TechTalk

PSA: Canon and other digicam users, camera recalls...

(thanks to a good friend who sent this information)

In the past week, four major camera makers have quietly published service advisories admitting their digital cameras are affected. In each case, the flaw appears to involve CCD sensors using epoxy packaging that eventually lets in moisture.

Canon URL

Fuji URL

Minolta URL

SONY URL

Kodak ships world's first computer-free wireless camera

There's now a computer-less way to dispatch family photos to grandma _ the world's first fully functional wireless camera.

After a summer-long hiccup, Eastman Kodak Co. this week began shipping a digital camera that, within range of hotels, coffee shops, airport lounges, offices, homes and other wireless hot spots, can send high-quality pictures directly onto the Internet and into e-mail boxes.

Unveiled in January, the Kodak EasyShare-One was supposed to hit the market in June but ran into engineering, marketing and other logistical glitches.

In the meantime, Japan's Nikon Corp. looked like it might steal Kodak's thunder by shipping its own Wi-Fi camera to stores last month. But while the Nikon P1 can wirelessly transfer pictures to a computer, the Kodak model remains unique in its potential to bypass the hassle of downloading.

"It's the next step forward in cameras. No more worrying about plugging in the cable," said photography analyst Ed Lee of InfoTrends, a research firm in Weymouth, Mass.

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Radio has its eye on podcasters

Podcasters have already inspired conventional radio stations to evolve.

But their podcasts will increasingly be on the radar of traditional radio broadcasters as fertile grounds to feed the desire for new talent, and ideas.

Both the BBC and Virgin will watch what podcasters do, learning from them, just as podcasters learned from radio.

"It won't be too long before this [podcasting] becomes the normal route to discover new talent," says Chris Kimber, head of BBC Radio Interactive.

He was just one of more than 100 podcasters at Europe's inaugural podcasting conference, in London - PodcastConUK.

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Nano owners complain about damage

Problems with the recently launched iPod Nano are emerging as owners complain of broken or scratched screens.

The smaller version of the popular iPod was unveiled at the beginning of September to much fanfare and delight at its sleek design.

Its delicacy was heralded as a design break-through.

But some fans are beginning to question whether the machine is too fragile for everyday use.

Owners are complaining about cracked, scratched or inexplicably failing screens, sometimes within hours of buying the machine.

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Hi-tech beermats for 21st Century

An intelligent beermat that alerts the bartender that your glass is empty could feature in pubs of the future.

Like an ordinary mat, it absorbs drips; but the gadget also has hidden sensors.

The device will detect the weight of the drink above it, working out how much is left before sending a signal to the bar for a refill.

The coaster can also tell which way up it is, and whether it's moving around. The creators think the mat could be used for voting in pub games.

This might be handy in a karaoke bar, for example, where the audience has to decide whether the performer should continue or stop.

"If they just raise their glass, that's a positive vote; if they raise their glass and flip over the beer mat, that's a negative vote," explained Professor Andreas Butz, at the University of Munich, Germany.

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Nokia's ace new music phone

We were going to do a long post about Nokia’s new music phone the 3250, but ShinyShiny got there first. Suffice to say that it looks great, sports a really cool twisty design that makes it easy to use both the music player and the camera, features a cool two mega pixel camera and has one Gigabyte of memory – which mobile spotters will tell you is twice as much as the Motorola/Apple ROKR and the Sony Ericsson W800i Walkman phone. It also has a neat 262k colour screen, Bluetooth and an FM radio. Music playback is ten hours per charge and users drag and drop tracks on to the device (hurrah).

Doh! That’s almost a long post. Over to your Sony Ericsson and Motorola/ Apple…

Samsung's hand warming mobile

Samsung was also parading a few protos yesterday including this little gem which it is billing as ‘literally the hottest phone on the market.’ Developed in Russia, in the Ural State Academy to be precise, the handset features a built-in hand warmer to ensure that even though the Siberian wind might be blowing your hands are still nice and toasty and ready to text. Anyhow I am sure my long deceased grandmother would approve. In her day it was standard practice stave off the cold by carrying round hot potatoes in pockets. Apologies for rubbish pic, but that glass casing was nailed down.

Author's Guild sues Google over copyright

NEW YORK - An organization of more than 8,000 authors accused Google Inc. Tuesday of "massive copyright infringement," saying the powerful Internet search engine cannot put its books in the public domain for commercial use without permission.

"The authors' works are contained in certain public and university libraries and have not been licensed for commercial use," The Author's Guild Inc. said in the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.

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NEC Introduces 11.9mm! Ultra-Thin Mobile Phone

NEC introduced a fold-type mobile phone that is only 11.9mm thin (folded!). The Motorola RAZR measures 23mm (folded).

The new NEC phone measures 47.9mm (width) X 101.5mm (height) X 11.9mm and weighs 96g. It has 1.9 inch (176~220 dot) 65,000 color display in addition to a digital camera with 1.3MP.
The new ultra-thin NEC mobile phone (somehow NEC does not mention the model name) is currently available in Hong Kong. The next market for the new World's Smallest NEC mobile phone are Italy, Russia, Australia and China, among others. No word on United States yet. Read more

Special Edition Titanium IBM Thinkpad Z Series

Lenovo the new owner of the IBM Notebook business is releasing a special edition of it's new Z series notebooks with a Titanium cover.

This is a big break with tradition as IBM Thinkpads have been completely black for years.
The new Lenovo Thinkpad Z-Series features the thinnest and lightest 14-inch Widescreen Notebook in the industry. The Z60m and Z60t will feature WWAN (EV-DO) integrated from Verizon. Sony features the EV-DO service from Cingular in their VAIO Notebooks.
The 14 inch ThinkPad Z60t will be available in October through Lenovo.com and start at $1,099. Read more

Belkin Prepares To Release The TuneFM

Our friends at iPodStudio.com are reporting that iPod accessory company, BELKIN, is about to release a new device known as the TuneFM.

TuneFM is a FM Transmitter that allows you to listen to music on your iPod via any FM stereo receiver.

Belkin explains: “Proximity switches give you total control at the touch of your fingertips, and the LED display indicates FM frequency and memory preset, eliminating the need to use the iPod interface for frequency selection; because the TuneFM is powered by the iPod no batteries are required.”

No price info is available at this point.

Nokia 6630 Music Edition

Crikey, it appears everyone want to launch a music phone today. For after Tosh's new 803 for Vodafone we now have Nokia which has unveiled a new music-friendly version of its 3G phone the 6630. Nokia says its 6630 Music Edition has been ‘designed with enhanced music functionality to make it convenient for you to take your music collection with you while on the move.’ Essentially this means it now comes with a 256MB RS MMC card, a USB MMC/SD reader and the Nokia Audio Adapter and its 3.5 mm stereo jack. It is also available in a few different colours including Rustic Red or Aluminum Grey. The rest of the phone, with its 1.3 megapixel camera, mobile broadband access via 3G, mobile email and streaming video is the same.

To further confuse matters Nokia is also foreign the Nokia Music Pack, which has the Nokia Audio Adapter, the Nokia 256 MB MMC Card, the Nokia USB MMC/SD reader and Nokia Stereo Audio Cable as a kit.

Of course the real Nokia music phone is this one.

Audica's iPod hi-fi

After initially being a tad snobbish about the iPod's compressed sound it appears now that the whole hi-fi industry has woken up smelt the cash and hopped aboard the MP3 bandwagon. The good news is though that the quality of mini systems designed for the ubiquitous Apple player and its MP3 chums appears to be getting better.

I rather like the look of this – the Audica MPS1. Unlike other speaker systems it has generous power at 25 watts (as opposed to 2.5 Watts) per channel. It also looks rather tasty and in particular comes with a pair of stylish polished extruded Aluminum loudspeakers. The system has three inputs selectable on the amplifier module or by remote control and USB and FireWire connectors enable portable music players to be charged. Cleverly one of those inputs is extra sensitive to allow for low-level outputs such as PC systems so that sound level differences when changing inputs are minimised. It goes on sale in late November for around £250. More info here

Hackers target net call systems

Malicious hackers are turning their attention to the technology behind net phone calls, says a report.

The biannual Symantec Threat Report identified Voice over IP (Voip) systems as a technology starting to interest hi-tech criminals.

The report predicted that within 18 months, Voip will start to be used as a "significant" attack vector.

As well as prompting new attacks, Voip could also resurrect some old hacking techniques, warned the report.

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