Google Fast Flip: the new news-worthy revelation in news...

Google has finally unleashed it's latest Google Labs (experimental features) beta. Called Fast Flip, it aims to revolutionize the way people read news. Judging by what I've seen, it will.

The great hallmark of Google News has always been that it was one place where you could read news from just about every reputable source. This is still the case with Fast Flip, which not only increases it's catalogue offerings, but also allows you to filter by not just topic, but also publication.

But here is where the resemblance to Google News ends. Rather than present readers with plain text news on a page under headings. It gives you actual images of the actual stories from their original locations, complete with headlines, bylines, stories, and unfortunately ads. Then, you can simply Flip through all the stories under whatever category/source you're looking at. And in true Google fashion, there ain't no waiting for thumbnails to load here. It's blindingly quick. During our hands-on, I only managed to get to a story without it's thumbnail already loaded once. And I was being pretty demanding.

Then, choose your article with a simple click and it gives you a bigger preview of the story with some more options, including to see the whole article, or "Like" the story, the usual share options, etc. Then, one simple click and you have the whole story, at its original source. Right there.

It's freaking brilliant. It works like an absolute charm, and I have had no problems with the (still experimental) tool yet, so that's a good sign.

It also has a dedicated iPhone page, which is also fantastic. It operates as above, but a bit better because it has all the functionality of the multi-touch interface. First page you see you can choose your category, then flip through the stories with a simple slide. Then, you can either pinch or rotate your iPhone to get a closer look. Tap to get all the usual options in it's own dialog box as well as some more info on your selected article.

But of course, there is a far more sinister side to all this. The two-step process between preview and story means that it has opened a whole new world of options. Options that aren't so great for us, the consumers.

One of the reasons Google put the effort into creating this, and also into changing into a preview-view operation lies in the Internet's very nature. Online press is notorious. It is almost impossible to make money out of online press. More than that, it takes revenue from more traditional sources. Why buy a magazine or a newspaper if you can just jump on your iPhone and look at all for free, on the fly. So far, neither have publishers been able to find a way to successfully monetize the online press, because either your readers run away from costs to someone else who happens to be free, or you can't generate enough money to cover your costs, or that there just isn't an efficient way of visitors paying for their content without too much hassle.

However, it's been reported that much of the Fast Flip architecture has been designed with future options to monetize the story, if you want to move past the article preview. On top of this is the fact that another part of Google Labs ongoing work is the Google Checkout, a payment method similar to PayPal, which we assume forms part of the underlying structure behind Fast Flip.

The implications of this aren't exactly great. It means that soon, not even Internet news will be free. We could all be paying for our news, even from our (almost) entirely free friends at Google.

What is the world coming to when you have to pay to know what the world is coming to.

Digirtal Cameras, Cars and Cash

Now what would you expect to pay for a digital camera? You can get your dirty mitts on a real nice compact from Nikon (but who would buy a Nikon) with 14 megapixels for a cool 509 dollars, but then what if one wants to take it to the next level with an entry-level Digital SLR...Canon is the obvious place to look and they'll sell you a (not that old) 1000D with a lens for 950-odd bucks. I bet at this point you're wondering 'Where the F*** is he going with this?', but hang in there. My point is that a 1000D is a very potent weapon, and it only costs about a thousand bucks, so why on earth are they also selling 1D's for, sit down, 6,500 dollars, a neat 5 and a half grand more than a 1000d. But one might say, but one of them is the top and the other is the bottom, but they have another 5 cameras, as well as innumerable lens kits (actually 28 different combos to be vaguely accurate), spanning every possible price range.

I'm not saying any of this is bad. All of those cameras are still great bits of photographic machinery, and having a camera for every budget and every whim is a great business move, but...There still remains the problem that there must actually be people in our society blowing 6 and a half thousand dollars on a single camera body, i mean you could get a car with that kind of dough. But it actually gets worse, because Canon also has their Canon 1Ds MArk III (that's a mouthful),for the serious stalker. But you pay a smallish premium for that 's' on the end. Small, as in $5,500, bringing the 1Ds to a neat total of 12,000 dollars.

HOLY SH**!!

You can check my maths at http://www.canon.com.au/products/cameras/digital_slr.html

Part 2: The reasonFor those of you not even vaguely interested in Digital Photography, skip to the next post now!The biggest difference between the 1D and the 50D for example is in the sensor. In the 1D, it captures the scene in fornt of it exactly as it looks, with all the zoom, and effects coming from aperture, exposure and ISO settings and obviously your lens. However, the 50D (and everything below or before it) does not. It actually has a built in zoom factor of 1.6x. This is not going to seem like much except for when you take the fact that this occurs behind the lens. So when you start using 200mm telephoto lenses, you get the effect of using a 320mm lens, and that is noticeable.

There are obviously other things for 11 grand, like much faster start-ups, incredibly fast shutter speeds, better lenses, more settings, features and modes etc etc, but the 1:1 zoom is one of the big drawcards, and i'm not sure Nikon even has that at all, so its an achievement...