Alisa's blog

The coolest gadgets this week are some new cameras, console games, and an update on the much anticipated laser-based rear projection TV from Mitsubishi. There’s lot’s more coming up on gadgets; check out what’s new for this week.

Ultra Mobile Laptop from Fujitsu
Fujitsu announced a UMPC (Ultra Mobile PC) called the Lifebook U2010. It runs on an Intel Atom Z530 (1.6 GHz) processor, has a 5.6 inch 1024 x 768 screen, and claims an 8 hour battery life. It comes in many colors and includes a built-in webcam. The reported price of $1300 is quite a bit more expensive than the comparable $500 Asus Eee PC 901
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Two Cool New Nikons
The Nikon Coolpix S560 is expected to go on sale at the end of August and will sell for around $250. It’s a 10 MP compact camera with 5X optical zoom, ISO up to 3200, advanced face detection features and optical image stabilization. It will record 640 x 480 video at 30 fps.

The Nikon Coolpix P6000 is even cooler than the S560 (and twice as expensive at $500). It’s a 13.5 MP compact camera with 4X optical zoom and optical image stabilization. One feature you’re paying extra for is a built-in GPS that “geo-tags” your pictures. This camera could be the closest thing to an SLR that fits in your pocket.

Another Game for NVIDIA’s PhysX Engine
NVIDIA announced that CAPCOM’s upcoming Bionic Commando video game will use GPU-accelerated NVIDIA PhysX technology to enhance the game’s debris, smoke, dust, and weapon effects. Bionic Commando, which will be released by GRIN in early 2009 should offer super realistic images generated by the CUDA general-purpose parallel computing processor.

Batman Game Coming in 2009
A new videogame from Eidos Interactive called Batman: Arkham Asylum will be made available for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Games for Windows in 2009. The game is being developed by Rocksteady Studios and puts players in the role of Batman as he delivers the Joker to Arkham Asylum.

New Thinkpad for Digital Artists
The Lenovo ThinkPad W700 has a big bright 17-inch screen but only weighs just 8.4 pounds. The Quad-core Extreme chip should provide lots of horsepower. The W700 is the first laptop with an integrated color-calibration system using a set of built-in color sensors along with an onboard Wacom graphics tablet. This laptop won’t be cheap, costing $3,000 before adding the extras and may go for as much as $7500 fully loaded. It’s due to go on sale in September.

News on the Much Anticipated Laser RPTV
The hype is for a projection TV with an extensive range of colors and the best depth of field of any display technology. Add to that a claimed 75% reduction in power over an LCD TV along with a 50,000-hour life span. Sound impressive? A handful of reporters were given a sneak peak at this TV at the 2008 CES and they were impressed by what they saw. Mitsubishi says they will offer a 65” Laser DLP set called LaserVue in September. The price could be less than $2,000.

New types of phones are continuously being added to the cell phone market, that too with new features. The options range from sliders like T-Mobile's Sidekick that offer big keyboards that slide out from under big displays. There are Smartphones with QWERTY keyboards and high resolution displays, and now a new generation of phones is offering many of the features found on smartphones along with cameras with lots of mega pixels, video recording, and editing tools.

Sony Ericsson C905
Although the Sony Ericsson C905 has many high end features found in smartphones it is being categorized as a camera phone. It has an 8.1 MP camera along with some cool photo features like face detection, Smart Contrast that balances light and dark areas, image stabilization, BestPic that takes seven pictures in fast succession(you keep the best), and a Xenon flash. It has a built in accelerometer so photos change to landscape mode when you turn the camera and A-GPS so photos can be “geotagged.”

You get all the latest connectivity options like 3G, GSM, A2DP Bluetooth (stereo), WiFi (with DLNA for home media sharing), USB 2.0, and Exchange ActiveSync. It has a 2.4 inch QVGA (320 x 240) display, a TV-out port for watching pictures on your TV, an FM radio with RDS (Radio Data System for station ID and track/artist info) and a megabass audio equalizer preset for better audio.

Samsung INNOV8 i8510
The Samsung INNOV8 i8510 is a camera phone with an 8 MP autofocus camera that includes image stabilization and face, smile, and blink detection. It will record QVGA (320 x 240) video at 120 fps or VGA at 30fps with a full editing suite on the phone which makes this device more like a camcorder phone than a camera phone. It supports WiFi, 3G Quad-band GSM (850/900/1800/1900MHz) and dual-band WCDMA (900/2100MHz) and runs Symbian 9.3 S60 3rd Edition FP2. It has a big 2.8 inch display, built-in A-GPS, accelerometer and has 16 GB internal storage with microSD card slot for more storage.

Motorola Motozine
Motorola is about to launch the Motorola Motozine ZN5 in China with a 5 MP camera “powered by” Kodak. It will have all the standard smartphone features minus a QWERTY keyboard and 3G connectivity. This phone is expected to be followed by the, rumored, Motorola Motozine ZN12 which could hit the stores around October 2008. It is also rumored to have an 8 MP Kodak camera, a big 2.8 640x480 display and uses an NVidia chip to help with video & 3D graphics. Some say this is a make or break cell phone for Motorola who needs another hit product in this market.

LG KU990 Viewty
The LG KU990 Viewty is an old timer by today's standards having been out for almost a year. It only has a measly 5.1 MP camera but some very impressive features. The camera uses a high quality Schneider-Kreuznach lens with autofocus, a Xenon flash, and a SmartLight feature that improves pictures taken in low light. It also includes a secondary front facing video camera for video conferencing.

The video camera takes QVGA (320 x 240) video at 120 fps which can be played back at 15 fps for slo-motion and also takes VGA resolution clips at 30 fps. A second front-facing camera can be used for video calls. It uses Haptic technology which has been used in game controllers to simulate resistance and motion, to provide added sensory feedback for some operations. The list goes on including a 240 X 400 pixels, 3 inch touch screen, FM radio and 3G connectivity. Missing is WiFi, GPS, and an accelerometer.