...more recent posts
We're still up if you are. Weird. People are out in the streets. Pretty calm.
I'm thinking martial law. I doubt they can bring it up very quickly.
This has been on my wish list for a while, and now Nikon has delivered with the 4.1 MP D2H:
The other 'big news' about the D2H system is the new WT-1 802.11b wireless transmission add-on which allows you to FTP images back to a server as you shoot them....This isn't the form factor I'm looking for in a camera (this is a big professional SLR body,) but it's great to see WiFi being used like this. Hopefully this ability will miniaturize and trickle down into smaller cameras.
The D2H has support for FTP built into its firmware, there is a setup page which allows you to define the FTP server, username, password and folder to be used for upload as well as the image format to upload. For instance you can shoot RAW + JPEG and just transmit the JPEG via the WT-1. Images are written to the CF card first and then transmitted, in play mode the camera indicates images which are queued to be transmitted, which have been transmitted and the image which is currently being transmitted. The camera supports automatic reconnection should the wireless link be temporarily interrupted. In action the system is very impressive, the ability to be completely portable and yet see your images 'popping up' on a remote machine is an eye opener.
Motorola and NEC are co developing a WiFi cellphone:
When used inside an office, the phones tap into a Wi-Fi wireless network to make calls that travel, in part, over the Web rather than over a telephone network. Outside the Wi-Fi network's 300-foot range, the handsets switch calls automatically to a cellular network, which offers the same data features and voice calling, but at much slower speeds.This is a must have feature for my dream mobile device (although I don't care as much about voice - I just want the data connection to use WiFi if possible, but then fall back on some cellular data connection (like GRPS) if there is no WiFi network available.)
I'm at the beach for a couple of days. And my phone doesn't have service (is that a bug or a feature in terms of being on vacation?) Email me here if you need to communicate.
Weird tiny Minox DD1 digital camera. Can you wear it on a necklace?
Here's a mini review of the Sharp Zaurus SL-C750 PDA. It has the same clamshell with a swivel screen as the Sony Clie PEG UX-50, making it a sort of super sub micro laptop. The Sharp even moreso than the Sony, since it runs linux and has a somewhat improbable 640 x 480 resolution screen (text must be tiny.)
So while it's not a phone, has no built in wireless networking (although it does have expansion slots, so you could add this,) and doesn't even look that great (IMHO,) it is still an interesting device. As phones and PDAs converge I think this sort of PDA-ish form factor will win out. Sony and Sharp have both nailed it, I think, with this basic design (although Sony's is much more stylish I think.)
And the fact that it runs linux means that you - or other knowledgeable third parties - can get into it's guts in order to add functionality. This is so big I cannot stress it enough. The device must run on open (not necessarily free) standard software accessible to the device owner. So go Sharp, go. They win big over the Sony in this department.
Now if someone could just make a combo GSM / WiFi expansion card we could add phone service and wireless to any of these PDA like devices. But without really knowing anything about it, I'm guessing this is not presently possible.
Mitch Kapor outlines his mobile device wish list. I agree with everything he says, but of course I want even much more. A camera, for starters (which his Nokia has, but he doesn't mention.) But beyond that it has to have some sort of wireless connectivity (802.11b is the best bet at this point.) Spontaneous local area networks are going to be the shiznit. Yo.
Help. How do I get an HP officejet D135 (an All In One printer, scanner, fax) to work right under OS X (10.2.6)?
They have drivers (4.6.5 and an alph 4.7.something) but both are incredibly buggy and over time consume huge amounts of CPU resources (like over 70%, when it's not even doing anything?) How could this not be fixed yet?
Is Gimp Print my only hope? Doubt that's going to run the scanner though.
For the hopelessly addicted among you, and really I guess that means me, here are four high res shots of the new P810. Now referred to as the P900. One, two, three, four. Looks like the camera will be just VGA 640x420 instead of the rumored 1.3 megapixels.
Frankly, this doesn't bother me. I don't want super high res in my phone cam until the camera itself can spit out thumbnails (why can't they already?) In other words, I'd love to shoot with x million pixels resolution, and store those images in the phone (to download to computer next time I sync,) but I need the phone to make a smaller version (100K or so) that I can send it right away over the slow mobile network (either to a server or to another phone.) I hate to think how long it would take to send a 1.3 MB file over the mobile network I use now.
No word on when this phone will ship (maybe not too soon, seeing as the P800 is still not completely available.)
In other P800 family news, here's a link to an SSH client. The server is presently slashdotted, but when it comes back to life I want to check this out. SSH is a protocol that allows you to log into a unix computer from a remote location using encryption. This is the reason I can have my server in California while I'm in NYC. It's the king of all geek protocols. So, of course, something I really want on my mobile.
And here is a company that has an SSH client for the Blackberry, and a beta of one for the Nokia 3650 & 6800.
I hate how hard they make it for 3rd parties to write software for the SideKick. This seems to be mainly T-Mobile's fault.
Another fun one from gizmodo: Panasonic wireless (WiFi) webcams. Each unit has a built in web server, so you can access the camera from anywhere on your network, or depending on your firewall, from anywhere on the internet. And it has remote control pan and tilt (nice!).