Day: April 4, 2006

For those of you who shoot with Canon SLRs, you know that “L” glass lenses are the shiznit. Seriously, they’re the kind that everybody drools over while wishing with all of your might that the price tag will just magically disappear – or at least move the decimal over to the left a little. In other words, the quality is top notch, but you might just need to take out a second mortgage to get one. Kind of like when I go into a camera shop and they let me try out a 20D (or 30D these days). Yeah, I want it, but I also want to eat.

That’s where Rentglass comes in. This company is actually renting out high quality lenses for decent money on a weekly basis. So far they only have Canon, but Nikon is around the corner. The worry of having to take care of someone else’s lens definitely makes me think twice about this, but imagine being able to head out to Hawaii for my honeymoon (still not definite, by the way) with a stunning wide-angle and a killer macro in tow for about 50 bucks a week. And I’m sure I could find some reason to spend $45 for a week with this beauty (and a friend).

It seems to be a growing business that’s trying to take it slowly and make sure their model will work. Here’s hoping that I get a chance to try it out!

(thanks to Matt Haughey)

Remember that webcam I mentioned last week? It got so popular so fast, they’ve already redesigned a “proper” front page, added forums, put up some ads, and hinted at a “premium” feed option in the future. Amazingly, there seems to be no grousing over the idea that these people can’t do this for free. In fact, there have been a few threads in the forums suggesting that they take Paypal donations and asking how they can contribute to make sure the feed keeps running smoothly (at this time it’s grown a tad jerky).

It’s nice to see people on the Internet realize that when a small project suddenly starts getting 2 million visitors a day with over 4500 simultaneous viewers, you can’t really keep it up for free. I guess it also helps that a number of people on the forums appear to be teachers who are excited about the prospect of showing a live hatching to their classes.

I’ve got to give a lot of credit to Infotec on this one. These guys have been on the forums asking and answering questions; tirelessly working on the feed as the demand has increased, and even assured everybody that there will continue to be a free live stream for everybody to see the eggs hatch. Way to go guys!

And here’s some quick facts I found in the forum:

* The Eggs are expected to hatch sometime in the third week of april. The incubation takes about 36 days!
* The nest is located on Hornby Island, Vancouver, BC, Canada
* The nest is sitting in a tree at the top of a 150ft cliff!
* The Camera is located next to the nest (literally) and is connected to an Infotec ‘Galaxy Encoder’ box situated nearby.
* The stream will be live well into the days when the baby eagles are old enough to leave the nest
* We don’t currently have an infrared camera, so at night time, expect it to be dark!

I just got to watch the mother swap out with the father again – and yes, I’d easily contribute 25 bucks to make sure it wouldn’t be so jerky next time.