Nikon launches compact camera system

Nikon launches the Nikon 1 system with the super-fast J1, and the pro-friendly V1.

The J1 ($649.95 with 10-30mm kit lens) is the flagship of the line, while the V1 is its amped-up brother, with high-resolution electronic viewfinder, mic jack and accessory port ($899.95 with same lens).

Besides the new form factor, Nikon's key boasts center around shooting. "The new advanced hybrid AF system is the world’s fastest autofocus," says the press release. The hybrid system uses two different types of detection that ought to maximize autofocus in different light conditions.

Nikon J1 with 30-110mm zoom lens (sold separately)

The cameras can do all kinds of things while shooting, not gimmicks but genuinely useful tricks: "Motion Snapshot" takes a frozen still image and a slow-motion shot of the same thing, merging them together with an audio soundtrack for "a portrayal of an occurrence with maximum impact." Think flowing hair, crashing waves, etc. Sounds haunting, and a little bit Harry Potter, but I want to check it out.

The other exceptional shooting feature has been seen on other cameras before, but is welcome on a model like this: If you're shooting a fast-moving object, say a honeybee, cat or kid at bat, you set the camera to "Smart Photo Selector," and it begins shooting before you press the shutter. The camera analyzes the images and delivers the best photo, or a selection of the top five for your choice.

The sensor inside the cameras sounds like a real champion. It's not as big as the ones in DSLRs — or the ones inside the competing Panasonic/Olympus Micro Four Thirds format — but it is substantially larger than the sensor found in point-and-shoots. A 10.1-megapixel CMOS, it's capable of super fast shooting: 1080p video at 30 frames per second, 1080i at 60fps, and can reach speeds of up to 1200 fps for super slow-mo effects.

As I mentioned, while the J1 is the smaller, more wide-audience version of the camera system, complete with a selection of colors (and even matching lenses!), the V1 is aimed more at pros, or at least enthusiasts who value adding their own microphone, a speedlight mountable flash and even GPS. The most distinctive feature on the V1 is its 1.4-million pixel electronic viewfinder, which activates when you stick the camera up to your face. The $250 premium for the step up from J1 to V1 is steep, but some people won't settle for less.

Tips to hide the Facebook ticker

Facebook  has been added sidebar ticke to the right-hand column of the newly redesigned News Feed, along with complaints and snarky comments about the new News Feed and this ticker.

Here are  quick and easy ways in both Firefox and Chrome to get rid of the ticker.

In Chrome, simply install the Hide Facebook SideBar Ticker extension and the ticker will vanish.

In Firefox, you will need to install a user script. To do so, first install the Greasemonkey add-on and then install this user script. When prompted, restart Firefox and the ticker will be gone. Do note that this user script removes the entire right column of Facebook, including the ticker, event invitations, ads, sponsored stories, friends' photos, and so on.

Apple iPhone 5 to debut Oct. 5

Apple will introduce its iPhone 5 on October 4, with new Chief Executive Tim Cook leading the show, All Things Digital reported.


The iPhone 5 carries tremendous significance for Apple. The company faces mounting pressure from the Android realm, with a confusing array of budget-minded and high-end models, but Apple chooses to put many its eggs in many fewer baskets.



The iPhone 4 has held up well under the competitive pressure. But with the breakneck pace of the smartphone market bringing higher-speed LTE networks, larger displays, NFC payments, and other features, Apple's flagship phone is starting to look a bit long in the tooth.

Google+ Opened to All

Google Inc. on Tuesday opened its Google+ online social network to the public.

The company also introduced new features to Google+, including the ability to search for information about topics such as cooking and photography, and along with the ability to see relevant Google+ users and their posts on such topics, as well as relevant content from around the Web.

Google+ lets as many as 10 people communicate simultaneously in a video "hangout." On Tuesday, Google said people can broadcast a "hangout" to the public, similar to how Google's YouTube video site lets some partners broadcast a live event.

Google also added a key feature to the version of Google+ that works on mobile devices powered by Google's Android software. Google+ users who own devices with front-facing cameras participate in a multiperson "hangout" using those devices, a potential advantage over the feature on Apple Inc.'s iPhone that lets people do video chats face-to-face, also known as "face time."

Google+ lets people share comments, articles, photos and videos with various "circles" of friends or contacts, or they can share content publicly with any user who wants to view their posts. Eventually, Google plans to incorporate features of Google+ in its other services, such as its YouTube video site.

Facebook redesigns its News Feed, adds real-time updates

Facebook is rolling out an updated version of News Feed that gives priority to important posts. If you haven't visited Facebook for a while, you'll see the top photos and status updates since you last logged in; if you log in several times a day, you'll see more recent news. The idea is to surface the information that matters most to you.

Facebook is also introducing a real-time "ticker" that streams your friends' most recent activity and encourages you to chat with them about it.

"Ticker shows you the same stuff you were already seeing on Facebook, but it brings your conversations to life by displaying updates instantaneously,"

Quickly delivering the most important updates from friends is the goal. But comments to the blog post about these latest efforts were mixed, ranging from users complaining that the social network doesn't have the ability to judge what's important to them to users welcoming the changes.

 

Sony Z1000, a new Android 2.3 Walkman

The Sony Z1000 Series, available in 16, 32 and 64GB, comes with a 4.3” 480×800 screen, Android 2.3 and a nice Nvidia Tegra 2 CPU at 1Ghz and 512MB of RAM! Schedule for a Japanese launch around October, the NW-Z1000 Series will be sold at around 28,000 up to 43,000 Yen and comes with the usual support of Google’s Services, DLNA, as well as Bluetooth and WiFi BGN.

 

Google reveals total power use

Google on Thursday revealed what had been one of its most closely guarded secrets: how much power it uses to fulfil its mission of organising the entire world’s information.

In a blog posting, Urz Hoelzle, the company’s senior vice-president of technical infrastructure, said that the company used 2.26 billion kilowatt hours of electricity in 2010 — the equivalent of some 200,000 U.S. homes. The company also emitted 1.46 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, equivalent to the yearly emissions of 70,000 Americans.

While this may seem like a lot, Google notes that its data centres actually use only about half as much energy as the industry average and that the total figure includes all the energy used by the company’s facilities and its 29,000 employees. The figure also encompasses the energy used for all Google services, including such relative energy hogs as YouTube.

“At Google, we’ve worked hard to minimise the environmental impact of our services,” the company said in a new website tracking its energy consumption. “In fact, to provide you with Google products for a month, our servers use less energy per user than leaving a light on for 3 hours. If you add in our renewable energy and offsets, our footprint is zero.”

Introducing the Samsung GALAXY Note [VIDEO]

Samsung GALAXY Note is a new type of smartphone.It is the ultimate on-the-go device which consolidates core benefits of diverse mobile devices while maintaining smartphone portability, creating a whole new experience.

The GALAXY Note has a 5.3” display which is the largest screen size with smartphone portability. It features the world’s first and the largest 5.3” HD Super AMOLED display, an expansive high-resolution screen that provides an immersive viewing experience. Taking full advantage of the large display, users will be able to do more tasks to create and consume more, with minimum scrolling and screen transitions, while on the go. An advanced pen-input technology, called the S Pen, is combined with the GALAXY Note’s full touch screen to introduce a new type of user-experience. Through this, consumers are able to freely capture and create ideas while on the go.

“The GALAXY Note is a device borne of our insight and innovation. We examined the fundamental elements of mobile culture, entertainment and communication in order to bring together the best experiences in a single, elegant device,” said JK Shin, President and Head of Samsung’s Mobile Communications Business. “The huge, 5.3” HD Super AMOLED screen is the largest, highest quality display available in any phone; the touch screen and S Pen combine to produce a uniquely accurate level of control and finesse, along with rich expressions across the GALAXY Note experience, enabling the introduction of new smartphone experiences.”

myTouch 4G

The myTouch 4G Slide is a well designed phone offering a spacious keyboard, a terrific camera, a fast processor and a Wi-Fi calling app that charges you voice minutes.
First, the good stuff. The phone’s showpiece is its 8-megapixel camera. It is still not a replacement for a quality point-and-shoot camera, but it is better than most phone cameras.
Part of the camera’s usefulness comes from its photo software controls. It has basic portrait, night and action modes, but also has a manual mode that allows you alter the exposure, contrast, saturation and sharpness. It also has an antishake setting to decrease the blur you might see in low-light photos.
Some of the camera features still need work, though. One is an H.D.R. setting for unevenly lighted subjects, like a room with sunlight pouring in the windows. It did not work very well in my tests. The camera also claims to have no shutter lag, so that it snaps the instant you touch the shutter button. It was quicker than most, but hardly at zero.
Also in the plus column, it has an expansive sliding keyboard with nicely raised keys in a case that is not absurdly thick. There is a snappy 1.2 GHz dual-core processor, and an Android operating system that can play both HTML and Flash animations.
Other standard features include the Genius button, which activates the voice controls, a group text feature and access to Netflix.
But then there is built-in Wi-Fi calling, possibly the least favorite feature I have seen on a mobile phone.
Anyone familiar with Wi-Fi calling apps like Skype and Fring knows that the VoIP programs allow calls to be made using your own Wi-Fi connection, so calls do not go across the voice or data channels of your carrier. That means no voice or data charges. In some cases, VoIP calls are completely free (apart from the cost of your Wi-Fi, of course).

This is a very good phone with a superior camera, but for Wi-Fi calling, stick to Skype or Fring instead.

Bootstrap, an online toolkit for twitter developers

 Twitter  released Bootstrap, an online toolkit for developers looking to build new web apps, or even clean up some of the code they already have.

Bootstrap is an open source set of files written in CSS (or Cascading Style Sheets, a programming language used to dictate how a website or web app looks and works) that covers some of the building blocks of most web apps, such as buttons, tables and forms, page templates, app navigation and even stylistic matters such as typography and color gradients.

The simple and small tools (at about only six kilobytes in size) released by Twitter, on the popular code sharing site GitHub, are the same basic tools used by Twitter developers for the social network's own webpages and apps, Mark Otto, a designer at Twitter, said in a blog post.

Google adds weather layer on Google Maps

Google adds weather layer onGoogle Maps that displays current temps and conditions around the globe, and will hopefully make travel and activity planning easier.
To add the weather layer, hover over the widget in the upper right corner of Google Maps and select the weather layer from the list of options. When zoomed out, you’ll see a map with current weather conditions from weather.com for various locations, with icons to denote sun, clouds, rain and so on.

Facebook Feature Shows You Your Old Status Updates From 2010 & 2009

Facebook has quietly rolled out a new feature that displays status updates you posted exactly one or two years ago.
The feature appears as a small box in the right-hand column above the advertising, either titled “On This Day in 2010″ or “On This Day in 2009.” We’ve typically found that the “On This Day” box appears while you’re browsing a photo album.
You can also click the “Show More” button to see more status updates from exactly one or two years ago, if you posted multiple status updates on those days. The feature only seems to go back to 2009. That makes sense — Facebook just didn’t have a lot of users in 2008 or 2007.
This isn’t the first time Facebook has tried to help uses discover their past activity on Facebook. It also has a feature for surfacing photos from your past.

Facebook Chat reverses changes made to online friends list

Facebook announced the change in a "status message" on its company profile page, citing "a lot of feedback that people missed seeing all of their online friends" as the reason.

"Today, we made a change so that Chat now shows the friends who you message the most, as well as the rest of your friends who are currently online," the status message read.

While many of the people who commented welcomed the change, just as many called for the chat system to be taken further back.

"If it aint broke, dont fix it," said one user in a comment.

The change comes two days after the social-networking giant announced the release of a new app for Apple's iOS (which runs on the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch) and Google's Android called Facebook Messenger. The app  lets users send Facebook chat messages to Facebook friends, as well as to people in their smartphone's contact books as text messages.

Over the last couple of months, Facebook has been making changes to its messaging system that seek to blur the lines between text messaging, instant messaging and Facebook messaging

Free Minesweeper, Sudoku come to Windows Phone 7 in the US

Microsoft has announced that ad-supported versions of Minesweeper and Sudoku are available to download, free of charge, right now on your Windows Phone 7 device. There's only one stipulation: you've gotta be a US resident.

Both titles feature Achievements and multiple modes of play -- in Sudoku, you've got Classic or Lightning mode, while Minesweeper boasts Classic and Speed modes. You can download each by following the links below