RCA’s EZ201 - Crazy Small Camcorder
The RCA EZ201 looks like a little ipod with an eye to me. I wonder if it works well for the low $100’s price tag?
As expected, this 5.25-ounce video recorder sports a ho hum enclosure, no optical zoom, 512MB of internal memory, a 1.5-inch LCD, MemoryManager software, and a SD expansion slot as well. The device is also compatible with Box.net’s online storage / sharing service, touts an EZ Grab feature that allows users to easily snag still shots from live action footage, and can function for two solid hours on a pair of AA cells. Best of all, however, is the price that CC is currently charging for this budget-minded device, as the $119.99 asking price is a full $10 less than we had previously seen, and you’ll even get a 1GB SD card thrown in gratis.
Wouldn’t a cell phone be more effective than this? Not only that, you would also have to carry around this extra device on top of everything else.
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Folding@home for the Xbox 360?
Better dust off that Xbox 360! Folding@home might be coming to the Xbox 360 soon according to Microsoft.
From Engadget:
Peter Moore of Microsoft has gone on record by saying that the Xbox 360 could also join the project, although he made sure to include a jibe at Microsoft’s primary competitor by mentioning the 360’s much larger install base, and quoting Xbox 360 processor’s “equal power to the PS3.” He even went so far as to cast doubt regarding the value of the 250,000 currently registered PS3’s on the program, saying that “we’ll continue to look at this and see whether there’s real value.” We’re forced to ask: how is this kind of attitude in aid of the project? By reducing something as noble as the Folding@home project to a PR battle, Moore’s indication sounds bitter and petty. He might as well have said, “ok, we’ll fight disease, but only ’cause the Xbox 360 is better than the PS3.” The irony is, it probably isn’t.
Newlite Portable, Solar LED Lights
This solar light is pretty neat. I’m always a sucker for solar powered anything. I guess it still amazes me that we can harness the power of the sun.
From Cool Tools:
I’ve used these solar LED lights for reading at night for over a year. There are three models and I have one of each — the Heavy Duty Compact model, the Compact model and the Mini, which I attach with Velcro to my backpack and then to my bike helmet when I need it for night riding. On full brightness, the Mini lasts 12 hours (recharge time is advertised as 7 hours).The Heavy Duty charges completely in 10 hours and, at full brightness, gives 12+ hours of light, while the Compact charges completely in 6 hours and, at full brightness, gives 12+ hours of light.
Very Cool!
Casio EX-V7 Review
Dpreview takes a look at the new Casio EX-V7 in their latest review.
As well as being the first ultra-slim Exilim to sport a large (7x) zoom it is the first with mechanical (CCD-shift) image stabilization. It’s also got a wealth of unique features and a fair degree of photographic control. But is the EX-V7 as good in use as it looks on paper?
From a portion of the conclusion:
The reality is that the EX-V7 is a disappointing camera, and one that fails to deliver on its promise, even allowing for the compromises inevitably involved in squeezing this much stuff into such a small body. Of course we expect there to be such compromises, but there has to be a limit to what is acceptable; being able to fit a camera in a shirt pocket surely should not come ‘at any cost’.
I guess I never really was a fan of the Casio cameras.
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Wii graphics worse than first Xbox says Microsoft
Once again Microsoft doesn’t get the point of the Wii. They are trying to disregard it’s graphics capabilities:
The video graphics on it aren’t very strong; the box itself is kind of underpowered; it doesn’t play DVDs; there are a lot of down-line components [that] aren’t actually that interesting, Bach said in an eWeek interview. They don’t have the graphics horsepower that even Xbox 1 had.Bachs comments meant no disrespect to Nintendo, as he stressed heavily his admiration for the rival companys innovation and even predicts success for the Wii. What has raised a few eyebrows, however, is his comment that the Wii wouldnt even be able to produce graphics that we saw from the original Xbox a system released five years ahead of the Wii.
J. Allard-dreadlock-pusher N’Gai Croal of Newsweek sought to test the validity of Bachs claim and polled a couple third party developers for their anonymous comments. One of the original Xboxs greatest strengths was its NVIDIA GPUs programmable shader capability something that the Wiis ATI GPU does not have.
The Wii’s GPU has fixed functions for vertex, lighting, and pixel operations, said one of the developers. All ‘programmable shaders’ means is that the code you write for the shader gets run on the vertex and pixel hardware of the GPU. This is how it works on the high-end ATI and Nvidia GPU parts. The Wii is an older fixed function design where you have lots of operations but the pipelines are not programmable in the sense of downloading shader code to run [on them].
The point of the Wii is that it doesn’t need super-powered graphics to be fun. The gameplay is what matters. Graphics are always secondary to gameplay (not that graphics don’t matter, but they aren’t the most important thing).
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