Hey all (both of you) - I’ll be on a vacation for a couple of weeks so posting will be at best very light and at worst not at all. Enjoy the Apple event on Tuesday… here’s to a Disney branded iPod that docks with Intel Mac Mini that has been built into a plasma tv.
See you on the flip side….
Apple’s iTunes Music Store hit their 1,000,000,000th download this evening around 9:35 PM Pacific Time. One lucky SOB got their grand prize of an iMac, 5 black and 5 white iPods and maybe best of all, $10,000 to spend on the store. I dunno about you, but 10k tracks would take me a long time to download.
Congrats to Apple on this tremendous milestone.
Walt Mossberg, venerable old fogey of personal electronics, likes the new set of big LCD compact digital cameras introduced at PMA this year. Tested were the Olympus Stylus 710, Nikon Coolpix S5, and the Canon SD630 with the Canon coming out on top.
Overall, we preferred the Canon. In addition to its superior pictures and larger screen, the Canon had a much cleaner user interface than the others. Many things about the Canon felt more like a tiny computer than a digital camera.
The Nikon and Canon were on par picture quality wise, but the Nikon requires a dock to actually remove pictures from the unit. The Olympus requires xD storage, which automatically deducts points from any review(we need to do a review of why to not buy cameras that don’t use SD or Compact Flash, but trust me, just don’t). Walt also found the Olympus a little more difficult to use.
The last few weeks on iTMS have been busy ones with swimsuits, weed, mice and buttheads, so maybe they let their engineers out of their cages last weekend. Only two new shows (although I’m not sure one counts) this week, America’s Funniest Home Videos and the more interesting release, Conviction, a soon-to-air new TV show from the creators of Law and Order. Best thing about the show, it’s a free download. Being a complete sucker for free, I watched it on the treadmill this morning… not bad, but like I need more TV in my life.
With digital cameras, I love both ends of the spectrum. There are a lot of great cameras out there right now, but I always feel like the middle kind of sucks. It just seems like there are too many compromises. I like digital SLRs and barring that, I like little pocket cameras. Canon’s announcement of the inexpensive A-line cameras is a little yawnsville for me. While I don’t d find them that exciting, the A75 I bought my parents last year for $200 was a delightful, feature packed performer and it occupies another great area of the spectrum, cheap.
New A series cameras include the A430, A530, A540 and A700. The A430, the smallest and cheapest of the lot is a 4 megapixel, 4x zoom camera for $179. The 530, 540 and 700 are basically the same camera with 5 , 6 and 6 megapixels respectively with a 6x zoom on the 700 rather than 4x on the lesser models. At $229, $299 and $349 these are respectable little shooters with many automatic and manual features.
One last Canon to mention, at the top end, the 20D got a modest upgrade to the 30D with a larger 2.5” LCD and 5fps shooting in JPEG mode for $1399.
Canon’s Elph series got an upgrade today with 3 new models, the Canon PowerShot 600, Canon PowerShot SD630, and Canon PowerShot SD700 IS. All pack 6 megapixels, the 600 has a 2.5 inch screen, the 630 and 700 upgrade to a 3 inch screen (although the 630 loses it’s viewfinder) and the 700 adds a 4x zoom rather than the 3x that has been standard on most of the Elph line.
Canon has introduced image stabilization to the Elph line with 700 IS. In theory, this will help make those long zoom shots less blurry. This is unique in the compact digicam space and new for Canon.
Canon has once again made the naming of these cameras confusing as they have fewer megapixels than the SD500 and SD550, but seem to have more features . I can’t wait for the questions as to why the 600 has a higher model number but fewer megapixels. No prices on these digicams yet, but I’m sure they’ll be priced somewhere around the $400-500 mark.
(via Imaging Resource)
Now, these haven’t been announced, but a good source has confirmed them.
Pentax brings us new thin cameras as well as a new underwater addition to their line.
(via DPReview)
Kodak updates their consumer friendly line of cameras.
Ah…. just recovering from the cornucopia of electronics announcements at CES and Macworld, it appears PMA is upon us. PMA (Photo Marketers Association) is held once a year in Orlando, FL and is the photo nerd’s paradise. The show doesn’t start until next week, but that doesn’t stop the early announcements (and rumors).
We’ll be rounding up the the new digital cameras announced prior to the big camera show, so stay tuned.
A number of stories this morning regarding the relaunch of Disney’s Moviebeam service in 29 markets this year. In a nutshell, Moviebeam is a hard drive based set top box that receives movies over unused television spectrum. The box ships with a 100 movies on the hard drive and about 10 movies are swapped out each week for new ones. Movies then can be rented for $1.99 to $3.99 (catalog versus new releases) with HD movies costing $1 more.
While the service is interesting, the biggest problem that I see is that the set top box is $250 before rebates, which is a huge barrier to entry for many folks. Not to mention it is another piece of hardware to hook up to a television. I have a sense that if this service were being a promoted by someone like Apple it could be hugely successful, but with backers such as Cisco and Disney, the future of Moviebeam is fuzzy at best.
(Via Zatz Not Funny)
Jonesing for your Swimsuit Edition in you pocket? Tomorrow morning, Apple is there to help you view SI’s bathing beauties while on that commuter flight to Des Moines. $16 gets you all the videos for your iPod so you can look less creepy in coach oogling scantily clad young girls in your spare time.
(Via TUAW)
I thought when I launched this blog that I would have coverage of all things gadget, but I realized over time that there are certain product areas that I could care less about. Mobile phones actually tracks pretty high on that list. This isn’t to say I’ll never cover mobiles on the site, but they must be leaps, not steps above the rest.
It seems like mobile phone carriers launch a new middle of the road phone every other week and keeping up in the market is pretty difficult. That said, I do like to point my faithful reader(s) in the right direction. Engadget Mobile launched this morning and promises to cover the mobile phone world like nobody’s business.
XM announced this morning that they’ve signed a 3 year, $55 million with Oprah Winfrey to launch the “Oprah and Friends” channel for the satellite radio provider. The channel will:
daily programming on a variety of topics including nutrition, fitness, health, self improvement,
home, and current events from popular “Oprah” personalities, including Bob Greene, Dr. Mehmet Oz, Dr. Robin Smith, Marianne Williamson, Nate Berkus, and Gayle King.
The station will launch September of 2006.
(Via Orbitcast.)
What would a day be without a little news about the iTMS? To celebrate the billionth track sold on iTMS, Apple is giving away a Nano and and a $100 gift certificate for every 100,000 songs sold (about 500) until they reach 1 billion songs. For the billionth track, the grand prize is an iMac, 10 iPods and a $10,000 gift certificate to iTMS.
If you want to try to game the system, try downloading iTunes Music Store Estimator to give you an idea where the numbers stand. Good luck.
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New blog post: !$title$! http://blog.stewtopia.com/2008/07/22/title/ FYI, "Hey I know this. This is Unix," was a ridiculous quote from Jurassic Park. ok, goofing off on google, I discovered that I am the number 1 search result for, "Hey, I know this. This is Unix." http://bit.ly/1LXfkx btw, thanks for all the well wishes Twitter friends. I've been reading them all to Heather and our still unnamed son. Noticing the little differences between having a baby in Seattle vs San Francisco. I don't remember an espresso bar at Cal Pacific. I think I forgot babies' schedules are completely topsy turvy. Wasn't party all night and sleep all day the motto for the Lost Boys? hangin' out at the hospital waiting for breakfast to be delivered. our son was born at 11:20 pm pdt. mom and baby are healthy and doing well. we're still working on a name. waiting for some food at the hospital cafeteria.
