Platforms

PowerShot S80 Announced By Canon
Canon has announced its new PowerShot S80 consumer camera, an eight megapixel compact camera with a wide range of auto and manual controls.
Smaller and lighter than the PowerShot S70 it replaces, the S80 sports a much larger (2.5″) wide viewing angle LCD monitor, a wide-angle 28-100 mm f/2.8-5.3 (3.6x) optical zoom lens which uses the same DIGIC II processor found in Canon’s professional series digital SLRs
The prosumer-targeted camera offers an EOS-style Multi Control Dial for quickly setting menu and shooting functions and nippily scrolling through images during playback.
The camera packs in some advanced features including real-time histogram display, FlexiZone AF/AE with a freely movable focus point and manual focus override with 21 shooting modes taking care of most lighting conditions.
The new large 2.5″ LCD is adjustable to one of 15 brightness levels and features a “Quick-bright” function for shooting in sunny conditions (sadly, a feature of little benefit to most UK users).
There’s also a handy selectable grid line display to help with composition and keeping wobbly horizons level.
As is the norm for a compact camera, the optical viewfinder can best be described as ‘basic’ with all the shooting image being presented in the LCD screen.
The little fella (104 x 57 x 39 mm) can also record quality video clips up to 1 GB in size, from 320 x 240 at 30/15 fps right up to 1024 x 768 at 15 fps.
Surprisingly, RAW capture has been left off the spec list, although there’s USB 2.0 compatibility to help speedily transfer images to a PC speedily.
“The PowerShot S80 provides those serious about photography with uncompromising specifications,” gushed Mogens Jensen, Head of Canon Consumer Imaging Europe. “Its futuristic and compact design symbolises Canon’s commitment to pushing the limits of what is possible in this important segment.”
The camera’s 8.0 Megapixel sensor produces images for detailed A3+ size prints, with auto focus speeds claimed to 20% faster.
The S80 is expected to retail for around $549 (£322, €475) when it hits the stores in October 2005.
PowerShot S80
24 August, 2005
Unified DVD Format On Rocks
Sony and Toshiba have failed to agree on a unified format for next-generation DVDs, according to a Japanese newspaper report today.
For three years, pressure groups led by Sony and Toshiba have jostled to have their respective technologies adopted as standard for next-gen DVD players, PC drives and optical discs.
Both formats are based around blue lasers, which have a shorter wavelength than red lasers used in current DVD equipment.
This allows discs to store data at higher densities, providing enough storage capacity for high-definition movies and television.
Toshiba teamed up with NEC and Sanyo to promote the HD DVD standard, while Sony and Matsushita (makers of Panasonic products) have been pushing a rival Blu-ray technology.
Japan’s Yomiuri newspaper has reported that the two companies have now abandoned their efforts to develop a unified format, with negotiations falling through after both sides refused to budge.
It was hoped that the Japanese technology giants may have worked together to develop a new format before the launch of new products, but time appears to have run out.
The newspaper report hasn’t been verified by either firm, although both have said that they have not ruled out the possibility of further talks at some point.
In the meantime, both companies will continue the development of products utilising the rival DVD formats.
Sony has announced that it intends to put a Blu-ray disc drive in its new PlayStation game console next year. Their Blu-ray technology is also backed by industry big boys Dell and Samsung.
Although pundits are predicting that producers of next-generation optical discs would eventually use one format, it looks like products based on the two competing standards will be around for a short while, potentially punishing earlier adopters and holding back consumer growth.
Blu-raydisc.info
HD DVD
Sony, Toshiba May Create Universal Blu-Ray/HD DVD Standard (April 2005)
23 August, 2005
Moog Dies
Thanks to Tim for the update on the details of this story
It is with great sadness that we heard of the death of Robert Moog, the inventor of the Moog synthesiser – an instrument that not only changed the way that music is created, but what music could be.
Moog had been suffering with an inoperable brain tumour since April and died on Sunday aged 71.
Many, including us, feel his contribution to society is too large to measure.
A humble man, by all accounts, who left the world on physics to work with composer, Herbert Deutsch in 1964 on the development of the Minimoog synthesiser.
While not the first synth, it became popular as it grabbed musicians attention in its flexibility, enabling them to express themselves.
The number of tracks and musicians that used a Moog are too plentiful to mention, but of particular note are Rick Wakeman; Keith Emerson; the Beatles, with their Abbey Road album; Kraftwerk; and Wendy Carlos with her Switched on Bach album. Laterly the Moog has been embraced again by a new generation of young musicians. A more complete list is available at the bottom of the page on Synthmuseum.com
I was lucky enough to see the film Moog, by Hans Fjellestad a couple of week ago and if you haven’t seen it I’d highly recommend that you do. It was clear that Moog was a man who was not only admired by the people around him, but genuinely liked.
As a demonstration of the depth of feeling for Moog around the world, it’s telling to see that close to 2,500 messages have been left for him and his family following the announcement of his illness.
Moog music
Tributes of Robert Moog
22 August, 2005
Shuffle Art Archives – Decorate Your iPod Shuffle, Free
Shortly after the launch of the Apple iPod shuffle, if not simultaneously, manufacturers were quick to jump on the bandwagon by producing and offering thin cases or skins.
I didn’t ever understand the point of this. I found the shuffle to be made of pretty tough stuff, quite happy knocking around in a pocket of change, with smudges wiping off easily.
Not only that, but it attacked one of the very things that I found desirable about the shuffle. Being a male of a certain age, I liked the way I could wear it under my tops and it didn’t add to the girth of my waist. Adding a case around the shuffle would extend my wait by a few additional millimeters.
Many of you will also have seen the devoted souls who have been arranging a packet of chewing gum around their shuffle, aping the comparison that Apple used at its launch, when the Apple product evangelists held the shuffle up with the packet of gum.
NB. At the UK press launch the US Appleittes brought US gum packets over with them, noted with some amusement by some of the assembled hacks.
Well, I’ve just come across an alternative to buying a cover.
Design your own shuffle cover Shuffle Art Archives is an enterprising Japanese Web site which has assembled collections of designs for decorative stickers that you can apply to your little white pride and joy.
It brings together all of the aspects of shuffle decoration – make your own; share your designs; and photo galleries of others designs.
Once you have downloaded your blank shuffle-sized templates as Photoshop file or GIF, you are then free to decorate, upload and share with your fellow shuffle customisers.
User Generated Content doesn’t just have to be digital.
Designs to Download The libraries of designs cover a really impressive range of designs and styles. These are easy to preview and download for you to print out to sticky-backed printer paper for your use.
Most of the designs for download leave the round controls uncovered, as I would assume that the print would wear out with use and it is possible that not seeing the functions of the keys could confuse the owner.
Rather than ignoring this large circle, a couple designs make use of the circular gap left in the print. One of particular note is Crow’s who uses an open mouth to surround the controls.
Another treats the shuffle as a phone, displaying the numbered keys in the lower section, with the controls taking the position of the ear piece
While some people take the simple approach and cover only one face of the player, others are more devoted and produce stickers for each of the exposed surfaces.
Once created or downloaded, they can be printed out on to sticky paper and applied to your virginal-white shuffle.
The quality of some of them is extraordinarily high. Two by Thomas Hui, could almost be sponsored version of the shuffle for the Basketball league.
Gallery The final part in the jigsaw is a photo gallery showing how enthusiastic people have been in customising their pride and joys.
As with the other sections, the range and quality is highly impressive with quite a few playfully mocking trade names such as a Sony battery, and a packet of Viagra.
As you might tell, I’m pretty enthused about the site – providing the tools to make your own covers and providing the inspiration to do it.
Shufflesome – has turned this idea into a business, even using RSS to alter you when new designed (or Outfits as they call them) becoming available.
Again, an impressive site with good designs – but of course you have to pay them for it!
Shuffle Art Archives
Shufflesome
19 August, 2005
3D TV: In Japan By 2020
You may think 3D TV is the kind of technology that will only ever appear in pages of a Dan Dare comic – a pipe dream.
Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications feel differently. They have stated that they plan to make it a commercial reality by 2020.
Japan is well advanced in TV technology – they’ve had HDTV for _ever_, so it makes sense that they start to purse what many feel should be the ultimate extension of TV.
Given their HD TV background, the 3D TV would be displayed at HD resolution, but it doesn’t stop there, they’d also have the sensation of touch and smell. This isn’t 3D with big clumpy glasses, but is watched with the naked eye.
There have been a number of research projects working on this over the last few years, indeed I was lucky enough to see one demonstrated last year. It was impressive.
A US company deepLight is claiming that they will be shipping displays in the first quarter of 2006, initially for commercial use, but as prices reduce home use will become practical.
Reuters interviewed Yoshiaki Takeuchi, director of research and development at the Ministry, giving an interesting example of, “Can you imagine hovering over your TV to watch Japan versus Brazil in the finals of the World Cup as if you are really there?”
3d TV forms part of a grand national project, formed around “universal communication,” which Reuters define as “a concept whereby information is shared smoothly and intelligently regardless of location or language.” Their serious about it too – the ministry will be requesting a budget of 1Bn Yen for the project.
deepLight
Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications
19 August, 2005
Lazer TripWire: Get On A Mission
Fancy getting all very Mission-Impossible at home or round about? Concerned that you need to protect yourself against International terrorists, your elder brother or members of a rival spy gang?
Wild Planet, based in San Francisco, will be able to fulfil your paranoia/technology dreams with their Lazer Tripwire. From the product name, it’s not exactly surprising that it act as a tripwire, but uses a laser to do it.
Using a low-power beam of light that won’t burn you retina out even if you look directly into it (not a laser then), for detection, the three supplied devices clamp on to relevant surfaces. Each of these units has an angle-able transmit and receive heads, so lining them up creates an invisible barrier around whatever is inside. As you all know from the movies, breaking the beam will set of the alarm, alerting you to the intrusion.
It’s an interesting adoption of technology that is used to protect really rather serious things, like armed fighter planes sitting on a runway and power stations, as Rayonet from UK company, Integrated Design, does.
Clearly devices like Rayonet are a little different in that they use infrared light and have a _little_ more sophistication in them, like the ability to ignore birds flying through the beam, but the Lazer Tripwire fundamentally uses the principles.
Michael Bystram of Integrated Design tells me that the initial ideas for Rayonet started 24 years ago, With a considerable step forward in intelligence around 8 years ago. Jump to now, and there’s a toy using the same principles.
The Lazer TripWire comes from Wild PLanet’s Spy Gear equipment range which, if I was in the process of going through childhood, I would been quite obsessed with getting hold of (frankly I’m pretty tempted now).
Wild Planet
Watch the Lazer TripWire Tv advert
Integrated Design’s Rayonet
18 August, 2005
Freeplay DEVO Wind-Up DAB Radio Announced
The world’s first wind-up FM and DAB digital radio, the Freeplay Devo, will be on sale in the UK soon.
Built on the well-regarded Freeplay power platform, the Devo wind-up wotsit offers DAB and FM waveband powered by an internal battery, AC via mains adapter or – when the power fades – some manful wrist action.
Sporting an attractive rugged black and silver finish with a blue LCD screen, the radio offers 5 DAB station presets with old-school rotary analogue tuning for FM.
The unit measures 122h x 114d x 205w mm, with the fascia being dominated by a large loudspeaker.
There’s a set of handy stereo RCA (phono) sockets onboard, letting users plug the radio into their home entertainment system, with a built in headphone socket for late night listening.
The Devo comes with a built in rechargeable battery with a claimed life of 6 hours DAB listening time (or 36 hours FM) per full charge.
When the batteries run out, a 60-second burst of action on the wind-up lever should reward the user with 3-5 minutes DAB reception or one hour of FM pleasure at normal volume
The Freeplay Devo is being launched in October 2005 with a retail price of £100 (~$180, ~€146).
Freeplay Devo
17 August, 2005
PMR 1.8″ Hard Drive 1st, Claims Hitachi
Toshiba claim a first with their release of what they claim is the first commercially released Perpendicular Magnetic Recording (PMR) hard drive.
Measuring 1.8 inches, the incy-wincy drive can hold 40Gb on its single platter, providing around 10,000 music tracks, or 25k photos. Running with the oh-so-memorable OEM name of the MK4007GAL, it weighs in at just 51g and measures 54mm x 78.5mm x 5mm. They plan to release a two platter version, the MK8007GAH, which has 80Gb storage and only an extra 3mm thickness, next quarter.
They’re also using the drive to make their Gigabeat music player sexier. The introduction of PMR technology into the Gigabeat F41 not only gives them 40Gb of storage, from a previous 20Gb, but lets them shrink the thickness by 3m.
Drives like this are becoming more important as digital media moves further into the mainstream, and consumers digital appetites expands from music to video. With the drive being this small it will fit into really compact devices like mobile phones.
How does it work its magic? Today’s drives typically use Longitudinal Magnetic Recording (LMR). In simple terms, the difference between the two is LMR has the magnetic field pointing either left or right, while PMR has them pointing up or down. This helps to achieve higher and more stable recording densities, and in turn improves storage capacity. The images from Toshiba should help make it a bit clearer (if you happen to speak Japanese).
While the theory of PMR has been around for a number of years, Toshiba has taken 1-2 quarters longer than they’d expected in getting the MK4007GAL to market.
Toshiba roadmap with PMR appears impressive with their 3.5in PMR drives giving 1Tb of storage in Q4 2006/Q1 2007. They estimate that PMR should give their 0.85″ drives 6-8Gb per platter.
It is generally thought that all hard disk manufacturers will move in this direction in the pursuit of ever higher storage capacities.
17 August, 2005
MX 5000: Logitech Announces Cordless Desktop Laser Keyboard
It could be argued that a keyboard’s beauty lies in its simple elegance. No flashing lights, no blinking screens, no whirring eye candy, just several rows of dumb keys obediently awaiting your input.
Simple. Classic.
Boring.
Clear your desks for Logitech’s new Cordless Desktop MX 5000 Laser keyboard – a futuristic, gadget-tastic affair that will makes your current keyboard look more at home in a Stone Age cave.
The Bluetooth keyboard features a built-in LCD which can display a ton of useful (and not-so-useful) information including e-mail and instant message notifications, favourite playlists and Internet radio stations.
Ever found yourself typing an email to your Gran and wondering what the ambient temperature of the room was? No problem – the MX 5000’s got a built in room temperature readout.
For MP3 junkies, there’s one-touch access to music playlists from popular player like iTunes, Windows Media Player and Musicmatch, with keyboard bashers also able to access and launch categories and themes of music through Musicmatch’s Internet radio stations.
The keyboard LCD screen provides instant notification of new e-mail and instant messages and there’s also a humble calculator included, but this one’s got a clever twist, with calculation results automatically being saved to the computer’s clipboard. Neat.
Naturally, if you want indicators, the MX 5000’s got ’em, with the LCD screen keeping users informed about the vital status of the caps lock and F lock keys, volume levels and mute.
The MX5000 reflects the trend which sees dumb-as-a-rock keyboards slowly turning into smartypants devices, capable of both sending and receiving info from the computer and, in this case, even acting as a Bluetooth 2.0 Enhanced Data Rate (EDR) wireless hub.
“Logitech introduced the world’s first mouse-and-keyboard combination in 1998 with the goal of removing cord clutter from the desk,” gushed Denis Pavillard, Logitech vice president of product marketing for desktops.
“We succeeded in delivering on that vision, and we are now addressing a different kind of clutter – cleaning up the mess of notifications and information that are displayed on the computer monitor.”
“The Logitech Cordless Desktop MX 5000 Laser desktop pushes that information to a peripheral screen so that people can choose when to glance at their notifications and status information, and can therefore clear their monitors — and their minds,” he added.
The Cordless Desktop MX 5000 package comes with Logitech’s MX1000 Cordless Laser Mouse, a laser powered chappie in a matching blue-slate/black finish.
Of course, the more functionality you squeeze into a keyboard, the greater the power needs, and Logitech have included a smart power-management solution which seems to comprise of a decidedly low tech on/off switch on the keyboard and an integrated battery indicator light.
We could have used one of them for our Logitech MX700 mouse which promptly ran out of juice half way through writing this review and is now pointlessly blinking away in its recharging dock.
The Logitech Cordless Desktop MX 5000 Laser will be available in October in the U.S. and Europe with a suggested retail price of £119.99 (€176) in Europe ($149.99 US).
Logitech
16 August, 2005
CC75, C110 Handsets: Siemens Goes Simple
Following hot on the heels of Vodafone’s successful stripped-down phone ‘Vodafone Simply’, Siemens has introduced a similarly frill-bereft mobile, the CC75.
The no-nonsense blower is designed for easy going folks who don’t want to do battle with a crateful of technology every time they want to make a call.
Accordingly, the Siemens CC75 has no camera, no Java applications, no memory expansion, no Bluetooth, no email, no video and no inbuilt speaker phone, serving up its set of Ye Olde basic functions in a simple, stylish design.
Simple doesn’t have to mean crap though, and the thin and light phone offers a 65k colour display, SMS and MMS with an innovative button on the side of the phone allowing a MMS voice message to be recorded easily.
In line with its Stenna stairlift shuffling demographic, the CC75 provides a screen with 16-dot lettering making characters 33 percent larger than usual and visible from any angle – so granny will have no problem finding a nephew to nag from her address book.
The Siemens CC75 will be available in Q4 2005, retailing in the “medium price range”.
Siemens have also announced their new CF110 slim slider phone.
Aimed at those weird people who like to “use their phone as a fashion accessory” (rather than talking into them), the attractive tri-band GSM CF110 offers a 130×130 pixel trans-missive 65K TFT, served up in a “Moonlight Silver” and “Midnight Blue” finish.
The CF110 is also something of a frill-free affair, with no camera, Bluetooth or music playback functionality onboard.
It does, however, offer a pretty useful set of day-to-day functions: WAP 1.2 browser, polyphonic ringtones, Java support, MMS, GPRS, basic PIM functions and a rather anorexic 1.5Mb of memory
The Siemens CF110 will be available in Q4 2005 in the mid to low price range.
Siemens
15 August, 2005