The G1 will be GE’s franchise player so its diminutive frame will be carrying the weight of the company. The 7-megapixel digi is only 3.625 inches wide and 2.5 inches tall, but it crams a lot into a small package. A 2.5-inch LCD shows you every close up captured by the 3x optical zoom and 4.8x digital zoom. The G1 also includes in-camera panoramic stitching, red-eye removal, MPEG-4 movie recording, electronic image stabilization, face-tracking, an SD/SDHC slot and a rechargeable lithium-ion battery. It’s available in black, red, blue, white and silver. Product Page → Read More
GE just announced a full Spring line-up of giggitydiggitycams. First up is the X series. The X1 is aimed at the prosumer who wants maximum zoom and loads of features to help you get the best picture possible. The 8-megapixel digi has 12x optical zoom that’s paired with 5.1x digital zoom and together they boast a 61.2x max zoom. For the paparazzi with a nervous twitch, the X1 is equipped with a handgrip and image stabilization. The X1 claims to have a very intuitive UI that’s viewable on the 2.5-inch LCD. Other notable features include in-camera panoramic stitching, red-eye removal, face-tracking, electronic stabilization, MPEG-4 movie recording and a 4 gigabyte SD/SDHC expansion slot. It will be available in black and white. Pricing is currently unavailable. Product Page → Read More
Emotiv is a company I expect we’ll be hearing a lot more about soon. It made news yesterday with a formal announcement of its Project Epoc, a developmental technology that interpolates electrical signals emitted by the brain and converts them into actions on a computer. I had been communicating with Emotiv going into GDC and as fate would have it, my meeting was scheduled for shortly after the press release began to circulate. First let me give you a little perspective on the landscape of brainwave measuring controllers. For a long time I have imagined a day when gaming would be controlled by body motion suits, brainwave headsets, all the stuff you wish you had from your favorite Sci-Fi film. Over the years I’ve seen and experienced a multitude of products that made claims similar, or identical, to Emotiv and its Epoc. Given those experiences, I was quite skeptical entering our meeting yesterday morning morning. → Read More
Samsung has something interesting in the MH80-series laptop hard drives. As the industry starts turning its eyes towards NAND-based flash drives for portables instead of standard disc-based drives, Samsung has developed a hybrid that couples an 80-, 120-, or 160-GB standard hard disk with 128- to 256-MB NAND RAM in one physical drive. The flash-RAM portion acts as a super-buffer for read/write tasks; as information is pulled from the physical disc, it’s stored in the NAND, where it can be accessed without the physical discs need to spin constantly. Because the on-drive transfer is near instant, the NAND acts as a low-power, fast place for required information to “stand by” to be accessed, meaning the physical discs can be put to rest, saving precious battery power. This next-step in drive evolution is meant to work with Microsoft’s ReadyDrive, a little-used component of Vista that makes for rapid booting and shutdown. The drive should give performance increases to any laptop, though, no matter what operating system it’s running, and should be available early summer for not much more than what drives sell for now. → Read More
Companies that feature “prosumer” products usually have a good rep. and their products are usually worth the extra cash. However, memory cards I just can’t see becoming “ultra extreme pro” or anything like that. But going against the grain, SanDisk and Lexar have announced multiple high-end memory cards. Lexar will offer a 4GB CF card and 2 and 4GB Memory Stick Pro Duo cards as part of it’s Platinum II line of cards. SanDisk is doing the same crap with it’s Extreme III line of cards. Expect to see a 4GB SDHC card, a MicroMate card reader, and a 4GB Memory Stick Pro Duo. Prices for all these cards range from $55 up to $180. Lexar’s offerings will be available by April while SanDisk’s are set to drop by May. SanDisk, Lexar announce high-end memory cards [Electronista] → Read More
For a NY minute I thought CRT’s were gone for good, but I was wrong…dead wrong. LG has announced a new CRT that they hope consumers will think is an LCD TV. It’s geared towards the Middle East and Africa, but I’m sure you could find a way to pick one up. The 21-inch CRT is about 75 percent cheaper than an LCD and its deflection angle of 120 degrees makes it the thinnest of all time. That’s great for everyone in the Middle East and Africa, but what about us? No word on price, yet. Slim CRT TV [via Gizmo Sight] → Read More
There’s an all new My Yahoo (upgrade URL) launching today at 11 am PST. This is the web’s most popular customizable home page by far, with 50 million or so worldwide users and half of the total market (the other half is controlled by Netvibes, GoogleIG, Pageflakes, Live.com and others). So when they make a change, it affects a lot of people. I had the opportunity to meet with Tapan Bhat (VP, Front Doors) and David White (Director, My Yahoo) and see a demo of the new product yesterday. There is also a screencast of the demo here, led by White. The new My Yahoo has been redesigned to look more like the recently updated Yahoo homepage. But the most significant changes are are under the hood. Instead of presenting a default set of content to new users to start them off, My Yahoo is now analyzing known data about the user (zip code from IP address and the areas of Yahoo that the user visits often) to create a customized version right at signup. So, for example, if the user tends to go to the Yahoo Movies property occasionally, a Yahoo Movies module will be auto added when they create a new My Yahoo account. Yahoo is also adding new sharing features. Any page that a user creates can be shared with other My Yahoo users via email or IM. If accepted, that page is added to the new user’s My Yahoo account as well. In the future, the team says, they’ll be allowing users to publish their own pages, as Pageflakes does today. Users can also choose between a 2, 3 or 4 column layout and a number of themes. There are a couple of areas where My Yahoo is still lagging competitors like Netvibes. Widgets cannot be added to the site, although that is coming eventually, the team says. Users also can no longer have bookmarks linked right from the main page – that feature has been moved to a drop down control panel. That makes some sense from a user interface perspective, but I’ll miss being able to access bookmarks with a single click. Finally, My Yahoo has a large ad unit on the site that cannot be removed – something none of the other services force on users. Overall this is a very welcome step forward for My Yahoo. And from what the team is → Read More
Yahoo Answers dominates its category, but there are a lot of complaints about spam and other useless content. Yahoo made a simple change to the product today that could help fight that spam. Users can now track others who tend to provide excellent answers. This won’t reduce the amount of spam on the site, but it will help highlight the better content and allow users to create social networks within Answers. To use this, users simply mouse over the avatar of a user they like and click “Add to My Contact.” Recent content from contacts appears in a user’s home page and profile page. This won’t directly help users who are searching for content or asking questions, but it will certainly bring better content to the foot of users who simply browse the site. → Read More
from photos in-camera. Suh-wheat. We haven’t yet gotten our hands on a demo unit, but the smartipants over at Laptop did, and apparently they love this thing. The only thing wrong that they could find was audible machine noise when the 3x optical zoom was actuated. Really, that’s trivial. Besides the basics of post-photo manipulation, the camera includes HP’s “slimming effect”, a digital meshing technology that “slims down” the person in the viewfinder. It’s perfect for us aging, gut-spreading hipsters. That alone makes this camera more than attractive at $229. HP Photosmart R837 [Laptop] → Read More
Eureka! iPodLinux has been successfully installed on a 5.5g iPod (Winpods and Macpods, 30 and 80 gig units). The 80GB iPods initially had problems and needed a ‘dirty hack’ because the kernel had trouble mounting the Root-FS. You should bow down to DataGhost and his genius in allowing us to have the penguin on the pod. If you’re unsure why anyone would want Linux on their iPod, well the answer is quite simple… because we can. Actually, it allows for infinite possibilities on expanding your hard drive driven device. 5.5g Wiki [via Make] → Read More
Being a sometimes-media critic (in years past, I wrote for the media magazine Editor & Publisher), the effects of news aggregation sites like Digg on news organizations is a topic of constant interest. Not so long ago, the vast majority of our news diet came from a single channel — reading (or listening or watching) a chosen news source. Whether it was our habit to pick up the Times every day, or to tune into 60 Minutes, whatever they decided was news, we’d learn about. In those days, the prestige and distribution of the news organization had an immense impact on the proliferation of a story. Of course, times have changed. These days, the Web has added two more news avenues to the mix: search-directed results (Google, for example), and community-driven news aggregation (Digg, most prominently, but also awful chain emails.) The spread of these channels, and Digg in particular, is having immense impact not only on our access to the news, but also on the type of reporting that news organizations undertake. And I’d venture to say that the end result could be nothing short of catastrophic. → Read More
Leica, the camera company you’ve never heard of, will release the C-LUX 2 this May. The 7.2-megapixel point-and-shoot has a 2.5-inch LCD and a 3.6x optical zoom, which isn’t bad at all. It also maintains the familiar Leica styling, which basically means it looks very metal-y. The only other thing worth mentioning is that Leica will implement intelligent ISO exposure control. All that means in English is that you should see an improvement in low light photography and taking pictures of sporting events and other fast, um, events. Product Page [Leica via Tech Digest] → Read More
Since Blake is apparently taking a cat nap and watching COLT flicks at GDC, I’d like to bring something to your attention. They had a round of talks at GDC called “Burning Mad – A Game Publisher’s Rant.” Basically, a select number of publishers and developers got to scream about whatever they hate. When Chris Hecker of the Spore team got his turn, he went on a crazy tirade on how Nintendo sucks. Chris has declared that “The Wii is a piece of shit!” and that Nintendo should make a console that doesn’t “suck ass”. Why is Chris so frustrated? The craptastic Wii’s processing power isn’t sufficient enough to develop next-gen games on and Nintendo only wants to make “fun” games. And did you know Nintendo just doesn’t see video games as art? Terrible! Where do I sign up for the Chris Hecker fanclub? Spore developer lambastes Wii [Games Are Fun] → Read More
Well, sans Hulk at least. Cingular has partnered with the WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) to create premium content available for wrestling fans. Everything from wallpapers to ringtones to videos will be available. However, getting your fix of Macho Man Randy Savage will cost you a pretty penny. Some videos will be included as part of Cingular’s media service plan while others will require a $4.99 premium video package. Ringtones are set to sell for $2.49 and wallpapers, graphics, whatever you call them, are going to go for $1.99. All the content is available now, just watch out when Jake The Snake comes to kick your ass for not downloading his ringtone. Cingular to bring wrestling to mobile phones [Washington Post] → Read More
across devices and were curious about how much effort they have put into DRM. In early 2001, Apple made a dynamic move signing major labels to deliver legitimate music downloads, albeit with a good amount of restrictions FairPlay. Fair enough, a number of folks at the time thought that DRM was a good way to get the digital party legally started. While iPods sold and Microsoft worked on playsforsure and planned Zune, we pulled together more of the picture on DRM which adds insight to Steve’s Thoughts on Music. → Read More
Sony’s finally adding Wi-Fi to one of its cameras. The six-megapixel Cyber-shot DSC-G1 is able to tap into 802.11 b/g networks so that users can instantly upload their photos to the Internet, be it Flickr, Facebook or their completely unread personal blog. Better still, the camera can link up with other Digital Living Network Alliance (an industry group that strives to forge common standards between different companies) devices. That can be another camera, a PC or one of those new WiFi-enabled igneous rocks. The DSC-G1 also has a roomy 3.5-inch LCD. Too bad the optical zoom is only 3X. Sony’s even throwing us a bone by including 2GB of built-in storage. Shame they still insist on making us use their proprietary Memory Stick storage format. It is nice to see Sony finally adopt a WiFi camera, making the company now only two years behind the times. Oh, and they’re charging the full Sony premium on it, too, demanding $600 for the camera. We’ll ignore the fact that you can grab lower end DSLRs for that kind of money because, hey, WiFi is just that awesome. Sony Announces Its First Wireless Digicam [PC Magazine] → Read More
Not even a minute into this video and I was cracking up. It’s not even because he’s rapping (poorly) about UNIX-commands, it’s that this is the biggest display of geekism ever. The beats are not fresh, the bassist has a frickin’ music stand to read notes off of, and the keyboardist is wearing the most unfashionable glasses to date. Oh, and last time I checked, unless you’re The Roots or something, you don’t use a live percussion setup for hip-hop. The lyrics are pretty funny though, so that makes up for everything else. Plus these dudes are completely serious, so have a gander and I’m sure you’ll day will become just a little better. Dude raps about Unix commands at Stanford [Digg] → Read More
The Zenum Organum portable media player player makes up for its underwhelming stats and features with its overall aesthetic. In other words, it looks really good. Might you call it iPhone-inspired?. Those features? Try 2GB of storage, 1.8-inch screen and support MP3, ASF, WMA and WAV. Pretty basic stuff, which is why Zenum had to go out of its way to make it all shiny and pretty. It should be here by the end of the year. Zenum pulled one of these “it’s so terribly basic, but boy does it look swell!” stunts last year when it starting showing off its Opteris smartphone. Incidentally, the Opteris might even see the light of day during next week’s CeBIT. Let no one ever tell you style is not any more important than substance. Product Page [Zenum via Unwired View] → Read More
I was about to go snarkstorm on this product, which is some sort of video player. Now that I look at it, however, it’s abundantly clear that it’s a bit of viral frippery. The real value, I think, is the video which involves a set of dirty, ugly hippies getting all coked up and pressing buttons. Don’t go watch it, however, because, as I’ll explain, that’s exactly what they want you to do. Let’s see if we can get to the bottom of this, shall we? → Read More
