2008 July 03 | tech gadget update

Jul 03 2008

Telus bringing HTC Touch Diamond to Canada

Posted by: admin in Mobile Gadget

As if Canada doesn’t already have enough good stuff goin’ for it already, Canadian wireless carrier Telus has announced that they will be carrying the HTC Touch Diamond in its CDMA form “later this summer” (presumably by the end of September.)

This’ll make Telus the first North American operator to carry the handset. Both hardware and software-wise, the Touch Diamond is a bit of a stunner - to recall the specs, it’s got a 2.8″ touch screen, the TouchFlo 3D interface, a 3.2 megapixel camera, and 4 gigs of internal memory.

Now, would someone please announce plans to carry the HTC Touch Pro in the says before my head explodes?

Via Mobilecrunch

Jul 03 2008

Happy 4th

Posted by: admin in Life Gadgets

Hey, readers. We’ll be chilling in the sunshine tomorrow and back to posting on the weekend in the lead-up to - ummmm - the iPhone 3G! Have a good long weekend and thanks, as always, for tuning in.

Jul 03 2008

Worried Japanese putting down more seismic probes

Posted by: admin in Life Gadgets

Did you know? Japan experiences 20% of the world’s most powerful earthquakes. I didn’t know that until I read this article, though I knew they got quite a few. And as you can see, what with the country being mostly composed of volcanoes and nuclear power plants, it makes sense that they’d have the world’s […]

Did you know? Japan experiences 20% of the world’s most powerful earthquakes. I didn’t know that until I read this article, though I knew they got quite a few. And as you can see, what with the country being mostly composed of volcanoes and nuclear power plants, it makes sense that they’d have the world’s most advanced seismic activity warning system. With the five they’ve just dropped, it now includes nine deep-sea ground probes and five tsunami detectors.

They’re connected through a fiber optic cable system and monitored from a secret undersea headquarters. Actually — I’m being informed now that they’re actually monitored from a normal, above-ground observation center. Sorry, I get carried away sometimes.

Helpful image from this very informative blog

Jul 03 2008

Gallery: Dyson HQ

Posted by: admin in Life Gadgets

This day, I’ll be wrapping up everything Dyson from my trip to Malmesbury. You’ll never believe what James thinks about his favorite gadgets. I know you’re excited to see the prototype I designed. And you’ll be privy to a short video of stress tests that all the products go through. Stick around. In the meantime, enjoy a […]

This day, I’ll be wrapping up everything Dyson from my trip to Malmesbury. You’ll never believe what James considers his favorite gadgets. I know you’re excited to see the prototype I designed. And you’ll be privy to a short video of stress tests that all the products go through. Stick around. In the meantime, enjoy a small gallery of pics I was granted to take on the premises.

The two pics above are from the EMC (electromagnetic chamber ) which tests the electronic emissions for each Dyson product. Each product sits atop a rotating table and an antennae rises and falls to test frequencies at all levels, so it doesn’t, for example, turn on your Television or vice versa. Both the table and antennae are controlled from another room that has access to the room via the all-plastic camera. Dyson is the first company in the EU to have it’s own testing facility and, in fact, they’re way ahead of the curve. They’re prepared for any future standards that may come up.

The following two images are from the Anechoic chamber which measures noise emissions. Walking into this room from the rest of the hangar was a tiny creepy. It was eerily quiet. Some of you’ve griped about your Dyson being loud and whatnot, but this certain ‘noise’ is ok, state Dyson engineers. If these guys weren’t around testing the noise levels you might have a vacuum with a sound frequency that might give you migraines. Each device is optimized for the ideal possible sound, so you’ll just have to deal with it if your ears are too sensitive. That’s my thought, not Dyson’s.

Jul 03 2008

Tiny Boots MEDDLE Bedroom Version - Acoustic On Piano, Tenorion And Stylophone

Posted by: admin in Video

bonjour friends here’s a bedroom version of my new song MEDDLE which is actually gonna be released properly… oooooo wow i hear you say…. on 7 inch vinyl in August with some super cool remixes hurray…. anyway here’s a naf version i did at home with some of my gadgets, pretty messy as usual, sorry its not my fault… blame gold cat….

Jul 03 2008

Netherlands gets iPhone tariff info

Posted by: admin in Life Gadgets

Dutch readers rejoice! T-Mobile.nl has released their tariff info for the iPhone 3G. I’m going to have you look above at the screen grab or head over to T-Mo.nl because my understanding of Dutch is fairly limited and “Houd mij op de hoogte” is what I stated to a charming young lady in Amsterdam last […]

Dutch readers rejoice! T-Mobile.nl has released their tariff info for the iPhone 3G. I’m going to have you look above at the screen grab or head over to T-Mo.nl because my understanding of Dutch is fairly limited and “Houd mij op de hoogte” is what I stated to a charming young lady in Amsterdam last year and she showed me that she was really a man.

Needless to state I didn’t got back to that McDonald’s.

Jul 03 2008

Nikon D3 and D300 Firmware Updates [D3 D300 Firmware]

Posted by: admin in General Gadgets News

Hot on the tail of the D700 release, Nikon let loose firmware 2.0 for the D3 DSLR, making the extraordinary camera even better. The main points of interest are improved autofocus and white balance, but I’ve blockquoted the laundry list below. The D300 gets a firmware update to 1.03 to mend incorrect battery indicator readouts, which is not almost as exciting. [Nikon via Rob Galbraith via Gadgetlab]

Modifications enabled with upgrade of A and B firmware to v.2.00

* Images captured with “Rotate tall”, in the playback menu, set to “On”, are not automatically rotated for display immediately after capture (image review).

* The following changes and additions have been made to “f4: Assign FUNC.Button > FUNC. Button + dials” ; “f5: Assign preview button > Preview + command dials”, and “f6: Assign AE-L / AF-L button > AE-L / AF-L + command dials” menus in Custom Settings:

o The “Choose image area” option has been separated into two options, “Choose image area (FX / DX / 5:4)” and “Choose image area (FX / DX)”

o A new “Shooting menu bank” option has been added.

* When “Choose image area (FX / DX / 5:4)” or “Choose image area (FX/DX)” is selected and the function button (Fn) is pressed, the image area setting is displayed in the top control panel, in the shooting information display, and at the bottom of the viewfinder.

* A “Copyright information” item has been added to the setup menu. When “Copyright information” is enabled, the copyright symbol ( © ) is shown in the shooting info display.

* “Recent settings” can now be displayed in place of “My Menu”.

* The virtual horizon can now be displayed with shooting in LiveView mode.

* The “Vignette control” setting can now be confimed in shooting information.

* The “Vignette control” item in the shooting menu now supports all types of G- and D-type lenses, except DX and Personal computer lenses.

* The “Vignette control” compensation value has been optimized for shooting with “Active D-Lighting” the shooting menu.

* Electronic analog exposure displays are now shown in the control panel and shooting info display while the exposure compensation setting is being applied.

* The degree of the “High ISO NR” setting can now be confirmed in the shooting info display while the “High ISO NR” setting item, in the shooting menu, is being applied.

* Design of the FX-format icon in the “Choose image area” setting has been altered.

* Ankara, Riyadh, Kuwait, and Manamah have been added to the “Time zone” options for the “World Time” item in the setup menu.

* When a GPS device is used and no heading information is available, —.—° is now displayed for the “Position > Heading” option in the “GPS” item in the setup menu.

* When shooting in LiveView mode using Camera Control Pro 2 (ver. 2.2.0) or later with a PC-E lens, the aperture setting can now be adjusted from the personal.

* Autofocus performance has been improved.

* Auto White Balance performance has been improved.

* An issue that, in some rare circumstances, caused the battery indicator to blink, regardless of actual battery charge, has been resolved.

* Errors in the German help displays have been corrected.

Via [Gizmodo]