Digital Living (Part II)
Posted by Vincent at 12:05 - Views: 65
This weekend we’ve bought a new LCD TV for our bedroom. We’re very satisfied with our previous purchase the SONY BRAVIA KDL-40Z4500. It was a no brainer that it would be again a SONY. Our preferred option was the SONY BRAVIA KDL-32EX500. Set-up was a piece of cake and after 15min I had the TV up and running including attaching the table-top stand. It’s amazing how different and more advanced this TV is in comparison to our previous HDTV:
It has the latest BRAVIA ENGINE 3 which let’s you view images with impressive detail, optimal contrast, and truer-to-life colour tones. It’s very energy efficient, Energy label A. Has PAP (Picture&Picture) a related feature showing two programs side-by-side on the screen, with the sound from one program being played through the speakers, and the sound from the other being sent to headphones.
The TV is Wi-Fi Ready (full 802.11a/b/g/n compatible) which means you can buy an additional USB adapter called the UWA-BR100, which will go into the side of the TV. We will probably buy this unit, but if have an extra Airport Express you can also bridge your current Wi-Fi channel.
There are also some build-in (BRAVIA Internet Video) online channels like YouTube, Dailymotion, Demand Five and LOVEFiLM (available services subject to country).
And is CI+ Ready, easily slot in your smartcard with CI+ CAM to access pay TV and subscription channels (CI Plus is completely compatible with Digital Video Broadcasting–Common Interface so existing CAMs can be used where available).
I give this TV a double thumbs up, if you consider buying a new second HDTV this is an excellent choice!
Update: Available (The Netherlands) 13 march
Tags: Bravia, CI+ CAM, Full HD, HDTV, KDL-32EX500, Sony, Television, UWA-BR100
Evolution Continues
Posted by Vincent at 17:23 - Views: 189
The new Canon EOS 550D will be available April, 2010. Here are some technical specifications already:
- 18 Megapixel APS-C CMOS sensor
- DIGIC 4 processor
- ISO 100-6400 (expandable to 12800)
- 3,7 fps
- EOS Movie Full HD (1080)
- 7,7 cm (3,0”) 3:2 Clear Wide View LCD with 1.040k dots
- LiveView
- iFCL 63-zone metering
- SDXC
- Quick Control screen
- Self Cleaning Sensor Unit
- Movie Crop
Short to say this camera is awesome! I am even considering to retire my old trusty 350D. When it’s available you can read a review here.
Tags: 550D, Camera, Canon, EOS, Photography, SLR
StarCraft 2 beta this month
Posted by Vincent at 9:22 - Views: 116
The closed beta for StarCraft 2 is set to begin this month. The game itself set for release in the middle of 2010.
Thousands of players will be given access to the beta, across North America, Australia, Taiwan, Europe, New Zealand, and Korea. The beta will be used to generate buzz for the game’s release, and of course to test all the new features of the updated Battle.net.
Here are a few details on the updated Battle.net: Battle.net will be the place to play and experience all Blizzard games, giving gamers the ability to speak to each other across both World of WarCraft realms and even other games. If you’re playing StarCraft 2 and your friends are in the middle of a raid, you’ll be able to speak to each other. It will also be the place to buy games and add-on content for Blizzard releases.
Take the tour via the official website
Hell, it’s about time 
Tags: Blizzard, Games, Starcraft 2
Aperture 3
Posted by Vincent at 18:54 - Views: 109
Apple today introduced Aperture 3, the next major release of its photo editing and management software, with over 200 new features including Faces, Places and Brushes. Building on the innovative Faces and Places features introduced in iPhoto ’09, Aperture 3 makes it even easier and faster to organize large photo libraries. Aperture 3 introduces new tools to refine your photos including Brushes for painting image adjustments onto parts of your photo, and Adjustment Presets for applying professional photo effects with just one click. Aperture is taking your photos further.
Tags: Aperture, Apple, Photography, Software
What if?
Posted by Vincent at 13:48 - Views: 258
Let’s start with little piece of history: Randy Ubillos and his group created the first three versions of Adobe Premiere, the first popular digital video editing application. Before version 5 was released, Ubillos’ group was hired by Macromedia to create KeyGrip, built from the ground up as a more professional video-editing program based on Apple QuickTime. Macromedia could not release the product without causing its partner Truevision some issues with Microsoft, as KeyGrip was, in part, based on technology from Microsoft licensed to Truevision and then in turn to Macromedia. The terms of the IP licensing deal stated that it was not to be used in conjunction with QuickTime. Thus, Macromedia was forced to keep the product off the market until a solution could be found. At the same time, the company decided to focus more on applications that would support the web, so they sought to find a buyer for their non-web applications, including KeyGrip; which, by 1998, was renamed Final Cut.
Final Cut was shown in private room demonstrations as a 0.9 alpha at the NAB exposition in 1998 after Macromedia pulled out of the main show floor. At the demonstration, both Mac and Windows versions were shown. When no purchaser could be found, Apple purchased the team as a defensive move. When Apple could not find a buyer in turn, it continued development work, focusing on adding FireWire/DV support and at NAB 1999 Apple introduced Final Cut Pro. In it’s current iteration’s of Final Cut Studio Pro 2, Final Cut Server and Final Cut Express. Apple has a whole end to end solution for the digital video post production market. Apple has created direct competitors for Premiere, After Effects, SoundBooth and Encore. This was a strategic defensive move against Adobe. Adobe was of course not amused by this move from Apple.
On April 18, 2005 Adobe Systems Incorporated gobbled up Macromedia in an all-stock transaction valued at approximately $3.4 billion. With this acquisition Adobe acquired all Macromedia’s technology including the application Adobe tried to destroy (Flash).
What if Apple hypothetical released an Adobe Creative Suite 4 killer. The application suite could contain a Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and Flash killer. So what would these applications look like? Let’s say Apple released a Photoshop killer called Image. Imagine an application that behaved and looked like any application from the Pro Suite, an Aperture on steroids so to say. Totally GPU accelerated using Apple’s OpenCL and of course written in Cocoa. An Illustrator killer called Draw and an InDesigner killer called Layout (based on the same code as Pages) of course native PDF and with the ease of iWork and last but not least Markup a HTML5/JavaScript/CSS editor based on the Core Foundations of Safari and with the ease of DVD Studio Pro.
With Final Cut Pro, Apple roughly claimed in 10 years 50% of US professional editing market share (according to a 2007 SCRI study).
What if Apple challenged Adobe…?
Tags: Adobe, Apple, Cocoa, Final Cut Pro, Flash, Illustrator, InDesign, OpenCL, Photoshop, QuickTime
To Flash or not to Flash
Posted by Vincent at 12:49 - Views: 499
The Adobe’s Flash drones are crying blue murder, the iPad doesn’t do Flash! Apple’s PR material on it’s website isn’t helping out either. If it’s broken don’t pretend it isn’t! Remember people we are dealing with companies here (Apple and Adobe) both of them have their own corporate agenda.
The big question is actually far more important: it’s not a question of using proprietary Adobe Flash or web standards it’s about accessibility of the content. Flash can be nice for enrichment but the same can be accomplished using HTML5/CSS/JavaScript. So poor lazy web developers rule our online experience and only bet on Flash because “everybody” (98%) has Flash installed. But what if you don’t or can’t view the content? Is there an alternative available? Often there isn’t (please download the Flash plugin)! Big companies like Google’s YouTube and Vimeo already have made their content available through HTML5.
It’s commonly known that Flash uses a lot of memory and CPU cycles, two things you definitely don’t want on a portable (or any device for that matter) add the instability of the Flash plugin which cause 99% of the crashes of the web browsers and you have the perfect answer of not using this technology. Adobe has to fix this first before it’s usable on any device.
Like Arnold Schwarzenegger so elegantly puts it: To be or not to be? …Not to be!
Update: Apple has asked their advertising agency Chiat/Day Media Arts Lab to remove the misleading material from the promo movie.Update: Kevin Lynch, CTO of Adobe reacts on the Adobe blog regarding the Flash Player issues. Read his comments here.
Tags: Adobe, Apple, Flash, iPad
Come see our latest creation
Posted by Vincent at 9:20 - Views: 217
Today ladies and gentlemen Steve will present us some Apple hardware sizzle.
We all have an educated guess what it will be
As predicted by numerous rumor sites the name is iPad and not iSlate. Roughly 9.5 by 7.5 inches and weights 1.5 pounds and has a 1GHz Apple A4 low-power system-on-a-chip processor.
The real question is: this thingy can do most a MacBook can. It’s positioned between a laptop and a iPhone. So it’s kinda like a UMPC (sorry!). Like the iPod Touch just uncontrolled grew in a gaming device I am curious to see how this device will evolve. We will be having a close eye on this.
