Real Carrier Flexibility, Even in United States

The United States mobile phone market is not consumer friendly, to put it mildly. We have a long history of carrier locked devices, long contracts, and restrictive plans. As if this wasn’t bad enough, the carrier technology and frequency picture is even worse: the Verizon and Sprint networks are incompatible with international GSM standards, and T-Mobile uses nonstandard frequencies for their “4G” HSPA+ network.

For consumers, this makes buying any kind of mobile device an expensive, multiyear commitment. If the contract or carrier lock doesn’t get you, the technology and frequencies will. This restrictive environment is something people from other countries have trouble comprehending, but Americans have grown to accept it.

What is needed is a “wonder device” that supports the widest possible diversity of mobile technologies and frequencies:

• “2G” GSM (AT&T and T-Mobile) and 1xRTT (Verizon and Sprint)
• “3G” HSPA (AT&T and T-Mobile) and WCDMA (Verizon and Sprint)
• “4G” HSPA+ (AT&T and T-Mobile) and LTE (AT&T and Verizon)

Behold the Wonder Device

Apple has been instrumental in breaking consumers from this carrier monopoly, though perhaps they could do more if it wasn’t for the big dollars they get from carrier subsidies. Already, Apple sells unlocked iPhones in the United States, and every iPad comes out of the box unlocked even though most consumers don’t know that.

There are currently two models of “Wi-Fi + 4G” iPad for sale:

• Wi-Fi + 4G for AT&T
• Wi-Fi + 4G for Verizon

Each device obviously supports the technology and frequencies of the named carrier. In the case of the AT&T iPad, this means their 700/2100 MHz LTE network and 2G/3G GSM-based network. Verizon’s device obviously works on their all-700 MHz LTE network and 800/1900 MHz 2G/3G CDMA network.

But many consumers do not know that the Verizon device also supports all the AT&T 2G/3G frequencies. Even though the AT&T iPad lacks compatibility with Verizon’s network, this does not hold true in the opposite direction!

That’s right, the Verizon iPad supports all the AT&T (2G and 3G/”4G”) and T-Mobile (2G only for now) frequencies and technologies, and it’s even unlocked! To prove this, I took the micro-SIM out of my AT&T iPhone 4S and, after installing an appropriate APN profile, got online at “4G” using AT&T’s HSPA+ network.

I haven’t tried a T-Mobile SIM, but reports indicate it works at 2G “EDGE” speed. And it should work great on most international 3G networks at full speed. And it ought to work fine on Straight Talk in the US too.

The Verizon iPad is only slightly short of being a true “do everything” wonder device: First, obviously, it’s not a phone and it’s kind of big to carry around. Second, it doesn’t work on the US T-Mobile network at 3G/”4G” speed yet, though T-Mobile is realigning their frequencies to fix that. Finally, the LTE interoperability picture doesn’t look good, and the iPad will likely never work on any LTE network but Verizon’s.

Free Personal Hotspot Tethering Too!

As if the unlocked/world-compatible picture wasn’t good enough, here’s the knockout reason to buy the Verizon iPad: It includes “Personal Hotspot” support (also known as tethering) for free!

AT&T doesn’t even offer tethering on their 4G iPad. If they did, they’d likely charge an extra $20 per month like they do with their iPhones.

Add up the cost of data and tethering on Verizon and AT&T (if they ever offer tethering) and the service fee really seals the deal. I love the flexible data plans on the iPad, too: Just pay for some data and it’s good for a month. If you run out, pay for some more. Why don’t phones work like this?

Note that Personal Hotspot service is tied to the carrier. If you swap an AT&T SIM into your Verizon iPad you don’t get to tether on AT&T. This is a bummer to folks like me who have grandfathered unlimited data plans on AT&T, though the company has started actively limiting these “unlimited” accounts anyway.

It’s unclear how the Verizon iPad handles being overseas, though I’ll find out next month. I’m traveling in the UK and plan to pick up a cheap micro-SIM for the iPad while I’m there. If it works as a Personal Hotspot, I might not need to reactivate my trusty Three Mifi!

Stephen’s Stance

The Verizon LTE iPad is a no-brainer. It’s compatible with just about every mobile network in the world and includes free tethering (on Verizon at least). It’s so good, I’m not sure if the average person really needs to buy a MiFi anymore: The incremental cost for an LTE iPad is about the same as the MiFi hardware, and the iPad data plans are much more flexible.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2012. | Buying a New iPad? Get the Awesome, Unlocked Verizon Model!
This post was categorized as Apple, Deals, Personal. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Most American networks use 850/1900 MHz, while most European countries use 900/2100 MHz and the rest of the world uses just 2100 MHz

Overview: 2G, 3G, 4G, and more-G!

Today’s worldwide mobile phone network consists of many different technologies operating at many different frequencies. Setting aside the frequency issue (we’ll get to that in a moment), let’s talk standards.

Generally speaking, the world’s mobile phone networks use one of two “branches” of technology:

• “GSM” is “the European standard”, defining 2G (true GSM and GPRS as well as “2.5G” EDGE), 3G (properly called UMTS, HSPA, etc.), and faux-4G (HSPA+). All GSM phones use a SIM card for subscriber information.
• “CDMA” is popular in the United States, Japan, and some other countries. More properly called IS-95 in 2G guise and CDMA-2000 for 3G, CDMA technology includes 1xRTT and EV-DO data protocols.

This is a vast oversimplification, and the true technology and terminology is much more complex. For example, 3G GSM networks use the W-CDMA channel access method, though are incompatible with the networks commonly referred to as “CDMA”. But these are the popular terms for the two networks.

GSM and UMTS is said to have 80 to 85% of the global mobile phone market, with most of the rest relying on some evolution of IS-95. The SIM card has become ubiquitous in popular culture worldwide, and is as much of an emblem of mobile phones as the floppy disk was of computers a decade ago.

Global roaming is impractical or impossible without a SIM-equipped GSM phone, though some CDMA phones and devices are unlocked and can thus be used on a variety of networks. The SIM card makes it much more practical to self-provision local service, however, as does the ubiquitous presence of GSM networks.

GSM Frequencies: the Blessed and Cursed

Not all GSM phones are capable of roaming even if they are unlocked and equipped with a local SIM card, however. The phone hardware must also be compatible with the local GSM network, and this is a major stumbling block in countries like the United States and Japan which use a variety of frequencies for GSM signals.

There are five frequencies that stand out for worldwide coverage and usability. One could consider these the “blessed” frequencies, since an unlocked device that supports 2G GSM or 3G UMTS here could be used nearly everywhere in the world:

• Globally, the most popular frequencies for GSM access are 900 MHz (Band VIII “GSM”), 1800 MHz (Band III “DCS”), and 2100 MHz (Band I “IMT”). This trio is used in all of Europe and much of the rest of the world for both 2G and 3G service. Note that the DCS Band is only used for 2G communication, while the IMT Band is predominantly a 3G UMTS range. Most countries outside the Americas and Europe are strictly 2100 MHz for 3G service.
• The second most popular frequency pair for GSM access is 850 MHz (Band V “CLR”) and 1900 MHz (Band II “PCS”). Sometimes called the American standard, thanks to the massive AT&T network, this pair is also used in many other Western Hemisphere countries, and 850 MHz is popular in Southeast Asia and the Pacific countries as well.

Alas, not all networks are configured in this “standard” way, and not all devices support the same technologies on all bands. This is particularly thorny in United States, where AT&T (by far the dominant GSM carrier) and T-Mobile operate incompatible 2G and 3G networks. Since AT&T has more than 3 times as many customers as T-Mobile, equipment vendors have been reluctant to support the smaller rival’s 1700/2100 MHz network.

Worldwide, companies operating networks outside the “blessed” bands find it hard to offer the latest devices and attract revenue from tourists and travelers. The iPhone and iPad, for example, support only the four popular 2G and 3G frequencies, dramatically reducing the attractiveness of providers outside this range. In United States, T-Mobile is currently realigning their entire network to the AT&T standards for this reason, a costly and time-consuming process. Examples of non-standard frequencies include 450 MHz, 800 MHz, and 1700 MHz.

Stephen’s Stance

Although frequency mismatches are frustrating to travelers, this is not an easy issue to fix. Allocating spectrum is a massive challenge globally, and realignment and reuse takes decades. It is heartening to see the world: as around “just” 4 frequency bands for GSM and UMTS, but the same battle is starting again with LTE. We haven’t seen the last of hassles and headaches!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2012. | Making Sense of Global Mobile Phone Networks
This post was categorized as Apple, Personal. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

What might the world have been like if aero planes had been a failure?

I don’t get much chance to read for pleasure, but two things I’ve been reading recently spurred my imagination. After reliving the advent of modern transportation in the solid non-fiction Jet Age by Sam Howe Verhovek, I stumbled upon two pieces of speculative fiction from an unlikely source that predated everything presented there. In between The Jungle Book and hundreds of other works, Rudyard Kipling imagined a future of air transportation that is coherent yet entirely unlike our modern world.

A world without radio communication and jets!

With the Night Mail

One doesn’t often think of Rudyard Kipling as a science fiction author. Indeed, considering that he was active around the turn of the last century, science fiction was not even a literary genre in his time! But Kipling wrote two thought-provoking “future stories” in a world where global transportation had trumped politics, population growth, and even war.

Written in 1905, With the Night Mail supposes that the world would be linked politically and socially by an active air transportation network. But Kipling’s future is based on massive yet buoyant dirigibles not the airplanes of today. And this is just the start of the fantastic yet inaccurate world he imagined.

To maintain movement through the skies, the Aerial Board of Control (A.B.C.) was given complete control of traffic through the skies and (ominously) “all it implies.” With the Night Mail follows a protagonist’s journey from London to Québec on a “Postal Packet” airship, and is written in the typical confident Victorian English style.

It is astonishing that, 25 years before H.G. Wells, Kipling would create so thorough a future world around a fairly mundane story. Indeed, like Tolkien, Kipling includes a strange postscript of “bonus content” set in this future world in the form of newspaper advertisements and letters to the editor.

The story itself is not much great literature, with forgettable characters who do little to develop or challenge the reader. Clearly, Kipling delighted in piecing together a future world rather than setting compelling characters in it.

Marvelously Clever Yet Entirely Off-Base

Airplanes (unproven technology in 1905) are sidelined as dangerous and impractical. As an advertisement for a dirigible construction company proclaims, “it is now nearly a generation since the Plane was to supersede the Dirigible for all purposes. TO-DAY none of the Planet’s freight is carried en plane. Less than two per cent. of the Planet’s passengers are carried en plane.”

Kipling’s power source is a turbine moving inside a closed-loop compressor and condenser reminiscent of today’s refrigeration coils. The propellant is “Fleury’s gas”, which “can lift anything” with “almost indefinite powers of expansion” yet will condense instantly once it touches a radium-powered ray. This same substance provides both lift and thrust, yet requires constant attention from an expert operator. Kipling delights in creating future jargon for these airships while incorporating conventional ocean lingo varying from quaint to precocious.

Although Guglielmo Marconi had already begun demonstrating radio communication at the time, Kipling does not grasp the importance of this work. The dirigibles are guided by illuminated beacons on the ground and “Mark ships” in the sky. Although a “General Communicator” presumably relies on radio waves, the captain shouts to passing airships through an open window. Most communication is through colored or flashing beams of light rather than long-distance radio beams.

Indeed, the entire purpose of the story’s journey is archaic: Packet 162 is delivering paper mail, and transports a “coach” containing bored clerks sorting sacks of letters. It would be impossible to imagine a time of continuous communication, broadcast media, or a global network of intangible information exchange at that time.

"Mark boats" are lighthouses in the sky

As Easy as A.B.C.

Where With the Night Mail was confident if a little tempered in terms of enthusiasm, Kipling’s next work in this fictional world was downright gloomy. As Easy as A.B.C. follows another aerial journey, this time to quell uprising in Chicago that threatens the flow of traffic through the skies. it is here that Kipling dives into the ominous overtones of the A.B.C.’s mandate of “all that it implies”.

The narrator, a reporter, joins an international crew on a high-performance A.B.C dirigible on their way to Chicago. The trouble? The people of Northern Illinois shut down their navigational beacons to force the A.B.C. to intervene against a group of “serviles” who dare to promote government, organization, and “crowds.”

This is by far the most surprising difference between Kipling’s two stories: The first was an amusing lark, while the second is serious commentary on the state of human relations and government.

Kipling also seems surprisingly reactionary in terms of the development of technology in the intervening years. While his 1905 story could be forgiven for not taking “aeroplanes” seriously, by 1912 the Wright brothers had successfully demonstrated controllable, manned, powered flight. Yet Kipling still dismisses it.

This stands in stark contrast to his seeming acceptance of radio technology. From a “ground hold” that uses supergravity to a light-based weapon, Kipling has well and truly accepted that electromagnetic waves are the future of technology.

Most interesting is Kipling’s take on the future of government. He presumes that greater availability of communication and transport technology would lead to a state of ultra-libertarianism, where governments would be dissolved apart from boards like the A.B.C. which merely facilitated transport. The population of Chicago despises “crowds”, collectivism, and government generally. This is well beyond the anti-communism and -socialism that would be a hallmark of writing and thought 50 years later. And it seems truly bizarre to modern readers.

Luxury liners and ultra-libertarianism!

Stephen’s Stance

It is wonderful to open one’s mind to completely alien ideas. This is especially true when reading speculative fiction from a century ago, since one can compare the actual development of society and technology with that supposed by the author. For me, science fiction helps reinforce an attitude of humility. After all, if great thinkers and writers could be so wrong about the world of today, surely I can be entirely wrong about the world of tomorrow!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2012. | From Kipling’s Dirigibles to the Jet Age
This post was categorized as Everything, Features, Personal. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Jailbreaking and unlocking are two very different things!

Carrier Locks and Unlocked Phones

Most mobile phones in the United States, and many in the rest of the world, are sold at a discount thanks to a subsidy from the mobile service carrier. Companies like AT&T and Verizon will spend hundreds of dollars to gain a new subscriber and lock them in for a few years of monthly service. They do this because the service is where their profit is, and service revenue usually adds up to 10 times the amount they spend on subsidies.

In exchange for the subsidy, the carrier requires the customer to sign a long-term contract for service. They also configure the phone only to connect to their network. This keeps the customer from signing up to get the subsidy and then breaking the contract to use the device on another network. But these carrier locks remain in place even after the contract is up, often rendering the phone less valuable, or even useless, on the secondhand market.

The situation is very different outside the United States, where consumers generally have a choice of buying subsidized and locked devices or spending more for unlocked devices. This is much more popular in markets with numerous competitive GSM carriers, since consumers can buy a device and expected to work on just about any network they choose. Most of my friends from Europe shop phones and service plans separately, and are happy to pay full price for an unlocked device.

Even the United States, it is possible to buy some devices unlocked, including the Apple iPhone and some Android devices, and there are unlock “hacks” for most phones. But the American GSM networks of AT&T and T-Mobile use different frequencies and are thus incompatible for most devices. Sprint and Verizon use totally different technology that doesn’t lend itself to unlocking. So Americans are generally stuck with their chosen carrier whether the device is locked or not.

Getting Root and Breaking out of Jail

So-called “dumb phones” (officially, “feature phones”) don’t run third-party software. You buy the phone, and whatever it does is what it does. Smart phones are different, though. As Apple learned, consumers want to run native applications on their smart phones, not just browse the web or read e-mail.

Smart phones are little computers, and running applications on them is a major risk. Viruses, Trojan horse applications, and plain poorly written software put the user at risk, and carriers might not want certain applications on their network. The device vendor also wants to keep battery sucking, crash prone junk off the phone to avoid being blamed for the issues caused.

This is why modern smartphone operating systems like Android and iOS put the user in a “sandbox” (derisively called “jail”). This allows native applications to run, but puts many functions off-limits. In the case of Apple iOS, the phone will only run official, signed programs from Apple’s App Store, whereas many Android devices will run applications from many different sources.

Since Apple places its users in “jail” and Android locks out “root” access, both devices can be considered “locked down” in a different way from the carrier lock. Many users feel the need to remove these restrictions, and this has led to the development of “jailbreaking” and “rooting” technology. Today, most iPhones and Android devices can be unrestricted if the user wishes.

Jailbreak, Root, Unlock, and Compete

It is important to understand that none of this is technically illegal in most countries, and that many unlocks do not require jailbreaking or root access. As mentioned above, Apple sells unlocked iPhones officially in most countries, and every iPad is sold without a carrier lock. These devices are incredibly popular with foreign tourists, since prices here in United States are usually much cheaper than in other countries.

I would also like to point out that unlocked phones do not place the user at greater risk of security issues. Although many Trojan horses have found their way onto Android phones, this has nothing to do with the carrier lock. And Apple’s iOS “jail” has proven remarkably sturdy against malware even though jailbroken and unlocked phones are commonplace.

Unlocking may become more popular in the United States in the coming years as T-Mobile realigns its “4G” HSPA+ frequencies to the same standards as AT&T. Next year at this time, users will have a real choice of high-speed GSM carriers, and they will be able to carry their unlocked phones abroad as well.

On the other hand, the crazy diversity of LTE frequencies used by Verizon, AT&T, Clearwire/Sprint, and international carriers does not bode well for unlocking. As is the case with Verizon and Sprint today, what good is an unlocked phone if it cannot be used on another carrier’s frequencies? Already, the AT&T and Verizon iPad models cannot roam on each other’s LTE networks, and neither works internationally.

Stephen’s Stance

I have, on occasion, jailbroken my iPhones, and I am the proud owner of a few unlocked devices as well. I found little interest in the former but a great deal of value in the latter. And I love the idea of a competitive carrier market as is the case with European GSM carriers and will soon be possible here, at least with AT&T and T-Mobile. It’s just too bad it took so long for this to happen!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2012. | What’s the Difference Between a Jailbroken and an Unlocked Phone?
This post was categorized as Apple, Ask a Pack Rat, Features, Personal, Terabyte home. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

I'm headed back to Las Vegas for Interop once again

I am thrilled to return to speak at Interop next week, though not so much about returning to Las Vegas for the third time already this year. This time around, I’ll be on two Interop panel discussions in Mike Fratto’s storage track. If you will be at Interop and would like to meet up, let me know.

Considering Interop

The grand old tradeshow, Interop has changed a great deal over the decades. No longer affiliated with Novell (obviously), Interop is unusual in that it attracts a wide variety of companies in many different IT verticals. Fields like Wi-Fi networking, network security, data center and campus Ethernet switching, and (yes) storage have other shows, of course, but most are affiliated with one company or another. Interop has become the home of the independents, the upstarts, and the startups in enterprise IT. Shows like EMC World and Cisco Live are great draws for buyers and companies within their ecosystem, but what about their competitors? Interop has become the place to find them. Interop is really 2 different events: The tradeshow and conference. The show floor in New York and Las Vegas is reasonably sized and houses a diverse group of companies. Folks looking to browse the latest enterprise IT technology enjoy walking the floor for a day or so. Then there is the conference, with its educational tracks and speakers like me. This is a separate admission, so traffic is usually a little lighter. Panel discussions usually attract a packed house, however. This is especially true if, as is the case for my Las Vegas panels, they fall at the middle of the event. I am hopeful that we will have a good turnout this time.

My Plans For Interop

Our panel session last year was standing room only!

I will be arriving Monday, just before noon, and will spend the day on the tradeshow floor. If you would like to meet up for lunch or dinner, or just to walk the halls, let me know. I’ll probably be getting a few folks together for dinner and drinks Monday night! Tuesday, I have 2 panel sessions. “What’s Next in Storage” will be held in Lagoon D at 11:30, and “Great Debate: Cloud Storage Is Dead on Arrival” will be in the same room at 3:45. I plan to record and stream both sessions live from Interop, so watch this post for the embedded video.

What’s Next in Storage

• Location: Lagoon D
• Tuesday, May 8, 2012, 11:30 AM-12:30 PM
• Speakers:
• Moderator – Mike Fratto, Editor, Network Computing
• Panelist – Stuart Miniman, Senior Analyst, wikibon
• Panelist – Howard Marks, Founder & Chief Scientist; Contributing Editor/Blogger, DeepStorage.net; Informationweek
• Panelist – Stephen Foskett, Community Organizer, Gestalt IT

Storage continues to evolve to meet the demands of the enterprise. Whether you are supporting big data initiatives, building a private cloud, going to the cloud, or trying to reduce costs and make more efficient use of your existing storage systems, there are many options to choose from. We’ll also get their take on what is coming in the 12-18 months and how to prepare for it. Come prepared with questions as this session will be mostly Q&A driven.

Great Debate: Cloud Storage Is Dead On Arrival

Note: I’m debating Howard on cloud storage. He’s been asked to argue that cloud storage is dead, and I’ll be taking the stance that it is alive and well. I don’t think this is Howard’s true belief, but it should make for an interesting panel debate.

• Location: Lagoon D
• Tuesday, May 8, 2012, 3:45 PM-4:45 PM
• Speakers:
• Moderator – Mike Fratto, Editor, Network Computing
• Panelist – Howard Marks, Founder & Chief Scientist; Contributing Editor/Blogger, DeepStorage.net; Informationweek
• Panelist – Stephen Foskett, Community Organizer, Gestalt IT

The statement under debate is that cloud storage is dead on arrival. There are a number of benefits with cloud storage like huge cost savings and supporting public cloud applications, but there are also draw back such as governance and the potential for lock-in. In this debate, our panel of experts will be taking one side or the other and in an old-school debate format, will be arguing their respective points. We’ll ask the audience to vote before and after to see who wins. Bring your questions and stump our experts. We’ll have fun and learn something.

Join Me at Interop!

I’ll also be getting some folks together Tuesday for lunch and dinner, as well as evening entertainment. I know quite a few people who are attending the event, and I always like getting together as diverse a group as possible at events like this. I fly out first thing Wednesday morning. Although it would be nice to spend longer at Interop, I just can’t afford to take a whole week out of my schedule for the event.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2012. | Interop Las Vegas 2012
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Events, Personal, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

The new Sony 50 mm prime is almost identical to the kit zoom lens

Shortly before I received the brand new Sony NEX-7 camera (on my birthday, natch!), B&H Photo dropped another eagerly-anticipated item at my door: The new Sony SEL50F18 prime lens for E-mount cameras like the NEX-5 and -7. It’s brilliant technically, easily the best affordable E-mount lens. But it wouldn’t be my first purchase for a NEX owner.

Different Lenses for Different Purposes

People use cameras to capture images and video. Usually they are documenting life and capturing memories; sometimes they are producing art. Regardless, a camera and lens has no purpose in a vacuum, so they must be useful, not just technically excellent. “Pixel peepers” seem to forget this, as do gearhead techies (like me).

Humans perceive the world through the eye with broad perspective, and most see sharp contrast and rich color in the center. In 35 mm camera terms, this corresponds to roughly a 35 to 50 mm frame and an aperture of 1.4 to 2.0. Walking around with this hypothetical camera, a person could capture pretty much what their eyes are seeing.

But the APS-C sensor used in the NEX cameras crops images by a factor of 1.5, so an ideal walk-around NEX lens would be 23 to 33 mm. As for aperture, most NEX lenses are far “slower” than F/2.0, optically. The 16 mm “pancake” is just F/2.8, while the 18-55 mm kit zoom ranges from F/3.5 to F/5.6. Although serviceable, these lenses are not all that great technically.

This is one reason that the SLR Magic 35 mm lens is so nice on the NEX camera: It’s a 52.5 mm equivalent, just a little on the close side, and reasonably fast at F/1.7. Walking around with the SLR Magic on the NEX just feels good, and the compact size is a great match for the slim, mirrorless body. But it’s not perfect: There’s no image stabilization and manual aperture and focus impacts “right now” candid capability.

Introducing the Sony SEL50F18

What the NEX system needed was a fast, simple, affordable prime lens, and that’s just what Sony delivers with the new SEL50F18. As the name implies, it’s a fixed 50 mm lens with a speedy maximum aperture of F/1.8. It’s designed for the NEX system, so it includes a silent auto-focus motor with direct manual focus (DMF), integrated aperture control, and Optical Steady Shot (OSS) image stabilization. In short, it’s the “do-everything” fast prime lens we’ve all been waiting for.

The SEL50F18 is wonderfully solid, built of magnesium alloy, and the wide rubber-ribbed focus ring is a joy to use. Manual focus is “by wire” – turning the ring tells the camera to run the focus motor rather than directly moving the lens elements. But the system is reasonably direct and doesn’t interfere. Auto-focus is fairly quick, certainly better than the long SEL55210 tele-zoom but nowhere near the speed of the phase-detection system on an SLR camera.

A 50 mm lens results in a longish 75 mm field of view on NEX cameras. This is not ideal, as we will discuss below, and camera shake can be a real issue. Thankfully, the image stabilization built into the SEL50F18 works wonderfully. This is said to be the (optically) fastest stabilized camera system lens ever built; it’s technically very challenging to stabilize this much glass. And it works great!

The SEL50F18 retails for US $299. Although this is somewhat expensive for a mass-market prime lens, it’s a bargain for one of this quality and performance. It seems costly compared to the 16 mm prime and 30 mm macro ($150 and $250, respectively), but those lenses are completely over-matched by the NEX-7′s 24 megapixel sensor. They’re nowhere near as sharp and almost uselessly slow (optically speaking).

Real-World Photography with the SEL50F18

Attach the SEL50F18 to a NEX camera and prepare to be impressed. Open the aperture to F/1.8 (which is so much easier with the NEX-7 Tri-Navi wheels) and you’ll be shocked at the short depth of field and gorgeous bokeh. It’s crazy-sharp on center, too, and the whole image is brilliant when stopped down a bit.

Snapshots become "images" with a fast lens like this

Walk around a bit with this lens on a NEX-7 and you’ll immediately feel like a camera super hero: It’s sharp, quick, and so easy to grab a shot even in low light that you’ll forget about the built-in flash. It’s so fast and bright you’ll (finally!) be able to experiment with narrower apertures, even when shooting moving subjects indoors. The NEX-7 and SEL50F18 is a dynamic duo, to be sure!

I previously purchased a classic Minolta Rokkor-X 50 mm prime for my NEX-5. It’s a wonderful lens, priced under $100 and sporting a huge glass eye that opens up to F/1.4! But it was difficult to use this lens in the real world, with serious chromatic aberrations wide open and no image stabilization or auto-focus for quick shots. The SEL50F18 is as good as the Rokkor was supposed to be. It’s so good, there’s no point in owning both.

Low light? No problem! And bokeh to boot!

But the SEL50F18, like the Rokkor has a dose of kryptonite built in: At 50 mm, it’s just too “long” for candid use indoors. A 75 mm (equivalent) field of view is really quite narrow, requiring more than a few steps back from your subject. I found myself constantly backing up while using this lens, sometimes even bumbling into tables or running out of room with my back up against a wall! It’s fine for street photography and posed portraits, but very, very difficult for a night out with friends.

Before considering buying the SEL50F18, I suggest setting the 18-55 mm kit zoom lens (which nearly every NEX owner has) to 50 mm and leaving it there for an average shooting session. Take some candid shots of friends and family, a few landscapes, and a portrait or two. Get the feel of shooting at 50 mm, then decide if you can live with a prime lens fixed at that length.

Note that there is a near-perfect E-mount prime lens: The Zeiss Sonnar T* E 24mm F1.8 ZA (SEL24F18Z) is wonderfully useful at 36 mm (equivalent). It’s fast and sharp, but excessively expensive. As is the case when comparing the SEL55210 and SEL18200 zoom lenses, cost tips the balance even for NEX-7 buyers!

Stephen’s Stance

The SEL50F18 is a brilliant lens, and well worth the $299 purchase price. It’s currently in short supply, and selling for $50 for list on Amazon. NEX-7 owners especially should definitely consider adding this to their arsenal, since it’s the only affordable option to match the capabilities of that camera. But it’s not the first lens any NEX owner should buy, since 50 mm just isn’t useful enough for everyday shooting.

Although it’s outclassed by the NEX-7, the SEL1855 remains my first choice thanks to its wonderfully useful zoom range. After that, the long zooming yet affordable SEL55210 or simple SLR Magic 35 F/1.7 would be my next purchase, depending on your needs. The SEL50F18 is definitely a great buy if you can tolerate shooting at 75 mm (equivalent), and is far more useful than the 16 mm or 30 mm primes.

If you’re wealthy enough, a combination of the SEL18200 and Zeiss SEL24F18Z beats all, but this pair adds up to almost $2,000!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2012. | Sony SEL50F18 Review: A Brilliant 50 mm F/1.8 Prime Lens for NEX Cameras
This post was categorized as Personal, Photography, Terabyte home. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

If you arrived on this page looking for a wallpaper image, you clicked through a site that included this hack. You’ll see the URL you clicked in the URL above after the “#!” part. I don’t have any such content, so you might as well go somewhere else, unless you care to read on regarding this puzzling hack!

SEO Slugs Injected Content On My 404 Page?

The issue lay with an old plugin I used to use called “SEO Slugs“. It removed “stop words” from the “slug” or URL of a blog post – things like “the” and “a” that search engines don’t want or need. I de-activated this plugin a while ago, and it appears it doesn’t work with modern versions of WordPress anyway. But I left the files around, a bad idea to be sure.

One annoying aspect of the WordPress plugin architecture is that even deactivated plugins can be called by name and executed. This was the root of the Timthumb exploit I wrote about in January, and remains true for all others. In this case, the URLs went directly to this plugin, since they all contained the prefix, “/wp-content/plugins/seo-slugs/”.

Somehow, by feeding this plugin a string, text and images would be added at the end of “the loop” from some unknown source. So my site returned my standard 404 page, but with a news report dropped into the sidebar you see at right. In the case of Christiano Ronaldo, it included a few paragraphs with text, too!

I was really concerned at first that my blog really had been compromised. I quickly too remedial action, changing my passwords and salts. Next, I checked my database manually using SQL queries and my filesystem using grep. But I didn’t find any “bad content” in my database or my filesystem. It appears that my site wasn’t compromised at all, fortunately.

What Happened Here?

I’m really puzzled, honestly. I can’t find any reference to a known hack of this plugin, and yet there are hundreds of references to my blog out there. Somewhere, a bot or spammer is filling sites with links to alleged jpeg files of various pop culture figures that all call my blog. Yet I don’t host this content!

I don’t see what benefit the spammer gets from all this. Sure, I’ve got a high-PageRank site. But this doesn’t appear to be a PageRank scam. Casual visitors to my site would never see this content (they have to hit a weird URL I would never link to) so it’s not typical spam. They’re not even freeloading on my server CPU and network bandwidth!

Stephen’s Stance

I guess it pays to delete disused plugins, something I’ve now done. But I’m still puzzled by all this, and I welcome comments or suggestions. Where’s the benefit for the perpetrator? Is there some nasty rock I haven’t turned over?

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2012. | Is the WordPress SEO-Slugs Plugin Hacked Or What?
This post was categorized as Personal. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

NAB is one of my favorite trade shows

As I mentioned earlier, the  National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Show is one of my favorites, with the wonderful variety of companies and products in attendance. Everything from professional video and broadcast equipment to IT infrastructure gear to celebrities (including the cast of Arrested Development) are on display at NAB. But what were the highlights? Here are my thoughts.

A Year of Resolution

Many people make New Year’s resolutions, but NAB Show 2012 highlights the year of the different type of resolution: professional gear is moving to 4K, and everyone else is moving beyond HD. My latest camera has a 24 megapixel sensor, my iPad is beyond 1080p, and Ben Freedman and I are planning for HD streaming of Tech Field Day. Video producers, too, are moving to HD and beyond.

All this high resolution video and photography strains the underlying equipment like never before. Suddenly, hard disk drives can’t keep up with a single camera, let alone multiple streams. FireWire and USB 2.0 are passé as computers move to USB 3 and Thunderbolt. Video producers increasingly rely on Fibre Channel, Thunderbolt, and lightning quick PCI express flash cards just to keep up.

These momentous changes were incredibly visible at NAB. A host of impressive new cameras were introduced (the Blackmagic Cinema Camera and Sony FS700 were the highlights) and RED continues to gain mind share. But every cinema camera on display highlighted beyond-1080p resolution (2K, 2.5K, and of course 4K).

The crowd inspects the new Blackmagic Cinema Camera

Interestingly, both the Blackmagic and Sony cameras mentioned above use conventional still camera optics, Canon EF and Sony NEX E-Mount, respectively. The idea is to bring professional post-HD video quality to the masses. Blackmagic, especially, embraces this “prosumer” market segment and is priced the Cinema Camera at just $3000. This camera also eschews proprietary media cards in favor of off-the-shelf 2.5 inch SATA SSD’s!

Trouble Downstream

These cameras excel at producing massive media files, and the storage and I/O requirements are mindbending. NAB was awash in high-speed interfaces (3G-SDI and Thunderbolt) and massive data storage devices. It was great to see companies like Active Storage, Object Matrix, DDN, and AmpliData getting so much attention from the professional media crowd. On the desktop side, LaCie, G Technology (now part of Western Digital), and Promise, as well as lesser-known companies like Rocstor, were ready to soak up all that data.

Fusion-io's new ioFX card brings ioMemory to the masses

One of the coolest storage products at NAB was not featured in the booth of its own. Fusion-io stocked a dozen booths with their new ioFX workstation flash storage card. Although not quite as fast as the company’s respected ioDrive, the ioFX wowed the audience with its attainable pricing of just $2495. Fusion-io also announced an SDK on Wednesday, allowing software natively to access the ioFX and ioDrive at full speed without translating their “ioMemory” into a fake disk drive. Cool times two!

I'm sure most people overlooked the significance of Sumitomo's Thunderbolt cables

Thunderbolt was the highlight of last year’s NAB Show. Although the release of Thunderbolt peripherals has not been as rapid as many (including myself) would like, there were some bright spots at NAB this year. Most people certainly overlooked it, but the release of copper and optical Thunderbolt cables by Sumitomo suggests that prices of this critical component could be coming down soon. Lenovo was also showcasing the first official Thunderbolt-equipped PC, and it was connected to an AOC monitor!

Thunderbolt to 8 Gb Fibre Channel, 10 Gb Ethernet, and SATA

Thunderbolt docking stations remain a fantasy, apart from Apple’s own Thunderbolt Display, but a number of clever I/O adapters were scattered on the show floor. ATTO was showing off their line of ThunderLink converters (8 Gb FC, 10 Gb Ethernet, and SATA), and Sonnet could even convert a Mac Mini into something like an Xserve(r) with their RackMac mini, complete with dual PCI express desktop card slots!

Non-Apple Thunderbolt is a reality in 2012!

Stephen’s Stance

NAB Show remains one of my favorites, and one of the only trade shows I’d unreservedly recommend attending on one’s own dime. From Thunderbolt to post-HD video to solid state storage, NAB has it all. And did I mention that the cast of Arrested Development was there, too? Oh yeah, and W. Curtis Preston, Robin Harris, Nick Pearce, Jason Collier, Scott Shadley, and many more besides!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2012. | NAB Show 2012: My Initial Thoughts
This post was categorized as Apple, Enterprise storage, Personal, Photography, Terabyte home, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Despite Sony's candy-coating, the NEX-7 exposes the weakness of the Sony lens lineup

The Sony NEX-7 is far from perfect. As noted in part 1, most of the new features are compromised in one way or another, but there’s an even bigger elephant in the room: The excessively dense 24.3 megapixel sensor overwhelms most of the NEX system lenses.

Too Many Pixels?

I was wary of that pixel-dense sensor from the start, since I never felt that the 14.2 megapixel sensor of the original NEX-5 was insufficient. All things being equal, a denser sensor places ever-greater demands on the optics in front of it, and 24 megapixels is a whole new world for digital photography.

Start with the image size: Each NEX-7 JPEG image is 7 to 8 MB in size. That’s massive! It really slows down the Eye-Fi card (which was already less than perfect) and fills up regular SD cards fast at 10 frames per second. You need a high-speed card just to keep up with that kind of pounding! And it’s even worse in RAW mode.

There doesn’t appear to be anything wrong with Sony’s NEX-7 sensor, mind you. Indeed, it’s really amazingly capable, with excellent low-light performance. Most tests show it to be better, technically, than Sony’s older 14.2 or 16.2 megapixel sensors. In fact, it is this performance that is the problem.

Out-Classed Lenses

The selection of Sony lenses for the NEX system remains quite limited even after two years on the market. We have four primes (16 mm, 24 mm Zeiss, 30 mm macro, and 50 mm) and three zooms (18-55 mm kit zoom, 18-200 mm “video lens”, and 55-210 mm). There are some third-party lenses, but no “must-have” offerings. Indeed, many NEX users opt for adapters so they can use the whole world of lenses from Sony, Nikon, Canon, Leica, and others.

Although some of Sony’s lenses are excellent (particularly the 24 mm Zeiss and 50 mm prime), most are merely adequate. They were good enough on the 3- and 5-series NEX cameras, but the NEX-7 is too much for them. Reviewers are noting poor off-center sharpness and vignetting with many of the older lenses, particularly the 16 mm and 30 mm primes. But this new sensor pushes the limits even of my “go-to lens,” the 18-55 zoom that ships with the NEX-7 kit.

Average photographers probably wouldn’t notice the difference, but NEX-7 buyers are decidedly not average. They’re people crazy enough to drop $1400 instead of $600 on a camera body just to get awesome manual controls and a viewfinder. I’m not much of a photographer (and I’m no “pixel peeper”) but even I noticed the odd lack of sharpness off-center with the 16 mm pancake (aka SEL16F28). And I’m glad I didn’t buy the 30 mm prime!

The NEX-7 desperately needs more sharp and quick lenses like the SEL50F18

Fixing a Hole

Newer NEX cameras include firmware that recognizes Sony’s lenses and corrects image aberrations. The NEX-7 tries to straighten out the barrel distortion of the little 16 mm prime, among others. The firmware will also brighten up some of the vignetting that plagues the NEX-7 at open apertures, and it corrects some of the chromatic aberration found on many of the Sony lenses.

But the NEX software can’t work miracles. It does nothing with third-party or adapted lenses like my scrumptious SLR Magic 35 F/1.7: Wide open on the NEX-7, it dims like crazy around the edges. And software can’t sharpen up an out-classed lens like the SEL16F28.

On the other hand, the 50 mm prime (SEL50F18) is really a solid companion to the NEX-7, with speed and sharpness to spare. And the Zeiss (SEL24F18Z) is said to be an excellent pairing as well. Although not perfect, the SEL55210 tele-zoom isn’t bad with this camera, either. But the SEL1855 kit zoom is just so-so, and the remaining primes aren’t worth buying for the NEX-7.

Stephen’s Stance

Sony should have designed a new kit lens for the NEX-7, and buyers should consider whether their collection of E-Mount and adapted lenses are going to be good enough for this camera. I will keep my 16 mm lens, mainly for use with the VCL-ECU1 ultra-wide converter, but I doubt I’ll use it much. I probably will tote along the 18-55 and 55-210 zooms for casual shooting, but will definitely switch to the 50 mm prime to get the most from the camera. And I’m seriously considering dropping another thousand on the Zeiss!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2012. | Sony NEX-7 Hands-On Review Part 2: 24.3 Million Surprising Shortcomings
This post was categorized as Personal, Photography. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

This graph is generated 100% automatically in Google Spreadsheets using data from YouTube and Vimeo. Here's how I did it!

One of the major advancements we’ve made for Tech Field Day in 2011 was streaming and posting video of all presentations. For all events in 2012, we will be posting video to both YouTube and Vimeo, and we’ve had great viewership numbers at both sites. I know the viewership numbers because I have developed a custom Google spreadsheet that automatically imports video statistics and produces a slick graph.

It isn’t easy automatically and correctly to grab statistics from many sites, but both YouTube and Vimeo expose this data. The challenge is in correctly parsing and formatting this data for use. Here’s how I do it, and I hope that this helps you with your video statistics collection!

As I have explained previously, Google spreadsheets (as well as Windows versions of Microsoft Excel) have some handy live data import functions. My favorites are importHTML and importXML, both of which will parse and expose the content of webpages. In this example, I am using importXML to parse both real XML and HTML, since Vimeo has an XML API and YouTube does not (that I am aware of).

Collecting Vimeo Statistics with the Simple API

Vimeo has two API’s, but the Simple API provides all the information we need without authentication and other troublesome work. It’s actually very simple if you have collected a set of videos in an album. All you need to do is reference a special URL with the importXML command and you will get all the statistics and information you need.

For example, my latest Networking Field Day videos are all collected in the following album: http://vimeo.com/album/1888172

Every album on Vimeo is exposed as XML data through the simple API. Just substitute the name of your album for mine in a URL that looks like this:

http://vimeo.com/api/v2/album/1888172/videos.xml

If you open that in your browser, you can see that it includes nearly everything you might want, from video titles and numbers to URLs and play counts. Alas, it does not include loads, finishes, or geographic data. But it’s pretty good.

The Google spreadsheets importXML command has no trouble parsing misinformation. Just create a new spreadsheet with the following content in cell A2:

=importXml("http://vimeo.com/api/v2/album/1888172/videos.xml","//video")

This will fill columns A through W with information about the videos in this album. The reason I put this in cell A2 is that I like to have usable headings in row 1! Here’s the official names for all the columns of output:

id title description url upload_date mobile_url thumbnail_small thumbnail_medium thumbnail_large user_name user_url user_portrait_small user_portrait_medium user_portrait_large user_portrait_huge stats_number_of_likes Number of Plays stats_number_of_comments duration width height tags embed_privacy

One more thing: Vimeo only includes 20 results using the simple API. If you have more videos in this album, as I do, just use the “page” parameter with another importXML command. For example, cell A22 on my spreadsheet contains the following formula:

=importXml("http://vimeo.com/api/v2/album/1888172/videos.xml?page=2","//video")

Extracting YouTube Statistics from a Playlist

I am not aware of an equivalent simple API for YouTube, though I imagine there is a complex API available for developers. Instead, I’m going to use the importXML command to read the content of an HTML page.

Once again, we are using a container to organize our videos. On YouTube, I used a playlist to collect all of the Networking Field Day videos. The following URL will show sufficient information on videos for the purposes of this exercise:

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL402D2AB55B52FE49&feature=view_all

The importXML function allows us to parse HTML as XML. We are going to key off the “span” tag with the class of “video-info”. ImportXML will output the title and “views” number in 2 columns on our spreadsheet. Here is the command for my playlist:

=importxml("http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL402D2AB55B52FE49&feature=view_all";"//span[@class='video-info']")

Once again, I placed this command in cell A2 and put my headings in row one.

One major issue with collecting data in this way is the “corruption” of longer titles with ellipses and “by StephenFoskett”. To handle this, I am creating a “short title” for each video that truncates them just before the elipsis. I’m using the following function in column C to do just that:

=left(left(A2,len(A2)-17),50)

The “17” refers to the length of the phrase, “by StephenFoskett”, and I’m truncating after 50 characters to be nice and even.

I also need to remove the word, “views” and convert column B into a number. This is accomplished with the following simple function:

=value(left(B2,len(B2)-6))

Converging and Correlating YouTube and Vimeo Data in Google Spreadsheets

In both cases, Google spreadsheets will automatically update the YouTube and Vimeo data sheets every time the workbook is opened (though not immediately if it has just done so). But I wanted to correlate both so that I can create a nice graph showing statistics from both sites. To do this, I created another spreadsheet that correlates the two sources of information.

Column A of my spreadsheet contains the full video title, inserted as simple text. It is important that Vimeo and YouTube have exactly the same title for every video! I am using text keys and the vlookup function so that I can sort the output to make a prettier graph.

Column E of my spreadsheet generates the correct short title with a simple “left” function. This allows me to match the full Vimeo name with the shortened YouTube name. My function is as follows:

=left(A2,50)

Column F extract the raw Vimeo numbers using the full video name as the key:

=vlookup(A2,'Vimeo Data'!B:Q,16,0)

I then pass this output through an “iserror” function to catch any undefined values and placed this information in column B for use in my graph:

=if(A2<>"",if(iserror(F2),0,F2),"")

Column G matches the short title to the view count from my YouTube spreadsheet:

=vlookup(E2,'YouTube Data'!C:E,2,0)

As is the case for Vimeo, I use the “iserror” function to move the final YouTube number into column C:

=if(B2<>"",if(iserror(G2),0,G2),"")

Column D contains a simple sum of the Vimeo and YouTube data. I sort this “Z to A” so that my graph will have the most watched video at the top.

I can now create a beautiful graph using columns A, B and C. I’m using a stacked bar chart to show the output. Google spreadsheets has remarkably limited graphing flexibility, but I feel that this particular chart is acceptable for presentation. I do wish they would improve in this area, however.

Stephen’s Stance

I hope this helps you to see how you can extract data from Vimeo and YouTube and use that data in your own Google Spreadsheets. Leave me a comment if you have any suggestions or corrections, or even just to share your own experiences.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2012. | How to Automatically Import YouTube and Vimeo Viewer Statistics into Google Docs Spreadsheets
This post was categorized as Personal. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.