I've been envious of folk with digital SLRs for years, and think, on the death of our main point & shoot camera, that I might finally take the plunge. I've been studying up on Nikon's options, as I've been using their camera bodies for about a quarter-century now. In Popular Photography's intro to the newest models, I found the following particularly interesting:

Both the Canon and Nikon models can accept an accessory wireless device for Wi-Fi transmission of images or to link to a GPS system or external storage drive.


That's a neat idea... no longer are you stuck with local flash cards, you can now take a picture and immediately stick it, well, if done right, anywhere on the web. Your "film" is limited only by your connectivity and server space, making the camera a much thinner client than it's been in the recent past.

(I also like the D3's ability to use two flash cards for either overflow, when you're taking pictures like crazy, or for instant redundancy. Seems like a no-brainer to have a second memory card slot on cameras, but nothing short of the insanely priced pro model has it. Perhaps that's just the database admin in me.)

I'm not sure the fight between thin and thick clients will ever end. There are some beautiful things you can do with a full-fledged, local email client, but Gmail's interface is something to behold, usable on most any Internet capable computer you can put your hands on. I'm often reminded of how much nicer a local app is when I'm doing online banking or shopping at, say, eBay or Amazon. There will always be a place for the local app, it would appear, if only because there are so many fewer barriers to innovation for your programmer pool, but there will always be places where thin is in, and naturally so, as I feel is the case with cameras.

Blatherific Wednesday, I guess.