Developages - Development and Technology Blog

Filed under: Digital Cameras

Step on down into Nikon’s booth with us. Lots of goodies on display here, but what really struck us was how much the central section of the booth was taken up by (gasp!) photos. Seriously, it had a bit of a gallery feel, except with way more people. But we’re here to get our geek on, so it’s over to the gear counters we go! The stripped-down D3 body was nice, and Nikon showed off one in cross section as well, just so you don’t have to cut your own in half.

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Original post by Steven Kim

Filed under: Digital Cameras

Here’s twin brother to Pentax’s K20D DSLR, the Samsung GX-20. It looks like a nice bit of kit, and we’re really curious to see if any differences between the two as a result of Samsung doing its own thing with the JPEG processing. If you’ve been watching either this model or the K20D, you know the specs: 14.6-megapixel CMOS, live view LCD and ISO that you can crank up to 3200. Note the Pentax KAF mount, so you can put Pentax glass on this body; and there are some nice lenses in the Pentax stable to be sure. Also, Samsung was showing off their extended grip with wireless capability.

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Original post by Steven Kim

Filed under: Cellphones

Rumor no longer, Motorola is taking a hard look at its Mobile Devices unit and might very well give those slackers the ol’ Freescale treatment and spin off the division as a separate company. This sort of love ‘em and leave ‘em tactic is oddly a bit of a habit with Motorola when times are bad, and times certainly have been better — Motorola’s phone unit lost $388 million this quarter, compared to $341 million in earnings a year ago. Motorola may sell the unit or spin it into its own company, which would leave Motorola with precious few intersections with the RAZR-saturated consumer, and as more of a government and enterprise business. Says Greg Brown, current president and CEO: “We are exploring ways in which our Mobile Devices Business can accelerate its recovery and retain and attract talent while enabling our shareholders to realize the value of this great franchise.” It’s a pretty odd statement for any company to make, and considerations may be further along than they sound, but either way we’ll be keeping an eye out for any developments.

[Thanks Stasys; via Unwired View]

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Original post by Paul Miller

I Don’t Believe in Imaginary Property writes “Apparently, the participants in the U.S. ‘Cyber Storm’ war games are familiar with the Kobayashi Maru, because some of them tried to cheat by hacking the games themselves. They also prepare for some very interesting scenarios. Among other things, the organizers are worried about having too many people on the ‘No Fly’ list show up at an airport, finding ‘mystery liquids’ in the subway, and having bloggers reveal the classified location of railcars with hazardous materials. The Department of Homeland Security has already analyzed the results of the games, and plans to hold ‘Cyber Storm 2′ in March.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by Soulskill

Filed under: Digital Cameras, GPS

The highlight of an otherwise lackluster PMA 2008 came not from Nikon, Canon, or any of the other big name companies, but rather General Imaging: GE’s new camera division announced that it will release one of the world’s first point-and-shoots with embedded GPS. Well, to say that the E1050 has true GPS would not be totally accurate — but the very features it lacks are what make it possible to incorporate geotagging capabilities in the first place. You see, this model only contains a GPS radio courtesy of New Zealand-based Rakon, but no baseband chip to process the data in order to create a “fix”; rather, an NXP Semiconductor spinoff called Geotate provides server-connected software that does the heavy-duty calculations once photos have been transferred over. This results in almost no hit to battery life or endless waits for a solid fix.

It works like this: every time the shutter is triggered, the camera’s memory card briefly captures the raw data from the GPS radio, associating it with each photo. Then, once the pictures have been imported into Geotate’s proprietary client, auxiliary location data is downloaded from a central server, which is then synthesized with the camera data using local resources to establish actual coordinates. What’s more, the Geotate software hooks in to Wikipedia as well as the popular mapping and photo-sharing services, giving you real-world information about your shots while also allowing you to map them out and upload to Flickr, Picasa, and friends.

Geotate tells us that besides the E1010, we can also expect to see the platform incorporated into future cams designed by Taiwanese OEM Altek, with such a reference design pictured in the gallery below, along with one for a geotagging peripheral that snaps into a DSLR hotshoe. In the longer term, Geotate hopes to embed its low-cost solution (all that’s needed is a small radio and some flash memory) in all sorts of products, from PCs to sneakers to soda bottles. And that’s where the name of the company comes from: Geotate stands for “GEOgraphic noTATion,” with the ultimate goal being the creation of an ecosystem in which we search not by “what,” but by “where.”

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Original post by Evan Blass

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

You’ve got to give the Pentagon credit for imagining every possible threat scenario in its latest wargame, dubbed “Cyber Storm,” but the plotline this time around is pretty wild. Starting with an electronic attack on the Port Authority of New Jersey, major new networks and bloggers spread “believable but misleading” information without revealing their sources — all while hundreds of people on the “no-fly” list stream into airports, DC’s Metro trains shut down, air traffic control towers in Philly and Chicago are disrupted, and mysterious liquids are found on the tube in London. That’s quite an afternoon, but we’re taking offense to the Pentagon’s classification of the press and bloggers as “threats” — come on guys, we’re here to help. We wouldn’t spread rumors — there’s nothing at all in the hollowed-out left leg of the front pew at St. Micheal’s Church in Fort Walton, Kansas.

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Original post by Nilay Patel

Jared Tarbell is an artist and programmer who does gorgeous computational art, coded in the Processing language. And not only are the finished pieces amazing (and available for purchase), but you can also “run” the art, see it grown in a pop-up applet.

Generative Artifacts - Computation Gallery [Thanks, Patti!] - Link

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Original post by Gareth Branwyn

Jared Tarbell is an artist and programmer who does gorgeous computational art, coded in the Processing language. And not only are the finished pieces amazing (and available for purchase), but you can also “run” the art, see it grown in Flash.

Generative Artifacts - Computation Gallery [Thanks, Patti!] - Link

[Read this article] [Comment on this article]

Original post by Gareth Branwyn

Jared Tarbell is an artist and programmer who does gorgeous computational art, coded in the Processing language. And not only are the finished pieces amazing (and available for purchase), but you can also “run” the art, see it grown in Flash.

Generative Artifacts - Computation Gallery [Thanks, Patti!] - Link

[Read this article] [Comment on this article]

Original post by Gareth Branwyn

We’re in the deepest part of the winter season, so almost anything that brightens up our space (work or home) is a welcomed addition. OFFI’s iPot emits a trio of automatically changing colored LED light (Cool Blue, Soft Red, and Smooth Purple).

What do you do with it? Pop in a small plant (real or fake), an array of small desk clutter, jelly beans & mints, or even your frequently disappearing keys. It’s a small way to cheer up your personal space and works with 3AAA batters of USB plug in.

Price: $19 at 2modern.com

Original post by Popgadget: Personal Tech for Women

We’re in the deepest part of the winter season, so almost anything that brightens up our space (work or home) is a welcomed addition. OFFI’s iPot emits a trio of automatically changing colored LED light (Cool Blue, Soft Red, and Smooth Purple).

What do you do with it? Pop in a small plant (real or fake), an array of small desk clutter, jelly beans & mints, or even your frequently disappearing keys. It’s a small way to cheer up your personal space and works with 3AAA batters of USB plug in.

Price: $19 at 2modern.com

Original post by Popgadget: Personal Tech for Women

willdavid writes “Paul McDougall reports in InformationWeek on Microsoft’s new online comic. The Heroes Happen Here comic strips are being created by Jordan Gorfinkel, a former DC Comics editor who helped revitalize the Batman series. ‘Tech workers who in the middle of the night fix a downed server or take on a computer virus don’t really have extraordinary powers. It just seems that way. But a new comic book has debuted in which IT pros literally are superheroes. The daily Web comic, called Heroes Happen Here, features tech savvy crime fighters like Lord Firewall, who “stands between chaos and order” and says things like “begone vermin!”‘” And because it’s never easy, in order to read the archives of the comic you’re going to need to install Microsoft’s Silverlight.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by Zonk

Filed under: Digital Cameras

We’ve harshed on GE’s cameras before, but the company showed up at PMA with a new model called the E1050 (pictured) that’s actually pretty slick. The 10 megapixel shooter features a 5x optical zoom, HD-res video mode, HDMI out, a 3-inch touchscreen, and an integrated GPS radio that syncs up with your computer to automatically geotag your shots. All for just $249 — even if thing takes just average pictures, that’s quite a bargain. We’ll have a hands-on soon, and read on for specs on the rest of GE’s 2008 lineup, all of which include face and blink detection.

Continue reading GE unveils the geotagging 10 megapixel E1050, eight other new cams

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Original post by Nilay Patel

its hard to think of writes “There’s an interesting story up at Nature News about scientific ethics. It seems that while one group of scientists is figuring out details about aetosaurs (ancient crocodiles), another group in New Mexico is repeatedly taking credit for their work and naming the new animals they ‘discover’. It also looks like the state government, which has been asked to intervene, is trying to sidestep the issue. ‘The New Mexico cultural-affairs department, which oversees the museum, conducted a review of two of the instances last October and concluded that the allegations were groundless. But some experts call that review a whitewash, claiming that it failed to follow accepted practices of US academic institutions faced with claims of misconduct. Now all three cases are before the Ethics Education Committee of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, a professional organization based in Northbrook, Illinois, which is awaiting responses from the New Mexico team before making a ruling.’ How widespread is this kind of thing?”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by Zonk

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

As is the custom in these matters, Dell has flatly denied the existence of any product to announce at MWC, and went further on to state that the company doesn’t even plan on attending the show. Rumors of a “Gphone” were probably greatly exaggerated to begin with, and now at least the venue has been firmly shot down. That said, there was no explicit denial of an Android-related product (there never is), so the optimistic ones out there can go on hoping for a Dell phone to solve all their problems. Hey, if Garmin can do it, what’s stopping them?

[Via Electronista]

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Original post by Paul Miller