Life is grand

Solution Watch writes:

Job Boards are everywhere! Michael Arrington’s CrunchBoard, Om Malik’s GigaOM Jobs, Darren Rowse’s Problogger Job Board, and Jason Fried’s 37signals Job Board.

When the 37signals Job Board launched I thought it was a good idea. Then TechCrunch launched theirs and it was a reasonable idea as it would target a different market to the 37signals board. But add two more and these job boards start to look like a poor idea.

Ideally we need a job board aggregator. Most provide a detailed enough RSS feed to do this. Would there be any copyright issues in doing this? The Techcrunch Job Board feed in particular provides a ton of information (through the EdgeIO spec.) Anyone?

UPDATE: Turns out Michael Arrington has already been looking at a job board aggregator.

Hey, Hot Shot: Auditorium by James Rajotte

Originally uploaded by msjenbee.

my empire

Originally uploaded by themexican.

In this post by Jeff Barr of Amazon, Xen is mentioned as the platform on which Amazon’s Elastic Computing is built. A good friend of mine works over at Xen and I am very impressed.

The rest of Jeff’s post is well worth reading. Playing field leveler indeed.

75.000

Originally uploaded by SophieMuc.

Birds

If it weren’t for the L grade price tag of $1600 the new Canon EF 50mm f/1.2L USM lens would be on my shopping list. We all already know of the brilliant 50mm f/1.8 ($74) and 50mm f/1.4 ($300) lenses and this new one puts a 50mm in the bag of professionals. Apart from the great max. aperture of 1.2 and the useful though hardly neccesary USM focusing the main selling point to me would be the build quality. The 50mm f/1.8 is a flimsy affair and the 50mm f/1.4 not that much better.

Well done to Canon for providing a prime in this day and age, I hope it sells with the pros.

The popular 70-200mm f/4 got an upgrade to IS (Image Stabilisation) as well in the Canon EF 70-200 mm F4L IS USM lens. Personally I am spoilt on f/2.8 lenses and so am saving for the 70-200m f/2.8L but this new f/4 is welcome all the same. At $1250 though it is not so well priced when you can get the aforementioned f/2.8 IS for $1600.

Canon officially announced their Canon EOS 400D (Canon Digital Rebel XTi in the States) today. 10 megapixels, anti-dust system, 9 point AF and a bigger LCD. The dual LCD on the back of the 350D is gone, replaced by one 2.8″ LCD. No spot-metering but it does have a RGB histogram. Frame rate and buffer size is up. Size and weight remain nearly identical to the 350D. Recommend retail price is $100 less at $899 for the body or $999 with the 18-55mm II kit-lens.

All in all a decent upgrade on the 350D, more so than the 30D was to the 20D. Current 350D owners need not rush to upgrade however, your baby is quite adequate. New buyers intent on a Canon camera would do well with the 400D though.

And this brings me to the Nikon D80. I own a Canon EOS 20D but my advice to people looking for entry level DSLRs is to go with Nikon. The D80 seems the better camera to me. You’ve got a better grip, a top LCD and more physical dials for control. Otherwise it is a much of a muchness compared to the 400D, any discussion on CMOS vs. CCD is pixel peeping at this stage.

Then you have the dream lens for any entry level user; the Nikon AF-S DX 18-135mm. 18mm to 135mm, that is one lens that covers the entire range most users will ever need. It is exactly the range that three potential 400D buying people have asked me if Canon have in their line up, and they don’t.

And on from the D80 you have the D200 which is really something wonderful to behold.

If you must get a Canon then wait till the end of September and get the 400D. What about the 30D? I’d go for it because of the extra physical controls and size that fits in my hands better. But really if you have to ask yourself “400D vs. 30D” then 90% of you should get the 400D. Those that a 30D suits know already.

If your requirement is an entry level DSLR though then head for the D80.

If you thought Amazon’s S3 or SQS was interesting then Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) is going to blow you away.

Amazon EC2 presents a true virtual computing environment, allowing you to use web service interfaces to requisition machines for use, load them with your custom application environment, manage your network’s access permissions, and run your image using as many or few systems as you desire.

Each instance predictably provides the equivalent of a system with a 1.7Ghz Xeon CPU, 1.75GB of RAM, 160GB of local disk, and 250Mb/s of network bandwidth.

The images mentioned are stored on S3 (penny drops.)

This is the link between S3 and SQS I’ve been waiting for (without really knowing it.)

If I have my sums right you could run one server doing 1gigabyte an hour for 365 days for only $2,628. AFAIK that is incredibly cheap (for the bandwidth being used.)

I’ve got my beta account and am going to get into EC2.