In what can better help you take ‘spontaneous’ photos, Canon adds 4 new cameras to it’s PowerShot line that have a feature called SmartAuto which detects smiles and winks and releases the shutter.
The four models are:
Some models will be available in late March.
Plug your SD memory card with digital photographs into Honestech’s FOTOBOX, plug the FOTOBOX in your PC and the FOTOBOX application runs you through a quick wizard and quickly creates a slideshow complete with effects.
You can transfer the finished product to DVD, YouTube, your iPod or save on your computer. That’s it!
Honestech makes the excellent VHS to DVD product (VHS to DVD Deluxe) that we reviewed previously.
Buy now!
More info from the manufacturer
Price: $52.25
(Please note prices are subject to change and the listed price is correct to the best of our knowledge at the time of posting)
Kodak has a new digital camera – the KODAK SLICE Touchscreen [press release]. With a 3.5″ 16:9 touchscreen, the SLICE is a 14 Megapixel camera with a 5x SCHNEIDER-KREUZNACH Lens, optical image stabilization, 720p HD video capture at 30fps, and easy sharing to sites like YouTube, Flickr, and Facebook as well Kodak’s Gallery.
Available in April 2010 for $350.
As consumers generate or collect an ever-increasing amount of digital content in the form of photos, music and especially videos, home storage solutions are growing in popularity. But what’s also becoming more important is that this content is accessible from anywhere and not just in the home. Netgear is one of the companies trying to solve this problem, and one of such product that fits the bill is the Stora MS2110.
The Stora has a very consumer-dedicated website that shows off all of its sharing and streaming capabilities, such as:
The Stora can hold 2 SATA hard drives, so you can mirror the data if you’d like for more protection. It ships with one 1TB drive for lots of initial storage.
Just one word of warning. Some of these features, particularly the sharing/access-over-the-Internet is only possible with a premium $20/yr service via Netgear’s Stora service. See the differences in features here.
More info from the manufacturer
Price: $199.99
(Please note prices are subject to change and the listed price is correct to the best of our knowledge at the time of posting)
The i-gotU GPS logger tracks your trip via GPS and records up to 65,000 waypoints in its 16MB memory. With its very small size, you can slip this into your pocket and head off on a hike, bike ride or road trip. Take pictures along the way and when you get back, plug both camera and i-gotU unit into your PC and the software will figure out where and when you took those photos.
The software is also configured to upload your travel blog to sites like @trip, Google Maps, Facebook and more. Take a look at the demo on @trip to get a good idea of what it can do for you without your having to figure out blogging software or GPS to map or photo to GPS.
There are 2 versions: a pure USB one and one that has Bluetooth so that you can pair it with your phone and use it as the GPS unit for your cell.
More info from the manufacturer
Price: $29.99
(Please note prices are subject to change and the listed price is correct to the best of our knowledge at the time of posting)
Here we have a furious round up of some of the many analog to digital converters we’ve featured over the years to persuade you to digitize your precious analog collections of audio cassettes, vinyl records, photographs, slides/negatives and VHS tapes. Let’s go!
Audio Cassettes
With CDs looking like they’re being overtaken by new performance discs and music simply being downloaded and stored on computers, it’s amazing that some people still have audio cassettes – we’ve said our goodbyes, now it’s your turn. The Ion Tape2PC USB Cassette Deck lets you do that by sticking your tape into the slot and transferring it to your computer in MP3 format. Audacity and EZ Tape software suites are included to make make everything run smoothly and is compatible with PC and Mac.
Buy now! – $125
Slides, negatives, photographs, vinyl records and VHS tape still to come. Read on.
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Once again the Geeks must keep an eye on the happenings at MacWorld while at CES as Google announced a Mac version of Picasa.
Previously Google offered only a Windows version of Picasa and placated Mac users with a standalone Picasa Web Albums uploader and an iPhoto plugin. Picasa and Mac lovers can now rejoice as the Mac release finally provides the advanced sharing and sync features of Picasa to the Mac OS X users and the release provides the “it-slices-and-dices” feature list that covers everything from color balance to collages.
Picasa for the Mac works like other platforms by offering some great trademark features including non-destructive editing, and the ability to keep track of photos anywhere on your hard drive, then automatically account for new images as you add them. This last feature finally tackles an issue I have had with iPhoto!
To run Picasa, you’ll need an Intel-based Mac running Mac OS X 10.4 and above.
Picasa was already a pretty damn good application for managing photos and even videos. Version 3 of Picasa has even more cool features. Here’s a taste:
There’s more… but just download it and find out first hand, or read to your heart’s content over at Google.
Fotoviewr is a new (free) Web-based service to turn your Flickr (or SmugMug) photos into a cooler interactive slideshow for your friends and family. You could easily get a slideshow set up in less than a minute with Fotoviewr – just plug in a Flickr/SmugMug username, then select the photoset you want to display and third, the type of slideshow you want. Fotoviewr has 6 different types of slideshows from a carousel to a wall of photos to a pile of photos on the floor.
While I love Flickr for its clean website, I find it a bit slow. Fotoviewr speeds things up by preloading the photos and making it significantly faster to browse. Fotoviewr has also built an application for you Facebook junkies.
Wanna see some photos of the Google Jets that they just parked at Moffett Field up in the Mountain View/Sunnyvale area? A friend of GfG, who is a fantastic photographer, just posted some of his very own pictures up on his blog. The pic you see is just a small sampling. Head over and check out his write-up and the rest of the pics.
