technology | At Home with Tech

July 22, 2012

The Joy of Shopping at Midnight in your Underwear

This is one need an online purchase may not satisfy. But there is plenty else to choose from after your mad dash to the 24/7 convenience store.

If a short man and a tall woman in dark suits and sunglasses walked up to you, displayed their IDs, and declared your smart phone was about to be repossessed by a secret government agency, you’d be pretty annoyed, right?

How would you survive?
Without your contacts.
Without phone numbers hard wired to your memory.
No apps. No web access. No music.
When was the last time you even used a pay phone?

But you’d get by. Somehow.
It wasn’t so long ago when smart phones didn’t exist and basic cell phones were making history at the magical rate of $1.99/minute.
(No one ever thought that was a good deal.)

The same story goes for your home computer.
Imagine some sort of futuristic “Free Your Home from the Web” initiative.
(It could happen!)
Without your main computing tool, you’d be limited, but not dead in the water. There’s always your mobile device, your work computer, or even the library (in 30 minute increments). You’d find your way back to Facebook. Don’t worry.

BuyEverythingOnline.com
But what’s up with online shopping?

Once upon a time, I would get in my car and go shopping for the consumer goods I require to live my life as a red blooded American, happily engaged in our great capitalist economy.

Then online shopping was born, and I remember feeling unimpressed. Surely you still needed to go out there to hunt and gather to make sure you got what you wanted. How would you return an item if there was something wrong? The experience would have to be fraught with limitations and problems. Plus, you had to wait days to receive what you needed right now. And how many books could you possibly buy on Amazon?

Wow. There’s been quite the shopping shift over the past few years.
Today, this new shopping behavior has fused itself onto my brainstem.
It’s become an essential tool I simply cannot do without.
And I’m not alone.

So why has shopping online become so much more than another convenience?

$$$
It’s about money, of course.
Online shopping usually costs less.

For an online merchant, it’s the simple economics behind not having to pay for a brick and mortar store and salespeople.

Your local low-priced Walmart down the street isn’t closing any time soon, but your purchasing behaviors are shifting big time.

Hold the Sales Tax
And it doesn’t hurt that you usually don’t get charged state sales tax, unless the online retailer has a store in the state where you live.

You should know your tax free shopping spree may not last forever.
There’s an Internet sales tax bill in Congress that would close this loophole.
It’s called The Marketplace Fairness Act, and it’s picking up steam.

If passed, it surely will help out brick and mortar retail stores.
But it won’t cure their problem that they’ll never be the only game in town again.

Showrooming
Pop quiz- In the past year, how many of you have walked into a retail store, found what you were looking for, and then walked out and bought it online for less?

Exactly. It’s known as showrooming, a term that popped up when bookstores began losing business to Amazon.

Some stores with growing web sales and reduced foot traffic are rolling with the punches and transforming their physical locations into pick-up and return centers for their online cousins. Talk about the tail wagging the dog.

Tick Tock
But for me, the X-factor (not the TV show) is time, and not having enough of it.

Who’s got time to waste traveling to the mall, hoping they’ll have what you need and then waiting in a long line? That’s an hour or ninety minute commitment. Easily.

Plus, our jobs are increasingly reaching out to us 24/7 and hijacking our nights and weekends. We’re always a BlackBerry email or cell phone call away. You’re never really off the clock.

So why not just take five minutes at midnight after answering a work email and quickly click on what you need?

Yes, I understand that sometimes you have to get out there and kick the tires (showrooming or not). But for repeat purchases, to keep the staples in the cupboard, I’m happily clicking away after dinner to handle the week’s shopping needs.

That said, every online shopping experience isn’t perfect…

Out of Toilet Paper?
Sometimes you just can’t wait.
And normally, who wants to be lollygagging for days for UPS to arrive? Don’t you want it right away? That’s what used to happen when you bought something.

But waiting for days?!
Yes, this is a counter intuitive shift in our age of uber convenient digital shopping.
But unless you’re out of toilet paper, Advil, or contraceptives, you really don’t have to have it immediately.
Do you?

Shipping Costs
That’s another problem.
I’ve been to the post office. I know how much it costs to mail a package.
It doesn’t cost $17.99 to ship a toothbrush. Nor should it cost $8 to ship a $3 light bulb (or a $14 LED bulb). I think some of these shipping costs are just padding to the profit margin. For me this is the single biggest deterrent to doing a deal online.

But if you’re smart, you can avoid this trap and get your booty shipped for free (mostly).

Many websites have free shipping with minimum purchases.
And of course, there’s Amazon Prime, which gives you free two-day shipping.
(Yes that program costs you $79 year, but it’s well worth it if you’re using Amazon frequently.)

The Shopping List
I know, I know. You can’t buy everything online and have it shipped to your doorstep. That said, here are some of my favorite websites that help me keep the wheels turning in the Lester household:

Technology that’s not an Apple product

bhphotovideo.com
Amazon

Apple products

D’uh

Best coffee I’ve ever had

counterculturecoffee.com

Supplies and toys for my toddler

diapers.com
ecomom.com
yoyo.com (Check the pricing. Sometimes it’s too high.)
onestepahead.com
and of course, Amazon

Clothing for the boy

oldnavy.com

Summer clothes with advanced sun protection for the family

coolibar.com

Cool jewelry for my wife

sundancecatelog.com

Great prices on photo paper

epson.com

House cleaning supplies

soap.com
And yes, Amazon

Perishable food is a whole different story, and I know there are several places you can go online such as peapod.com to order food and have it delivered for an extra delivery charge. I haven’t done a lot of that yet.

The one item I can’t find online, but would immediately pay extra for shipping or delivery is Trader Joe’s Chunky Unsweetened Applesauce.
(Rules are meant to be broken sometimes.)
It’s very yummy.

So where are some of your favorite online shopping hangouts?
Please add to the list!

3 Comments

July 15, 2012

Singing the Blu-ray Blues

Are you still on the Blu-ray Disk bandwagon, or have you moved on? I’ve got five reasons to stick around.

Not so long ago, I was the proud owner of a new Samsung Blu-ray Disk player. I immediately repurchased a few of my favorite sc-fi blockbusters and marveled at the magnificent imagery of this HD-enabling device.

My home entertainment center was worthy, again.
(Is that a tear welling up in the corner of my eye?)
I looked ahead to the gleaming age of HD video with Blu-ray Disks for my 42” Panasonic Plasma TV.

Fast forward to the present.

The Distant Honeymoon
What the frak happened?!
HD video is so yesterday. Now, it’s 3D that’s the bomb.

Yes, Blu-ray Disk sales are still strong.
In fact, 2011 was a banner year with sales up 20%. But digital delivery rose 51% over the same period.

Don’t look now, Blu-ray, but your days on top may be numbered.
Is it just a matter of time until HD streaming technologies take the lead?

So where does this leave you and me?
Again with confusion.
Time to abandon Blu-ray? I hardly knew you.

All I know is my movie collection is a train wreck.

The Costs of Beauty
Blu-ray tech shows off a stunning picture. So I’ve pledged to never go back and buy a standard DVD ever again. That would be sacrilege!

But the premium pricing of Blu-ray Disks never came down that much from their original sticker shock levels. Plunking down $20-$30 to watch a movie in today’s enlightened media landscape is somewhat extravagant. No?

Here’s the current pricing for few new Blu-ray disk titles at Best Buy-
Wrath of the Titans- $19.99
Mirror Mirror- $29.99
The Artist- $24.99
Safe House- $24.99

Where’s the value proposition? (more on this later)

And can I mention how annoying it is to wait for a Blu-ray Disk to load?
(It takes like, FOREVER!)

So, needless to say, my Blu-ray Disk collection has not flourished.

Smarty Pants Strategy Implodes
Of course, I’ve been ordering all my Netflix red envelope movies to arrive wearing Blu-ray stripes.

That strategy quickly became a problem a couple years back when my home theater started growing cobwebs. Remember, I am a proud parent of a toddler.
And that prompted most of my media consumption to go mobile when
I became a mobile media warrior on Metro North.
So now what?

Well I thought I would be very clever. So I jumped down the rabbit hole.
(way down)
I bought myself Panasonic’s prototype portable 9” Blu-ray player and almost broke the bank. (Don’t tell my wife.)

You might ask who in their right mind would spend big money on a tiny screen for watching HD video with a platform that moved at the speed of glue?

I think there were three of us.
(But I got a great deal on Amazon.)

You must understand I had no other choice, right?
I had over-technoligized myself into a corner.
How was I otherwise going to watch my precious movies?
(And remember, as a new parent, going to the flicks the old fashioned way was a distant memory.)

I really got the Blu-ray Blues.

Dead Disk Walking?
Look, the facts don’t lie.
Let me add to the weight and throw a few more rocks onto the future of Blu-ray tech.

Apple never put the darn drives into their computers.
I’ve already got HD streaming via Apple TV and Roku.
Standard DVDs really aren’t that bad. (Please don’t stone me.)

So why not just chuck Blu-ray and move to a higher plane with all streaming?
Well, it turns out there is actually something to the Blu-ray value prop.

Five Reasons to Stick with Blu-ray Disks

-The Downloadable Copy
One big reason I will buy a Blu-ray Disk is if it comes with the digital version.
If you shop smart, you’ll often find a version packaged with a digital copy you can pop right on your mobile phone. Nice.

-The Extras Come with Extra Extras
I know this has marketing ooze all over it, but it works.
They simply pack the Blu-ray Disk extras with more goodness. For example, I wouldn’t know the correct Star Trek movie (2009) plot without having gone through all the deleted scenes. Fascinating. (I had to enlighten a friend who had only bought the standard DVD version.)

-DVD Player, Say Hello to VHS Player in the Attic
It’s over, baby. Thanks for the memories. You can hang around a while longer, but please leave the keys on the way out.

-3D
I’ve said I would never wear those silly glasses at home, if I don’t lose them first. Time will tell…

-I Prefer Owning Atoms instead of Bytes
I’m still stuck on the idea of having a physical object to put on my shelf.
I know. It’s an analog vestige I’ll grow out of some day.

Fold or Hold?
So where does all this leave us in the HD game?
Though this feels like another tech poker tournament, the reality is Blu-Ray Disks aren’t joining their HD DVD cousins and Betamax ancestors any time soon.

Cheer up.
While you’ve got your Blu-ray Blues, at least you’ll be viewing them in the full color spectrum of awesome high definition.

Joy?

July 8, 2012

I Sold My Soul to the Digital Devil

Is Final Cut Pro X sharp enough to erase that evil deal you made to shoot movies on your camera?

If a stranger with a wicked sun burn walked up to you and said you never needed to use your camcorder ever again to record your home movies, you’d take the deal, right?

We all did this a few years back.

The last tape-based camcorder I ever bought was a Sony Mini DV unit back in 2002.

I edited the content by sucking it onto my iMac via FireWire. My editing software was iMovie and then later, Final Cut Pro.
Everything worked just fine, and I was rather chuffed with my little home media studio of the early 21st century.

Then one day, digital cameras started showing up with little red movie record buttons, and everyone suddenly realized you didn’t need tape-based camcorders anymore. Heck, you didn’t even need a camcorder. Cameras could do double duty.

Sure, the video quality wasn’t as good. There were file size limits that restricted how long you could record. And to edit your digital movie files, you had to buy external hard drives to handle the massive movie clip sizes. And the file size problem really exploded when HD recording came into fashion.

You theoretically could save the files forever. But you also had to worry about your hard drives going belly up with all your precious family memories.
(This has occurred to you, hasn’t it?)

But storage, backup, and file corruption concerns aside, I have to admit it’s pretty cool to plug your camera’s little SD card into your computer and watch your movie files quickly transfer over.

So yes, it was a time saver.
Yes, it was easier.
Yes, I liked it way better.
(really)

…BUT
(You knew that was coming.)

There is one problem that nobody ever talked about-

TRANSCODING.
No, not transwarp.
TRANSCODING!

The Deal with the Digital Devil
You must have wondered somewhere along the way how a tiny four gig SD card in a camera could record so much video. Well, it’s called file compression, and that’s your camera’s secret voodoo.

There are a few types of movie recording codecs that perform this tricky task to squeeze your movies small enough to allow them fit onto your camera’s memory card. A few of the more common codecs are H.264, Motion JPEG, and AVCHD.

These highly compressed movie formats create video files that look great when you play them back on your camera or your computer, but you couldn’t edit with them. (That’s buried on page 17 of the contract.)

So what good were these movie files if you couldn’t do anything other than look at them?

The fix here was to reprocess or “transcode” the files into a different video codec that your editing software could actually handle. This meant creating a larger and less compressed duplicate of each movie file that would play nice with your editing software.

Got that?
Just nod your head, and let’s move on.

The Devil is in the Details
As a new daddy, I went about my business editing little movies of my son’s early days by first transcoding every frickin video clip I wanted to edit with.

You can imagine the organization that kind of workflow required.
-Duplicate files.
-External hard drives filling up at triple speed.
-Archiving hell.

I’ll just say my desk at home, let alone my computer’s desktop, does not quite live up to the clean and simple aesthetic of our almost all-digital world.

But you do what you gotta do.
Right?

Was I the only father out there who had a deal with Mephistopheles to make home movies? Nobody else seemed to be talking about it.
(Maybe it’s in the contract. I really never got around to reading mine.)

The Phoenix of Final Cut Pro
A year ago, Apple shocked the digital editing world and killed off its wildly successful Final Cut Pro editing platform. Almost a decade earlier, Final Cut had brought professional non-linear editing to the masses for a fraction of the cost of competing systems.

Then Apple pulled the plug by reinventing Final Cut Pro all over again. The problem is the new version, Final Cut Pro X, is an entirely new program, “built from the ground up.”
It’s not compatible with the old version, Final Cut Pro 7.
(There is no version 8 or 9.)
So you can’t move your old or ongoing editing projects to this new editing platform. Sorry.

I got stuck in the eye of this hurricane, and for the past year I’ve been struggling to decide when to make the transition.

First off, Final Cut Pro X only works on Lion, Apple’s current operating system (and soon to be released Mountain Lion). So I first had to make the Lion upgrade.

Then, there was sooooo much bad press about how inferior this new version of FCP was. Angry editors called it iMovie on steroids. There was a consensus in the professional and semi-professional editing communities that they felt abandoned by this more limited editing platform.

So I wasn’t too eager to jump into the mess.
I’ve got plenty of my own digital messes to clean up!
(plus a few analog ones too)

But Apple kept banging their drum about how much better FCP X really was. They said you simply had to invest a little time to learn the new interface.

But there was one particular FCP X feature that caught my eye.
Apple said you didn’t need to transcode your files anymore.
You could throw just about any video codec at FCP X, and it could work with it.

Bold words.
But still I held off.

Fast forward to our current timeline, and Apple, never standing still, has been busy improving FCP X through multiple software updates.
And there’s a rumor out there that the old FCP 7 platform will cease working with the Mountain Lion OS, coming out later this month.

So I figured it was finally time.

Final Cut Pro X to the Rescue
Last week, I went to Apple’s App Store, which always has a friendly icon waiting eagerly on my iMac’s dock.

I clicked on it and downloaded Apple’s most controversial product since the iPhone 4 ‘Antenna-gate.’ (Remember all that hoopla with the antenna reception problem?)

The time had come to face my digital gauntlet.
I watched my finger make its move to launch Final Cut Pro X.

FCP X quickly sprung to life.
Would the continuity of the Lester family record on video be ensured for eons to come?
(or at least the next couple of years?)
Drum roll please…

Well, of course it worked.
But as I’ve said, the devil is always in the details.

While this is not a product review, let me confirm that FCP X is better and faster in a whole host of ways. It’s also still missing some functionality that was standard with the older version. One example is it takes three steps to blend a transition between two audio tracks instead of the old way, which took one.

I’ll live.

The Big Answer
And what about TRANSCODING?
Remember, Barrett’s holy grail?
Have we forgotten about that already?!

Can Final Cut Pro X edit my native H.264 .MOV files fresh from my Canon SX230 (standard-issue toddler cam) or Canon Elph 300 (in-a-pinch pocket cam)?

Perhaps the question should be,
“Does FCP X WANT to edit with my camera’s native H.264 movie files?”

I don’t think it really does, but it grudgingly will when told to.

FCP X quickly gave me a few opportunities to transcode my imported movies.
Pro Res 422 (a beefy codec) is now FCP X’s default transcoding option.
It was almost like, “Would you like fries with that?”

Clearly Apple’s declaration that ENDS THE ERA OF TRANSCODING has been somewhat exaggerated.

Look, I understand that better ingredients create a tastier pie.
And the same holds true in the digital world. Non-optimized movie files will make FCP X and your Mac work harder. And maybe not all Macs (especially older ones) are up for the task.

But my 2010 iMac is a 2.93 GHz Intel Core i7 with 4 gigs of RAM,
(I’m not bragging) and should be ready for the challenge. Yes?

So I refused all requests to transcode and hit the proverbial red button.
Cue another drum roll…

EUREKA!! It worked!
(And there was much rejoicing in Barrett’s brain.)

Let me proclaim this again loud and clear throughout the land!

I DO NOT NEED TO TRANSCODE MY H.264 .MOV FILES TO EDIT IN FINAL CUT PRO X!

I am free!!

Wait, did I just cut another deal with Beelzebub?
Hmmm. I don’t think so.

So today’s story has a happy ending.
Technology has made my life a little easier.
(Savoring the moment…)

Digital Zen restored.
I am At Home with Tech.

Now please excuse me while I get to work editing my five-month backlog of family videos. I think I’ll be needing to move at transwarp speed to catch up!

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