Apple iPad 2 Camera Review

In a thousand words:

The small size of this thumbnail hides the poor quality of the image at its true resolution. You can click the image above to see that, too, but just in case you’re too lazy:

Cropped image at 1:1

I was actually going to post a comparison photo from my HTC Desire HD, but I didn’t realize that the whole world already knows about this issue. The sad thing is, this is the higher spec camera of the two on the iPad2. And the best response I saw from a fanboy on an Apple forum said something about this device not being made for taking photos. It has two cameras that takes stills, yo — it is made for taking photos.

On the other hand, the camera on the iPhone seems very good — I’ll see a friend who has one tomorrow, so maybe I’ll test it out against my Desire HD.

YouTube iframe embedding

It seems that the new way of embedding YouTube videos is really slow to render when you have multiple videos on a single page. Offhand, I can’t remember tweaking anything else that would cause this blog to be loading in segments like this. The thing is, I don’t really have time to test it now, so I guess I’ll just refrain from posting so many vids for a while and let the ones below fall off the front page.

Dropbox is addictive

Getting more Dropbox space is like earning achievements in your favorite video game.

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It’s been a while since I wrote about Dropbox vs. Google Docs (for MS Office document backup), and there have been new developments since then that really make this software interesting. So how do you get started?

First, create a Dropbox account (clicking this link gives you and I both 250MB extra storage space on top of your initial 2GB)

After you sign up, you will be presented with a list of basic tasks that teach you the basics of the service. As an incentive, you are awarded extra storage space (250MB) upon completion of all the tasks.

Next, complete simple tasks (like linking your Twitter/Facebook accounts to Dropbox) on this page to further boost your Dropbox space (128MB x 6). Note: You may not want to connect Dropbox to your social networking accounts due to privacy concerns.

Finally, make links for your friends/visitors with your referral code (like this) to boost space for both of you.

Random Links 11/15/2010

Grizzly Bear Chasing a Bison Down a Highway in Yellowstone
Somehow more satisfying than a photobombing rodent.

The Pirates Are Winning
If you had nothing to lose and everything to gain, you might make a good pirate, too (especially if you had access to cheap Soviet Bloc weapons and ready access to shipping lanes).

How to install Android 2.21 on an iPhone 3g
Nobody’s stopping you from swapping an NSX engine into your Ferrari, either.

Where and how to play Caravan in Fallout: New Vegas
My kings and jacks are your worst nightmare.

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Also:

Hey, that’s what I said.

Dropbox vs. Google Docs for document backup

Hey, that rhymes, yo.

Before Dropbox came along (I actually tried 3 or 4 similar services, but Dropbox was the best), I was backing up all of my Office documents (MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint) in Google docs, which replaced the time-honored practice of e-mailing documents to myself… As it turns out, I was better off doing just that, because I recently discovered that a lot of the formatting in the documents (particularly tables and tabs) were being corrupted by Google docs, whereas I haven’t had a problem with e-mail attachments for many years.

But all of that is moot now because Dropbox has largely replaced both e-mail backups and flash drive transfers (for “small” files) between all of my PCs. Don’t get me wrong, I still use Google docs on a regular basis and prefer it to any other Microsoft Office alternative (although not to Office itself), but for pre-existing Office document backup and fidelity, I prefer Dropbox.