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Mobile Devices, Tablets, Smart Phones: Why Apple's iOS Has the Edge -- Again

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Mobile Devices, Tablets, Smart Phones: Why Apple's iOS Has the Edge -- Again

People tend to be glued to their tablets and smart phones all the time. There seems to be so much to do that cannot be done five minutes later or an hour later when we’re back home for many of us these days. Whether or not that’s really true is for everyone themselves to decide, and if people really do not mind — or even enjoy — the feeling of always being on the leash for someone else and being immediately available for the stupidest of questions and accessible to others all the time, so be it for these ones.

The health implications of these new behavioral patterns are far-reaching though.

Apart from attention spans getting shortened constantly and reasonable thinking being replaced by the mere reflex of hitting “Like” or sending off some pretty useless “emoticon” along with an equally useless photo of what someone may or may not be eating at one particular moment — really, who-the-f*** gives a s***?! — there are non-psychologic health effects as well.

Just look at people around you: having evolved to some level of going upright, it appears as though humanity would be set to reverse that development, constantly needing to look at some little screen displaying sparkling colors, entertaining them while they should actually be walking (in a more relaxed way), or giving them directions (as if one couldn’t use one’s eyes to look around and see where you’re going in most every-day situations). It might not be long until most of us go back to crawling on the floor again, if we continue with our addiction to beg for guidance from something we hold in front of ourselves, developing an increasingly spastic-looking habit of fixation toward this ridiculous and visually insufficient, pixelated thing and its images.

On top of that are the EMF implications, exposure to electromagnetic fields. If you bore with me until now, it is possible that this is the point where your eyes will glaze over. EMFs and their effects on health have been spun so they seem to be for conspiracy theorists and crazies out there only. The fake-news industry has done a great job at this, and now the majority of people are brain-washed into believing that there’s nothing real about health warnings or people cautioning their fellow humans when it comes to cellphone, mobile device, cordless home phone, baby monitor, or similar wireless device use.

I would say, just “follow the money” though. Here’s why:

Lawyers have this thing going for a while now that they can make very good money leading class-action lawsuits against big businesses. Might be only an outrage or a nasty habit of some mediocre ambulance-chasers one might say — were there not the numerous verdicts and settlements finding some of the initial allegations sustainable in court and awarding significant amounts of money to the victims or affected of some established wrongdoing on the part of the industries concerned. Businesses were fast to learn from that and have included pages and pages of disclaimers, user instruction, disclosures, and risk warnings in accompanying documentation with many kinds of product sold to consumers. Of course, it’s all contained in the small-print only, but never mind.

So I’d suggest you get yourself a powerful magnifying glass from your drawer and have a look into cellphone manuals, user instructions for tablets and mobile devices. While we’re at it, we may as well put the blinders the industry and the mainstream media gave us back in!

Now browse through that manual and go right to the last few pages of it…

  ***

  it absolutely would make sense that it’s only ‘better’ when idle, as the router still has to produce sufficient signal strength in order to do its job. One bright side though: I understand this particular unit to include some sort of auto-sensing which means that it will cut off all ‘overpowering’ and only emit the amount of WiFi actually needed for certain connections and at their particular distance — so you would still have a significant reduction benefit, e g when this router is transmitting to a nearby device over a short distance requiring very little transmitter power (hence little radiation; better, but still not ideal from an EMF standpoint). Using adaptors like this one https://amzn.to/2RGvcaw and hard-wiring whenever possible (IMHO, it’s ALWAYS possible, who would really need insecure/slower wireless networking?!) is generally the most prudent solution. Having gone as far as now ‘allowing hard-wired connections in again’, I believe Apple have done a giant leap forward (for all of us) and have, once again, the edge over Android-based devices. (In Android newer than 4.4 you unf now need dedicated apps to make ‘reverse tethering’ or internet ‘tunneling over USB’ possible at all — and even if you go the extra mile, it is not certain that each and every of your Android apps will still run). Compatibility has never been an issue with iOS apps when connected using the above Lightning-to-Ethernet adaptors — and why would it: every iOS app has to be able to travel over the Lightning port for iTunes and AppStore compatibility; it’s pretty certain Apple will make sure they do during their infamous app preview)…

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Hello World!

My memories of coding back in the day...

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A Broker Is a Person 'Broker than You' -- Here's Why, and How Most Brokers Mug Things Up

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A Broker Is a Person 'Broker than You' -- Here's Why, and How Most Brokers Mug Things Up

The large majority of real estate agents are on record for neither being overly bright nor having any feel for investing. Most of them are only employees working for some office they don’t feel very strongly for — and, to be honest, neither care about real estate nor investments in general. They are the people giving you “advice” though if you happen to be interested in a particular piece of property.

Bad luck, in most cases then.

While there certainly are exceptions of seasoned real estate agents who have got a hang for particular kinds of property or who are self-employed, sufficiently ambitious, and/or simply love the line of work they’re in, our own multi-year experience in many local real estate markets throughout one or two dozen countries worldwide has taught us many sobering lessons among the few situations that we were and still are really happy about. (Needless to say that we continue working with the brokers offering decent properties in a convincing and proper way and earned our business by standing out from the crowd, as described above).

Take, for example, Irish properties where one large auctioneer seems to be dominating a good portion of the country’s housing market today. While they do offer adequate online support (and even try and stimulate extra action once they feel there aren’t enough interested parties to make prices going the hoped-for way, which is clearly North of already overly expensive Dublin and generally Irish price levels), if you look closely you’ d be hard-pressed finding an agency mugging things up more badly (for the seller side as well as the prospective buyers) than these lackluster employees on their heavily subsidised and overpaid big bottoms.

As a real estate agent, you can hardly do anything worse to sellers’ interests than not provide good information in order to make the subject property as attractive as possible to as many potential buyers as possible. This is the only way of attaining as good a selling price (or final auction price) as possible. Failing to do this means leaving money on the table or torpedoing the chances of selling the property altogether.

Merely look at the fact that they regularly fail to even mention if there is any land included with a property or, if so, how much. It might, in my humble opinion, be possibly of interest to a real estate investor (or buyer) how much real estate there is, in fact, included. Remember, that real estate refers to investment in land, hence that portion of property features might reasonably be expected to be of interest to prospective buyers (if you want to attract them, that is).

Also note that they do have a shiny online presence outlining the properties up for auction in the next session. However, what good is such an innovative — and certainly attractive and very handy, if used in the right manner… — tool when it is more than obvious that listings are produced without giving any thought about the property listed, nor about the audience of these listings and their needs and matters worth knowing. From the very “presentations” themselves and even upon superficial browsing, you can clearly see that they have merely grudgingly sent out a bored trainee to the properties. Equipped with some point-and-shoot digital camera, this person then reluctantly drove by the subject properties without even stopping and regularly took between one (!) and three shots of the house out the side window of their car. No internal images, no details as to property size, not even any reliable outside dimensions of the house, no mention of outbuildings, no nothing.

When you still register or put some nice little house on the “My Properties” list, you may or may not receive further updates on the subject property later on — usually much later on, as in one or two days before the auction. These “further updates” then include essential legal documents (such as mortgage copies from which you cannot even see if you are buying morgaged property or property free of any bank or other liens) or in some — increasingly many, by the way — instances a notice that the auction reserve price has been lowered from such-and-such by 5000 euros (in that case a whopping 15%) or similar amounts.

It is painfully obvious that today’s housing market with its omnipresence of bubble pricing also brings about total incompetence on the part of the middlemen involved as a result of these unhealthy housing market distortions and price bubbles.

For illustration’s sake, look at what they’ve done with this sample Irish property auction offer, and note that only three outside pictures where available prior to the auction date. The desperately ones, needed for any reasonable decision whether to visit and view or not to view, mysteriously appeared the night before the auction — a clear example of Too-little-too-late. Also, that essential question whether or not the place of your buying-on-the-cheap dream comes with or without a €100,000 mortgage has still not been answered — leaving potential buyers in the dark as to what they would be bidding on.

We are watching how that goes and whether or not this particular lot will be sold in the upcoming auction.

For all the complaining, one thing is sure: even with “information” like this, there is a certain informational — along with some entertainment — value in these kinds of auctions. The information bit being some kind of gauge on the state of the Irish property market. As this particular country’s market seems too stubborn to adequately correct after the 2008 events — or even start correcting at all –, it is already of interest to receive at least some messages of “lowered reserve prices” on certain properties for these show that, even in Ireland, prices are now set to adapt, if only slightly, to investment reality.

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Water Filters: Caveat Emptor, If You Want to Really be Safe from Contaminants

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Water Filters: Caveat Emptor, If You Want to Really be Safe from Contaminants

After some research into the more popular as well as some lesser-known water filtering units, it turns out that there are mainly two models of water filters out there really doing their jobs properly. Depending on what you want, i e dependent on the contaminants you seek to reduce (or ideally eliminate), the outcome might be slightly different.

For every-day use, water contamination with pesticides, heavy metals, antibiotics and other medical residues should be the focus of your attention. These are most common contaminants in the public water supply in almost every country today. (Water from a private well may still be exposed to nitrate as well as rain-borne contaminants as well as pesticide run-off from agricultur, a. k. a. conventional “farmers”.) To get rid of these, the AcalaQuell filtering system has one of the best set-ups. Also, this filter treats pressurised water that has run through a domestic water system to decompress and let it find its natural characteristics again, which basically means the water can “breathe” or re-naturalise before it is consumed as drinking water.

The German-made AcalaQuell system is available directly from the manufacturers via the AcalaQuell online shop as a rectangular-shaped desktop water filtering jar or a pitcher-style or “pouring can” variant with a slightly more ergonomic handle (or in Germany from Amazon.de as well as their other local-language website versions).

AcalaQuell filters beat those popular Brita filters by miles. Be aware that laboratory tests have found Brita filters (along with “Culligan”, “Pure”, and “Seychelle” filters) to actually INCREASE aluminium contamination in water by 33.9% (ouch). This is possibly due to some aluminium parts within those cartridges, so what’s the point of using Brita, really…), see these in-depth water test results for more! The Acala filter is not known to have these problems. AcalaQuell know a thing or two about Good Water and their filters are among the best thought-out on the market.

There is also a very good US-made filter called ZeroWater. This variant excels at removing heavy metals, including radioactive contaminants like uranium, caesium, strontium, plutonium (and others that might be present during a nuclear emergency and as the “payload” of alleged weather engineering cocktails appearing in regular aircraft exhausts for reasons unknown), from your drinking water. So if general heavy metals filtering or even getting rid of radioactive contamination are the main filtering need, then the pitcher-style ZeroWater filter is clearly and by far your best choice (also available from local Amazon stores like amazon.de or other language versions.

At the end of the day, we got both filtering systems, the Zero Water “just in case” or as a preventative measure along with the AcalaQuell for more regular or “every-day” use. The latter we ordered with a supply of filtering cartridges. Each of them is said to have a useful life of 2 months. This gives you plenty of output for your money and is a lot cheaper and more convenient than bottled water. (Without any fungi issues, it is also the much better option over bottled water).

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touringAV -- If You Like Travel, Outdoors, Touring Videos, Watch This!

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touringAV -- If You Like Travel, Outdoors, Touring Videos, Watch This!

If you really love travel, touring videos and everything-outdoors, you’ll likely be inspired by our destination videos, campervan diaries, and the occasional sailing, canoeing and outdoorsy stuff we cover. We have decided to include all touringAV content inside this website and use appropriate tagging in order to orgainze everything in an easy-to-use manner.

To start this project off, we uploaded the latest version of our AP/V (aerial photo and video) result brought home from a tour this summer. This one features Lake Väner in Sweden’s Dalsland and Värmland provinces. The images were shot from a DJI Phantom flying over beautifully coloured woods along the rocky shorelines of Europe’s largest lake (after the Russian Lakes Ladoga and Onega).

Also make sure to check out my stock image portfolio on Shutterstock to download similar RF imagery for re-use, also revealing a few glimpses into how we got there in the first place, traversing Denmark and Northern Germany in summer.

The featured video will be used as the Channel Trailer for touringAV over on YouTube, but there’s more — usually extended versions and Premium or enhanced stuff — available on D.Tube, Vimeo and/or Lbry in order to support these platforms over Google’s own video portal.

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iOS 10.2 and Newer: Apple Silently Introducing Hard-Wired Ethernet Over Lightning Connectivity

A brand-new Post has been published on http://marquix.net/ios-10-2-apple-ethernet-over-lightning/

iOS 10.2 and Newer: Apple Silently Introducing Hard-Wired Ethernet Over Lightning Connectivity

Apple have very silently — one might even call it covertly — introduced a great hard-wired Ethernet (LAN) option into their mobile operating system iOS 10.2 and newer versions. To even SEE it on your device, you FIRST need a special cable though (Lightning to RJ-45 or Ethernet adaptor). Only when that one is plugged in, you will see ‘Ethernet’ between “WiFi” and “Bluetooth” under “Settings”.

We have tested this Ethernet Adaptor for iOS Devices and found it to be working nicely with both iPhone and iPod touch on one hand as well as iPad tablets on the other.

To be on the safe and EMF-free side, simply use an adaptor like that, power it FROM A GROUNDED power supply and a grounded outlet over a STP Cat-7 cable and you will be able to avoid all RF and most of the Electric Fields as well as DE while still using those apps.

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Webtalk -- Communicate Better!

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Webtalk -- Communicate Better!

The up-and-coming Social Media platform Webtalk, on top of being a superior a more featurprich professional and personal contacts management system, might be a great money-making opportunity for you, dear reader. So whether you’re just into finding a better ‘Rollodex’-type of tool, a more advanced contacts management solution, or an affiliate commissions earner — you should read on:

They are pretty new to the game, and the first 1 million subscribers fulfilling some minimum requirements will qualify for 5x the planned-for commission payments, stacked to 5 levels, for an unlimited period of time.

What this means:

Webtalk is pretty much a mix of LinkedIn, Facebook, eBay, and Twitter etc, allowing people to post and discuss online, publish presentations, public profiles, advertising, and what have you. Webtalk will start selling ads like Facebook in a few weeks time. They also plan on integrating an eBay or Amazon Marketplace-style online market where professionals market their services or individuals sell their old video games, socks, or Lego bricks. Also, like LinkedIn, they offer “premium” and “ad-free” features. All these features and the advertising will be paid-for services which, in turn, they pay a commission on to the ones “bringing in the business” (namely premium subscribers, ad clients).

Like Facebook’s infamous EdgeRank algorithm, Webtalk will have their own, called SocialCPX. At the same time, SocialCPX is the portal for that marketplace and affiliate commissions processing and payments platform. The platform is still in Beta, SocialCPC is not even really live yet, and sign-up is by invitation only. I received one a few days ago from one of my connections on LinkedIn.

And here’s the bummer: relatively deep down in the TOU it says that — unlike on any other platform I am aware of — you will even be free to SELL your Webtalk/SocialCPC profile and “ground-level affiliate status” after 5 years — so I figured that’s a nice speculation in case everyone will be bending over backward by then just to get one of those long-gone 5-level commission accounts…

Here’s the invitation/sign-up link again, in case you’re interested. Join now — and as long as the enhanced 5-level commission-earning opportunity exists!

I really have NO IDEA at all when it comes to whether or not a brand-new platform like Webtalk will take off or whether it will ever gain a large-enough market share to make this a worthwhile thing to pursue, but — as of this writing —  user numbers have started exploding, Over the last month or so, they have continuously doubled and are now over a million — and counting. On top, it’s free (other than your time for setting your stuff up), and I’ll give it a shot. I’ve also shared this info on my Facebook profile back in October when this thing started to look interesting. Maybe it’s interesting for any of you guys.

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Website Clean-Up, Spam Removal, Search Engine Removal and Restriction Management

A brand-new Post has been published on http://marquix.net/website-clean-up-spam-removal-search-engine-removal-and-restriction-management/

Website Clean-Up, Spam Removal, Search Engine Removal and Restriction Management

Today’s way of mainstream internet use has created a ton of “new problems” for businesses and publishers. Anyone running any kind of website will be aware — from unpleasant experience, I assume — of how widespread unsolicited advertising or submission of useless content serving only the purpose of sneaking in some hoped-for publicity for the benefit of the creator of this annoyance (“Spam”) is these days.

Spamming another person’s website with meaningless and completely off-topic rubbish like that — as seen so frequently from shady SEO ‘experts’ who, in fact don’t know the first thing about their occupation  — is still the rudest thing you can do, and it is the bottom-of-the-barrel of online low life there is. Period.

Dozens of scripts and CMS Plugins needed to be developed to counter that kind of abuse, even changes in Google’s Algorithm have been brought about by it, and many other attempts of solving the problem that spreaded like wildfire all over the internet during recent years. If you need a consultant specializing in cleanup, Spam removal, search engine restriction management, and all kinds of similar recovery measures, check out imageHoppers and talk to a qualified specialist there. Despite all the available solutions and preventative measures, some losers continue doing just that, trespassing on websites and  submitting Comment Spam, not even realizing how useless their methods are. We see it every day on the marquixNET IT Services website, too.

Comment Spam may now even be counter-productive (because of Duplicate Content traps and a whole lot of other reasons). Anyone doing this is only proving one thing: how dumb and incompetent they are, and that they better try finding other ways of making money instead of destroying other people’s content while potentially even defrauding their SEO clients (if they have any) promoting links to websites like that.

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Product Review: ASUS VivoBook Slim S510UQ-BQ517T 15.6-Inch Laptop

A brand-new Post has been published on http://marquix.net/product-review-asus-vivobook-slim-s510uq-bq517t-15-6-inch-laptop/

Product Review: ASUS VivoBook Slim S510UQ-BQ517T 15.6-Inch Laptop

First off, the ASUS VivoBook Slim 15.6 inch Laptop boasts the worst BIOS I have ever seen. ASUS urgently need to change this! They are now trying a ridiculous GUI-style BIOS screen, but they forgot to make this rubbish work: does not recognise external drives, no USB-boot possible, I wasted hours on end only to finally find a few forum posts saying it’s likely not going to work, at all. Without any intention to taint this review right from the start, this is one of the most important factors I had to consider, so I needed to mention it right at the top of this review.

  Most Important Review Question: Does the Item Deliver?

“ASUS — In Search of Incredible”, but the only thing they found is incredibly stupid. So continue searching, ASUS… They need to do a lot more searching, maybe then at least they re-gain some credibility among just slightly advanced users instead.

It seems as if they did not do any marketing, usability and user-base research.

I am going to look into other important features and noteworthy matters about the ASUS VivoBook Slim S510UQ-BQ517T 15.6-Inch Laptop below. The model I am reviewing and commenting about here has the following specifications: CPU Intel Core i5-8250U, RAM 8 GB, Drive or Storage 256 GB SSD, Graphics NVIDIA GeForce 940MX, Windows 10 pre-installed (the latter is a major downside, see in-depth reasons and comments below).

Quite unlike previous ASUS notebooks I had, this one is finally fault-free, even has a nice and responsive trackpad, working keyboard etc (not at all a common thing at ASUS, according to my own experience). They either fixed their earlier quality issues, or I just got lucky with the unit I received. Note that I still kept the other one (despite its drawbacks, for it was a versatile allrounder otherwise, and I was happy with its -re-configurability and options for modification, OS-replacement, and overall optimization). I am also giving ASUS the benefit of the doubt when it comes to earlier shakiness issues, assuming I was just ‘unlucky’ and they may have been limited to a few items out of a wider range of fault-free ones? So I am overall (maybe overly) ASUS-friendly in my review here, but enough is enough.

  The (Incredibly Stupid) Push for Yet More Vendor Lock-In

It is sad to see how ASUS screwed up an otherwise very well-built and (at long last) quality unit, simply by pushing for yet more vendor lock-in and making it (intentionally or out of engineering incompetence at ASUS?) hard to use this box for anything but housewife-style computing. Wholly unsuitable for anything remotely resembling professional deployment.

Note that I am not that dumb here and I very well did disable ‘secure mode’, turned off all those idiotic shenanigans, switched back from that hairbrained GUI-style BIOS screen to a more normal-looking one they call ‘advanced mode’, I enabled CSM and tried all sorts of additional steps just in order to make this pile of garbage boot from USB-connected devices like CDROM or a standard USB memory. Nothing. Numerous sources all over the Net also confirm that you’re likely out of luck with this product when it comes to wanting only a tiny bit more than your every-day mass-market consumer or dumb user. Not a good approach for any manufacturer. Certainly not worth our money, so let us wish them better luck in future (they’ll need it)!

  Overall Layout, Hardware Design

While build quality has considerably improved over previous ASUS products tested and the display is clear, crisp, stable, anti-glare and simply lovely, the trackpad on my unit was responsive, accurate, and very good, and there are many features mass-market and consumer-level users might like about this ASUS notebook, there are other (more important) factors to consider.

They don’t even include any RJ-45 sockets to connect to standard networking without dongles, adaptors, and similar pain. Have they never seen a professional network or even a medium-size datacenter at ASUS?! Have they never heard of the outrage Apple have been causing by scrapping common connectors on MacBooks?! And do note that these ASUS thingies are not even MacBooks, so ASUS would be well-advised to stand a little lower and adhere to what their audience wants and needs. I really don’t know what they have been smoking. Seriously…

I am most certainly aware (also confirmed in the reviews left and right of this one) that most people only seem to care about how ‘good’ the wireless stuff is or whether it displays nice colours out of the box (and, clearly, it should! Instead of complaining, one could also try to fix those graphics issues by finding that usually easy-to-fix driver problem though)! Still, there is that ‘other half’ of users who need all (or some) of what I mentioned, but ASUS are neglecting that portion of the market altogether.

  Review Result

Meaning, with this (otherwise excellent, really a shame) notebook you’re stuck with that ridiculous Win-10 garbage so many people don’t really want anymore these days. No alternatives. You’re not likely to run Linux on this one. As manufacturers apparently do this on purpose with “Win10-compatible” computers these days, they are not earning my spending money. Plain and simple. Still very frustrating as in time needlessly wasted. I had to send this ASUS notebook straight back to the sellers for a refund and not waste any more time on this ridiculous product.

The unit was bought in order to test Davinci Resolve compatibility, hence the focus on a dedicated Nvidia graphics unit as well as high CPU specs and an Intel i7 processor. Due to the hurdles with even doing a basic OS replacement and Linux install for a professional video editing setup, I could not even get as far as seeing any of the actual purposes and runtime results with a power-heavy professional Video NLE package. While it may be good enough to support the software package for some playing around under Windows, this ASUS notebook (and likely any other one from this manufacturer using this ridiculous BIOS variant and ASUS-style makeover) is entirely unsuitable for this intended purpose.

The ASUS Intel Core i5-8250U, 8 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD, NVIDIA GeForce 940MX Graphics, Windows 10 received an overall score of only 1 out of 5.

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Snippet Integration with OpenGraph Plugins

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Snippet Integration with OpenGraph Plugins

Achieving the right results with website snippet integration can sometimes be tricky across SERP (search engine results pages) and multiple third-party websites, Social Media sites or similar.

As this is not an uncommon problem, a number of solutions have been developed to give website owners better control. One of them are WordPress Plugins for OpenGraph settings and manipulation.

  — Read more below. —

..

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Lightweight Cameras for Meaningful/Professional Video Production

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Lightweight Cameras for Meaningful/Professional Video Production

On great many a camera, the lack of an external microphone input is a severe downside. This can go so far as to overall ruin the usability of an otherwise excellent piece of kit for video production. If you do not have an external microphone input and are forced to use built-in mics in your camera, your video will bear ‘amateur video’ all over it. One infamous example of a camera lacking a mic input is the mostly great Sony a5100 mirrorless CSC, a versatile and affordable APS-C sensor camera. Unlike the almost equally affordable Sony a6000 — which at least has some proprietary input for an external mic (more on that below) — the Sony a5100 neither has that nor a hotshoe at htat. A real dealbreaker against the a5100.

The Sony a6000’s external mic ‘fix’ with the proprietary mic connectors behind the hotshoe still is bad enough, actually it should be treated as an overall LACK of external mic inputs altogether. most serious filmmakers do just that!

I am currently in the process of testing those options on the Sony a6000 though and will report on my findings in more detail later.

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Best Video Equipment for Online, Vimeo, Wistia, or Youtube Video

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Best Video Equipment for Online, Vimeo, Wistia, or Youtube Video

It is great to find other people’s take on how lousy DSLR default features can be for video shooting. After finding some mention of Canon being not at all good at it, which is very illustrating because — using a Nikon DSLR which is equally not good at it — I thought it might ‘just be me’ or it’s just Nikons performing so badly.

But, as I can now gather from other people’s remarks on the subject, that is apparently not so.

I have also been wondering as to the reasons for some time now. I first came to the conclusion that Nikon — whose products I love and who I used to respect for many reasons as a manufacturer of excellent equipment — appear to have been ‘resting on their fame’ of inventing the first good bayonet back in the 50s, have enjoyed their resulting popularity with still photographers all these decades, had tremendous success with the famous nikon F3 and similar stuff, but have not don much innovation ever since?

Then again, when that very same thing is reported with Canon, it does not seem to be a Nikon-specific problem. It’s rather a DSLR problem in general, it seems, as these still are geared mainly towards the still photography market. Myself having done stills from early high school, I don’t have any problem with that generally — but, come on, isn’t it about time to move ahead and adapt to real life demands some time?! How innovation-phobic can an enterprise be if they miss out on a good part of their markets for decades…

Mirrorless is an exciting solution to many of those problems! However, if they lack external audio inputs of hoy shoes, then they’re pretty much useless for video production. Larger-than-NEX models from Sony are fine though, that is the alpha series. From the Sony Alpha 6000 upward, hot shoes and inputs are there, the a6300 and a6500 even boast 4K capability, if that is required at all (customers usually don’t even know what it is and don’t insist on it — but it’s nice having for ‘future compatibility’ or for ‘ranking better’ on Youtube thanks to that little 4K extra icon you can get on there — but generally a ‘smaller’ one will be more than just fine. At any rate, mirrorless is great for ‘traveling light’ and not carry too much gear around, which often matters. Also not drawing a huge crowd, just like you said, is a big plus!

I also agree with those other reviewers on the pros and cons of camcorders. If one finds oneself a sufficient one with a decent viewfinder, hot shoe, inputs, twin cards — in short something clearly above common ‘handicam’ specs, then tey are an excellent tool. One caveat against camcorders is sensor size though: they often have baby-fingernail-sized ones which are usually inferior to mirrorless, let alone DSLR, sensors and resulting low-light and DOF performance.

So when all is said and done, I would opt for mirrorless or (carefully selected) camcorders fulfilling those ‘advanced’ needs…

As it is a matter of knowing what to look for, all these insights into equipment experience are particularly helpful to everyone starting out or thinking of upgrading their equipment.

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The Usual Imbalances with "Revenue Sharing": YouTube's "Partner" Programme

A brand-new Post has been published on http://marquix.net/the-usual-imbalances-with-revenue-sharing-youtubes-partner-programme/

The Usual Imbalances with "Revenue Sharing": YouTube's "Partner" Programme

When it comes to online video and money-making opportunities using Google AdSense as part of the YouTube video publishing process, it is claimed more often than not that Channel owners allegedly received a 50-50 cut on ad revenue generated.

Unfortunately, this is not so.

Maybe it used to be 50-50 some (rather long) time back, but my most recent Analytics insights on my YouTube Channel clearly show that it’s closer to 70-30 these days (Google, obviously, keeping the better part for themselves, in case you’re wondering)…

Also note that the Google/YouTube de-facto monopoly has now pretty much gotten rid of the small guy altogether. The infamous January 20, 2018 update to “YouTube Partner Programme” terms put the entry bar considerably higher. This is just one of many ‘updates’ tightening the rules and effectively rigging the market in their favor even further (just as they’re constantly doing since 2010, having startied with ‘Panda’ and ‘Penguin’ algo changes back then). The next big — and very bad — thing coming our way will be Google’s requiring SSL certificates or forcing the HTTPS protocol instead of simple HTTP for ALL websites in order to not be ‘punished’ and, eventually, still be listed in Google search results at all — so the overall direction here is pretty clear: screwing everyone by abusing a de-facto monopoly that has never been a good thing. And no, this is not ‘for security reasons’ or anything like that — control is the objective; getting the entire public internet “kill-switch ready”​ because it so happens you need to submit ID proof before you even get a certificate from some of those centralized CAs (certificate authorities) usurping the internet (a medium that was originally a decentralized one)! If unfairly cornering the market wasn’t enough, Google are now adding insult to injury by also unilaterally deciding they want Just a little more (with the very same ‘eloquence’ or lack thereof displayed by David Rockefeller a few years ago).

Does that mean to avoid YouTube, am I saying it was useless to even bother? No, I actually don’t. The reason for this is that establishing a presence on YouTube as something of a hybrid between an internet search engine and a social media platform is still worth it. Also, that notorious ‘income from YouTube’ is, in fact, a composite amount of 9% to 11% AdSense and roughly 90% other (affiliate link and similar) income (so you should have those) and/or ‘real’ or direct brand deals (if you happen to be a larger Channel or name out there). It all depends on ‘doing it right’ and running the right mix on there.

[marquixhd-blog]

Dealing with Customs: Putting Your Gear Through Immigration for Professional Travel

A brand-new Post has been published on http://marquix.net/dealing-customs-putting-gear-immigration-professional-travel/

Dealing with Customs: Putting Your Gear Through Immigration for Professional Travel

When you travel as a professional photographer or video producer internationally, you may be faced with customs issues.

Inside Australia, the United States plus, at the time of writing, NAFTA area also comprising Mexico and Canada, or within the European Economic Area (that is, EU plus Iceland, Norway, Switzerland), you will not have any problems, as customs treaties and “customs unions” — while being a tool of globalists and not something to be very fond of generally — at least make life for travellers a lot easier.

Crossing the “outside borders” of those block-style countries as well as crossing any other, or normal, borders, may raise customs issues though. We will look into this in a bit more detail and will also specify solutions like obtaining “carnets” for camera gear, vehicles, or other equipment that might be taxed otherwise. (Coming up soon.)

[marquixhd-blog]

Four Years of Real-Life Usage: Pros and Cons of the Nikon D3300

A brand-new Post has been published on http://marquix.net/two-years-real-life-usage-pros-cons-nikon-d3300/

Four Years of Real-Life Usage: Pros and Cons of the Nikon D3300

The Nikon D3300 continues to be one of my favourite low-priced but at the same time very versatile DSLR cameras. Some call it an excellent ‘entry-level’ camera, but it is actually more than that. I am still quite impressed by most of its features after more than 4 years of regularly using it — or, rather, even two D3300 bodies and a handful of lenses. They have all served me quite well and, over that period of time, both positives and negatives have come to light. I will explain some of them below.

The good sides of the Nikon D3300 really dominate. The camera is easy and pleasant to use in most situations — for photography even more so than for video, although being able to record at a full 60fps in HD1808p with such a low-priced camera was one of the reasons for me to get one — and this is what still amazes me today after so many hours of of HD video recording time spent with it.

Other great features of the Nikon D3300 are its featherweight specs which might even make it fly on a medium-sized multicopter for aerial video shooting, if someone is so inclined and looking for a real high-quality solution and relatively big-sensor camera to take to the skies.

In photo mode, the camera can shoot JPG and NEF (RAW format) stills at up to 5 images per second.

The real-life downsides of this camera are there as well, but they are mostly hidden ones. Most of them got to do with video camera handling. For example, if you want to shoot video remotely, you actually absolutely can not, by any means, monitor what you’re shooting: the Nikon D3300’s menu simply does not allow for any control connections while set to LiveView. (That, however, is a pre-requisite for taking video on this camera in the first place though). Very annoying and partly anihilating the usefulness of this otherwise excellent little guy! I believe it is clearly time for Nikon to finally start thinking a bit more about videographers and not continue to ignore this significant market segment altogether (leaving so many chips on the table that way and really playing in to the hands of Panasonic or even Canon with their plasticky and Digital-Restrictions-laden stuff I’d never touch)… Nikon really ought to fight (and think) a bit harder in order to not rest forever upon their past rewards of having invented some great SLR technology in 1957 (their famous lens mount bayonet) and missing out on everything else after that as a result!

Wake up, guys, and turn Nikon around! (Unfortunately, Nikon continues to exhibit remainders of that old thinking even in their latest top-of-the line Nikon D850 model… Really very sad.) While everybody appreciates good still-photography tools, more versatile ones also doing decent video — and appropriate video handling and UX — are needed to keep your position in today’s market.

Edit: there is a much longer and more detailled article I have discovered after writing the above. Curiously, it includes pretty much the same complaints about handling (or actually, the lack of it!) in video mode (as well as the lack of that, as well)! Also, the article continues laying very similar accusations and suggestions at the door of Nikon (and pretty much every other DSLR maker out there) for not getting today’s market anymore. You may want to read the article, which is, in fact, a Nikon D5300 review, here. Please do let me know in the comments section (below) what you think…

[marquixhd-blog]

Best Solutions for Self-Hosted Contests, Giveaways, and E-mail List Hosting

A brand-new Post has been published on http://marquix.net/best-solutions-self-hosted-contests-giveaways-e-mail-list-hosting/

Best Solutions for Self-Hosted Contests, Giveaways, and E-mail List Hosting

Finding the best solutions for self-hosting giveaways, contests, and e-mail lists on your own website is gaining importance. Recent changes with may of the established platforms — or even niche offerings — are making it increasingly difficult for small businesses and independent entrepreneurs to find good and affordable solutions for particular marketing tasks in their daily business life.

It is not just YouTube who unilaterally and even retrospectively (and hence unfairly!) for Channels meeting the 10,000 views threshold between September 2017 and early 2018 significantly upped their requirements. Other platforms appear to b e following suit. We just received word of a number of specialist platforms introducing high fees or others ceasing operation of much-liked services altogether.

It appears that, therefore, taking control yourself and self-hosting your business’ core needs, goodwill building functions, and ultimately your property is what makes the most sense in an increasingly locked-down world.

Depending on whether ‘going the extra mile’ is worth it to somebody, there are great entirely self-hosted solutions (hence independent, free from worries about price changes or program cancelations) available. So if you’re like me and happen to like being in control, then look into WordPress-based plugins like ‘Shortstack for WP‘, ‘Simple Giveaways‘, the FatCat Apps Plugin Contests & Giveaways, or add-ons for WooCommerce like WooCommerce Free Gift. The latter is particularly seamless if you already have a self-hosted e-shop.

The above listed, along with other useful functionality like E-mail list management or A/B testing for opt-in or landing pages and other marketing or online-selling functionality, should pretty much take care of all of your online business needs.

Granted, there is a learning curve as well as some admin work involved with using any of these solutions but these may be outsourced, if needed, and the control over your business given back to you by these Plugins is definitely worth the effort. Eliminating any counterparty risk for these parts of your entrepreneurial property is what it all comes down to! There is little use in building a business or goodwill or any other portions of business assets on someone else’s servers where they can all be taken away from you just at the punch of a button.

[marquixhd-blog]

Youtube Customer-Service Speak: Can You Go Even More Overboard...?

A brand-new Post has been published on http://marquix.net/customer-service-speak-can-you-go-even-more-overboard/

Youtube Customer-Service Speak: Can You Go Even More Overboard...?

Customer service is all about ensuring customer satisfaction — even for an unsatisfactory (or flat-out bad) product or service. A certain “speak” has been developed as a tool for achieving just that, and users in the customer service and marketing industries have gone increasingly insane with the euphemisms they use, the phrases they develop, and their attempts to brush off legitimate complaints or concerns in order to make their product or service shine, no matter what…

Part of this is the “proud-speak” variant of language where these mercenaries of big or even not-so-big corporations boast their tremendous qualities, insights, and ingenuity for their product or service. Touting customer service dedication and 24/7 availability is, of course, a huge part of that (even as it’s most certainly not done out of compassion for the poor troubled customer, but for corporate greed and promotional reasons only). Google have now gone completely overboard. Topping it of, delivering the absolute maximum, the ultimate in claimed largesse, they apparently cannot help using the following paragraph as part of their instructions among YouTube help topics:

*Please note that flagged videos do not automatically get removed. We have trained internal teams, fluent in multiple languages, who carefully evaluate your flags 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year in time zones around the world.

Actually surprised they stopped short of intergalactic availability throughout multiple gravitational zones and solar systems, but they already manage topping the list of dumb claims and wordings by some margin! (Even if it should be true, although it isn’t, at least for the “trained” teams part as we all know how much these call-centre agents know — or don’t.)

Thank you YouTube. Apart from your latest rip-off policy changes in the YPP (YouTube Partner Program), the 2018 demonetization wave against small Channels and YouTube creators, it gives us additional stuff to talk and post about on our Blogs…