Wibiya Website Toolbar

Updated on Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 22:31 by Willem

Wibi... what? I've no idea what it means, but Wibiya allows you to add a toolbar to your website. The toolbar is situated at the bottom of your web browser. Basically, it adds functionality to your website. The tool is still in beta, and you need to sign up to get access. Upon registration you wil receive an invite code within a couple of hours.

The toolbar holds several (configurable) tools you can use to display;

• a search bar (powered by Google Search).
  So if google doesn't (want to) know you, you won't find many search results
• a translate-this-page-to-<20 languages> option (powered by Google Translate).
• recent / random posts from your website/blog.
  based on your RSS feed.
• your Twitter Status.
• Photo album
  You need a Flickr account for that.
  
• Facebook crap.
• etc.

Click to read more ...

Western Digital My Passport Essential Review

Updated on Tuesday, November 3, 2009 at 15:02 by Willem

In the post before this one I had some trouble with a Freecom XXS USB drive. I had no way of fixing it, so it went back to the store (and basically back to Freecom). But since that drive is used for offsite backups I needed a replacement unit, because the return of the old drive could take several weeks.

This time the Western Digital My Passport Essentials 500GB (2.5" USB powered) disk was chosen. A nice small device with lot's of storage capacity.

Western Digital Proprietary Connector on the LeftUpon opening the box I noticed immediately that there's something 'wrong' with this drive. The cable / USB connector is proprietary. The connector is some sort of ultra-mini-USB format. No need to say that of all the USB cables I collected over the years will ever fit. So I need to be extremely careful with the one I got with the drive.

Since I lose stuff (hell, everyone does), you could expect a blog post of me swearing 'bloody hell' (and stuff) when I have lost the cable.... but I won't, just read the rest of this review.

Click to read more ...

First Review New Nikon 70-200mm f2.8G ED VRII

It seems that Cliff Mautner is one of the (very, very) few lucky photographers who received his new Nikon 70-200mm f2.8G ED VRII a month early. His findings can be found on his blog, and I must say..... Those images are awesome (from a image quality point of view). Especially the VRII seems to rock.

/me is looking at his savings.... and cries silently

Anyway, the new 70-200 is a long overdue improvement for the 'old' 70-200mm f2.8G VR lens, since the old one performed not as wel on the FX cameras (D700, D3-range) as some would have liked.

Data Robotics Drobo Review

About a month ago, I bought a Drobo to expand my hard disk storage. Normally you would buy an additional hard disk to add storage. Problem with that is that those drives will eventually fill up with all sorts of important information.
Every time you add or replace disk you need to move data around, which takes a lot of time.

The Drobo is an external enclosure which holds up to 4 SATA disk drives. The enclosure can be connected via FireWire800 or USB2.0, and is seen by the OS as a removable drive.

Your data stored on the drobo is secured when you use 2 or more drives. 1 disk drive is used for redundancy. So if one drive fails your data is still there.

Click to read more ...

Lumix LX3 in Poor Light Conditions

Metallica @ AhoyLast Monday I visited the Metallica Death Magnetic Tour concert in Ahoy, Rotterdam (NL). A relatively small establishment for a rock band like Metallica, but great for the fans (if you got tickets), since the podium was centered in the middle of the arena. So everyone was relatively close to the stage.

I brought my Lumix LX3 for this occasion (since I won't be allowed entrance with my D300 + 70-200mm lens). This was the first time I brought a (P&S) camera to a concert, so I had no idea of what to expect of the quality.
I must say that I did try several settings, but the iA (Intelligent Auto) mode left me with the best images. Downside is that this mode produces only JPEG's and no RAW files. The A, P, S and M modes are too susceptible to the light changes (over- or underexposed, or just blurry images), and the light conditions change a lot (almost every second).

The movie-mode of the camera performs relatively well. Extremely bright lights results in vertical lines across the movie. The audio is not that good, but hey... it's a digital still camera with filming capabilities.

The only downside of the camera was (and still is) that it lacked zooming to 400 or 600mm :).

The photographic results can be seen on my flickr page.