Archive for March 19th, 2009

By March 19, 2009 Read More →

Google enable street view in the UK

photo Google Maps now allows users to navigate some UK city streets, using photographs taken at a street-level viewpoint. It has been rolling out its Street View service gradually in various countries, starting with the US, since May 2007. Camera-equipped cars began photographing British streets in the summer of 2008.

"Street View has been hugely popular with our users in Europe and worldwide, and we’re thrilled it’s now available in the UK for so many great cities, enabling users to see street-level panoramas of major city roads and look up and print out useful driving directions," Ed Parsons, Google UK’s geospatial technologist, said in a statement.

The full list of UK cities covered by the service includes: London, Edinburgh, Leeds, Bradford, Cambridge, Cardiff, Belfast, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Oxford, Sheffield, Nottingham, Derby, Bristol, Coventry, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Swansea, York, Newcastle, Dundee, Southampton, Norwich and Scunthorpe. The scope of Street View is limited in some cities, a spokesperson for Google said.

Posted in: Phones
By March 19, 2009 Read More →

Windows Marketplace for mobile details revealed

image

Msmobiles have uncovered some interesting information on the upcoming marketplace for mobile. First off this is definitely an application and not a link to a website. Also included are automatic updates of purchased applications, search of applications suitable by device type, payment by credit card or through carrier, access to user ratings and reviews and transfer of applications to a new phone. For the full story visit msmobiles and also take a look at the video from mix09

Posted in: Phones
By March 19, 2009 Read More →

Capacitive touch is not affordable for Microsoft

image Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has been talking with Stephen Adler from BusinessWeek, and All Things Digital’s Peter Kafka was a fly on the wall for the event. He paraphrased the chat, which we have below and has answered the big capacitive screen question and a few others. What he has to say is rather surprising and not the answer I wanted to hear, quality and usability should be the driving force not cheap products.

Stephen Adler: Do you care about “touch” on phones? The blogs say you are.

Steve Balmer: Windows Mobile 6.5 has touch on it. The way Apple does touch drives cost. The way they do it on the iPhone is not an inexpensive component. We’ll do it in a way that you can afford to do it on most phones.

Posted in: Phones
By March 19, 2009 Read More →

Sanyo Xacti HD2000 unboxing video

If you are a regular reader you’ll know that we’ve looked at several video cameras in Sanyo’s Xacti range and most recently we reviewed the Xacti HD1010. I have to say that I really like the Xacti cameras, they are really well specified, are small, light and easy to use. Most importantly the quality of the recorded video is really good. I’ve been using the HD1000 to record unboxing videos for about 6 months and really like it. It’s convenient to be able to take the SD card from the camera and pop it in a card reader to copy the video to the PC for editing.

HD2000_angled_left

The Sanyo Xacti HD2000

 

Despite have the same external look the new Xacti HD2000 has a number of improvements over the HD1000 and HD1010. First of all the optical zoom has been up rated from 10x to 16x (it remains 10x for stills) the CMOS sensor is now 8.1 megapixels which allows you to take 8 megapixel stills without interpolation. Face chaser has been updated and can now track and focus on 12 faces in a shot.

Perhaps the most important change, though, is that full HD 1080p recording has been upped to 60 frames per second from 30 fps. It’s pretty unusual to have 60fps on a consumer grade camcorder and even more unusual on a camera this small. If you want to shoot Full HD at 60FPS though make sure you’ve got a high capacity SDHC card and make sure it’s a good quality fast one as that’s a lot of data to be recording!

As with the HD1010 I’ll be spending some time with the HD2000 and will be using it for some of our unboxing videos. I’ll also record some other sample footage to share with you.

I’ll leave you with the HD2000 unboxing video below. As you can see, you get quite a lot in the box!

 

Sanyo Xacti HD2000 unboxing video (recorded with Xacti HD1000)

 

Sanyo Xacti HD2000 specification:

Video

  • Zoom: 16x optical
  • Resolution: 5.31Mp (HD)
  • Definition: High
  • Scan method: interlaced & progressive
  • File type: MPEG-4
  • Image size: 1920×1080
  • Focus types: Continuous area AF, manual
  • Minimum illumination: 2lux
  • Monitor: 2.7in TFT LCD screen
  • Interface: HDMI, component, S-video, composite
  • Formats: NTSC, PAL
  • Power: Li-Ion battery

Still

  • Zoom: 10x optical
  • Resolution: 8Mp
  • Sensor size: 1/2.5in
  • Sensor type: CMOS
  • Image size: 3264×2448
  • File type: JPEG
  • Sensitivity: ISO50-3200
  • Storage: SD/SDHC
  • Focus types: 9 point AF, spot
  • Normal focusing: 50cm-infinity
  • Close focusing: 1cm-1m
  • Metering types: Multi, centre-weighted, spot
  • Exposure compensation: /- 1.8EV in 1/3 step increments
  • Shutter speed: 1/2-1/1000sec
  • Flash: In-built
  • Monitor: 2.7in TFT colour screen
  • Interface: USB 2.0 via docking station (included)
  • Power: Li-Ion battery
  • Size: 112.6x90x54.5mm
  • Weight: 311g (inc. battery and card)

Full specification can be found on the Sanyo Website.

 

Posted by: Matt

[ Post Tags: Sanyo Xacti HD2000, camcorder, video cameras, tracyandmatt.co.uk ]

Posted in: Cameras
By March 19, 2009 Read More →

Windows Mobile 6.5 Widgets explained

image A new blog post over at the Windows Mobile Team Blog has  given us a little more information on the Widget Platform for Windows Mobile 6.5. From the post they tell us:-

For the first time since windows mobile 6 shipped we are expanding our development story to make easier and more accessible writing applications that not only look great but also consume cloud services to bring a portable chunk of the web to our mobile devices.

A good way to think of a Windows Mobile Widget is as a “Portable chunk of the web” or just basically a rich internet application.  Widgets are written using all the web technologies we know and love (HTML, CSS, AJAX, JavaScript) and, since they are powered under the covers by our new internet browser, they have full access to flash and other ActiveX controls available on the device (Like MediaPlayer).

The interesting thing about our Widget Platform is that it allows them to look and feel, to the end user, as a normal standalone application does; they have their own start menu icon, they show up as an individual apps in task manager and, most importantly, they have full control of the SK menu bar as any other application would.

You can read the full post over at the Windows Mobile Team Blog

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Posted in: Phones
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