sony

Sony eBook Store gets a 500k title boost from Google

Books, Music and Movies / By /

Sony announced today that they have, with Google’s contribution, added over half a million (500,000) free public domain books to their library for their eReaders. This collection consist of books whose copyright has expired, so most of these titles will have been published prior to 1932.

This brings the total number of titles in the Sony eBook Store to over 600,000 easily surpassing the 250,000 titles that the Kindle Store has.

While many see this as Google teaming up with Sony to compete with Amazon in the eReader field, I think Google probably saw this as an easy decision, choosing to go with the vendor that supported the e-book standard, EPUB. Kindle does not natively support EPUB, although it has a conversion tool that ships with the reader.

Sony Webbie HD Camera

Cameras and Photo, Gizmo of the Day, Portable / By /

A fun camcorder/camera for fun times. Sony’s Webbie HD weighs in at 7 ounces and is pocket-sized allowing you to record all your crazy life moments.

The camcorder records 8.5 hours of HD MP4 video which plays nicely with YouTube. The Webbie can also take and store thousands of photos using a built-in 5MP camera. Of course the number of photos and length of video depend on the size of the memory stick. So, since this is a Sony product, what memory stick do you think the Webbie uses? I hope you guessed a Memory Stick PRO Duo… 8.5 hours of video or thousands of photos are based on 16GB memory card.

So record your next adventure with impeccable detail as the Webbie can film in high-def (1440×1080/30p, 1280×720/30p) or standard definition (640×480/30p)… all for under $200! That’s right, the Sony Webbie is listed at $199.

Holiday Gift Ideas 2008: Laptops and Notebooks

Computers, Gizmo of the Day, Holidays, Portable / By /

Considering the number of sub-$500 products there are in this category, it’s no wonder that these are still on people’s wishlists given the faltering economy. The 2 biggest splashes this year arguably came from Apple with their new MacBook and the brand-new MacBook Air, but Dell also joined the still hot mini-laptop/netbook field with their Inspiron Mini 9 and 12, and other makers improved upon their existing minis or jumped on the bandwagon as well.

We also liked the HP tx2z which is a tablet notebook with multi-touch. Here are some ideas and prices on a few of these laptops/notebooks/netbooks.

Apple MacBook Pro (unibody Aluminum case, 17″ TFT LCD, Intel Core 2 Duo 2.6GHz 4GB 320GB NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT) – $3200
Apple MacBook Air (2nd gen. 13″ LCD, 1.6Hz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU, 2GB DDR2 SDRAM, 120GB Serial ATA hard drive, NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics card) – $1700

Dell Inspiron Mini 9 (Glossy 8.9″ LED screen, Intel® Atom Processor® N270 1.6GHz,Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 950,Wireless 802.11g Mini Card, Win XP Home, 512MB DDR2 SDRAM, 8GB SSD) – $399.
Dell Insprion Mini 12 (Intel®Atom®Processor Z530 1.6GHz, Windows® Vista Home, 40GB PATA Hard Drive, 12.1″ widescreen TrueLife® Display (1280×800), Intel®Graphics Media Accelerator 500, 1GB DDR2 SDRAM, Wireless 802.11g Mini Card, Bluetooth 2.1, Integrated 1.3M Pixel Webcam) – $599.
Dell Studio Laptops – starting around $1250

Asus Eee PCs – starting at $249!

HP tx2z tablet notebook – starting at $1150

Vaio CR Series – starting at $799

Sony Ericsson P1i business smartphone

Cameras and Photo, Phones, Portable / By /

If you’re in the market for a serious business oriented smartphone that is also stylish and gives you some personal ‘toys’, then look no further than the 3G Sony Ericsson P1i. The P1i is a touchscreen smartphone with a slew of connectivity options like GSM and UMTS, Bluetooth, IR port, modem, and USB.

For productivity, you have on-the-go document editing, calendar and contacts application, task lists and notes, and even handwriting recognition among many others. The e-mail application supports syncing back to an Exchange and a standard POP3 e-mail client.

For your personal life, you’ve got a built-in photo and video camera, video viewing, a music player, RSS feeds, and numerous applications. The video camera also integrates with the phone for video calls on UMTS networks! With a talk-time of up to 10hrs on GSM, this is perfect for business folks who don’t always get back to their homes every night to recharge.

Gimme!

More info from the manufacturer

Price: $354.95
(Please note prices are subject to change and the listed price is correct to the best of our knowledge at the time of posting)

Sony hopes to make TransferJet fly

Miscellaneous / By /

TransferJet is Sony’s next shot at taking a leadership role in founding and rallying support behind a new technology standard. TransferJet is a wireless data transfer tech that claims up to 560Mbps speeds. Sony hopes to get this into consumer electronics gadgets next year (2009).

TransferJet is only meant to go short distances, much like Bluetooth, but with a much higher bandwidth so that people can do things like quickly transfer their pictures from their camera to their computer or to a TV or to someone else.

One of the selling points of TransferJet is its touch-to-pair idea, much like Microsoft does with its Surface table, to make it easier to pair up devices quickly for transfer.

Sony now has 14 large CE firms on board, including Canon, Kodak, Panasonic, Samsung and Toshiba, and has formed a consortium to progress their goals.

Sony Walkman – Audio/Video, 8GB, and Bluetooth Headphones

Miscellaneous / By /

Remember when those (horrible) white earphones were the in-thing? Well no more. Now, Sony is giving its Walkman line of Video MP3 players some wireless love with Bluetooth built-in as well as throwing in a pair of BT headphones to go with them.

Available in either an 8GB or a 16GB size, these Flash-memory based players can store thousands of MP3 tunes or hours of video for playback on its 2.4″ LCD screen. Battery life on these guys is up to 36 hrs for audio and 9 for video.

In the audio department, you can also expect WMA and AAC audio support along with the usual MP3 support, not to mention some DRM support.

Gimme!

More info from the manufacturer

Price: 8GB: $269.99, 16GB: $319.99
(Please note prices are subject to change and the listed price is correct to the best of our knowledge at the time of posting)

Samsung shows off a 82″ OLED TV with Backlight

3 Comments / Miscellaneous / By /
At CES this year, Sony showed off their 1st OLED (Organic LED) TV that will go on sale, except it was a puny 11″ screen. It was a sweet looking TV though at 3mm thick and with a contrast ratio of 1,000,000:1. But who wants 11″ of OLED when they can get 50″ of Plasma for the same price?

Now Samsung just showed off an 82″ OLED with backlighting. We may even start seeing some more reasonably sized screens coming to stores soon as well. Essentially, it’s not a question of technology but of economics – scale and cost.

via TV Snob.

Sony Presents Thinner “Ultra Thin” OLED Display

Audio/Video, Home Theater / By /

Recently, at the Display 2008 expo trade show in Japan, Sony released an new “ultra-thin” OLED that is only 2mm thick. In addition Sony showed the newest version of the 11″ XEL-1 which is the world’s first mass-produced OLED TV. This latest version measures only .3mm in thickness which is better than the current model’s bulky 1.4mm.

Not about to go into commercial production, but an even thinner 3.5-inch prototype display was shown off that measures a mere 0.2mm (0.008in) and features a 320 x 220 pixel resolution.

Source: Pocket-Lint

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