Posted on Jul 31, 2005

Video Flickr

If you haven’t figured it out by now, I’m a big fan of Flickr.com – a photo-sharing website. I have pro accounts for myself, Lambda Chi Alpha, and CFEA; and I also set up a Third Goal section to pool Peace Corps photos.

When it comes to managing and sharing photos, there is nothing better than Flickr. I just wish they’d offer the same features and service for video.

If your cell phone or digital camera takes photos, there’s a good chance it is also capable of recording small videos. If Flickr added a video-sharing service, then it could become the single best consumer image sharing repository.

Alas, there are more complexities regarding sharing videos than there are sharing photos. Bandwidth aside, there are so many video formats. Some formats can only play in Quicktime, others in Windows Media Player, and many in both or neither.

For example, my Treo 650 captures video in the 3g2 format, which plays back via Quicktime, while my new Casio Exilim EX-S500 uses MPEG-4, which defaults to Windows Media Player.

I have found a few sites that are creating a Flickr-like service for video and tested three of them out.

  • Vimeo takes the easiest approach. It simply stores your videos in their native format, leaving playback compatibility up to its visitors.
  • YouTube attempts to convert all of your videos to Flash files. For my MPEG-4 test, it did just fine. As for my unsupported 3g2 format, it converted the video but lost the audio.
  • JussPress required me to download some software to use their site. Since I didn’t quite trust ‘em, I decided to pass on testing their service. If you were bolder, feel free to tell me about it here.

In time, either Flickr will jump into the video-sharing market, or some other player will figure out the best formula for sharing video snipits.

Posted on Jul 31, 2005

Mutant Frogs

CIMG0040

The bullfrogs in my pond are getting so big and so populous that I’m becoming afraid of them.

The zoom on my new camera is only 3x, so I tried taking a few photos through my binoculars. It worked okay.

Posted on Jul 30, 2005

Casio EX-S500 Exilim

Today, my Casio EX-S500 Exilim digital camera arrived. Smaller in size than a deck of cards, this gadget takes 5.0 mega pixel photos, records MPEG-4 movies, and has a typical 3x optical zoom.

Though I’m always excited to have a new gadget, I wonder how much I’m going to use it for my affinity for taking photos has shifted over the years.

My Photo History

As I kid, I enjoyed playing with my dad’s 35mm camera. As a teenager, I hated posing for photos for my mom. As a college student, I shifted to video and majored in communications. As a young adult, I bought a video camera and began recording my travels.

It wasn’t until last year that I started taking photos again when I obtained a Treo 600. The photos were crude, but the tiny camera was part of a gadget I carried with me at all times. More so, I could instantly upload photos I took to my website; becoming a photo blog.

A few months ago, our office upgraded to Treo 650s. Though the image quality is better, it’s still low resolution. And forget taking photos at night, neither the Treo 600 or 650 comes with a flash.

So I decided to get a stand alone camera. It doesn’t have access to the web, it doesn’t take calls, it just takes photos and video – doing both rather well. And since the EX-S500 is smaller than my Treo, I hope I’ll find myself carrying it around more often.

Quality Comparison

For giggles, I wanted to see how my new camera’s images compare to those taken by my Treos. Click on each thumbnail to see the detail in a larger image.

Treo 600 Treo 650 EX-S500
Treo 600 Tree Treo 650 Tree EX-S500 Tree
Treo 600 Cube Treo 650 Cube EX-S500 Cube

Posted on Jul 29, 2005

iMIS Goes Live

iMIS Goes Live

Yesterday, at 6:10 p.m., JB informs me that our core membership data conversion is complete. iMIS is live.

There is still a lot of work that needs to be done, for we migrated just our 250,000 member records – containing basic name, address, and chapter information. We still have to migrate their donor history and attributes.

But we have a start; a beginning. We now have iMIS.

Posted on Jul 27, 2005

Raiser’s Edge Read-Only

Raiser's Edge Read-Only

At 3:00 p.m. today, Lambda Chi Alpha’s 10-year old membership management software was switched to read-only.

No longer will our staff use Blackbaud’s Raiser’s Edge to update our membership database. Starting next week, they will begin using iMIS by Advanced Solutions International.

This is a big change for Lambda Chi Alpha. The transition is occurring while most of the staff is out of town running our annual conference, giving JB and I the chance to close down the old system, import the data into the new system, and test.

Sure, the next few months will be bumpy with user training, learning a new system, importing missing data, writing new reports, etc. But it’s needed.

iMIS will give Lambda Chi Alpha a more flexible membership management system that will also tie to a new website, which we will begin building once our internal transition is complete.