Dr. Augustine Fou's Online Scrapbook

Thursday, June 07, 2007

Philips unveils SPC620, SPC1000, and SPC1300 webcams at Computex

from Engadget by Darren Murph

While we thought we'd already seen the crown jewel of webcams before, Philips apparently thinks otherwise, as it boasts quite heavily about its new trio of display-mountable cams that were unveiled at Computex. All three devices support background customization and emoticon integration, wide-angle lenses, and face-tracking capabilities. The SPC620 holds down the low-end with a vanilla VGA CMOS sensor and will run you €49.90 ($67), while the SPC1000 includes a directional microphone and noise reduction filter, two-megapixel sensor, and a 5x digital zoom for the very same price. The €99.90 ($135) SPC1300 features Pixel Plus 2 technology seen in the company's Flat TVs, a six-megapixel sensor, audio beaming system, twin directional microphones, and Digital Natural Motion technology that purportedly nixes any frame rate flickers when video chatting. All three webcams should hit shelves in Europe, America, and Asia this August. [Via TechDigest]

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Phreetings - Create Photo Greeting Cards with Flickr Pictures and Your Text

http://labnol.blogspot.com/2007/06/create-photo-greeting-cards-with-flickr.html

Amit: The interface is intuitive - search the images from Flickr database (you can also limit search results based on Creative Commons license), add some text and the photo card turns into a webpage.

Here's a sample greeting card created from the the profile pictures of MyBlogLog visitors.

Thanks, Amit!

PictureSandbox

http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/7527

Mike Linksvayer: April’s most sophisticated Flickr/CC mashup yet has relaunched with angel funding as PictureSandbox.com with cool tools to find and reuse CC licensed photos in lightboxes, cards, and more.

Thanks, Mike!

Phreetings have color schemes!

PRIMARY red http://picturesandbox.com/card/6zy5zvmk blue http://picturesandbox.com/card/m04q8oys yellow http://picturesandbox.com/card/58pcslob SECONDARY green http://picturesandbox.com/card/vxarf8i4 purple http://picturesandbox.com/card/ezuemh8j orange http://picturesandbox.com/card/a6uyowys

Geek Chic: The Sims 2 H&M® Fashion Stuff

Geek Chic: The Sims 2 H&M® Fashion Stuff

12 min 47 sec ago by GeekSugar

If you haven't noticed the ads for the new The Sims 2 H&M® Fashion Stuff across the Sugar Network recently I suggest you take a gander. The game, which is available for order now, allows you to dress up your Sims in H&M® clothing collections for men and women with The Sims 2 H&M® Fashion Stuff. Your Sims characters can choose from FabSugar-approved H&M® fashions, then play with retail-themed items like mannequins, clothing racks, cash registers and even walk the runway. It's a real makeover from the days of plain Jane Sims clothing and adds a fun, girlie touch to the game. I dare you to not get addicted.

The game requires The Sims 2, The Sims 2 Special DVD Edition, or The Sims 2 Holiday Edition to play.

Vyew: Free Live Web Conferencing

from TechCrunch by Duncan Riley

Free online web conferencing service Vyew launched earlier this year. Today, they’ve launched a new version that allows users to create “VyewBooks” to share, present, and interact with other people around content such as Microsoft Office files, pictures, audio and video.

The new version includes tools to facilitate the creation of new presentations and also supports a desktop view for live sharing of files, images, and web sites.

A widget-style tool “Vyewlet generator” allows content to be embedded on any website, a screencast tool of sorts that records collaborative work for demonstration elsewhere.

Henry Hon, CEO of Vyew compares the new version directly with competitors: “Vyew isn’t just another WebEx or GotoMeeting where information is communicated in a canned one-to-many format. Vyew is an enterprise-class social computing platform where people can also create, share, and participate with rich content in a many-to-many relationship, both in real-time and asynchronously over time.”

There are a lot of alternatives in this space and competing with the likes of WebEx and GoToMeeting is a challenge in itself. Vyew offers something a different a little different at a competitive price.

Previous TechCrunch coverage here.

Make your own air horn in 3 minutes

Canon crams 50 megapixels into a CMOS prototype

from Engadget by Paul Miller

You won't be seeing one of these sensors in your fashioncam any time soon. Canon has built a 50 megapixel CMOS monstrosity, which is reportedly almost twice the resolution of its nearest competition, and is prepping it as a sort of large format surveillance camera for monitoring large, busy areas such as parking lots and theme parks, along with detailed work like factory part inspections. Despite the sensor's clear industrial-end aims, Canon has managed to build its prototype at 19 x 28mm in size, the same dimensions of the sensors in its DSLR cameras, so who knows where this tech could end up in the long run. So far Canon hasn't even announced release plans for this current incarnation, so we aren't going to go hawking our existing shooter just yet.

More on Apple's new LED-backlit MacBook Pro

from Engadget by Ryan Block

Filed under: Displays

Apple left a little mystery in their MacBook Pro announcement today, and being that this marks their first official release of an LED-backlit laptop we had to take out the guesswork and get confirmation on a few of our more burning questions.

All 15-inch MBPs now use LED-backlit displays standard; 17-inchers still use CCFL (cold cathode fluorescent)
Apple claims users can see a battery-life benefit of between 30 mins - 1 hour (depending on use). They did not have stats on exact efficiencies between LED and CCFL backlit displays.
The new LED backlight is the same brightness: 300 vs 300 nits of the previous gen's CCFL
The viewing angle is also the same as before
In other words, besides faster time from fully-off to full-brightness and an increase in battery life, Apple claims users should notice absolutely no perceivable difference between last-gen displays and the new LED-backlit ones.

Other bits

To clarify, MacBook Pros are using Santa Rosa, but MacBooks are not yet using Santa Rosa
Even though the MBP is 0.2 pounds lighter, we're still without an internal / integrated 3G option

Asus' new Eee PC 701 joins the laptop-lite fray with a bang

from Engadget by Paul Miller

Asus and Intel seem to be bridging the gap between the fairly humanitarian efforts of the OLPC project and their own Classmate PC efforts, and the recent rash of mini-laptop attempts such as Palm's Foleo and VIA's NanoBook. Specs and launch plans aren't entirely nailed down, but this new Eee PC line has quite a bit going for it, even as crowded as this market is getting. The 7-inch ultraportable is based on an unnamed Intel chipset, and runs regular Windows XP or Linux without a problem, but really shines in its "easy" mode that strips things down to a barebones OS mainly for internet browsing (sound familiar, Foleo?). Asus didn't even leave Palm alone with its Wii comparisons either, stating that the Eee name, which stands for "easy to learn, easy to play, easy to work," also conveniently conjures images of the Wii game console, which is known for being novice-friendly. The Eee line will kick things off with the Eee PC 701, which will sport 802.11b/g WiFi, Ethernet and a modem for connectivity, along with a webcam, 512MB of RAM and a 4, 8 or 16GB flash drive for speedy, reliable storage. The real kicker is that prices for the 2 pound laptop are supposed to start as low as $200, and the Intel / Asus duo won't be aiming this at massive governmental purchases, but instead will be offering it to consumers through traditional retail channels. [Via HardwareZone]

More pics of the Dell XPS m1330

Posted Jun 5th 2007 2:27PM by Ryan Block Filed under: Laptops

We still don't have the magic numbers (launch date and price) on that most impressive new Dell XPS m1330, but we did at least secure some more eye candy for you. A couple more shots after the break.

Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Porsche Design Mobile Group unveils P'9521 handhset

from Engadget by Darren Murph

While the unlicensed version of Porsche's mobile handset still holds a special place in our hearts, it looks like the Porsche Design Mobile Group finally took it upon themselves to join the growing fray and introduce its own co-branded device. The group has already slapped the luxurious logo on a sat nav device as well as a portable XM radio, but Stephane Bret (the group's director) was caught showing off a new mobile in Essen. Unfortunately, details on the phone are all but nil, but we do know that the P'9521 was unveiled at the Red Dot Design Museum and will rock a squarish flip-phone design, integrated camera, and multimedia player. No word just yet on when (or if, actually) this sure-to-be-overpriced handset will hit store shelves, but we can't help but notice that a few formidable opponents are quite a few laps ahead at this point. Click on through for a few more shots.

Continue reading Porsche Design Mobile Group unveils P'9521 handhset

Tiny thermoacoustic engines pave the way for screaming gadgets

from Engadget by Nilay Patel

Looks like all that heat generated by your laptop may finally be useful for something other than frying eggs -- a group of grad students led by professor Orest Symko at the University of Utah has unveiled an array of "thermoacoustic" engines that turn heat into sound, which can be directed at a piezoelectric mechanism to produce electricity. The US Army-funded research seems promising but is obviously still in its infancy -- one of the designs the researchers demonstrated is half the size of a penny but pumps out 120dB of noise (about the same as a siren), while another bumped out over 135dB, (which is roughly equivalent to a jackhammer). The team expects that future, smaller designs will work at ultrasonic frequencies outside the range of human hearing. Although we're not expecting hybrid-siren-powered laptops to hit anytime soon, you Utes out there may want to invest in some earplugs -- Professor Symko says they'll be testing these designs at the University's water-heating facility in the next year. [Via InformationWeek]

Google and Salesforce Tightly Integrate Adwords Products

from TechCrunch by Nick Gonzalez

There’s been a lot of speculation about Salesforce and Google lately. Tomorrow the two companies will announce a marketing and distribution alliance that will tightly bind Google Adwords to existing Salesforce tools that track sales from online advertising.

Salesforce and Google will be starting an extended partnership encompassing marketing and distribution of their products across 43 countries. It will begin with the integration of Google Adwords and Salesforce’s lead generation tools into a new application called “Group Edition”, available here. Group edition replaces Salseforces earlier version Team edition.

Group Edition will enable Adwords users to track Adsense referrals to their site and build up a customer profile based on a the data a user enters into a site and their navigation path. Businesses will handle their Adwords campaigns through Google, as usual, but Salesforce takes over from there. When potential customers click through to the businesses site, Google tells Salesforce what search terms brought the user to the page and where they navigate throughout the site.

It is our understanding that the technology behind the salesforce side of the deal comes from Kieden, an company that they acquired late last year.

Site owners can also drop “web lead forms” onto the site, which can collect any other customer information (names, email, phone numbers) and bundle it into customer profile. All of this data is enumerated on a dashboard view, which you data on lead generation, sales, and growth. As with any other Salesforce application, users will also be able to mash up the data with other AppExchange Apps. The application will cost $600 for 5 user accounts and come with $50 of Adwords credits.

Private equity buying big piece of Nextag

from GigaOM by Om Malik

Having snapped up whatever there was to buy in the brick and mortar world, the private equity investors are now turning their attention to technology sector. Cadance has been linked with big private equity money. Add comparison-shopping engine Nextag to the list.

Some private equity investors, one of them rumored to be Providence Equity Partners, are looking to buy 66% of Nextag for between $1 and $1.2 billion. Of course these are all rumors for now, and while contacted Nextag, we are yet to hear back from their press relations department.

Nextag is said to be doing about $200 million in revenues, with a lucrative mortgage and other lead generation business being the rocket that is driving the company. Internet giants for example – have taken out its peers – MySimon, PriceGrabber, Shopping.com and Shopzilla. Comparison Engines has a great overview of the market so far and news about this deal.

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