Canon Pancake Lens Review

A couple of months ago I got a Canon EF 40mm f/2.8 STM Lens also know as a pancake lens due to its dimensions. It is a small lens which it designed for use as a video lens because of its silent motor (STM meaning stepping motor). The quality of the lens is good with the connection area being metal, instead of plastic on cheap lenses. It has a 40mm focus length which works well in both in-door and out-door situations. When videoing even though the lens it meant to be silent there is a slight noise.

The lens is very thin like a pancake and because of the dimension it easily fits into the camera bag. This is not a professional photographers review of the lens, but after using it for a couple of months I have found it a very useful lens, not just for taking video, but it produces some great photos which are clear and sharp. Because of the size and price, which is less than £200 it is a great little lens to own and would recommend it.

HTML5 Links

Below are some great HTML5 links I have found

Apples HTML5 page with links to some decent demos
http://www.apple.com/html5/

Mozilla developer network links to loads of HTML5 demos
https://demos.mozilla.org/en-US/

Googles HTML5 demo web site
http://www.chromeexperiments.com/

Loads of information and resources on HTML5
http://www.html5rocks.com/en/

Microsofts Internet Explorer demo page with some demos of HTML5
http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/

Examples of HTML5 features including some great resources
http://beta.theexpressiveweb.com/

Google search results error with AVG

While using Google search in the Chrome browser I received the following error message:
TypeError: Object #<Text> has no method 'getBoundingClientRect'

Clicking OK removed the message and allowed me to continue as normal, then I received the error message again a few moments later. I managed to find that the error would occur when moving the mouse cursor over particular adverts on the right hand side of the search results, I then realised that these adverts had an AVG related icon on the left of the title which when you hover over an AVG dialog would appear regarding the safety ratings. To fix the error I turned off the AVG safe search option in the 'Google Extensions' options.

Most popular browsers

I have just been looking at the stats for this blog and I was surprised to see which browser was the most popular. Here are the stats for the top 5.

1. Firefox 34%
2. Internet Explorer 24%
3. Chrome 16%
4. Safari 16%
5. Opera 3%

The reason why I was surprised is that years ago I used Firefox because it was a great alternative to IE, since then I found that IE caught up and then Chrome was released which I now consider the best browser for the Windows OS. I also used Opera for a short time and was impressed with some of the features included with the browser. The reason why I liked Chrome over IE, Firefox and Opera is that it runs really fast. I can see that Firefox users dislike IE and will eventually move over to Chrome and Chrome and Safari will become the top browsers.

LG OLED Super thin TV

LG have released the next generation of TVs with a 55 inch screen that is only 0.16 inch thick!!! OLED stands for Organic Light Emitting Diode and is more efficient than existing LED/LCD TVs, but currently the new TV will cost over £6000 ($10,000), however it is predicted that costs will drop like previous technology and will become affordable by 2015. OLED is currently used in other devices with smaller screens like the Sony PS Vita. I imagine Samsung will release a similar model in the next few weeks.

02076197597 Phone Calls After Donating

In November I was approached by a young lady in the street collecting for the Shelter charity, which I believe is a good cause and I thought I would donate. They way they wanted me to donate is via a simple SMS text message which would cost me the amount that I wanted to donate. I thought this was a good idea because it is not always you have the correct amount of cash that you wish to donate. Everything was fine until I started getting calls from 02076197597, I did not answer these calls because generally I don't answer calls who I don't know who it is, it us to mainly be annoying recruitment companies with jobs that had nothing related to what I do. After doing some research into this number it appears to be related to a number of charities. I might be incorrect, but I think that Shelter must have taken my number and past it onto a charity collecting company. Because of this my advice is never give your number out to charities and if you are going to give stick with cash or card.

Death of social networking?

Lately I have found that there are more and more issues with social networking sites.Here is a list of current issues and possible future problems that I have heard of.

• There are more and more scams appearing on the sites, the latest I saw was the Facebook Tesco scam which looked like a valid offer because a friend had put a link for it. I can see that there will be more elaborate scams in the future.
• You have to be very careful on who is your friend, there a lot of fake accounts with people who say they know you just to get more information on you.
• Insurance companies are looking at social networking and what information you put on them, like if you say you are going out and you get burgled they will not payout.
• A lot of people are getting a bit tired of it and it is no longer innovative and needs something new. Once everyone was using friends reunited, but these things are fads and become less and less popular.

There are of course reasons why social networking is here to stay, but people get bored and there has to be constant innovation to keep people interested, without this people will move onto other sites and trends. Is it possible that in a few years time people will have had enough of social networking and will be interested in something else. I can see some sites like Linked In continuing because it is a place to advertise your work, it could be Facebook and Twitter also go down this avenue and include a way recruitment agencies can use their sites. I think the next couple of years will be an interesting time, with existing sites looking for innovation and new sites and new ideas appearing.

Outlook.com First Impressions

Outlook.com is the new email service from Microsoft, which is designed to replace its Hotmail service. I received an email to my hotmail account with a link to upgrade to the new service, simply clicking the link upgraded the service almost instantly. My first impressions are good, here are some of the pros and cons I have found so far.

Pros

Clean looking more modern feel, more Windows 8.
Option to delete message from within the message line.
Sweep option to help clean up the inbox.
More email settings including an automated holiday reply option.


Cons

Need for larger screen, does not work well on a netbook.
Does not give a page number, just gives you the current page and options to more back forward and to a specific date.

These are currently my first impressions of the new email service, I imagine the more I use it the more will appear.