Category: Web Services

DPReview lets loose a Sony press release about the DSC-U50:

Sony has today announced the ultra-compact and stylish Cybershot DSC-U50. This $250 compact digital camera has a rotating lens element with a fixed focal length lens and a two megapixel CCD. The DSC-U50 is the first Sony Cybershot to record images to the smaller MemoryStick Duo format, so far only used on PDA’s and mobile phones. The press release also makes note of a new ‘Memory Stick Duo Pro’, something we’ve not heard of before.

I’m not sure how tiny it is, but I’m an extremely happy user of the DSC-U20, and it’ll have to be microscopic for me to think about picking it up.  It does take the Memory Stick Duo format, which means that it has the potential to by tiny!

Via Jeremy, the Blackout Moblog is absolutely classic.

Thanks to a heads up by the chaps in #mobitopia, The Washington Post:

NEW YORK – A massive power outage swept across swaths of the eastern United States and Canada on Thursday, leaving sections of New York City, Detroit, Cleveland and Toronto without electricity, witnesses said.

Film at 11, but this definately doesn’t strike me as a good thing, regardless of why it is happening.

Similar coverage can be had at CNN.

BBC News is providing better coverage than stateside news outlets, as usual.

It’s true.  Paul Botin’s piece in Wired about free Wi-Fi access has been making the rounds lately, but a title from the Seattle Post Intelligencer’s weblog says it like it is:

Wi-Fi wants to be free.

DPReview:

Just posted! Our full in-depth review of Nikon’s entry-level zoom Coolpix 3100. This three megapixel three times optical zoom digital camera was announced at PMA earlier this year and is aimed at beginners or those on a budget, it’s pocket sized proportions and cute rounded styling make it a great go anywhere camera which won’t break the bank. Read the full review to see how the Coolpix 3100 performed in our tests.

I would personally advise against purchasing a Nikon Coolpix 3100: It runs on one really expensive, non-rechargable, CR-V3 battery.  You of course have the option of purchasing seperately rechargable NiMH AA batteries, but at the $299 price range, a digital camera should include a rechargable Lithium Ion battery.

Using non-rechargable CR-V3’s is a recent trend that doesn’t make me very happy.  It screws the consumer while allowing the manufacturer to lower the all-important price point another few bucks.  A single CR-V3 battery can cost over $15 here in Washington, DC.  For $15 you can get anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour or so of usage.

It’s not just Nikon.  Some recent models that I’ve seen from Samsung, Olympus (they make one that requires TWO CR-V3’s!), Kodak, Pentax, and others use this non-rechargable battery.

Make it stop.

Wow, windowsupdate.microsoft.com is really slow tonight for some reason…

Symantec has released a quick and easy fix for the nasty little worm running amok.

Via Dave Winer, the Google Calculator rocks.  Of course it handles all the weird an imaginary numbers quite well:

• 3*(1+2i)
• 5e^2
• 2pi

…And much fun was had by all.

Mac Central:

Bakery-cafe chain Panera Bread Co. is one of the newest food chains to announce that they’re deploying Wi-Fi access. Unlike many of the other companies that have announced plans for wireless networking access, however, Panera’s doing it for free.

Wow, that is great news.  The list of wi-fi enabled stores doesn’t include the one closest to me, but honestly, I wouldn’t mind driving a little out of my way to eat food and surf for free.

Now that is a logo.  Did I mention that I love the color orange?  The Register has details, and of course, all we need now are the actually Athlon64’s.

Today was MGM Studios and will be after hours night at the Magic Kingdom. Right now I’m off to the top of The Contemporary Resort for dinner. Later.

 

It rained a good bit of today in orlando. I caught up on some feeds today, but was mostly offline. Check out my moblog for a few pictures. Back to some vacation…

Infoworld:

The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) plans to use more than 1,450 Dell Inc. servers in a powerful Linux supercomputer that will be used for everything from predicting the demise of the universe to discovering new drugs to keep you alive until that happens.

With all of the recent supercomputer news, it looks like the Top 500 list might have to be shuffled around a bit.

Boing Boing:

Last year, Powell directed his staff to take the steps needed to make the FCC one of the first federal agencies to provide public WiFi access. Visitors bringing their own hardware and software can use the service on the Twelfth Street, Courtyard, and Eighth Floor levels of the headquarters located at 445 12th Street, SW in Washington, D.C. The system uses the 802.11a and 802.11b protocols, commonly referred to as WiFi.

Hmm, I’ll have to head downtown and blog from the FCC.  It will probably have to wait until I get back from Florida.

Imaging Resource has some information and a logo for the new Minolta/Konica company:

The color of the oval has been changed to a different shade of blue which has been dubbed “Innovation Blue”, with the five horizontal lines that “represent light and express the wide range of technical capabilities in the field of imaging” retained as-is. Minolta’s logo is sometimes shown with four lines currently, but only in smaller versions where we presume the fifth line makes it look too busy – the larger versions currently use five lines. Meanwhile, a new typeface with a clean, modern look underneath lists the name of the new company – Konica Minolta.

I honestly think that Konica got the shaft on the logo, as they had the cooler non-AT&T looking logo.  It had color.  The font doesn’t really thrill me either, but they obviously didn’t check with real people after designing the logo.

I just hope that a little bit of Konica shows through the merger, they were by far the more helpful and more understanding company to dealers.  Their digital cameras have also been top notch and inexpensive.

Konica stopped making point and shoot film cameras this year.  I really hope that this merger isn’t the end for Konica completely.

News.com notes that AT&T is now offering the Nokia 6800, the funky flipphone in the US.

Chris Heilman pointed out the freeware release of Glider yesterday.  I didn’t have any Macs booted up, so I grabbed the windows version of Glider 4.0.

It seems to run fine under XP once you get past the installer freaking out because my Windows version number is higher than 3.10.

Scoble‘s little flash mob gets some (virtual) ink in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

According to The Korean Herald (who got their info from IDG), the top handset makers are:

1. Nokia (40.9 million units, 34.6% global market share)
2. Motorola (13.4% global market share)
3. Samsung (12 million units, 10.1% global market share)
4. Siemens (6.8% global market share)
5. Sony Ericsson (5.7% global market share)

Today is shaping up as a mostly offline day.  I’m getting ready for a few days in Orlando later this week.