shahine.com/omar/

If you ran to Nikon's web site (like I did) to download the Nikon NEF codec for Vista and then proceeded to add some keywords or captions to your photos then I hope you have a backup. Those files will not render in Adobe Bridge or PhotoShop any longer. You see when the NEF codec is installed, then Vista proceeds to write any meta data changes using the supplied codec (if one is available). So it appears that Nikon is making changes to the file that Adobe Camera Raw does not understand.

As a test I placed the modified NEF file back on my memory card and the camera rendered it just fine.

I hope Adobe fixes this ASAP.

This also applies if you have edited the photo using the Photo Info tool and have the NEF codec installed on either XP or Vista.

A while ago I asked how folks convert their digicam videos from AVI files to something smaller. A number of folks suggested ffmpeg. Well it's far to convoluted to even figure out what I needed to install to make it work. Having a command line solution would be nice though so that I could dump any new videos from the camera into a folder and just batch convert them.

Anyway, lucky for me there is a great free solution. It's called the Windows Media Encoder Script which comes with Windows Media Encoder 9 Series.

To convert a folder of movies from AVI to WMV you first need to create a profile. You can do this with the supplied Profile Editor. Here is the one that I am using:

Name: Convert AVI to WMV

Audio: Quality VBR / Windows Media Audio 9.2

Video: Bit rate VBR (Peak) / Windows Media Video 9

Video size: same as video input

Frame rate: 29.97

Video bit rate (average): 1894.976K

Video peak bit rate: 5684.928K

Peak buffer size: 5 seconds

Decoder Complexity: Auto

Once you have your profile saved open the command line and enter:

cscript.exe wmcmd.vbs -loadprofile Canon.prx -input "D:\input" -output "D:\output"

With this script I am seeing 6 - 8 x smaller file sizes. For example a 150 MB video of my cat is now 20 MB. The quality looks the same to me.

There are a lot more details one what you can do in the help file.

If you ever used any of the Microsoft Digital Image Suite products to add keywords or captions to your photos and you plan to use Vista you are in for a surprise.

Digital Image Suite writes keywords and captions to proprietary EXIF tags and not the IPTC fields that most software (Picasa, Adobe Applications, iPhoto etc) use. The field in question is EXIF Property Tag ID 40094 which is a Unicode String.

However, Digital Image Suite does read those fields just fine.

So say yo have a photo. Now you've added a bunch of keywords to those photos in the past. But you stopped using Digital Image Suite and started using a different program that writes them to the IPTC fields?

Well now you have a photo with two sets of conflicting keywords. But who cares right? All programs except MS ones ignore the Microsoft EXIF fields for keyword and caption. Well, if you plan to view those photos on Vista you are in trouble.

You see, Microsoft has fixed the sins of the past and Vista has proper support for all things photo. This includes new APIs and extensibility for all kinds of metadata. This includes IPTC/EXIF/XMP as well as a pluggable model for vendors to write codecs for their proprietary image formats (like Nikon has done for NEF).

Well, great you say... but here is the kicker. For compatibility reasons, Windows Photo Gallery still reads the EXIF keywords. This ensures that folks who only used Digital Image Suite will still see their keywords and captions. However, since it shows both the EXIF and IPTC keywords you don't know which one is which. Not to long ago I redid all my keywords in Adobe Bridge and iView... this fixed everything in the IPTC fields but left the EXIF fields untouched. Uh oh, now my keywords are a mess!

Well, luckily there is a way (tedious) to fix this.

1. if you don't have it, install Digital Image Suite on Windows XP
2. Load all your pictures and let it go through them all (this can take a while)
3. Load the Labels view
4. Delete every single Label

This will result in Digital Image Suite essentially zeroing out the EXIF keywords from your images (and leaving the IPTC ones in tact). Now you can move your photos to Vista and feel good knowing things will work fine from now on.

Mad props to the MS Photo team for finally getting it right on Vista (and in the .NET Framework 3.0).

1. Windows Update
2. Microsoft Update
3. Apple Software Update
4. Adobe Updater
5. and the list goes on.

Well I also discovered there is an Install Shield Updater. I hate crap like that. I was wondering how to remove it and I found this.

The latest Nikon NEF Codec for Vista installs this gem without my permission.

You can download this application and evict the updater from your machine. Keep it in your portable apps folder.

Why does this stuff bother me? Cause each of these applications runs all the time doing nothing useful. The frequency with which all these products get updated does not warrant something running all the time.

It' not often that I am impressed by Adobe's install process. But today I was really impressed. You see Photoshop CS2 requires that you activate it. This prevents you from buying one copy and using it on more computers than the license allows.

The neat thing is that when I went to uninstall PhotoShop it asked me if I wanted to de-activate it first. Now that is smart. It will save me a lot of aggravation when I re-install it later and can't activate it because I forgot to deactivate it.

Other programs that need this kind of feature include iTunes and every other product that requires activation.

Isn't it great when you blog about a problem and some one else does the work to create a solution? This is referred to as the Lazy Web and I love it.

Get your Windows Mobile DST fix here.

I just found out about a Media Center 2005 add-in that will play all iTunes content in the MCE UX. This seems like a better idea than buying an Apple TV just so I can watch my downloaded TV shows in my living room.

MCE Tunes seems perfect. Anyone using it? This could save me $270 (Apple TV = $300, MCE Tunes = $30).

After wiring my whole house with structured wiring a I learned a valuable lesson. Don't cheap out on stuff. Why? Cause when you realize that your screw on F Connectors on all your RG6 cable is leaking signal and you now have to retrofit all of them with proper compression F Connectors, it's a BIG PAIN IN THE ASS.

Buy a decent compression tool, stripper and do it right the first time. Stripping a Quad Shield Cable is actually not just a strip and crimp thing... you need to do a little work, pealing back the metal strands and all. Basically, read the instructions that come with the stripper/compressor (which I didn't do).

Bad

Good

Inspired by Steve I looked up my first Amazon.com order. It was for Medusa's Child by John Nance. I paid $16.77 on October 1, 1997 when I was still a senior in college. Wow, I can't believe Amazon.com has been in my life for almost 10 years.

Nowadays I order something from them like every other week. They are a great place to order Diapers from...

I downloaded and tried Jello.Dashboard for GTD the other day. In short, I don't like it. I think that it's a pretty incredible testament to what's possible with the Outlook Today page and how little anyone's ever used it. Just look at this sad little Today page.

Anyway, since I hadn't seen the Today page since 2001 or something I went looking at the source of the default today page. You can see the source by opening: res://C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\1033\OUTLWVW.DLL/outlook.htm in notepad. It's just HTML, CSS etc.

The guy hat wrote Jello gets some mad props for basically writing a Web 2.0 application inside of Outlook. That's right, it's good old JavaScript just using some special Active X Controls. Web 2.0 inside of Outlook?

Anyway, the thing I didn't like about Jello is that it uses this weird wacko way of identifying projects (any category that starts with "(@P):". Personally, I'd rather something that surrounds the category with brackets or something. The workflow is also a bit clunky.

But it got me thinking. It really would not be that hard to create a nice little task dashboard.... oh if I only had time and desire to mess around in JavaScript.

yay, SpeedFiler 1.1 is out... now with Ribbon support in Outlook 2007. The improvements and bug fixes are very welcome.

What do I use SpeedFiler for? Well I run it in addition to ClearContext. CC is great for filing messages to Topic folders, but I have a hotmail account in Outlook which CC does not work with (and I file messages in there all the time). Also, I can only run CC on one Outlook at a time cause CC doesn't have master/slave mode yet (it screws up Exchange cached mode if you run Outlook on multiple machines like I do).

I also use it to file and navigate to folders inside of Outlook using the Outlook Shortcut keys. For example type control-Y and then start typing the name of a folder and then enter... now you are in that folder. Save some screen real estate and turn off the left hand Navigation Pane.

For example, to get to the calendar (I can never remember control-2) type:

1. control-y
2. cal
3. enter

to move the selected messages type control-shift-v etc.

BTW, if you are interested you can use coupon code BLD743 to get $5 off the $24.95 purchase price, until Jan 27.

Thanks Itzy!

Greg has some great thoughts (as usual) on the Treo 750. I find it interesting that he actually likes the Pocket PC OS. Personally I find that the Smartphone OS is a bit less clunky, however, Palm does a nice job of working around the OS deficiencies (like writing their own SMS Chat application which is amazing). I wish Microsoft would just license that application and toss the SMS support in the OS.

However, Palm they blew it on the price. $400 for a device after a 2 year contract is absurd. Their unlocked Treo 680 costs that much. I'm not getting on on principle of that fact (and the fact that Cingular want's to stick it to me whenever I want to upgrade).

I'm sticking with the Blackjack, although I wish the Blackjack didn't have the world's lamest bluetooth implementation. It does tether very nicely to my laptop using Bluetooth and USB though for some sweet 3G surfing.

BTW, the difference between the Pocket PC and Smartphone formfactors dates back to when there was a Pocket PC OS and no phone support. Microsoft basically went on a parallel track... they developed the Smartphone OS for traditional mobiles like the Motorola MPX-200. This was released as Smartphone 2002. At the same time they added Phone support (by way of applications, drivers and dlls) to the Pocket PC OS. Windows Mobile 5 was the first attempt to unify some of the differences between the OSes. However, at it's core, Pocket PC is a stylus driven OS where Smartphone is a numeric keypad driven phone that uses T9.

Therein lies the problem. Once Keyboards became popular (thanks to RIM), neither device was a perfect fit. They both have problems with keyboards. Pocket PC OS is not 100% navigable with a keyboard. There are still modal dialogs, weird notification balloons and other random things that make using a stylus of a finger necessary. Smartphone on the other hand doesn't have copy and paste support... cause it was never meant to have a keyboard. Some other weird things... Pocket PC Resolutions go like this: 240 x 240, or 320 x 240 and so on. If you want a square screen you are stuck with 240 x 240. Smartphone OSes can support QVGA: 320 x 240 and smaller. It cannot do 320 x 320 either. Contrast to Palm OS devices which are 320 x 320.

Anyway, this should get better over time, but it's a bit sordid today because of the past, and keyboards. I think that Microsoft never believed in the mobile keyboard's success early on... kinda like Bluetooth. As a result the experiences using both leaves a lot of room for improvement.

Why am I writing this post? I wish I didn't have to. I spent a few days trying to figure out why PDFs were not being indexed on Vista, and why none of my TIFF files that were created with Microsoft Office Document Imaging (and have embedded OCR text) were showing up in search results. This was happening on Vista and on XP with Office 2007 and Windows Desktop Search.

After a bit of digging around, and a couple of emails I got the answer.

Vista and Windows Desktop Search 3 (which share the same technology) do not support IFilters that only implement IPersistFile. In order for the contents of files to be indexed the IFilter must support IPersistStream.

If you want an IFilter for PDF files then you should download Adobe Acrobat Reader 8 for Vista (only the Vista version has the IFilter). The previous IFilter does not work. While you are at it, read this post for instructions on how to make your own very well behaved Adobe Reader Installer.

If you want an IFilter for your TIFF or MDI files then you are out of luck for now.

I would like to add that Microsoft Office Document Imaging is one of the best values in the Office Suite. It's completely ignored, and not installed by default on Office 2007 any longer. If you do install it you can use it with any TWAIN compatible scanner to scan all your legacy paper. The text in that paper is OCR'ed (text is recognized) and you can save as a TIFF file which can be viewed on almost any computer. That text can also be indexed and searched on your computer. This is a handy way to find that receipt for your TV from 2 years ago etc. You can also create these files from any application that can print. I've been using this for years to save any web receipts that I need.

My Dad has been really family tree software since he got his first Mac. The transition to Windows was hard because his trusted Reunion Program didn't exist on Windows. Since then he has been using some crappy $20 program that looks like a DOS app.

Anyway, Geni looks amazing. I just tried it and it's cool. I like that all the family members can collaborate together to help the tree grow. I hope they add export and print functionality.

[Source: lifehacker]

Since I am out of the office for the longest stretch of my career, I had to think about how to deal with all the email that would be delivered to my exchange mailbox.

You see the problem is that I really don't want or need to be reading any work email while I am gone. However, since Exchange manages part of my life, I do want and need access to my calendar, tasks, notes and contacts. In fact, I've found that being away from the office actually increased my dependency and usage of tasks in Outlook/Smartphone. I do need to launch and use Outlook without seeing 3000 unread items in my Inbox.

I'm also realistic about the fact that there is some work email that I do want to read. It's not work related, but from people that will be emailing my work email address. This includes co-workers that are also friends.

So what I did was this:

1. Remove myself from every non critical distribution list. I noted the lists that I unsubscribed from in a new task that I created called "DLs to rejoin". It has a due date of the day after I return to work.
2. I made sure that every rule that processes mail has "Stop processing more rules". This ensures that when the rule moves a message to a folder, no other rule can operate on that message.
3. I created a "Hold" folder in my inbox. I then created a rule, that I placed at the very bottom of the server side rules that moves every message that has not previously been moved by a rule, and where I am not in the To line, to the "Hold" folder.
4. I changed Outlook to show me Outlook Today when I launch it. Outlook today is really old, lame and crusty though. It used to be the default in Outlook XP I think but since then they've made "Inbox" the default. I'm thinking of switching to something like Jello.GTD for my home page or creating my own.

That's it. Since leaving work I've received about 20 messages in my "Inbox". The rest have been filtered away.

In fact, I had an "aha" moment when I did this. There is so much less junk in my Inbox now, that I feel myself less anxious. I can actually budget an hour or so a day to go into my "Hold" folder and really quickly delete threads and other non relevant emails in one sitting. Previously this is something I would do all day long... which would result in my sitting and staring at my inbox some times and feeling like I would never get through my email. With this new system I can actually get to zero messages every day.

The reality of Microsoft is that email is like a fire hose and your inbox is like a small bucket that can't hold all the water. The hardest part about GTD for me has been just the energy required with staying on top of email. The problem with email is that the majority of it is not actionable and gets deleted, but as humans we are weak and the sensation that you are "buried" all the time by a constant stream of this stuff gets unbearable. Personally I'm not strong enough to really allocate some time a day to do this and I end up doing it all day long... from my desk, for my smartphone and from the web.

This Hold folder idea simply turns the firehose into a garden hose, and redirects the rest of the water to a really big holding area that you can visit on your own time... hopefully after the water has settled a little bit and the amount of energy you spend processing isn't repetitive.