Canon Vixia HF R300

With video-capable phones and cameras, consumer camcorders?are in a tough spot when it comes to balancing price and usefulness. The Canon Vixia HF M50?($649.99, 3 stars) captures great video, but at that price, you might as well get a high-end digital camera that also takes great still images. The Canon Vixia HF R300 ($349.99 direct) falls in the lower range of the company's consumer camcorder line, but offers a far more compelling combination of performance and value. It lacks some of the low-light prowess found in the M50, but takes the advantage with a wider angle lens and 32x optical zoom. The smaller sensor still produces some great looking high-definition video, making the R300 a solid choice for the weekend videographer looking for a no-frills, easy-to-use standalone camcorder.

Design and Features
The R300 looks a lot like the higher-end M50, measuring 2.2 by 2.1 by 4.5 inches (HWD) and weighing in at 8.8 ounces. It feels a bit flimsier than the M50 (2.5 by 2.7 by 4.8 inches / 10.9 ounces), but is still comfortable to hold and shoot for long periods. The control layout is nearly identical on the R300 and M50, with a Record button on the right side, where your thumb naturally sits, and a zoom rocker on top, within reach of your index finger. In the LCD recess are Video Snap, Home, and Playback buttons, as well as a 3.5mm headphone and microphone jack, mini HDMI out, and mini USB out. There is no built-in memory, only a single slot for an SD, SDHC, or SDXC card. The lens cover is engaged and disengaged by a small switch to its right, which is less convenient than the automatic cover on the M50.?

All controls are accessed with the 3-inch touch-screen LCD. It definitely gives the R300 a clean and minimalist look, but I found navigating the touch menus to be a bit cumbersome. Focus, white balance, and exposure are all buried in touch menus, and getting precise control is too difficult. With this type of camcorder, however, I expect most users will stick to the fully automatic mode, which I found to be fast and accurate in most situations. The 230k-dot LCD is the same as the one found on the M50, and is still a bit too grainy and dim for bright outdoor light.

The R300 uses a smaller 1/4.85-inch HD CMOS sensor, but also packs a far more versatile lens. The 32x zoom lens features a 38.5-1232mm focal length (35mm equivalent) with an f/1.8-4.5 aperture, which is wider and longer than the M50's 10x zoom (43.4-436mm) with its f/1.8-3.0 aperture. Canon advertises a 51x zoom factor, using what it calls the Advanced Zoom feature, but really this is just a combination of optical and digital zoom.?

Performance and Conclusions
Though it lacks the "Pro" designation found on the M50, the R300 is a capable shooter, capturing crisp and clear high-definition video. You can choose from three shooting modes?Auto, Manual, and Cinema?with the latter simulating the look and frame rate of most film projects. Video format and quality can also be adjusted, with the highest setting, MXP, recording 1080i60 video in AVCHD format. Much like the M50, the R300 is limited to interlaced video as opposed to progressive, capturing 60 interlaced fields per second and encoding the video at 30 frames per second.

The resulting video is very similar to the M50, which is to say good, with sharp detail and fine textures. White balance is a bit less accurate with the R300, with colors skewing towards cooler hues. The smaller sensor means smaller pixels, which results in reduced low-light performance. The difference is most evident in the amount of image noise apparent in low-lighting situations. The M50 excelled, while the R300 showed noticeable grain in low-light. It didn't ruin the video by any means, but it is evident when playing back on large screen HDTVs.

Image stabilization is solid, helping steady shots at both the wide end and telephoto max. The 32x zoom is impressive, and could really come in handy if filming, say, a school play from the back row of a large auditorium. Obviously even powered image stabilization can only do so much, and when fully zoomed, video had the same dreamy wobble found on the M50, though it was a bit more noticeable on the R300. Autofocus was quick and accurate, and I actually encountered fewer instances where the focus would shift to the background inadvertently than on the M50. Audio quality was on par with the M50, with similar issues with picking up wind and other ambient room noises. And as with the M50, the R300 has a 3.5mm mic input for better audio capture with an external microphone.?

When compared with video captured by a point-and-shoot camera, like our Editors' Choice Canon PowerShot S100?($429.99, 4.5 stars), the R300's video lacked some of the saturation and vibrancy, but was able to achieve similar levels of detail and sharpness. The R300 does have an advantage in moving shots, like a slow pan, where the S100 turned in slightly choppy video. Still images, which are captured at 2-megapixel resolution, however, don't loook great on the R300, with too much image noise and loss of finer details.

The Canon Vixia HF R300 strikes a solid balance between performance, features, and price. At $349.99 it's less expensive than most digital cameras that shoot comparable video. It lacks the built-in memory, Wi-Fi, and low light performance of the M50, but also costs considerably less. A solid camera like the PowerShot S100 is more versatile, taking far better stills and capturing relatively sharp 1080p video. However, if you're sold on the traditional camcorder form-factor, the R300 is a solid, easy to use, and relatively affordable option for more casual shooters.

More Digital Camcorder reviews:
??? Canon Vixia HF M50
??? Canon Vixia HF R300
??? Ion Air Pro WiFi
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??? GoPro HD Hero2 Outdoor Edition
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UP Board Allahabad Intermediate Result

It is important for candidates to receive well UP Board Intermediate Result if they are to be accepted to the best colleges and universities across the nation thus making the UP Board Result 2012 very important for the UP education board stake holders. The media and critic society usually turn to them first with many questions regarding result and performance and when results are noted to drop below their available lots of hue and cry is raised.

This makes the maintenance and recruitment of the best possible staff a necessity in the field since they teachers are noted to play a major part towards student success. Parents have also been identified to play a major part towards UP Board Intermediate Result and UP Board 12th Result and it is important that both the teachers and parents work together to ensure the best UP Board Result 2012.

The government also plays a major role towards ensuring the best results be delivered since they must ensure the personnel being given the responsibility are qualified for the task.
It is also important that new techniques and approaches begin being introduced to schools since recent research shows that half of all children are visual learners thus meaning they require to be provided with visual examples to learn effectively where as the other half are auditory learners thus meaning they earn better while listening to procedures. Most school teach using the auditory method and if the schools adopt both technique it is sure that UP Board Result 2012 and future examination will have major improvement.

Many private schools are today adopting the technology to teach students and it has seen many weak students drastically improve the learning capabilities. Government school remains without such facilities thus depriving many of the candidates with such teaching techniques. It is important in this case that parent who could afford should purchase computers or lap top since these are the main tools used to teach visual learners in the modern world.

One could access different syllabus and learn them visually thus leading to better UP Board Intermediate Result and UP Board 12th Result as many visual learner have been noted to fail examination since that do not have auditory skills thus leading them to miss al lessons. The technology has been adopted in many private special education centers in the state and they have been noted to improve UP Board Result 2012 for many students that had no hope of passing.

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Obama touts gay rights in Jane Lynch-narrated video

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Sage Releases Intuitive Construction-Specific Cloud Service ...

BEAVERTON, OR?(Marketwire ? May 22, 2012) ? Sage North America today announced the release of Sage Construction Anywhere, a cloud-based platform that increases accessibility to project data, fosters collaboration, and increases operational efficiency. It is designed to help construction and real estate companies get critical project information into the hands of those who need it most ? anytime, anywhere.

Sage Construction Anywhere enables everyone involved in a construction project to work together with common information and keep all projects, people, documents, and data securely in one project hub in the cloud. It is built upon Microsoft's industry-leading cloud services platform, Azure, which provides the highest available levels of data integrity and confidentiality. The Sage Construction Anywhere platform provides the administrator control over who sees what projects and which details as well as makes it easy to invite new companies, people, and contacts to a project. Designed specifically for the construction industry by the market leader in construction business management solutions, Sage Construction Anywhere uses terms and processes that are instantly familiar to builders and contractors, making it an intuitive tool that requires virtually no training.

?In the construction industry, a building project can involve dozens ? even hundreds of trades and other team members that all need to be in lock step to drive the project's performance,? said Jon Witty, vice president and general manager of Sage Construction and Real Estate. ?Sage Construction Anywhere is the quickest and easiest way to bring together all the people, documents, data, discussions and interactions related to the project. It changes the way we think from simply asking whether we got the project done in time and made money, to managing how quickly we performed and the ability to maximize profit at every step of the project.?

Sage Construction Anywhere will aggressively rollout new functionality several times a year. Each major update will be built around improving a core aspect of project collaboration and operational excellence for the construction industry. The first cloud services are focused on the ability to access Sage Timberline Office (becoming Sage 300 Construction and Real Estate) reports anytime, anywhere. For more information or to order Sage Construction Anywhere, call 1-877-541-1642 or visit SageConstructionAnywhere.com.

Sage construction and real estate products are part of a broad portfolio of Sage business management solutions that are designed to help make business life easier. They include Sage Timberline Office (soon to be renamed Sage 300 Construction and Real Estate), Sage Timberline Enterprise (Sage 300 Trade Specialty), Sage Timberline Estimating (Sage Estimating), Sage 100 Contractor (formerly Sage Master Builder), and Sage Peachtree (Sage 50 ? U.S. Edition) software, which are industry-tailored to help companies optimize financial and operational performance. With over 40 years in the industry and more than 40,000 construction and real estate customers, Sage product lines have been recognized as the most widely used applications for construction estimating, job costing, accounting, payroll, and project management in the mid-market, according to the Construction Financial Management Association's (CFMA) 2010 Information Technology Survey for the Construction Industry.

About Sage Sage is a leading global supplier of business management software and services for small and midsized businesses. The Sage Group plc, formed in 1981, was floated on the London Stock Exchange in 1989 and now employs more than 12,300 people and supports more than 6 million customers worldwide. For more information about Sage in North America, please visit the company website at na.sage.com/. Follow Sage North America on Facebook, facebook.com/SageNorthAmerica, and Twitter, twitter.com/sagenamerica.

Tags: Construction Industry, collaboration, Sage Timberline Enterprise, team members, Sage North America

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Beyond Strategy: It's About Value ? The Learning Pond

May 23, 2012 by glichtman

We might refer to the last 20 or 30 years in independent school management as the Era of Strategic Planning.? Schools recognized during this time that they were businesses, not mom-and-pop start-ups or old boy clubs.? Businesses need to plan for the future, not just believe in it.? We learned to do five-year look-aheads according to best practices.? For many schools, particularly those that were founded or have grown substantially since the 1960?s or 1970?s, we crossed the Rubicon between putting out fires day-to-day and acting like a business with plans for a real future.

I am a huge fan of strategic planning.? My book, The Falconer, teaches strategic thinking and interprets The Art of War in perhaps its simplest and most personal form. But as Kevin Hendry from the University of Queensland writes in his Leading Strategic Conversations, strategic planning is evolving in substantive ways, and they are highly relevant to school leadership.

Both Hendry, and Jim Collins, who he cites, argue that leadership is now less about the vision of a charismatic or revered individual raised up for others to implement, and more about creating an ongoing dynamism in the organization for continuous self-evaluation and adaptation.

In the current fast-paced, fluid period of evolution, caused by the combination of market stresses and disruptive innovations that so many of us recognize, strategy has to be linked not only with long-range planning for financial and organizational stability, but in creating value.? This is not a new business concept but it is one that many school leaders have yet to embrace.

Strategic plans have focused on how the organization can operate efficiently and reliably: how to ensure a match between sources of revenue and the expenses of operation.? The link to value proposition requires that we understand what we offer from the direct viewpoint of the customer.? This viewpoint has not been the core focus of our strategic planning processes, and that will need to change. We can create new value, find value that we have always had but have underexploited, or expand on our current greatest values.? But we are not going to get there if we don?t shift our approach.

Strategy has largely been the purview of senior leadership; leaders set the agenda and lower levels get it done.? Value creation requires a vastly more integrated process of determination and implementation. By definition all members of the organization (and in particular the rank and file of faculty) offer key value delivery mechanisms.? Our organizational structures and practices are not optimized to take advantage of these value creation opportunities.? It is not that we have been stupid; the world has changed and it demands new approaches to address those changes.

Bottom line: value creation is now Job One for all of us, and leaders need to embrace how to develop this in the organization or face quickly losing competitive advantages that may have been built up over decades. A great place to start will be to re-focus from traditional strategic planning to an integrated focus on value proposition.

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The Big Question | Thompson Patent Law ... because litigation ...

In our house the day has finally come.? I imagine most if not all parents of children on the autism spectrum dread ?The Big Question.?

?Daddy, do I have autism??

My fear of this question began six years ago, within days of the diagnosis. When is the right time to tell her? What if she finds out from a bully who crushes her spirit on the playground because we chickened out and waited too long?

The big question popped while we read aloud a book written by Temple Grandin, a famous autistic professor at the University of Colorado. As we read the words to her (which she could read mostly by herself, by the way) she recognized similarities between Temple?s self-description and her own experience.

As it happened, we basically led her to it but left it up to her to formulate the self-awareness all on her own.? She was more ready to ask than I was to answer, even though I had six years to think about it.? I paused.

?Well, yes, dear.? That?s what the doctors said.? Everybody has different strengths, and you have some of the same strengths as Temple.?

Like most questions, I suspect she may very well have known the answer, but asked to see what we would do.? On reflection, she may have been operating on that higher plane that we simply don?t appreciate.

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Iran talks in Baghdad: Western naivet

It?s hard to overestimate the degree of naivet? on the part of the West as it heads toward another round of nuclear talks with Iran in Baghdad on Wednesday.

Clearly, Iran is stalling for time to develop a nuclear weapon. One example: In talks last month in Istanbul, Tehran seems to have convinced international negotiators of the sincerity and weight of a fatwa, or religious edict, by the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that a nuclear bomb is haram ? forbidden ? in Islam.

Last week, for instance, former French Prime Minister Michel Rocard said the fatwa will help promote confidence about Iran?s nuclear activities.

OPINION:?3 reasons not to attack Iran

The ayatollah is not beholden to keep his word, but that doesn?t seem to be of much concern. At the Istanbul talks, the West agreed for the first time to Iran?s demand that it may enrich uranium, with restrictions ? despite UN resolutions to the contrary.

The Islamic regime has continuously believed that the more its nuclear program is expanded and progress is achieved, the less likely the West will demand a halt to the program ? and if Iranian leaders remain steadfast in the face of all threats, the more likely the West will eventually accept a nuclear Iran.

Recent chronology bears this out.

When President Obama took office in 2009, Iran was under several UN sanctions conditioned on its suspension of all uranium enrichment-related and reprocessing activities. At the time, Iran had 1,200 kilos of low-enriched uranium at its Natanz facility.

Mr. Obama chose to engage the Islamic regime, believing that an extended hand would yield better results than threats. He reasoned that a new US approach would be welcomed by Tehran because it was a complete change from the Bush administration.

However, the radicals ruling Iran saw this extended hand as weakness. They engaged the Obama administration while enriching uranium beyond the benign 3.5 percent level, as it had been limited to for many years, to the 20 percent level. While that is not a high enough enrichment level for a nuclear weapon, it is high enough to get to bomb-grade very quickly ? in a matter of weeks if Tehran decides to do so.

Early in 2010, Obama, realizing his defeat in the negotiation phase, moved to a sanctions phase. But instead of the crippling sanctions he had promised, he started step-by-step sanctions that Iran?s clerics saw as further proof of America?s inability to stop Iran, which emboldened them to speed up their program.

OPINION:?5 reasons US must avoid war with Iran

Today Iran, under further sanctions by the United Nations, United States, and European Union, has over 5.5 tons of enriched uranium ? enough to eventually make six nuclear bombs. It continues to enrich uranium with more than 9,000 centrifuges at Natanz, both at the 3.5 and 20 percent levels, and at the previously secret site, the Fordow facility, deep in a mountain near the city of Qom, to the 20 percent level.

All the while Iran is expanding the number of centrifuges at both sites, with a possibility that there are more sites unknown to the West or the International Atomic Energy Agency.

This takes us to the current set of negotiations. In Instanbul, the West handed the Islamic regime a historic win. For the first time in the negotiations over Iran?s nuclear program, the West offered Iran full acceptance of its nuclear enrichment process if Iran stopped the 20-percent enrichment.

In other words, the West has caved to Iranian demands of accepting its domestic nuclear enrichment.

Most interesting is an Iranian analysis of Khamenei?s fatwa: ?If the Obama administration realizes the importance of the place of the supreme leader in Iran and understands the fatwa, then most of their problem [with Iran?s nuclear issue] will be solved.?

The analysis ominously stated: ?There will be no other guarantee beyond the fatwa to the West? ? meaning that the West will only get the word of a leader whose regime has been based on lies and deceit, a leader who has ordered the slaughter of thousands of Iranians ? and also Americans ? in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a leader who constantly threatens the existence of Israel and the ?defeat? of America.

ANOTHER VIEW: Iran nuclear talks: To keep global support, US must seize diplomatic opportunities

Khamenei is not a grand ayatollah, or a marja, and therefore cannot issue a fatwa. Many in Iran?s Islamic leadership know this. He was elevated to ayatollah status overnight to replace Ruhollah Khomeini when he died in 1989. Even if a marja issues a fatwa, he can overturn it if it benefits Islam. So Khamenei?s fatwa can be tossed out at the right time.

Interestingly, the regime?s interpretation of the Quran is to deceive its enemy, i.e. the West, until such time as the regime is strong enough to confront it.

Is Obama so naive as to hang on to a fake fatwa in return for accepting a nuclear Iran?

His secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, says she has discussed the fatwa with Turkey?s prime minister, experts, and religious scholars. ?If it is indeed a statement of principle, of values, then it is a starting point for being operationalized, which means that it serves as the entryway into a negotiation as to how you demonstrate that it is indeed a sincere, authentic statement of conviction,? she said last month.

According to media reports, the US is expected to push Iran to close its Fordow facility and send its stockpile of medium-enriched uranium out of the country.

Iran has ruled out the closure of Fordow, even announcing that it will increase the number of centrifuges at that facility. And so far, its strategy of expanding its nuclear program while wearing down the West has already proved successful.?

OPINION:?Five reasons to attack Iran

It is clear that after a decade of negotiations and sanctions, the leaders of the Islamic regime will not accept a full halt to their nuclear program. But given that Iran now has the know-how to make a bomb, that is the only outcome that should be acceptable to the West.

Reza Kahlili is a pseudonym for a former CIA operative in Iran?s Revolutionary Guard and the author of the award winning book "A Time to Betray:?The Astonishing Double Life of a CIA Agent Inside the Revolutionary Guards of Iran." He teaches at the US Department of Defense?s Joint Counterintelligence Training Academy (JCITA) and is a member of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security.

ALSO BY THIS WRITER:?Ex-CIA spy: History of failed negotiations shows Iran won't deal

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