In a flurry of press announcements, Sony have announced no less than four shiny new cameras to add to their popular range of digital compact cameras.
Sony Cybershot DSC-H5 and DSC-H2
It seems that they liked their Cyber-shot H1 so much that’s it’s spawned two new updates, with both featuring an image stabilized 12x optical zoom, electronic viewfinders and a host of exposure modes including manual, aperture and shutter priority.
The bigger brother Cybershot DSC-H5 sports a 7.2-megapixel CCD with a man-sized three-inch LCD screen, while the DSC-H2 serves up 6 megapixels and a more modest 2.5 inch screen.
Both cameras come with optical zoom lens offering a huge range of 36-432mm (35mm equiv) at F2.8-3.7.
The combination of Sony’s Super SteadyShot optical image stabilisation and high sensitivity settings (up to IS0 1000) should let all but the shakiest folks on wobbly shoes get sharp pictures.
Offering 32MB of internal memory, both cameras take Memory Stick Duo or Memory Stick PRO Duo cards (now available in capacities up to 4 GB).
The DSC-H5 camera will be available in May for about $500 (~£287, ~€420) and the DSC-H2 a month earlier for around $400 (~£230, ~€337).
Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W70 and DSC-W100
Slipping in to the front of the W series pack are the DSC-W70 and DSC-W100 compact cameras.
Featuring 8.1 and 7.2 million pixels respectively, the DSC-W100 cameras offer a 3x zoom (38-114mm), eye-level viewfinder and a 2.5-inch screen.
There’s some useful manual controls on the DSC-W100, with a manual exposure mode giving up to 46 steps of adjustable shutter speeds (30 – 1/1000 sec) but there’s only two steps of aperture control available.
Both cameras offer a wide range of ISO sensitivities with the DSC-W70 covering 100-1000 ISO and the W100 managing an impressive 80-1250 ISO.
Battery life is an impressive 360 shots on a single full charge, with the W100 coming with 64MB of internal memory and the W70 58MB. Both cameras use Sony’s Memory Stick storage.
The Cyber-shot DSC-W100 will be knocking out for $350, and the DSC-W70 for around $300 (~£172, ~€253). Both models are scheduled for release in April and will be available in black and silver.
Panasonic’s first digital SLR camera with interchangeable lens has been announced at the PMA show.
Do we like the sound of that? You betcha!
Onboard is Panasonic’s Venus Engine III image processing LSI, claimed to consume only 80% as much power as its predecessor, the Venus Engine II.
Although full details have yet to be announced, the camera does seem to share quite a bit in common with the Olympus E-330 EVOLT, although the new, Leica-branded lens looks to be a very classy number indeed.
Google has struck up a partnership with the US National Archives to digitise their historic movie collection and provide free access to the public through their video search service.
“Our new strategic plan emphasises the importance of providing access to records anytime, anywhere. This is one of many initiatives that we are launching to make our goal a reality,” he added.
Happily, this was not the case, as a Google spokesperson explained: “Video uploaders, using Google Video’s ‘Advanced Options’ feature, can choose to blacklist countries. In this case the uploader blacklisted the US and only the US. When uploading the video the content owner set a preference not to show this content to users in the US.”
The site formerly known as Ask Jeeves has retired its long serving butler, rebranded itself as ‘Ask.com’ and served up a new, simplified homepage offering access to new tools like enhanced maps, driving directions, encyclopaedia search and a Web-based desktop search.
Aerial photos can also be overlaid or combined with regular street views, with the option to print aerial shots for a fee.
Here’s an idea Ask.com – how about you include a help file to explain this to users, or, even better, give us the same goodies too?
Old Danny boy’s got his work cut out for him as Ask Jeeves has remained the least used among the largest search engines, way behind market leaders Google who currently hog an estimated 40 per cent of all queries.
It is with great sadness that we hear that UK IPTV innovator KiT (Kingston interactive TV) is to close its doors on 3rd April. We’ve always been huge fans of their work.
It’s always struggled to get sufficient subscribers to support the service. Hull is an area with much financial deprivation with the average family income around £14,000/year. It’s understood that the high point of subscriptions, 10,000 at the start of the service, has lead to the current low point of 4,000. The level of financial loses and the need for KiT to refresh its now 7 year old IPTV kit is understood to have lead to the decision. The parent company, Kingston Communications (KC), feel that they can no longer justify supporting the service
Unknown to many, Blockbuster Video have been running a VoD trial on KiT for a couple of years. Their first in the world.
There has been some wondering around the Digital-Lifestyles office if the delay in closing KiT has been a considered position by the KC. By waiting until now to close KiT, the rest of the world now realise that they all need to be in IPTV, and the number of potential purchasers will have increased.
The idea behind buzz-o-phone is simple enough. You call a US freephone (800) number where you’re able to leave a voice message. Your elicitation, wise or otherwise, is the posted to the player section of the buzz-o-phone Web site, where the world can listen.
We’d imagine that two versions of the ‘conversation’ will have to be created; the raw, which would be an unfiltered version; and the clear-feed, dropping off comments that are judged as offensive. This is riddled with difficulties of its own – as with all censorship, you have to make you’re own decision as to if your parameters of acceptability align with the self-appointed censor.
Xara has been around for over a decade now, and although it may not be as well known as expensive rival programs like Illustrator and Freehand, it continues to offer astonishing value for money, providing ample power under the hood and enough tools to satisfy anything from graphic smudgers to arty pros.
Although it isn’t the most modern-looking of programs, Xara’s sheer simplicity and power makes it a far less daunting program to master compared to many high-end vector programs, with new users guided by a set of excellent help files and 80+ short movie tutorials.
Imported images can be resized, have text added and then exported as JPEGs with control over compression settings.
The verdict
Islington’s free WiFi cloud to extended well beyond the initial Technology Mile.
Jogging geeksters! Set your wallets to ‘buy’ as GlobalSat are set to release a wrist-type GPS Receiver aimed at sporty types who get their kicks from running around all over the place on foot, bike, board or ski.
Training projects and analysis come with the bundled Windows-compatible “professional self-training” package, but Apple users can stay at home because we couldn’t find any mention of Mac support.
GPS Parameters