sinéad's lifestream

For years I’ve had an interest in digital photography but have never had the money to purchase my own digital camera, I’ve always borrowed everyone elses or used my god-awful vga camera on my mobile phone. I’ve been thinking that it’s about time that I purchased a digital camera of my own. Of course, when it comes to me and technology, I want the best there is to offer. I had my hopes set on getting a digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) camera – the difference between a DSLR camera and a standard digital camera is the ability to view the picture you are taking via the lens rather than the viewfinder, giving you a truly accurate image. Unfortunately, even a 6 mega pixel DSLR camera is about €600. Which is definitely outside of my budget, for now.

The traditional digital camera market is completely saturated, and I’ve found it rather difficult to choose one (hence why I still don’t own one!) as my own terrible greed for “features” makes it impossible to stay within a reasonable budget. However, upon investigation I found an alternative to a DSLR camera that’s within budget. The Fuji FinePix S5600 Zoom: it’s only 5.1 megapixel, however it boasts 10x opitcal zoom. That’s impressive for €300, and it looks quite cool too. It has some wonderful features, for instance, movie recording in .avi format and the ability to change the lenses (I already have my eye on a fisheye! – ha ha).

The only drawback to buying a Fuji digital camera is the fact that they only take xD-Picture Cards, which is annoying considering I have plenty of MMC cards just lying around from old digital cameras and phones. If I’m to buy this camera I’ll have to purchase at least 1gb, which will set me back another €60, double the price of a standard MMC card. For now I’m not going to make any decisions, until I actually have the money. What fun it is to procrastinate.

Google has paid out $900 million to provide search results and ad listings on MySpace.com (read more…). Basically, this means that MySpace users will be able to use Google Search without having to leave www.myspace.com – entering any term into the search box directs myspace users to a page similar to this one, the Google ads appear in the form of sponsored listings in the search results. This will be of major benefit to Google as an additional source of traffic and ad revenue. Almost 100 million MySpace members will access Google’s search tool from the network, thus viewing ads relevant to their search terms.

Google will also provide contextually targeted placements on MySpace pages. Unlike the search box functionality, this has yet to be implemented. Considering Google’s policies on not administering pop-up advertisements (and the Google Toolbar that actually attempts to blocks pop-ups – emphasis on the attempt, as my own Google Toolbar still allows Dell ads from MySpace to appear) this suggests an end to pop-ups on MySpace.

Personally, I’m hoping it is also an end to “interesting” animated banner and skyscraper ads for online dating websites – for example this monstrosity. Also, ads that are misleading and direct the user to install rogue anti-spyware/adware/malware products. Currently, these ads still exisit on MySpace. Just recently Google has started warning people when search results could potentially lead them to malicious code, if these ads continue to appear on MySpace, perhaps these warning signs should be displayed when your search term is “myspace”.