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Excellent. This is what we need. Matsushita is developing a hybrid image sensor chip that combines the best qualities of CCD image sensors (good quality, good low light abilities) with the best qualities of CMOS image sensors (low cost, low power consumption.)
For high-end digital camera and camcorder users, 1.3 and 2MP is a little bit of a disappointment since it will have no immediate impact here. What it does mean is that a whole new wave of higher image quality camera phones, X10 wireless cameras, and other low-power devices should start appearing on the market soon.Woot! 2MP camera phones with reasonable battery life. I. Cannot. Wait.
More technical details are here at EE Times.
Cool concept sketches of a hypothetical PDA / notebook combo with a folding screen. I've thought about something similar before. The tradeoff might be worth it: a much smaller folded size unit in exchange for a very thin seam down the middle of your display.
Texas Instruments is about to make wireless capabilities much easier for manufacturers to add to their products:
This will allow TI to add a cellular radio right into its DSP processors which are used by companies like Nokia and Palm. (Well digital CMOS radios have been around for a while, but it has been very hard to make them commercially thus far.)
This digital CMOS radio would cost an additional 35 cents and will basically do three major things: cut the cost of handsets drastically, reduce the power consumption hugely, and if all goes well basically make bluetooth, Wi-Fi and all future wireless PAN and LAN technologies fairly easy to incorporate into the handsets.
Apparently Nokia is adding Python support to series 60 mobile phones. Being able to script a mobile phone is one of my dreams (yeah, I know, but you take what you can get.) It's something I didn't expect any of these companies to make possible. Is this really going to be open to everybody, or will you have to be some sort of registered developer?
Yet another reason to learn Python.
Comcast has made a surprise $66 billion bid for Disney. That match makes no sense to me.
Anandtech.com is a very old, very popular, and very well respected computer related site ("your source for hardware analysis and news" is the tag line.) Anand Lal Shimpi is the proprietor. He's always been a Windows guy, but he just bought a mac with the intention of using it as his main computer for 1 month and writing about the switch on his weblog.
This is a great test for the mac since he isn't going to pull any punches, but at the same time I trust him to have an open mind and tell the truth. Plus I figure I'll learn tons about XP since that is what he is comparing it to. Not ever having used that makes my fondness for the mac rather ungrounded, so I'm looking forward to following Anand's experiment.
On August 15, 2000 Bruce Schneier wrote:
What amazes me is the dearth of information about the security of this protocol [Bluetooth]. I'm sure someone has thought about it, a team designed some security into Bluetooth, and that those designers believe it to be secure. But has anyone reputable examined the protocol? Is the implementation known to be correct? Are there any programming errors? If Bluetooth is secure, it will be the first time ever that a major protocol has been released without any security flaws. I'm not optimistic.From ZDNet, February 9, 2004:
Nokia has admitted that some of its Bluetooth-enabled mobile phones are vulnerable to "bluesnarfing", which is where an attacker could read, modify and copy a phone's address book and calendar without leaving any trace of the intrusion.There is a more detailed look at the vulnerabilities at bluestumbler.org. I stole the Schneier link from a comment in the discussion over at slashdot.
Looks like the Foveon chip will finally hit the consumer market in the $399 Polaroid x530. Here's the Foveon website, and here's the NYTimes story on the Polaroid camera:
This week Foveon will enter the mainstream market with a new camera priced at $399 that will be manufactured in China and marketed as the Polaroid x530 with Foveon technology.Falling in cost is to put it mildly. I'm thinking the Foveon might be too late, but it will be interesting to see the quality.
The Foveon sensor chip, called the X3, is made using an industry standard semiconductor manufacturing process and has received good reviews for color fidelity and resolution. The chip is composed of millions of photo-detectors, each capable of capturing red, blue and green light. In contrast, most of today's digital cameras use a chip with individual color filters that correspond to each photoreceptor. Although the Foveon technology is generally thought to have advantages over the three-chip approach in image quality, cost, lower power consumption and adaptability to new photo and video applications, it has not been widely adopted. The challenge has been to compete with an older, more entrenched technology that is falling in cost.
From here to VOIP
Here's a product I want: a cordless phone. No, not a cellular phone. Just a cordless phone. And yes, while there are tons of such phones on the market, the one I want is not available. Read on for my first draft of what it looks like.