Web Edition - NewsGator Online

"iTunes and Pepsi are teaming up again to give away free iTunes downloads, as well as free iPod mini. Chances are good, too, with 1 in 3 a winner (hopefully we can still do the tip up trick). Even better, the codes will appear across a great portion of the Pepsi line, including Mountain Dew and Sierra Mist. I made out pretty well last year when all my friends gave me their codes (too bad I can't play any of those songs anymore since I broke them with Hymn!)"

[Gizmodo]

Fun Google hack with Google Images - The Digital Photography Weblog - digitalphotography.weblogsinc.com

Fun Google hack with Google Images - The Digital Photography Weblog - digitalphotography.weblogsinc.com

Fun Google hack with Google Images

Posted Sep 30, 2004, 2:43 PM ET by Amit Malhotra

Phillip Torrone continues to amaze us with his photo hacking skills. If you have not already checked out engadget .... here is his latest..

Here’s a fun thing to play around with, if you’re bored at 3am. Most Sony digital cameras start saving photos with the following name “DSC00001.JPG” and a lot of people take these photos and upload them to the web, where the all-knowing, all-seeing Google later catalogs all of them. So by clicking this link you can see the first photo taken by someone with their new camera, this is what it looks like when thousands of Sony cameras lose their photo-virginity.

Update: Bonus fun, IMG_0001.JPG is the equivalent for Canon cameras. So, that will work too. Here’s CASIO, Pentax and Nikon. And one of our readers points out “Using DSC as a search string in P2P programs also works great for turning up things on peoples hard drives they they didnt know they were sharing”.

Where it gets even more interesting is, if you turn off moderate search setting (NSFW) and enter the most generic terms , common names and of course, any potential file name even IMG_0034.JPG.

SAMSUNG Introduces World’s First “3-dimensional Movement Recognition” Phone

SAMSUNG Introduces World’s First “3-dimensional Movement Recognition” Phone

Samsung Electronics unveiled the world's first “3D movement recognition” mobile phone (model: SCH-S310). ‘Accelerometer' is built in to accurately calculate and ascertain movement in three dimensional space and then carry out commands according to those calculations.

Midget iPod, budget iMac? The guessing game is on / At Macworld, Apple must sketch out shape of things to come

Midget iPod, budget iMac? The guessing game is on / At Macworld, Apple must sketch out shape of things to come

Midget iPod, budget iMac? The guessing game is on

Sony DSC-T33

Sony has confirmed that the DSC-T33 (which besides being on the slender side and the latter successor to T-1 and T-3 versions, also has a 3x optical zoom lens and a 2.5-inch LCD screen) will actually go on sale here in March with a retail price of around $450.

The T-1 is a very poor performing camera.

New Version of Wi-Fi

WSJ.com - Personal Technology

MIMO -- which stands for Multiple Input, Multiple Output -- is likely to be the basis for the next major flavor of Wi-Fi, now under development, which goes by the technical name 802.11n. It's intended to replace the most common flavors used in homes today, which engineers call 802.11b and 802.11g. But MIMO is so good that makers are rushing it into the market even before the new standard is complete.

CNN.com - Microsoft offers free security program - Jan 6, 2005

CNN.com - Microsoft offers free security program - Jan 6, 2005

Microsoft Corp., whose popular Windows software is a frequent target for Internet viruses, is offering a free security program to remove the most dangerous infections from computers.

Barely legal? Strip poker hits Cingular phones | CNET News.com

Barely legal? Strip poker hits Cingular phones | CNET News.com

A tepid version of strip poker for cell phones is set to debut in the United States, and while there's no nudity--on the screen, at least--the game's distributor is preparing for complaints that it stretches the boundaries of good taste."

'Alchemy' Au1200

Product Brief

AMD has announced a new chip called the 'Alchemy' Au1200, designed to power portable video devices of all sizes. The hot heat about the Alchemy is two-fold: first, it can resize almost any major format video into different resolutions on the fly (upscale and downscale, it seems), meaning that devices that use the chipset won't have to have video transcoded to its native resolution before copying it over; also, the chip will power portable video players that will be compatible with the just launched TiVoToGo service that will allow you to copy recorded content from Series2 TiVos to portable devices, such as the newly announced GoVideo and FIC's video players. (Thanks, Dimitri!)

Alchemy Product Page [AMD]

Techdirt:Vonage Goes VoWiFi -- How Big Is The Market?

Techdirt:Vonage Goes VoWiFi -- How Big Is The Market?

Vonage is about to pick up quite a bit of press coverage for their unveiling of "plans" to offer a WiFi phone that will work with their service. It wasn't a secret that they were working on such a plan, and it sounds like this isn't so much a launch as it is a confirmation that they plan to launch it at some point (giving them an extra chance at getting some publicity).

Yahoo! News - Motorola to Build Cell Phones Into Ski Jackets

Yahoo! News - Motorola to Build Cell Phones Into Ski Jackets

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Motorola Inc. (NYSE:MOT - news) said it will unveil plans this week for a line of outerwear that uses interactive cell phone and portable music technology in snowboarding jackets, in a bid to win over twentysomethings.

PlayStation Portable from Sony

SouthBendTribune.com: PlayStation Portable from Sony

Even if you don't particularly like video games, you'd best resign yourself to what appears certain to anyone who's spent a little time with Sony's new PlayStation Portable:

This is a gadget that's likely to eventually become a worldwide household hit. That holds true especially if your household includes, as mine does, a young man who grew up with the original PlayStation.

Full length films - coming to a handset near you

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Full length films - coming to a handset near you

Mobile phone owners are being targeted by a company that has developed technology allowing them to watch full-length films and TV shows on their handsets.

From next month, tiny chips will allow most people with recent models to turn their phones into mini DVD players.

Casio Exilim Zoom EX-Z55 review by PC Magazine

[PC Mag]

The Z55 has the sharpest images we've seen in a camera this size, a big LCD, Casio's great menus and features, and reasonable speed. But the images produced by this camera don't quite measure up to those of of the Canon Powershot SD300.

Impressed by BitTorrent? Third-gen "Swarming" Technique Moves Faster:

"If you're impressed by BitTorrent, you're going to be absolutely blown away by SwarmStream," promises Justin Chapweske, inventor of Swarmcast, the first swarming technology. It's a line he uses on his blob and in his presentation at JavaLobby. Here's how Chapweske explains it:
"The technology improves swarming by ensuring that the bytes that the user wants next are scheduled to be received next. So if they're playing back a video file, the bytes from the front of the file will be received first. If the user (or application) skips forward to the middle of the file, the bytes at the middle of the file will be prioritized. Thus, unlike first generation swarming systems like Swarmcast or Bittorrent, you don't have to wait for the entire file to download to do something useful with it!."
" It also provides Self-Healing Downloads, implements a full-blown, scalable, Web Proxy Cache, and actively works to ensure that the video playback never studders or buffers by constantly monitoring and adapting to changing network conditions." That's just the tip of the product. [Paidcontent.org]

SD Card Doubles as USB Flash Drive - Everything USB

"Taiwanese-manufacturer Digimaster has released the first SD card that doubles as a USB flash drive, or vice versa. One end of the card has the connectors of a regular USB 2.0 interface while the other end has the same interface of a regular Secure Digital, making it compatible with many digital cameras and PDAs. The Double Card is touted as the perfect storage for eliminating the need to bring along a SD card reader. Initially, 128MB version will retail for $880 (Taiwan New Dollars) and 256MB for $1280."

mpack Product

Yet another mini entertainment center. When will people start migrating to these devices vs. iPods? Probably not anytime soon unless price points drop precipitously or marketing on these products get better.

World's smallest miniDV Cam

Sony Announces World's Smallest miniDV Camcorder

Only to be outdone in another week by a Chinese knockoff.

Fujifilm FinePix F440 review by PC Magazine

The Fujifilm FinePix F440 is stylish, fun to use, and great for showing off at parties. But its square shape can make for awkward shooting, and the pictures you get are only adequate.

I've never really liked the Fuji cameras. Poor picture quality and hard to aim...

Giant robots in the backyard | CNET News.com

[Cnet]

In the back of Carlos Owens' southern Alaska yard, an 18-foot-tall steel robot is taking shape in the dim light of the winter afternoons.

The 26-year-old Owens is an Anchorage-area steelworker by day. In his own time, he's hoping to become the creator of a true "mecha"--not a robot, exactly, but a gigantic exoskeleton that can transform its wearer's motions into eight-foot strides and the devastating sweep of a steel fist.