iPad has failed

The iPad had completely failed, no idea why it actually needed to have a sign though, maybe they always fail.

Dell Adamo Notebook Out Now For Australia

I am not sure how many people have heard of Dell computers amazing looking Adamo notebook PC, I only heard of it the other day. Dells release date is today and you can have a look at it on their Adamo website. I think it is pronounced Ah Dah Mo.

The notebook looks amazing, made of milled aluminium like some of the Apple notebooks and super thin – thinner than Apples Air PC !wow! A 13.4 inch HD screen that is flat glass to the edge, a fair number of ports and includes adaptors to use them (no extra cost I think) – eSata is great, my Toshiba has it and I connect my External HDD to it (and it can be used as a normal USB if needed) and the whole thing only .6inches thin (the air was a fat .76 🙂 ) .

The packaging is very iPod like and a first I would think for notebook marketing, I am betting others start doing it soon. The outer faces of the aluminium are an etched finish and look superb. A backlit keyboard with nice scalloped keys, I wish my current notebook had backlit keys, including my Netbook. Dell say the Adamo will get about 5 hours on the battery, not bad if true.

There are a few photos around but not many, I have taken stills from the Adamo video and it’s in black and white. Actually the computer will be available in two colours as well, Onyx and Pearl (black and white really).

The price will be around $1,999 US, not sure about Australian prices for the Adamo, hope it is not too bad as I would like to buy one if it is cheap enough with the Australian dollar as it is.

A new phone, N96 or C905

I am on the hunt for a new mobile phone. Yes, it’s called a  mobile phone not cell phone in my country 🙂

Here is a view/ review (written in good old sales script) on a couple of good looking phones, not bad at all but maybe a bit too over the top for me. The Sony Ericsson c905 is a little smaller than the Nokia N96 and feels nicer in the hand. Let me know what phone you think, remember data plans are super expensive here in Australia, especially Telstras network (at least double of others) so things like the iPhone are out.

Nokia N96

Some people are looking for a phone that’s just a phone. But if you’re looking for a phone that has more tools than Inspector Gadget, then you’ve found it right here. Offering superior features and multiple applications, this phone will keep you entertained with big-time fun that’s small enough to fit into your hand.
Photo quality is fantastic thanks to a 5 megapixel Carl Zeiss lens, autofocus and dual LED flash. Ever wanted to share a great place with your friends, but have found it hard to relay exactly where it is? Switch on ‘geo-tagging’ to add the geographical location to any photograph you take. Friends can use this information to locate your recommended destinations while travelling or out-and-about in town.
The Nokia N96 features an FM radio and music player with dedicated music and gaming keys.Listen through your own headphones or enjoy full-bodied sound through built-in stereo speakers. Sporting an unbelievable 16 gigabytes of internal memory, you’d have a hard time trying to fill it up, but for those who like to max out their phone’s capacity, the microSD slot will take up to 16 gigabytes on top.
On the practical side, the N96 features easy email set-up with document viewer, wi-fi internet and an in-depth organiser. Speaker phone is clear, as is call quality and messaging is straightforward and intuitive.

Sony Ericsson C905

You’d curse yourself for not bringing your camera. Who would believe you without proof? Enter the 8 megapixel Sony Ericsson C905 for immediate image capture. This brilliant auto-focus camera phone takes only a second to open so you won’t miss another once-in -a-lifetime moment. With heaps of settings and the Xenon flash illuminating even the darkest environment ,your photos will be of stunning quality. Immediately send them via MMS to mobiles or email addresses to spread the wprd of your discovery!

The music player is very similar to the Sony Ericsson Walkman phones, playing a variety of file types with MegaBass equaliser and stereo Widener.The FM radio features the TrackID system which traces the artist and song title of any radio song that you like. A new innovation of this system is the “Find similar music” function to recommend similar songs to the one you have traced.

It’s certainly not lacking in communication advancements either. The Manage Message feature helps to organise your messages by sorting into Business, Follow Up, Important, or create your own categories. You can also sort by sender and store on the phone or transfer to the included 2GB memory card. Call quality is great and you can count on long battery. The phone also features GPS navigation and Google Maps. So map out where the action is and get yourself there with this image-hungry essential for any photo fan.

The whole internet on floppy disk

I posted a little way back a link to download the entire internet – it said it would take 4000 years or so!

 Well no problem now, Microsoft have it on floppy – I can’t find a link for it but I am sure some clever person can. 🙂 It is a pity I don’t have a floppy drive on any of my computers so it is no good for me and I am not even sure if it is Vista compatible.

(click for bigger pic)

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Thanks to Cool Star Wars photos for all the comments on previous posts.

Lumix – a great camera

I have had a Panasonic Lumix camera for a few years now. The reason I chose it was that I wanted a small camera with a big lens – not a big SLR style one. The zoom I wanted was for taking pics of my son at sports etc. , where normal 3x zoom compacts just wouldn’t do.

Size has to do with it as well and the Panasonic had the smallest 12x zoom camera around. Not talking dirty here but size is important , too big and I know the camera will sit at home and be forgotten. It’s a fine line between performance and size and at the time the FZ-3 was perfect.

Panasonic upped the models with mainly megapixel increases, keeping the great lens (f2.8 for the full 35to420mm zoom) until this new model , the FZ-18 … it has an 18x zoom! Not only has the zoom length gone greater (504mm) it now is wider as well, 28mm. Excellent. The Fstop has increased, naturally, with this long lens – f2.8-4.1, still very, very good.

The size is bigger and, to be honest, for my use it is just a little too big now. The TZ-3 would get more use in our family as it still has a pretty good 10x lens but is in a tiny body that we would carry around. Remember it doesn’t matter how good the camera is if you leave it at home, and that is what I think would happen with the FZ-18.

Microsoft is cool? on the Surface.

You have probably seen demos of this before. It was on the news a couple of days ago but I only saw the last few seconds so didn’t quite catch it properly. I came across a good site that talked about Surface when I was reading something else, glad I did.

If Apple talked about this and showed the demo, their fans would be talking up a storm and knocking on an Apple shop demanding to buy one. But Microsoft? Nah it can’t be good, well why not, have a look at the video if you haven’t seen it – wow is the word you will say.

More info at Microsoft

Apple suit over poor MacBook displays

I find it strange that Apples advertising keeps pushing the Artistic/ Design bent but they have an inferior display, via OSX, than if you used XP. Macbooks and Pros ahave been around for a while now but I have never heard of this before and assumed what is advertised is true (yes, I know I shouldn’t beleive advertising:) ). Plus, saying millions of colours when the displays can only handle 262,000 is a bit crook isn’t it, I guess we can’t let advertising get in the way of facts can we?

A class action suit has been launched in the California Superior Court alleges that Apple engaged in deceptive advertising, unfair competition and misrepresentation regarding the ability of the displays used in the MacBook and MacBook Pro to display “millions” of colours.
The heart of the case is that the MacBook and MacBook Pro – like other notebooks of similar size – use display panels that use six bits for each of the red, green and blue subpixels, giving a maximum of 262,144 colours rather than over 16 million from eight bits per channel. A further assertion is that the dithering process used by Mac OS X to simulate eight bits per channel gives significantly inferior results to that used by Windows on the same hardware. The colour performance is said to fall short of that required by a professional user of software such as Apple’s Aperture photography application.
…One message quoted in the filing stated “If I boot into [Windows] XP using Boot Camp, the dithering and banding and noise goes away…

info From ITwire Australia

Amazon acquires dpreview.com

DPreview.com has been my favourite site for all things camera wise. Their reviews are excellent, very detailed and helped me sort through the millions of cameras available and get down to the one I like.

It seems the they have been bought out by Amazon, I hope this doesn’t effect their reveiwing ability and stay a bit independent from Amazon trying to push certain brands and models. I hope they have made a mint with the sale.

We’re proud and excited to announce that Dpreview has been acquired by the worlds leading online retailer, Amazon.com. Started as hobby site in 1998, dpreview.com has grown to be the number one destination for anyone interested in digital cameras and digital photography. Each month dpreview.com has seven million unique visitors (over 22 million sessions) who read over 120 million pages. “We’ve worked very hard over the last eight years to deliver consistently high quality content to our readers”, founder Phil Askey said. “It will be fantastic to be able to expand and build on that without compromising our quality or independence. With the support and resources of Amazon we can achieve this.”

Turn your photos into a 3D image

Fotowoosh.com is website that is able to convert any 2 dimensional picture to 3D picture from just a single image. what i have seen is pretty impressive but I am guessing that unless it is almost completely automatic I would never get the same quality.
It says it mimics the technology of human perception, how we are able to understand the depth, color and texture from a single image. They develop a 3D picture by figuring out from the image, which parts of the image corresponds to the ground, and from the vertical surfaces, and the sky, it can construct a simple 3D model of the scene. They add the texture of the original image to the new 3D picture, so it looks real life like.

The Video shows some of the 2D images to 3D images based on the mathematical model Fotowoosh it developed. Pretty fancy examples I must say.

It is in Alpha stage, once it is Beta it will be open to us users. I have applied for it, if they allow me I will check this program and update it here.

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Nostalgia for Flickr fans

If you are a Flickr fan you need to try this little app out. It is called Nostalgia and it’s from thirteen23.

What it is is a little, fancy front end to flickr and it works well I must say. You can install the app for XP or just simply run it directly if, like me, you are a Vista user. Mac users, sorry not for you.

Try it now..