The Samsung DV300F is shorter than the height of a business card,
with official 95.2 x 56.5 x 18.3 proportions and a mere 120g weight.
Sitting well in the palm, this is a compact that truly is compact. No
one will feel discomfort slipping the DV300F into a trouser pocket, and
in fact it’s almost too easy to forget it's there. We had the black
matt model in for review, which has a totally smooth brushed metal
faceplate and a more textured faux-leather rear. The DV300F has 16.1
effective megapixels from a 16.4MP 1/2.3-inch CCD.
Samsung has shoehorned in a 5x optical zoom with the DV300F, here
supported by optical and digital stabilization and starting out a
usefully wide angle 25mm equivalent (in 35mm terms) and running up to
125mm at the telephoto end. The lens boasts a maximum aperture of f/2.5,
so specification is better than cheaper Samsung cameras like the ST96,
although the maximum aperture of f/6.3 at full telephoto is actually
slower. Instead of the more trendy touch-screen interface, the DV300F is
navigated using a very familiar panel of physical controls ranged
alongside the LCD screen on the right-hand quarter of the camera back.
Video resolution is rather mundane 1280x720 pixels at 30fps, rather
than the more up-to-date 1080i/p, with the camera utilising H.264
compression. Strangely there's no dedicated record button either,
another confusing oversight on a 2012 compact. The full extent of the
optical zoom can thankfully be used when videoing, unlike on many
cheaper-end models which usually suffer from quite noisy zoom
mechanisms. By contrast the DV300F’s zoom action, whilst not completely
silent, is impressively quiet.
Another accessory that is ‘missing’ is a separate mains adapter.
Instead we get a mains plug with a USB input, so the
standard USB cable (provided) can ingeniously be used for recharging as
well as image uploading/downloading. Also omitted is a HDMI connection, again
something of an oversight on behalf of Samsung.
The DV300F is the first dual-screen Samsung to offer built-in Wi-Fi,
with an array of options available. Users can email their images,
upload them directly to Facebook, Picasa, Photobucket
and YouTube, or instantly copy them to a home PC via Auto Backup.
Samsung’s AllShare Play and Microsoft's SkyDrive cloud
services provide free storage space that's accessible by anyone with an
account. MobileLink allows you to directly send images to a compatible
smartphone or tablet, while Remote Viewfinder uutilises a smartphone as
a live image previewer. Finally TV Link takes the place of a physical
HDMI connection by playing back photos on any device that's connected to
the same wireless access point as the camera.
A good e-commerce plan can
immediately improve your sales and marketing efforts. Whether you’re a
neighborhood pizza shop or a home-based consultant, you can expand your reach
to a national or even international base of potential customers. Indeed,
creating and sustaining an online presence can help small businesses level the
playing field. On the Internet, even the smallest online retailer can be as
attractive and as functional as the largest big box store.
Although you may be a little
intimidated by the thought of it, moving a business online doesn't have to be
an overwhelming and daunting task. There are several solutions and services
that make it a fairly seamless process. Below we’ll take you through some
common questions and necessary tasks that you’ll need to consider if you want
to grow your online presence.
Six Key Questions
1.What
will you offer online?
At first
glance, your products may not appear conducive to online sales. Businesses like
movie theaters, bakeries, bowling alleys and utility companies either require
the customer to be on-site or offer a product that is largely intangible. But
even for those types of businesses, customers have come to expect an online
presence. If you can’t sell your actual product online, you can certainly sell
tickets or offer discounts. Moreover, by showing online images, examples, demos
and videos of your products and services, you can increase demand for your offerings.
Whatever business you are in, you can offer something online. You just need to
determine what that is.
2.What
are the required resources?
Internet
businesses need to operate full time, so you must seriously and realistically
consider how much help you will need. Below are some common options that many
small businesses have employed to implement the online aspect of their
business:
Hiring a full-time Web
Manager. This person would be solely dedicated solely to Web management and
operations.
Hiring consultants.
Consultants or temporary employees can help set up your online business. This
way you only have to bring them back on an as-needed basis.
Outsourcing. Many small
businesses outsource development, design and hosting of their Web site and rely
on an outside organization to keep it up to date and to manage growth.
Using “packaged” solutions.
There are many "e-commerce in a box" solutions that will help you
quickly and easily set up an e-commerce site. These products typically charge a
monthly fee (around $25) and provide an online store with virtual shopping
carts (locations where shoppers electronically place the items they want to
buy). They also include online catalogs, customized product pages, tools that
help merchants list their products and services on online auction and shopping
sites, secure online payment options, discount coupons for customers, and
technical support.
3.What
will your customer service policy look like?
Whether
they’re at your actual store or online, customers expect to be able to contact
a company with questions, special requests or problems. Make sure you place
your contact information in a prominent and visible place on your site, so that
customers with inquiries can easily contact you. Also, be sure to state how
long it will take for you to reply to their message.
4.How
will you process transactions?
To accept credit cards online,
a small-business owner must first apply for a bank merchant account and then
find a way to process transactions. At a brick-and-mortar store, the processing
takes place when a card is swiped through the card reader. At an online store,
the processing is done when a shopper types in the credit card information,
which is then verified by a merchant account processor.
Merchant accounts may have
drawbacks for some small-business owners, however. Most charge set-up, monthly
and per-transaction fees. Additional fees may also be involved if a business
owner has a pre-existing account for a physical store, and wants to convert
that account to accept payments online. Moreover, some banks won't approve
small online businesses for merchant accounts, considering them high-risk
operations.
It may take 30 days or more
for a merchant account to be approved and the integration process can be
burdensome for business owners to do it themselves. Fortunately, the growth of
online sales has given rise to an entire industry of merchant service bureaus
that will grant a merchant account and everything else needed to accept online
payments.
If you don’t have access to a
merchant account or the fees are just too high, one solution is an online
payment service, like PayPal. PayPal allows businesses to accept credit-card
transactions and payments safely and conveniently. It also allows buyers to
send payments directly from a bank account.
5. How will you ensure transaction security?
If you want customers to make
purchases from your online store, you must make them feel secure. The good news
is that you don’t have to be information technology security experts to have a
secure site.
There are services in this
space that bring together all the security measures that an online small
business needs to have in place. PayPal enables businesses to set up a Website
that accepts credit cards without seeing or having to store the account numbers
of its customers. This makes buyers feel even safer because they don't have to
share their personal or financial information online. Gateway services like
Authorizenet.com, CyberSource or Chase Paymentech Solutions will also handle
credit card and electronic check payments securely.
6. How will you ensure privacy?
Consumers' fears of identity
theft and the aggravation over spam make privacy policies essential for online
businesses. Customers expect merchants to boldly exhibit their privacy policies
on their stores' sites, with links from the catalog pages and the shopping
cart.
A privacy policy should
describe how data, such as the customer's personal contact information and
financial details, is collected and used. Consumers should be given the
opportunity to opt out of having their information sold or distributed and of
receiving e-mail newsletters or other company communications.
Starting an online store may
seem like a daunting challenge, but the reality is it's never been easier.
Today, many of the processes of moving a business online have become
standardized and even automated. So, what are you waiting for? Get started
today!
MEMPHIS (IFS) Robots have been
around for along time, and they have silently begun to take their places among
the living.First they started out in
the car factories as painters, then wielders, Alan Beckett was the first
cameraman to use them in making motion pictures, calling them auto-scoping
cameras, then computer building units that function on the assembly lines.They were repetitive masters with great precision
that used the stationary pivoting robot arms that were doing mind-numbing
tasks, without breaks, lunch, unions and any back talk.
Now these little units are found
in the homes of everyday people cleaning the floor and vacuuming the carpets,
where you can purchase them at Wal-Mart for less then $80 dollars.But is does not stop there.These robots have been reduced in size down
to Nano robots or called nanobots that are placed in the human blood stream
where they fight cancer cells and other diseases.Doctor Leonard McCoy from “Star Trek” would
just say, that this is a good start.
Google, the master robot
developers have used their Motorola Company to placed the first auto robotic
cars on the freeways of America,
by getting the first robotic driving licenses from the State of Nevada
where their vehicle drive themselves using onboard computers, cameras and
Velodyne 64-beam laser range finder mounted on the roof.
With over 1.2 million people
killed in traffic worldwide every year, Google thinks that technology can significantly
reduce that number of deaths on the road.Google’s combination of GPS data and the constant vision of it’s’
surroundings enables these vehicles to drive themselves avoiding obstacles and
respecting the traffic laws.
As with guns in general, its going
to be very hard to pry the steering wheel from the hands of the driving public
and let a robot do the driving.As with
IBM’s Watson, or Honda’s Mono walking robot, or the quest for Star Trek’s
Commander Data, the future is here already.It has been a quiet revolution in the making.With the combination of iPads, iPhones and
Androids, I hereby dubbed thee “iDroid”, because it’s all going to be the same
thing in the future.One robotic nation
that started with the television show “Jeopardy” and that will continue long
after mankind’s rein on this Earth.
As a young student at Antelope
Valley Community College in Lancaster, California back in late 1960’s, Doctor
Charles Parker of my Economics class told me that Congress would pass laws that
would tax robots and levee social security, FDIC and other humanly taxes upon
them, and that this tax would be placed in our retirement system and it would
give man more leisure.I loved his
vision of the future, but in reality that dream of robots paying into the tax base
died somewhere in Congress in the early 1970’s and was never again brought to
the front of the table for discussion.
40 Million Women are missing in India, Anybody
Looking For Them?
By Kenny Smith for IFS
MEMPHIS
(IFS) -It is only 40 million women that
is missing.Only, that’s the size of several
whole countries as many as two or three small countries together.Generations upon generations of missing
citizens that have disappeared from rank and file of families, the future work
force, military, inventions for the future and just loved ones who wish to find
them.
Economically, it is a disaster
for India.With the potential lost of creativity and just
the taxes per head alone from services and or lost productivity lies in the
Billions of dollars.These citizens must
be found.If they are looking for them
to produce just male children; approximately fifty percent of them will have
bore a male child; that’s 20 million males for the work force and the military.
It’s starting to get sick with this number and
very little help is forthcoming.This
all started when a television news report quoted the FBI statistics for 2010
that 2,300 children are reported missing everyday in the United
States.Adding it all up, would mean that 735,000 children are on milk cartons
and the side of delivery trucks all across the country.
If I only get sick about 735,000
kids that go missing every year, or the average of 2,300 kids per day, what
about the chances of being found alive in India?Chances are not too good even for a child let
along a woman that’s kidnapped and sold into the sex trade by her own family
members and strangers.
What are the odds of being found
in United States
verses being found in India?Statistically, the average child and or
person of interest that goes missing are about seventy-two hours according to
the FBI.During that short period of
time, the chances of being found alive is greatly reduced by fifty
percent.There is a show on cable called
“The First 48 Hours” where searchers determined the whereabouts of missing
persons and attempt to find them.
In India, once you are reported
missing, your chances of being found within a reasonable amount of time varies
from six months to twenty-five years to never, or as we put it, your chances
are “slim and none.”The Indian
government is more interested in building a nuclear bomb to destroy their
neighbor than finding these lost children.They are more interested in letting husband and fathers kill their wives
and daughters because of some kind of ancient ritual law then protect, love and
cherish their women and children.I wish
someone would drop a bomb on them of common sense, loyalty, and just plane love
of their fellow man and woman.As they
say, tradition dies hard, and so will they in the end.
Why doesn’t the Indian government
do more to find their missing children and women?They are not that important to their
society.Women and children do not
count.This is the only English speaking
country (thanks to British rule for over 130 years, thereabouts) that makes
their precious citizens second class and untouchables.They don’t want them found.
Yet we give millions of dollars
to their country in military, school and social aid to no avail.We give them lots of money to help them
perpetuate the problem and they in turn give us what we ask for . . . very
little help in helping their citizens and even less for helping us in the
United Nations when it comes for votes on women’s rights.
We cried and get angry when the
Nazis and Russians killed over 12 million people during WWII, yet we say very
little or nothing for the slaughter of women and children in a lot of countries
in Africa, yet there is not cry for the missing women
and children of India.No government official will stand up and
delivery an ultimatum to help families find their love ones.
Could the sex trade for Indian
women be so high as compared to the missing women of the Philippines
or other countries?I don’t thank
so.
SACRAMENTO, CA
(IFS)
D-Town Records has relocated its SDC
OmniMedia Group to Memphis, Tennessee
with its SDC Radio One Networks
predominately taking the lead rolls in production.
The D-Town Records Imprint division will continue to
repackage its catalog, and release its new products via digital distribution
with D-Town Digital.
D-Town Records relationship with Memphis
dates back to the middle 1960’s with Willie Mitchell’s production of the Prince
of Detroit’s Lee Rogers with hit recordings entitled “Love For A Love”, “The
Same Thing That Make You Laugh (Can Make You Cry)” and several other great
hits.
KDTN Radio One’s Blogtalk radio series and it’s music
affiliate station has been on limited production schedule since 2010 when
operations shifted to the Yolo County farm suburbs where broadband was just
limited and none existence.
D-Town has re-launched its’ sdcog.net website portal to
report on its subsidiaries activities and products.
MEMPHIS (IFS) As Savannah
Guthrie officially takes the reins of the co-anchor ship of the Today Show this
morning; I was one of those 303 friends of Ann Curry. I had received rumors of Ann’s leaving as far
back as six months ago from the many of the view ships of the show, twitter
feeds, and other things.
I had flashbacks of Ann hurling herself off of bridges,
bungee jumps, crazy morning stunts that gave me the creeps over the years, but
yet the powers that be had to let dear old Ann go after one year on the job.
Let’s face it, I’m not bleeding for Ann, just hurting that I
will not get a chance to see those hot sexy legs and shoes in the morning over
my hot cup of Joe that helps to pert me up and get me through the day. Am I a sexist pig? Hell yea!
And proud of it. On the other
hand, I am a little jealous that I did not get a $10 Million going away
settlement. On my last days on the job
back in 2001, it was a small $65,000 severance package and a good luck note.
So do not cry for Ann Curry, but my heart does go out for my
morning show. Since ABC’s Good Morning
America has pulled ahead of the Today Show, I believe I will be switching
alliance in the mornings and tuning in to watch and flipping channels to CBS
This Morning. But on these two show,
they show no legs, just lots of arms.
