The Death of Point-and-Shoots

I love my Nexus S, I really do. It is running pure Android 2.3 (ICS on the way), it has a decent processor, the screen is 4" (0.5" bigger than the iPhone) and I love the camera...so much that I have hardly used my 14 MP Sony point-and-shoot in the past 4 months.

Why do I love the camera so much? Even though it is only 5 MP, it takes good photos and avoids a lot of the hassle with point-and-shoots:

1. Geotagging: As long as the my phone's gps is turned on, photos are automatically geotagged, and the accuracy is pretty good. With the point-and-shoot, I have to manually add the gps information with software that often crashes.
2. Uploading: Android allows easy uploading to major photo sharing sites. I am a diehard Picassa web album user, to upload I simply select the photos and the album to upload to. For the point-and-shoot, I have to transfer them to my computer via a usb cable, then upload them to Picasa web albums. I hate having to deal with wires.
3. One Less Device: Back in the day I rocked a dumbphone and iPod Touch. Like a lot of people I have ditched the iPod Touch and dumbphone, and use just the smartphone. Using the smartphone as my primary camera is another step in the direction of using just one device. Before the smartphone age, people would whip out their point-and-shoot to grab a photo, take out the dumbphone to make a call; now they simply whip out their smartphone. Flickr numbers provide evidence for this, the iPhone is the most popular camera used (and yes, I admit that the iPhone does have a great camera) and I suspect other phones are playing catch-up. 

Photographers out there will never move in this direction, and most probably don't use a point-and-shoot, they will stick with their SLR or DSR or whatever it is called. The average user is ditching their point and shoot for their smartphone and I expect the rate of this will increase. Instead of users upgrading their camera, they will upgrade their phone (8 MP cameras and higher are very common in smarthphones these days). I know I will be doing this come October.

Finally, here is the same beautiful Newfoundland scene taken with my Sony point-and-shoot and my Nexus S, I am not sure which device took which photo, for me and the average user it doesn't matter. 

Google Roudup for June 29th - July 6th

This week in the world of Google has been somewhat active, but not as much as others. It amazes me that Google is involved with so many projects, and the number is continually growing. Here is a summary of the world of Google for June 29th - July 6th:

• UbiqWindow has a cool video of a computer screen projected in mid-air a person interacting with Google Earth by touching the hologram. Super cool.
  

• Mike Pegg is one lucky and hardworking blogger. He is the writer of the Google MapsMania blog and now product marketing manager of Google Maps API. Pegg was hired on because his blog was so good.
  

• If your a Nine Inch Nails, they have released a Google Earth file showing distribution, geographically, for 1.4 million downloads of The Slip, which is their latest album. I'm not a fan of their music, but this is a great idea.
  

• The iGoogle gadget of the week is the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games Countdown. It should be interesting to see how the poor air quality is going to affect the athletes in Beijing.

• Google Apps is popular and the number of users is growing very fast. It is just 17 months old, and 500 000 organizations use it as part of their business, and 3 000 sign up daily. Hopefully my workplace will be signing up soon.

• If your a FireFox 3 fan like myself, there is a new feature that lets Gmail be the default for all email links (containing mail to:). Check out this post at the Gmail blog for the setup procedure. Also, if you want to be a Gmail expect, look at these 10 tips.

• If your a iPhone or iPod touch user, there is a version of Google Talk designed specifically for both.

• For those of you interested in seeing top films from around the world, check out the The YouTube Screening Room, where there is a fresh lot of movies.

New iphone

As expected, Apple announced the new iphone today, the cost is around $199 (American), and is going to be released in 70 countries, including Canada where Rogers will be the provider, both are going to make a ton of money off of this. The new iphone will have 300 standby hours of battery life, five hours talk time, 7 hours of video, and 24 hours of audio. As for surfing the web, it is about 3x faster than previous generation iphones. Along with this, there is a strong emphasis on Apps for both the ipod touch and iphone such as video games and a mobile version of ebay. Looks like Apple has another winner.

                         Steve Jobs giving his keynote speech