Getting to dig into the source code of Google’s Chrome OS for about 12 hours today has been interesting. Once I created a build, my imagination began to fly with the possibilities the OS could bring.

Google’s representatives has it would take about seven (7) seconds to go from boot-up to the Internet. I got there in 10. I believe my slower launch time was related to the hardware I tried the OS on. If I were to install Chrome OS on Intel Atom motherboard with Solid State Drive (SSD) and 1 GB of RAM I believe I could have hit the 7 second bullseye.

There was one thing I noticed that was said about the Chrome OS machines that might be the key to the boot-up speed and operation times, firmware. The firmware may be loaded in the BIOS to reduces calls to the hard drive or to Cloud. Back in my Apple II day, Beagle Brothers had a utility that would load all the operating system into a reserved part of the RAM to speed the II up and reduce wear and tear on those floppies. I’m thinking Google is cramming a lot of the OS into the BIOS or and another EPROM to achieve a three-step boot.

The hardware specs to run Chrome OS are inexpensive which is what the main goal of the project was meant to be – make computers affordable. Just out of curiosity I made contact with a couple manufacturers in Asia to see what it would cost per unit to build a Netbook on the specs Google provided for a Chrome OS machine. The quotes I got were a lot less than the Windows Netbooks, by a couple hundred dollars. Keep in mind that does not include shipping, tariffs or other cost associated with importing electronics to the United States. I may check the other cost to see just how much a unit really cost before it hits a retailer’s inventory.

I doubt if I were to start a small line of computers that it would cripple IBM or Dell, but I would like have a Netbook tweaked with a few improvements. Judging by my search engine reports I know there is a lot people wanting the same things out of a Netbook. What features would you make standard on a Netbook if you had a chance?

We are a week away from the holiday parade season and a time to capture amazing photographs. To get everyone prepped and in the mindset to snap some great images I went through Flickr to look for great shots you could use as your guide.

Pets, Shriners or Both

Every parade worth it’s weight in candy canes is going to have Shriners and pets. Both are going to be dressed up in some wild outfits.

To make the colors stand out and open up any shadows use your flash set at a f-stop and half less than the ambient lighting if you are shooting in daylight. For a nighttime parade just expose as you normally would.

Try to get close enough to frame them so they are the predominate subject in the frame. A shorter telephoto lens will help you selectively focus on your subject and blur the background. This will add a sense of depth to your and make it a show stopper.

Be certain to bracket and take as many photographs as possible as the expressions and positions are constantly changing. Digital cameras have an advantage over film cameras when it comes to how many photographs you can take before reloading. When you get back the computer you can trash the bad shots and show off the best.

Lights

Many parades begin at dusk when the holiday lights come on and some of the floats will present an exoskeleton if lights to add an extra dimension.

Try to get your meter readings ahead of time to see just how much light will be in the scene before the floats arrive. Then try to match you flash output to a level close to the existing light. This way you will not me washing out your photographs with a flash that over powers the image.

If you have a strobe that can be removed from the camera invest in a PC or flash extension cord. You can move the flash off the same axis as the camera to avoid red eyes in people and add more depth to the scene.

You can use a tripod or Gorillapod. to steady your camera, but remember that a parade participant or entry that moving fast be show up as a blurry movement on the final photo. Position yourself where they be moving straight towards you, not past you. Having your flash during the exposure will freeze the action.

Interaction

Watch how the members of the parade interact with spectators along the parade’s route. These unscripted events are the moments a child will remember and share for the rest of their life.

The lens choice for this type of shot should be a wide-angle to short telephoto zoom to give you the versatility frame, focus and shoot fast. Use a fill flash to insure you are getting every detail out of the area you can.

Crazy Cars

It doesn’t matter where you are on the map, when there is a parade there is going to be “That Guy” who brings a wild jalopy to run in the parade. No one can take their eyes off it and they are going to be trying to explain just what it was about the car that stood out.

Try to frame your photo with some of the crowd from the parade to capture their facial reactions to the vehicle. The middle of the wide-angle range on your standard zoom lens will work perfectly for this shot.

Action

Parades are the place where dancers, exhibitionist and stunt drivers come to show off their talents. High shutter speeds and ISO ratings will stop the action and deliver sharper vibrant details. Before they approach the mark you will be shooting them from study their routine to see where the height of the action is so you will know exactly when you want to trip your shutter. If you camera can fire multiple frames in sequence, just hold the button to make certain you have the definitive image of their display.

Your flash will help you stop the action and separate the subject from the background. Find the highest shutter speed your camera can synchronize with the flash and meter the scene for the f-stop for that shutter speed. Now set your flash to put one f-stop and a half less than the metered amount.

Santa Claus

Santa Claus isn’t just in the parade, he is all over the place, so keep an eye opened for him. He may be on decorations, Elvis may be impersonating the jolly old elf in the crowd or he might be having a seat taking names.

When you find your Santa try photographing him with a polarizing filter to knock the reflection off his suit to help show every degree of saturation his outfit has to show.

Just Shoot

The holidays only come once a year, so make the most of it. Shoot early and shoot often. The digital camera media cards are inexpensive and can hold hundreds of images. Take plenty of camera cards/film and batteries and be ready to start snapping.

The Digital Journalist has begun to ask for pledges to stay alive after their main sponsor, Canon, put them on notice that they are pulling their advertising dollars out the publication.

It’s a downstream economy and when a company the size of Canon gets the sniffles, their vendor’s are going to start sneezing mighty fast.  Dirck Halstead, the editor and publisher of TDJ, wrote the open letter about the loss of revenue and noted that The Digital Journalist is the same boat as newspapers, magazines and other news gathering agencies. TDJ was already beginning to change its organization before Canon announced they would be pulling their advertisements.

We read and hear every day about cut backs and closures crippling newsrooms and see a wide range of options applied as they try to stay afloat. Considering the readers of TDJ are journalist, it will interesting to see if they will be making a donation to save the publication or if a better funding idea emerges.

AN IMPORTANT LETTER TO THE VIEWERS OF THE DIGITAL JOURNALISTj

From Dirck Halstead

I am afraid that the December issue of The Digital Journalist may be our final issue, at least for a while.

As many of you on our mailing list know, The Digital Journalist has been online producing our monthly magazine, about visual journalism, for 12 years. During that time we have presented the memorable work of some of the greatest photojournalists in the world, while offering opportunities for publication to many new photographers. Our columns and reviews have taken a 360-degree look at the industry, and predicted much of the upheaval that has taken place as the media around us have been buffeted by the shifting winds of technology, and now, a crippling economic downturn.

We have also sponsored over 37 Platypus Workshops around the world, which have taught photojournalists how to cope with and adapt to these industry changes.

Unfortunately, our principal sponsor, Canon, whose market has also been impacted by these turbulent times, has decided they can no longer afford to provide their financial backing to The Digital Journalist. We are very grateful for the generous support they have given us over the years.

Even before Canon’s decision we were planning to reorganize. We are aware of how seriously a lot of our readers, who make their living from photojournalism, have been hit by the recession through the failures and cutbacks of countless publications, magazines and newspapers, as well as TV and cable. Our reorganization goal is not only to continue publishing The Digital Journalist, but to provide funding in order to send photographers out into the world to do their work, documenting the important stories that shape our lives and history.

Such an ambitious undertaking requires serious fundraising efforts on our part.

So we are asking you, our loyal readers, numbering more than 10,000, to help us raise these funds. Effective immediately, we have set up a PayPal link on The Digital Journalist ( http://digitaljournalist.org/pledge.html ) and urgently ask for your pledges so that we can continue the work which will help us all. We have never solicited paid subscriptions, but these dire times call for dire measures.

If you value The Digital Journalist, this is the time to step up and make a pledge. If enough people do, we may be able to keep The Digital Journalist — and visual journalism — alive. Consider it as an investment in yourself, and the future.

Thank you all for your loyalty over the past years. We appreciate your continued support, and look forward to seeing you on the Web.

Sincerely,

Dirck Halstead
Editor and Publisher

Everybody enjoys pouring over photographs from the past and even more they love sharing them. Digital cameras have made that a snap compared the negative and print days.

If you have been a Shuttebug for a while you are going to have a lot of favorites sitting on slides and negative waiting to join their digital cousins. I have wrote about film scanners in the past, but Imagelab has a scanner that is perfect for Netbook users and people without a computer.

The Imagelab FS5CO5 is a 5 megapixel slide and film scanner taken has it up a notch. The FS5CO5 features a LCD screen to view the images and a SD card slot to save the images directly to. Once the photographs are captured the card can be put into a Netbook, laptop, computer, the kiosk at your favorite photo lab or even send to an online photo finisher.

The Imagelab unit uses a built-in digital signal processor (DSP) to accomplish the scanning and recording. Other entry level scanners you the central processing unit (CPU) and slowing your computer down while scanning is in progress.

The unit is nice, compact and portable with an intuitive operation workflow that anyone can master with little effort. It does not a have all the features of film scanners in the $1,000+ range, but it does deliver excellent result. Photographs scanned by the Imagelab be enlarged up to a 16 X 20 with little loss in image quality for under $100.

The Netbook sector has matured since the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC). There has been a lot improvements with speed, graphics, screen size, battery life and features. Growing pains came with the growth spurts in the sector. The biggest pain is the choice of operating system (OS), Windows or Linux.

The first wave of Netbooks were running Linux, which I saw a good thing. This would lower the entry price and overall expense of ownership. Linux also is a great choice for children to learn the OS at an early age and give them a head start towards being competitive when they enter the workforce.

Then there were the reactions to the Linux Netbooks in the form of product reviews on shopping sites that told a different story. Some buyers felt jipped because the computer they purchased did not have Windows installed. Reading a few dozen of the reviews it is easy to tell there are two types of people in the world. The really cool people who are willing to adapt for a lower price and those who wanted to stay with Window at any price. The divide lead to one large retailer making to move not to sell anymore computers running on Linux.

I received a belated birthday present which was unexpected and was a perfect fit for me, an Acer Aspire One. But there it wasn’t like any of the Aspire Ones that I have reviewed or used to date this one has Android installed alongside Windows XP from the factory. Nice to know Acer will still cater to the  Linux community. I’m a Red Hat/Fedora person, but Android rocks. I’ll be writing about it’s features in the near feature.

For Netbook and other computer owners feeling left out of the Android movement there is one distribution of Android that has been working to make installation and using the OS as painless as possible. Android-x86 Project has HowTos, nightly builds and documentation to make the running the same smartphone OS possible on your Netbook. The code tree was broken on November 15^th by the push of Android 2.0 (Eclair) to the public release, but it should be fixed soon.

No you're not out of your Vulcan mind, you can pick-up a Star Fleet communicator right now in the 21st century.

Tuesday is the day that the J.J. Abrams’ version of Star Trek on Blu-ray is released. A perfect Thanksgiving Day movie, from SciFi fan perspective anyway. While I was checking to see if there were any boxed collector’s set for the movie I found a working Star Trek Communicator from ThinkGeek.com.

For $39.99 the Captain Kirk (Shatner that is) era communicator will work with Skype, MSN, AIM, or iChat via a USB port on a Window XP or later or Mac with at least  OS X 10.5.

When Rupert Murdoch says he is flirting with the idea pulling his News Corp. properties websites from Google’s index and putting up Pay Walls, you have wonder if he’s using old school bullying or trying a new business plan for content publishers.

He makes a valid point that search engine traffic does not relate to loyal readers. But that’s not Big Picture Thinking. When a reader keeps coming from repeated search engine queries, they are more likely to add the site to their routine to reduce the steps to get to the news. Spend the time and effort on SEO and convert the drive by readers over to daily visitors.

When it comes to erecting Pay Walls or raising prices, I always think of small town newspapers. When one paper I worked at would raise the single copy price a nickel, someone would take offence to the hike and newspaper racks would start lining the bottom of the Pigeon River, like the three eyed carp it became famous for. Before Murdoch and company start charging they may consider that Internet readers, who have been spoiled by ‘free news’ may toss them in the river.