Will You Try My Paper iPhone App?

I see a lot of demos for a lot of apps. Today, in particular, I sat through a dozen back-to-back demos for startups launching at Disrupt next week. Some of them really blew me away. But none of them quite compare to the unexpected demo I got after my long day when I walked into a Palo Alto CVS to buy some toothpaste.

As I was waiting in the checkout line, a very polite Stanford college student named Parth Bhakta asked me if I would be willing to test out a prototype for an augmented reality mobile app. I was tired, but I am a supporter of higher education.

When I looked down at his hands, however, instead of an iPhone, he held a few pieces of paper with wireframe drawings in pencil. This was his app. I was supposed to pretend the paper was an iPhone screen and press the hand-drawn buttons as I shuffled through the flow. The idea is that you could point your camera at a magazine rack and get digital versions of the magazines, which you could preview on your iPhone and then purchase individual articles or the entire magazine. It made a lot more sense when he did it (see video).

Now, there is nothing wrong with getting your ideas down on paper or paper prototypes to work out the kinks before you start coding. But you might want to wait until you have an actual working app on an iPhone before testing it out in the wild and asking for feedback from normal people. To be fair, Bhakta was only following his assignment, which was to make a paper prototype of an app that could enhance the experience of standing in line and test it on potential users. So I blame his professor for sending him on this hapless mission. (There is really no way to test an iPhone app on paper, the buttons don’t do anything). The best part: the course is called “Introduction to Human-Computer Interaction Design.” I didn’t want to break it to him, but he was missing the computer part.

Austerity Not a Solution

Austerity Not a Solution

Robert Pollin: Stimulus and debt not creating inflation

Transcript

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay in Washington. As the November elections close in on us, the biggest debate, of course, is about the economy. And we're told the following. Number one, a higher deficit and more stimulus will cause inflation. It will cause business confidence to decline. Fiscal stimulus policies never work anyway. And the most important, at least we're told so: a big fiscal train wreck is on the way. So does all this bear out under study and investigation? What are the facts? Well, Bob Pollin, who's the codirector of the PERI institute in Amherst, Massachusetts, says more or less none of these are true, and we're going to work our way through these main arguments with Bob. And Bob now joins us from Amherst and the PERI institute. Thanks, Bob.

ROBERT POLLIN, CODIRECTOR, POLITICAL ECONOMY RESEARCH INSTITUTE: Thank you very much for having me, Paul.
JAY: Okay. So we're going to do—for the audience's sake, knowing where we're headed here, we're going to do four segments here, where we're going to take on the four main arguments about what's wrong with higher deficits and why increased stimulus is the wrong thing to do. So argument number one: large fiscal deficits will cause high interest rates, large government debts, and inflation. So, Bob, that sounds like almost a truism—we're told, at least. What do you say?
POLLIN: That one is the easiest argument to contend with, because right now the long-term interest rates on government bonds, for example the interest rate on a five-year Treasury bond, when somebody essentially lends money to the government over a course of five years, that interest rate is about 2.5 percent, which is historically low. It's rarely ever been that low. So, contrary to the idea that the interest rates have to go up when the government borrows a lot of money, the interest rates have gone significantly down. Now, the reason why they think it should go up is a simple supply and demand story, which is, if the government is asking for people to lend them money, more and more people, so the government essentially is saying, well, we're desperate for money, and then the borrowers say, oh, good, well, we've got you over a barrel, so that we'll just keep raising the interest rate, 'cause, you know, you're going to need to borrow more, well, that has not happened at all. The interest rate, as I said, is very low, and as a result of that, thinking over the five-year period where the government pays back its debt, the actual debt burden to government debt as a share of the economy or as a share of the government is correspondingly very low.
JAY: So why aren't the interest rates bonds on going up? I mean, if I understand it correctly, the debt-to-GDP ratio now in the US is about 10 percent, which is at historic levels. The last time time it was anything close to this was during World War II. Why isn't this happening?
POLLIN: Right. The fiscal deficit as a share of the GDP, the amount the government is borrowing as a share of the whole-economy GDP (and you're right), is at around 10 percent, and it hadn't been that high since World War II. Now, so, yeah, it's an interesting question, because, yeah, read 95 textbooks, they will all tell us that the interest rates have to go up when the government borrows so much money. Well, the real reason it's happened is precisely, ironically, because of the crisis itself. Because of the crisis itself, all the world's bondholders, the people that actually play seriously in the global financial markets, are very risk-adverse. They don't want to take big risks anyplace, and they see the US government securities, US government bonds, as the safest asset. So, contrary to what one would expect, what has happened is, even though the US is where the crisis originated (the crisis originated on Wall Street), as a result of that, the US gets this bargain where we get to put out government bonds, and all the world's big money players are saying, let's lap those up because they're safe—they're a lot safer than, for example, government bonds in Europe. Now, government bonds in Europe might have been considered, well, the next safest place, until Europe had its own crisis, which in financial market terms is more severe now than the US crisis. So that's the main reason why the US really is almost getting a free ride as regards this big government borrowing.
JAY: The traditional argument is that when the Fed and the federal government start pushing money into the economy, quote-unquote, by "printing it", even though I suppose they don't have to actually print paper money anymore to do this, that these big debts and this kind of push of money—they call it quantitative easing, I think, which is another one of these wonderful terms to kind of hide what's going on—it necessarily has to lead to inflation. And part of the argument here is that sooner or later this inflation has to kick in. Is that true or not?
POLLIN: Well, again, it hasn't kicked in. And, again, the real problem today is not inflation. It's deflation. The real problem today is that prices are going to keep going down. And when that happens, actual debt burdens go up, because if you owe $100 that you have to pay off next year and prices go down, that means the value of $100 has gone up. That means the value of your debt, the $100 of your debt has gone up. So deflation is a huge danger, because we already have an unstable financial market, and it will become still more unstable if deflation occurs. Inflation isn't happening. Now, why isn't it happening? Some of the deficit hawks actually acknowledge that there was never an argument for this. And, for example, Martin Feldstein at Harvard acknowledges that this has never been a legitimate argument. In order for there to be inflation, there needs to be some pressure in the real side of the economy. That is, there needs to be either labor is able to push up their wages or businesses have the power to push up prices. But if the markets are soft, people are lucky to sell things at even lower prices. So there is no inflationary pressure in the economy, and there actually never was a legitimate argument as to why you would get inflationary pressures during a recession. Now, we did have inflationary pressures in a recession in the 1970s, but that was because of oil prices shooting up. If oil prices shoot up again, okay, we may get inflation, but that will be because oil prices have shot up, not because of the fiscal deficit.
JAY: You wrote a paper recently called Austerity is Not a Solution. If what you're saying—and it seems, you know, rather obvious—there's no inflation, then deflation seems to be the order of the day—then why the push for austerity?
POLLIN: Well, the push for austerity starts with the simple fact where you began, you know, the interview, which is that the fiscal deficit is large. There's no debate about whether the fiscal deficit is large. It's 10 percent of GDP. Again, it hasn't been this high since 1942, and that was when we were fighting World War II. So the fiscal deficit is large. So it's fair for people to be concerned about fiscal deficits of that order of magnitude. But they forget the next step. The reason the fiscal deficit is so large is because the crisis is so large. The crisis caused by Wall Street, by the Wall Street hyperspeculation and collapse of financial markets, meant that the economy was spinning into what would have been another Great Depression. The fiscal deficit stimulated the economy to keep us out of a 1930s-level depression. Now we're still in a very severe recession, with unemployment officially at 10 percent—and a better measure would be close to 20 percent. Another argument is, okay, well, you tried the deficit spending, and it didn't work, so let's go backwards and let's go back to, you know, fiscal stability, let's go back to a balanced budget, because obviously the deficit spending didn't cure the recession. I also think that argument is wrong. The fiscal deficit has worked to some degree, but the fiscal deficit had a lot to fight with given the severity of the recession. So if we go back and say, well, let's impose austerity—and let's be specific about what austerity means. I mean, sitting at a public institution right now, the University of Massachusetts, it would mean hundreds of people at my institution will get laid off. And when they get laid off, then they lose their homes, then they stop spending money in the community. That means more jobs are lost. That's what austerity means in real life, and that's no solution. That's why the title of my article is Austerity is Not a Solution.
JAY: Okay. Well, in the next segment of our interview, let's talk another piece of the argument, which is maybe all of this is true, they say (these are the people saying we do need austerity), but the global economic system is so fragile, there's such a lack of confidence in the ability of governments to someday repay these debts—and they point to Greece and Spain—and sometimes, people say, sooner or later, the US could be in a similar "basketcase", they like to say. So in the next segment of our interview, how real is that danger? And what is the whole question of business confidence? Please join us for the next segment of our interview with Bob Pollin on The Real News Network.
END OF TRANSCRIPT

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What I Didn't Find in Africa

OPINION | OP-ED
What I Didn't Find in Africa
For Op-Ed's 40th anniversary, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV recounted the story behind his Op-Ed from June 2003 and the series of events that followed its publication.

Sony Raises Camera Feats to New Level

September 22, 2010
Sony Raises Camera Feats to New Level
By DAVID POGUE
When it made up the term “S.L.R.,” the technology terminology industry was not operating at its peak creative powers.

An S.L.R. is one of those big, black, professional-style cameras. They do things that make pocket cameras look like pretenders: they can blur the background, take lower-light shots without a flash and shoot with no shutter lag (the delay after you press the shutter button). And thanks to enormous light sensors and lenses, the photos just look fantastic.

But ouch — that name. Even if you know what S.L.R. stands for (“single-lens reflex”), you have no idea what it means. “Single lens” is misleading, because the whole point of these cameras is that you can attach dozens of different lenses. And to most people, “reflex” refers only to wincing when they see the price.

Kidding aside, historically, there was a point to the term “single-lens reflex” (yes, I use Wikipedia, too). It describes the mirrors and prisms inside that bend the light from the lens to your eye.

Recently, a new generation of mirrorless cameras have hit the market. They look and work like S.L.R.’s — interchangeable lenses, no shutter lag and so on — but they’re smaller and they capture high-definition video. (Since they’re not technically S.L.R.’s anymore, Popular Photography magazine proposes the term I.L.C. for them, for “interchangeable-lens compacts.” Let’s run with it.)

Sony’s new Alpha A55 camera, available in October ($850 with 3X zoom lens), is an S.L.R. — sorry, an I.L.C. — that changes a bunch of games at once. It accepts any of Sony’s existing 33 Alpha lenses, but its radically different guts give it talents no other camera has had before.

This will require a paragraph or two of technical slogging, but you’ll feel rosy and smart when it’s over.

In a typical S.L.R., light from the lens hits a mirror, which bounces light up to your eye and onto a focusing sensor. The blessing: you see what the lens sees. The curse: when you take the actual photo, the mirror has to flip out of the way so that the light falls on the main image sensor (the “film”). For that fraction of a second, the camera can’t focus. If someone or something is hurtling toward you, a typical S.L.R. may have trouble keeping rapid-fire shots in focus.

That’s also why most S.L.R.’s can’t change focus when you’re shooting video. If you start filming on something close up, and then pan to something across the room, the video goes out of focus.

Still with me?

All right. Sony’s A55 camera adopts a new spin on a decades-old photographic idea: the mirror is translucent. It splits light between the focusing sensor and the image sensor — all the time. The mirror never has to flip up to take a picture, so the autofocus never goes blind when you take a shot.

As a result, the camera can shoot an incredible 10 shots a second, refocusing all the way. Sony says no other camera in the world can do that.

The camera also shoots beautiful, high-definition video — and it can change focus as you pan the camera, gorgeously and cinematically.

Very few S.L.R.’s, or even I.L.C.’s, can do that trick, refocusing while filming.

But the Sony doesn’t just change focus in video. It changes focus fast. According to Sony, the A55 is the first camera — or camcorder, for that matter — to use what’s called phase-detection focusing for video. (Other cameras, and all camcorders, use a slower system called contrast detection.) That’s only possible because, in this camera, the autofocus sensor can see the scene all the time.

Now, to pull off this unusual design, something had to go, and it was the optical viewfinder. When you hold this camera to your eye, you’re basically looking at a tiny TV screen in the eyepiece, rather then peering out through the glass of the lens. In other words, it’s an electronic viewfinder.

Photographers usually pooh-pooh electronic viewfinders, because no screen is as sharp as real life. But Sony’s viewfinder is extremely big, bright and sharp (how does 1.4 million pixels strike you?). And having a screen in the eyepiece gives you all kinds of advantages you don’t get when you’re just looking through glass.

For example, you can see exactly what effect your settings will have before you take the shot (white balance, exposure, focus, and so on). You can summon digital overlays in the viewfinder, including a horizon level. You can magnify the scene up to 15 times for precise manual focusing. You can play back your photos right in the viewfinder — a rare, surprisingly handy feature, especially when you’re experimenting with settings or reviewing your photos in bright sunlight (which washes out the screen somewhat).

You can shoot video with the camera to your face, too, a more stable way of holding the camera. (Most S.L.R.’s require you to look at the screen on the back to shoot video.)

The best part is that these gee-whiz features are part of a generally terrific camera. It has Sony’s Sweep Panorama mode, where you swing your arm in an arc as the camera snaps away — and then, two seconds later, the camera displays an automatically assembled, stunning 260-degree panoramic photo. The quality is fantastic, although it’s auto-mode only.

The A55 also creates high-dynamic range photos automatically — a neat trick by which it restores detail from areas that are too bright or too dark by superimposing three photos with different exposures.

There’s a built-in stereo microphone for use with your video, plus a mike jack. The button placement is excellent — especially the dedicated Video Record button (no switching modes when filmic inspiration strikes). The tilting, rotating, flip-out screen lets you shoot over your head, at knee level or even self-portraits. You can also fold the screen flush against the camera (with either screen in, for protection, or screen out).

I was so confident in the A55’s ability not to muff photo ops that I did a risky thing: I used it as the sole recording device for my son’s one and only sixth birthday party. Happy ending — the ratio of winner shots to losers was amazingly high. Even the low-light candle-blowing moment looks fantastic in video, like a Scorsese shot it. (Have a look at the sample photos that accompany this column.

Now, there are a few flies in the ointment. That 10-frames-a-second mode requires a lot of light; indoors, these superburst-mode photos are sometimes too dim, and you can’t adjust the aperture in this mode.

The camera is small and light compared with true S.L.R.’s, but it’s still much bulkier than, for example, Sony’s own minuscule NEX-5 (the smallest of this type in the world, although you give up a lot of features — like a flash, a mode dial and a wide choice of lenses).

There are two separate playback modes, one each for stills and videos, and it’s annoying to have to switch between them. Battery life is about 350 shots a charge, which could be better. And some of the fancy modes (like high dynamic range) require a lot of processing after each shot, during which time you can’t use the camera.

Still, this camera takes pictures and videos as well as anything in its price range — and, in some cases, better than far more expensive equipment. (A sibling camera, the A33, is available now for $100 less. It gives you 7 frames a second instead of 10, and 14 megapixels instead of 16; it also does away with the GPS chip that tags each photo with your location.)

Even more exciting, it’s thrilling to see Sony finding its mojo again, introducing radical new design ideas that, in this case, really advance the state of the art.

In other words, maybe the right term for this camera is neither S.L.R. nor I.L.C. Maybe it’s really an E.S.F. (exciting step forward).

E-mail: pogue@nytimes.com


From readers' comment:

Nice try, Mr. Pogue, but this is article is obviously written by a non-photographer trying to review a camera after limited use and reading the new product's press packet sent by Sony publicists. I have no doubt that this camera is a fine camera, as most recent model cameras by Sony, Nikon, Pentax and Canon are -- particularly those models which are a notch above consumer level. However, mirrorless or light splitting designs are not new and offer a well known set of technical compromises.

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