I don’t see this product often in the market, and the first time I was it was on an plane flight to the Philippines with a stop over in Taiwan on Eva Air and was flipping through their in-flight product catalog. I saw the product was less than $30 and decided it’s not bad for it’s price, bought it and gave it try. When I came back to the US and started searching online, looks like all over amazon and you can buy one of these online. Ok, so enough of the intro… let’s get down to the results. I took a sample photo and check the results below.

I simply looked out my office window from the SEO Department’s office at Internet Marketing Inc. And for those familiar of the area, this is in Mission Valley, San Diego on the northern side of highway 8. My window is facing the southern side and took a photo first without the 8x zoom lens.

I then too another photo outside using the 8x Zoom iPhone Lens and zoomed into the building across the highway. Like any other zoom in camera, the further away it is, the more shaky the viewer can be and if your hands are not steady enough, this can sometimes blur the image. The photo below was not using a tripod, I was just simply holding my iPhone when I took this picture.

Resizing the first image without the zoom lens in Photoshop to compare what I got out of the lens and putting this side by side, you can see the extra detail you can get.

For the majority of people who totally do not know where I am when I took this photo, to put this in a better perspective of distance, below is a screenshot from Google maps.

Using the scale of Google maps on the image, this distance is approximately 600 meters, which is more than half a kilometer, and more than a quarter mile, almost near a half mile too. Just to make sure, I used Google Street View to make sure I was referencing the right building.

600 meters away is good enough to be a good paparazzi tool and would be handy for TMZ reporters. Using the iPhone can also easily upload the photos wherever, send by email, etc. And the zoom in lens can be used to see whatever details from celebrity tattoos to celebrity diamond rings.

Now if you are planning to buy this, since the lens connects to the casing of the phone, make sure you get the right one depending on your iPhone version. The iPhone 4 has square edges while all older versions are rounded bevel backs.

iPhone 3/3GS version (image taken from Amazon.com)

iPhone 4 version (image taken from Amazon.com)

Taking photos zoomed in and very far away has a tendency to be blurry if your hands are not steady enough and tripods are recommended. If you are buying this online, make sure you buy it with the tripod. Both links to Amazon above have tripods with them.

If you ended up on this page, most probably, you are running HTMLDog’s Sons of Suckerfish Dropdowns and you did some compatibility check either by using an old Windows XP computer running multiple IEs, some virtual machine or using MSIE’s developer tools changing browser mode or document mode. I had the same problem with another website and thought I found the solution by Matt of Built From Source although the fix was not working for a 2nd level drop down. What happened was when I initial hover on the top bar menu and the first dropdown is displayed, all second level dropdowns also appear all at the same time.

If Matt’s simple fix to the SuckerFish Dropdown IE7 issue was this:

#menu li:hover, #menu li.hover {
position: static;
}

I have a simple fix too for the second level. But first thing to mention is, I think the second element #menu li.hover did not really do anything since there is no hover class in my code. So I disregarded that and simply changed my code to this:

#nav li:hover ul{

position: static;

}

#nav li:hover ul ul{

position: relative;

}

And like Matt’s solution… VIOLA! The second level is fixed! Still thanks to Matt for giving me a place to start and not relying on IE conditional comments or CSS hacks for IE problems.

Adobe Acrobat Connect

To make video presentations of what you are doing on your screen, there are several ways to do this. Currently at my day job, we like using Adobe Acrobat Connect. It is a good software platform that can run on any operating since it is an application service that runs on an Adobe server that you simply connect to and uses Adobe Air which runs like like Flash as a desktop application. Advantage of this is you can Air pretty much on any operating system, thus you are sure Adobe Acrobat Connect will run on any computer. Although good service often does not come free. But still Adobe Acrobat Connect is affordable at $39/month.

But Adobe Acrobat Connect is only one option to record your screen that you may use for some instructional video, and it’s main purpose is not only as a screen recorder. It is a full web-based online meeting/collaboration platform with tons of power that if you just need a screen video capture software, there are many other options such as GoToMeeting, Jing Project, Screenr and more listed below.

GoToMeeting/GoToWebinar by Citrix|Online

Citrix Online - Makers of GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar, GoToMyPC

The same people that gave you GoToMyPC which is a remote PC controller over the web, also makes software for online web conference meetings and public/private webinars just like Adobe Acrobat Connect. It also cost $39/month if you pay for the whole year. But if you pay on a monthly contract, it is actually $49/month. I personally like the intuitiveness in using GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar compared to Adobe Acrobat Connect. But somehow some people at our company have been saying the voice conference over the phone is clearer on Adobe Acrobat Connect, but in my experience, I never really had any serious problems with GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar. And like Adobe Acrobat Connect, this is a full remote meeting/collaboration/presentation platform. Has more power than just screen grabbing your actions. So there are more options that are actually free, like Jing Project, Screenr, and NCH, read more about them, below.

Jing/SnagIt/Camtasia by TechSmith

TechSmith - Makers of Camtasia, SnagIt and Jing

TechSmith is really a screen capture company. Images or videos, adding annotations, cropping, resizing, saving in files, saving to clipboard and everything you need in a screen capture grabbing company. When you go to their site, it starts to become confusing which software you need. As a quick guide, you can think of it this way, for professional video screen recording, for professionally done presentations, Camtasia
is the way to go. For the best image capture would be SnagIt and if you want something for free, but limited power, but good enough (Video Screen Capture is only for 5 minutes maximum), use Jing Project.

It seems Camtasia + SnagIt and Jing is the top team to beat. And there does not seem to be any other reason to use something else. But actually there is some reasons why you might want to use Screenr and also NCH Debut Screen Capture. Read more about them below.

Screenr

Screenr - Share videos on Twitter

In the age or real time search, social media and microblogging, Screenr easily captures short videos and easily post them on Twitter. If you are an active Twitter user, you may want to consider using Screenr. All uploaded videos are also in the MP4 or Mov format what makes it compatible also for the iPhone that does not play Flash video. So sharing on Screenr can be seen everywhere. This is a free tool and since it is free, you have a limited time of recording also per video.

But if you want just to screen capture anything for free, capture all movements of your mouse and keyboard as you explain everything on your microphone, NCH Debut Video Capture Software.

NCH Debut Video Capture Software

NCH Debut Screen Capture

This may not have the zooming in functionality of Camtasia and the annotation power as well, but this software can record screen video as long as you want. It is really limited by your available disk space. And the best thing is, this is all free! Today, NCH Debut Video Capture Software is still my personal favorite. It gets the job done, and I didn’t need to spend anything. Although they have a pro version which is probably more comparable to Camtasia, but with the free version, this will make many people happy already.