WorldCAD Access

The False Consensus Effect

Mark Bauerlein desribes it this way: "After Nixon crushed McGovern in the 1972 election, the film critic Pauline Kael made a remark that has become a touchstone among conservatives. 'I don't know how Richard Nixon could have won,' she marveled. 'I don't know anybody who voted for him.' "While the second sentence indicates the sheltered habitat of the Manhattan intellectual, the first signifies what social scientists call the False Consensus Effect. That effect occurs when people think that the collective opinion of their own group matches that of the larger population. If the members of a group reach a consensus... Read more →

What Will You Put on 27GB DVDs?

HP plans to ship desktop computers with Blu-ray DVD drives next fall. ("Blu-ray" is the name of a new DVD specification. These DVDs hold 27GB on one side, up from the current 4.7GB. It is named after the blue-colored laser beam that reads and writes the discs.) What will you put on 27GB DVDs? For starters, nothing, because you need all new equipment: new DVD readers and new DVD burners. After that, it could be that your software won't recognized the 27GB capacity -- I have older CD burning software that doesn't recognized that CD can now hold more than... Read more →

Microsoft Wants to Serve Your Software

Microsoft's plan is to make desktop software, such as the next release of Office and Visio, dependent on server-based software, says Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols of eWeek. "No word processor in this day and age should need anything from a server except a place to store files. No, the reason why Microsoft is making these moves is to force users to use its own server software, instead of Linux." Now imagine that happening with a CAD system. In some ways, it is already happening. Autodesk continues to release server-based software -- check out the Revit Streaming Trial. I suspect they are... Read more →

Cheap Telephoto Enhancers

I have seen lowcost telephoto add-ons (under $100) on eBay that would double the Canon S1iS's telephoto out to 20x. On the [email protected] mailing list, gerald48 reports his experience: I found a 2x lens on ebay that sounded like a bargain, but like most things that sound like a bargain you get what you pay for. I purchased it, made by Merkury Optics. Guess I should have tried to check it out more thoroughly. It is a terrible lens. At full telephoto, just the center of the subject is in focus, the rest is completely out of focus. I even... Read more →

Review of Canon 20D

Imaging Resource has posted its review of Canon's top-of-the-line digital SLR camera. Some highlights of the camera include: * 8.2-megapixel resolution * ISO range of 100 - 3200 * 5 frames-per-second * Shutter speeds from 1/8,000th through to Bulb (unlimited). * In-camera cropping of images. * Uses interchangeable lenses * US$1500 - body only; no memory card included. Read more →

Zoom Browser 5.0 Update

Canon yesterday posted version 5 of its Zoom Browser software. It's a free update that you can download from the PowerShot Web site. Select a camera model, and then select Downloads, and then select Software Applications and Updates and then select the language and then select ... well, just keep clicking and you finally get to download the 36MB software update. (G6 customers don't need to do this download; your camera comes with it. S1iS customers can click the link down below to skip past the many pages Canon wants you to click through. And, you have to have an... Read more →

World's Largest Photograph

The new title of "Largest Digital Photograph" in the world now belongs to a photo of Delft, Netherlands. The photo is actually a series of 600 pictures stitched together to create a 78,797 x 31,565 resolution photograph: 2.48 gigapixels. That 2.5 times larger than the previous record holder, a one-gigapixel photo of the Grand Canyon. The Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research at the Electrical Engineering faculty of Delft University invented a computer-controlled pan-tilt tripod that determined the aiming points for a Nikon D1x with its 400mm lens. After the picture were taken, it took three days to stitch them... Read more →

Avoid Transcend Memory Cards

The Transcend brand of memory card sometimes does not work with the Canon S1iS camera, as detailed by Luis TP at this forum. He notes: "... when connecting to the computer via USB, the S1 is not able to read the images from the card." Others have found the same problem with certain models of the Transcent: some work, some do not. Follow the tread URL'ed above for more details. Read more →

Market Shares

For the US marketplace, the top three sellers of digital cameras during Q3 (July-August): Sony - 20% market share Kodak - 19.8% Canon - 16% Worldwide, the top three are: Sony Canon Olympus Some Japanese camera makers are losing money, according to a report by UBS: Olympus, Pentax and Konica Minolta. Camera makers make half their annual revenue during the sales frenzy leading up to Christmas Day. Sources: CNET, Hindustani Times, and Imaging Resources. Read more →

Adjusting for a Cheap Dollar

Some international CAD companies, like Dassault Systemes, have a large percentage of their sales in the USA. For them, the difference in currency value has an effect on their accounting. DS, for instance, provides parallel financial reports: one with currency fluxuation left out, another with fluxuation included. It makes for harder but more accurate reading. With the recent plummeting of the US dollar, it may be a good idea for US-based CAD firms with large international sales to start doing the same thing. For instance, Autodesk's Q3 finances were spectacular -- but I saw no reference to the weak US$... Read more →

Free Guide to Digital Photography

PC World has partnered with Polaroid to (1) promote Polaroid's new 4x6 printer; and (2) provide a free guide to digital photography. After registering at Digital Photography Superguide (your name, email address, location, and whether you plan to buy a printer in the next 6 months), you are sent an email message with the link to downloading the 8MB, 28-page PDF file. I guess it's free because it is the 2003 edition :< The document is a repackaging of articles that previously appeared in PC World magazine. Most articles are written by Dave Johnson, PC World's digital camera columinst, and... Read more →

How Open Would 3D XML Be From Microsoft?

Over at Microsoft Watch, Mary Jo Foley asks: Is Microsoft's implementation of XML that is part of its Office suite really open? That question was raised, yet again, at last week's XML Conference & Expo. The XML formats Microsoft uses for its Office products are proprietary, because other software had to rely on filters provided by Microsoft to read OfficeXML files. IBM and Sun are leading the charge against Microsoft's XML being approved as "open." An analyst with ZapThink agrees: For Microsoft to give up control of this format would potentially significantly erode their competitiveness in the market — which... Read more →

DSLR? No Thanks.

DSLR is short for "digital SLR" and SLR is short for "single lens reflex." Photographic keeners yern to own a DSLR, because they are more like the Canon AE-1s, Minolta XE-7s, and Nikon F-1s that we remember from our chemical-based fim days. Problem is, DSLRs are really expensive: the camera body is expensive, and the extra lenses are even more expensive. Not a problem I suppose, if you want to spend money on camera gear. But really. What practical advantage does the DSLR have over something like the Canon S1 iS? None that I care to spend a thousand or... Read more →

512MB = $15 -- Ouch!

Lexar's 512 CompactFlash memory card is down to US$15, but it takes a couple of rebate coupons. Here's how it works: 1. Go to the amazon.com Web site, and buy the card for US$50. Click here. 2. On the same Web page, print out the $20 rebate coupon. 3. Go to this site to download a PDF file that gives you another $15 off. There are two catches: you have to buy the card by November 27, but Amazon.com is back-ordered by 1-2 weeks. The other catch: it's a 12x card, which is fine for pictures, but may not be... Read more →

Underwater Photography Guide

Canon has a detailed guide to taking photographs underwater. Some digital cameras are designed to get wet; most, however, will need an underwater housing that costs about US$200 or so. The purpose of the article is to encourage you to purchase Canon's underwater camera housings. Still, the info is useful, and includes these topics: Understanding White Balance Maintenance on the Boat Basic Retouching Techniques for Better Images Read more →

LT Outsells AutoCAD

Autodesk reports sales figures for its AutoCAD-based software at the end of January, 2004: Total AutoCAD-based Installed Base = 3,423,300 This number includes those AutoCADs packaged with vertical apps, like Mechanical. Autodesk provides this breakdown: Stand-alone AutoCAD = 2,368,000 Architectural Desktop = 336,300 AutoCAD Map = 190,100 AutoCAD Mechanical = 139,000 Land Desktop = 109,900 (There is an interesting note: the numbers include "prior period adjustment of approximately 28,000 seats.") By comparison, AutoCAD LT has an installed base = 2,430,400. That's more than stand-alone AutoCAD. LT has been on the market only half as long as AutoCAD. Let's see how... Read more →

Discovering Details in Underexposed Images

In the previous post, I noted how I could take better figure skating photos by deliberately underexposing the photographs (in order to achieve faster shutter speed) and then post-processing to increase the exposure. Several image programs offer an automatic image enhancement feature, so I tested them. At left is part of an under-exposed photo I took last week. (Click the thumnail image to see a larger version.) Picasa has an Enhance button. I find it is often useful, but does not work when the picture already contains bright and dark elements. Also, I find the result tends to increase graininess.... Read more →

IFCs for GIS

I write a little phrase like "Autodesk's IFCs" in the upFront.eZine e-newsletter, and the email doesn't stop coming! The phrase was deliberate, to point out that Autodesk invented the organization (IAI) whose job it was to come up with IFCs -- but that Autodesk has since lost interest, and instead concentrates on a "dumber" file format, DWF. (IFCs are a way to transfer intelligent objects between different AEC packages. A neat demo shows data from a CAD drawing sent to an HVAC module for ventilation analysis, and then the data passed further on to a cost estimating package, and then... Read more →

Fixing Difficult Figure Skating Photos

Speaking of figure skating,that's got to be one of the most difficult of shooting conditions: Dim lighting - requires wide-open aperture and slow shutter speed. High speed movement - requires high shutter speed. Background (white ice) brighter than the subject - backlighting issues. Constantly changing focus (from far side to near side of the rink surface) - can't use hyperfocal focussing because aperture needs to be maximized. Small subject at a far distance - requires maximum zoom, and can't use flash. So far, my approach has been to underexpose the photos: in manual mode, force the shutter speed high. Later,... Read more →

The Point Being --

Listening in to the Dassault-Microsoft press conference. As industry analysts ask probing questions, there seems less and less to the agreement. Q: Will Microsoft use 3DXML as a standard like Direct3D? A: No. Q: Does 3DXML mean that Dassault and Microsoft are stting their own standard, against Adobe (U3D), Autodesk (DWF), and others? A: Microsoft has not committed to using XML Q: Is this an exclusive agreement? Are UGS, PTC, Autodesk left out of working with Microsoft? A: No, it is not exclusive. Q: Is this purely a cooperative development announcement? A: Yes. No new products, no new distribution. Q:... Read more →

Wishlist: Zoom Overview

I was taking 10x photos of my daughter figure skating last week, and had a hard time keeping her fast moving body in the viewfinder. Which made me think: I wonder if Canon could implement a zoom overview feature. The viewfind would show the wide-angle view (so I could see the skating rink and skater in context) and a green rectangle shows the zoomed-in view (so that I can frame the skater in the picture being taken). (I've simulated the effect with the image above; click for the larger view.) Read more →

When an Apple Becomes a Platypus

The iPod is a music player that is sold by Apple. And HP. It is assembled by Inventec Appliances Company in Shanghai. Some of the chips inside the iPod come from PortalPlayer. The scroll wheel is made by Synaptics. Sony and Sanyo make the rechargeable batteries for the iPod and iPod Mini. Hitachi and Toshiba make the small hard drives. One estimate is that it costs Apple $70 in parts to make the iPod. International Pricing iTunes charges different amounts in different countries. Fair? * Canada: (equivalent to) US$ 0.83 / song * USA: US$ 0.99 / song * EU:... Read more →

JT Not Good Enuff for Dassault - Udpated

Confirmed -- Dassault Systemes of France today announced 3DXML as another platform of its 3D for Everyone concept. As first revealed by Computer Zeitung of Munich, Dassault is working with Lattice of Japan to create a XML-based standard for exchanging 3D engineeering data. The problem is that a heavy-duty 3D standard already exists -- JT Open -- and is used by General Motors, Ford, Daimler-Chrysler, and others in industry. Why wouldn't Dassault use JT Open? Because it is developed by arch-competitor UGS (as well as PTC). Why was 3DXML important enough for William Gates to join Dassault CEO Bernard Charlès... Read more →

CADopia IntelliCAD Incorporates eDrawings

First CADopia modifies its dialect of IntelliCAD for SolidWorks, creating DWGEditor -- a way for SolidWorks users to edit AutoCAD drawings. (CADopia did some custom enhancements so that ICAD would work within SW.) Now it's tit for tat. CADopia is incorporating some SW technology into IntelliCAD: eDrawings and Toolbox. (eDrawings is SolidWork's version of PDF: it let others view and redline 2D and 3D designs without having access to the drawing originals. Toolbox is a library of common mechanical parts.) Bundling isn't new for CADopia. Their IntelliCAD Pro (US$395) includes Columbus document management software. There are bundles with Rhino (3D... Read more →

Bluetooth Meets USB

The organizations who control USB and Bluetooth are planning big changes for their standards in the new year. Right now, USB works just over wires, and has become the most popular way to connect peripherals with computers and each other. The plan is to release a wireless USB spec by year's end called ultra wide-band (UWB), and products by end of 2005. This woulod allow wireless connections between printers and computers and digital cameras. Bluetooth, in contrast, was originally designed to operate wirelessly, but suffers from slow speed and short range. (The technical reason is that faster speed and longer... Read more →

CATIA Counterfit Ring Cracked?

Reuters reports: Greek and British police in a joint operation ... arrested a Greek citizen and a Briton who pirated and sold an expensive computer software program for the car and aeronautic industry, charging only about 700 euros. Sounds to me like CATIA. They did not name the company involved but said the man and his British accomplice in London were selling the program to buyers through the Internet. Police in Athens also found dozens of copies of the software as well as 7,000 CDs containing "every kind of program on the world market." Read more →

TurboCAD Adds Constraint Manager

The CAD package that can't get no respect become more respectable with today's release of version 10.5. IMSI has hadded D-Cubed's 2D constraint manager to TurboCAD Professional. (Constrain managers allow you to define relationships between objects. Change the size or position of one object, and the associated objets also change -- depending on the rules you define.) The new release of TurboCAD has fifteen 2D and geometric constraint management tools available for points, lines, circles and arcs. As well, constrained 2D profiles can be used to create 3D models, which update automatically update whenever the 2D profile is changed. Read more →

Fixing Six Fotos Problems by Fuji

Fuji Camera's Web site offers explanations for six problems encountered by taking digital photographs: I get white spots in the image when I use the flash People have red eyes when I use flash There are strange striped patterns in the shot There are strange ghostlike objects in the shot The colors are blotchy in some parts of the shot The top and bottom of some objects are unbalanced You can learn the solutions to these problems at What's Gone Wrong Read more →

Shared Web Hosting Hazards

General CADD found out about the hazard of shared Web hosting. (This is very common: one Web server hosts many different Web sites. upfrontezine.com, for example, is hosted by Telus on MegaServers.) But people in Australia were unable to reach the General CADD Web site in late October. Their ISP, BigPond, had blocked access at the request of the Australian High Tech Crime Centre because it felt there was a data miner at IP address 66.226.64.11. (BigPond is 51% Australian-government owned through the telecarrier Telstra.) A member of the General CADD forum, Milan, was able to access the site using... Read more →

Vicious Copyright Law Proposed for Canada

The Globe&Mail reports: Last week, the standing committee on Canadian Heritage resubmitted its recommendations for updating the Copyright Act of 1998 and ratifying the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) treaty. Copyright lawyers say that if the changes are made into law, you will not even be able to own your own wedding pictures or save a Web page without paying for it. Among other things, the committee proposes that photographers keep the rights to their work and surfers would have to pay a levy for material even if was offered free of charge. Copyright holders could also shut down websites... Read more →

RAW File Processing

Despite Adobe's early attempts at creating a universal RAW file format, the format is not widely supported. (Part of the problem is that RAW is inconsistant between camera brands. RAW does not refer to a file format like JPG so much as it refers to the raw data generated by the camera's image sensor. All cameras generate the raw image data, and then convert RAW to JPG; many cameras, however, no not preserve the raw data, such as the Canon S1iS.) If you have a camera that saves pictures in RAW format, then you might be interested in this software.... Read more →

Rand Debt-free Next Year

RAND Worldwide is becoming less worldwide as it shuts down operations in Ireland and Italy, and continues to sell itself off to Dassault Systemes. The lastest agreement with DS is worth CDN$50 million, and will eliminate $38 million of debt. With all the changes to the company, it's hard to compare figures to previous quarters and fiscal years. Q3 revenue was down to $23.3 million, compared to $27.5 million a year earlier. Net loss $12.9 million, compared to a net loss of $10.2 million a year earlier. The company has $6.4 million in cash. CFO Kriss Bush writes, "Once the... Read more →

Closest Macro Distance Differs

Snoz at the Canon Talk forum found differences in how close the Canon PowerShot S1iS digital camera can focus in macro mode. * Automatic focus (MF turned off) = 5cm (about 2 inches) * Manual focus (MF turned on) = 10cm (about 4 inches) The distances measured are from the subject to the front of the lens. Automatic focus gets twice as close as manual focus! This is an interesting find, because I would tend to use manual focus to ensure that the object is in focus. Macro photography has a very short depth-of-field, and it is too easy to... Read more →

TIPS: Poster Printing

The Inquirer is a British computer news Web site that I like to visit every day for its British-style reporting on computer news. A recent review of Digital Camera Poster Creator made write an email to the author: Some software packages and some printer drivers include that functionality. Visio software, for example, creates posters. Just copy and paste the image into a Visio page, and then use the page setup options to specify the number of pages to print over. My HP PhotoSmart printer's driver has a similar feature that works with any software program: select the poster option, and... Read more →

Photo CDs

A reader's comments: "We just received our photos back from our wedding. Guests requested so many copies that the photographer suggested Wal-Mart to keep the cost down. The idea was to select the ones we liked best, and have them blown up latter. "I asked her to get them put on CD. I had no idea the CD quality would be so bad. I assume my negatives are OK -- I hope. But the photo quality is bad on the prints, and the CD is useless, because they are email size. "I was hoping to bring them in to adobe... Read more →

Blotchy Panorama Photos

Over at the dpview forums, carlsson asks: Please take a look at andreascarlsson.com/.../Image42.html. This image is taken with my Canon S400, with the Panorama function. What have I done wrong to get different exposures on the pictures? I replied: I notice that the sky has many small clouds. That tells me that the sun came and went behind clouds. As you were taking the pictures, the scene became darker and brighter. When taking panorama photos, Canon cameras lock the exposure. When the sun came out from behind the clouds, the exposure did not compensate. In addition, I would note: Panoramic... Read more →

Preventing Redeye

D.A. asks: I own the s1 for several months now and when I took indoor low light shoots I got a lot of red eyes. Do you have any suggestions how can I solve this with in the shooting process and not post processing the pictures. ralphg replies: Some tips are listed here: How to Avoid Red Eye by Rheese Thomas D.A. responds: I have two more questions for you on this subject: 1. Did you have the same problem with your S1? 2. Do you know a specific way to solve this problem for the S1? ralphg replies: 1.... Read more →

Cell Phone Cameras go Nuts

In an earlier posting, I complained of cell (mobile) phone makers adding cameras to their phones. One drawback is the low-resolution of the camera (typically around one megapixel) and the surcharged cost of transmitting the JPG photo file over the cellular system. Well, if I didn't then read about next year's cell phones: * They'll have 3 and 5 megapixel cameras. * And they'll have tv tuner chips for watching television programs. And now Panasonic is showing off a new cell phone with two cameras! The Z800 has an outer one at 1.3-megapixel resolution, and another inside the clamshell with... Read more →

Device to Device Communication

One barrier to eliminating the computer from digital photography is USB. It was designed under the assumption that the computer is the host, and that all other devices plug into the computer. You cannot, for example, plug a USB drive into a USB printer; the two will not recognize that they are supposed to communicate with each other, nor would they know how. Kind of like trying to plug the female end of an extension cord into a electical wall outlet. BlueTooth, on the other hand, was exactly designed for communication between any two devices. Problem, though, is that BlueTooth... Read more →

30% Off MicroStation Package Price

Bentley Systems is blasting out email offering half-price on MicroStation if only you would also buy an add-on. The combo still isn't cheap, but is cheaper. They provide this example: Regular price before discount: MicroStation + GEOPAK Site: US$7,790 Price with 50%-off MicroStation discount (-$2,397.50): $5,392.50 Savings works out to 30.8%. (Their math is a bit off. At one point, bright red letters announce the discount is $2,400, but then they use $2,392.50 in their calculations) Of course, the question that springs to my mind immediately is, "Why?" A hint is given by the dates: betwen Nov 1 and Dec... Read more →

IMSI Sells Cadalog.com

Oops, they did it again. IMSI bought the Cadalog.com Web site last year, and now sell it on to another company, IBsystems. This, despite IMSI's one-time claim to be focusing on CAD. Rational? "The sale of the CADalog.com store is a further step in IMSI's desire to focus its online activities on sales and services offered through Houseplans.com and CADsymbols.com." Yah, okay. Price was not announced. IBsystems, founded in 1994, is home to sites like AECcafe and MCADcafe. (Cadalog.com resells e-books published by upFront.eZine Publishing, parent of WorldCAD Access.) Read more →

Too-Small Memory Cards

Can memory cards get too small? Is there a limit to form factor? I think so, but that's not stopping SanDisk from shipping memory cards that are four times smaller than SecureDigital cards. They call it the TransFlash, and the first models hold up to 256MB. It is available now, but is meant for cell phones with cameras, not digital cameras. The 128KB version costs US$45. (When first announced, it was called T-Flash.) SanDisk does admit the TransFlash is too small: "Due to the ultra small size of the product, it is not intended to be handled or removed on... Read more →

Flash Memory Price Drop -- Next Year

Thank SanDisk for the plummeting prices on flash RAM, the type of memory used for digital camera memory cards. Next year, you'll need to redirect your thanks to Intel. Currently, the company dominates the supply of high-end flash RAM for cellular (mobile) phones. Now, they plan to expand that market to "everything else." You can read more at eWeek. Read more →

IntelliCAD Ships! Sort of...

In August, the IntelliCAD Technical Consortium announced the next release of IntelliCAD that it supported -- version 5.0 was to ship in September. There were delays, and on the second-last business day of October, ITC issued a press release (dated 10 days earlier) stating that "The IntelliCAD Technology Consortium Releases IntelliCAD 5." Well, sort of... It's a two-stage system, because the ITC doesn't sell or ship software to end users. Instead: Stage 1: The ITC is now allowing its commercial members to "officially release their products based on the IntelliCAD 5 technology." Stage 2: Next, it's up to the CADopias... Read more →

I Don't Get It

There is a need to archive digital photographs while on the road, or even at home, if you are trying to avoid the computer. There are an increasing number of products that perform this chore, but not all are useful. Sony's latest "solution" is an example of one that doesn't make sense. Photo Vault is a small, portable CD burner with a slot for inserting the camera's memory card, a screen for viewing photos, and some buttons. Italso has a USB connector (to connect to computers) and a video connector (for connecting to tvs). Now for the problems: *It uses... Read more →