Panel opposing CCSF seeks support to stay afloat

Panel opposing CCSF seeks support to stay afloat

By Nanette Asimov

The commission set to revoke City College of San Francisco's accreditation next year is asking for help in its own effort to stay in business.

The Accrediting Commission for Communityand Junior Colleges needs letters of support to pass its five-year review from the U.S. Department of Education. At stake is its federal recognition, without which it could no longer accredit colleges. But the commission recently learned that the Education Department has received only complaints about it from faculty and letters of gratitude from colleges for accreditation renewal. There have been no letters of support.

"If these communications remain the only 'voice' of the California community colleges, then it is possible that the (Education Department) will not be able to grant recognition to the accrediting body," its president, Barbara Beno, wrote on Oct. 8 to the Association of ChiefBusiness Officers, who run the finance departments at California's community colleges. Other education agencies apparently received the same request for a letter expressing "your institution's or your organization's commitment" to the commission's standards, policies and practices.

The commission accredits 134 colleges in California, Hawaii and the Pacific islands. It was established 50 years ago by the colleges themselves but must meet federal standards to continue holding them accountable.

Target of criticism

In recent years - especially since it began holding City College's feet to the fire last year - the commission has been a target of criticism by some of those very colleges. Not just from vocal faculty members but from the administrators who run them, though anonymously.

So when the Association of Chief Business Officers received the request, approval was not automatic. But its 13 board members eventually agreed to send a letter supporting one part of one accrediting standard: that colleges must remain financially viable.

"It was not unanimous," said President Bonnie Dowd, who didn't give the vote count. At least one board member was dissatisfied enough to leak the letter.

Asked recently if the commission was in danger of losing its federal recognition without the letters of support, Beno, the accrediting commission president, said: "Sure it is."

Beno and the 19-member commission, mostly educators, have said accreditation is meant to ensure that colleges function according to established standards.

But support for the commission is perhaps at its lowest point.

It's unclear what would replace it if the commission lost federal recognition. Yet pressure for change is coming from several sources:

Two lawsuits, one from the California Federation of Teachers and the other from the city of San Francisco, are challenging the commission's integrity leading up to its decision to revoke City College's accreditation next summer.

The state has also approved an audit to check whether accrediting practices conform to how other commissions work across the country. The U.S. Education Department has issued preliminary findings that the commission is out of compliance in areas from conflicts of interest to the clarity of its requirements.

'Fear of retaliation'

Dissatisfaction is also found among college leaders.

The chancellor of one college district wrote the Education Department on Oct. 7, urging it to reject the commission's petition for federal recognition on grounds that the commission is overly punitive and does not comply with the requirement that its "standards, policies, procedures, and accreditation decisions are widely accepted in the United States."

The chancellor also points to a 2011 report by the nonprofit RP Group, which studies California community colleges and found deep dissatisfaction with the commission among the leaders at three of five colleges studied.

For example, "the colleges interviewed found (the commission) generally unreceptive to constructive criticism and expressed a fear of retaliation," the report says. Two leaders disagreed but said that was because they had personal relationships at the commission.

The commission's application deadline is Oct. 25. A decision on recognition is expected in January.

Nanette Asimov is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail:nasimov@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @NanetteAsimov

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Hackers target SIM cards

Hackers target SIM cards

By Jordan Robertson, Bloomberg Business

Wireless carriers including AT&T and South Africa's Vodacom Group are facing a new threat: the illegal hacking of SIM cards, the small plastic chips that verify the identity of customers on mobile networks.

Globally, carriers are expected to rack up $3.6 billion in losses from account fraud this year, nearly triple the amount in 2011, according to the Communications Fraud Control Association. "Attackers are definitely getting more advanced," says Lawrence Pingree, a mobile-security researcher at Gartner. "It's almost like stealing at a bank - going right in and doing it in person. It's very personal."

The scammers who targeted Keith Carter were pretty sophisticated. On Aug. 12, the Atlanta resident answered a call from someone purporting to be an AT&T representative. The caller, who already knew Carter's address and other personal information, promised him a discount on his bill in exchange for completing a customer survey. It all seemed aboveboard to Carter, who provided the last four digits of his Social Security number - the information the thief needed to access Carter's AT&T account and reassign his SIM card to another smartphone.

The next day, Carter's iPhone had no service. Overnight, however, his account began accumulating charges for calls to Cuba, Guinea and Gambia. Carter got a new SIM card, yet the international calls continued - the final tally came to $2,600. He plans to dispute the charges and drop his carrier. "I thought when I got the new SIM card that the old one would be disassociated with it, but clearly this bad boy is still rockin' and rollin'," he says.

AT&T declined to comment on Carter's case but said such scams are being driven by groups that profit from selling stolen cellular services through online marketplaces.

"We're working to educate our customers on how to protect their information," said the company in an e-mail. Sprint and T-Mobile US said they hadn't seen this type of attack. Verizon Wireless declined to comment.

In South Africa, criminals are hacking SIM cards of Vodacom customers whose bank accounts have also been compromised through other means, so they can intercept text alerts that banks send to verify transactions, says company spokesman Richard Boorman. That gives them cover to make several withdrawals.

While Boorman says the attacks are "extremely rare," the carrier now sends text messages requiring confirmation of SIM-card swaps, which are routine when a customer upgrades a phone.

Mari and Candace Sawyer, two sisters who own a dessert catering business in Atlanta, say AT&T isn't doing enough to safeguard customers. Shortly after noon on Sept. 3, a man called their mother's phone and asked for Mari, who holds the family's account. He had personal information, and the call appeared to come from AT&T's customer-service line. Because it seemed legitimate, Mari supplied the last four digits of her Social Security number.

The caller wasn't from AT&T. The number had been spoofed, a process where a call is routed through a service that makes it appear to come from somewhere else. By 10 p.m., all four phones on the family plan were dead and hundreds of calls to Gambia appeared on their account.

Jordan Robertson is a Bloomberg Businessweek reporter. E-mail:jrobertson@bloomberg.net

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Volunteer hackathon connects techies, nonprofits

Volunteer hackathon connects techies, nonprofits

By Nellie Bowles, San Francisco Chronicle

Chong-Kee Tan knew his idea for a nonprofit would grow if he had an app. But he could never afford the necessary fleet of programmers, who would cost thousands of dollars.

One day, he heard through a friend that a group of hackers that gathered regularly at a private mansion by Alamo Square was hosting an event in June for nonprofits.

When Tan showed up, he found a full developing team's members asking how they could help.

"I couldn't believe it," said Tan, the 55-year-old co-founder of Bay Bucks, a community currency startup. "Generally, hackathons are about winning competitions to make a name for yourself, with a lot of silly ideas. This was curated and smart. And I couldn't believe how fast they worked."

Hosted by an organization called ReAllocate, these low-profile volunteer hackathons, which bring together tech-savvy people to use their skills after hours, have been helping small nonprofits since June. Run by four entrepreneurs, ReAllocate has set up weekend-long do-good hackathons where data scientists, designers and back-end engineers can work with nonprofits.

Last Saturday, they hosted an all-day event for engineers to meet with nonprofit founders, followed by speakers, guest chefs and a dance party. In a few weeks, they're growing beyond in-person intensives by launching a website to connect skilled volunteers with worthy projects.

"Skill-based volunteering, you can be much more efficient, much more purposeful," said ReAllocate executive director Kyle Stewart. "If you have somebody with an amazing set of technical skills and they're serving soup in a soup kitchen, it may not be the best use of their time."

Addressing income gap

As the income gap grows, especially in San Francisco, programmers, who are often characterized as apolitical, are rising up to address the issue directly - the name ReAllocate implies an active plan for redistribution. And while building apps may not have immediate tangible effects, these new techno-volunteers think harnessing and sharing their high-level skills can help others rise from poverty.

ReAllocate's role will be to play matchmaker between the engineers and nonprofits.

"Nonprofits can post their projects and then we'll help them connect with our network of technical talent, entrepreneurs and storytellers," said Stewart, who estimates that ReAllocate has tens of thousands of volunteers in its network. ReAllocate's engineers are already loading up the website with tools for other techies to use on projects. And they'll work in teams - for Tan's startup, Bay Bucks, he had a user interface designer, an iOS expert and a platform independent developer sitting around a table working simultaneously.

Not just code

"It won't always be about writing code from scratch," Stewart said.

The hackathon last Saturday ended with series of speakers and a dance party at the Alamo Square house, a mansion whose inhabitants call it the Embassy. Speakers included Lawrence Grodeska, the nonprofit director of Change.org, and Nolan Love, whose startup, PollVault, connects voters with advice from trusted organizations - both of whom spoke about the need for more effective volunteering systems for programmers.

The chef and "food hacker" Tim West made spring rolls, mango salsa and cabbage bowls. A DJ played in one of the living rooms, and, at a Vine video booth, attendees could answer the question: "How can you ReAllocate?"

Community space

One project that has already come from ReAllocate is Freespace, a temporary community center in a massive old warehouse on the edge of the Tenderloin. The space hosts events (like community dinners, after-school tutoring and free yoga classes) that draw techies and low-income locals together.

The organizers are planning to launch temporary Freespaces globally in tandem with the World Cup in 2014.

"In our very noncommittal generation - and especially in San Francisco - how do we create community?" Ilana Lipsett, one of the leaders of Freespace, asked at the Embassy hackathon. "And that's where the idea of temporary comes in. Temporary shows what's possible."

Since the hackathon in June, Bay Bucks has been steadily growing, Tan said. He plans to go back to another ReAllocate event to get some kinks worked out. He believes that tech volunteers may help close the wealth gap.

"When you work on the technology, you're working on the source of the problem, on the structural issues," he said. "You're not just alleviating those suffering of poverty. It's not just a Band-Aid. You're looking to stop poverty from happening."

Nellie Bowles is a San Francisco Chronicle reporter. Her Gold Rush features look at how tech is impacting city life. E-mail: nbowles@sfchronicle.com

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Code.org: Mark Zuckerberg, other tech icons lead effort to teach computer science in every school

Code.org: Mark Zuckerberg, other tech icons lead effort to teach computer science in every school

By Mike Cassidy, Mercury News

An audacious plan to build a diverse supply of skilled programmers by ensuring that computer science classes are available in every K-12 school in the United States received a tremendous boost Monday when a who's who of Silicon Valley and the tech industry announced they would back the effort with money and know-how.

Tech superstars such as Microsoft's Bill Gates, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, Susan Wojcicki of Google (GOOG), Jack Dorsey of Square, Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn, investors John Doerr and Ron Conway and powerhouse companies including Google, Microsoft, LinkedIn, Amazon and Salesforce.com have all signed on with Code.org, a nonprofit that started just over a year ago as the dream of Iranian immigrants and tech investors Hadi and Ali Partovi.

"It's been amazing, collecting this group we've assembled," Hadi Partovi, a Seattle-based angel investor, said at a San Francisco news conference to kick off the effort. The group aims aimed to expose more kids to a rapidly growing field that is fast becoming one of the most important in the U.S. economy. "This is incredible support from the tech industry," he said.

Code.org would not disclose how much money it had raised through its benefactors.

As a kick-start to the ambitious effort, Partovi issued a challenge for every school student to spend an hour coding during a week in December. He said he would donate enough laptops for an entire classroom to 50 participating schools. Another 50 classrooms will win a video conference call with a tech luminary, including the likes of Gates, Dorsey and Wojcicki.

The hour of coding challenge, which Partovi hopes will result in 10 million students being exposed to programming, is something of a gimmick for the much larger goal. Code.org's plan, with the help of the deep pockets and big brains it has recruited, is to train at least one teacher in every school to be a computer science instructor.

The idea is to give every student the opportunity to decide whether computer science is for him or her in the hopes of staving off a severe shortage of programmers, a worry of the tech industry for years. Hoffman, who appeared at the news conference -- which ended with a panel discussion including California State Superintendent of Schools Tom Torkalson, PayPal co-founder Max Levchin, Brad Smith of Microsoft and Maggie Johnson of Google -- said computer science education would prove valuable even for students who go into other careers.

"For one," Hoffman said, "it actually teaches problem solving and critical thinking, which is useful anywhere in terms of what you're doing in your life."

Moreover, social scientists and others have for decades pointed out the lack of diversity of those studying computer science and holding positions in the field. While women make up a majority of those attending college and have nearly reached parity in the fields of medicine, law, math and some sciences, they account for only about 18 percent of those who received computer science degrees in 2010, the latest figures available from the National Science Foundation.

The numbers for blacks and Latinos are even worse. The Computer Research Association reported that in 2011, blacks earned 3.6 percent of computer science degrees. The association reported that the number for Hispanics was 5.4 percent.

Those who have studied the issue say one factor in low participation among women and some minorities is a lack of exposure to the field early in their academic careers. Computer science becomes a closed club, the argument goes, of white and Asian boys who took to computing early through the encouragement of teachers, parents and media stories of the successes of young men in the field. By the time women, blacks and Latinos are exposed to the subject some time in college, it is often too late to embrace computer science as a major.

Though no exact figures are available, Code.org estimates that only 10 percent of the nation's high schools offer computer science classes. Smith said during the panel discussion that fewer than 3,000 of the country's 42,000 high schools are certified to offer advance placement computer science.

UCLA senior researcher Jane Margolis, who co-wrote "Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing" and who's studied the gender gap in computer science since the 1990s, says Code.org's push into schools is needed to diversify the ranks of computer scientists. Today high school computer science is largely limited to kids whose families can afford private instruction or who live in marquee school districts that offer advance placement computer science classes.

"What we're trying to do is make sure that it's not just the kids of preparatory privilege," says Margolis, who's working with the Los Angeles Unified School District on an effort to expand and diversify computer science education there. "We want to make sure that all these other kids are learning this really important knowledge."

Contact Mike Cassidy at mcassidy@mercurynews.com

or 408-920-5536. Follow him at Twitter.com/mikecassidy.

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Apple threatened by growth of prepaid smartphone plans

Apple threatened by growth of prepaid smartphone plans

Troy Wolverton, www.mercurynews.com/troy-wolverton

In a shift that could become a big threat to Apple (AAPL), U.S. consumers are increasingly signing up for a type of wireless service plan popular around the world that's traditionally not been in favor here -- prepaid accounts.

Prepaid plans typically allow consumers to purchase services in advance in bite-sized chunks -- whether by the minute, the megabyte or the month -- and allow them to cancel at any time. In contrast, the standard plans offered by the big carriers, such as AT&T and Verizon, generally require users to sign up for pricey two-year service agreements.

Although prepaid accounts still represent less than a quarter of all wireless service plans in the United States, they're gaining ground rapidly. Half of all new wireless accounts added between 2008 and last year were prepaid ones.

"It's a very dramatic change in how customers in the U.S. are buying wireless," said Sara Kaufman, an analyst who covers the wireless service market for Ovum, a research firm.

That shift is a worrisome one for Apple, whose iPhone provides the lion's share of the company's revenues. The vast majority of iPhones sold in the United States come with two-year contracts for standard plans with the big carriers, whose high-priced contracts subsidize the cost of the phones. The company faces the prospect of losing market share -- and eventually revenue -- to cheaper phones on prepaid plans, or having to offer a lower-cost phone that could undermine sales of its higher-priced iPhones.

With prepaid service plans, consumers typically have to pay up front the full cost of their phones -- or connect a device they already own to the service. Because of that, inexpensive phones tend to sell best for prepaid providers.

Apple, however, doesn't offer a cheap phone. Without its subsidy, for example, Apple's new iPhone 5C -- billed as the "lower-cost" iPhone by CEO Tim Cook -- costs $550. That's hundreds of dollars more than the typical cost for a prepaid phone, many of which run Google's (GOOG) Android operating system.

Investors and analysts have fretted that Apple's focus on selling pricey, heavily subsidized phones will hurt it in developing countries such as China and India, where unsubsidized phones and prepaid plans predominate. But few have paid attention to how the company is being hurt by the shift to prepaid plans closer to home.

"There's no question that (Apple's) missing out," said Weston Henderek, a principal analyst at Current Analysis, a technology market research firm. "They're essentially ceding that market to Android."

An Apple spokesman did not respond to a request for comment. But Cook, in an interview last month with Bloomberg Businessweek, said his company wasn't interested in the market of customers looking for inexpensive "junk" phones, and that Apple can have a "really good business" by focusing on the higher-end market.

"I'm not going to lose sleep over that ... market, because it's just not who we are," Cook said.

Analysts say the company could endanger its brand or cut into its healthy profit margins by offering a truly inexpensive iPhone.

But with iPhone sales having fallen in China in Apple's last quarter and sales growth slowing elsewhere, the company may be forced to look closer at making a device targeted at the prepaid market.

Prepaid accounts comprise the vast majority of wireless agreements globally. They've represented a small fraction of the U.S. market, but that's changing. Between 2008 and the end of last year, the number of prepaid accounts jumped from 48 million, or 18 percent of total wireless accounts, to 76 million, or 23 percent, according to CTIA, the wireless industry's U.S. trade group.

Until recently, prepaid plans were offered only by second- or third-tier carriers. But now even the four big service providers offer such plans.

And the plans have become more varied and flexible. Consumers used to purchase service by the minute, which frequently meant that they would have to add more minutes to their accounts. Those plans are still available but newer prepaid plans look a lot more like standard "postpaid" plans: Consumers pay by the month and their service includes a set number of voice minutes or data usage.

"The sophistication and the diversity of the offerings has certainly changed," said John Walls, a spokesman for CTIA. "You have a lot more flexibility as a prepaid customer than you did five to six years ago."

Another factor driving the growth in prepaid plans has been sales of tablets such as the iPad, many of which include cellphone radios. The typical wireless plan for those tablets is a month-by-month prepaid agreement.

And then there's the Great Recession.

"What we've seen in the past is that when the economic situation is a bit tougher, people think they're in more control if they move to a prepaid basis," said Carolina Milanesi, an analyst with industry research group Gartner.

Eric Snider, a 44-year-old San Jose mobile app developer, is among those trying to save some money. Three months ago, he switched from AT&T to Straight Talk, a prepaid provider whose service is offered exclusively through Walmart. With AT&T, Snider paid $93 a month, and got only 450 voice minutes and 2 gigabytes of data. Now he's paying just $45 a month, but getting unlimited voice minutes and unlimited data usage, although Straight Talk warns that it slows access rates after the first 2½ gigabytes.

"There are things that aren't as good as AT&T, but I like saving almost $50 a month," Snider said. The $93 per month he was paying AT&T "seemed too much, and it was making me mad."

Contact Troy Wolverton at  408-840-4285. Follow him at www.mercurynews.com/troy-wolverton or Twitter.com/troywolv.

A different kind of smartphone plan

Prepaid wireless plans, long the dominant kind overseas, are becoming more popular in the United States. Here's how they're different from standard plans.

No long-term contracts. With prepaid plans, customers typically pay for service by the month, the minute or the megabyte. Users can cancel at any time -- with no penalty.
No subsidized phones. With prepaid providers, users have to either bring a phone they already own -- or pay the full retail cost for a new phone. Standard service providers by contrast typically offer phones at deep discounts -- in exchange for lengthy contracts.
Cheaper service. Prepaid plans typically cost less than standard ones, in part because service providers don't have to recover the cost of the phone subsidy. In some cases, the difference can be dramatic -- up to half the price of the cost of a standard plan.
Different plan, same network. Prepaid providers typically lease space on the major carrier's networks -- or are simply brands that are owned by the major carriers.

Source: Staff research

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Exploring every East Bay Regional Park trail

Rockridge hiker exploring every East Bay Regional Park trail
By Marta Yamamoto Correspondent
POSTED:   07/29/2013 01:04:16 PM PDT
OAKLAND -- Wendy Wheeler has been hiking for most of her life. She likes to explore, loves nature and believes that hiking offers opportunities to learn what the world is really about.

Through early on she focused on local parks, this Rockridge resident has broadened her exploration field and set herself a formidable goal. With hiking partner Thomas Page, Wheeler is hiking every trail in every park of the East Bay Regional Park District. Those in the know are aware that there are 65 parks, 113,000 acres and 1,200 miles of trails within the park district. Wheeler's plan is to cover every mile of trail.

"Our goal is to finish but also to enjoy ourselves," she said.

Though Wheeler and Page have been hiking since 2001, it wasn't until 2008 when Page came up with the "every park, every trail" idea, and since then the two have hiked on weekends starting early in the morning and covering 10 to 20 miles. The project requires a lot of preparation, including planning for weather conditions and terrain.

"We take a map and start plotting out the most efficient way to finish the park without doubling back and hiking one trail twice," Wheeler said. "We use yellow highlighter to show the trails we've hiked and for us to finish a park, every trail on the map needs to be yellow."

The statistics are impressive. Wheeler boasts hiking in every park except for Brooks Island, some parks more than once. The pair has completed 48 parks, from Big Break and Briones in the north; to Point Pinole and Tilden in the west; to Coyote Hills and Ardenwood in the south; to Round Valley and Sunol in the east.

"We've hiked more than 2,000 miles because when you hike every trail in a park you travel more miles by hiking over the same trails to cover dead ends," Wheeler said. "In larger parks, the number of dead ends and same trails add up to many extra miles."

Wheeler's explorer instinct is a big motivator; she loves seeing new things and welcomes the opportunity to explore these amazing places.

"Sometimes people don't realize how much we have around us," she said. "If they fully grasped the beauty and vastness of this open space, they would be shocked."

To spread the word about the Bay Area's richness of natural resources, Wheeler and Page have a bimonthly lecture at the Lafayette Library in which they put on slideshows about local and Bay Area parks. Wheeler also serves as an ambassador for the East Bay Regional Park District, participating in park-sponsored events and often creating her own, and she works with local schools to encourage children to get outdoors. She helped start a hiking club at Chabot Elementary, organized parent nights to show the movie "Mother Nature's Child" and is now working on a lecture series for Merritt College to bring in speakers who focus on children in nature. Through her work with the Children in Nature Collaborative, she's set up a Facebook page for parents to see outdoor opportunities. Wheeler hopes this hiking project will serve as encouragement to others.

"Try to explore more and learn what's out there," she said. "There are different ways to explore the parks -- on your own or on a naturalist-led hike," Wheeler said. "We would love to see more people experiencing the parks in new ways."

As for when the project will be completed, a push might get them there in one year, but there's no pressure. The goal is to explore, enjoy and appreciate.

For more information
Anyone interested in having Wendy Wheeler talk to their group about hiking or show "Mother Nature's Child," contact her at environmentw@yahoo.com.
For pictures of Wheeler and Page's hikes, go  here >>>
For information on Children in Nature, go here >>>

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Canon's new 70D SLR keeps video in focus on the go

Jefferson Graham, USA TODAY 12:31 a.m. EDT July 2, 2013

LOS ANGELES — What if you could shoot a DSLR still camera like a camcorder, keeping the image in focus as you moved across the room and zoomed in and out?

That's something that many photographers have wished for, and a feature Canon plans to push heavily in the fall when it releases the new EOS 70D, ($1,349 with lens, $1,199 body only).

USA TODAY got a sneak peak at the 70D, which Canon just announced. It replaces the current 60D (on sale now online for around $599, body only). Some specs: 20-megapixel image sensor (up from 18 MP for the 60D) and the ability to shoot as many as 7 frames a second (up from 5.3).

But the big news is the continuous autofocus. As anyone with a DSLR knows, most models won't stay in autofocus once a recording has started. So if you pan a sports field to get video of your son playing baseball, you could start in focus on the home plate and end up with a fuzzy image when he gets to first base.

With the 70D, the idea is that you'd remain in focus all the way through.

Canon touts the 70D as keeping 80% of the focus area sharp. It pulled it off with what it calls a "revolutionary" new method of pixel management. Traditional image sensors only capture light with the pixels; the 70D uses a "dual pixel" sensor that both focuses and captures the images.

To get even more geeky, the camera has over 40,000 pixels on the sensor — up from 18,000 for the 60D.

What the extra pixels do is "speed up autofocus and make it more accurate," says Chuck Westfall, Canon's technical adviser. "It's now quicker and more reliable."

In our brief tests during our sneak peak, the 70D truly stayed in focus as we roamed the room, and it did everything Canon said it would — but we'll reserve final judgement until we get the opportunity to do a full review.

The potential is huge. The DSLR video revolution was started by Canon in 2009 with the release of the 5D Mark II, when photographers began taking advantage of the larger imaging chip in DSLRs — 20 times the size of those in video cameras — for brighter, crisper images and cinema-like quality.

You can't zoom as effectively or smoothly on a DSLR as you can on a video camera. And initially you couldn't run the camera as long as a camcorder — clips were just 12 minutes max — but now most newer cameras, including the 70D, allow up to 29.9 minutes.

But the images looked so much sharper that photographers were willing to put up with the focus issues. They use add-ons — like loupes and monitors — to help their eyes see better to focus.

Now, with the 70D, their camera bags could conceivably be a little lighter.

Canon's lineup of DSLRs starts with the entry-level Rebel cameras, ($649, body only) and is topped off with the 5D Mark III ($3,300). In between now will be the 70D, which has a larger body than the Rebel cameras, more manual controls and a new feature — built in Wi-Fi, in conjunction with an app for Apple and Android devices.

Follow Jefferson Graham on Twitter: @jeffersongraham.

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