In case you missed the news, the s1000pj is an utterly unexciting point and shoot camera from Nikon, except for one minor detail: it's got a projector—like a real, don't-look-straight-into-it lamp projector—built right into its face. This is why it's funny, why it's interesting, and why we're writing about it. Moreover, it's why this camera exists in the first place: as a sort of high-profile tech demo for Nikon.

But first!

And for that matter, foremost! This is a standard point and shoot camera, with generally standard point and shoot camera specs. Nowadays, that equates to 12.1 megapixel photo resolution, a 5x lens that's 25mm equivalent on the wide end, built-in vibration reduction and SD storage. A/V connections are serves by a single microUSB slot, and the rechargeable battery juices up on a separate charger.

Taking photos on the S1000pj is extremely simple, almost to a fault: ISO and white balance controls, for example, are hidden behind two layers of menus. But for lack of a better word, the point of a point and shoot is to make taking OK pictures as easy as possible, which the S1000pj certainly does.

As you can see in the sample gallery, the shots are never spectacular, but never terrible. The Nikon rarely finds a situation where it can't return a decent shot in auto mode, be it in a dark room, a sunbleached roof or a tungsten-lit kitchen. High ISO performance was a pleasant surprise as well, since Nikon opted for the S1000pj's sensor to automatically draw down to three megapixels during ISO 6400 shooting, which keeps the results from being too spectacularly bad. In fact, ISO 800 shots are clean enough to print, while ISO 400 returns crystal-clear photos, even during longer exposures.

That said, this is still a point and shoot, and not even a very high-end one. The lens isn't spectacularly sharp, and the colors are particularly vivid. The VGA video is dull and mostly lifeless. Button-press-to-shoot time is quick, but still not quite instant. That's the biggest problem for this camera: It'd be a perfectly acceptable—even above average—point and shoot for, say, $250. It costs a good deal more than that, becauuuuuuuuuuse:

Yes, It's Got a Projector

My love affair with the S1000pj didn't start until the day after I got it. It was early evening so my room was dim, and I'd only taken a few photos with camera the day before, as I was unboxing and summarily dismissing the camera in a well-lit office. "This projector looks like ass," I believe I said. "Human ass."

But when I flicked the little projector button this time—it's a dedicated switch on top, next to the projector's manual focus slider—I was stunned. It looked fine. I shut the windows. I backed up, stretching the image to about 40 inches. Now it looked great. This dinky little projector, and hacky and ridiculous as it looks and sounds, is legitimately useful.

It's an instant wow-piece for anyone who uses it, and a great way to show off photos (and yes, videos) in a bind. And by bind, I mean any time you don't want to ask everyone were your are to crowd around a computer screen and awkwardly watch while you import photos. Now, you just tell them to dim the lights. That'll do fine.

Oh, But You Probably Shouldn't Buy It

It's was a tough call not to recommend this outright, but I really can't, unless you've got a wad of cash burning a hole in your pocket, or don't mind paying a $150 (rough) premium for the projector. Yes, the camera itself is capable enough. And yes, the projector concept isn't nearly as ridiculous as most people make it out to be. What's so appealing about this camera is that it's nailed what will be, if not a universal feature, something we come to expect in a certain kind of camera before too long.

But that makes this product admirable, not buyable. For the Nikon to be a worthy purchase, we'll need to see a change: Either the photographic experience itself gets a little closer to what you'd expect for $430—about how much you're going to end up spending on this now—or the camera drops significantly in price.

Nikon is charging a classic early adopter tax, and you won't just be paying for it in dollars: battery life is predictably bad when using the projector (I could easily lose a quarter of my charge just showing off a set of photos to friends). And this thing isn't particularly svelte, considering the specs. But if you know what you're getting into—and now you do—it's your call.

You will have fun with the Nikon s1000pj, even through the pangs of buyer's remorse.

The projector is surprisingly decent in low light

Chunky design

Adequate photography

Battery drains very quickly when projecting

Hefty early adopter tax

Price

$300 with 2-year AT&T contract, $600 à la carte

Verdict

Nokia has built a great netbook, but they've done nothing to redefine the genre. Their 10-inch Booklet 3G has your typical 1.6GHz Atom, 120GB hard drive and 1GB of RAM. Running Windows 7, that means the performance is just passable. I'd be this close to pounding my head against the wall when a program would begin installing or a video would load.

That's typical.

What's ever so less typical is the sharp, sub-3lb unibody-esque construction (complete with sweet MacBook-like under-hatch battery and a hinge that bends nearly 180-degrees), HDMI output (not that you can really playback HD videos smoothly on an Atom) and, of course, solid integrated 3G and integrated GPS (though Nokia's bundled Ovi software apparently requires a phone or PC to activate, and after 30 minutes of fiddling, I honestly gave up on mapping.)
The battery life is impressive, too. In nonstop 3G browsing and app running with the screen at 80% brightness, the machine's svelte 16-cell battery ran for a bit over 6 hours and 30 minutes. That was a strenuous test, and dimming the screen and/or browsing through Wi-Fi should truly be enough to get you through the workday sans-recharge. (For instance, CrunchGear's John Biggs reported a pretty remarkable 10 hours of movie playback.)

But alas, even for a nice netbook, the Booklet's price is a bit too opulent for what you're really getting: an ever-so gussied up version of the same machine you could buy from Acer, Asus, HP, etc, for half the price (before subsidies). Meanwhile, there are plenty of ULV systems in the $700 range with bigger screens, better performance and portable-minded design (of course, they'll mostly require 3G dongles).

Give me some rhinestones and a bit more power, and we'll talk. Or just hand me back my iPhone.

Quality build

Long battery life

Plastic monitor back makes whole thing feel cheaper

It's still a $600 netbook

It has got two spindly black legs attached to a backpack with long rectangular batteries on the shoulder blades and an armored computer in the small of its back. Amusingly, it has radiator fins instead of buttocks. The whole machine looks sort of like a human skeleton, because the legs and hips have joints that mimic the movement of human limbs.

In fact, when you strap your legs into its legs, you can walk, run, kneel, squat, dance, or whatever—the exoskeleton has a range of motion equal to that of a human being. You move, and it moves with you. But once on, it allows a regular geek to haul a 200-lb. backpack as if it weighed as much as a couple of physics textbooks.

Now we're talking.

Let me explain how I got here. In late 2007, a production company called me and asked if I'd like to host The Works, a show for the History Channel. My job, they said, would be to "explain, uh, how things work." During my cable TV stint, I raced lawn mowers in Florida, was shot at with a rifle while inside an armored car in Texas, and—best of all—I piloted an honest-to-God lower-body exoskeleton with the researchers at Berkeley Bionics in California.

And so, on an otherwise perfectly normal summer day, I dropped by a nondescript brick building where a group of former graduate students from the University of California at Berkeley were busy making last-minute tweaks to a dead-black titanium exoskeleton, and they invite me to try it on.

My first impression: The straps are too big. The HULC was built with military money and it is designed to fit army guys. And soldiers have big thighs, apparently. I yank the Velcro straps as tight as possible, then strap my shoes into its open-toed boots. I shrug on the backpack and clasp the chest strap. I am now wearing an exoskeleton. Turned off, the device is heavy; it's like wearing a scuba tank on dry land. But once the researchers switch it on, HULC stands up on its own—with me inside.

At this point, I'm still hanging from the ceiling, so I can't fall down. I can't feel any extra weight because the exoskeleton frame supports itself (about 30 lbs), as well as any attached backpacks. We turn on the treadmill and I cautiously bend my knee. Nothing happens. A half-second later, force sensors detect my leg pushing against the exoskeleton and the machine jerkily bends its knee. The delay is disconcerting; I can barely walk.

A couple minutes later, the treadmill is rolling and I'm humping along like Forrest Gump in his special shoes. Like a video game that breaks the human face down into just a few polygons, my new exo-walk consists of just a few gross movements. Knee lift, foot out, foot down. Repeat. It lacks the fluidity of my normal walk, but I don't fall. And oh yeah, every movement is accompanied by the loud whine of electric motors. Each step sounds like reeee (that's the motor) followed by ker-thump, as my foot touches down.

Reeee-ker-thump. Reeee-ker-thump. "Drop the gun," I say. "You are under arrest." (Yes, that's a Robocop joke, and it is hilariously funny.)

After the practice run, it's time to hit the hallway. I immediately notice that my gait is becoming more fluid. I can even balance on one leg. This is because the machine is learning to anticipate my every move. The HULC is no dumb brute. It is constantly sensing the force of my movements and forming a model of how I walk. It's getting to know me, exoskeleton-style.

The HULC is a finished product, along with a slew of other exoskeletons, such as the full-body Sarcos and the medically oriented Hal-5. But make no mistake, scientists have been trying to build robotically augmented limbs since well before Sigourney Weaver used a power lifter to kick alien butt.

Designs for wearable mechanical skeletons have been evolving since the 1960s, when General Electric foresaw using the Hardiman for heavy loading in factories. Sadly, the original designs were infeasibly power-hungry, requiring heavy batteries that pulverized the payload-to-system weight ratio. Even worse, the old designs didn't degrade gracefully, which is a nice way of saying that when the power failed, they would fall to the ground and rip your limbs off. Ouch.

But today, exoskeletons have become a reality and, according to the researchers, they don't suffer from the limb-ripping drawbacks of yesteryear.

Once my gait cycles a few times, HULC has formed a complete model. A researcher informs me that from this point onward, the exoskeleton can cycle through my walk all by itself. Yes, by itself. This means that I could fall asleep and it would keep walking, dragging my legs through the motions. Suddenly, I imagine a platoon of snoozing soldiers fast marching non-stop through dark jungles at an average speed of 7 mph, a fast jog.

That's creepy. Plus, I'm sweaty and exhausted; it's time to take off the exoskeleton.

A couple yanks on the Velcro straps and I'm out. But my legs feel dead, like I just spent an hour jumping on a trampoline. My helpful researcher lets me know that the goal of the exoskeleton is to minimize metabolic cost. Using your muscles costs oxygen, and the brain is stingy—it uses just enough oxygen to get the job done. Once your brain figures out that it needs less oxygen to move (thanks to the exoskeleton), it sends less oxygen. Without the exoskeleton, my brain isn't giving me enough juice to use my limbs normally, hence the weak legs. Luckily, it only takes a few minutes to go back to normal. Thank you, brain.

Despite the amazingness of it all, I have to say it felt clumsy and weird to lock my limbs into the machine's cold, robotic embrace. You won't catch me walking down any staircases in an exoskeleton. At least, not without a lot more practice.

Daniel H. Wilson is the author of several books, including How to Survive a Robot Uprising, Where's My Jetpack?, and Bro-Jitsu: The Martial Art of Sibling Smackdown. Wilson earned his PhD in Robotics from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. His first novel, Robopocalypse, is forthcoming from Doubleday.

Video from The Works courtesy of The History Channel

This week, Gizmodo is exploring the enhanced human future in a segment we call This Cyborg Life. It's about what happens when we treat our body less as a sacred object and more as what it is: Nature's ultimate machine.

Eris is Verizon's other Droid phone. It really is a remodeled Hero, running Android 1.5 and HTC's vaunted Sense candy coating—documented CSI style here—a $200 phone stuffed inside a thinner $100 body, like a Corvette engine shoved inside a Saturn. It's admittedly less exciting than the titular Droid, an industrial beast running Android 2.0. But I have the feeling Verizon is gonna sell a lot more of these things, because, again, it's $100.

Designing for the Middle of the Road

The Eris is rubbery blob, a narrow oval that's as subdued as a phone could possibly be, but there is admittedly something comforting about the Eris's utter lack of personality—it's completely non-threatening, like a middle manager. It's so generic it's almost artful, actually, a design that is nearly perfect for a cheap phone.

The four main Android buttons are touch sensitive, bleeding into the black bezel, hovering over the dead-center trackball and hard chrome buttons for phone and end. I'd like a dedicated camera button, but a volume rocker is all we get. The camera lens stares out the back, disturbingly more reminiscent of an eye than most cameras sticking out the backs of phones, probably because of how stark the rest of the phone is.

Hardware and Camera

The actual guts and screen are the same as past Hero phones—which is to say, nearly the same as all of HTC's other Android phones so far. The 480x320 screen's still nice, even if it feels dated now that the Droid's massive screen, beckoning the next generation, looms large over it. Oh yeah, HTC? Can you get rid of your stupid, pointlessly different version of the mini USB port? Let's go to micro USB now, yeah?

The still camera's better than the Droid though, and about the same as the Sprint version of the Hero, performing pretty decently in low-light situations. Video, not so much:

Software and the Endgame

I've already covered HTC's Sense UI in depth, and it is the exact same on the Eris. It runs just as fast as the Sprint Hero, if not a teeny bit quicker. I will say that after using Android 2.0, it does feel like a step backward in some ways, mostly because of the single Google account limitation. But HTC's confirmed Android 2.0 is coming, so it won't be an issue for every long.

And really, the fact that Android 2.0—half the reason the Droid is excellent—is coming to the Droid Eris is why, in the end, it's such a steal. It's running on Verizon, it's going to have Android 2.0, and it's $100. It's a great phone now, and will be better still soon, making it kind of a perfect storm for people on Verizon looking to ditch their dumbphones—but not Verizon—for something more capable, but who are put off by the Droid, whether it's the steroids or the higher sticker price.

It's last month's darling. But it'll run this month's software. For cheap. And that's pretty spiffy, actually.

You're getting last month's killer Android phone for half price

We'll say it again: This is the best Android deal around

Android 1.5 feels a little dated

Video recording's not exactly amazing

Services like 23andMe (proponents of the above-mentioned "spit parties") and Navigenics both examine specific snippets of your genome for known severe genetic conditions like diabetes, bipolar disorder and certain types of cancers (as well as goofier stuff like freckling and "food preference").

Meanwhile, a boutique genome mapping company named Knome maps not just snippets of DNA but your entire genome, using a blood sample. When it's ready, they sit you down with a doctor to explain their findings.

This thoroughness comes at a cost, of course. Knome's service will run you the price of a Porsche, while their competitors bill up to only a thousand dollars, often less. And while we can technically map the entire genome, we certainly can't understand everything we see.

Ari Kiirikki, a VP at Knome we met at TEDMED, decodes the future of genomics in this brief Q&A:

Where's genomics now?

The first human genome, completed in 2003, took 13 years and nearly $3 billion to decode. Today, we can sequence and interpret an entire human genome in a matter of weeks for less than $70,000 (our current price is $68,000). New software and other analytical tools have put decades of accumulated scientific research at our fingertips, enabling us to analyze an individual's DNA in order to identify risk for thousands of diseases and other inherited traits and conditions.

What will we be doing in 5 years?

Within 5 years, the cost of sequencing an entire human genome is expected to plummet below $1,000, which will dramatically increase the demand for genetic sequence interpretation. The resulting increase in raw data will enable scientists to make new and important discoveries linking our DNA to health and disease, thereby further increasing the clinical utility of DNA analysis. This will enable us to finally deliver on the promise of personalized medicine by allowing scientists to begin the development medicines and individualized "cocktails" of therapeutics tailored to individual genetic profiles.

In 10?

Ten years from now, sequencing a human genome will cost less than $100. Within the decade, scientists are likely to have unraveled precisely how DNA interacts with our environment to impact our risk for developing disease. Expect DNA sequencing to become a regular part of your annual check-up along with the introduction of new therapeutics that can be prescribed to help delay or completely avoid getting specific diseases that you may be predisposed to.

And now we're stretching it, what about 20?

Every medicine you take will be tailored specifically to your genome. Every newborn child will be sequenced at birth, enabling future generations to use their DNA to guide the management of their health over their entire lifetime. Perhaps most amazingly, your DNA will be fully integrated into your everyday life. Genetics will move beyond the clinic, into a broad range of consumer products—snacks, vitamins, mouthwash, skin creams, dating services, etc., all optimized for your unique genetic profile.

I can't speak for everyone here, but I could certainly go for a stick of gum that, instead of being labeled "grape" or "spearmint," simply stated, "You'll enjoy DNA-certified flavor, fatty."

[Image: Human chromosomes "painted" by flourescent dyes to detect abnormal exchange of genetic material frequently present in cancer. Chromosome paints also serve as valuable resources for other clinical and research applications.

Human Genome Program, U.S. Department of Energy, Human Genome Program Report, 1997.]

This week, Gizmodo is exploring the enhanced human future in a segment we call This Cyborg Life. It's about what happens when we treat our body less as a sacred object and more as what it is: Nature's ultimate machine.

First Place—Doc Brown
Second Place—Shaun Legacy
Third Place— Jon McGrath

Obviously, the role of a prosthetic is one far more intimate than that of a couch, and being fitted for a prosthetic is much more labor intensive than just picking out eyeglasses, and but the ideas aren't so dissimilar. From the 1930s to as late as the 1970s, the UK National Health Service mandated only one "choice" for their eyeglasses—considered solely as "medical appliances"—and the standard was a plastic frame formed in a rather horrid pinkish color, an attempt at "flesh tone," already problematic in that description: Whose flesh tone, exactly?

The NHS believed that people would want discretion in their vision correction—the social humiliation generally thought to be incurred by wearing glasses meant that no one would want their glasses to stand out. So there was one form of glasses made for everyone. Today, that sounds ludicrous.

Meanwhile, no one has yet to build a leg that does it all—I have to change legs when I want to wear high heels; I have to change legs when I want to wear different height high heels; I have to change legs when I want to swim, take a boxing class at the gym, or sprint on the track. I have 12 pair in all (though many are housed in museums).

Until that functionality is matched with one single prosthetic, you want to be able to have the fullest quality of life as deemed by you. For some people, it will never be important to swim, or wear a pair of high heels, or to have a prosthetic limb with a cosmesis that really replicates humanness. But for others, those things could be very important. For some people, like me, some of those things are important only some of the time.

In my functional daily arsenal, I have a general rotation between what I call the "Robocop" legs (Re-Flex VSP Legs made by Ossur) and my cosmetic, very life-like legs (by Dorset Orthopaedic).

As if we weren't already aware of the dire state of the American healthcare system, the lack of prosthetic opportunity and choice for most people is due to very limited coverage by insurance companies. To be frank, since my teenage years, I have pursued each and every opportunity to be a guinea pig, trading the use of my body as a testing ground for new technologies for the privilege of using them. Not one pair of my legs is covered by insurance; not one pair of my legs is considered "medically necessary."

What is considered medically necessary for the American insurance standard is whatever gets you from the bed to the toilet. I am not kidding. No other aspect of daily living other than using the bathroom is considered "necessary," which means your basic prosthetic given to most amputees—a stick with a rubber foot as a leg, or a stick with a hook on the end as an arm, has fundamentally not changed since WWII.

My Ossur legs are constructed of woven carbon fiber. They've got a shock absorber, springs, and a split-toe foot so I can navigate uneven terrain with a bit better balance-and basically there's nothing human-looking about that leg. I don't mind this aspect. I'm quite happy with this amazing construction looking like what it is: a good prosthetic that enables me to move around very well. I've embraced the sci-fi aesthetic of the sleek black carbon fiber, the WD-40 glistening on the shock absorber, and I feel rather cool wearing them. They're the prosthetic leg version of a motorcycle jacket. However, I am very aware that there are some vets—mostly female, but some male as well—currently coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan who aren't exactly thrilled about looking like the Terminator, and their consumer desire for choice should be respected.

My Dorset legs are designed more for style than utility. Far lighter than the VSPs, the skeleton or internal frame is made from a hollow carbon fiber custom made tube, and like my sports legs, the sockets are shaped to match my residual limbs exactly so I am able to wear the prostheses all day without discomfort. The carbon is used because it has tremendous strength and weighs very little, approx 300gms. The frame is then covered with a polyurethane foam that is then sculpted both to my specific requests and the aesthetic imagination of the prosthetist Bob Watts, who will ask me how I want them to look. (My last pair got a super flexed calf muscle; it serves as a reminder to get the rest of my body to the gym.) Finally, the prosthesis is sheathed in a 2mm custom-made silicone cosmesis. The cosmesis is a truly astounding work of art: a Kevlar-backed and vulcanized silicone sleeve is built up of many thin layers of differently colored silicones that matches my exact skin tone by combing through nearly 500 color swatches of silicone. You won't find any standardized pinky-beige hues here. Dorset will even map hairs or just hair follicles (I prefer mine smooth, thank you), capillaries, veins, moles, and yes… tattoos. The Cosmesis takes a technician 2 weeks to build and sculpt. The result, incredible.

When traveling, I try to always wear my Robocop legs mainly because the shock absorber makes traversing the airport halls more comfortable. I can also easily lift the legs of my yoga pants and pop them off easily on a plane, making air travel much more tolerable when sitting trapped in a confined space for a few hours. An additional travel hazard I face is with airport security metal detectors: wearing legs that look so perfectly human, like the cosmetic pair I have, is not ideal because generally people in airports hear the word "prosthetic" without registering what it means. Being laced with bits of metal, I set off the bells and whistles and it isn't obvious why, and it leads to a more complicated, lengthier interrogation and inspection for me. Anyone who has ever raced to make a connection in Charles de Gaulle airport knows that every minute counts!

I once wore my cosmetic legs while transiting in Portugal and (predictably) set off the metal detector. They waived me aside—this was right after 9/11—and in a pathetically muddled hybrid of Spanish and Italian, I was like "no, no, yo tengo…" and "ho due…," struggling to complete the sentence with the Latin root word of "prosthetic." I said what I thought sounded like a good approximation, and I immediately got hauled off to one of those strip search rooms replete with search dogs, because the whole time I was actually saying "leave me alone, I'm with two prostitutes."

Not eager to revisit my lost-in-translation experience, I've learned to keep the cosmetic legs in the suitcase. I wear the Robocop legs, and when I set the metal detectors off, I just show my carbon fiber limbs at the ankle, and it's automatic: we commence with the wanding, the bomb swab, the pat down—if at JFK they have an additional X-ray box with a battery of 10 scans I have to pass—they actually know me by name now.

So I guess that means when traveling, I do anything but try to look like everyone else—which is a bit different from what the UK National Health Service would have ever predicted in 1950. [Image by Nick Knight]

Aimee Mullins is an athlete, speaker, actress and model we met at TEDMED. She's also the guest editor for our theme week This Cyborg Life. Read her bio here.

What's New and Dandy

What makes it my favorite Canon so far is actually everything that's completely new to Canon—DP Review has a nice summary here, in pictures. But in short, while this might sound weird, it shoots more like a Nikon than any Canon DSLR I've used. This is primarily because of the new 19-point autofocus system and the color metering system that goes with it. You're able to select AF zones—clusters of AF points—while in the past with Canon you've been limited to a full AF blast or picking out a single point. The system is also more customizable, so it can be locked with different default focus points depending on whether you're holding the camera horizontally and vertically orientations. Against Nikon's D300s, Canon's new AF system mostly kept up, and definitely performs better than autofocus on the 5D Mark II.

The new viewfinder now provides 100 percent coverage, unlike previous Canons in this range, and it uses a new polymer LCD network for the graphical overlay to display AF points, grids and other displays, so it's more flexible and feels more fluid. (It also just looks swankier, and again, more Nikon-like.) Your other viewfinder (when you're shooting video, anyway), the LCD screen, is a 3-inch, 920k dot display like the 5D Mark II and it's still excellent, with a wide viewing angle, nice color and the right amount of crispness.

Sensor and Image Quality

Truthfully, I've been mildly surprised at the quality of photos that've come out of the 7D, which uses an absolutely stuffed 18-megapixel, APS-C sized sensor. (So, there is a 1.6x crop factor.) For comparison, the D300s has a 12MP sensor that's the same physical size (Update: For nitpickers, yes, Nikon's DX format is marginally larger than Canon's APS-C sensor, with the D300s's sensor coming in at 23.6 x 15.8 mm to the 7D's 22.3 x 14.9 mm.) The the D3 only goes for 12 megapixels on its bigger full-frame (35mm-equivalent) sensor. The 5D Mark II has a 21MP full-frame sensor. And typically, the more pixels you try to cram on a sensor of a given size, the more the image quality degrades, especially when it comes to low light, high ISO shots.

I was expecting a noisefest, or at best, seriously noticeable noise reduction employed by the camera's software. It is clear that Canon's using incredibly sophisticated noise reduction algorithms with the dual Digic IV processors onboard, though the effects are less drastic than I expected. It's most apparent, actually, when you directly compare photos taken with the D300s. Looking at photos taken with the 7D and D300s at 100 percent crops, the D300s's images are noisier, but they also preserve more detail. For web-sized images, the 7D's images look better, with less noise and more smoothness.

I've got two sample galleries—an array of sample shots, and then another directly comparing the 7D with the D300s in low light situations, using identical settings for photos. 100 percent zooms follow photos in both galleries. Or you can download full size photos from Flickr here and here.

Video

You can get sense of Canon and Nikon's philosophical differences with the difference in their buttons for video: Canon makes a distinction between Live View and video mode, while Nikon is ready to start shooting video as soon you tap the live view button on the D300s. Creating video is a separate, dedicated event for Canon, in other words, and there is a semi-serious video camera that happens to be built into a DSLR. Nikon's D300s, on the other hand, is a DSLR that happens to shoot video.

With video, the 7D simply has the upper hand—video is very much a legitimized use of this camera, not a secondary one like the D300s. (As expected from a company with an entire wing dedicated to camcorders for pros and consumers.) Not only does it have full manual controls, I find that it's slightly easier to use that the D300s while shooting video—not to mention the whole shooting in a real video codec at 1080p, yadda yadda. Three clips here: A melange of video above, and then by two videos, one from the 7D, one of the D300s, that mirror each other. Both were shot at ISO 6400, and you should be able to catch them at full res if you click over to Vimeo.

Build and Controls

The 7D is heavy, heavier than the 5D, but it's also slightly sturdier, with a build quality and weatherproofing that that's slightly in between the 5D and Canon's definitely pro 1D. It feels about the same in your hand, though. And it's roughly comparable to the D300s.

Controls aren't radically different from other Canon DSLRs of this caliber—that is, it's what you'd mostly expect from a DSLR that sits in between the lower end 50D and the higher end 5DMkII, though it's a bit closer to the latter. While the menu system feels completely unchanged—leaving more advanced features, like the orientation autofocus a bit inscrutable—a few things are new on the outside: The power switch is up on the top left, under the mode dial; there's a dedicated button for switching to RAW/JPEG; a quick action button; and a new toggle switch for Live View and video, which you engage by pressing a start button in the center.

You Already Know If You're Going to Buy This

The real question for Canon users who want something more than the lower end 50D is whether they go for the 7D, at $1700, or full bore to full-frame with the $2700 5D Mark II. The 7D has a 1.6x crop factor which is useful for sports, a better autofocusing system, shoots faster, is slightly more rugged, and is $1000 cheaper. The 5D is full frame—which I suspect is the real consideration for folks—and takes slightly better photos at higher resolutions.

Obviously, if you're locked into Nikon, with thousands of dollars in lenses, you're not going to jump to Canon, or vice versa. But Canon's dedication to DSLR video is proving formidable in carving out a new kind of market that Nikon might have some trouble competing in, since they're a dedicated still camera company, not a video company, too, like Canon. Really, both the D300s and 7D deliver for the money, though I think the 7D delivers more, since it's packed full of newer technology and for the people who want it, the video component is truly killer. Either way, it's proof that competition is good—it clearly wouldn't exist without the D300, and the D400 will be that much better because of it.

New 19-point autofocus and metering systems plus the new viewfinder rock

Excellent 1080p video with full manual controls

Not full-frame, which might put off some people

I'd like a secondary SD card slot, like the D300s

Noise reduction can get pretty aggressive at higher ISO speeds, obscuring detail

BTW, here are some Giz posts shot w/ the 7D:
• Motorola Droid Impressions
• Motorola Droid Review
• Blood Energy Potion Review
• BlackBerry Storm 2 Review
• S90 Review

[In my home we are] all Apple. Apple uses the best technology for their [computers]. Apple says to their customers: if you buy a computer from us you can be sure we have selected the best technology inside for you. That is their promise to consumers. Their promise to consumers isn't we've selected the best technology for you with the exception of what Intel allows us to use. That's not their promise. And that's why Apple uses the best technology where they want whenever they want. And that's why I'm all Apple! At home it's just Macs everywhere. It's Nvidia's technology in all of them but I use Macs. My son has two Macs, my daughter has a Mac, there's an extra Mac just in case and my wife has a Mac. It's just Mac, Mac, Mac! Because I know it's got the best stuff inside.

That's quite an enthusiastic endorsement. So enthusiastic that he crosses the ultra-fanboy territory and gets into the "I've my hockey knee pads here and I'm ready to perform iphonelingus on you if you pick me as your tablet provider, Apple" danger zone. [Shufflegazine—Thanks Ron]

You may also remember that Google already said it would foot the bill for Virgin America Wi-Fi during the same period.

The catch? Once you log into the network, you'll be pestered if you want to set Google to your homepage or try Google Chrome. But that's it. I can deal with that. You'll also have the option to make a donation to Engineers Without Borders, the One Economy Corporation or the Climate Savers Computing Initiative.

Meanwhile, Yahoo is providing free Wi-Fi for an entire year in Times Square, and Microsoft and JiWire will give free Wi-Fi at airports and hotels if you make one search on Bing. I like free stuff! [Google]

Airports for Google-Sponsored Free Wi-Fi:

• Austin (AUS)
• Baltimore (BWI)
• Billings (BIL)
• Boston (BOS)
• Bozeman (BZN)
• Buffalo (BUF)
• Burbank (BUR)
• Central Wisconsin (CWA)
• Charlotte (CLT)
• Des Moines (DSM)
• El Paso (ELP)
• Fort Lauderdale (FLL)
• Fort Myers/SW (RSW)
• Greensboro (GSO)
• Houston (HOU)
• Houston Bush (IAH)
• Indianapolis (IND)
• Jacksonville (JIA)
• Kalamazoo (AZO)
• Las Vegas (LAS)
• Louisville (SDF)
• Madison (MSN)
• Memphis (MEM)
• Miami (MIA)
• Milwaukee (MKE)
• Monterey (MRY)
• Nashville (BNA)
• Newport News (PHF)
• Norfolk (ORF)
• Oklahoma City (OKC)
• Omaha (OMA)
• Orlando (MCO)
• Panama City (PFN)
• Pittsburgh (PIT)
• Portland (PWM)
• Sacramento (SMF)
• San Antonio (SAT)
• San Diego (SAN)
• San Jose (SJC)
• Seattle (SEA)
• South Bend (SBN)
• Spokane (GEG)
• St. Louis (STL)
• State College (SCE)
• Toledo (TOL)
• Traverse City (TVC)

A few years after the United States unleashed the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Soviet Union tested their first nuclear warhead ever. They appropriately called it "First Lightning," the opening of a series 456 atomic tests that brought Hell to Earth sixty years ago. For all of us, that summons terrifying, but beautiful images into our brains:

Sadly, to more than one million innocent people living near the Semipalatinsk Polygon—the Soviet nuclear testing site in the northeast of Kazakhstan—it means this:

For three generations, and more to come, those tests mean deformed babies. They mean premature aging, and countless diseases caused by radiation poisoning. The bombs' ghosts still live in the dead steppe, their invisible fangs ready to suck seven years off the life of every person living around that place. That's the difference in life expectancy with the rest of Kazakhstan.

Of course, it's not the only horror inflicted by weapons in the Soviet Union—or in the rest of the world. I recently read all about them in a fascinating book by Ryszard Kapuściński, one of the best journalist and writers of our time. The book, called Imperium, talks about the Soviet Union through a series of adventures and trips that reach all the corners of the Red Empire. The mosaic is a frightening view of the deadliest, most insensitive killing machine that has ever existed, all through the eyes of the people who suffered it. Not even Hitler matched the horrors of Stalin and his cohorts.

Imperium's raw stories moved me to tears many times, and these images by Ed Ou are a perfect summary of the atrocities inflicted upon hundreds of millions that Kapuściński describes in his book.

However, as I watch through glassy eyes how Mayra Zhumageldina massages her daughter Zhannoor, or how 29-yo Berik Syzdykov sings and plays piano despite being deformed and blind since birth—he was exposed to a nuclear blast while he was inside his mom's womb—I try to smile. I try to smile and be a bit optimistic because, no matter how monstrous some men and women can be, the human spirit always seems to find a way to survive. [Adventures With Light and Getty Images via Big Picture]

That was Aimee Mullins the athlete, running on early prototypes of now-commonplace carbon fiber legs. Since the 1996 Paralympics, she's worked as a fashion model, a speaker, and an actress, while making her way into more sports and culture publications than we can count.

But what most bios may miss about Aimee, whom I had the pleasure to meet at TEDMED, is that she's more than a jock or some sappy "never give up!!" Hallmark greeting card.

Standing between a slender 5' 8" to 6' 1"—depending on her particular mood—Aimee is that girl you knew in high school who was too pretty and popular for you but never felt it necessary to point these facts out. (Maybe because she's a not-so-closeted geek who rarely misses the opportunity to make reference to sci fi classics like 2001, Robocop and Terminator—especially when referencing herself.)

It's our privilege to have Aimee guest editing this week, exploring where technology has and will take the human body. If she's what it means to be "disabled," then why are the "able-bodied" among us so jealous? [image by Howard Schatz]

From the outset, the HD2 is a tragic creature, built from the finest pieces imaginable and burdened with a categorically disappointing OS. HTC has done their best to hide the HD2's shame, but it's just not enough.

Meeting the HD2: Hardware

HTC's got a funny way of designing hardware, where they settle on a basic set of components then pump out virtually every iteration of this basic spec set they possibly can. (See also: HTC as Taco Bell) It's a rare occasion, then, that we get something like the Touch HD2, a followup to the similarly impressive, never Americanized Touch HD.

Top to bottom, corner to corner—and it's a long trip—the HD2 is a perfect specimen of glass, plastic and aluminum. The massive screen-to-bezel ratio means the HD2 is essentially just a 4.3-inch piece of glass, its 800x480 multitouch display bordered by just a few millimeters of ink-black trim and a subtle row of satisfyingly pressable little buttons. The handset's minimalist hindside, interrupted only by a slightly protruding lens for the HD2's 5-megapixel camera and a ever-so-slightly grained aluminum battery door, is elegantly tapered, emphasizing just how thin this thing is—thinner than the iPhone, which is pretty good for a phone that I have to remind myself not to call a tablet.

It's got the same space-warping powers as a supermodel; it looks like a beautiful phone in pictures, but when you finally see it in person, it's twice as tall as you thought it would be and far too thin for its expanded proportions. It's almost not fair to other phones. And it will give them body image issues.

Behind this spectacularly huge screen is a 1GHz Snapdragon processor assisted by 448MB of RAM—specs that would have put a top-line desktop to shame less than ten years ago—and 512MB of ROM, aided by expandable microSD storage. The whole battery of expected high-end smartphone amenities are here, from GPS to a facial proximity sensor to an internal compass to Bluetooth 2.1. There's a 3.5-mm headphone jack, and charging comes by way of Micro USB, through to an adequate 1230 mAh battery (it'll get you through the workday, which is par for the course nowadays). Unless you absolutely need to have a hardware keyboard, there is nothing—nothing—the HD2 leaves you wanting for.

Moving In With the HD2

One of the benefits of Windows Mobile not having changed much in the last few years is that it's easy to compare new hardware to old, and let's be clear about the HD2: It's unbelievably fast. Applications open almost instantly and close without the slightest hesitation, and over Wi-Fi, web pages render in Opera Mobile as if you're browsing on a laptop, not a cellphone. (And hell, if you put your face close enough to this ridiculous screen, it's easy to forget you're not.)

This near-magical experience is spread throughout the HD2: Calls answer and end without the expected delay, the camera—a decent 5-megapixel number with a blinding flash and VGA video capabilities—wakes up as fast as you can point its lens, and tapping the home button, no matter how many apps you've got toiling in the background, always results in a satisfyingly clean and snappy return to HTC's ostentatious homescreen. Speaking of which!

This is one of the first Windows Mobile phones to have HTC Sense, which combines bits and pieces of their overhauled Android interface and kneads them together with years of TouchFLO 3D development. Practically, this means that using the HD2 is just like using any other HTC Windows phone from the last three years—a tabbed slider at the bottom of the screen moves you from homescreen panel to homescreen panel, where HTC has condensed a lot of the information you look to your phone for. It's faster and more complete that you've seen before, with added color, a Twitter client and visual browser bookmarks, but it's essentially the same HTC dashboard, just gussied up a little bit. And to the extent that such a thing—you know, a disguise—can work, it works.

Falling Out of Lust With the HD2

HTC's software ethos has always been to hide the unseemly parts of Windows Mobile. And it's got plenty! But with the HD2, they've taken this philosophy all the way to its logical conclusion: They've tried to replace Windows Mobile's UI entirely. The HD2 is HTC: Reductio ad Absurdum Edition.

And don't get me wrong, this whole Sense thing is surprisingly usable—it's a fairly rare occasion that you fall out of HTC's safe, smooth, grey-and-black arms, and into the Windows 3.1-esque hell that has been, and somehow still is, a Windows Mobile hallmark. With Sense HTC has made a sort of meta-OS, which uses Windows Mobile 6.5 as a behind-the-scenes stagehand, which only shows its face when it absolutely needs to. HTC has even added multitouch to the browser, maps and photo applications, which works well enough for what almost certainly qualifies as an after-the-fact hack.

In fact, that could describe the whole Sense experience just well. It's good, considering what it is. It's just that that's a huge qualification. As pretty as HTC's replacement apps are, they're not the same as having good core apps in the first place. Want to add music to HTC's fancy new media player? You've got to find Windows Mobile's old media player, add a directory and switch back. Want some new apps? Trundle on over to Windows Mobile's sorely lacking Marketplace, where most of the apps you download will look and behave differently than the ones in HTC's coddled ecosystem. Press Start, and you'll be greeted with Windows' unsortable mess of a Start Menu. Need to modify a setting that HTC didn't deem important enough to put in their own control panel? Good luck. And god forbid you don't like Sense, and want to stick with vanilla 6.5, you basically can't: It's not quite ready for stylus-free use, and the HD2's screen doesn't come with—or support—those forsaken almost-pens of yore. As much good work as HTC has done here, it's an uneven experience. Remember those flashy old Windows XP shell replacements like bbLean and Litestep? No? There's a good reason for that.

Every time you notice the absurd lengths to which HTC has gone to deny this phone is running Windows—they've even replaced the calendar and text messaging apps, for god's sake—you find yourself asking the same question: Why even bother?

It's a question for consumers as much as it is for HTC. For HTC, why spend so much time and effort desperately—and only marginally effectively—hiding an OS when they know they can just replace it entirely? I understand they've got a legacy with Windows Mobile, but right now that legacy is starting to seem toxic, as HTC's insistence on distancing themselves from it in the form of passive-aggressive disguising operations shows. And for anyone thinking about buying this thing, why not wait a little while? We've seen how fantastic this hardware combo is, so why not wait until someone loads it up with software that HTC doesn't feel like they have to hide away like some kind of dark secret? Sony's about to outspec the HD2 with the Android-powered Xperia X10 anyway, and HTC would have to be stupid not to be working on something similar right now.

If you've got some undying loyalty to Windows Mobile, be it personal or work-enforced, life won't get any better than with the HD2—it's shipping on multiple carriers sometime in early 2010, though I don't suspect it'll be cheap. If you don't, then just wait this one out. Trust me: for hardware like this, the payoff will be worth it.

UPDATE: Some people are saying I've been too dismissive of the phone simply due to its software, and they have a point: The HD2 is, without qualification, the best Windows Mobile phone on the market right now. And being a Windows Mobile phone isn't all bad: The browsers have Flash, Exchange support is perfect, and multitasking is seamless. On top of that, the Sense shell is an impressive piece of software, especially in terms of social networking and media playback. But the point remains: Even behind the very convincing disguise of a modern phone, Windows Mobile is lagging well behind its competitors in terms of new app development, fast OS development and general user experience, and by the time you get your hands on this phone—and just as importantly, by the time your contract is halfway through—Windows Mobile 6.5, Sense or no Sense, will feel like a complete dinosaur. Hence the "wait"—for a similar phone with better software, or for Windows Mobile 7.

[HTC]

The 4.3-inch glass display is pure bliss

Actually, no, this whole handset is bliss. If they were sitting right here, right now, I would kiss the hardware designers on the mouth. With tongue.

Battery life isn't as atrocious as you'd expect it to be

HTC Sense does extensive damage control on Windows Mobile, making this the best WinMo experience out there right now.

Not to beat a dead horse, but it's still Windows Mobile. (What that means)

Your heart can beat 3 billion times in your lifetime without maintenance—that's a performance spec that no motor can match. Tens of trillions of cells inside you undergo constant death and regeneration. And your brain juggles countless autonomic and cognitive processes without so much as a status bar. But it was just eight years ago that we decoded our genome, seizing the blueprints for ourselves. We're just starting to understand this machine enough to tinker with it. And Man being Man, we need to tinker.

Techie people like new toys. In the future that will mean everything from artificial limbs that perform better than the originals to benevolent viruses that recode the software of the human body. And as the gadget obsessed, we'd be the ones most likely to sign up first. And to go high end, cutting edge.

Last year I got lasik, and sprung for all the upgrades. Like the cornea mapping system to correct sector by sector aberrations on my eye, the same tech used to remap the flaws in Hubble telescope's glass. And the laser cut instead of the scalpel, which reduces night halos. Everyone else attending the mandatory pre-surgery briefing went budget. But when it comes to our bodies and minds, the gadget-minded think of our flesh and soul as extensible and upgradable with only with the best.

For a far more interesting story, we are lucky to have an amazing guest editor with us this week named Aimee Mulllins—Aimee was born without fibulae in both legs and her doctors decided to amputate her legs below the knees to give her a chance to walk with artificial legs. Eventually, she became the first woman with a disability to compete in the NCAA using carbon fiber equipment modeled after the hind legs of a cheetah. She's also been voted as people magazine's 50 most beautiful people in the world and, at 17, was the youngest person to hold top secret Pentagon security clearance. Some might classify Aimee as handicapped, but I'd call her enhanced. I hope she can share with us what its like to depend on her gear and have it change the way we live and the conditions we're born with.

Through the week, we'll hear from other experts too:

• Daniel H. Wilson, author of How To Survive a Robot Uprising, will be writing about his experiences searching for super-powered strength.

• Sexologist Debby Herbenick will discuss some of the upgrades going on below the belt.

• Our own Mark Wilson, who spent a week hearing about the outer edges and most pressing needs of health science at the TEDMED conference in San Diego, will share his encounters with the stars of organ growing, genome mapping, human body imaging and more.

• In a Q&A with The New Yorker's Michael Specter, we'll see why it's more dangerous to not embark on the paths of genetic and viral manipulation than to follow them to their most unnerving ends.

This week, Gizmodo will be exploring the enhanced human future. We're calling it This Cyborg Life. And its all about what happens when we treat our body less as a holy object and more as what it is: Nature's ultimate machine. Even if we can't replicate it—yet—we can make it better.

Readers and writers and editors for other periodicals and books: if you've got old or new stories that would fit into our theme week, please let me know! We'd love to link you.

1. Since a battery should never be 100% full or 100% empty, you should charge it then discharge it in sequence ideally ranging between 80% to 20%. Start by charging for 12 minutes, then running it down, then charge it for 11 minutes then run it down, and so on. Confused? Just use this handy formula: n!=C(n,k)/r! where n can't equal r, and k never reaches zero. Simple!

2. If you use a phone or laptop without first charging its battery fully, you will die.

3. A lot of battery experts warn of the memory effect, but it's not really an "effect." It's just their way of saying "Remember to charge your batteries!"

4. Batteries run better when cold. The easiest way to do this is to find a refrigerated warehouse or meat locker, befriend the night watchman, and do all your work from there. ($20 bribes usually work.)

5. If your laptop battery gets hot enough to sear tuna, step away. Check your fridge for tuna. If no tuna in fridge, run to the supermarket to buy tuna. Don't worry, as long as you don't unplug your laptop, the battery will stay hot while you are gone.

6. When putting your laptop into storage, take out the battery. Wrap the extracted battery in a well oiled cloth and place it in a clay pot. Bury the pot in a hayfield. Any will do, but it's best if there's a long rock wall with a big oak tree at the north end. The battery should keep fresh for up to six months that way. If you're worried about finding it again, just mark your spot with a rock that has no earthly business in a hayfield. I favor black volcanic glass.

7. If your battery is about to run dry, take it out and blow on it. I have no idea why this works, but it totally does.

8. If your battery does die, you can always make your own: A potato theoretically has enough "potential energy" stored inside to power a laptop for a full hour—the trick is knowing where to stick the wires. Just ask a third grader. One tip: The potato must not be baked.

9. You should never confuse your batteries. Here's an easy way to keep them apart in your head: Lithium Ion batteries explode, Nickel Cadmium destroys the environment, and Lead Acid batteries are more corrosive than the Alien Queen's blood (plus, they contain lead). You can eat Lithium Ferro Phosphate batteries.

10. People may tell you to carry a battery-life extender in your bag, but the secret there is, it's just another battery. What do I recommend? Jumper cables.

The Best

Chorus: Hey, Apple, when people start making apps just to help people find new apps, take it as a sign that your App Store interface could use a little help. Chorus crowdsources the effort to cut through the endless jungle of trash:

Chorus is a bit like Apple's native App Store app, except with drastically shifted emphasis: instead of giving category "Top" lists, which rank apps by overall download numbers, Chorus only pitches you apps that've been explicitly recommended by someone. These someones could include other friends who use Chorus, nearby Chorus users, or a stable of "App Mavens"-online reviewers and tech journalists, mostly.

Free.


ZenApps: An even better sign that the App Store could offer more in the way of search tools, filters and sorting options than a company making an app-finding app? Two companies making app-finding apps. ZenApps takes a more traditional approach than the social network-y Chorus, aggregating review buzz from a list of app sites into a tag cloud, or a simple list. Also free.


Million Tap Challenge: Speaking of maybe worthless crap apps, Million Tap Challenge is a simple app with a simple goal: to be tapped. A million times. This makes the cut because unlike 99.99% of the spammy crap in the App Store, Million Tap Challenge has a sense of the absurd. It knows how ridiculous it is, and for just the right kind of person, it's a brilliant timekiller.


Flying Without Fear: My pops was a pilot, and the thought of being suspended 32,000 feet in the air in a tiny aluminum tube still freaks me the hell out. Flying without fear takes a two-pronged approach to soothing panicked passengers, with relaxation exercises on one side, and more importantly, detailed explanations of each step in typical airline flight, and the terrifying sounds that accompany them. Minor complaint #1: $5 seems a little steep for a branded app—this one is slathered in Virgin Atlantic's colors and logo. Minor complaint #2: Sir Richard Branson, who provides a video intro, is scarier than the worst transatlantic turbulence I've ever sat through. IT'S THE BEARD, BEARDO.


Gokivo: It's getting hard to keep track of all the iPhone navigation apps' names, much less their price structures, so here's what you need to know: Gokivo, the decent-but-too-expensive navigation app, has become Gokivo, the decent and now-not-too-expensive navigation app. The price has dropped from $5/mo to $5 dollars 30 days or $40 for the year. It's not as dirt-cheap as products like MotionX Drive and CoPilot, but solid text-to-speech and live traffic make this a deal.


Black Friday(s): This one comes in two parts, actually! Both FatWallet and Dealnews have put together apps that'll aggregate the best last-minute Black Friday deals come (almost) Thanksgiving. Neither is getting very good reviews right now, mostly due to their lack of deals. Today November 6th, so this is mildly mind-boggling. Patience!


LexPrint: Hey, remember Lexmark? They made printers! And evidently, they still make printers! Also, they've put together one of the better iPhone photo printing apps I've seen. Instead of shipping with grossly limited compatibility like other printing apps (seriously, everyone's got one now, but they're all pretty picky about which printers they talk with) Lexmark bridged the wireless gap with a PC client called Listener, which accepts print requests in lieu of a wireless radio on the actual printer. Kind of brilliant, if you have a Lexmark.


Waveboard: Google Wave is still invite-only, so it's a little strange to see a dedicated app this early on. That said, a sizable group of people are already power-using the shit out of this service that I don't think I'll ever fully understand, so Waveboard, which is marginally better than the stock Wave web interface, might be worth the one dollar entry fee.


Eliminate: This one lands in the top ten for two reasons. One is obvious: This is a fun, smooth-running FPS with intuitive controls—rare!—and solid gameplay. The other is a little counterintuitive: To get the full Eliminate experience, you probably need to shell out for Energy Cells via in-app purchases. This is good precisely because it's terrible, and provides a perfect example to other devs of how not to use the new in-app purchase system. It's fun while the free lasts, though! A cautionary tale.


TowerMadness Zero: TowerMadness used to be a better-than-average tower defense game, rendered in 3D and priced at about $3. Then, there was a lightning strike. A developer was zapped in the skull, collapsed, and three hours later awoke, dazed. As he stood up and surveyed his charred surroundings, he froze as if he was having a stroke; his eyes, though, twinkled. He had an idea. When he finally spoke, everyone around him was stunned: "TOWERMADNESS SHALL BE FREE," he bellowed, "AND IT SHALL BE SUPPORTED BY ADS THAT ARE NOT VERY ANNOYING." Then he died, from the burns. Pointlessly dramatic fake scenario aside, this kind of thing should happen more often.

Honorable Mentions

Cry Translator: This one purports to tell you what your baby's various gurgles, yelps and screams mean. This sounds implausible! Also implausible: That it's somehow worth $30. Just jingle your keys, try to feed it, and smell for poop. Parenting, done.

Family Guy: Hey look, it's a game based on a popular-but-well-past-its-prime television series! It's a bit Nintendo-like, which is charming, and the free version is worth a few minutes of you time, provided you don't hate Family Guy.

This list is in no way definitive. If you've spotted a great app that hit the store this week, give us a heads up or, better yet, your firsthand impressions in the comments. And for even more apps: see our previous weekly roundups here, and check out our Favorite iPhone Apps Directory. Have a great weekend, everybody!

For the most part, do you consider these digital upgrades as good or bad ideas?

It's All in the Google Cloud

Android phones don't sync with your computer. That's because they don't have to: Your contacts, calendar and mail are all kept up in the great Googleyplex. Unfortunately, Google's Contacts manager, while it's gotten better, is kinda crappy, and all of your Contacts are beamed down to your phone from there.

So even after you get the actual contacts you wanna talk to exported to Google Contacts, one problem is that all of your Google contacts, like everybody you email, show up on your phone. What you have to do is either sort your contacts into different groups and tell the phone's Contacts app to show only the groups you only wanna see, or to only show you people with phone numbers. If you wanna sync your contacts, so you have a master copy on your computer and can manage them from there, that problem takes a bit of legwork—at least on Windows.

If you're on a Mac, it's easy to keep your Contacts synced—just tell Address Book to sync with Google. On Windows, you'll need a third-party app, like GO contact. That way, you can manage your contacts on your desktop, and have a local copy that's always synced up with what Google's got.

Calendars are easier: Google's got an app for that.

Exchange support varies from version to version: Android 2.0 has it, previous vanilla versions of Android don't, but carriers like Sprint and hardware makers like HTC have been rolling their own Exchange solution into Android. Check the box, in other words.

The Gmail App Is Amazing

If your primary email account is Gmail, that's almost reason enough to go Android. Not only is Gmail pushed to your phone, the Gmail app is an absolutely perfect rendition of the Gmail experience for the small screen. Threaded conversations (hurray), full label support, starring, archiving and a true Gmail look-and-feel. It's even better in Android 2.0, which finally includes support for using multiple Google accounts with the Gmail app, and a few interface tweaks to make it easier to use.

For your non-Google accounts, there's a separate email app that's a pretty standard IMAP/POP mobile email app. Not amazing, not bad.

For That Matter, All of the Google Apps Are Amazing

You might be switching to Android for political reasons, or just to get away from AT&T, but what's gonna make switching actually work is that all of the Google services are fantastic, and often, more powerful than their iPhone counterparts.

Google Talk is the non-Gmail killer app for me, and highlights just how badly the iPhone needs a native messaging app—it's like BlackBerry Messenger, but for Google. (Or mobile AIM, but less shitty.) Keep in mind, anyone signed in to Gmail on a desktop browser can be reached through Google Talk if they've authorized it, so you've probably got more "buddies" than you might realize.

Latitude is actually built into the Maps app; Google Voice integrates seamlessly; and Google actually frequently releases updates them the Android Marketplace. Oh, and did I mention Google Navigation? Yeah.

What Google hasn't gotten around to yet is integrating Google Docs, but the web version with Android's HTML5-superpowered browser is pretty good.

Not Being on AT&T Is Just as Liberating As You'd Hoped

I've never had full bars on any Android phone—on T-Mobile, Sprint or Verizon—and not been able to do something online. End of story.

Multitasking Is All It's Cracked Up to Be, Mostly

"Hey look, someone @replied me on Twitter!" Pull down the window shade, check it out, go back to browsing this month's custard calendar. "Oh hey, an email." Down comes the window shade, I reply, and then instantly return to drooling more over pumpkin-pie custard, before flipping to Google Talk to tell my friend when we're going to slaughter zombies in Left 4 Dead 2 demo. All in 10 seconds, while listening to Pandora radio.

The drop down window shade is pure genius, and what makes the cacophony of background notifications from all the apps you've got running work. See, you don't actually close apps in Android like on the iPhone. You just switch between them, and the OS takes care of closing apps you haven't used in a while in the background. (Unless inside of an app, you explicitly tell it to shutdown, like Twidroid.) Anything a background app wants to tell you goes into the notification windowshade. Sure, there's a bit of lag switching back to the browser and then scrolling is choppy for a second on some phones, but it's a small price to pay. And bigger batteries in more recent hardware, like the Droid, are enough to make it through the day.

Android Takes More Work

Every version of Android gets a little smoother, a little more user-friendly, but stock versions are pretty barebones. Want to read a PDF attached to an email? You need an app. Visual voicemail? Gotta download it unless your carrier preinstalls one. Want a notepad? Find it on the Market. HTC takes care a lot of these little humps with their custom builds—which includes a PDF viewer out of the box, for example—and generally speaking, there's an app for the basic holes that need to be filled in, but get ready to do a little bit of legwork.

It's Not Quite as Secure

The lock screen is a series of swipes—not an actual passcode—and there's no remote wipe out of the box. Granted, with the iPhone you need a MobileMe plan to get remote wipe, but you don't have to look for an app to install, like SMobile Security Shield.

It's also less secure in the app department, at least on paper: Under Android, you can opt to install unverified programs through the settings menu. This may be a good thing to you—even your reason for switching—but it carries obvious extra risks.

The Android Marketplace Isn't as Nice as the App Store (Yet)

The only place to look for apps and install them is directly on your phone, through the Android Marketplace. With Android 1.6, the Marketplace did get a lot nicer to browse, with a new interface and actual app screenshots, but categories are still too broad, and you still can't do any of this on your desktop, where you have a much bigger screen. Updating apps? You've gotta do them one at a time, which is annoying.

The App Situation Is Getting Better, But Isn't There Yet

So here's the thing. The app ecosystem on Android has absolutely exploded, so it's much, much better place to be than it was six months ago, much less a year ago. In fact, for a lot of your everyday iPhone apps, there's now an Android counterpart or equivalent: Facebook, Pandora, Slacker, Remember the Milk, Foursquare, Shazam, Flixster, etc. The problem is, they're universally not as polished or full-featured. Facebook's missing messaging and events entirely; Twidroid, the best Twitter app, is hideous compared to any of the top 5 iPhone Twitter apps; Photoshop's lacks some of the effects it has on the iPhone.

Gaming is probably the single biggest thing you'll miss. There are games, yes. Some of them good. There aren't as many and they're not as fantastic. There's nothing Star Defense caliber. Or Sim City. (Oops.) Partly, this is simply a numbers issue: Android's not as big as the iPhone yet. But the other aspect is that there's a serious storage limitation for apps—just 256MB in some phones—which seriously cramps what some games can do, as well as how many apps you can install on you phone. Apps will get better, the app economy will get better, this is true. But for now, be ready for some limitations and possibly, disappointments.

Music and Video? Just Buy a Zune HD

Kidding. Sort of. Getting music and video onto your Android phone is a purely drag and drop operation—there's no official Google sync application to organize and get your 10 gigs of music onto your phone. There is an Amazon MP3 store, and it's okay. There are third-party solutions, like DoubleTwist or Windows Media Player. But once you get the music on there, the music player itself kinda blows. It's ugly and just not very nice to use. On the upside, it plays Ogg Vorbis, open source fans.

Movie watchers are in even worse shape with Android. Your best bet is to avoid the native player that's sort of hidden and to actually use a third party app, Meridian. Or just get a Zune HD for your music and video, and you'll be much happier.

I think that covers the basics guys. Yeah, Android's not as polished or smooth, but you know what? It's actually quite livable over here. If there's something else you wanna know—or want to share—about switching, drop it into the comments.

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First Place
8 Bigmacs. Two SB-800 speedlights and on-camera flash (nikon CLS kicks ass) Nikon D80 I think at 1/125 f/5.6. Fast enough to shoot hand-held before it would tip over. The macs are skewered with two wooden kebab skewers to a piece of plasticine (unfortunately visible). Some photoshop curves and black and white mixing. -Zach Slootsky

Second Place
The Coburg Cafe's monster burger. Regular sized burger on top for size reference; 1 lb. hamburger, ham, bacon, swiss & american, on an 8" bun w/all the fixins' -Trask Blueribbon [Ed note: remember to tell us your camera/settings!]

Third Place
This photo was taken at my son's school cafeteria. We had lunch together. It was abysmal. Jello was good though. I snapped this photo with my Verizon HTC Touch. Basic settings. My technique was to hold back the vomit before I barfed on my phone. -Robbie Amburgey

Thanks for the entries, and look for a more classic Shooting Challenge topic next Monday—something more along the lines of photography for photography's sake. (Not that I don't love watching you poison yourselves in the name of art.)