A couple months ago I got a 6 megapixel digital camera. Later, I had it in my pocket, and having forgotten it was there, went for a swim in a creek. This is not that story.

A team of geeky photographers has just created a 4 gigapixel camera. That’s 4,000 megapixels. Not six. They call it the Gigapxl Project. Their pictures have absurd clarity. Objects not 5 inches high are photographed from 100 yards away, and you can zoom in on the photographs and see them clearly. It’s astounding. Please look.

Now, once they have a pocket-sized version of the beast you’ll see here, I’ll bite. As it is… you know… I don’t want to look like a tourist. But at least I couldn’t ruin it by forgetting it in my pocket.

I got a flier in the mail today from Newsweek, a magazine I pretend to read. It said that if I renewed now, I could get the next year’s worth of issues (that’s 54 issues, mind you) for only 59 cents an issue. I’m flipping through the latest issue right now, with “Deep Throat” on the cover. This is pretty high quality paper. Every single page is full color. It’s 88 pages long, plus the front and back cover. It’s usually decent writing, too.

I’m not going to renew. Not even for 59 cents an issue. It’s not a content problem, although it’s true that I don’t have time to read it all after sifting through the stories I don’t care about. It’s just that I get the news I really care about elsewhere. Paper is a dying medium. It’s good for some things, certainly. Artwork is one. Reading a book still feels better on paper than a computer screen, although I happen to prefer the audio format for fiction. I’d rather look at photography on some kind of paper-based product than on a computer screen, assuming there were no opportunities for interactivity.

Still, the ‘Net is having a vast impact on the print medium, to the extent that they can practically give their stuff away, and people like me still won’t take it.

My semi-obvious prediction: TV is the next major medium to change (or suffer) due to the Internet.

I’m so jealous of kids today and in the future. Some of them get to use these things called “Smart boards”, which are really taking off in educational use according to Wired. The idea that you could put notes up on the board, and then manipulate and transform those notes instantly, or go from a particular bullet point to a better, more detailed example of that point, is incredibly compelling. I think it would make learning much more dynamic and fluid.

The thing that really bugs me is that I predicted this invention about nine years ago, but I never invested in SMART Technologies. D’oh!

Oh, and before it’s too late, happy birthday Steve! Here’s a PodBrix minifig in your honor.

(Yes, I bought one.)

I just noticed an article by Michael S. Malone for ABC News which I found to be incredibly interesting. In this article, Mr. Malone first shows you how he determines when a company may be on their way to the grave, and gives you some excellent examples of previous predictions he has made.

Then he makes a prediction that will really shock you. Read this one all the way through. It’s worth it. It’s no guarantee, of course, but the possibility is certainly there.

I guess now’s not a good time to mention that Apple’s stock is at an all-time high.

It’s Mac OS X 10.3.8, and I helped!

A couple days ago, Apple released the 8th major OS update to Panther, and I just saw this great report about it on MacFixIt, a site I’ve always generally disliked due to their obsessive paranoia, and the fact that I don’t think it’s “news” when a guy in Kentucky has an unreproducible Kernel Panic. The good news comes at the bold text Positive reports, and in case you don’t feel like scrolling, here’s the gist:

Lest readers think that we’ve only heard bad things about 10.3.8, we should point out that we’ve received many, many positive reports — possibly more than with any recent OS X Update.

(Toot! Toot!)

iTunes and Pepsi have teamed up again, and I’m once again in the possession of a code for a free song that I can’t redeem due to this little thing called the official rules and “Section 9.” So, like last year, I’m putting the code in the comments, and I expect whoever redeems it to tell us what they purchased and why. Heck, give us a review of the song! It’s free!