The non-profit organization Wikimedia Foundation, creators of “Wikipedia”:http://www.wikipedia.org/ among other projects, is having a fund-raising drive. If you want to support this awesome web resource, you can get information on donating “here”:http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising. If you have a “PayPal”:http://www.paypal.com account, donating is point-and-click painless… so no excuses.

“A9″:http://www.a9.com, Amazon’s search service, is “hiring”:http://a9.com/-/company/job-driver.jsp ‘Block View Drivers.’ These are the folks that drive around major cities talking street-level pictures of businesses for A9’s “Yellow Page service”:http://a9.com/optical?a=oyp. Here’s a bit of the job description:

bq.. While on the job, you will drive a specially equipped vehicle with GPS, a digital camera, and computer hardware/software to collect geo-referenced imagery. The ideal candidate will have experience with all of these technologies, and will be confident in his or her ability to troubleshoot any hardware and software problems that may arise.

p. For a little background on how they took these pictures, check out “this”:http://a9.com/-/company/YellowPages.jsp.

Google recently purchased “Keyhole”:http://www.keyhole.com/, so I am sure they have something cooking along the same lines. For a ‘preview’ of what might be coming, check out Microsoft’s “TerraServer”:http://terraserver.microsoft.com/. I’ve noticed that they have updated some of the urban landscape photos recently. “Here’s”:http://terraserver.microsoft.com/addressimage.aspx?t=4&s=8&Lon=-122.12816734&Lat=37.41580018&Alon=-122.12816734&Alat=37.41580018&w=1&opt=0&addr=3990+El+Camino+Real%2c+Palo+Alto%2c+CA+94306&qs=3990+El+Camino+Real%7cPalo+Alto%7cca%7c a shot of the “Baja Fresh”:http://www.bajafresh.com location in Palo Alto, CA. How about a Double-Double from “In-n-Out”:http://terraserver.microsoft.com/addressimage.aspx?T=4&S=8&Alon=-122.128167&Alat=37.415800&W=1&opt=0&qs=3990+El+Camino+Real%7cPalo+Alto%7cca%7c&addr=3990+El+Camino+Real%2c+Palo+Alto%2c+CA+94306&Lon=-122.09338707333333&Lat=37.4207918? Some trick stuff is coming…

I’ve been doing some revamping of the site this morning. I changed my CSS style sheet a bit to eliminate underlining of links. I found that the links were already distinctive enough, since they are a different color than normal text. A good site for learning CSS is W3School’s “CSS site”:http://www.w3schools.com/css/default.asp.

I’ve also been playing around with adding a “favicon”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Favicon for the site. I thought that Photoshop would support @.ico@ files, but no luck. Alternatively, I felt like this feels like a web ’service’ — upload an image file, and get it back in @.ico@ format. Indeed, such a service does exist “here”:http://www.chami.com/html-kit/services/favicon/ — very trick.

BTW, I found the favicon site using Yahoo! Search. For some reason, I was having no luck on Google/A9 (which is not to say that you couldn’t find it on Google, just that my query style was more efficient on Yahoo!). Lesson = using multiple search sites pays off.

_*Update: 2005_20_02*_
I changed the format for @blockquote@ tags in my CSS file to:

.content blockquote {
line-height: 150%;
border: 0.5px solid #666666;
padding: 5px 15px 5px 15px;
background-color: #FFFFFF
}

p. This adds a box around the blockquoted text. I found this style “here”:http://www.brandmalaysia.com/. I’m going to try this out for a while.

_*Update: 2005_20_02*_
I changed the css file for the sidebar background color to a light shade of gray to separate it from the main content window.

.sidebar {
padding: 15px;
background-color: #F3F3F3;
}

I changed the @banner@ id’s: 1) background color in the css to @C0C0C0@, 2) reduced the banner height to @22px@ and 3) changed the padding to @5px@.

And I removed the ‘blog description’ (i.e., @

@) from the @Main@ templates.

“PMA”:http://pma2005.pmai.org/ (Photo Marketing Association’s annual show) runs from February 20th-23th, and as “DPReview”:http://www.dpreview.com says:

bq.. The Photo Marketing Association Annual Show will be held this year at the Orange County Convention Center, Orlando between the February 20th and 23rd. PMA is the photography industry’s most important annual event, it’s the place where the new year’s hottest digital photography products are announced.

p. Check out DPReview’s full PMA coverage “here”:http://www.dpreview.com/articles/pma2005/. I’m sure there will be some great, new digital cameras coming out at this show, so be sure to check DPReview’s site if you’re a digital camera geek.

The PMA show aside, I’ve recently been reading about some new digital cameras that either incorporate ground-breaking features, or have been awesomely re-designed or even one that defines a new digital-camera product category.

Leading the way in novel features, is Konica-Minolta’s “Maxxum 7D”:http://konicaminolta.com/products/consumer/digital_camera/slr/maxxum-7d/index_nf.html that features the _’world’s first digital SLR featuring a body-integral CCD-shift, Anti-Shake (camera-shake compensation) technology that combines enhanced picture quality, performance and improved handling characteristics.’_ The 7D gets DPReview’s Highly-Recommended stamp of approval in their recent “review”:http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/konicaminolta7d/page26.asp, so it’s definitely worth considering if you’re new to the DSLR market, or if you are a Konica Minolta devotee.

The new -(so new it’s not listed on Canon’s site yet)- “Canon EOS 350D”:http://consumer.usa.canon.com/ir/controller?act=ModelDetailAct&fcategoryid=139&modelid=11154 raises the bar on entry-level DSLR cameras. DPReview has a preview of the camera “here”:http://www.dpreview.com/articles/canoneos350d/. Some of the awesome improvements include:

bq.. Eight megapixel CMOS sensor (not same as EOS 20D)
Second generation CMOS (same generation as rest of current range)
DIGIC II processor (better images, faster processing, less power)
Instant power-on time, faster shutter release, shorter blackout time
Continuous shooting speed increased (3.0 fps vs. 2.5 fps)
Buffer increased (14 JPEG frames vs. 4 JPEG frames)
Image processing time decreased (thanks to DIGIC II)
Compact Flash write speed increased
Smaller body (15 x 5 x 8 mm smaller)
Lighter weight (17% lighter including battery)

p. And defining a new digital camera market is Epson’s new “R-D1″:http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/consumer/consDetail.jsp?BV_UseBVCookie=yes&oid=49164277. The RD-1 is a “rangefinder”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rangefinder_camera camera, in a similar market as the analog “Leica M-series”:http://ecuadorphotos.tripod.com/leica/leica.html cameras. If the R-D1 wasn’t three grand, I’d be interested in one. However, Epson will face some competition in this market soon, so stay tuned for lower prices and digital-rangefinder selection. Luminous-Landscape’s review of the RD-1 can be found “here”:http://luminous-landscape.com/reviews/cameras/epson-rd1.shtml (btw, they love it).

I wrote about a new, smaller PocketPC phone a couple of days ago “here”:http://www.zoinger.com/archives/2005/02/15/13.23.48/. Since then, I have found another in-depth “review”:http://www.geek.com/hwswrev/pda/jam/index.htm on it and a place where you can actually “buy one”:http://www.dweiniger.com/phones/jam.shtml now for about $600.

It’s just a matter of time before they “build-in WiFi”:http://www.msmobiles.com/news.php/3577.html and add a keyboard (a front-facing one like “this”:http://www.msmobiles.com/news.php/3587.html or, better yet, a slide-out keyboard like LG’s “F1900″:http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000090025637/). With native WiFi support you could use Skype’s “PocketPC client”:http://www.skype.com/products/skype/pocketpc/, while a keyboard would make messaging, web surfing and email much easier. As soon as a small PocketPC product comes out with these features, I’m on it.

Regarding carriers’ data packages, T-Mobile is pretty much your only choice for a reasonable data package, since they offer an *unlimited* GPRS-based “Internet package”:http://www.t-mobile.com/plans/default.asp?tab=internet for about $30/month. Cingular is NOT an option. Their data service plans are a joke… like $30 a month for 10 Mbs of download. Forgetaboutit. I’m not even going to link to Verizon since their phones *suck* and all have external antennas, and, of course, their data rates are too high (I think it’s about $80/month for unlimited access). Surprisingly, Sprint’s “data plans”:http://www1.sprintpcs.com/explore/servicePlansOptionsV2/DataPlans.jsp are expensive too.

Some carriers need a reality check… if you build it and charge too much, they won’t come.