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Waiting in line at the bagel shop and looking for something on Best Buy

It's surprising how poorly some major retailers have implemented their websites for example. Take Best Buy, for example. Today I went to their site and searched for "printer," then organized the results by price. Instead of getting some budget printers to choose from, the top results were a list of printer cables. Next came an infinite list of printer cartridges. Realizing this wouldn't work, I searched around on the mobile site (I was using my phone) and found a narrow results option. I tried narrowing by category, and was given a choice of "computers" or "office" among the categories, but no printers. Realizing that most new printers being released today were wireless, I did a search for "wireless printer" and eliminated the printer wires from the results, bringing the total down a manageable 75.

Private photos on Apple iPhones are not really private: New York Times

The New York Times has an interesting piece buried in the Bits blog today that claims Apple is giving developers access to iPhone users' photo libraries without any notification beyond an initial consent to accept location-based services.

Nick Bilton explains, "After a user allows an application on an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch to have access to location information, the app can copy the user’s entire photo library, without any further notification or warning, according to app developers.

It is unclear whether any apps in Apple’s App Store are illicitly copying user photos. Although Apple’s rules do not specifically forbid photo copying, Apple says it screens all apps submitted to the store, a process that should catch nefarious behavior on the part of developers. But copying address book data was against Apple’s rules, and the company approved many popular apps that collected that information."

Read full story.

Erik Johansson: Impossible Photography

Erik Johansson creates realistic photos of impossible scenes -- capturing ideas, not moments. In this witty how-to, the Photoshop wizard describes the principles he uses to make these fantastical scenarios come to life, while keeping them visually plausible.

Technorati Interview: Bruce Polderman, Product Manager, Google

Technorati Interview: Bruce Polderman, Product Manager, Google

(an extended marketing effort at trying to convince people to sign up for Google Plus and hasten Google's path to taking over the world)

Pennsylvania the latest state to be boycotted by online retail affiliate programs

Pennsylvania has become the latest state to institute sales tax on online companies with affiliates inside their borders, which has resulted in the cancellation of website affiliate programs in that state by B&H and possibly Amazon (if they follow past practice).

Thom Hogan has written a rant about this on his website. While I am sympathetic to Hogan and other website managers effected by retailers' affiliate boycotts in states like Illinois, I am going to state that I unequivocally disagree. There is absolutely no reason why online retailers should not be collecting sales tax, particularly when state budgets are suffering such significant woes. While retail behemoths have been successful at boycotting (or threatening to boycott) some states in retaliation, they can't boycott them all and Amazon's delay in pulling out of Pennsylvania indicates that they see the writing looming on the wall: yes, online businesses will too someday have to pay full sales tax.

Brick and mortar businesses serve a valuable service to their community. They provide local jobs and in the case of establishments like bookstores, local centers of community. Why should they be forced to collect tax when online retailers are not? Furthermore, the law is clear- sales tax is intended for all purchases in a state, whether made online or not. States have just been slow about enforcing the law.

Igniting Social Media: Interview with Jeff Reine, General Manager of Typepad (Say Media)

 Igniting Social Media: Interview with Jeff Reine, General Manager of Typepad (Say Media), Part One (part two after the jump)

Google Forms: Unworkable, unreadable

I tried using Google Forms today on the recommendation of the Typepad Knowledge base. That was a mistake. Google Forms, part of the Google Docs cloud computing software program, is a real mess. I tried Google Docs once two years ago and have avoided it since because it creates a similar set of problems: to summarize, you're locked into formats that any user should see don't function properly within ten minutes. For a set of smart cookies, the people at Google can be really dumb sometimes.

 

Here are the problems I've encountered in Google Forms within the first two hours of use:

 

1) It is impossible to get a results sheet. In the "edit form" page, you're offered two choices: summary or spreadsheet view. Summery view is a pie chart, as if you're taking a poll and not trying to obtain particular information from specific users (I had been hoping to use Google Forms to create an estimate template for my photo business). Spreadsheet is an Excel-style page that is totally unreadable. First of all, the questions are displayed in no particular order. Second, the spreadsheet includes questions that have been deleted from the form, i.e., questions that will never contain any data because they are not there. Third, the columns are so small that a paragraph answer could spread down for one or two dozen rows, making it very difficult to read. Fourth, there is no notification system for finding out if anyone has submitted a form.

2) The background templates are very difficult to manage. Out of the 97 that are offered, I had a lot of difficulty finding one that fit correctly in the 800 pixel space on the Typepad page where the form was to be inserted. Many templates were either too narrow (thus leaving awkward huge blocks of space) or too wide (leaving the text to run off the page). Google should make the template margins flexible, or at least leave a way to edit them in HTML.

3) It is impossible to mix choice answers (e.g., "Yes," "10," etc.) with paragraph answers. Thus, if there is an answer choice requiring additional details submitted by the user, the only way to allow for it is to bounce users to a second page to fill in the additional details.  This must be done for all answers in block, even if I don't need additional information for some of them.

4) There is no reasonable way to organize, split, or delete entries. Thus, if I did go on using this form, it would collect on one spreadsheet all the entries that have been submitted until the end of time. At the very least, this would require creating a new form every time I wanted a new results sheet. Additionally, deleted entries do not disappear from the summary page.

I don't think the way I was using the software was outside the boundaries of what Google intended it for. On their help page, Google says that forms can be used to collect information, give quizzes to students or plan events. It would not work well for any of these purposes because of the problems I've mentioned. Nor is their "collect and view responses" page helpful in responding to any of the issues I've outlined.

Granted, Google states that all parts of the spreadsheet may not work in Firefox- they suggest using it in Chrome. Well, I haven't tried Chrome yet but I have tried Safari, and it didn't work any better there. I don't think I should need to open a new browser to see some survey results.

I've wasted two hours of my time and now I'll need to find another site and start from scratch. Will update this entry with some better alternatives.

Update: I went to Jotform.com. It took about 20 minutes to set up and it works! The only catch is if my business becomes too popular I will have to pay for the service. The submissions come in directly to my email box directly.

Video tutorial description: This tutorial goes over how to use Google Forms in Google Docs. We show you how an insurance agency would collect testimonials from existing clients to use for marketing. [bert0313]

Nikon D800: successor to the Nikon D700, successor to the Nikon D3X or megapixels gone wild?

The Nikon D800 has arrived.

The 36-megapixel full-frame Nikon D800 has been announced, sending relief to Nikon users envious of the Canon 5D Mark II and consternation to photographers wishing for a natural successor to the D700- basically, a D4 Lite.

Reviews on this camera have not been conducted yet, but this post will include specifications, a summary of analysis from around the web, pre-order information for anyone set to buy the camera, sample videos, and a brief summary of my own thoughts, with the caveat that I and many people writing about this camera haven't used it yet, so throw in ample grains of salt.

The Nikon D800 was hotly anticipated for a long time but its announcement was delayed until this month due to the Japanese earthquake and flooding in Thailand last year. It is hear now and for the time being holds the only bracket between the $1,200 D7000 and the $6,000 D4 in the Nikon lineup. The new FX camera is also being released in a D800E edition for $300 more, intended to mitigate the effects of anti-aliasing filters. This alternate edition may have better sharpness in some situations, but at the expense of possible moiré. More on that later.