There seems to be a plethora of new cameras at the moment, this time it's the ultra-slim Casio EXILIM Card EX-S770.
It has a 7.2 megapixel resolution and a 2.8" inch LCD but it's an unbelievable 17mm thin and only weighs 127g. That's pretty incredibly thin.
Impressive stuff. If this takes good pictures too, it could just be my next new (ultra) compact. Looks pretty sweet as well.
The replacement for the very successful D70/D70s has finally been announced today. The D80 features a new high resolution 10.2 megapixel CCD, improved 11 area auto-focus, a larger and brighter 2.5 inch LCD display, powerful new image processing and metering, configurable auto and high ISO settings and other improvements, many of which are passed down from the pro level cameras.
They've also switched from Compact Flash to SD/SD-HC memory card support with the new camera, leaving Compact Flash for the pros. The D80 is also a bit smaller and lighter than the D70s.
Overall it looks like a great evolution of the D70s and is no doubt set to be as popular. Digital Photograhy review have a typically excellent, detailed preview of the camera (that they've been using for a couple of weeks already, lucky them).
Looks like Canon have some catching up to do, I wonder how long it will be before we see a new version of the 350D?
A day after the event it's time to look at the announcements in the cold light of day. There has been a lot written about it, some of which I think is strange, some of it great.
First of all, let's just recap what this conference is called - Worldwide Developers Conference. Note the word 'developers'.
A few people have said to me and I've read all over the place that they were a bit disappointed blah blah. Why? We pretty much knew what was coming, it was always going to be a preview of Leopard and almost a guaranteed announcement that the Intel transition was over, with the introduction of the new Mac Pro and Xserves - and that's exactly what happened.
It's not a consumer show, that's Paris expo next month. So, yes it would have been lovely to have had a new iPod nano, an iPhone, a media centre Mac etc. etc. but the fact that they weren't announced isn't disappointing, it's realistic. If Apple released these amazing products at every show, they'd run out of them pretty quickly.
We still did get some amazing products though. The Mac Pros are awesome machines, really. Incredibly powerful, the likes of which haven't really been available to the everyday consumer before (OK maybe not everyday consumer, you will need the deficit of a small country to be able to get a highly specced one - I got it up to £11,ooo maxing everything out with dual 30" displays!!).
And Leopard. I was genuinely impressed by Time Machine particularly and also Spaces and the other features mentioned. Steve did say that these were just the things they were showing now, it's not the complete new feature list, it's just a sample. There's more to come people!
So when I read articles like this one over at Stuff magazine, it makes me wonder why they bother. Time Machine and Spaces are impressive and innovative. I mean, what more do they want? The hanging gardens of Babylon? Heards of wildebeest sweeping majestically across the desktop perhaps?
People expect too much. Of course, Apple are partly to blame for this with the hype that's generated with their 'special' events but people also blow it out of proportion.
I'm pleased with what we saw and excited about what we didn't see. At least some people agree with me. There's much more to come from Leopard over the next 6 months and for the consumer gadget freaks, I'm sure that Paris expo in September will usher in the new iPods and whatever else they have up their sleeves. Personally, I can't wait for an 8GB nano.
Far more worryingly, people are talking about the possibility that Steve Jobs is ill or maybe losing his touch. I'd say that's way more reason for investors to get jittery. I'm reserving judgement on this one but watch this space...
Updated: typos.
Steve Jobs previewed the new version of the Apple operating system earlier today, Mac OS X Leopard, the sixth major version of Mac OS X.
There are some revolutionary new features built into Leopard, the most intertesting of which are Time Machine and Spaces.
Time Machine is an automatic backup utility built into the operating system. What's really clever about it is it's ability to auto-save any content on your computer to an external hard-drive or server.
The user can then use an innovative interface to visually 'warp' (see above) through time to view and restore a single file right through to entire photo albums or even the entire system.
Spaces enables you to create multiple, virtual desktops to organise all of your open applications. So, for example, you could create a collection of open web pages and an instance of iChat in one 'space'; have PhotoShop and Illustrator open in another 'space'; iTunes and Mail in a third 'space' and then quickly and easily switch between them.
Think of it as application switching for desktops.
Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO, said "Breakthrough features like Time Machine and Spaces are good examples of how Mac OS X leads the industry in operating system innovation. While Microsoft tries to copy the version of OS X we shipped a few years ago, we're leaping ahead again with Leopard".
Indeed, these features do seem way ahead of what Microsoft will be able to offer when the oft-delayed Vista is finally released.
Other features in Leopard to get an overhaul include iChat, Spotlight, Mail, Dashboard, Boot Camp, Front Row and Photo Booth.
See Apple's new 'Leopard Sneak Peek' site for more detail and some QuickTime movies of some of the new features.
Apple has announed the Mac Pro (pictured left) with two dual-core Intel Xeon "Woodcrest" processors at up to 3GHz. That's a total of four cores for a supremely powerful 64-bit workstation, supposedly twice as fast as it's G5 predecessor.
The system accommodates up to 2TB of storage, 16GB of RAM, two SuperDrives (that can be used simultaneously) and up to four GeForce 7300 GT graphics cards or optionally ATI Radeon X1900 XT and NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500 cards are available.
Wow. You're going to have to be doing some serious stuff with one of these to even touch the sides.
The new Xserves come similarly equipped with two dual-core Xeon processors at up 3GHz, for that happy quad-core feeling. With up to 2.25TB storage, two eight-lane PCI Express slots, dual onboard Gigabit Ethernet, a combo drive and a claimed 5x performance boost over the Xserve G5 that all fits in a 1U rackmount, this is a killer server.
What more can you say, I think the specs speak for themselves, these are some seriously powerful, industry-leading computers. We'll see in due course when people start doing some benchmarks.
Check out the Apple site for the full details:
Mac Pro
Xserve
OK, so the next couple of days, the whole internet is going to be taken up by posts about Apple, you have been warned.
WWDC day has finally arrived and the Steve Jobs keynote speech is due at 10am PDT, 5pm GMT, 6pm BST today.
A few keen Apple watchers have been taking photos of the Moscone exhibition centre where it will all take place. Apple isn't mucking around and is clearly making Vista their main target.
There are various flickr accounts floating around with loads of pics of banners depicting slogans such as "Mac OS X Leopard, Introducing Vista 2.0" and "Mac OS X Leopard, Hasta la Vista, Vista". Nice work.
Check out MacRumorsLive.com at 6pm tonight (UK) for a minute by minute update of the event.
Ahhh, the Nintendo DS. It's going from strength to strength these days outselling the PSP in most regions. It's the fastest selling console ever in Japan, with massive selling games and now, as if to confirm what we already knew, loads of nominations in the Golden Joystick Awards 2006.
Mario Kart DS leads the way with 6 nominations in all, including Handheld Game of the Year, Nuts All-Nighter Award, Nintendo Game of the Year and Online Game of the Year. Other DS titles are well represented as well including Animal Crossing: Wild World, New Super Mario Bros., Metroid Prime: Hunters and Nintendogs amongst others.
The awards were first held in 1982, when Atari, Commodore and Spectrum vied for the gaming top spot. Promising to be bigger than ever, the Golden Joystick Awards 2006 will feature 17 award categories and are the only UK gaming awards to be voted for by those who matter – gamers themselves!
The final results of the Golden Joystick Awards will be unveiled on Friday, 27th October 2006.
So go and vote for your favourite games and consoles at www.goldenjoysticks.co.uk
Via the BBC.
OK, so it's that time of year again. Apple rumours abound with the prospect of the Worldwide Developer's Conference (WWDC) and a Steve Jobs keynote speech on the 7th August only a few days away.
The rumour mill has been pumping them out as you would expect, so below is a summary of the main threads.
Sony today announced the 7-megapixel Cyber-Shot DSC-T10 digital camera. It's got a (pretty much standard these days) 2.5 inch LCD and 3x optical zoom lens. And with the increasingly common optical image stabilisation and high ISO (1000) as well. Comes in a choice of colours too - black, white, silver and pink!
Pentax announced the new Optio S7 last week as well. This also features a 7-megapixel sensor with a "Blur Reduction mode" high sensitivity setting - up to ISO 1600 (only at 4 mp though). Some new Face Recognition AF & AE for "photos of people with perfectly focused faces" has been thrown in for good measure along with a DivX Movie Mode and support for the latest SDHC memory card format.
There is something about the Segway that I like. I don't know what it is - maybe its a childhood dream of being Johnny Five, but I've always thought they were neat.
Living in the UK they're a rare sight, but on an Orlando holiday last year, I watched as the security in the parks whizzed around on them - I was tired from walking around all day so this made me especially envious.
But this is the Segway concept, called Centaur and you can catch a neat video of it at YouTube. Is this an improvement over the two wheeled version? Well I'm not sure, it seems more versatile and its more quad like appearance might help it to be more widely accepted -but then isnt it kind of against the whole two wheeled, up right approach that makes the Seqway interesting? Perhaps though this version will catch on better as except for the odd President and Park Security the current Segway's hardly a roaring success.
