Hands-On: Canon EOS 5D Mark II [5D Mark II Hands On]

Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/396693880/hands+on-canon-eos-5d-mark-ii

We got our hands on Canon's brand-new full-HD shooting 5D Mk II monster tonight, and well, yeah, we want it just as much as we did last night—even though Canon wouldn't let us pop our own CF cards in for some test shots and vids. We're not mad though—we ran through live view, video mode autofocus and everything else you can do with an SLR with no CF (ie: grope, grope, grope). Let's look.

As you know, AF during live view and HD video recording is tricky business. But the 5D adds three distinct modes for AF during live view—color contrast and facial recognition, an "quick" mode which quickly drops the mirror. You won't be able to track a fast moving object, but all are serviceable. Here you see the 5D correctly IDing Canon tech guru Chuck's mug. Live view definitely takes a few seconds to pop to live, but it's worth the wait for what you get in the end. As you'll soon see here on Giz.

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Samsung 10-inch NC10 netbook fears germs, not Germans

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/396995821/

Filed under: Laptops

Ho boy, what's this? Can it be that another vendor has introduced a laptop-cannibalizing 10-inch netbook? Oh, you betcha -- it's the occasionally seen NC10 from Samsung, sporting the same chunky design, heavy XP OS, 10.2-inch display, 6-cell battery, WiFi, Bluetooth, up to 160GB hard disk storage, and 1.6GHz Atom processor as just about every other 10-inch netbook on the market. So what does Samsung bring to the table that's truly unique? An anti-bacterial keyboard for germanophobes mysophobes, that's what. Available in Europe next month for an undisclosed price.

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Nokia's E72 slider and E75 candybar with QWERTY keyboards leaked

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/397032196/

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

A Nokia promotional video has apparently been leaked to YouTube revealing a pair of an unannounced, business-minded handsets: the E72 QWERTY slider and E75 QWERTY candybar. Check all the hot corporate, S60 video action after the break -- who knew architectural planning could be so easy?

[Via Symbian Freak]

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Computers begin to 'understand' the meanings of words

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/connected/main.jhtml?xml=/connected/2008/09/19/dlcomputers119.xml

Last Updated: 12:01am BST 18/09/2008

The technology now exists to teach computers the meanings of words so that they can "understand" the English language in much the same way as a human. Cognition Technologies has released a "semantic map" that can give machines a vocabulary that is 10 times larger than that of a typical American college graduate. The firm has begun licensing the map to software creators interested in developing programs that "understand" words based on their tenses and context in a sentence - in a similar way to the human brain. "We have taught the computer virtually all the meanings of words and phrases in the English language," Cognition chief executive Scott Jarus told AFP. "This is clearly a building block for Web 3.0, or what is known as the Semantic Web. It has taken 30 years; it is a labour of love," Jarus said. When applied to Internet searches, semantic technology delivers results directed at what users actually seem to be looking for instead of simply matching words used to online content. For example, a semantic online search for "melancholy songs with birds" would know to link sadness in lyrics with various species of birds. Cognition's semantic map is already used in a LexisNexis Concordance "e-discovery" software to sift through documents amassed during evidence phases of trials. "We help them find the needle in a haystack," Jarus said. Cognition's Caselaw program uses the technology to look through more than a half-century of US federal court decisions for legal precedents, according to the company. The semantic map is also used in a widely-used medical database. Cognition has a handful of rivals, with each firm taking its own approach to semantic technology. In July US software giant Microsoft bought San Francisco-based Powerset, a three-year-old start-up which specialises in interpreting the intent of people's Internet searches instead of matching specific words they use. Microsoft said it planned to use Powerset technology to enhance its free Live Search service.

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Intel's dual-core Atom 330 reviewed in desktop guise

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/397227716/

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Intel's Atom processor and the netbook are the silicon equivalent of Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson; they're inseparable. Naturally we can't wait for the dual-core Atom 330 to cozy up to the next generation of economical portables, but have to wait a bit as it's being soldered exclusively into tiny desktops at the moment, like the one tech site The Guru of 3D just ran through a series of benchmarks. The posted results could have been interesting had they compared its performance to the single-core Atom 230 rather than AMD's (relatively) heavy-hitting Athlon 4850 X2 and Phenom 9850 -- not exactly apples to apples. We'll just have to assume it's roughly twice as fast on the right apps, all that for only twice the power consumption. That's still only a measly 8-watts! [Via The Inquirer]

The Atom 330 Dual core processor utilizes ... and do get scared now .. 8 Watt at maximum :) For the entire "PC" we maxed out at 56 Watts with both CPU cores 100% stressed and the PC in idle consumed 43.6 Watt. The light bulb in my toilet uses even more power...""

Atom 330 does not look like anything particularly stellar for the desktop it should do the job better than the alternatives by Via. We ran it with Windows Vista perfectly fine...."

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