A few resolution ideas for big tech companies

A few resolution ideas for big tech companies

Larry Magid

Lots of people make New Year’s resolutions, but I’m making them on behalf of tech companies — even though they never asked for my advice. Here are a few things I’d like to see for 2013.

One is the return of the optical viewfinder on compact digital cameras. Most cameras you buy today don’t have a viewfinder that you peer through with one eye, like the old fashioned film cameras I grew up with. I’d like a return of viewfinders not out of nostalgia, but because I can take better pictures if I hold the camera to my face.

With a viewfinder, you don’t have to worry about the image being washed out by bright sunlight. And holding the camera against your face stabilizes it. With today’s cameras, you have to hold them way in front of you and if your arm is a bit unsteady, the camera will shake. Maybe using a viewfinder is just an old habit, but it makes me feel more composed as I compose the picture.

Speaking of cameras, hats off to Sony for letting users charge their battery in many of their cameras using a nonproprietary micro-USB cable. I’d like to see all portable products adopt the same strategy.

I’ve recently been testing Sony’s amazingly good DSC-RX100, which comes with the same type of charger and cable as most cellphones (except those from Apple), which means I can charge it with the same adapter and cable I use on my Android phone. A few years ago, I forgot to pack my proprietary charger and cable when I took off on a trip and, once the initial charge on my camera was depleted, I was unable to use it till I got home.

If you’re traveling and forget Sony’s nonproprietary charger and cable, there’s a pretty good chance your hotel’s Lost and Found has several compatible ones on hand they would loan or give you. Sony’s RX100, by the way, has lots of other great features, including a larger than usual sensor that gives you great photos, even in low light. At $650, it’s expensive compared to other compact cameras, but it’s the first pocket-size camera I’ve tried that’s as good in low light as many SLRs.

Another pet peeve of mine is being forced to wait for an update that I may or may not need at the moment. There are times when I turn off my Windows machine, but before it powers down, I’m forced to wait for a Windows update. Microsoft has no idea whether I’m in a big hurry to reboot or catch a plane. Apple does a better job by just letting you know an update is available and trusting you to install it on your own time.

I’m a big fan of predictive spelling, in which your cellphone or other tech device tries to help you out by guessing what word you’re typing and suggests the correct spelling either before you finish typing or if you get it wrong. But sometimes the software gets it wrong. I was recently in Latin America where I tried use my iPhone to send an email to someone to meet me at the Hotel Nacional. My U.S. iPhone insisted on typing National, which is correct in English but not in Spanish. It also tends to mess up abbreviations and the names of restaurants or other places.

While I like devices making suggestions, I don’t like them forcing the change on you unless you verify that the device is right and you were wrong. Sometimes those changes can be laughable or even embarrassing. I once accidentally misspelled the word “warehouse,” and was a bit red-faced when the spell-checker changed it to “whorehouse.”

Here’s a resolution for Apple and Google. I love Apple’s Siri voice recognition system but hate that she only interacts with Apple apps. If I ask her how to find an address, she’ll show it to me in Apple Maps instead of Google Maps, which is now my preferred map app. Apple needs to create an application programming interface (API) that lets Siri talk with any app and offer users a configuration panel that lets them choose default apps similar to the way you can specify a default browser in Windows or OS X.

And Google could make it easier to use voice recognition within its new iOS mapping app by creating a really big and easy-to-find touch microphone icon for people who want to speak to the app while driving. I know, you’re not supposed to look at or touch your phone while driving. But people do use their phones, and it’s better to make it safer and easier than to force them to interact with tiny icons.

It may seem presumptuous for me to tell companies what they should do for 2013, but it’s only fair, because they’ll undoubtedly reciprocate by trying to tell me and everyone else what we should buy this year. Contact Larry Magid at larry@larrymagid.com. Listen for his technology chats on KCBS-AM (740) weekdays at 3:50 p.m.

Mirrorless interchangeable lens camera

Mirror-less interchangeable lens camera

Don Lindich

Q I want to buy a travel camera with interchangeable lenses, which I guess means an SLR. I’d like something on the small side. What do you recommend?

— J.B., Milwaukee

A For travel I’d strongly recommend a mirrorless interchangeable lens camera.
You can fit an extremely capable outfit and an iPad in a small, light shoulder bag, which is how I travel now. Mirrorless camera bodies and lenses are much lighter and more compact than their SLR equivalents, while producing equal or better picture quality. Mirrorless also works better for recording video. Besides their superiority for travel, I actually find them to be a superior choice for most other consumer use as well. In Japan, mirrorless cameras already make up about half of interchangeable lens camera sales and are likely to outstrip SLRs in the not-too-distant future. Here in the United States, SLRs are still dominant. I think a lot of this has to do with consumer education (or better put, the lack of it) and big-box retailers stocking up on SLRs and telling their staff to push them.

Almost all the major brands now offer mirrorless cameras. About a year ago I indicated my preference for the Micro Four Thirds system developed by Olympus and Panasonic. The past year has solidified my preference as the cameras have gotten better and the lens lineup has expanded with more great choices from both manufacturers. Though the Micro Four Thirds sensor is slightly smaller than most SLR sensors, the latest Micro Four Thirds sensors have achieved image quality parity with their SLR competitors, making an SLR an even harder argument now. I prefer the Olympus cameras for their built-in image stabilization and their ability to produce sharp, bright, colorful pictures that look perfect straight from the camera. At my deadline for submitting this column the Olympus OM-D E-M5 was in the lead on dpreview.com for reader choice of best camera of 2012. After using it extensively I can report it is hands-down the most enjoyable photographic tool I have ever used. The OMD E-M5 kit sells for $1,099, which is a bargain for what it offers, but still a bit much for many consumers. You can now get the same image quality and most of the capability with the new $599 E-PL5 and $499 E-PM2. These new models share the sensor and imaging technology of the OM-D EM-5 in a smaller, more affordable package.

Another reason I am in love with Micro Four Thirds: the lenses. Olympus and Panasonic have come up with a dream lineup of impressive optics. Besides the high quality, affordable zooms lenses, there are many fixed focal length lenses available. Fixed lenses are preferred by serious photographers for their sharpness and low-light ability. I recently tested the Olympus 75mm/1.8 lens on the OM-D and it is easily the best portrait lens I have ever used. Third-party manufacturers are also manufacturing lenses for Micro Four Thirds. Sigma recently introduced two lenses, the 19mm/2.8 and 30mm/2.8, which are only $149 each after an instant rebate. They are a great way to get a taste of what it is like to shoot with a fixed lens.

Learn more at www. getolympus.com, www. panasonic.net/avc/lumix/ systemcamera/gms/index. html and www.four-thirds. org/en/microft/index.html.

Next week I will discuss SLR cameras, their best applications and some interesting choices on the market. Contact Don Lindich at www.soundadviceblog. com and use the “submit question” link on that site.

Internet drives Year of the Bay project

Internet drives Year of the Bay project

By Paul V. Oliva

An African American family poses next to their new 1956 Dodge overlooking Hunters Point shipyard. A Chinese girl drum corps stands next to a captured Japanese sub in 1942 in San Francisco's Chinatown. Police drag a man out of a Sausalito houseboat under a sign that reads, "Peace with a lease!"

These people are all part of the history of San Francisco Bay.

But who are they? How did they come to be photographed? And what other photos, movies, sounds and stories of the bay can be unleashed from the closets and computers of the hundreds of millions who have lived or visited the basin that defines the Bay Area?

That is the great history experiment of 2013. It's called the Year of the Bay project, and anyone can participate.

Historians and technology types are turning to crowdsourcing to allow anyone connected to the Internet to add details to existing materials, as well as upload their own stories and items. Everything can be geo-tagged to a map location. And it's all collected via a single website accessed through www.yearofthebay.org.

Leading the charge

The project director is Jon Christensen, who is also a historian at Stanford University's Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis.

"2013 is the year of the bay," he said. "It's the 150th anniversary of the San Francisco port, there's the America's Cup, there's the new span of the Bay Bridge. We wanted to create a way for everyone to participate in celebrating and understanding the history of the bay ... to bring together the diverse history of people, and communities, and their relationship to the bay, all sharing their story."

Christensen's own bay story begins when he first crossed the Bay Bridge as a young man coming to Stanford. He looked out over the natural and built environment, and it "was an epiphany of the beauty of it." He has swum in the bay, run along it, kayaked on it, driven and flown over it, and spent hours gazing at it. The bay has never failed to deliver "ecstatic moments" for him.

Yet assembling and bringing to life the countless stories and experiences others have had presented a daunting challenge.

It's a new world for historians like Christensen with Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram. Historians have gone from a lack of information and boxes of attic-style out-of-context material to a stunning stream of online photographs and digital sources with contextual and geographic data that an archivist would have spent decades to assemble.

That's why the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation decided to fund the project, with the technology platform provided by a London-headquartered startup called Historypin.

A crowdsourcing test

It is one of the first major experiments in the world using crowdsourcing to create a socially, geographically and temporally accurate historical archive of such an expansive topic.

Anthea Hartig, executive director of the California Historical Society, said she's excited too see what unknowns may surface as part of the project. "We don't know yet what crowdsourcing can do."

Traditional materials she can access are often not marked with names of people or contextual details. Then there are the unknown things hidden away in attics and memories. And then there is history continually being made.

She particularly hopes people will provide context, where different people have divergent views of the same point in time and space, creating differences in "historical memory."

"The bay holds us. People will want to help us create a history of the bay as it was - and as it should be," Hartig said. "People will be surprised to learn hidden surprises, what was there, and layer on top of what we do today."

At the same time, the Year of the Bay project aims to give people a voice about the future via a more inclusive environmental history.

"We have some major choices to face about the future of the bay," Christensen said. "Sea level rise, development and conservation. ... Some developed areas face the prospect of heroic efforts to protect property, or cede space to the bay. How do we do that? What will people support?"

Much has already been contributed to the site from Hartig's organization and other project partners, including the National Archives, the Bancroft and the San Francisco Public libraries, Chinese Historical Society of America Museum, FoundSF and The Chronicle.

A century's sweep of photos, video and story snippets are arrayed like so many memories across Grandma's table and pinned to a map in their respective locations around the bay and coast.

See an error? Suggest a correction. If you know people in a photo, recall the event or have your own item, submit it.

You can also upload a collection of items, or create a narrative tour that connects items by time, space or subject. Contributing is as simple as creating a Google account or signing up with an existing one.

Interested in seeing things in person? Save the date for an exhibition at the California Historical Society on April 7.

As Hartig says, you'll be "looking at history ... and making history."

Paul Oliva is a sailor on San Francisco Bay. E-mail: datebookletters@sfchronicle.com

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Career-related New Year's resolutions

Career-related New Year's resolutions

L.M. Sixel

When most people focus on New Year's resolutions, they're thinking about eating better and exercising more. But there is nothing to stop you from vowing to brush up on your career-related skills, get ready for the next job opportunity and expand your horizons.

In case you haven't thought of ways you can improve, here are some suggestions. Hopefully, those you choose will last longer than your new diet and exercise plan.

Network: Most people don't do enough of it. They stay inside their small circles, rarely taking advantage of opportunities to meet their counterparts in other companies.

Vow to go to an industry event at least once a month. Or go to a meet-and-greet event at a nearby chamber of commerce to get to know folks outside your industry. I did that a few years ago, and it has become a habit.

Get personal: When you're expanding that network, make sure you're doing it in a way that's effective and meaningful. For Andrea French, executive director of a transit advocacy group, that means more phone calls and face-to-face meetings over lunch and coffee rather than relying on e-mails and social media.

"E-mail is great for time constraints and quick answers," said French. "But to develop relationships - meaningful and lasting ones - it's better to do it in person or on the phone."

Reach out: When you go to a business event, make an effort to sit with strangers. And take the opportunity to introduce yourself. You'll make more valuable contacts than if you just sit with your car pool.

Read more: Stephen Newton, area manager for the Houston office of Russell Reynolds Associates, vows to waste less time scrolling around his iPad and read more business books.

"I'm not a trade,r so how soon do I have to know the housing starts?" asked Newton, who is a recruiter for executive and board-level positions.

The first books on his 2013 list include "The Signal and the Noise: Why Most Predictions Fail But Some Don't" by polling and statistical guru Nate Silver, and "The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business" by Charles Duhigg.

"All of us in our business become way too siloed," said Newton. "We need to recharge our intellectual batteries from time to time."

Socialize: Every organization has celebrations. Sometimes it's to mark a retirement; sometimes it's to say hello to the new director of sales.

You're busy. You don't need to eat another piece of cake. And it's not exactly your idea of a good time to stand around and listen to speeches. But go anyway. Use the time to meet and greet your co-workers who work in other departments. When you need a favor in two months, you will thank me for pushing you out the door to that reception.

Bone up: Think about one skill you can improve and then make a plan. Maybe you'd like to become a better public speaker. Or maybe you'd like to write a better business letter.

There are dozens of books about presentation skills, or you can ask your company to send you to a training program. At a minimum, you'll end the year with something you didn't have at the beginning. And you can even put it on your resume as an accomplishment if it's big enough.

Saadat Syal is planning to brush up on his schmoozing skills. He retired from his full-time job more than a decade ago, but he's been spending more time as a mediator, consultant and lecturer on workplace conflict and cultural issues.

Syal has to learn how to generate business for himself and the old standby of dividing a business meal into thirds - from the getting-to-know-you portion, to the meat-and-potatoes why-we're-here segment, to an agreement to meet again - seems passe in this fast-paced world of social media and technological language that eclipses many social niceties.

"They're looking for different trigger points," said Syal, recalling his surprise when potential business partners break the ice with questions about technology providers and operating systems. "I'm not sure I'm delivering them."

Get current: Update your resume to include your current position. The economy is warming up, and you never know when you'll hear about an interesting job opening. The inevitable question will come up - can you send me your resume? Have it ready to go.

L.M. Sixel is a Houston Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: lm.sixel@chron.com

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Covey's '7 Habits' changed behavior

Covey's '7 Habits' changed behavior
By John Hillkirk

The ideas, all seven of them, still sound so simple.

Be proactive. Think win-win. Begin with the end in mind, to name a few.

Yet they made Stephen Covey a force of human nature, his "7 Habits" woven into the emotional well-being of millions in almost any walk of life, from self-help to the corner offices of Corporate America.

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