Dr. Augustine Fou's Online Scrapbook

Friday, December 04, 2009

Olympus E-600 reviewed, lives up to its billing as a top-notch entry-level DSLR

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/04/olympus-e-600-reviewed-lives-up-to-its-billing-as-a-top-notch-e/

We were hoping for good things when the E-600 was announced back in August, and it looks like those expectations will be met. The camera is now shipping and has been put through its paces by Photography Blog, scoring very highly thanks to its great performance and a feature set only slightly cropped when compared to the already value-packing E-620, but at a price that makes it $100 more likely to fit in your budget. It's a lot of camera for an MSRP of $599, but surely you'll be finding it for a bit less than that soon enough.

Olympus E-600 reviewed, lives up to its billing as a top-notch entry-level DSLR originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 04 Dec 2009 09:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | source

Photography Blog | Email this | Comments

SmartSynch intros GridRouter for smart meters and the electric companies that love them

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/04/smartsynch-intros-gridrouter-for-smart-meters-and-the-electric-c/

The last time we heard from SmartSynch it had inked a deal with AT&T to provide communications between its smart energy products and power companies. Now the company's back with a little something called the GridRouter, an IP-based device based that connects appliances, smart grids, and utilities -- no matter which communication protocol is used. The device is built on an open platform since the current grid is a mish-mash (or a hodge-podge, if you will) of proprietary hardware and software, and includes WiMax and Wi-Fi capabilities. Sounds like it just might be the thing for utilities struggling to catch up to the 21st century smarter energy revolution -- and those of you who are really, really into Google's PowerMeter beta. Want to give it a spin? Hit the source link to get in touch with the company. PR after the break.

Continue reading SmartSynch intros GridRouter for smart meters and the electric companies that love them

SmartSynch intros GridRouter for smart meters and the electric companies that love them originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 04 Dec 2009 12:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink

CNET |

GridRouter | Email this | Comments

Nokia Booklet 3G review

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/04/nokia-booklet-3g-review/

You might think MikroMikko is the name of some Asian fusion restaurant, but it was actually Nokia's first computer line -- and in 1987, the MikroMikko 3 was a state-of-the-art MS-DOS machine with 1MB of RAM and 20MB drive. It's been about 25 years since Nokia's made a computer bigger than an N900, but it's back in the game with its first netbook, the Booklet 3G. Nokia's pitching the Booklet as a top-of-the-line machine with an all-aluminum chassis, integrated connectivity and GPS apps, and at $599 it's certainly priced that way -- although inside it's got a low-power Atom processor and 4,200rpm hard drive. The Booklet 3G is one of the best-looking netbooks out there, but is Nokia's entry back into the market a winner? Click on to find out what we think of the entire system in our full review.

Gallery: Nokia Booklet 3G Review

Continue reading Nokia Booklet 3G review

Nokia Booklet 3G review originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 04 Dec 2009 13:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | | Email this | Comments

Core Values: What's next for NVIDIA?

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/04/core-values-whats-next-for-nvidia/

Core Values is our new monthly column from Anand Shimpi, Editor-in-chief of AnandTech. With over a decade of experience poring over the latest in chip developments, he's here to explain how things work and why our tech is the way it is.

I remember the day AMD announced it was going to acquire ATI. NVIDIA told me that its only competitor just threw in the towel. What a difference a few years can make.

The last time NVIDIA was this late to a major DirectX transition was seven years ago, and the company just quietly confirmed we won't see its next-generation GPU, Fermi, until Q1 2010. If AMD's manufacturing partner TSMC weren't having such a terrible time making 40nm chips I'd say that AMD would be gobbling up marketshare like a fat kid. By the time NVIDIA gets its entire stack of DX11 hardware out the gate, AMD will be a quarter away from putting out newly refreshed GPUs.

Things aren't much better on the chipset side either -- for all intents and purposes, the future of NVIDIA's chipset business in the PC space is dead. Not only has NVIDIA recently announced that it won't be pursuing any chipsets for Intel's Core i3, i5. or i7 processors until its various legal disputes with Intel are resolved, It doesn't really make sense to be a third-party chipset vendor anymore. Both AMD and Intel are more than capable of doing chipsets in-house, and the only form of differentiation comes from the integrated graphics core -- so why not just sell cheap discrete GPUs for OEMs to use alongside Intel chipsets instead?

Even Ion is going to be short lived. NVIDIA's planning to mold an updated graphics chip into an updated chipset for the next-gen Atom processor, but Pine Trail brings the memory controller and graphics onto the CPU and leaves NVIDIA out in the cold once again.

Let's see, no competitive GPUs, no future chipset business. This isn't looking good so far -- but the one thing I've learned from writing about these companies for the past 12 years is that the future's never as it seems. Chances are, NVIDIA's going to look a lot different in the future because of two things: Tesla and Tegra.

Continue reading Core Values: What's next for NVIDIA?

Core Values: What's next for NVIDIA? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 04 Dec 2009 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | | Email this | Comments

Motorola prepping 'La Jolla' low-end Android clamshell?

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/04/motorola-prepping-la-jolla-low-end-android-clamshell/

It's a source code-palooza these days! Fresh off that huge HTC code name find, someone's dug into the Motorola CLIQ's source code and found references to a new Motorola device dubbed "La Jolla." Meaning "The Jewel" in Spanish, La Jolla apparently means "low-end Android clamshell" in Motorola-ese, with mention of a WQVGA screen, 528MHz processor and what seems to be a QWERTY keyboard. (What such a phone might look like is pictured above. Thanks, LG). In fact, a QWERTY Android clamshell (the clamshell bit was extrapolated from the display driver by the folks at AndroidandMe, but sounds reasonable) seems to be the perfect cure for the recent rash of QWERTY featurephones we've been seeing lately, perfect for the SMS / email junky that doesn't want to bother with high-powered apps or a big price tag or the resistive touchscreen-only typing of the HTC Tattoo. Now, if only could find some device source code that could solve our trigger shyness brought on by this steady stream of Android handsets -- not that we're complaining.

Motorola prepping 'La Jolla' low-end Android clamshell? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 04 Dec 2009 15:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink

P hone Arena | source

AndroidandMe | Email this | Comments

FTC moseys into Intel / NVIDIA dispute

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/04/ftc-moseys-into-intel-nvidia-dispute/

The dispute between Intel and NVIDIA has already reached legendary proportions, and it looks like now even the FTC is getting involved as a result of its longstanding investigation into Intel regarding another matter. While Intel just settled the antitrust fight with AMD that originally kick-started the investigation last month, the FTC is now reportedly talking to NVIDIA to see if its numerous complaints against the chipmaker actually hold water. While complete details are exectedly light and none of the parties involved are saying much on the record, some "people familiar with the matter" say that the FTC is trying to determine if a lawsuit filed by Intel earlier this year is nothing more than an effort to disrupt NVIDIA's business. Of course, things could well expand from there, considering what the FTC has waded into.

FTC moseys into Intel / NVIDIA dispute originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 04 Dec 2009 16:22:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink

CNET News | source

Bloomberg | Email this | Comments

Thursday, December 03, 2009

Ridiculous User Interfaces In Film, and the Man Who Designs Them [Design]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/ooJsO7Hirf8/ridiculous-user-interfaces-in-film-and-the-man-who-designs-them

What do The Bourne Identity, Mission Impossible 3, Mr & Mrs Smith, Children of Men, and Agent Cody Banks 2 have in common? Absurd, futuristic, and totally fake software interfaces, designed in part by one man: Mark Coleran.

Designing a fake dashboard for an imagined supercomputer or a hovering control panel for a worldwide surveillance system is a different process than creating a genuinely usable UI. Your goal is to imply things: that a machine is powerful; that a villain is formidable; that the software is intuitive, but that the breadth of its powers borders on unknowable. At no point does real-world usability factor in, and nor should it—this is pure fantasy, for an audience raised on Start Buttons, desktop icons and tree menus. Here's a gallery of some of the most famous interfaces; see how many you recognize.

Coleran's UIs are a mix of proudly retro and boldly new, mingling compact pixel art, wireframes and the solid, militaristic reds, blues and blacks of software from the 80s with touch-free gesture systems and overelaborate visualizations. It's the kind of stuff you take for granted in action and sci-fi films, but rounded up in one place, it's a strangely impressive, almost cohesive view of the future of software, as designed by someone with no contraints. [Mark Coleran via Metafilter]

Now Available [Now Available]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/cPF3JQMHllM/now-available

In this installment of Now Available: Dell's snazzy Vostro 1015 laptop, WowWee's sweet-as-cinnamon pico projector, the not-so-hot Samsung Omnia II, and the Nokia N900, a smartphone that's so smart it's not even a smartphone.

Dell's Vostro 1015, the rare business laptop that brings a halfway elegant design to the boardroom table, is now available. The base model of the 15.6" laptop costs $429 but only comes with a 2.2GHz Celeron 900 processor, so you will likely want to make the jump to the $629 model which sports a 2.1GHz Core 2 Duo T6670. You know, to ensure that Excel performs snappily. Or at least for making sure you can snappily Alt-Tab back to Excel when the boss strolls by. The $629 price tag also gets you 3GB of RAM, a 320 GB HD and Windows 7 Professional. To check out more details on the Dell Vostro 1015, head over to Dell.

The Samsung Omnia II is now available at Verizon for $200. Though the Omnia II sports a pretty 3.7" touch screen, that beauty is only skin-deep; John thought just about everything else was a hot mess. The phone runs WinMo 6.5 mucked up with Samsung's 3D-Cube TouchWiz 2.0 UI and i! s the fi rst phone to feature Swype input technology, which may or may not save you some time when you're texting all your friends to tell them that your new phone sucks. The Omnia II packs a 5-megapixel camera, an 8 GB HD, and supports both social networking widgets and Microsoft Office Mobile. To be the first person to submit an expense report via Swype, head to Verizon.

The Nokia N900 Maemo which, Nokia will have you know, is mobile computer and not a smartphone, is now available. For $570 you can fetch an unlocked N900 with a 600 MHz processor, a 32 GB hard drive, a 5-megapixel camera capable of capturing 800 x 400 video, and all the other expected bells and whistles. The N900 has a slide-out hardware keyboard for all your texting—err, mobile computing—needs, supports playback of a wide range of both audio and video file formats and offers VoIP integration. All of this is packed into Nokia's Debian-based Maemo OS which the company's announcement boasted as offering "computer-grade performance in a compact size". Ooh and ahh at the impressive N900 and its correspondingly grandiose website here.

The Cinemin Swivel Pico Projector by WowWee, a $300 pocket-size projector designed for use with other pocket-size devices, is now yours for the having. The Cinemin swivels on a 90-degree hinge for versatile projection without a tripod, which is sweet like cinnamon but only offers 480 x 320 resolution, which ! is like the minimum of cinema, thus Cinemin. That might not be what they had in mind with the name but I'm sticking to it. You can get your hands on the little guy over at Amazon.

Intel Developing App Store for Netbooks [Apps]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/B1XMl9KSsvE/intel-developing-app-store-for-netbooks

Intel this week announced a beta SDK for Atom-powered netbooks, with an eye towards having an app store preinstalled on both Windows and Moblin systems in 2010.

The business model will follow that of the iPhone app store, with developers getting 70% of the revenue and 30% going to operational and partner costs. Potential applications will also go through a similar vetting process to Apple's, although hopefully a bit more transparency.

Intel hasn't yet said how many developers are actually working on netbook-specific applications, and they were vague in a CNET interview about what exactly we might see, other than promises of social networking-type capabilities. And of course, there's an easy way to keep 100% of your netbook software sales, and that's by just selling it as, you know, software. In any case, there's no clear timeline for the store other than 2010, but Intel seems motivated to get this done quickly. Soon, I hope... I'm curious to see what form this takes. [CNET via Apple Insider]

The Incredible Shrinking Dell [Charts]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/Xe4o-h_53AA/the-incredible-shrinking-dell

Not too long ago, Dell was one of the fastest growing companies in the world. Now, it's the only major PC manufacturer actually getting smaller.

iSuppli's quarterly report on computer shipments is a little dry, but today's report that Dell's shipments declined 5.9% caught our eye. It's easy enough to blame the economy, but not when your major competitors are all growing, and especially not when Acer knocks you out of the number two spot. It's true that netbooks and pricing are big factors in Acer's success, and that Dell's still second—barely—to HP in total shipments. But someone in Round Rock needs to realize that what's true for plants and populations is also true for computer companies: if you don't grow, you die. [iSuppli via Electronista]

Motorola invests in Anywhere Multitouch technology

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/03/motorola-invests-in-anywhere-multitouch-technology/

It's been awhile since we heard anything from Sensitive Objects, the French firm that developed Anywhere Multitouch, the platform that uses piezoelectric sensors to extend touch sensitivity beyond the display to the entire device. Well, we thought it was a pretty sweet idea -- and apparently Motorola did as well. According some spicy and exotic PR, Moto's investing some of its hard-earned cash in the company, which began as a project by the French Science National Research Center. As Reese Schroeder, managing director of Motorola Ventures, put it: "Natural user interface (NUI) and in particular interacting with a device through touch is an area of rapid development and great excitement. Sensitive Object provides an innovative and unique approach allowing new ways of interaction. We're most excited to be involved in their growth and success." One has to wonder what kind of new and innovative handset interfaces are coming around the bend -- and one has to wonder what kind of havoc it will cause when you put one of these "anywhere multitouch" phones in your pocket without locking it first. Luckily, the technology is said to be cheaper to implement than the other touchscreen solutions currently available -- so if these guys get their way, we might be accidentally calling our ex-girlfriends with the whole device very soon indeed. PR after the break.

Continue reading Motorola invests in Anywhere Multitouch technology

Motorola invests in Anywhere Multitouch technology originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 Dec 2009 15:52:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink SlashGear | | Email this | Comments

Read More...

Summary only...

Google and Microsoft join I3A's Camera Phone Image Quality Initiative

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/03/google-and-microsoft-join-i3as-camera-phone-image-quality-initi/

The International Imaging Industry Association -- colloquially known as I3A -- announced today that Google's signed on as a member of the non-profit organization. They've also simultaneously announced that pre-existing member Microsoft has joined forces with Google on the Camera Phone Image Quality Initiative. What's that all about? The initiative, which also calls Motorola, Eastman Kodak, Nokia, and other members, is dedicated to creating the metrics needed to "produce an accurate and repeatable testing program for camera phone image quality." Considering the wild variances in quality among different cellphones, such formalized measurement techniques would surely be welcomed by everyone on planet earth.

Google and Microsoft join I3A's Camera Phone Image Quality Initiative originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 Dec 2009 18:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | source

I3A | Email this | Comments

HTC's Touch.B gets demonstrated, featurephone status confirmed (video)

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/03/htcs-touchb-gets-demonstrated-featurephone-status-confirmed-v/

This isn't going to be fun, so we'll just say it and get it over with: the HTC Touch.B isn't the updated Android smartphone we'd been hoping for. As it turns out it isn't even a smartphone, relegated to the realm of the featurephone by running Qualcomm's BrewMP OS. Full Flash support is nice, and we must say the UI has a charming, simple look to it, but it all looks a little... limited, and that screen seems awfully small given the size of the phone now that it's been turned on. See for yourself: there's a quick video demo after the break to get you primed for this one to ship sometime next year.

Continue reading HTC's Touch.B gets demonstrated, featurephone status confirmed (video)

HTC's Touch.B gets demonstrated, featurephone status confirmed (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 Dec 2009 09:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink

MobileTechWorld | source

MobiFrance | Email this | Comments

Samson's Q2U microphone does USB and XLR on a budget

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/03/samsons-q2u-microphone-does-usb-and-xlr-on-a-budget/

Sure, there are a variety of ways to get your high-end XLR audio onto your PC, but the solutions we've seen before haven't been cheap. Shure's dual-purpose mics cost up to $250 and while the Icicle adapter is only $60, it's a strictly BYO microphone affair. Samson's $89 Q2U package includes all you'll need to become a podcasting wunderkind, most important being the mic itself, which comes with both XLR and USB cables. It also features an integrated 3.5mm headphone jack for zero-latency monitoring, includes a set of studio headphones, and even comes with a tripod so that you can wildly gesticulate while expressing your fury about the Dollhouse cancellation -- even if your 23 subscribers can't see you. It's all available now, so stop popping your P's and get with the ordering already.

Gallery: Samson Q2U microphone