Samsung is joining the ranks of the latest craze in the cell phone markets - touchscreen phones without keypads! While we’ve known about the SGH-P520 Phone for some time now via FCC approvals and other leaks, it’s now been officially confirmed as more than just a pipe dream or figment of our imaginations.
The new 7.2 MP FinePix Z10fd Style-Cam from Fujifilm. FUJIFILM U.S.A Inc. unveiled this brand new camera that features cutting edge technology that flirts with today’s youth. It combines style and design with technology that makes the FinePix Z10fd attractive to the next generation users.
This 7.2 megapixel camera has an ultra-portable design allowing it to be carried anywhere and everywhere to capture those lasting moments of life. Although these are basically targeted to today’s youth, the manufacturers didn’t leave this camera lacking. It sports a combination of high-tech features that makes it one of the best cameras in the market. It supports a Fujinon 3X optical Zoom lens, 2.5″ LCD screen and packs 54MB of internal memory to give you some extra room when your memory card has had its fill. It is equipped with a high-resolution LCD with a very cool slideshow mode so you can view and share photos spontaneously with friends.
The battlecry for this camera is “Face It, Beam It, Blog It”, perfect for this generations “it” crowd.
“Face It” boasts of the FinePix’s innovative Face Detection Technology that allows it to identify up to ten human faces in one picture. It is perfect for capturing party and group pictures with family and friends.
“Beam It” is the IrSimple technology featured in the camera for fast and easy transfer of files and images. With this technology, you can literally take a picture, and automatically beam it to any device supporting the IrSimple technology. This is a great way to share photos to friends.
Lastly, we have “Blog It”. Most of our youth today have blogs. An essential element of this online activity is pictures. The manufacturers were aware of this, so they created the camera to support this kind of lifestyle. The FinePix Z10fd comes equipped with Fujifilm’s handy Blog Mode that lets you post pictures to blogs, websites and emails easily. It copies and automatically resizes the images you captured and want posted right directly from your camera. It eliminates the hassle of having to download the picture to your PC and uploading it again to a blog or website.
Ultimately, this camera is built for todays younger generation. This is the era where everyone wants to be connected with friends at all times and this digital camera allows you to do just that. It combines the latest technological development with the current style and trend to attract today’s youth.
Apple Inc. this week began shipping its petite wireless Bluetooth headset for iPhone and we’ve got about four dozen high-quality photos to prove it.
The $129 add-on turned up at several Apple retail stores earlier this week, many of which have since sold out of their initial inventory. Several stores contacted by AppleInsider said they expect additional shipments to arrive in the coming days. However, we luckily managed to snag a couple on our way back from SoHo.
Each Apple Bluetooth headset comes packaged quite elegantly in the same black retail packaging constructed for the iPhone itself. Outside of the imagery on the front and rear of the box, it’s otherwise identical to the iPhone packaging.
Inside each box is the Apple Bluetooth Headset, Apple iPhone Duo Dock (for charging the iPhone and headset simultaneously), a User Guide, a warranty pamphlet, two earpads, and a USB travel cable that includes its own Bluetooth headset mini charger (recessed into the rear of the dock connector plug). Therefore, the USB travel cable can also charge both the iPhone and Apple Bluetooth Headset simultaneously.
On the far end of the Apple Bluetooth Headset is a minute MagSafe connector that magnetically secures the accessory to the charging port in either the Duo Dock or the USB travel cable — there are no pins to bend or break. The headset itself also includes a single LED that glows green when the unit is fully charged or red when not.
When both the iPhone and Bluetooth headset are connected to the Duo Dock at the same time, the iPhone will display the battery level of both the iPhone and the headset on its display screen (last photo, below).
We’ll have some initial impressions of the Apple Bluetooth headset in the coming days, followed by a thorough review sometime thereafter.
Some subset of photographers would like a compact camera with lots of higher-end features and manual controls. But a vastly larger quantity want their cameras to take photos with the correct focus, exposure, white balance and other factors without having to do more than press the shutter button.
Which is why Panasonic’s three newest cameras, the Lumix FX-33, FX-55 and FZ18 are notable. For one thing, Panasonic is catching up with competitors such as Fujifilm and Canon by introducing face detection, which lets the camera guess more intelligently about what the photographer is trying to shoot and adjust settings accordingly. But more novel is what Panasonic calls Intelligent Scene Selector.
Intelligent Scene Selector, if switched on, replaces a common set of broad parameters that otherwise must be manually activated. It lets the camera take its best guess about whether the scene is one of five modes: portrait, landscape scenery, macro close-up, night scenery and night portrait, said Alex Fried, Panasonic’s national marketing manager for imaging in North America. And when the camera is in portrait modes, it uses the face-detection technology for further refinement.
“All that takes place without touching a button,” Fried said. “Consumers don’t utilize scene modes to their fullest capability. A lot don’t go that deep into the manual or into the menus.”
All three of the new cameras feature the face detection and automatic scene selection as well as two earlier technologies, Panasonic’s Mega OIS, which shifts the image sensor to counteract camera shake, and Intelligent ISO, which increases the camera’s sensitivity to try to deal with moving subjects. Boosting ISO lets the camera use a shorter exposure to freeze action better, but it produces more off-color speckles called image noise.
Collectively, Panasonic calls the four features Intelligent Auto Mode. I suppose camera makers can be excused for attaching official names to their features, and now metafeatures, in the effort to distinguish their models from the herd. But I fear it causes brand exhaustion among camera buyers.
The three new cameras are 8-megapixel models due in September and sporting zoom ranges that begin at a nice 28mm wide angle. The FX33 and FX55 are smaller, with 3.6x zoom lenses and LCDs measuring 2.5 inches and 3 inches, respectively. The FZ18 has a huge 18x zoom range, a notch longer than the predecessor FZ8, which began at 35mm and spanned a 12x zoom range. And for control freaks, it offers manual control and raw image support, Fried said. Prices, in ascending order, are about $300, $350 and $400.
Summer is in full swing and the season is heating up with new camera announcements. Fuji steps to the plate with five new models that follow the trend toward more megapixels and slowly growing zoom ranges, while adding to the company’s set of signature features. As with the company’s PMA introductions the new cameras will all be able to store images to both xD Picture Cards and SD or SDHC cards.
With the Finepix F50fd, Fuji is introducing a new version of the company’s face detection technology, which Fuji calls Face Detection 2.0. While the old version could deal with faces that faced different angles in the horizontal plane–such as someone turning her head from side to side– Fuji says the new version can also accommodate faces that vary in the vertical plane, such as a person laying down. The system can detect up to 10 faces at a time and will set autofocus based on the primary face, while adjusting auto exposure so that all the selected faces are properly exposed, if possible. Fuji says that Face Detection 2.0 should be able to detect faces even in profile, which should be interesting, since most face detection systems we’ve seen so far need to detect two eyes to identify a face.
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