Nikon finally took the wraps off the D3X tonight and everything we’ve been hearing about it are true. The full frame DSLR from Nikon features a 24.5-megapixel CMOS sensor and ability to capture five frames per second. Start-up time is pretty quick at 0.12 seconds with a shutter release time lag of 0.04 seconds. And the optional GPS is pretty cool for geotagging.
Newly developed Nikon FX-format CMOS sensor (35.9 x 24.0 mm sensing area)
24.5 million effective pixels
Superior-resolution image quality equivalent to medium-format digital cameras
High-speed continuous shooting of up to approx. 5 frames per second in FX format (24.5 megapixels) / 5:4 (20.4 megapixels); 7 frames per second in DX format (10.5megapixels)*1
Wide ISO sensitivity of 100 to 1600 at normal setting, with low noise performance
Two Live View modes — Handheld and Tripod
High-density 51-point (world’s largest number*2) AF system
If you’ve got $7999.95 lying around then hit the jump for the full release. Read More
Love it or hate it, Amazon.com’s Kindle e-book reader is selling well — in fact, even at $359 there currently aren’t any in stock. So Amazon certainly doesn’t need any advice from me about how to sell more Kindles, but I have some ideas about how the company could make the device more attractive to casual readers like me.
The basic idea would be to make the Kindle reach critical mass as a consumer product, similar to how many “average” people own an iPod. Whether iPod owners use it or appreciate it isn’t as important as the fact that they bought an iPod because it’s become the de facto standard for portable music playback.
Granted, e-book readers are a harder sell than portable music players as almost everyone consumes music in someway or another but not everyone regularly reads books for pleasure. Still, the idea isn’t to make the Kindle as popular as the iPod, it’s to make the Kindle the iPod of e-book readers.
Walmart has some pretty good video game deals going on right now. Available games are limited to certain titles, some better than others. For instance, there are 63 Wii titles to choose from but only 21 Xbox 360 titles. Games for the PS3 are nowhere to be found but there are two available PS2 bundles.
Wow. That’s pretty much the only word that can describe Tom Armitage’s “If Games Ran The World.” Its thesis is that, in the next few years, people who grew up playing video games will become world leaders. People who have played all the big games from every generation—Pac-Man, the first EA Sports games, Resident Evil, MMOs, fighting games, etc. Real gamers.
Then point, then, is that this generation of leaders will have already tackled the types of problems that they’ll face once in power. Things like scarcity—you only have so many bullets and saves in Resident Evil 2, so how best to manage this?—resource allocation—looking for tanks and healers to join 25-man raid, already have DPS—and so on. The games these people have been playing their whole life have taught them skills that can be used in the “real world.”
It’s a fun read. It’s not a short one, mind you, but it being your day of rest and all, and most of you being gamers in some capacity, you might well enjoy it. Me, I’ll be playing Super Street Fighter II Turbo: HD Remix on and off this afternoon.
Last week’s attacks in India have reminded us all of the keen danger that terrorism poses. But one tool that was to be employed at airports to combat terrorism, those body scanners that sometimes reveal a person’s, well, person, came under criticism. Fighting terror (inasmuch as you can fight it) is great and all, but should people literally be exposed in the process? The Germans say no, and are developing a body scanner that, while it does its job (detecting weapons and so forth), doesn’t show off your nude body to the leering airport screeners.
The new scanner will undergo proper laboratory tests this week.
The full-on “naked scanner” is already in use in other European countries such as the Netherlands.
Also, Germany-Netherlands make a fine football rivalry. Three cheers for random, tangentially related information!
It seems that Japan is getting greener almost by the week. Now Japan Post announced it will start a field test with electric vehicles (EVs) for postal services and other business activities as early as next month. The company plans to convert all of its fleet of more than 20,000 cars to electric vehicles by 2016.
Mitsubishi’s mini car “i MiEV” (pictured above) will be used in the Japan Post office in Ginza in central Tokyo for about 2 months from Wednesday, December 3. The i MiEV is planned to be used mainly for client visits.
Surveillance cameras can sometimes give you a creepy feeling (especially the ones you can’t directly see) but the nation of cute- and friendliness, Japan, now offers two solutions for that problem.
One example of a “friendly” CCTV camera is the Daruma surveillance doll. Daruma is a wish doll in Nippon so that many Japanese people see the little guy in a positive light by nature (even though it says “security camera” on the doll in the video above).
148Apps, which tracks and reviews iPhone Apps, says 10,000 applications have now been released on the iPhone App store (the site is named after the fact that you can add up to 148 applications to an iPhone or iPod touch).
A tribute page shows a mini icon for every application. And it also gives some interesting data. About 24% of apps are free; 35% cost $.99. The average cost is $3.12, including free apps. About 34% are games or entertainment, and there are 49 weather related apps for the iPhone despite the fact that a weather app is built in. Read More
Joost launched their iPhone application on the App Store this evening, giving users access to 46,000 Joost videos, including major television shows and films. The iPhone has a built in YouTube application already, giving them a serious head start when it comes to video on the iPhone. But archrival Hulu doesn’t yet – giving Joost a little room to maneuver for now. Read More
From the briny deep comes this mad-eyed comment on a post about game companies:
Hi. I regularly scan this forum. This is the head together unequivocal to ask a query.
How multitudinous in this forum are references Nautical port behind, disingenuous users?
Can I depute all the facts that there is?
Among their arsenal of weapons are bags of almonds and BlackBerry mobile phones – almonds to keep their energy up, and the mobile internet connections to stay one step ahead of police and the military.
These fuckers turned our tools against us and it’s an embarrassment – and a reminder – that the tools that make our lives easier and, dare I say it, better, can also be used to sow doom and destruction. Read More
A digital design shop in Australia, Boffswana, shows off a neat parlor trick in the video above. It places a 3D Flash character made with Papervision into a regular Webcam video using nothing more than a paper printout. (Update: Oh, and you can print it out yourself and add the character to your own video).
Our own sassy Doug Aamoth appeared on the Dr. Fitness and the Fat Guy Show last week, turning said show into Dr. Fitness and the Fat Guy and One Really Tall Norwegian. Pop over to their site to listen to Doug’s interview.
If you’ve been trying to find the ultimate in personalization, look no further – how does an 8×10 portrait of your DNA sound? For $169, you can send a swab of the inside of your mouth to dna11.com and 4-6 weeks later, you’ll get a visual image of your one-of-a-kind DNA sequence. You can customize the image in one of 25 colors, too, and it comes with a certificate of authenticity.
I’d take a much closer look at this if it sold for closer to $100. Also, I find the $40 shipping charge to hover somewhere between outrageous and ludicrous. Other than those two deal-breakers, this looks like a pretty cool idea.
Hey, look at this deal! You can see what all the SSD fuss is about for just thirty bucks after a $60 mail-in rebate.
Tiger Direct has the 32GB OCZ SATA II 2.5-inch solid state drive for $89.99 with a $60 mail-in rebate. The rebate deal is good until 11/30 – that’s tomorrow — so you’ll have to be relatively nimble if you want to see that $60 ever again.
The rebate applies to higher capacity OCZ SSDs as well, but it’s $60 across the board so the 32GB drive is the best deal.
How were the crowds at your local Best Buy, Circuit City and PC Richards yesterday? Good? Great? Grim? (My local Best Buy was pretty crowded yesterday, to say nothing of the mall itself; parking space was at a premium.) To be sure, if there’s one item these retailers hope to sell this holiday season it’s HDTVs. Lots of them, preferably. Like it or not, but HDTVs have become the great bellwether for this terrible economy: if retailers can sell a few of them all may not be lost. But if Best Buy & Co. has boxes upon boxes of them stored “in the back” it could be a sign that consumers are hoarding cash and aren’t going to spend their way out of this recession. Then we’re reduced to fighting each other with pointy sticks.
Here is a prime example of America’s incessant spending habits. They were fighting over Wal-Mart’s Xbox 360 Arcade Guitar Hero 3 bundle for $199, BTW. Insane. No wonder there was fatalities yesterday.
MSI deserves a round of high-fives for the Windbox. Generally, all-in-one computers tend to be pricey and stick owners with limited LCD screen options so the Windbox’s mounting solution just makes so much sense. The nettop is a slim-line PC that affixes to the standard LCD VESA mounting holes allowing owners to choose their monitor.
You know how in trailers of terrible “family” movies there’s always a part where the announcers says, “Here we go again!” in that dumb “enthusiastic announcer guy voice”? Think of that right now, only juxtaposed with the sights and sounds of Liberty City, for it has been revealed that Grand Theft Auto IVuses SecurROM DRM. That’s the same DRM that upset so many would-be Spore players (but didn’t bother Fallout 3 players).
Straight from a Rockstar rep:
GTA IV PC uses SecuROM for protecting our EXE… Product Activation is a one time only online authentication when installing the game. GTA IV has no install limits for the retail disc version of the game, and that version can be installed on an unlimited number of PCs by the retail disk owner.
So, if we’re to believe this shadowy Rockstar fellow, the actual restrictions imposed by SecuROM seem to be minimal. That is to say there are none, as all it’s used for is to validate your CD key. Certainly that seems reasonable. You should also know that the game requires Games For Windows Live—how in God’s name did Microsoft manage to foist that upon savvy PC gamers?—is required to play the game.
Grand Theft Auto IV for the PC is to be released on December 2. SecuROM or not, expect to find cracks available within two seconds of its release, if not before then. Such is life.
Seiko yesterday announced it has developed the world’s most solar-efficient clock [JP]. The HS533W will go on sale in Japan at the beginning of next month (price: $310). Seiko hasn’t said yet if the device will ever find its way outside Nippon.
The clock, which is just 8.5mm thick, comes equipped with a CR2032 battery as a backup power supply. Seiko says in dark places, the clock will work for 2 years powered by the CR2032 alone. The company promises that solar energy alone is enough provided the clock gets around 8 hours of sunlight each day.
Love it or hate it, Amazon.com’s 
Hey, 
