  Someone at a senior executive level who usually knows little about data centers picks based on his personal preference.  But, what do senior company executives know about data center executives.  The NYTimes writes on "The Secrets of Talent Scouts" and makes an excellent closing remark.

For all of Sequoia’s success, Mr. Moritz cautions: “We often get it wrong. Judging people is more difficult than judging a market or a product. Markets rarely deliver big surprises. People will always produce surprises.”

When someone is on the speaker tour they are either selling their services, adding public speaking engagements as their internal achievements, looking for a new job.  Or a 4th option is sharing knowledge because it is the right thing to do.

Hint: the data center talent is more often the 4th option, and not the necessarily the most popular.  As we have all learned being the nerdy kids in the school, the most popular are not necessarily the most talented.

Dyn throws a great party at SXSW, another example where the key are good people

Part of going to SXSW is going to the parties.  After going to four different tech parties, one thing was clear the most important part for putting together a good party is the people you work with.  I am amazed at how many times people think of picking companies to do the work, and miss the point that is all about what people specific get assigned to the project.  A good or bad project manager can make all the difference in your schedule, budget and performance in a data center.  The same idea applies to many other complex things, like throwing a popular party.

One of the funnest parties was the Dyn party on Tues night at Cedar Street Courtyard.

The venue was the location for GroupMe and FourSquare as well, and my vote goes to the Dyn party with 11 live bands and an in crowd of tech and music people.

This party had lots of people.

Same venue opposite angle.

Which party would you like to be at? The first one or the Dyn one?

The Dyn party above had 11 live bands vs. the 1st one had a DJ with dancing audience.  The 2nd one had a bunch of the musicians hanging around to watch the headline act, Dawes.

Talking to some of the event people it was interesting to see how much work Dyn spent thinking about how to throw a good party at SXSW.  Here is a blog post from last year.

Last year, I flew to SXSW Interactive on a mission. I hit Austin, TX, to take it all in and see what campaign slogan of ours had more legs: ‘Tweet Nerdy To Me’ versus ‘DNS Is Sexy’.

I was also super excited to check out trailblazing people and brands from the Web congregate for five days of networking events, parties, schmoozing, boondoggling, drinking, BBq’ing and concert going. The truth is that it was an epic week of hanging with clients and partners like SimpleGeo, Twitter, Media Temple, Mashable and Revision3.

It was the center of the Internet universe and we were right in the middle of it. Well, almost…

The only problem? I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off, hustling but alone, rogue and tired with no event or home base of our own. I traveled with two great friends and Dyn supporters, who both agreed that our disruptive and unique company could make great noise at an event like this.

What became clear as I listened to the 11 live band line-up and chatting with the folks there, there was a lot of time spent to make sure the right people worked on the event.  A typical approach would be to pick a budget, pick a venue, and allocate the money to support the event.  A smarter approach is to find the people who have hosted many events at the venue and at SXSW and ask "what works?"  What does it take to pull off an awesome event that people will twitter about?  Then, you look at your budget and see if there is good value.  If it is a good event, it is much easier to get sponsors to support the event.

One recurring theme even in data center discussions is getting the right people. People who understand how important people are to the solution are much easier to work with.

A new way to regulate who you talk to at a Data Center event, Yellow and Red Cards flag fouls

I was at a the Open Compute Summit that Facebook hosted in NYC, and one of the data center executives was sucked into a sales conversation and sold quite flagrantly, interrupting our group's conversation.  At an industry event where people have paid admission fees and/or exhibit fees many sales people think it is their right to sell the attendees.  You have little hope of doing anything to get an aggressive salesman to leave you alone.

Then it hit me after the salesman left.  We should have yellow and red cards for attendees to flag fragrant behavior.  I've order a few of these for a group of us to use in a week.

We are hosting our own event, so we can create our own rules.  We'll have fun with this idea.

Here is the record for yellow and red cards in a soccer match.