I’ve read much Wallace Stegner, but not his Discovery! The Search for Arabian Oil (scroll to the bottom). A future read, certainly.

I don’t need Adventures in $40 eyeglasses right now, but for the future…

Haven’t watched The Kingdom, but the opening credits sequence is nifty. (via)

The best 10 books of the year? So says The New York Times in its 2007 list. Despite my reading, I never even came close to one of this group, and had only heard of two.

I don’t pour myself into Twitter, but I recognize that’s its very open-endedness is a strength. What caught my eye about this analysis was simply its method: pictures and diagrams, in lieu of many words. My education continues.

Who has time to read Draft Business Model Innovation Manual (beta version)? Not me, and I haven’t even downloaded the PDF, but I love the audacity of someone creating a manual for innovation. Clayton Christensen has described innovation and its consequences on businesses wonderfully. But a “manual” implies prescription, which is much, much harder.

Among the least surprising headlines of the year, from December 4, 2007: “Hybrid Vehicle Owners are Wealthy, Active, Educated and Overwhelmingly Democratic, According to Scarborough Research” (PDF available from press page)

Domains are interesting to me. I have seven of my own, though I only use one. DomainTools introduced “Registrant Search,” with an offer of a free self-search. Yup…found them all. But I don’t try and hide.

I’m a sucker for things like this: “human history in 60 seconds.

Joe Jackson is starting another tour and will be in Redwood City in May 2008.

The current (old) camera

The camera I’m replacing is a Canon PowerShot S400 Digital Elph, purchased in the summer of 2003. Why do I need a new camera? Occasionally, the images are coming out skewed in strange ways, and won’t even transfer to the computer via iPhoto. I wondered if it was the memory card, but wandering by a camera store (they still exist!) in Fanueil Hall, in Boston, I was told that the CMOS chip is probably shot. I’m willing to believe that diagnosis, in part because the slow shutter speed of this camera irks me, and has for almost as long as I’ve had the camera. The size and megapixels and controls are all pretty sharp…but taking pictures of moving children is well nigh impossible.

The requirements

My requirements are simple enough, I hope:

• small enough to fit in the pocket
• at least 4 megapixels (but I don’t need more)
• shutter speed that can catch up with the under-10 crowd.

I’m not terribly picky about zoom levels, etc., and I’ll pay a reasonable price, though I won’t pass up a deal.

The selection process, in laborious detail

Start at CNET.com.

Search for “fast shutter speed”

Looking at the tiny thumbnails in the search results, the first few cameras don’t look small enough (they have ergonomic handles, which means they won’t fit in the pocket). So, I tried the second one which looked small, the Sony Cyber Shot DSC-T9.

Note: the first camera which looked small, the Olympus Stylus 710 has a disappointing summary.

Despite the attraction of a weather-resistant body, the Olympus Stylus 710 falls short with disappointing performance and overprocessed images.

I went on to read the full review of the T9. The “nut graph” is buried a bit:

Though the Sony Cyber Shot DSC-T9 is far from perfect, it’s darn good for an ultracompact snapshot camera.

Right below that sentence is a chart, which I had to read carefully to understand, but shows that the DSC-T9 has a shutter speed of 0.3 seconds.

I noticed that the user ratings is 8.7, even higher than the CNET Editors’ rating of 7.6. Since user ratings are often lower than CNET Editors’ ratings (in my anecdotal experience, anyway), that’s a good sign.

I flipped over to the Compare tab, to see which other cameras are similar. The chart was fairly useful, although putting the weight in both lbs and oz (pounds and ounces) forced me to think a bit much. 16 ounces to a pound, right? (Google confirms yes.) Weight isn’t really my key decision point, but I am curious.

I decided to remove two cameras from the list, the Canon PowerShot S2 IS and the Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT with 18mm-to-55mm lens (silver).

Clicked over to the Casio Exilim EX-Z750

The “bad” concerned me:

Sluggish burst mode; can’t charge battery or off-load photos without using the dock.

but I still clicked to the full review. There was only a paragraph or so on this page, so I went to the printer-friendly version, hoping to get it all on one page. I did. The dock requirement for charging or transferring photos does stick in my mind, so I’m not done yet.

I went back three pages, and went over to the Canon PowerShot SD600.

Almost immediately, went to full review. The initial page really doesn’t have enough information to make a decision. The full review showed me that time to first picture is 0.7 seconds, much slower than the Sony.

Decided to watch the in-page video review. Quite a loud Best Buy ad first, although only 10 seconds. Mildly helpful.

Went back two pages, to the comparison page once more, so I could watch the videos for the Sony and the Casio (links are five or six rows down in the grid). Watching the Casio video reinforced that I care not at all about manual features — if the camera can’t figure it out, I’m certainly not going to. (Also, the repeat of the Best Buy ad at the end was… unwelcome. Ad volume is much higher than the video volume; not a good part about TV to emulate.

Since the review date of the Casio was “Review date: 5/11/05″ (should be May instead of 5, but oh well), I decided to click on the link for “See all products in the Casio Exilim Z series” in the hope that maybe there was a new model which didn’t require the dock. Nope… the 750 is the newest.

At this point, I’m uncertain, so since I know there are editorial features which try and group like cameras available, I click on the Camera link in the header.

Scrolled down the page, and noticed a review for the Casio Exilim EX Z1000.

Once again, had to click through to the full review, where I saw that the camera has 10 (!) megapixels, but seems to come up a bit short in some other areas. Mostly, I wasn’t sure it was fast enough, although the shutter lag is cited at 0.3 seconds. From the review:

Despite a very responsive shutter, the Casio Exilim EX-Z1000 takes just a bit too long between shots. After a quick 1.8 seconds from power-on to first shot, the camera took 3.5 seconds between every additional shot–even though shutter lag in bright light was a minimal 0.3 second and only 0.5 second in dim light. With the onboard flash enabled, that sluggish rate ballooned to 5.1 seconds between shots.

Early in the review, there was a link to the Casio Exilim EX-Z850 — I guess that Z series page I looked at was historical in nature, which is frustrating. I wanted to know about these newer models in the same line. Glad I found them via another route!

Watched the video on that page, which shows a dock (ugh) in the screengrab, and that’s the one negative mentioned in the video, although not in the “bad” — wonder why?

I did continue on to the full review, and was annoyed once again by the limited info on the page, so I went to the printer-friendly version almost immediately. I think the dock is a deal-breaker, although I didn’t know it when I started this process.

Back to the Camera index page. Two of the three cameras I was looking at initially are in the Most Popular section (which is driven, I believe, by how many people clicked to buy the camera), and the third (the Sony) is in the Editors’ Top Products section. Scanning those two groups of five. The Z850 was in the latter group (Top Products), too. So, I’m probably in the right ballpark. How to decide?

I decided to look at the Canon PowerShot S80 from the Top Products list, since it also looked to be a pocket camera. It is. It’s an Editors’ Choice, which is good. A bit pricier than the other ones I was looking at, and only available from three stores. I watched the video…made me think it was slightly bigger than I want. But I went to the full review anyway, and quickly (the norm, now) over to the printer-friendly version. Yup… it’s not small enough:

The S80 isn’t as small as the ultrathin models out there, but it will easily fit in a jacket or a loose pants pocket.

Back to the full review, where I click in the left-hand navigation menu for “Editors’ top cameras” and then on Ultracompact cameras, last updated June 2, about six weeks ago. Four of the first five cameras on the page are ones I’ve looked at already. That’s good. I feel like I’m in the right place to make my final decision, especially since I can now compare price ranges on all of these, too. I don’t have to pick the cheapest one, but I want to know how much more I’m going to pay for each model.

I have to check out the Sony Cyber Shot DSC-T30, since it’s the only one I haven’t looked at in the top five. Over to the full review, one one page (yes!). I watched the video, longing for a different advertisement. (They are short.)

The T-30 is the first one where I went to check prices. Seeing the tax-adjusted price (with my zip code entered) was very welcome… adds $40 to the price of this camera, sending it over $500 at some of the merchants.

Hmmm… I did sort by price, and saw that the T-30 is available from J&R Music and Computer World for ~$440. I’ll admit that my reaction to this merchant is colored by the Science Tuesday section of the print New York Times, where J&R was always (still is, probably) one of the prominent advertisers. I don’t look forward to spending money with the NY camera merchants. So, I have two options for $10 more, and I’m going to go with PC Connection over Crutchfield, probably because it’s higher in the list (not very scientific). I may have ordered from them before.

The purchase

I clicked over from CNET to PC Connection at 10:10pm (damn, writing this up simultaneously has stretched the process out). (Here’s the page I arrived at, with the CNET attribution in the URL.) When I arrive, I realize that this is a Sony (duh), which means their damn memory sticks. Oof. Trying to decide whether I should bail, going back to the Canon PowerShot SD600, since I don’t want to deal with the Casio’s dock (too bad… great cameras otherwise). My current camera has CompactFlash cards, so I guess those won’t be in use either way. Oh well. My 1GB card would be nice to keep using. I’m disappointed the CNET editors didn’t remind me about the proprietary Memory Stick format, but maybe they assume that everyone knows about that tradeoff. I knew, but didn’t remember, obviously, as I considered other factors.

(It’s late, and I want to finish this off. If I wasn’t blogging it, I might just call it a night and sleep on it.)

Opened a new browser window, and went over to check prices for the Canon SD600. Much cheaper camera. Sorting by price shows me a few merchants I’ve never heard of pricing the camera just under $200! I’ve ordered from BuyDig before, though, so I think I’ll go with them instead, even at $80 more.

Except, before I click, I scroll up and read what I’ve noted here about each of the cameras, and I see that the Canon is about the slowest of all the ones I’ve been looking at. So, cheaper and slower and more common memory card (the Canon) or more expensive and faster and proprietary memory card (the Sony)? Since I have to buy new memory cards either way, and I’ve been griping about the slow shutter speed for years, I’m going to go with my initial instinct on the purchase, gritting my teeth about the Memory Stick all the way.

Before I checkout, though, I have to figure out which Memory Stick (a) comes with the camera and (b) is compatible, as there are now a Duo and Pro and a Pro Duo (huh?). So I go look at the specs again, and see that the Duo or Pro Duo are compatible… but I don’t know the difference, beyond expecting that the PRO option is more expensive. I scroll up to the Digital camera memory card selector in the left-hand nav, and on to the Memory Stick page.

Armed with the knowledge that I want a 1GB Memory Stick Pro Duo, I go back to PCConnection and decide on the cheapest one I can find ($47.95, a SanDisk).

The actual checkout process is speedy, and I have my confirmation email at 10:42pm.

Two hours of my life… gone. I hope (a) the camera is great and (b) my former colleagues at CNET find this blow-by-blow useful.