Filed in archive Photography by jim on March 28, 2008 Most people who have a digital camera use it, among other things, to take pictures of other people. How many times have you heard: "Smile", "Look into the camera", "Hold still", etc? Well those commands may be OK for a formal portrait, and those are just fine, but this type of picture doesn't really capture the essence of an individual. What you want is a picture that looks natural, not posed. For this type of shot you'll want your subject to do something other than to stare directly into the lens and have the result look like a mug shot. (Read the full post about ‘Digital Photography And People Pictures’…)
Posted Mar 28th 2008 4:35AM by Paul MillerFiled under: Displays, Transportation If those darn kids would get out of the way, what you’d see before you is a fancy new dashboard that Daihatsu teamed with Provision Interactive Technologies to build for its latest concept car. They’re calling it HLXX, and it’s pretty straightforward: there’s a traditional flat screen 2D dashboard that is used for all the usual driving infos, with a 3D holographic screen in front that overlays warnings or alerts so they’re more easily seen by the driver. Daihatsu hopes to have HLXX in production vehicles by 2012, but until then we suppose we’ll just have to pretend these gauges and dials on our dashboards are 3D. Oh wait.Tags: CD, lcd, hdtv, cameras (Read the full post about ‘Daihatsu and Provision building HLXX 3D holographic dashboard, the future’…)
For the millionth time I’ve been wondering, how come no one has ever put out a low-end phone with at least one high-end feature, like a 5-megapixel camera on a monochrome display candy bar, or an mp3 player in a cellphone-and-flashlight in one? Well, my wondering ends today, as Nokia has officially announced an expected Q2 release of the Nokia 6300i, an upgrade to the original slim Finn. Actually, not much has changed with the Nokia 6300i, design-wise and feature-wise. But I think the one thing it adds to the table will really help in changing the “game.” That’s because the Nokia 6300i is now equipped with Wi-Fi, and that lets it connect to wireless networks and make VoiP Internet calls. (Read the full post about ‘Nokia 6300 gains Wi-Fi with 6300i’…)
I admit the title of this post is a bit cryptic, but bear with me. If you own an inkjet printer, the short video referenced here is worth a look. In case you’re wondering why your printer may be running out of ink quicker than you think it should or maybe just plain not working, take a look as the author rips apart his own printer; this may be why.
A Google developer recently released Mail Trends, a Phyton based program that analyzes and visualizes email data. Developer Mihai Parparita is associated with Google Reader, so if you are familiar with the Trends page in Google Reader you may see some similarities with the version for Gmail. Google Mail Trends can show distribution data of messages by year, month, day, day of week and time of day as well as distribution of messages by size and a user’s top 40 largest messages. If you want to know the top people you send mail to, you can do so as Google Mail Trends can also show your emails’ incoming and outgoing traffic. To date, Google Mail Trends is only available for Gmail use only. (Read the full post about ‘Google releases Mail Trends for Gmail’…)
Check out this new way of controlling your computer via USB - this tricked out USB joystick has been hacked to interface with new buttons, letting you monitor the contacts via software. Could this herald the return of the ‘new parellel port’? After all, the older days saw computers’ parallel ports interfacing with the real world, so why not in the 21st century. The possibilities are endless as you can attempt to hook it up to door contacts, motion sensors and rain sensors among others. You can watch the video here. Tags: video game, MP3, equipment, Gadget (Read the full post about ‘Hacked USB Interface’…)
The Palm Centro might have sold a whole bunch, but it still isn’t doing enough to drag Palm out of the woods just yet. For those who are contemplating on picking up a Centro, you will be pleased to know that there is a black colored version now available - at least in AT&T’s store at Salt Lake City, Utah. Pricing details are tipped to remain the same since the only cosmetic change is the color. Tags: gps, pvp, toys, tech (Read the full post about ‘Black GSM Palm Centro Coming’…)
If you’re going to make a toy, much less a computer for kids, then you’d better make sure it is highly durable to the rigors of inquisitive tots. Apparently OLPC owners aren’t too happy with the shoddy workmanship, since the laptop’s rubberized keys ain’t no match for a child who prefers to spend their time peeling the keys off rather than typing them. OLPC does not seem ready to handle such a situation since they aren’t shipping out replacement keyboards at this point in time, so you had best plug in your own USB keyboard in the meantime. I wonder which test group did OLPC rely on to certify this as kid-proof? A bunch of children who were brought up by the local nunnery? (Read the full post about ‘OLPC Keyboard Fails Stress Test’…)
Posted Mar 27th 2008 7:41PM by Nilay PatelFiled under: Desktops, Laptops That huge bundle of damning emails and documents Microsoft produced as part of the Vista-capable lawsuit is full of fascinating information about how the company developed, planned, and launched Vista, but the latest juicy nugget to come out if it suggests that a lot of problems faced by the troubled operating system are actually NVIDIA’s fault — nearly 30% of logged Vista crashes were due to NVIDIA driver problems, according to a Microsoft data included in the bundle. That’s some 479,326 hung systems, if you’re keeping score at home, and it’s in first place by a large margin — Microsoft clocks in at number two at 17.9 percent, and ATI is fourth with 9.3 percent. (Read the full post about ‘NVIDIA drivers responsible for nearly 30% of Vista crashes in 2007′…)
During a recent roundtable discussion, Mozilla CEO John Lilly announced the final release of Firefox 3 will be available in June. According to the timeline Beta 5 is expected to be available in early April and the first Release Candidate (RC1) is expected in the beginning of May. While a Beta 5 will be nice to see, that almost seems like a formality at this point, RC1 will be the nice step (especially for early-adopters) because at that point we will start to see more themes and extensions beginning to work (or work properly) with Firefox 3. Current estimates put the use of Firefox 3 beta 4 at around 700,000 users, which is just a very small portion of the total 160 million people running Firefox. (Read the full post about ‘Mozilla to release Firefox 3 Final in June’…)
