It’s not often that I get the chance to correct my boss’ boss’ boss but given the opportunity to do so without harm or business impact, I might as well enjoy the novelty. 😎

Jonathan writes:

[blogs.sun.com]

And from an intelligence gathering perspective, who would’ve thought the anachronistic Minox’s arch rival would become Nokia – delivering a far higher resolution, more compact, video-enabled information gathering asset.

…and I don’t disagree with the general thrust of the posting – blogs are faster and more reactive than the media, especially in the “why wait for permission” sense of effecting change – however it did strike me as the recent disaster unfolded that having having several-dozen “have you seen this missing person?” websites would not be particularly better than having none at all.

Likewise having Sky News running a tickertape of SMS messages received saying “Person X has reported that they are OK” looked dramatic and useful, but I couldn’t help myself wondering how much actual help that would be. Maybe it helped a few families, but I feel the effort expended would have been more useful with some centralisation and oversight.

But, that aside, a technical nit:

Here is a link to a scan of picture taken by a Minox, specifically my Minox GT-E 35mm camera: [www.crypticide.com]

It’s not from a traditional 8x13mm Minox film format, but please consider that the image is not the 37Mb original JPEG negative scan that you might otherwise be downloading; what you see is significantly reduced in size, and was taken on ASA400 film rather than (say) Agfa Copex hi-res emulsion that would toast the cheap Fuji stuff I was using; this is not to mention the possibility of exotic aniline-dye film that might be available to the intelligence community, which would permit the camera to reach its optical limits…

Now: here is a link to a cameraphone picture: [found.pale.org] from my friend Jim Finnis‘s site, recording my visit to see him and his fiancee, mid-last-year.

Notice the resolution and quality difference; and my GT-E is smaller than my cellphone, although I doubt that might be a business justification for getting an upgrade for it, because in any case it lacks a camera… 😎

So, the future: Video, yes. Dynamism, yes. Mobility, yes.

Resolution and quality, have a slight way to go.

I am reminded of a story that circulated in the UK during the recent Gulf conflict, of reporters deliberately pixelating their footage in post-production to make it look more “exciting”.

I don’t know if that charge was ever proven?