Archive for April 28th, 2005
Microsoft has been ramping up the hype surrounding the Xbox360 in the last few days and today was no exception with the announcement that Samsung has come on board to help them promote what they call the “high-definition gamin era”.
The companies plan to place over 25,000 Samsung high-definition televisions in Microsoft Xbox retail kiosk locations across the globe.
“Gaming has become a primary force for innovation in the entertainment and
technology industries. Samsung has selected Microsoft Xbox as the best next-generation game console and a key driver in the global HDTV revolution,” said Peter Weedfald, Senior Vice President Consumer Electronics & North America Corporate Marketing, Samsung Electronics America, Inc. “Samsung is proud to expand the Microsoft relationship and stand with them at the forefront of the HD gaming century.”
“Samsung is a natural partner to showcase the richness of the next-generation Xbox,” said Peter Moore, Corporate Vice President of Worldwide Marketing and Publishing for Xbox at Microsoft. “Samsung HDTVs will provide Xbox enthusiasts with the truest high-definition gaming experience available.”
The new 23″ Samsung LCD TV (LNR238W) to be paired at retail with the new Xbox console offers a super-fast 12 millisecond pixel switching speed, which will enable intense action while overcoming any motion artifacts. In addition, the Fixed Pixel Device eliminates scan lines, further ensuring gameplay is smooth and flicker-free. Picture quality combines with advanced audio technology to create an incredible gaming experience. Samsung’s HDTV built-in speakers emulate the most realistic surround sound using SRS Tru-surround XT so the action feels even closer. Game enthusiasts will no doubt appreciate the sharper details, deeper contrast and rich sound that are standard on a Samsung HDTV.
April 28th, 2005
You may think that having those tell-tale white earphones plugged into your head while you ride the subway / tube / metro makes you look cool. Well, we’re not arguing, but it also acts as a big sign above your head saying “$400 iPod over here - please steal me!”.
Figures just released by the New York Subway show that although crime as a whole is down, theft is up with no less than 50 iPods reported stolen this year already. That may not seem like many, but it’s 50 more than were stolen in the whole of 2004.
The transit authority are so concerned about how their figures are skewed because of a wave of iPod theft that they are urging you to replace the white earphones with cheaper, less-distinctive models.
So, the thieves won’t know you have an iPod, but then neither will anyone else, and as 90% of the point of owning an iPod is showing off, you might as well have saved your money and bought an iRiver instead.
April 28th, 2005
HP is bidding to move out of the office and into your living room as it announces 3 new digital entertainment centers, devices that you to personalize and manage their TV viewing, movies, music, photos and videos, all from one remote control, and 10 new Pavillion TVs.
The new HP z555 and z557 High-definition Digital Entertainment Center series include three tuners: One ATSC OTA high-definition TV tuner for the ability to pause, play and record HD over-the-air programming and two NTSC tuners for recording two standard definition shows simultaneously. The z555 model comes with a 250 GB 7,200 rpm Serial ATA hard drive, and the z557 model comes with two 300 GB hard drives, one being a personal media drive to deliver over half a terabyte of combined storage.
Both units offer high-performance TV quality with the Nvidia GeForce 6600 PCI-Express graphics card. This product enables digital entertainment enthusiasts to combine entertainment features with the ability to surf the web or instant message friends, all in the convenience of their living rooms by fusing the best of PC and audio-video elements. All HP Digital Entertainment Center models are available for purchase now in North America, Sweden and France.
HP also unveiled a line of 10 newly branded HP Pavilion TVs, including four high-definition microdisplay rear-projection televisions, three high-definition plasmas and three high-definition LCDs.
Introduced at the Home Entertainment Expo, all of the TVs include new HP Visual Fidelity technologies, which provide enhanced image quality and brilliant color by, depending on the model, gauging a room’s ambient lighting and doubling pixel resolution among other innovations.
HP’s microdisplay TVs also feature a lighted front-connection panel designed with a special slot under the TV so audio/visual cables can easily be connected from the front and then hidden from view. The microdisplay TVs additionally enable viewers to quickly and easily select an input source, such as a DVD player, by touching a button on the remote control to view on screen how all input sources are being used.
“HP’s logo says ‘Invent’ and that’s exactly what we’ve done with our new line of televisions, all designed with ease of use in mind,” said Stephen J. Nigro, senior vice president, Imaging and Printing Technology Platforms, HP. “We’ve been able to leverage our expertise in imaging and data processing to figure out innovative ways to enhance color, reduce video noise and double the resolution, setting our TVs apart from the competition.”
April 28th, 2005
In an announcement straight out of the pages of a Star Trek techno-babble script, Seth Putterman, a physicist at the UCLA and his colleagues Brian Naranjo and Jim Gimzewski have announced that they have achieved table-top fusion using ‘crystals’.
The ‘pocket fusion’ device raises the possibility of every home having its own generator.
Mr Naranjo joked that the advance “seems like magic” and that he now understands why the starship Enterprise was powered by “dilithium crystals”.
In another Sci-Fi allusion Prof Putterman revealed that he wanted to call the technique “crystallic fusion” but discovered that Buzz Lightyear uses the phrase when he asks: “Are you guys still using fossil fuel - haven’t you discovered crystallic fusion power yet?”.
It is likely that this discovery has been more rigourously tested than the last time scientists made a fusion breakthrough claim. In 1989, Dr. B. Stanley Pons of the University of Utah and Martin Fleischmann of Southampton University in the UK amazed the world when they announced that they had achieved what they called cold fusion at room temperature. Several months later no one had managed to reproduce the findings and they were discredited. Fusion experts noted that the new UCLA experiment was credible because, unlike the 1989 work, it did not violate basic principles of physics.
The experiment appears in Thursday’s issue of the journal Nature.
April 28th, 2005
We didn’t want to spoil you with all your Nokia news in one day, so we held one new product over to today - the N90 camera phone.
Including Carl Zeiss optics (a nice touch, but probably not the best quality that Carl Zeiss outputs) and a full set of digital camera features, the Nokia N90 is targeted at high-technology enthusiasts. The Nokia N90 has a 2 megapixel camera with autofocus and 20x digital zoom, integrated flash, macro mode for sharp close-ups, and video capture with on-phone editing capabilities.
“We foresee that already this year, the camera phone market will grow to be over four times the size of the digital camera market,” said Juha Putkiranta, Senior Vice President, Multimedia Imaging, Nokia. “And not only is the market growing at an enormous pace but, as fantastically highlighted by the Nokia N90, camera phone functionality is also developing rapidly to meet the needs of the more demanding picture taker. With its pioneering multi-hinge twist-and-shoot design, we have brought ease-of-use and high quality photography into mobile telephony.”
Facilitated by its two screens, the Nokia N90 features two modes for instant photo and video capture. Simply twist the unique rotating camera barrel, and automatically the 2 megapixel camera is ready to shoot high quality photos, in a snap. A dedicated capture key and the cover display (128 x 128 pixels) of up to 65,536 colors as a viewfinder make the snapshot experience ever more effortless. Unfold and twist the main display (352 x 416 pixels), and the Nokia N90 is ready to shoot high quality video in MP4 format using the high-resolution (352 x 416 pixels) 262,144 color landscape display as a viewfinder. Dedicated record and zoom keys, including up to 8x digital zoom for video capture, provide for very convenient one-hand operation.
The Nokia N90 is packed with advanced camera features that ensure high quality photos and videos every time. With autofocus, pressing the shutter key halfway automatically focuses in on the target, after which pressing the key all the way captures the image with amazing clarity. Furthermore, the macro mode feature provides for striking accuracy when taking close-ups.
Printing great quality images is now possible directly from the Gallery with just a few pushes of a button. With the Nokia XpressPrint printing solution, users can select from a range of mobile printing options, including PictBridge, where the handset is connected directly to a compatible photo printer with a USB cable; wireless printing over Bluetooth wireless technology; or by extracting the Reduced Size Dual Voltage MultiMediaCard (RS-MMC) from the side of the phone and inserting it into a compatible printer.
Photos and video clips taken with the Nokia N90 can conveniently be stored on the phone’s internal 31 MB memory or the 64 MB in-box RS-MMC. Users can also easily store captured content at full resolution using the Nokia PC Suite Image Store, which, when connected, automatically saves images and video clips to the PC.
Share
Images and video clips can also be instantly shared via MMS, email or by uploading them to web albums directly from the new improved rotating Gallery, which also allows on-handset editing of captured images and video clips. In addition, video clips can easily be trimmed further on the PC with the in-box Adobe Mobile Video Editor software.
Part of the Nokia Nseries, a new multimedia device range that combines rich functionality into one device, the Nokia N90 capitalizes on the convergence of imaging, smartphone features and 3G. 3G-enabled features, such as two-way video calling*, video sharing and push email, are further complemented by an organizer, video streaming, Internet browser and add-on software.
Based on the leading Series 60 Platform, the Nokia N90 is a tri-band phone for GSM 900/1800/1900, EDGE and WCDMA networks, and is expected to be available in the second quarter of 2005.
The Nokia N90 multimedia takes mobile photography to a new level. Being the world’s first camera phone equipped with Carl Zeiss optics, the Nokia N90 offers superior quality photography with a possibility to instantly print and share the shots over distances. Boasting a 2 megapixel camera and VHS resolution video capture among its advanced imaging features, the Nokia N90 multimedia helps people to capture memories at their convenience. Based on a pioneering multi-hinge twist-and-shoot design, the Nokia N90 is expected to become available during the second quarter of 2005.
April 28th, 2005