For background on the story, click here.

This case has been getting a lot of attention, particularly about the owners behavior on social media. The real lesson to learn, though, is that people who are jerks in real-life will likely be jerks online … except more so. Now, this might seem like a trite observation, but if you expand that thought to any kind of behavior (e.g. secretive, oversharing, verbose, etc.) then you can quickly see how not every company is cut out for social media. Actually, that’s not entirely fair. Every company can have a successful social media presence, but some may need our help as communication experts to educate them how to behave in public – which could include hiring the right person or team to speak for the company.

The moral of the story is this… in today’s world, digital and real life are THE SAME THING! The best thing we can do is help our clients to start equating the two and to stop thinking about digital (and social media) as something mystical or arcane – or even special. Yes, there are some things that engineers do that you don’t have to learn, like setting up an Apache server and there are certainly best practices for creating content for social media. But, we are all on Facebook (or almost all) and we interact with the digital world every day. Many companies have become very good at not talking to their customers, or only talking to them in controlled settings like press releases, surveys, focus groups, call center scripts and special events. Now it’s back to the Good Ole Days™ when your word was your bond and you had to look your customer in the eye.

There’s nowhere left to hide!

Setting aside the larger issue of conversions versus impressions and the balance between awareness and sales, there remains the thorny question of what exactly should you measure in your quest for ROI nirvana. At first glance it appears that there is a simple answer — conversions — after all, a conversion is the ultimate goal. Tracking conversions is an important part of the equation (and often a difficult one, particularly with B2B and offline purchase scenarios where the real conversion doesn’t happen online). There are other metrics, however, with which we should be concerned, particularly click-through rates (CTR).

Perhaps you’re asking yourself, why bother tracking the click-through rate of my ads when the conversion is where I make money? After all, it doesn’t matter how many people see my ad or even click on it if they don’t buy my product (or download my white paper). Seems like a reasonable question until you realize that there are many levers to adjust when creating and optimizing an online marketing campaign.

Ideally, a search engine marketing (SEM) campaign will be equally concerned with click-through rate (CTR) and conversion. Obviously, conversion is the metric we all care about the most, but click-through rate plays a key role in the process. In fact, in a well-crafted campaign, there needs to be a balance between the emphasis on CTR and conversion. At the simplest level, the more click-through’s, the more opportunities for conversion. The reality is a bit more complicated than that.

Each conversion begins with a click-through which is dependent on the effectiveness of the ad copy as well as the Quality Score (QS) of the ad (which is determined by Google). The quality score impacts how prominently the ad is placed as well as the cost of the click. One of the key metrics that Google uses for determining the quality score is the click through rate. Therefore a higher CTR directly impacts how much you pay-per-click as well as how prominently the ad is placed. Both of these impact the overall ROI of each conversion, and — since click throughs are the raw material of conversions — it directly impacts the number of opportunities for conversion you have.

Conversions themselves are most impacted by the landing page. The more generic the page the less likely the click-through will result in a conversion. The more you can optimize the landing page for conversion, including reducing the number of distractions (outbound links that are not part of the conversion process) and increasing the relevance of the content to the ad itself, the higher your conversion to click through ratio.

It is certainly possible to choose keywords and ad copy that are optimized for conversion, in other words, higher in specificity which helps drive more qualified leads. Too much emphasis on this approach, however, will negatively impact your quality score and will hurt the overall performance of the campaign.

When we first begin a search marketing campaign for a new client we typically optimize for click through, particularly when it is a new account, because we need to establish authority with Google (in other words, improve the overall quality score so our cost per click and placement are solid). At the beginning of a new campaign, we also work with our clients to define conversion goals and to begin creating and refining optimized landing pages. This process can be challenging as we work to find measurable online conversion points and to connect with offline conversions by integrating with customer relationship management tools. Until conversion goals can be fully defined and accurately measured, it is not possible to get an accurate ROI for the campaign.

That does not mean that you should wait to begin your search marketing campaign until all of the pieces are in place. Measure what you can and improve the process as you go. As you gain more clarity around your conversion goals and have more control over the entire process you can begin to bring more focus to measuring conversion. However, don’t lose sight of the click-through rate as it is an equally important metric for the overall process.

If you are still interested in the details of balancing click-through rates with conversions, the following links from Search Engine Land, one of the leading sources of up-to-date information on search engine marketing, will be helpful in explaining the link between CTR and conversion.

http://searchengineland.com/conversion-rate-optimization-in-paid-search-why-click-through-rate-matters-118991

http://searchengineland.com/how-important-is-click-through-rate-in-googles-quality-score-formula-27296

http://searchengineland.com/the-conversion-chain-in-paid-search-beyond-traditional-key-performance-indicators-112651

I realize that Coke has what seems like unlimited budgets, cool brands and the best marketing people, but this video shows that even companies like Coke sometimes need to step back and recalibrate.

"I’m convinced that the people who actually write for magazines, edit them and publish them have never actually tried using their iPad versions for more than a few moments. If they actually did try to use their publication’s app as the actual means to read each issue, things would have to improve. Right?"

Like Justin, I love magazines. My first design job was a magazine and I subscribe to numerous publications. I want to love reading them on my iPad, but the experience just isn't there yet. Of course, the iPad experience is light years better then it is on my Kindle Fire.

There is a huge opportunity for the big publication companies to step up and make better use of the platform.  

I'm busy. Or perhaps, lazy. Or both. (There's a future blog post coming on this topic if I can find the time to get off my butt and write it.)

As a busy/lazy person, the care and feeding required for all of these social networks is tiresome. And, it's complicated. Privacy settings are either non-existent (Twitter) or complicated and inadequate (Facebook). Something as simple as being "friends" with someone on Facebook and not having that information be available to my other friends is impossible. Which forces me to choose in a way that isn't required IRL (in real life). Say my best friend gets married and I become friends with his spouse. Then suppose they get divorced but I remain friends with both of them. I could easily find myself in a situation where publicly being friends with both of them could jeopardize my relationship with both of them. IRL, a little "don't ask, don't tell" with each of them and I can preserve at least a semblance of the relationship I had with each of them before the divorce. On Facebook, that's simply not possible. (You can easily expand this to a multitude of other situations with even more dire consequences. Worst of all, even the privacy settings that are available are complicated and time consuming to learn and implement, especially when multiplied across many different networks. I'm a user experience professional, computer programmer and a generally internet sophisticated guy. Imagine how much more difficult it might be for my grandmother. Or yours.

Which brings me to the second point Maciej so eloquently addresses in his post — the underlying use of these networks to sell stuff. I'll start with a caveat. Until recently I led the interactive group for an advertising agency. Our job was to market things and ideas through a variety of methods, and I was particularly interested in digital or online marketing. For one client we explored how you might connect all of the touchpoints they had with their customers — websites, events, point of purchase, etc — with social networks to form a complete picture of each customer. There is immense opportunity and power in that kind of data and our clients were unabashed in their desire to use that information to sell you more of their products or ideas. 

For many people, this kind of data mining for marketing purposes represents a kind of evil empire exploitation of innocent consumers. A moral/ethical quagmire that is the hallmark of twenty-first century capitalism. Others are concerned with the proliferation of vapid and tedious marketing ploys cluttering the purity of their interpersonal relationships online.  Personally, I believe that there is an small but interesting place where these two ideas intersect with a third concept I call usefulness. 

For many marketers this third concept is relevance — the idea that by providing advertising or marketing that is interesting or relevant to a particular consumer, based on their profile or relationships or whatever, we solve the first two problems. No longer will I think you are exploiting me with useless drivel, but rather welcome your message with open arms because it is a topic/brand/etc. that I am interested in. Bravo, dear marketer for engaging me on a personal level. There is some merit to this idea and it is certainly fundamental to a successful engagement between consumer and marketer, but for me, it falls short. I may explicitly (opt-in) or implicitly (like, +1, keyword) express my interest in your brand or subject area, but that doesn't mean that your ad, contest, tweet, post, etc is more then marginally better then a completely unsolicited and random ad, contest, tweet or post.

The idea of usefulness takes relevance to a new level by asking marketers to deliver their message through something I will find useful. In some cases useful is a tool and in others it can be entertainment, but in all cases the only criteria is whether the consumer looks at your message and says, "Yes, I'm better and happier for having received this thing today." A lofty goal you say? Yes. Difficult to measure you say? Certainly. Varies from person to person or even moment to moment? Quite possibly. No one ever said it would be easy. 

What do you think? Have you seen any good examples of this recently? Or particularly bad examples?

When I first joined Paradowski it was the culmination of years of moving from job to job and learning everything that I could about being a designer. After I started I realized just how little I knew and just how lucky I was to have been given the opportunity to learn and contribute in one of the most creative, collaborative and challenging firms in St. Louis. More importantly, I have had the opportunity to reinvent myself more then once during my time at Paradowski and for that I am grateful.

This new chapter is an opportunity to pursue new kinds of projects on a different scale. I am joining the UXCC team at Perficient as a Lead User Experience Business Consultant where I will have the opportunity to work with a wide variety of technology including "big iron" systems like IBM's Websphere and to help the team explore new technologies and bring in new business. There's even some travel, which I'm very excited about, but mostly I'm excited to try something new.

Like many things in life, tenure has its pros and cons. On the upside, the longer you are with a company, the more you know and the better you understand the team, the culture and how to navigate "the system." You also gain in reputation which, if managed well, becomes the currency with which you get things done. It's what provides you with the freedom to operate without intense scrutiny of every action making it easier to get things done.

On the other hand, tenure tends to make us jaded and sometimes a little lazy. Not that you're not getting your job done, but there is a certain amount of apathy and "coasting" that can creep in and keep you from doing the things that established your reputation. Sometimes you just know too much and you're no longer able to see the possibilities, only the obstacles.

For now, I'm looking forward to getting back on the edge and experiencing the fear that comes from getting dropped into the deep end of the unknown. I'm ready to reboot.

• Dynamic menus. Axure provides menu widgets for both horizontal and vertical menus with dropdowns and flyouts as well as tree navigation widgets. It would be awesome if I could populate these dynamically from the Sitemap. This is a feature that competitor Protoshare already has.
• Better sizing options on tree menus. The tree menus are really cool, but there isn't very much control over the size and I can't make a menu item break into two lines. So if I have a long page title (not recommended, but I'm not in charge of everything!), then the tree width stretches to accomodate the long title. Text wrap combined with a way to control the width of the tree would solve this problem.
• Inline links. Currently the only way to make something a link is to make the entire object a link. If you're creating a typical "footer" navigation with all text links separated by pipes you can't make each item a working link unless you manually break them apart. Very tedious.
• Dynamic breadcrumbs. Breadcrumbs are a very common navigation aid. It's possible to simulate dynamic breadcrumbs using variables, but it's fairly tedious and painful. Breadcrumbs based on the sitemap structure of the page would be awesome!
• Universal stacking order. Masters are a wonderful feature that makes it possible to make rapid changes across an entire site without having to touch every page. However, a master placed on a page follows the stacking order of that page. Typically this works out just fine, but occasionally it can be a problem. Case in point, I recently worked on a project with a common header. I put that header in a master. In a subsequent round of changes I added a modal dialog activated by a link in the common header. I put the dynamic panel for the modal in the header master so it would be automatically added to all pages. Unfortunately, the header wasn't always the top item in the page stack. On most pages there was other page content that was added later. This content didn't occupy the same x,y space as the header so the stack order wasn't important. It became important when I added the modal which did occupy the same x,y space as the page content. I was forced to touch every page containing the header to bring it to the top of the stack which partially defeated the purpose of the master. If there were some way to give masters a universal stacking order, maybe this problem could be resolved. Something similar to the z-index, perhaps.
• Open link in new window. Currently a link can be set to open in current window, popup window or parent window. It would be great if it could be set to open in a new window. This is a common behaviour (which can be annotated in the specification fields), but client's are literal.
• Auto Labeling. It would be great if menu items would be automatically labeled with the text of the link (which could then be overridden. This would save alot of tedious work.
• Interactions between masters. Suppose you have a dynamic panel on one master. If you place that master on a page, you can manipulate the state of the panel from a link/object on the same master or on the page on which the master is placed. You cannot, however, change the state of the panel from a link/object on another master.

It's difficult to gauge at this point what the ultimate impact of this device will be, and frankly, I think it will take a year and a second generation version before the verdict is in. As I watched Steve Jobs on stage with the iPad I was continuously reminded of the PADD devices used by the crew of the Enterprise in Star Trek. It might not be the first version, but I believe this device will find significant inroads into how we work in a way that was promised by Tablet PCs, but never delivered because of weight, a clumsy OS, etc.

As with any Apple device, the debut of the iPad has been marked by the things that are absent: a camera, Flash support, etc. This should come as no surprise to anyone since Jobs has been eliminating things from his creations since the iMac launched without a floppy drive. I remember the hue and cry about how the lack of a floppy drive made the iMac a joke. I guess Apple had the last laugh.

VIrtually every device that Apple has launched since then has left pundits gasping at what was missing. And almost without fail the devices have been a resounding success. I fully anticipate that the iPad will eventually get a camera, but it won't be the same as a camera phone. Apple will add some twist that makes sense with the new device. It might even be something they wanted to launch with this version but left out so they could reach one their most important goals: a $499 pricetag for the base model. As the cost of the hardware decreases, Apple will include more features -- but features designed specifically for the iPad.

Perhaps the biggest missing item on the list, though, is Flash support. My initial reaction was disappointment. As I've thought about it more, however, my disappointment is tempered by a few thoughts. There are primarily three uses for Flash: video, games and ads. I'm certainly not disappointed by the lack of ads and most, if not all Flash games, as John Gruber points out, are designed for a mouse and keyboard and wouldn't translate well to the multi-touch interface. This is not to say that some enterprising Flash developers wouldn't create games specifically for the iPad, but personally, I can live without the games.

The most significant issue related to Flash and web browsing is video. Currently much of the video published on the web uses a Flash video player and this will present some problems, especially on a device that Jobs touted as the best device for using the web. However, as more developers begin utilizing the video capabilities of HTML 5 -- as both Vimeo and YouTube are already starting to do -- this problem will quickly go away. While we as developers may be forced to support multiple video formats for many years to ensure that all of our visitors can watch our video content (I'm looking at you, Microsoft), I predict that by the end of 2010, this problem will be substantially diminished for iPad users. Like the iMac and the floppy drive, the iPhone and iPad will drive continued adoption of HTML5 standards and non-Flash video as an option. 

It's interesting that some bloggers (John Gruber, Gina Tripanni, Andy Baio) have been sharing their Flash visitor stats to show that Flash enabled browsers are on the decline. While this does appear to be true, I don't believe the numbers are quite as compelling as they might appear. The Lifehacker numbers show a 300% increase in Flash-less browsing, but that still only equals ~6% total. Gruber's numbers are around 32%, but likely only about 7% are actually completely Flash-less -- the rest are using Flash blockers that allow you to click to view Flash. I suspect that many users of these plugins are more interested in blocking Flash ads then surfing in a Flash-less world. In fact, I would suggest that this is a far more significant statistic for media buyers and ad agencies then it is for Apple.

I don't know if the iPad is significant inflection point for the industry the way the iPhone was. I do know that I am looking forward to a device that fits better for reading, video and casual web surfing. Hopefully the iPad fulfills my wishes, and even if it doesn't, it still feels like one step closer to Star Trek.

But that's not really my point. During the discussion following the presentation, one of my colleagues asked about keeping up with and participating in the the ever increasing sources of conversation. It's a problem that I have been wrestling with for the last few months, especially as my focus has turned increasingly toward social media. The textbook answer, and the one I suggested to my colleague, is that we must each decide what is important to us and focus on that. I further suggested that it is ok for a company or a brand or an individual to only participate in those networks and conversations that best engages with their core audience.

That answer, of course, is somewhat glib and facile and ignores the fact that even when culling down the signals to only the most relevant, the flood of data is still more then we can process. So what next? Are better tools the answer? Perhaps. But it is far more likely that fighting the information overload battle with better tools is at best an arms race of cold war proportions. Information is increasing at an exponential rate and new tools are not really keeping up. So what next?

One idea (and it's certainly not a new one) is the concept of editors and curators. Steve Rubel wrote about this a few years ago on MicroPersuasions. In his post Rubel suggests that the difference between a curator and an editor, is that the editor must fill a finite space and the curator seeks only to unearth treasures that fit a purpose or viewpoint. I might extend this to suggest that the editor seeks those things that are timely, while the curator seeks those which are timeless. John Gruber, the noted Mac philospher and pundit, is an editor. His posts are always timely and generally insightful, even when they are short and pithy—or perhaps most often when they are short and pithy. Jason Kottke, on the other hand, is a curator of the "liberal arts 2.0" and a shining example of how a good curator can provide a steady stream of new and relevant content.

Shaun Inman recently launched a new feedreader, Fever, which purports to take "the temperature of your slice of the web and show you what's hot." Based on your personal collection of feeds, Fever calculates which posts are most relevant to you by looking at how many other sites are linking to a particular topic. While an interesting idea, I believe that Fever suffers from two fundamental flaws. One technical and one existential. The technical problem comes from Shaun's decision to make Fever a server based app, thus limiting its utility to programmers, developers and other fellow geeks with the necessary skills and infrastructure to use it. Second, and more importantly, it attempts to determine relevance based on mathematics and relevance is a much fuzzier proposition.

Fever does, however, represent an important step on the journey to machines as editors and curators. But until the singularity, I'll continue to look for the Gruber's and Kottke's to keep me informed and safe from drowning in the information ocean.

The following short quiz consists of 4 questions and will tell you whether you are qualified to be a professional. The questions are NOT that difficult.

1. How do you put a giraffe into a refrigerator?

Correct Answer: Open the refrigerator, put in the giraffe, and close the door. This question tests whether you tend to do simple things in an overly complicated way.

2. How do you put an elephant into a refrigerator?

Did you say, Open the refrigerator, put in the elephant, and close the refrigerator? Wrong Answer.

Correct Answer: Open the refrigerator, take out the giraffe, put in the elephant and close the door. This tests your ability to think through the repercussions of your previous actions.

3. The Lion King is hosting an animal conference. All the animals attend.... except one. Which animal does not attend?

Correct Answer: The Elephant. The elephant is in the refrigerator. You just put him in there. This tests your memory.

Okay, even if you did not answer the first three questions correctly, you still have one more chance to show your true abilities.

4. There is a river you must cross but it is used by crocodiles, and you do not have a boat. How do you manage it?

Correct Answer: You jump into the river and swim across. Have you not been listening? All the crocodiles are attending the Animal Meeting. This tests whether you learn quickly from your mistakes.

I realize this is only slightly better than fifth grade humor, but we can all use the opportunity to get in touch with our inner child.

Usability testing is not a dirty word. Providing adequate time and resources to do build elegant and usable web applications is not the place to trim costs if customer satisfaction, error reduction and customer retention are your goals. And most of all, you are not a designer or usability expert. Please hire the right people, give them the resources to do their job and stay out of their way.

Of course, if one of these issues is the result of a design decision -- please pick up a copy of Luke Wroblewski's book, "Web Form Design:Filling in the Blanks" and "Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability" by Steve Krug.

Before I jump into the nits, a quick overview of paying bills the 2008 way. Or at least my way. My process begins with a spreadsheet in Google Docs. I used to use Excel, but Google Docs does everything I need and let's me use whichever computer I happen to be in front of at the moment. It also means crucial data is automatically saved "in the cloud" instead of on a machine that may fail or get stolen. And yes, I do backup the Google Docs file to my machine. I'm not that trusting. My Google Docs spreadsheet contains a list of all of my recurring bills with the amount I've paid each months. Pretty basic. The value of this system is that I don't miss any bills — they're all in the list; plus I can see what I've been paying over the last year which helps me catch any bills that change dramatically.

My next step is to open a folder of tabs in Firefox. I have one folder of tabs on my bookmark bar devoted to bills and I can open these all at once by choosing "Open all in tabs" at the bottom of the menu. With all of my tabs open and my spreadsheet ready and start by visiting my online bank site to mark off those bills that are auto paid — crucial bills like the car payment and mortgage. Generally I avoid auto pay; I like to have a little more control than that.

On to nit #1. Logging in. Websites the world over allow you to save your username and password via cookie, or at the very least don't actively block the password manager built into most browsers. Regions Bank does. I believe this is a misguided attempt at "increasing security." Personally, I'd like to have a little more control. At least the option of using my browsers built-in password manager — like every other site I know. Also, while we're talking about logging in. Try testing your site's functionality in a mobile environment like an iPhone. Region's login fields have default text in them which in a desktop browser is automatically removed via Javascript when you click in the field. Not so on the iPhone. There I have to click in the field. Navigate my cursor to the end of the field and then backspace to delete the phrase "Enter Login ID". Not cool.

Nit #2. Not having online billpay. I'm looking at you CitiFinancial. How can you be part of the world's largest financial institution and not offer a way to pay bills online. Now you know why I no longer have an account with you.

Nit #3. Antiquated bill pay system. This problem seems particularly endemic to public utilities. AmerenUE and Laclede Gas use MyCheckFree, which is an adequate system most of the time. Metro Sewer has an out-dated system that is difficult to navigate and makes it virtually impossible to tell if you've paid your bill or not. Heaven forbid if you pay your bill in person or by mail one month. The system has no idea. Missouri American Water is the worst offender in this category, however. Their system is only a step better then paying by mail. There is no history and the system has no knowledge of your past or current bills. You must have your bill in front of you to enter your acount number and to enter the amount you owe. You must also have your checkbook in front of you to enter a check number, bank id and account number. At least they have a system!

Nit #4. This is really two nits in one. Links should do what they say. If the link at the bottom of your page says "Make a payment," it should not take me to a page that offers me the opportunity to sign-up for a card. The very card I'm tyring to pay. Furthermore, once I click on the link, please don't open a popup window. I don't care that you use a third-party company to process the payments. Your branding is all over the new page. I am not mystified and I am certainly not going to close this window and then decide my experience was so wonderful paying my bill that I will buy a few more things. If I do, I'm perfectly capable of getting back to your website. And while we're on the topic, opening yet another window after declining to make a "Rush Payment" is just egregious. Figure out a way to handle rush payments with the same system.

Nit #5. Unnecssary, non-standard information inputs. SallieMae hits the trifecta if you need to pay on a student loan. First, notice the checkbox at the beginning of the line. SallieMae helpfully allows you to choose which of your loans you're going to pay. Unfortunately, if you only have one, you still have to check this vestigal, un-identified box. Second, notice the payment amount conveniently divided into dollars and cents. Guaranteed to cause an error since every other site allows you to input the entire amount in one field. Couldn't we also have a button to automatically choose the "Pay this amount" amount? Third. Notice the date selector. Fortunately for me, I always check the "Pay Today" button. Of course, if you don't check either which is not that difficult to do, you'll be experiencing a lovely assortment of error messages. Thanks for paying.

Had I written this article a few months ago as I had intended, I might have had a lot more to say. Over the last few months I have noticed an improvement in the payment systems for a number of companies. AT&T most notably. I have also noticed a significant increase in annoying "security" measures like the constant barrage of little Site ID pictures and personal questions like my first girlfriend or the name of my favorite band. Some of these questions are useless (anyone can find out where I was born or what my mother's maiden name is). Other's are impossible. I'm a designer, my favorite color changes with the seasons!

All in all, for me, this system is a whole lot better then the old fashioned way. I an almost hear the voice of the computer in Wargames, "Want to pay a bill?"

If you're curious, it's powered by my favorite things. ExpressionEngine, Macbook Air and a few of these.

Stay tuned. More coming. Soon. Ish.

The camera market is constantly changing and what you get depends much on what your particular needs are. When I'm camera shopping I usually check out reviews at a couple of sites including cnet.com, dpreview.com and http://www.steves-digicams.com. I've done some looking at what's current and based on your budget of $200-300 I have four suggestions for you with some explanations on why it might or might not be appropriate. I've included links to the details page on dpreview.com for each camera. There are links to online stores selling these cameras there including there price. There is often quite a bit of variance in pricing between different stores. Check out the store before you buy and make sure they look reputable. Also, be sure to check Amazon.com and NewEgg.com before you buy as they are often very competitive in pricing. Buying at a local store is almost certain to raise the price by 25%, but you do have the advantage of someplace you can go if there is a problem. I've bought quite a bit of camera equipment online and never had a problem. (Knock on wood!) Also, don't forget that you'll need at least one memory card and that batteries are not cheap. If you don't have them already, plan on buying 4-8 AA rechargeables and a charger, otherwise the batteries will eat you out of house and home. Plan on getting at least a 512mb memory card. All of these cameras are at least 5 megapixel. If you can swing it get a 1 or 2 gb card (or if it's cheaper, a couple of 512mb cards.)

Ok, now the cameras. Flat out my recommendation is the Canon S2 IS. (http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/specs/Canon/canon_s2is.asp) One of my pet peeves about point and shoot cameras are the wimpy zoom lenses. Most point and shoot camera's come with a 3x optical zoom which is better than nothing, but only barely. By the way, digital zoom is worthless. Ignore all digital zoom features and don't use them. They are the equivalent of taking your photo into MS Paint or Photoshop and cropping them then enlarging them. Completely useless. A 3x zoom is the equivalent of a 105 mm lens which is fine for a lot of things, but you'll get annoyed as soon as you take the camera to a little league game or the ice rink or anything where you can't be right up close to the action. The Canon S2 IS has a 12x optical zoom. More than enough to get the job done in virtually any situation. Plus the IS stands for Image Stabilization. The problem with long zoom lenses is that they magnify camera shake. The IS helps combat that problem. The downside to this camera is the size and the price. It's a little large for just sticking in your purse or pocket. It's not as big as my camera, probably half the size, but it's not a pocket camera. The other problem is the price, this one will be right at the upper limit of your budget without adding rechargeable batteries or memory cards.

If you find this camera interesting, you might also check out the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ7. (http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/specs/Panasonic/panasonic_dmcfz7.asp) I've been hearing good things about the Lumix cameras and this one has most of the same features as the Canon S2 IS, plus it's a 6 megapixel camera vs the Canon's 5 megapixel. The same downsides apply to this one as the S2, plus I don't have any personal experience with it.

If you want something smaller and or cheaper, take a look at the HP R817 (http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/specs/HP/hp_r817.asp) Now I don't have any personal experience with this camera, but the price to feature ratio on this camera is very good. The size is more manageable than the S2 or Lumix and it still has a 5x optical zoom which is excellent for a camera this size. I can't say I'm a fan of the HP brand for cameras, but that's mostly a lack of experience with them. Definitely worth checking out.

If the HP is still to big or if you want to stick with a more name brand camera check out the Canon SD600 (http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/specs/Canon/canon_sd600.asp). Fair warning, I'm a big Canon fan. This looks like a solid contender, but the zoom is only 3x.

I would take a trip to a camera shop or Best Buy, etc and try to play with this cameras yourself before you make a decision.

Since I prepared the previous, my brother (ubergeek, Ben) has found another contender, the Ricoh Capilo R4 in the $200-300 category. Nice stats: 7x zoom, 6 megapixel. A few niggles on the image quality, but not enough to damage it's user rating on DPReview. I'll leave you with the link. (http://www.cameratown.com/reviews/review_listing.cfm/hurl/id%7C2368)

Purists might argue that this ruins the integrity or lowers the historical value of the photographs, I believe, however, that Kottke's work enables an insight that few of us manage on our own when studying historic documents: the idea that these people we see were as real as you and I. Two dimensional images, especially those burdened with the unreality of black and white or faded color photography are like fairy tales. We don't relate. By simply correcting the color on these remarkable images to approximate that of a modern camera, the people and situations they depict come alive in a way I had never before experiences.

Bravo Jason for daring to tinker with the past! I'd love to see the whole book with this treatment.

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Huh. I'm pretty sure Safari 2, Firefox 1.5 and Opera 8.5 are all out of beta, and have had non-beta versions for quite some time now. So what exactly are "normal circumstances?"

Which brings me to today's gripe: the lack of RSS reading tools to meet my needs. Sure, their are lots of different news readers out their, and, yes, I am not your usual internet consumer, but c'mon people! The missing feature in RSS apps in my world is synchronicity. Actually, this is the killer feature for almost anything I do online, but more on that some other time. I work on four different computers. My main machine is my 17" Powerbook G4. I maintain my email on this machine, although I'm working on converting to IMAP so I can be more fluid in my email habits. My second machine is my custom built Windows PC at home.My third machine is my Dell at work and my fourth machine is my Treo 650.

At various times, for various reasons, I use all four to access the internet and I would like to be able to use all four to keep up with my feeds. Time is precious, so I like to be able to make good use of any spare cycles and that means being able to use whichever machine I'm sitting in front of at the moment. One of my best tools for capturing those spare cycles is my Treo. I certainly don't have a lot of good things to say about Sprint, and the internet access they provide is a little slow, but in the aggregate, it's better than being idle. However, finding good tools for managing my feeds between these four machines has been nearly fruitless.

For my first foray into RSS I used an OS X reader called NetNewsWire and another reader called Pulp Fiction. I preferred the interface of PulpFiction, so for a little while I stuck with it. The problem with these and any other desktop RSS reader is that it is isolated. I could use a desktop newsreader like FeedDemon on my PC and I could even use an RSS reader like on my Treo, but none of these apps can talk to each other. Enter online RSS readers. Two services rise to the top in this category. Bloglines and Newsgator.

Both services are web based RSS readers and each handles the process with slightly different quirks and annoyances. One of the virtues of both services is the ability to use them on a mobile device like my Treo. Unfortunately the implementation of this ability lacks anything but the most basic features. I began by using Bloglines. On the plus side, Bloglines is free, including accessing it with a mobile browser. Bloglines works, after a fashion, but a couple of serious issues had me looking for something new in just a few weeks.

My number one issue: clicking on a feed shows all of the unread posts from that feed and promptly marks them all as read. This means that if I only have time to read one or two posts out of the dozen waiting for a particular feed I have to check the "Keep New" box on all of the ones I haven't read. This is counter-intuitive and Just Plain Wrong. I have since found NewsGator. I first heard about the gator from reading Scoble's blog, but initially ignored it since it seemed to be mostly about the Outlook plug-in and the fees for anything but basic service. I gave it a second chance, however, when NewsGator acquired FeedDemon and NetNewsWire. The promise of a better tomorrow was tantalizing enough to pony up the cash for a paid subscription.

The mobile version of NewsGator requires the subscription, but everything I read indicates that paid subscribers will also get FeedDemon and NetNewsWire...if they ever come out. The web version of NewsGator is adequate. It doesn't have many features when compared to desktop programs, but since it's not a desktop app, I guess that is to be expected. It is a bit more intuitive than Bloglines. Posts are not marked read the second you click on the feed link. Instead you mark them read individually or all at once by clicking the appropriate links. There are a few other tools like a ratings system, clippings and email post that are useful, but unfortunately not present in the mobile version where they would be even more useful.

While I would like better features for saving and managing posts and feeds when I'm sitting at my desktop, I could really use some of these features when I'm mobile. At my desktop I can easily follow links and use other tools to manage information and follow-up on interesting posts. When I'm mobile, my only choice with NewsGator is to leave all posts for a particular feed unread. With Bloglines I can at least email myself about an interesting post. Bottom-line. I'm looking for a cross-platform, including Treo-friendly, RSS reader solution. A web-based solution is fine if it is full-featured. The mobile solution must facilitate reading feeds in small increments and have a decent system to allow me to follow-up on interesting posts. Any thoughts?

My second primary use for ImageReady is creating animated gifs. While this certainly isn’t a huge part of my average day, it does come up frequently enough to shine a spotlight on one of ImageReady’s more annoying “features.” My workflow for a typical animation project begins in Photoshop. I design the basic framework and then use layers to create the individual frames of the animation. In the “Good Old Days” the final animation would be built with a special tool that read the Photoshop layers and assembled the animation. Now I use ImageReady to do the assembly. Which brings me to my gripe.

Animated gifs work exactly like cartoons. Animation is composed of static cels or frames that appear to animate much like an old fashioned flip book. ImageReady helps the artist manage these frames in a pallete that provides a look at all of the frames side by side. Editing a particular frame is as simple as selecting that frame in the pallete and then turning layers on and off (or moving elements in layers). The problem arises when the artist decides to add an element that isn’t already on one of the layers.

Suppose you forgot to add the company logo in the last frame of the animation. No problem. Create a new layer and place the logo on the that layer. And here’s where the aggravation occurs. Rather than activating that layer for only the frame or frames selected in the animation pallete, ImageReady decides to activate that layer for EVERY frame. So now, although I almost never want this effect, the new layer appears on each and every frame. The only solution I’ve found is to highlight all of the other frames and deactivate that layer. It’s not a difficult solution, but why do I have to do it at all?

Maybe there’s a better way, but I haven’t found it. Have you?