AKVIS has introduced a new version of one of its photo effects apps, Sketch 10. The software converts photos into simulated watercolors and pencil drawings. The upgrade provides a new effects tool called Stroke Direction, which offers control over hatch direction and enhances realism. Three new presets have also been added, along with support for Snow Leopard and Windows 7.
Sony recently announced to its investors that it will add 3D stereoscopic capability to the games on its PS3 gaming console via a future firmware update. The presentation (pdf) contains the line "all PS3 units will be firmware-upgradeable to 3D," and that the company plans to lead the 3D market, though no timelines were revealed. There was, however, an indication that Sony will offer 3D-specific tools to developers of its games.
Sony is showing off a 280-inch 3D display at the currently ongoing International Broadcast Equipment Exhibition in Japan. The 3D LED Wall is 21 feet wide by 11 feet tall and can show both 2D and 3D video. It is made up of 70 LED displays, each 28 inches in size.
In Brief: Mozilla has already released a third beta of the upcoming Firefox 3.6 update, bringing a variety of bug fixes and security enhancements. Eye-Fi has updated its photo uploading utility with Selective Share, a new feature that allows users to selectively share only certain pictures on sites such as Flickr.
Qualcomm has quietly shown an example receiver that would give the iPhone and iPod touch FLO TV reception. Despite assertions that the company would use iPhone OS 3.0 support for native hardware, the demonstrator mimics the strategy used for the Softbank 1Seg tuner in Japan and pipes video over Wi-Fi. The receiver itself is roughly as large as the iPhone, though it's unclear whether this is due to its prototype nature or to accommodate a larger battery.
YouTube drew controversy with word this week that it has begun limiting the use of its native video API on devices. Reflecting new terms of service, any device that connects to a TV must have a license from YouTube to get fully native video support. The move will ban smaller-scale devices like the Popcorn Hour C-200 from directly accessing YouTube videos, although it will still allow them access using Flash.
Barnes & Noble today signaled that new orders for the Nook reader now won't ship at all in 2009. Those placed today will ship no sooner than January 4th, or more than three weeks after the delay to December 11th. The bookseller hopes to console those missing the Christmas target by giving them a certificate that promises a Nook reader when it ships.
Despite promising to release its Via HDTVs with Wi-Fi and network connections this fall, Vizio has officially said it will delay the launch until January of 2010, according to a Friday CNET report. Other promised features of the Via TVs include local LED backlighting dimming for deeper black level reproduction and interactive add-ons as well as a Bluetooth remote with a QWERTY keyboard to navigate and manage it all.
Autodesk will soon launch a Mac version of Smoke, a demonstration at Japan's InterBEE expo confirms. The software is a high-end video production suite, costing approximately $15,000. It is capable not only of conventional editing tasks, but also handling audio, painting, text and various visual effects.
Divergent Media has released an update to its M2T/MTS batch converter, ClipWrap 2.0. The program converts HDV or AVCHD files into QuickTime movies that can be used with any QuickTime-based application. Features in v2.0 include enhanced speed when rewrapping files, as well as additional format support.
Hasselblad today kept its H3DII camera line alive by adding a specialized model, the H3DII-50 Multi-Shot. It addresses image quality through an unusual approach that drops the need for the Bayer filtering common on virtually all cameras: it takes four shots, each offset by a pixel, and composites these into a single image. The result is a shot where every pixel has full color information and eliminates the visual artifacts that creep up on even better cameras, such as moiré from the interpolated color values.
The recently highlighted Qualcomm Mirasol e-reader prototype may be the first to offer the capability to play action games, thanks to a gaming controller accessory revealed on Thursday. The mirasol display technology is capable of reproducing colors and can play back video and the company behind it is seeing a potential as a gaming platform for its device. The plug-in controller has two control sticks, like many popular gaming consoles.
Apple has released two new software updates, beginning with a firmware update for the 24-inch LED Cinema Display. The update fixes an error with the built-in iSight camera, which may not be detected as intended by some programs. Downloaders must have an Intel Mac, as well as Mac OS X 10.5.8 or 10.6.2.
Adobe has announced several release candidates for updates to its RAW and DNG file utilities, Photoshop Camera Raw 5.6, Lightroom 2.6 and DNG Converter 5.6. The updates extend file support to 19 new camera models including Canon's EOS 7D, Powershot G11 and S90; the Nikon D3s, Olympus E-P2, Pentax K-x, Sigma DP1s, Sony's A500/550/850, and several others.
Dell on Wednesday introduced six new inkjet all-in-one printers geared for home and business use. All of the models feature print speeds of up to 33 pages per minute in monochrome or 25 pages per minute in color. Monochrome copy speeds are claimed to reach 25 pages per minute, with color copies processed as fast as 21 pages per minute. All "w" variants feature integrated wireless connectivity, while an optional Bluetooth dongle can be connected to the USB Pictbridge port.
Magazine publisher Condé Nast today revealed that it's taking the unusual step of optimizing its publications with Apple's rumored tablet in mind. The agency doesn't claim to MediaMemo that it's privy to Apple's design but expects Wired, and later its 17 other magazines, to be ready in a format that works with the device by mid-2010. It will allow both actual-size and optimized formats and should include both mixed media and hooks for social networking.
Qualcomm today showed off a new implementation of its mirasol technology that could lead to a major advancement in e-book readers. The semiconductor designer has developed an early mockup of an e-book reader that has a 5.7-inch, 1024x768 color e-paper display. While not fully functional, it represents a design that should not only be capable of supporting richer colors than any other reader but also playing video.
MacNN has reviewed Photo Mechanic, a professional photo browser that offers options for renaming, captioning and geocoding groups of photos. Photos can also be rotated, watermarked and given new metadata, as well as saved to backup. When browsing, images can be displayed in a contact sheet or else zoomed in for detail.
Flip will reportedly release a new USB camcorder with built-in Wi-Fi functionality early next year, thanks to Cisco, which bought Flip maker Pure Digital earlier this year. While this is not official, it should allow the ultraportable camcorder to upload videos directly to video-hosting sites over private and public Wi-Fi networks. The new Flip will purportedly also have a large screen that would slide out of the way to grant access to the record and menu buttons.
Red Giant has released Holomatrix, an After Effects plug-in which simulates the look of animated sci-fi holograms. Thirty built-in preset options include Ghost, Bad Reception and Security Cam. Within them, users can fine-tune over 80 different properties.
ASUS today officially took the wraps from the first notebook to use NVIDIA's GeForce 3D Vision. The G51J 3D uses both NVIDIA's special glasses and a 120Hz LCD to add spatial depth to games that support it, such as Arkham Asylum and Borderlands. The combination of a 1.6GHz Core i7 and a GeForce GTX 260M help run the games at the 15.6-inch notebook's native 1366x768 resolution.
Sony on Wednesday began taking pre-orders for its most advanced e-book reader, the Reader Daily Edition. The third e-book Reader from Sony, following on the Reader Pocket Edition and Reader Touch Edition, is the first Sony Reader to get a 3G connection for faster connection to Sony's eBookstore. It also sports a larger 7-inch touchscreen for easier reading of digital newspapers and magazines, and can be viewed in either portrait or landscape orientations.
AMD on Wednesday bragged of the graphics performance crown with the launch of the ATI Radeon HD 5970. The card uses two 5800 series chipsets on one card to provide the most performance possible. While each has the speed of a 5850 with a 725MHz primary clock speed and 1GHz GDDR5 memory, the 3,200 stream (effects) processors, 160 texture units and 2GB of memory give it as much performance as two 5850s but in half the space.
Casio today added a new category to its Exilim cameras tailored just to ruggedized models. The Exilim G series is headed up by the EX-G1 and claims the title of the thinnest toughened camera: it measures just 0.78 inches but can survive drops of 7 feet and is both dustproof as well as waterproof at depths of up to 10 feet for up to an hour. Winter travelers can also use it as it operates in temperatures as low as 14F (-10C).
Adobe has announced an update to its live audio and video capturing utility, Flash Media Live Encoder 3.1. The app is designed as a media encoder that streams both audio and video in real time to Flash Media Server software or the Flash Video Streaming Service. Users can perform up to three simultaneous encodes and save data to a local file during encoding. The upgrade provides support for Mac OS X, while retaining all of the features of FMLE 3 for Windows.
Just About Managing has announced SimCap 1.0, an iPhone Simulator screencapture utility. The title is designed for developers creating App Store images, or else professional demonstration videos. Extended sequences of stills can be captured, aiding with action shots. When recording video, users can choose whether or not to display cursors or gestures.
NVIDIA in a low-key move today launched the GeForce GT 240. The chipset brings performance from the mid-level to sub-$100 cards and uses the newer 40 nanometer manufacturing process to make itself a reasonable fit in budget PCs: its low energy use both helps it occupy only one slot and to run entirely off the power of the PCI Express bus instead of needing a separate power connector.
Barnes & Noble will soon accept its gift cards as payment for purchases made in its eBook store, the book retailer announced on Monday. Not only will both physical and online gift cards be accepted online, but also through Barnes & Noble's own nook e-book reader and other wireless devices compatible with the B&N eReader software.
MOTO Development Group on Tuesday showed off its first round multi-touch casino gaming table prototype at the Global Gaming Expo 2010 in Las Vegas. Similar in concept to the Microsoft Surface, the touch table has Blackjack and Texas Hold ‘Em poker games built into it. The table has one large integrated touchscreen that supports multi-touch inputs from many players.
Amazon today gave the green light to selling the Kindle 2 in Canada. The reader is the same international version sold elsewhere and will give Canadians the same access to the Kindle bookstore as Americans. Some Canadian publications, such as the Globe and Mail and the Ottawa Citizen, are also available in subscription form for the e-book reader.
(Update with possible explanation) A problem autofocusing the Droid's 5-megapixel camera has been suddenly fixed according to reports from multiple users. Although it had previously had problems properly locking on to subjects at all since the Droid launch, owners at HowardForums and elsewhere now say it has suddenly started focusing properly in almost every case, suggesting a silent over-the-air fix. Some have noticed it after rebooting the phone or changing settings, but others say they did nothing that might have triggered a check for an update.
onOne has published Photo Essentials 3, an updated version of its extension for Photoshop Elements. The add-on attempts to simplify certain tasks in Adobe's software, such as color correction, framing, enlargements and background removal. The latest edition introduces Make It Cool, a module which applies effects from a list of over 40, including sepia toning and simulated HDR (high dynamic range).
NVIDIA today provided details of the first official hardware to use its upcoming Fermi architecture. The Tesla 20 series is even more optimized for general-purpose computing standards like OpenCL or NVIDIA's own CUDA and handles complex math that previously hasn't been as practical, such as ISO standard double-precision math and C++ code processing. Unlike past models, though, the card model also has a video output and works as a video card rather than just as a companion device.
Casio on Monday upgraded two of its key Exilim cameras to focus on low-light image quality. The EX-FH25 superzoom and EX-FC150 compact both have backlit CMOS sensors borrowed from the Sony TX1 and can take in more light, improving the detail both for night scenes as well as portraits of backlit subjects. Both cameras accordingly have dedicated scene modes.
ASUS will release a 17.3-inch 3D notebook, the G72GX, early in 2010 with high-spec features such as an Intel Core i7 CPU, GeForce GTS 160M graphics, 4GB of memory and two 320GB hard drives, according to Chinese daily Digitimes. Before that, however, the computer maker will unveil a smaller, 15.6-inch version known as the G51J3D that should otherwise have near-identical specifications.
Creaceed has introduced Prizmo 1.2, a new version of its Mac OCR software for users with digital cameras. The program supports up to 10 different languages such as English, Swedish and German, and provides tools for scanning images, customizing text recognition, and selecting different filetypes when saving.
The flyer for Best Buy's Black Friday/Thanksgiving sale has been leaked on the Internet ahead of its official release thanks to a copy posted today. Among the 'doorbusters' are a $300 PS3 bundle that includes two games, while an Xbox 360 bundle with six games will carry the same sticker price. Another front-page deal involves a 46-inch, 120Hz LED-backlit Samsung HDTV with free home delivery, hook-up and recycling for $1,600, or $1,000 off.
A leak today hints Sony is planning to tackle the high end of the TV market with at least two new XBR models and a long anticipated update to its OLED sets. The KDL-ZX will allegedly be Sony's first OLED set since last year's XEL-1 and, though no details are mentioned in the HDTVLounge data, is likely to use Sony's recently previewed 21-inch OLED panel. Its screen is 10 inches larger than that of the XEL-1 and produces the same 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio but at a greater than 720p resolution.
Qualcomm's FLO TV Personal Television is now available in stores and online. The device as expected provides subscription over-the-air TV from a 3.5-inch capacitive touchscreen that the company now adds is oleophobic (oil-resistant). Programs are a mix of live and timeshifted shows from CBS Mobile, CNBC, Comedy Central, FOX News Channel, MSNBC, MTV, NBC 2Go and Nickelodeon. Some limited-time bonus channels will also be offered for special events, premium programs and original content.
Boxee today confirmed talk that it would produce its own hardware. The media center startup now says it has partnered with an unnamed home electronics company to make its own set-top box and that a mockup as well as further details will be shown at an already-planned December 7th event that was to mark the Boxee software entering beta. Most details aren't known, but Boxee stresses that the device will still let users choose from a wide variety of sources rather than a narrow channel.
InFocus has released two new DLP projectors meant for the business and educational markets with the IN3902 and IN3904. The main difference between the two is the former's native 1024x768 resolution and the latter's 1280x800 resolution. Shared between the two is compatibility with InFocus' LiteBoard technology, which allows users to interact with the projectors, annotating, appending and highlighting projected content with a wireless remote called the LiteBoard Wand.
Samsung has introduced a new monitor that doubles as a TV on Wednesday with the 27-inch SyncMaster P2770HD. The display is Samsung's largest with an HDTV tuner built-in and can natively display 1080p video. The integrated picture-in-picture and picture-by-picture features let users compute while watching TV.
ABBYY has announced that FineReader Express Edition for Mac now supports Snow Leopard. The program is an optical character recognition (OCR) tool, which converts scans and camera images into various files such as XLS spreadsheets, PDF documents and HTML pages. It automatically detects tables and reconstructs them, also providing tools for editing the end result.
Bang & Olufsen on Wednesday introduced a new addition to its BeoVision 7 HDTV lineup in the form of a 55-inch model. It becomes the largest BeoVision 7 offered, readily beating out the 40-inch set available in North America. Most notably, Bang & Olufsen has doubled the panel's refresh speed to 120Hz but has also added motion compensation. There is also a new LED backlight with progressive scanning and local dimming that improves the contrast ratio.
AMEX Digital today put out an internal Blu-ray drive upgrade kit for owners of current generation Mac minis. The slot-load SATA drive gives the Mac the option of burning Blu-ray discs in apps that support it as well as reading Blu-ray media at up to 4X speeds; although Macs can't yet play Blu-ray movies directly, AMEX suggests using VLC to load the raw video files. Boot Camp gives access to regular movie playback.
Matrox on Tuesday prepped for a record-setting launch of the M9188 PCIe x16 Octal graphics card. The PCI Express board supports as many as eight DisplayPort or single-link DVI outputs from a single Linux or Windows computer. The single-slot card otherwise sports 2GB of memory and can handle resolutions of up to 2560x1600 in DisplayPort mode, or enough for a 30-inch display on each jack. DVI is limited to 1920x1200.
Dell on Tuesday released three commercial workgroup printers meant for use by businesses. This includes the 5130cdn, which is being touted as the world’s fastest single function letter-size office color laser printer; the 7130cdn, Dell’s first LED color printer with tabloid-size printing capability; and the Dell 3330dn, a high-performance monochrome laser printer. The 5130cdn can print up to 47 single-sided pages and 37 double-sided, letter-sized pages per minute in either black and white or full color.
Yesterday's Mac OS X 10.6.2 update has also solved some problems related to Photoshop, says Adobe product manager John Nack. The fixes are noted to have been tested with help from Apple, and target problems such as application crashes when opening or saving files. Similarly, crashes and program errors should no longer occur when using the Menlo font, in Premiere as well as in Photoshop.
Intel today launched a new handheld specifically to help with reading. The simply-titled Reader carries a camera and automatic text conversion to translate printed text into a digital form that can be read either onscreen or spoken aloud. It's billed as useful to archive text but is focused on helping the blind or poor-sighted read without needing to use Braille.
ARRIS, the recent owner of Digeo and its Moxi-branded DVRs, announced on Monday it has overhauled the Moxi line and given it new features. This includes adding a three-tuner version of the Moxi HD DVR and introducing a new Moxi multi-room package that includes the new three-tuner Moxi. At the same time, ARRIS has dropped the price of its existing dual-tuner Moxi HD DVR. The new three-tuner Moxi HD DVR lets users record up to three channels at the same time and watch a program already recorded.
