Gadgety News

You may have read my review about the Panasonic G1 a week or so ago.

I was impressed and found it pretty easy to use - this comes from someone who basically points and shoots.

The people that Panasonic allowed to run rampant with the pre-production models in order to review and feedback to the company were offered a chance to win one of these beasties.

Well, in for a penny……

I entered the pic that you can see above which, to be honest, took me 25 minutes to take (including the walk to the top of Primrose Hill and back!).

8am on a cold, blustery morning with the threat of rain I quickly snapped a few pics (the rest are on my Flickr page if you’re interested).

Well, long story short - I didn’t win.  I don’t get a free Panasonic G1 four-thirds camera.

But I did come in second place!!!!

Surly a testament to how easy the G1 is to use

After quite a lot of teasers, rumours and a smattering of hype RED just this moment went official with their eagerly anticipated DSMC (Digital Stills and Motion Camera) System.

There’s many, many combinations to this thing, be warned.

Let’s start with your choice of the professional Scarlet or “master professional” EPIC brains which can then be configured into about “2,251,799,813,685,248 possible camera configurations” - so says RED in a half-jokey manner ;) 

These ‘brains’ are built upon Mysterium-X and Mysterium Monstro sensors which start at 2/3-inch and end at a whopping 6×17-cm!  Good news is that when a new sensor comes out all you do is just upgrade the brain.

Scarlet will launch in 4 choices ranging from $2,500 (maybe less) to $12,000 with a variety of lens mounts (Canon and Nikon) capable of shooting 3K @120fps on up to 6K @30fps.

If that is still a little on the cheap side Epic will offer similar mounts with capabilities spanning 5K @100fps ($28k) to 9K @50fps ($45k).  Want more? A 28K system hitting 25fps is expected in 2010 for $55k

The first Scarlet systems could come as early as Spring of 2009 while EPIC should arrive by summer. Of course, the brain is just the beginning of the costs.

Just to confuse me even more RED has also introduced a 3D camera today.

RedUser

Pure Digital’s Flip Mino was pretty good for the money and the Ultra even more so - but now it’s gone Flippin HD!

Ok, so it’s listed as being $230 in the Wall Street Journal so perhaps cool it a bit.

For the cash you get about an hour’s worth of fixed zoom, 720p, MPEG-4 video recorded to 4GB of built-in flash memory.

Shove the USB cam into your PC or Mac to launch the built-in FlipShare editing software for fine-tuning your videos before sharing via MySpace, YouTube or direct over email. Obviously this gets compressed to 480×270.

There is word of HD sharing via an unnamed partner arriving early next year according to Pure.

Katie Boehret, over at the Wall Street Journal groped the gear and seemed impressed by the video and improved sound quality.

Overall she made noises to the fact that the FlipShare was well worth the $50 premium over the previous Flip Mino.

This is a glimpse into the mobile handset future through Sony Ericsson’s eyes - date: 2012.

Ignore todays cutbacks to R&D budgets and the global economy shuddering to a halt

Whilst LTE and fast CPUs are no real surprise and Japanese superphones are already not to far from that 1,024 x 768 XGA screen resolution.

What is most interesting is the embedded camera sensors: Between 12-20 megapixels and capable of recording Full HD video.

Stacking on the MPs is all very well as long the optics and image processing are there and up to the job of supporting this resolution.  I also think that we’ll be needing a hefty bit of built in memory as well!

Anyone else think that a lot of these projection will be seen before 2012?

Yup, those know-it-alls at Wired are going to open their fourth annual store from November 21 until December 28 in New Yoik.

There will be more than 150 items including the latest electronics, toys and transportation, which can also be purchased online from November 20.

The Wired Store will also recognise four different charities, and is set to feature a brand new green section created by Adrian Grenier and Peter Glatzer of Reconcile Productions as well.

Is Christmas coming or something?

Wired

We bid farewell to the Polaroid camera and shakey-shakey developing film and the world has never been the same since.

The basic idea is still alive thanks to Tomy!

Yup - the toy maker.

Tomy and Zink have joined forces to make the Xiao TIP-521, a digital camera with a printer built in.

The Xiao has an middle-of-the-road res of 5mp and will be up against Polaroid’s Pogo Zink offering.

Market Watch

The Nokia N85 has been released in the UK and is a great alternative to the N96.

I loved my N95 and it was probably the best all-rounder of a phone that I’ve owned - the N85 looks to be more up-to-date in its looks with the sleek, black fascia. It’s also 5mm thinner than the N95 and weighs 128g.

Like the N95, the N85 is a dual slider handset.  Slide one way to reveal the keypad, slide the other way to reveal dedicated media keys.

The screen has also been updated with a state-of-the-art 2.5” OLED screen. This offers enhanced colour and contrast but also reduces power consumption.

It keeps the good ol’ Nokia 5mp camera with Carl Zeiss lens, autofocus and duel LED flash.  All this ensures high quality happy snapping.

Videos are recorded at 30fps and a secondary lens on the front of the handset for vid-calls.

Now, unlike the N96 and its 16GB internal memory, the N85 only has 74MB internal dynamic memory.

However, it does have a ‘hot swappable’ microSD card slot available for up to 8GB.

The new Nok gives you direct access to the Nokia Music Store and has the all important 3.5mm jack socket. so you can use your fave cans.

A neat feature is the FM Transmitter. This lets you send your mp3 tracks over FM radio waves to the nearest radio tuned into the correct frequency. Clever; and perfect for use in the car!  No need to buy a little add-on.

Gamers will be pleased to know that the N85 features Nokia’s N-Gage gaming service.

The handset comes with 15 pre-installed game demos. Chose your favourite from the demos and Nokia will send a code to activate one of the games for free!

You can hook up to 3G as well as 3.6Mbps HSDPA, EDGE, GPRS, WiFi connection and A2DP Bluetooth.

I reckon this is a great, cheaper option to the N96

Happy birthday to this gadget blog. Happy birthday to this tech blog. Happy birthday dear Jay’s Gadget News.  Happy birthday to yooooooooooooooooou!

Blog! Blog! Blog! Blog! Blog! Blog! Blog! Blog! Blog! Blog! Blog! Blog! Blog! Blog!

Well, what started off as a test to see if there was room for another gadget and tech blog site a year ago has slowly gained enough of you lovely readers for me to carry on writing about things that have caught my eye and that you (hopefully) find interesting.

My first posts (ie not ones dragged over from my temporary test site) were posted this very day 12 months ago - I know, how Goth to choose Samhain/Halloween to start a blog

I would like to take this moment and space to thank all of you for coming here and making this place feel loved - whether you were here from the very start or have only just found this place.

If there are anythings that you would rather see more/less of now is your chance. Either email me or just leave a comment here and I’ll do my best to please - the new look was prompted by a comment a lo, it was done.

So, thanks once more and here’s hopefully to another year of gadget grooviness and tech tremendousness

Much gadgety love

Jay

Cast your minds back to September 12th where I wrote about the new Panasonic Lumix G1.

Well, I’ve spent a week with the clever four-thirds camera and have been pleasantly surprised.

I’m not a photographer; never claimed to be, and probably never will be classed as such - but I do enjoy taking snaps.

So, for me, a nice compact such as the Panasonic TZ-5 is a very great cam and does the job pretty damn well.

On opening the box of the G1 there were 2 lenses and a body - now this made me very scared indeed!

Chris, my bro, writes a blog about DSLRs and the dark art that is real photography so I generally leave the clever stuff to him.

But after popping over to Primrose Hill with about £700 worth of kit and an uncertainty of how to use any of it I was releived to find that the camera is really easy to use and that the optional zoom was fantastic!

The body was light and the whole kit (body and 2 lenses) hardly took up any space in my man-bag.

I could see that people with smaller hands, people travelling but want a “proper” camera and people like me that would like to try DSLR’s but put off by their complexity, size, weight and cost will love this.

The construction of the thing is top-notch.  It has a metal chassis and feels really top-end, as do the lenses.

A little mentioned point is the fact that the large screen flips out and can be twisted so that over-head shots at gigs/”Hail Mary” paparazzi shots can be taken or indeed help avoid the need to lay on the floor to take ground-level photos.

It of course has a full manual mode for those that know what they’re doing but also a lot of toys such as stability control, etc as well as the full iA auto.

Panasonic plan on releasing some more lenses as well as an adapter which will open up the choice no end.

For the more fashion conscious it will also come in 3 colours - Red, Blue and naturally black.

A bit of news - there will in the future be a HD model that will take HD video: Another World’s First. This has generally not been possible with “system cameras” as there is an auto-focus lens problem but the G1 HD (perhaps it’ll have a different name by then) will have a special lens.  You heard that here first

The Panasonic Lumix G1 will be released in the UK on November 1st

What you’re seeing is Sanyo’s newest digital phone frame, the ALBO.

it looks remarkably like a retro-futuristic telebox and wouldn’t look out of place with a JVC Videosphere - perhaps partner it with the RR226?

Personally I rate this as one of the coolest digital picture frames that I have ever seen - and there’s no shortage of frames is there?

As you can see from the photo, it is possible to turn the screen on a swivel for landscape/portrait formats.

It can also display RSS feeds via Wi-Fi and it can receive photos from a phone through an infrared port.

The ALBO comes with 256 megabytes of memory and is pencilled in for release on November 14, for a price of about $422 and probably only in Japan.

DVice

Another ‘Worlds First‘; this time The Exilim Keitai W63CA has bragging rights to rockin an 8.1 megapixel camera - in a phone!

The latest Japanese super-phone squeezes 480 x 800 pixels into a 3.1-inch OLED display.

It also finds room to shoe-horn in features such as a wide-angle lens, 9-point auto focus, face detection, anti-shake, and a YouTube video mode that records VGA video at 30fps to microSD.

All this in a flip-fone measuring a mere 110 x 50 x 17.4 ~ 22-mm!!!

It launches in early November but no news on whether it is going to be available anywhere other than Japan as yet.

There are many of us that don’t like/are in fear of the ‘Big Brother’ state that Britain is becoming - especially if you live in this glorious capital called London.

IR.ASC by URA / FILOART is an infrared lighting device to protect you from the infrared surveillance cameras.

The device emits infrared light thus messing with infrared images from surveillance cameras thus giving the wearer/user a ball of light as a head!

The IR ASC falls within the non-visible spectrum (at frequencies between 780nm and 1mm) so the watchers behind the camera wont be able to make out your face.

The IR ASC was demonstrated at an exhibition showcasing spy technologies in Berlin, Germany.

This may sound cool now, but what if burglars or other ne’er-do-wells get their gloved mits on this technology.

BoingBoing via NewLaunches

The average British household will work its way through more than 250 electrical devices over a period of 60 years, according to a new survey.

The poll of 3,000 households by Reevoo.com shows that electrical items rarely last longer than six years - and the kettle is the item Brits use and replace the most.

Over sixty years, each household will get through 20 kettles and spend approximately £1,000, which works out as a new kettle every three years.

The most expensive item is a home PC, replaced around 4 years at a cost of around £500 while the average oven costs more at £545, but lasts around 6 years.

In total, Reevoo.com reckons Brits will fork out £48,940 on electrical devices over their lifetime.

I, and no doubt your goodselves, have probably read about the Flip Mino a while ago but it wasn’t official in the UK, until today!

The Flip Mino is the younger sibling to the Flip Ultra and gives you 2GB of on-board flash memory allowing you to capture up to 60 minutes of video with sound and has a 1.5-inch colour LCD screen around the back. It weighs only 90g so is easily pocketable.

The Flip Mino rocks a rechargeable lithium-ion battery that powers up automatically while plugged into a computer and provides more than 4 hours of recording time on a single charge.

My fave feature has to be that built-in software.

It kicks into action as soon as you flip out that hidden USB plug and shove it into a computer, letting you offload clips, edit footage and upload them to YouTube or MySpace in just a couple of clicks.

It’s costing £120 at the moment but there’s some stiff competition on the way from Kodak so there may be a price drop soon! 

The ultra is priced at £99 - Run over to the wonderful Firebox right now my good people!

Flip Video

LG continue to negate the need to take out a compact camera with their KC780.

We all know that phones are getting bigger cameras but this one not only packs an 8MP sensor, it throws in a Schneider-Kreuznach lens, an ISO of 1600, face and smile detection, a spot-removing beauty mode, image stabilisation and ‘DVD-like’ video recording.

Why would you need to take your tiny camera to the pub?

If that wasn’t enough you can hook this up to your PC to use as a webcam.

You can also use it as a real mobile phone!

It’s got what you’d expect and it all can be viewed on the 2.4-inch screen.

You can find out more details and stuff from November, when the KC780 gets ever realer in Europe.

You gotta love a ‘world’s first’!

And, my dear readers - dare I say, friends, is perxactly what I have here for you.

This unassuming camcorder is none other than the world’s first Geo-Tagging camcorder!

The result of a collaboration between Geotate and DXG - Geotagging specialist and vid-cam maker respectively.

So as your capturing all those travelling moments you wont get confused when watching the pics back at home because all of those flicks will automatically contain that location metadata.

The camera itself is a Geotate software pimped version of DXG’s DVH586.

No price, etc, blah, blah yet

LetsGoDigital

According to Japan’s Nikkei newspaper (kind of Japans’ Wall Street Journal) they report that Nintendo will launch a new version of the DS later this year.

Now I’ve already talked about this but this is where the Nikkei article gets interesting:  They say that this new DS is coming loaded with a built-in camera, music playback and a more powerful wireless to boot!

The camera will be used for new types of games - given what they’ve created with the Wii there’s no telling what this could lead to - though I’m sure it would involve taking pictures of yourself at some point…….

Of course, it’ll reportedly launch in Japan before it hits overseas, where it’ll sell for under 20,000 yen (Kotaku notes the current DS is 16,800 yen).

If true, it looks to be another iteration of the current DS, not the dual widescreen jobby I mentioned before - expect it in April or May 2009.

Nikkei via Kotaku

I had this land in my inbox today.

It looks to be a new camera phone from Sammy called the Pixon.

It’s a touch screen jobby with an accelerometer and an 8mp snapper.

MP3’s should sound pretty good as it comes loaded with the SRS system.

You want more insider knowledge?

Read on………….

The press specs are thusly presented:

• 8MP Camera with Auto Focus.
• 3.2-inch Full-Touch Screen.
• Only 13.8mm thin.
• 16 x Zoom, Dual Power LED Flash.
• Face Detection.
• Smile Shot.
• ASR (Advanced Shake Reduction).
• WDR (Wide Dynamic Range).
• Photo Browser (Accelerometer Sensor).
• High Speed Video Capture and Playback.
• HSDPA Quad-Band 7.2Mbps connectivity.
• Online Widget for easy access to frequently used functions.
• SRS (surround sound system) Virtual 5.1CH.

As well as all of that there appears to be what looks like a gaming icon on the screen………

It’s said to be arriving in November with a £400 price tag - prolly best to get it on a contract huh?

The press chappy asks me to point you here : www.thephotographicadventuresofnickturpin.com to get involved.

Panasonic kept things bang up-to-date with their “Four Thirds” digi-cam but check out the coolness of Olympus’ offering!

Taking its visual cues from the classic Rangefinder cameras, this yet to be named Olympus is just a concept for now with no pricing, specs, or release date announced. BOOOOOOOoooo!!

Still, it shows just how far Olympus and Panasonic can push the Micro Four Thirds standard while maintaining Four Thirds lens compatibility and a DSLR-sized 18 x 13.5-mm sensor.

DC Review

While Minox isn’t best known for exciting camera’s they have released a couple of noteworthy newies.

The DCC Leica M3 Gold Edition is a revamp of the silver version which I like but still; seen it before,

But then you get this classic 30s “I’ll put it on a microdot and dead drop it” style DSC (Digital Spy Camera).

Measuring 86 x 29 x 20mm and has the power of 5-megapixels.

Man from Milk Tray outfit not included!

Studio Lighting