Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Kodak 'phasing out' low-end digicams, creating 5MP sensor for cameraphone

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Google to license Stanford's Stanley tech, enhance maps

Although Google Maps might have been called out by name as the best in "Lazy Sunday" (double true), Microsoft's been gaining ground of late by adding lots of trick features to its own mapping site, particularly some nifty simulated 3D views. Well, Google is never one to lie back and take it from the Redmond crew, so it's struck a deal with Stanford to license the sensing technology behind 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge winner Stanley to improve their maps. Stanley, as you probably remember, was a robotic Volkswagen Touareg put together by the Stanford Racing Team that zipped across the Mojave Desert for 10 hours without any human input, winning the Grand Challenge by a hair. Now that same tech will reportedly be used to scan building faces and improve the 3D portions of Google Maps and Google Earth. Details of the deal and how it will be implemented are due to be announced during the Where 2.0 conference on May 29 and 30 -- here's hoping it involves the phrase "army of robotic Google cars."
[Via I4U News]

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Better Clouds, Wind Coming to Second Life

secondlife1.jpg Linden Lab, the company behind Second Life, has announced the acquisition of graphics technology from Windward Mark Interactive . Linden Lab will acquire WindLight, an advanced atmospheric rendering technology; Nimble, a realistic 3D cloud simulator; and associated intellectual property and interests.

Once the acquisition is complete, Linden Lab plans to open source the technology and integrate it into Second Life, bringing a new level of realism to the Second Life metaverse.

WindLight uses algorithms that imitate the ways in which light is affected by real-world atmospheric factors like dust and moisture, enabling the nuances of sunlight, clouds, water and weather to be accurately simulated in real-time. Nimble uses advanced physics models to realistically simulate clouds.

Alliance, an online game developed by Windward Mark Interactive does not form part of the acquisition.
slclouds.jpg
original image credit Tim Bray

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Western Digital's 250GB perpendicular Scorpio heads for laptops

Late last year, Western Digital decided to make the leap to the land of perpendicular magnetic recording with its 160GB Scorpio, and now the firm is stepping it up to a full quarter terabyte with its latest rendition. The 2.5-inch SATA drive fits nicely within the confines of most lappies, sports 8MB of cache, a 12-millisecond access time, spins at 5400RPM, and touts the company's WhisperDrive technology so you'll barely know its there. Additionally, the ShockGuard and SecurePark systems tag team to keep your data safe during turmoil, and the IntelliSeek system reportedly "calculates the optimum seek speed of the read / write head actuator to help reduce noise and power consumption." So if you're looking to up the storage capacity of your mobile machine, you can snag WD's latest right now for a penny under $200.

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DViCO's TViX M-5100SH offers 1080p, HDMI, and H.264 decoding

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Seems like only yesterday -- ok, 4 days ago -- we were telling you about the DViCO M-4000SA HD media player. Now they're back with the M-5100SH which bests the former with 1080p support, HDMI output, and H.264 decoding. It still packs Ethernet for plenty of in-home media streaming and of course DViCO will be more than happy to throw in a 3.5-inch, 512GB SATA disk for a fee. But why not save some bills-per-byte and double your capacity with a 1TB Hitachi disk purchased elsewhere. You can also add WiFi and an optional ATSC tuner to create a full-featured 1080i video recorder. Decent but standard stuff so far; what's odd is the pricing. The cylindrical M-5100SH is only available for pre-order and will cost $439 when it ships next month in Japan and presumably parts beyond. Meanwhile, the boxy M-4100SH offers all the same features as the M-5100SH yet costs only $359. Oh, and it's available domestically now. Of course, black MacBook owners already know the premium paid for aesthetics. Peep the M-4100SH slab after the break. [Via Impress] Read -- M-5100SH Read -- M-4100SH

Continue reading DViCO's TViX M-5100SH offers 1080p, HDMI, and H.264 decoding

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