Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
The first weekend here, Lisa’s family gave us their awesome seats to a baseball game between the Yomiuri Giants and the Hanshin Tigers, my first Japanese baseball game ever.The differences I noticed between American baseball and Japanese baseball being that everyone chants a different song for each batter in complete synchronicity, the stadium food includes…
Lensbaby has just revamped its line of creative bendable “distorting” lenses at Photokina, and added a new type. This new Composer disposes with the bellows bend/focus system of earlier Lensbabies and has ball-and socket twisting with a focusing ring at the front to let you select the in-focus sweet-spot in your photos. It’s also got…
100GB CF cards…. holy moly that’s huge. Pretec’s saying it’s the world’s largest capacity CF, and I’m not going to argue. It’s a 233x speed card, capable of access rates at 35MB/s and it, along with its smaller 64GB sibling, is being shown at Photokina this week. Not satisfied with that though, Pretec’s also extending…
We’ve crossed the palm-sized threshold in the contest for the tiniest USB keyboard. Joel lusts for this one, and yet, Chen does not think such a device would be useful without a cellphone connector — Why? Cellphones already have text entry and clearly the USB keyboard’s utility is all about its size. I can’t wait…
I love the new Microsoft ads, from Seinfeld to the I’m a PC montage, but I’m no expert. Vanity Fair asked seven advertising pros to comment on Microsoft’s campaign. They put answers in cute little old fashioned Windows error prompts. One thought: There are lots of CEOs here, but I’d prefer to see more creative…
The NYTimes’s profile on HTC’s billionaire founder and Chairwoman Cher Wang reveals some interesting facts about the company. The most fun being HTC’s R&D think tank is called Magic Labs, where engineers have titles like Mechanical Wizard and Chief Innovation Wizard. They’ve also got a writer and jeweler among their 50 lucky staff, but probably…
Fuji announced a 3d digital imaging system that uses modern image processors to take images with similar quality found in modern cameras. The dual lens system can also be used for future applications including instantly stiched together panoramas from two simultaneous shots, or using one CCD to shoot video while the other shoots stills. (Things…
Today is one of those days that designers celebrate and dread: Adobe unveils its latest Creative Suite—Number 4—with new pro versions of Photoshop, Premiere, InDesign, Illustrator, Flash, Dreamweaver, After Effects and more. Heavy users wait with bated breath to see if their desired tweaks have been added, knowing that if the answer is “yes,” then…
Jumping the gun a bit, the official site for T-Mobile’s—and the world’s—first Android phone is live. That “heavy Google branding” we heard about is in full play: HTC’s Dream is billed as the “T-Mobile G1 with Google.” They’re using a neon green jelly font, kind of cool. Most of the site is walled off until…
A component maker called Digital Imaging Systems has announced it will soon ship a camera module for phones and other devices, capable of shooting single images at 3488×2616 pixels—over 9 megapixels. Another great fact for the sell sheet is that the low-powered CMOS will allow for 30-frame-per second 720p high-def video recording. The module contains…
Techgage is reporting credible evidence to support a rumor that HP is going to shut down the VoodooPC operation, citing both an internal e-mail discussing layoffs, and the fact that the company returned over 300 power supplies to Topower, a hardware partner. It would be strange for HP to be shutting down its boutique hardware…
If you drive in cities, you know the game where you guess the exact speed to, say, cruise down Lexington Ave hitting all the green lights in sequence. With Audi’s Travolution system—currently piloted in Ingolstadt, German—that game is no longer necessary, because 46 traffic lights report in to the car’s computer, and the car tells…
As you can sort-of see in the video, Russian president Dmitry Medvedev picks up an iPhone and plays with it during a press conference with French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Rude! But keep in mind that the video is fuzzy and there are no guarantees that the device in the video is actually an iPhone. Could…
There are plenty of carbon footprint calculators online, but now treehugging mathematicians can easily calculate how much damage they are doing to mother Earth using this handy pocket-sized CO2 calculator. Electricity use, water, trash and gas can all be managed from this simple, portable device (although I don’t see a button on there to calculate…
Did you look twice and think I wrote “Alien Orgasm?” Sorry to disappoint but the Antonín Dvořák Concert and Congress Center slated to go up in the Czech Republic reminds me of some sort of microscopic life form. The unique design will feature two concert halls—a philharmonic hall and a chamber music hall that will…
Amid the iPhone 3G launch hysteria, we made a pronouncement that, looking back now long after the dust has settled, pretty well nailed it: forget hardware, it’s code that counts. Code via the juggernaut that is the App Store, which allowed the iPhone to truly came into its own as a mobile platform. Now, our…
The Samsung HZ1 is just a 26mm thick point ‘n shoot, but it manages to pack in a 10x zoom, 24mm wide angle lens and 720P HD video recording that captures at 30 frames per second. Of course there’s all the other stuff you’d expect in a premium camera of this class—optical image stabilization, 10.2MP…
Apple’s iPhone Mail app isn’t bad, but for those of us looking to use advanced Gmail functions (like managing multiple accounts or starring items), an app named MailWrangler would fill in the gaps…that is, if Apple hadn’t rejected the application from their iTunes store. Here is the message sent from Apple to the developer, six…
The final hardware for the upcoming SlingCatcher is all but finished, and Brian Jaquet from Sling gave us a brief demo with the new hardware, leaving me pretty excited about what this thing can do. For those unfamiliar, the SlingCatcher can take a video feed from another Slingbox and throw it up on your TV…
The idea behind the Segway is a good one, but between the Presidential accidents, Polo games and supreme laziness, the Segway has developed a serious image problem. When people think “Segway” they think bike helmet-wearing super-nerds having an asthma attack while whizzing down the sidewalk at 12 mph. Not so with the following gadgets. Unlike…
