Nikon launches Coolpix P6000 with inbuilt GPS system

Nikon has launched its new high-performance compact camera COOLPIX P6000 that can be operated on the auto as well as manual modes providing flexibility to the professional photographer.

Essential features of the Coolpix P6000 include a 13.5 megapixel resolution with an in built GPS system. It has a 2.7inch LCD with a high-resolution screen. The camera has 4x zoom, NIKKOR-angle lens with two ED glass elements and image processing system EXPEED.

It can be effectively used to compose photographs even in low light conditions. The GPS places geo tags along with the images. Thus you can browse photographs location wise.

A D-SLR dial can be used to adjust the camera for different light conditions. The camera weighs 240g and has an internal memory of 48 MB. The Lithium-ion battery is capable of delivering 260 shots after charging.

The pricing of the camera is likely to be above Rs. 20,000. It is expected to be available from September onwards.

Supreme Court issues notice to Yahoo, MSN and Google

Internet: a bane or a boom, has been a common topic for discussion. However there is no denying the fact that the Internet has brought along with it quite a few vices.

Proving the point the Supreme Court of India has issued notices to the big three in the internet business, Yahoo, MSN and Google for showing advertisements promoting or encouraging female foeticide.

Online advertisements that promote sex determination tests have invited such an action by the Supreme Court. According to Indian Preconception and Prenatal Diagnostics Techniques act - PC-PNDT the determination of the sex of unborn baby is illegal. The act also prohibits any advertisements for the same. However the internet is being blatantly used by unscrupulous operators.

However the top three companies need to take a serious note of the issue.
The catch here is that such advertisements are permitted in some foreign countries.

BlackBerry launches Bold to compete with iPhone

The proposed launch of the iPhone is creating waves in the mobile handsets market. Most mobile companies are introducing products to compete with the iPhone. The RIM is launching Blackberry Bold to take on the iPhone.

The Blackberry Bold is a 3G that sports high end features with a LCD display of 480X320 resolution. It has a full QWERT keyboard and is powered by a 624 MHz processor with 1 GB of internal memory. The device is Wi-Fi compatible and has a 2 megapixel camera. A mini SDHC media card can be used to boost the storage to 8 GB. Navigation by using BlackBerry Maps is another available feature.

The phone is likely to be available during September. The pricing of Blackberry Bold is not yet disclosed.

Sony Ericsson launches C902- goes James Bond way to promote

Sony Ericsson unveiled the C902 cybershot camera phone Titanium silver edition to coincide with the upcoming James Bond film “Quantum of Solace”.

The C902, which is the company's trademark cybershot phone featuring a 5 megapixel camera, is used by popular film character Bond in the upcoming movie.

This isn't the first time Sony has used virtual marketing to promote its product. Casino Royale, which marked Daniel Craig's debut as James Bond, showcased an array of Sony products right from its Vaio range of laptops, digital cameras and mobile phones.

Vesper Lynd, who according to the story was Bond's first and last love interest but actually was a double agent working with Mr. White - the film's villain representing the Quantum Organization - also used a Sony Ericsson phone.

The phones weighs Size 107 grams and is 108 mm long. With a built in memory of 60 MB which can be extended using a memory card, the phone has a screen size of two inches. The limited Titanium edition will come pre-loaded with Bond ring tones and wallpapers.

Nokia too has used this marketing strategy in the past. In the recently released Batman movie - The Dark Knight - Nokia used the strategy to showcase their upcoming Tube mobile phone, which will be the Finnish major's new full touch screen mobile phone.

C902 will cost Rs.20,995 in the Indian market.

Sony Ericsson unveiled T700 ultra thin mobile handset

Sony Ericsson has recently unveiled the T700 phone. This ultra thin phone is meant to be the successor of the T610 style icon. This T700 mobile handset is 10 mm thick and sports a flawless design with premium features.

The T700 is a GSM/GPRS/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900 UMTS/HSDPA 2100 phone that will be available in selected markets in the colours Black on Silver, Black on Red and Shining Silver from early Q4 of 2008. It has an optimal memory of 512 MB. The camera is 3.2 mega pixel and has the self portrait facility using which you can click your own photographs.

Few specific features of T700 are as following:
• The perfect slim elegant phone – slick stick design with premium metal finish
• 3.2 megapixel camera – snap a great shot and share with your friends via your blog or web page
• High quality stereo speakers – share your music with friends
• Colour matched headset – colour co-ordinate your accessories with your phone
• High speed sharing – via the operator network or Bluetooth™
• 512MB memory card memory in box – and even more to expand
• 2" TFT display – add more emotion when you’re in motion, download film clips and view in vivid colours

This phone is intended to take on the Motorola L6, L7 and the Nokia 6300 and 5310 Xpress Music series. The T700 has a talk time of 9 hours and 30 minutes and a standby time of 370 hours.

The T700 is a slim elegant phone for the mass market – whether you want a phone that looks good or one that is perfect to show off in an important business meeting. The pricing of the mobile handset has not yet been declared.

coming soon: a digital camera based on the human eye

Digital cameras would soon be more humanised, what with a new technology that can produce images with a wider field of view, just like the human eye.

In a collaborative study, Yonggang Huang, Joseph Cummings Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Mechanical Engineering and John Rogers, the Flory-Founder Chair Professor of Materials Science and Engineering have created array of silicon detectors and electronics that can be conformed to a curved surface.

Thus, just like the human eye, the curved surface can act as the focal plane array of the camera, which captures an image.

In a normal camera, such electronics must lie on a straight surface, and the camera's complex system of lenses have to reflect an image several times before it can reflect on the right spots on the focal plane.

"The advantages of curved detector surface imaging have been understood by optics designers for a long time, and by biologists for an even longer time. That's how the human eye works -- using the curved surface at the back of the eye to capture an image," Nature quoted Huang, as saying.

The researchers established experimental methods and theoretical foundations for an effective way to transfer the electronics from a flat surface to a curved one.

They created a hemispherical transfer element made out of a thin elastomeric membrane that can be stretched out into the shape of a flat drumhead. In this form, planar (flat) electronics can be transferred onto the elastomer. Popping the elastomer back into its hemispheric form enables the transfer of the electronics onto a hemispherical device substrate.

But the drawback was that such a process applied to conventional electronics leads to catastrophic mechanical fracture in the brittle semiconductor materials

Thus they created an array of photodetectors and circuit elements that are so small - approximately 100 micrometers square - they aren't as affected when the elastomer pops back into its hemispheric shape.

In addition, each of these devices on the array is connected by thin metal wires on plastic, which form arc-shaped structures that Huang and Rogers call "pop-up bridges." These bridges interconnect the silicon devices, thereby relaxing all of the strain associated with return of the elastomer to its curved shape.

The array was also designed in such a way that the silicon component of each device is sandwiched in the middle of two other layers, the so-called natural mechanical plane. That way, while the top layer is stretched and the bottom layer is compressed, the middle layer experiences very small stress.

The images obtained using this curved array in an electronic eye-type camera indicate large-scale pictures that are much clearer than those obtained with similar, but planar, cameras, when simple imaging optics are used.

"In a conventional, planar camera, parts of the images that fall at the edges of the fields of view are typically not imaged well using simple optics. The hemisphere layout of the electronic eye eliminates this and other limitations, thereby providing improved imaging characteristics," said Huang.

The results of this research will be published as the cover story in the upcoming issue of the journal Nature.

Airtel and Vodafone to launch iPhone on 22 August

The iPhone is finally on its way to India. Airtel and Vodafone will be launching iPhone on 22 August 2008. It was earlier reported that only Airtel will be launching the service. However now it has now been confirmed that even Vodafone will be selling iPhones from the same date.

The iPhone will provide 3G services, which are expected to be twice as faster as 2G services. The price details for the phone in India have not yet been released.

According to President Bharti Airtel mobile services Sanjay Kapoor, “iPhone has been an iconic technological revelation of this year and Airtel has been at the forefront of innovation and customer delight in the Indian telecom sector”.

Now what about the price? No one knows the exact price and even the Airtel or Vodafone has not disclosed it either. However, a 3G phone is expected to be sold at about Rs 20,000.

Intex to launch a series of nine notebooks in India

Intex has announced to launch a new series of notebooks in India. The new series consist of one model each in the Lifestyle, Gaming and Tablet Pad types and three models each in the Business book and Education notebook series.

All the newly launched Intex notebooks are equipped with connectivity features like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

The Lifestyle Book targets working women. The notebook comes in pink, black and white colors and weighs only 1.8 kg. It is priced in the range of Rs 33,000. The Gaming notebook is a high-end laptop. It sports the Intel Centrino technology with Nvidia Graphic Power. It has a hybrid TV tuner card and targets the younger generation of gaming enthusiasts. It is priced at 75,900.

The Tablet Pad has a 12.1inch TFT touch screen that can be rotated through 180 degrees. It is aimed at professionals. The Business Book variant comes in 15.4 inch and 13.3 inches size screens. It features a HDMI port, security features of finger-prints and hotkeys to play music. It is priced between Rs 32,900 to Rs 42,900.

The Education laptops are value for money laptops. They are targeted at students and promise to deliver high performance. The education laptops from Intex are priced between Rs 25,000 to Rs 30,000.

Samsung launches TouchWIZ F480

Samsung has launched its full touch screen, ultra-slim Lifestyle segment mobile phone – The Samsung TouchWIZ F480 in the Indian market.

The Touchwiz’s 5 MegaPixel, AutoFocus-LED Flash camera, refined metal body casing and luxurious leather cover combine the best of form and function to create new benchmarks in Lifestyle space in mobile phones.

The F 480 is a high tech touchscreen phone that has Olympics 2008 as its theme. The Samsung TouchWIZ offers a brilliant full touch navigation experience ; widgets with ‘Drag and Drop’ technology and User Interface with Haptic Feedback which makes the experience of using the phone highly interactive and easy. The TouchWIZ strengthens Samsung’s lineage in touch UI with the already existing portfolio of I780 & I710, the Giorgio Armani P520 and Soul.

The innovative, quick and simple ‘drag and drop’ technology of the Samsung TouchWIZ allows widgets to be selected from the left panel of the screen and dropped anywhere on the home screen. Since the Widgets comprise widely used applications like clock , calendar , alarms , Music Player , FM , Games and Profiles, this practically equips the user to set hotkeys on the touch menu for all these functions as per their will. The colourful widget icons add a dash of colour and life to the idle phone screen and desktop. Haptic Feedback offers a tangible feedback when a user makes a selection on the touch screen.

The Samsung TouchWIZ with its 5.0 Mega pixel camera answers today’s customer needs as the perfect digital camera and multimedia mobile combined into one single device. Innovative ‘Auto Smile Shot’ feature makes its worldwide debut in Samsung TouchWIZ. This intelligent feature enables the camera to detect when a person is smiling and automatically take a picture when in the ‘Smile shot’ mode, so the user can easily capture his/her happiest moments. In addition, the chic Samsung TouchWiz is equipped with face detection, image stabilizer, auto focus, CMOS video lens and Wide Dynamic Range (WDR)- features found in the more advanced digital cameras of today.

The Samsung TouchWhiz is compatible with GPRS, EDGE, 3G, HSDPA (7.2mbps) networks and functions on GSM 900/1800/1900, and WCDMA 2100 bands. In terms of storage, the phone is equipped with 240MB of internal memory, which can be expanded up to 8GB via the microSD memory card slot.

Users can enjoy super-fast Internet access through the 7.2 Mbps High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) browser and share images or video taken with the phone. With 7.2 Mbps HSDPA, users can also download songs at a faster speed compared to average 3G networks. The high speed internet access (HSDPA) and USB 2.0 connectivity of the Samsung TouchWiz enables users to transfer and download data faster. Whether they are music or video files, customers can enjoy all the benefits of being online on-the-go.

Other usage features include an integrated FM radio, multi-format video playback (MPEG4, H.263, H.264, WMV, Real), and also MPEG4 video recording and editing functions. Media playback and user interfacing can be enjoyed on a large 2.8-inch TFT LCD (240x320) display screen.

Samsung TOUCHWIZ F480 will be available for Rs 20,990 in the Indian Markets.

Lenovo all set to launch netbooks in India

The trend of launching low cost laptops that can perform basic functions like surfing the Internet and office applications has caught up in a big way.

Lenovo too has jumped in the fray along with Acer, Dell and HP by deciding to launch the IdeaPad S9 and S10 netbooks. These netbooks will be ultra-portable and thin. Mr Liu Jun, senior vice president, Consumer Business Group, Lenovo says “IdeaPad netbooks are the latest in a string of recently announced Lenovo products, designed specifically for consumers worldwide and developed through our heritage of technological innovation and exceptional engineering,”

Their features include 8.9 and 10.2 inch screens with enhanced battery life, WiFi, Bluetooth connectivity and an Express Card slot for users with high speed mobile broadband connectivity. In built web camera, a multi-card reader and two USB ports are provided. With hard disks of 80 GB or 160 GB the net books will be operated by Windows XP or Linux operating systems.

The netbooks will be available in India in September.

Get ready for the next operating system- Midori

According to a report by SD Times, Eric Rudder, senior vice president for technical strategy at Microsoft, has been working on the OS named as ‘Midori’, which is heavily dependent on the Internet based and designed to work on native hardwares (x86, x64 and ARM).

“That sounds possible—I’ve heard rumors to the effect that he had an OS project in place,” says Rob Helm, director of research at Directions on Microsoft, hinting at the latest development at Microsoft.

Windows has come a long way since its release in 1985. The first version of the operating system was Windows 1.0. The latest from Microsoft is the Windows Vista. Midori is expected to be the first operating system outside the Windows umbrella; however it will be hosted by Windows Hyper-V hypervisor or by a Windows process.

Pentax to launch 10.1 megapixels Optio E60 Digital Camera

Pentax has recently announced to launch Optio E60 compact digital camera. The camera sports 10.1 megapixels. It is bundled with the ACDSee viewer/ image software and is compatible with Windows Vista.

This latest member of the Pentax Optio E series is newly equipped with an optical 3X zoom lens designed especially for group shots in narrow settings, landscapes and architecture. In addition, the Optio E60 features a variety of modes including Auto Picture, Face Recognition, High Sensitivity Digital Shake Reduction, and a Green mode that sets exposure, sensitivity and other parameters with the touch of a button for the newest of digital users.

The Optio E60 uses AA batteries and sports World Time and Date Imprint functions. It also has an Image Recovery function to retrieve accidentally-erased pics.

The Optio E60 permits you to combine pictures into one panoramic picture. You can shoot 16 images in quick succession. It has a Green mode where in you can set sensitivity, exposure and other settings at the touch of a button.

It will be available in October for US$140.