Richard's Tech Reviews

Rogers Rocket stick data plans

In a sane world, there would be a range of mobile data plans, and a range of mobile data devices.  You would choose a plan, and then a device.  And then get it.

But the world of Canadian mobile devices is not a sane one.

I will now decode the Rogers plans for you.  It doesn't help that they provide a lot of their information as popover layers that I can't link to directly.

Rogers basically offers four data plan payment contract types: prepaid, monthly, 1 year, 2 year and 3 year.

They also offer two USB sticks, which they brand "Rocket" sticks: a 3G stick and an LTE stick.

So far so good.  Except they attach plans to devices.

So if you go to Rocket Stick

https://www.orderrogers.ca/rocket/stick#/overview

and click on the Prepaid Rocket Stick

https://www.orderrogers.ca/rocket/stick#/data-plan/prepaid

You might think you are on a data plan.  But you are not.  You are on a plan, attached to a specific device, named the "Prepaid Rocket™ mobile Internet stick".  You might think that's a way of paying for the stick, but no, to be clear, the Prepaid stick is only the 3G Nokia CS-18 stick.  No other stick can be prepaid.  (There is no technical reason for this, it's an arbitrary business decision.)

This would be fine if, say, the Rogers store had not specifically told me they didn't carry any Prepaid Rocket™ mobile Internet sticks and that in any case the Prepaid Rocket™ mobile Internet stick had been problematic to set up.  Instead they pointed me to the LTE Rocket™ Stick - Sierra Wireless AirCard® 330U. 

http://www.rogers.com/web/link/wirelessBuyFlow?forwardTo=PhoneThenPlan&productType=normal&productId_Detailed=AC330REDR&N=52+11+4294925041

Which would all be wonderfully clear if the Rogers website was very careful to always specify whether it was referring to the Nokia 3G stick or the Sierra Wireless LTE stick.  But which is not at all clear because the website instead uses "Rocket Internet Stick" to mean sometimes one device, sometimes the other, and sometimes both. 

For example, start at LTE Devices

http://www.rogers.com/web/link/wirelessBuyFlow?forwardTo=PhoneThenPlan&productType=normal&N=52+11+4294925041

Then click "Learn more" on the LTE Rocket Stick

http://www.rogers.com/web/link/wirelessBuyFlow?forwardTo=PhoneThenPlan&productType=normal&productId_Detailed=AC330REDR&N=52+11+4294925041

then click Device & Plan - Monthly

http://www.rogers.com/web/Rogers.portal?_nfpb=true&_windowLabel=Wireless_BuyFlow_Portlet_Definition&Wireless_BuyFlow_Portlet_Definition_actionOverride=%2Fportlets%2Fconsumer%2Fwireless%2FphoneBuyflow%2FsimplifiedWirelessBuyFlow.selectProduct&Wireless_BuyFlow_Portlet_DefinitionprodId=AC330REDR&_pageLabel=WRLS_BuyFlow&CellPhoneFinalNetPrice=169.99&ChangeProvinceEmpty=&RemoveEssential=&selectedPackageType=PHONE_THEN_PLAN&WirelessBuyFlow_Selected=PHONE_THEN_PLAN&phoneConfig_TermSelect=MONTHLY

And you get this apparently very clear screen:

$21.81/month for the LTE 100MB-9GB plan

$46.81/month for the LTE 2GB-9GB plan

and a handy link

Prepaid plans available for Rocket mobile internet stick. Learn more.

Now you might think that SINCE YOU ALREADY SELECTED LTE Rocket Stick and SINCE IT SAYS PREPAID PLANS AVAILABLE FOR ROCKET MOBILE INTERNET STICK that means that there are... prepaid plans available.

But no.  You are wrong.  When it says "Prepaid plans available for Rocket mobile internet stick" it actually means "Prepaid plans available for the Prepaid Rocket stick which is definitely not the LTE Rocket stick, isn't that obvious?"

In any case.  You might think that you could at least select the $20 monthly plan and combine it with the LTE Rocket stick, and then buy the LTE Rocket stick.

But no.  Even if you already have a Rogers account, Rogers wants to do a credit check.  A credit check to make it clear that you must be granted permission by Rogers to bless them with your money.

May I suggest that a business model designed to reduce risk from university and high school students getting their first phone is not ideally suited to middle-aged people buying their dozenth device.

As a bonus, if you manage to land on the right web page which will show you clear-ish-ly that the prepaid has one plan option

and that the LTE had 4 plan options

(Rather than say, standing in the store next to a computer while the salesperson attempts to decode an out-of-date paper rate flyer and buries you in confusion about what plans actually exist.)

You still can't actually buy it.  You may request, like a medieval supplicant kneeling before a king, the permission to give Rogers your money.  You will then wait for Rogers to call you back, to discuss whether or not this boon will be granted.

Needless to say, I am not currently in possession of an LTE stick, there being rather too many hoops to jump through, particularly considering that I already get 6GB of tetherable data for $30 on my Rogers iPhone.  I guess wanting to give Rogers extra money for much less data on a second device was too much to hope for.

Facebook photo privacy and locations

Location Privacy

Facebook has lately gotten a lot more interested in attaching locations to status updates and photos.

One route for it to get this information is directly from your device, e.g. from your iPhone location (if you've given it permission) or from your browser's location function.

In Firefox, if you've already given a page permission to access your location, there is no "location manager" to help you see what you've authorized.  You can only go per-page and then go to the obscure Tools->Page Info->Permissions tab and then change Share Location.

To globally disable location sharing in Firefox, open about:config and change geo.enabled to false.

See more info in Firefox Location-Aware Browsing FAQ.

In Chrome, it's buried in Preferences... Under the Hood->Privacy->Content Settings... (click the button then scroll down to the Location section).

However, even if you block the browser from sharing your location, it can still be extracted from the information invisibly embedded in your photos.  This may be full EXIF-GPS (the exact location the photo was taken, embedded automatically by most cameraphones and by some cameras) or e.g. IPTC keywords giving the location as a text string e.g. "Ottawa, Ontario, Canada".  (IPTC actually has many fields for location text strings, including creator contact address and image location broken down into city, province and country.)

It's not clear what Facebook is using and what it is storing.  It is certain that in some cases it has enough data to create plots like this of where photos were taken:

(from What Facebook knows about you)

Facebook has also gotten a lot more aggressive about asking for explicit location information, both when uploading (every photo now has an attached location field) and retroactively for albums:

There's not a lot you can do easily to protect your location information.  Some basics are disabling the location-aware features in your web browsers, and not completing the blank Location fields Facebook provides.  You can also disable location features in your camera phone, e.g. on an iPhone go to Settings->Location Services and either turn Location off entirely (which means maps won't work) or go into the list of apps within Location Services and set Camera (and any other photo apps) to OFF. 

Beyond that, you could strip all EXIF information, particularly GPS and IPTC keywords and location fields, but that is often difficult or impossible to do on a camera phone, and awkward to do in photo editing apps (which are more intent on preserving EXIF than destroying it).

Photo Privacy

It is important to realise that there is no "private" on the Internet.  There is only "systems attempting to enforce privacy".  Systems can be hacked or have holes, intentional or unintentional.

Facebook very much wants as much of your content as possible to be public.

One consequence of this is that every single photo in Facebook has a public URL (a public link) regardless of what limits you have set on it (e.g. "Friends only").

It is easy to find this link for an entirely album.  Simply go to one of your albums (your wall photos are also an album).  If you don't know how to find albums, go to http://www.facebook.com/media/albums/

Click a photo to go into a specific album.  Scroll to the bottom if necessary.  You should see "Share this album with anyone by sending them this public link".  That's right.  Regardless of your photo controls.  With anyone.  Public link. 

It's a bit more complicated to see this with an individual photo, but you can find it: Right click on a single photo within an album, to pull up your browser menu.  In e.g. Firefox then do "Open Link in New Tab".  At the bottom of the new photo tab that opens, you will find "Share this photo with anyone by sending them this public link".

With "more than 250 million photos uploaded per day" (Facebook Statistics) and Facebook already hosting on the order of 150 BILLION photos (yes, billion, with a "b") that's a lot of surface area for photo privacy attacks.

Facebook doesn't even provide minimal location exclusion features, unlike Flickr, which lets you geofence important locations, so that even if by accident you upload EXIF-GPS data for e.g. your school or your home, Flickr won't display it.

Thanks to Neil Saunders (@neilfws) for getting me thinking about this.

Fuji LH-X10 lens hood and 52mm filter adapter quick look

The Fuji X10 has a nonstandard thread, it's not-exactly 40mm (which would be hard to find anyway). Here's my conversation on Twitter with the @fujiguys

are there any UV filters that will fit the X10?

"Using the Adapter Ring / Hood for the X10, you should be able to use any 52mm filter."

Is it possible to use filters directly without the adapter? I've read in forums that 40mm filters fit, is that true?

It's not exactly 40mm and finding filters that size is difficult. Buying the adapter ring helps further Innovation however :-)

I got the LH-X10 lens hood & filter adapter (it's one unit, in two parts) and a Hoya Pro1 Digital Protector 52mm filter (it's just a clear filter, not a UV filter).

Here's what it looks like all together

Here are the three individual pieces (the LH-X10 disassembled across the top, and the filter I bought on the bottom right)

Here's another option, with just the filter mount & Hoya filter on and the lens hood removed, and a 52mm lens cap over the filter. Notes: 1) Don't screw the lens hood on too tight, or you will have a heck of a time getting it off the filter ring. 2) The Fuji lens cap won't fit over the filter mount, so you have two options: a) if you use just the filter mount, you can get a 52mm cap with a cap keeper b) if you use the lens hood, you will need a cap that fits into a deep socket, which means no side-loop for cap keeper. I got a Matin 52mm cover with cap keeper, and a Nikon 52mm cap to use with the lens hood.

I got the filter in part to prevent fingerprints on the main X10 lens. The filter mount will also partially protect from dust, although it does have 3 vents around the sides, so it's not completely sealed. If you need to clean off your lens or filter, you can use a LensPen.

The LH-X10, 52mm filter, 52mm caps and LensPens are available from Amazon.com
In Canada, I got mine from my local Vistek.

Previously:

November 5, 2011  Fuji X10 quick impressions

Fuji X10 quick impressions

We've moved from pixels to sensor size, which is probably a more reasonable measurement.  However not all sensors are equal - there are different designs.  For example, Sony is using Exmor-R back-illuminated CMOS, while Fuji is using front-side-illuminated EXR-CMOS.

Here are a few cameras I have, from smallest sensor to largest (sensor size measurement is a bit weird, so just look at the fraction, don't take it as an indication of the actual size)

camera	sensor size	megapixels	GPS?	viewfinder (OVF)?	zoom	compact?
Sony HX5V	1/2.4"	10 MP	yes	no	10x optical	yes
Canon S95	1/1.7"	10 MP	no	no	3.8x optical	yes
Nikon P6000	1/1.7"	13.5 MP	yes	yes	4x optical	no
Fuji X10	2/3"	12 MP	no	yes	4x optical	no (protruding lens)

The next step up from 2/3 is the Four Thirds System, then APS-C, then "full frame" sensors.  Wikipedia's Image sensor format article gives a good overview.  You can also get a visual idea of the sizes from this SensorSizes image.

Despite the smaller sensor, I like the features of the HX5V including high zoom and GPS, so it's my main compact camera.

The current (as of November 2011) versions of the cameras above are the Sony HX9V, the Canon S100, and the Nikon P7100 (all with different specs than the models listed above).  The Fuji X10 was just released.

X10 impressions

I got the X10 for its quick start up time and very high shooting rates (up to 10fps still photo, up to 200fps video).  I also wanted to have a viewfinder camera as sometimes staring at the LCD to compose a shot is awkward.

Here are some quick impressions:

The first thing I noticed right away is that the lens cap--which is about 1cm deep--has no loop for a strap.  As the camera turns on by turning the lens (there is no other way to turn it on), this leads to a very awkward dance as you take off the cap and then try to hold the cap while turning the lens.  Since the cap is deep, it doesn't quickly slip into a pants pocket or a tight shoulder bag pocket.  This multi-second dance impedes the theoretical 0.8s startup time for the camera in quick-start mode.

The second is that the auto mode seems quite poor.  Instead on the X10 your default auto-shooting mode should be the EXR mode, which is much more intelligent.

Sweep panoramas are under the Advanced mode, unlike the HX5V where it is a top-level dial option.

There are in fact a proliferation of modes, respectively under

EXR - EXR Auto (it will auto choose between many different options), EXR Priority (choose one of: resolution, high ISO with low noise, dynamic range)

Adv - 360 Panorama, Pro Focus (softens the background in portrait shots for pseudo DSLR effect), Pro Low Light

Scene Position (SP) - Portrait, Portrait Enhancer, Landscape, Sport, Night, Night (Tripod), Fireworks, Sunset, Snow, Beach, Underwater, Party, Flower, Text, Natural (2 shots, one with flash, one without), Natural Light

Movie - 1920 (30fps), 1280 (30fps), 640 (30fps), 640x480 (70fps), 320x240 (120fps), 320x112 (200fps)

In general for selection modes you turn the dial, then press menu, then select the sub-mode.  This is quite a few steps to go through.

Those are just the modes on the main selector dial on the top.

There is a menu button + up/down/left/right buttons + "sub-command" wheel on the back face of the camera that has two other key modes:

Macro (left) - choose between regular macro and super macro (as close as 1cm) - works in Auto but not in EXR

Drive (up) - high speed still shots - also has various modes but the main ones are related to speed - L (3fps), M (5fps), H (7fps), SH (10fps with image size reduced)

I do like the flash design, in which you have to manually pop up the flash for it to be active (particularly since I see so many people with cameras firing off flash all the time, where it's not needed because of lighting or where it's prohibited e.g. in art galleries).

The optical viewfinder has 85% coverage, and it does zoom along with the zoom you set manually.  I like the manual zoom as drive-controlled zoom (e.g. as in the HX5V) is very hard to control precisely.

On the software front, the camera comes with FinePix Viewer, but it is not supported under Mac OS X 10.7 Lion (and will never be).  It works fine with Aperture.

UPDATE 2011-11-08: There have been a number of questions online about RAW support.  Currently there is limited support on the Mac for the RAF RAW file format, however Fuji does provide a converter on the supplied software CD.  Look for the rather obscurely-named "SILKYRFCEXInstaller.pkg" - it will install RAW FILE CONVERTER EX (mine is version 3.2.5.0).  It installs fine in Mac OS 10.7 Lion.  The underlying engine is from SILKYPIX, which sells a more full-featured software package online.  ENDUPDATE

I asked the @fujiguys two three questions on Twitter, here are their responses:

about lens cap strap

"Tried at the last meeting in Tokyo, but apparently lost that battle."

about FinePix Viewer under 10.7 Lion

"Unfortunately, FinePix Viewer will not be supported under Lion. Personally, iPhoto is much better anyways."

is the 12MP EXR-CMOS sensor in the X10 back-illuminated?

"the 12MP EXR-CMOS in the #Fujifilm X10 is a FSI and not a BSI. This allows for Base 100 ISO."

I am still learning the many, many modes on the camera.  Here is a cropped picture taken in EXR Auto.

The X10 is available for order from Amazon.com but not yet from Amazon.ca - in Canada I got mine from Henry's. The manual recommends Class 4 or better memory card for video; I'm using a SanDisk Class 10 | UHS-I | 30MB/s card. I found the battery life is not great (the in-device processing uses a lot of power I think), so I got a second battery. Another useful accessory is the lens hood, Fuji model LH-X10 (I plan to order one).

 

Setting up Magic Trackpad with OS X 10.5.8

You won't get the full multi-touch features, but it will work as a basic trackpad-mouse.

Bluetooth icon (upper right of screen)->Set up Bluetooth Device... (or run "Bluetooth Setup Assistant")

Continue... Select Device Type: Any device

IMPORTANT: On the Searching for your device screen, you must click Passkey Options... and select Use an "empty" passkey.

The Magic Trackpad will show up as Apple Wireless Trackpad, you just select it and it will pair and that's it.

(It will ask you if you want to use it as an input device, just say yes.)