Not that I am in the habit of drooling over photo gadgets, but I must say, when my partner Inese Birstins give me the BBC link below, I was truly dazzled. Our previous entry was all about archiving and the issue of storing/archiving files, ever-increasing in number and size. This new panoramic photo system is breaking all records in this regard: it is about to deliver a gargantuan appetite for storage but, nevertheless, an amazing visual and affordable way to create such files. This is all too dangerous. It works, it costs around $350-$500 (including a low-end digital camera), and it’s fun. The truth is there have been less than practical attempts to replace the legendary Swiss-made Alpa ROTO 360 panoramic camera that cost, in the eighties, a mere $25K. This just does it… I need one.
Imagine being able to zoom into any part of a panoramic photograph that catches your eye. Plus, even seeing people miles away when the picture was taken.
Richard Taylor Editor, BBC Click
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/8004657.stm
Posted by nelsonvigneault 
We are getting our telescope ready and are hoping for a clear view of the sky. The CleanPix team is happily switching off all lights on the inside and outside of our headquarters building for Earth Hour. In addition we will be unplugging all non-essential computers during this time. We’ll be enjoying the calm in concert with the millions of others who are joining in on this notable gesture. We are aware that living on Earth is a privilege.
That was today’s headline for The Huffington Post at around 8:30 MST this morning. The headline changed over every 5 minutes to create, I guess, an entertainment appeal to the story. This headline linked to a web video interview with Obama that happened solely on the web as opposed to simultaneously directed to traditional newsprint/TV media. Under the headline, a collage of traditional forms of media (still shots of TV casts and newspaper front pages) frames a YouTube video screenshot. I think that was the point of that headline… A sort of virtual Harakiri directed to traditional media. In reality, this is all more about the vehicle of news rather than the Media itself and it is certainty not about the content of the news. Of course, the surrounding advertisements are the same, cars cars, cars and expensive gadgets destined to lure our CEOs from their cherished bonuses (Sorry, I digress).
The experts agree it’s time to get your marketing/pr running full spin and this despite budget cuts and market slow down. These times have happened in the past; the clear winners have emerged in the end from those that have demonstrated leadership by endorsing a simple but winning strategy. This strategy is: raising awareness of their products or destinations with unwavering energy. Showing some panache is not for the faint of heart, but when you think about it, any sign of bright and bushy tail vigor goes a long way when the competition is busy being sorry for itself or is waiting for a handout that is likely not going to happen.
This feedback from Tourism Squamish , a new member of CleanPix, delighted us.
Finally… and we have updated pressuite.com to emphasize our invitation to writers as well as bloggers to join a pool of hundreds of other active Pressuite guests. The call for action is simple; get creative and busy posting fresh pressbriefs and engage the media. Get your story broadcasted on print as well as on-line and use pressuite.com as your tool. Again, what works best is short, paragraph or two long, briefs with some great pictures to match. Don’t forget to ensure your captions are all in place! To know more on the best ways to brief an eager media blogger or writer you can 
Back from a conference in San Francisco dedicated to Social Media where, I must say, I learned a few things, or perhaps, I learned new questions? Here was a group of 200 or so participants that for the most part remained wired to their laptops as they followed the guest speakers. Many were blogging or twittering (tweeting) live at the conference proceedings. Twittering during a presentation is a good thing.
Making a press release has a lot in common with pitching a story to a live media person. But there is one bit of confusion we are ready to stamp out. You do not make the news, the journalists do. This means provide the seed and let the media build the story. Understanding how the media goes about their job is a great help in preparing a sound approach.
Is there a definitative digital archive solution?
April 20, 2009Here are some of the factors at play: File formats change constantly, the software versions that read these formats as well as the hardware and their operating systems seem to thrive on obsolescence. The sheer amount of digital bits, the cataloguing/indexing methods, the need for redundancies of storage and location are all part of the archival equation. And most important is ease of retrieval. (We already know: “Your call is important to us, we are busy serving your competition, please stay in the queue… then push the pound key to listen to this message again.”) Talking about pounds, it comes to mind (not to discourage anyone), that that the human body has more retentive ability to preserve fat than any digital system has for the files it so gluttonously ingests!
Here are some interesting notes:
Although this article was published in 2002, (this article was first published on guardian.co.uk at 10.51 GMT on Sunday 3 March 2002 ) it appears that at least the concept in this article and its relevancy remain preserved to this date.
In further digging on the subject and the science of digital preservation, I retrieved this “touché” webpage that should, if nothing else, poke a serious dent in the illusive notion of digital archiving. (Note, in this case I took a picture of the webpage for fear of imminent evaporation.) Perhaps we should not just yet add “digital archive” (an oxymoron?) to Wikipedia.
There are, in fact, serious efforts and new conceptual approaches to solve the dilemma, but first, I think, we have to really look beyond IT and it’s terabyte devices to the professional librarians who, from Alexandria to now, have been in the business of dealing with archives. One thing that particularly struck me conceptually is that it appears that digital is better at being live than archived. So why not give it life? Here is one librarian, Brewster Kahle, revealing that the secret to the organization’s success is in keeping it simple in a vision opting to give access to the world of knowledge freely to the world. In his words: “We are allergic to secret sauce.”
Thinking about it, I have written on this WordPress blog platform now for several months. Did anyone at CleanPix make a copy of all this stuff, anywhere but on WordPress? … oops!
The latest digital archiving solution has a problem of its very age
Making alternate copies is likely core to any 101 classes on digital archiving. I must say that when I did my graduate studies at R.I.T. in photography, the museum practice course did not include “digital” anything in the subjects…yet. In the mid 1980s, the Encyclopedia Britannica was in its heyday in its printed voluminous form. Now it exists in its entirety in a complex configuration of zeros and ones. But the core archiving methodology learned then remains still valid: to date, not enough time has elapsed to definitely validate any digital archiving practices. This simply means that the latest digital archiving solution has a problem of its very age. This is the nature of new evolving digital technologies.
At CleanPix we are prone to say, in the context of a “green environment’”, that “dealing with digital files digitally is the only way to go” (using the internet as opposed to flash drives and CD burning etc.). This slogan may turn up to be more true on more levels than we first thought. For the shear pleasure of it, if we interpolate from the famous E=mc2 equation where mass contains all its energy, we could derive a parallel where digital is energy, and when stored as mass (mechanical) it becomes “heavier” to deal with. I knew that sooner-than-later I will find a twist to insert Einstein in this blog and perhaps share with you this awesome NOVA video that put relativity, relatively understandable and certainly entertaining. Here is an abstract of the video: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/preview/q_3213.html