The promise of the Kodak’s EasyShare V1253 is immense. As the world’s first compact cam with a video capture function that can pull high-def (that’s 720p, and no I’m not counting those Sanyo products), this could represent a rare case of digital convergence that carves out an entirely new niche.

We just got our hands on this pore-revealing pocket shooter. A full review will come later, but here’s some pics and a quick overview.

While this 3x-optical-zooming camera shoots 12 megapixels—way more than anybody not in the poster business would actually need—the real story is the video function. Along with the simultaneously-released V1233 (which is bulkier and thus not quite as awesome), this thing can capture 720p video at 30 frames per second. Once we put it through the ringer, lets see if it lives up to its promise.

It’s got a very-necessary digital image stabilization, but I’d imagine high-def tremors will be unavoidable from something this small.

The camera is a bit bulky for a compact cam (especially next to Casio and Sony’s offerings), but it will still stow nicely in a purse or pouch. It also requires a proprietary adapter in order to plug a U.S.B. cord into it, which is obnoxious.

At 3.1-inches, the rear L.C.D. screen is absolutely enormous. There’s no optical viewfinder—so be warned—but the colorful screen should keep most pupils happy.

It retails for $300, and should be available now.

In general, as the cliche goes, Apple products are known for being simple, pretty, easy-to-use, and fun. And this is exactly why they are bad for progress in the tech world.

While Apple’s gadgets are undoubtedly user friendly, that ease-of-use always comes at a price. In this case, it is a stinginess with features—video had been around on PMPs for years before the 5G iPod brought it to the masses, and no iPod has yet to include an FM reciever or voice recorder. For the most part, the mass market gets by just fine without such add-ons, as long as a product’s core functionality shines. Unfortunately, all too often, other companies try to mimick this, and end up producing under-powered Apple rip-offs that lack any sense of innovation or experimentation. Unfortunately, many companies seem to have confused “simple” with “feature-less.”

Ever since the iPod burst onto the scene, Creative, SanDisk, Archos, Microsoft, and all their other DAP-making brethren have attempted to beat Apple by giving consumers more features for less money. It obviously hasn’t worked, and the obvious response is “Why even bother?” To these companies, it must look like no matter how many bells and whistles they stuff in their players, they just can’t win. In fact, it may be that they can’t, but that doesn’t mean the public doesn’t win by them trying.

These players represent a sort of farm league for features. A typical feature cycle goes like this: A new feature pops up on one of their players, gets put through the ringer while the technology gets better, and eventually shows up on an Apple product, to much hoopla, when they are ready for prime time. In the end, Apple usually gets credit for the development of the feature, even though such credit is beyond ridiculous.

Still, this farm league is necessary for the progress of innovation—particularly as it concerns mobile gadgets. Without it, we’d likely be stuck with the same stale players for years.

So this is a call to all the Archoses and Creatives of the world: Don’t despair. Keep putting on tons of features that nobody uses. Even if they don’t boost your sales one iota, you are providing a valuable service to everybody who wants great features. And don’t worry about following Apple’s lead—leave that to Chinese iPhone cloners. Instead, worry about carving out your own niche. One day, you just might find that that niche is suddenly the mass market.

Seth Porges writes on future technology and its role in personal electronics for his column, The Futurist. It appears every Thursday and an archive of past columns is available here.

So, here we go. The best cheap laptops for toting to campus. With one exception, we’ve stuck to machines that start at under a grand. After all, college kids are poor and break and lose things. Of course, since virtually all laptops are customizable, all prices are approximate — a few extra gigs of memory or a sweet new HD-DVD drive will boost any price.

MacBook: The “Duh” Pick

You don’t need me to tell you about this one, but Apple makes it simple. The 13-inch MacBook is ridiculously easy to tote, pretty as hell, and shines with just about everything that matters to college kids—movies, music, media editing. Of course, Macs were never known for their games, so get Parallels or Boot Camp if your fragging fingers are feeling frisky. And while it might cost a bit more than a comparably-powered Windows machine (and is the only machine we are featuring with a sticker that tops a grand), a Mac is a virtual vaccination that will keep you free of viruses, which spread through campus computers faster than mono at DTD.
Starts at about $1099

Dell Inspiron 1420: For the Color-Conscience
I still don’t get why people make such a big deal over what color a gadget comes in. But they do, and if you are one of those people, while i won’t pretend to understand what goes through your mind, I will recommend this computer. After all, one of its eight available colors is sure to make you happy. On a more technical note, this computer is a pretty damned good deal. Most configurations clock in under a grand, and it comes with a healthy 160GB hard drive, 2-to-4 gigs of RAM, an okay-sized 14.-inch monitor, and a I-guess-it’s-now-standard Core 2 Duo processor. Also neat: For about 150 more clams, you can get it preloaded with 3G broadband from any of the non-T-Mobile carriers who offer such surfing services. And at 5.9 lbs, you’ll feel it, but it won’t keep you from carrying your psych books either.
About $850

Acer Aspire 4710-2013: For The Savvy Shopper

For the cost of a pre-price-cut iPhone, you can get a pretty sweet CPU. I’ve played around with some of Acer’s new laptops a bit and, other than the sheer heft of their up-scale multimedia offerings, have been seriously impressed. Their designs have improved like crazy (this model got some input in that department from BMW Group Designworks USA, although it still doesn’t feature cup holders), and their machines have become incredible values. For just $600, you can get a Core 2 Duo processor, 8x DVD burner on a nice-looking 14.1-inch model. For the money, I’d reckon to say this machine can’t be beat.
About $599

Toshiba Satellite P205-S6237: Bonkers For Big Screens

Campus networks are great for sucking up multi-gigabyte flicks. Unfortunately, a small screen means you have to rest the laptop on your body, potentially killing future unborn children from hot drives and seriously cramping your style (and ability to share the silver screen.) This model gives you a 17-inch screen and more-powerful-than-expected speakers for under a grand — a rarity in the computer world. I’ve heard less-than-stellar reports on the system’s benchmarking and battery life, and it doesn’t approach Toshiba’s upmarket Qosmio’s in terms of multimedia prowess, but it also won’t rape your wallet like it’s big brother.
About $900

Everex StepNote SA2053T: The Ultra-cheap Ultraportable

Most ultraportable notebooks are ultra expensive. The fact is, cutting heft usually comes at a hefty price. Shave off the weight and the cost by picking up this notebook. At just 3.8lbs, you’ll have no trouble running between lectures with this in your bag. Under the hood, things don’t look so bad either. It’s got a 1.73-GHz Core Duo processor, a 100-gig hard drive. and a DVD burner. And who the hell is Everex? I’m not too sure, but if they keep pumping out machines like this, they could turn themselves into the Vizio of notebooks. And notice the Wild Hogs screenshot. Maybe these guys hang out with Steve Jobs.
About $680

“Steve Jobs’ entire keynote was a series of middle fingers directed at AT&T and their carrier brethren,” says Sascha Segan, lead cell phone and PDA analyst at PC Magazine. “Notice that he dropped the iPhone’s price without mentioning AT&T; that he’s introducing the iPod Touch into Europe before the iPhone, which will depress iPhone sales there; and that he had a long chat with a Starbucks exec without once mentioning T-Mobile, who operate all of the Starbucks hotspots that he’ll be selling his music through. Never mind that the song he decided to demo on the iPod Touch was Beck’s ‘Cellphone’s Dead.’”

Perhaps he is merely sharing the frustrations of millions of Americans fed up with carrier-locked phones, draconian contracts, poor customer service, and ludicrous fees, but it would appear that, a little more than two months after bringing Apple into the cell phone game, he is already sick of it.

Click the jump to read more…

“The very existence of the i-minus-phone, the Touch, is a slam at AT&T,” Segan adds. “AT&T was hoping that they’d get customers to come over from other carriers for the ability to use Apple’s radical new product. Now Apple’s offering an option for all of those Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile users, who now don’t have to switch to AT&T – they can get their Touch and keep their existing phones. The phone is the weakest part of the iPhone anyway.”

Add to the list the fact that the iPod Touch will be available in a 16-gig version while the iPhone still maxes out at 8, and I couldn’t agree with Sascha more. It’s almost like he thought: “Carriers: I hate you. Customers: Here’s the iPhone without having to deal with them, and an extra 8-gigs of memory to play with while you’re at it.”

As I said–I’m not sure what kind of backroom wheelings and dealing Jobs has had with AT&T, but I would bet money that they have been littered with frustration and tension. I would also bet that Steve has the date his exclusivity agreement with AT&T expires circled on his calendar. I think it goes without saying that he can’t wait to open up his toy to the rest of the country, not to mention the rest of the world, where customers are free to pick whatever phone they want, no matter who they choose to pay their monthly bill to. While few electronics companies are as American as Apple, perhaps Jobs’ mentality would find itself a better fit in Europe or Asia.

And since they apparently have some new product announcements lined up for next month, lets just hope their idea of “innovative new cellphones” doesn’t involve simply plastering the RAZR with new coats of paint.

NYTimes

The official line from Nintendo is that the Wii Wheel steering wheel accessory will be available in the beginning of 2008, along with the Wii version of Mario Kart. However, I just got back from Europe, where I happened to spot that very product for sale in an electronics store within the Amsterdam airport for 20 Euros, or about $26. Check it out.

And if your first thought is “Oh, it’s a third-party knock-off”, then I ask you to check out the official-(looking) Nintendo logos on the bottom corners of the box. They don’t do it like that on Canal Street.

Another day, another Apple announcement. Fortunately, this was no “Lets take another look at Leopard” letdown. As far as product unveilings go, this one was absolutely a doozy. We saw them (almost) completely revamp the entire iPod line, add a new (but still familiar) face to the mix, and bring frowns to the faces of Sony and HP, who had the misfortune of announcing products on the same day.

So lets take a look at what some of what they’ve done, and what it all means:

JUST 99 CENTS FOR A RINGTONE!!!:

Note to Steve Jobs/Apple, Inc.: Your press conference attendees are a pretty friendly bunch. At most press conferences, if journalists broke out in applause every time a new slide came on the screen, media watchdogs would go “Oh no they didn’t!” But with you, it’s okay. You see: The journalists who cover you are just, as if not more, passionate about this whole technology thing than anybody out there. So when a legitimately great piece of technology comes out of Cupertino or anywhere else , it may be somewhat understandable if they can’t help themselves but applaud like Yoda just came on-screen for the first time during an Empire screening.

But we also recognize the smell of corporate hubris and grossness when it starts to waft through the hall. Just a few months ago, you said that the digital music industry should abandon DRM completely. To now engage in the very worst of all DRM crimes: double charging (that is, forcing consumers to buy the same thing twice in order to work on multiple devices), you are embracing everything that we hate about DRM. Shame.

IT’S FOR A GOOD CAUSE:

Ah, what’s there to say? I’m sure the Apple engineers were busy enough with the thousands of other goings-on that they figured they could get away with slapping a coat of red paint on a Shuffle and calling it a day. And really, what’s wrong with that? A good Shuffle in white should be a good Shuffle in red.

THE 3G NANO:

The words of the immortal “Weird” Al Yankovic come to mind:

“My zippers bust, my buckles break
I’m too much man for you to take
The pavement cracks when I fall down
I’ve got more chins than Chinatown…

Because I’m fat, I’m fat, come on
You know I’m fat, I’m fat, you know it
You know I’m fat, I’m fat, come on you know
Don’t call me pudgy, portly, or stout
Just now tell me once again who’s fat.”

The lack of video on the Nano was merely a product of Apple’s design. Smaller, crappier, less-powerful MP3 players than the Nano have been playing video for years. Still, you have to give them credit for not stuffing the moving image on anything with a screen — video capabilities on tiny, poor-resolution screens are rarely used, and often cause more harm than good. They waited until they had a super bright screen, decent-sized screen, so good for them.

THE iPOD “CLASSIC”:

Are we already nostalgic for 2005, when the 5G iPod first tore up the cover of Time magazine and ushered in a new era of portable video? These days, tech product names tend to evoke futuristic feelings of sleekness and bleeding-edgness. When I hear the word “Classic”, I imagine a gas-guzzling Chevy that weighs three tons and can’t fit down the streets of downtown Boston. Seriously, it is almost like they don’t want this thing to succeed. Maybe there’s more profit in the flash players than this (I honestly don’t know), or maybe the presence of four players plus a phone is too muchiPod for Apple to handle, but you have to imagine that somebody in Cupertino was trying to sink this player before it got off the ground.

Still, there is definitely a market for people who desire ginormous hard drives to stick gargantuan amounts of music they’ll never listen to on. I, for one, hate shuffling songs on and off my player as it fills up. Glad to see this addressed.

DO YOU WANNA TOUCH? (YEAH!):

Add Skype and the new Touch is the best iPhone out there. Seriously though: Very good. Very, very good. There is surely a gigantic swath of people out there who desire the browsing, video, and music of the iPhone, but don’t really feel like cutting their T-Mobile contract and signing their life away to AT&T. And because of the inability for non-hackers to get an unactivated iPhone to do anything but keep papers from blowing away, there was simply no getting around it.

A few things though…
The normal time periods for carrier exclusivity for hot new phones run in 6 month intervals. So it could be 6 months, or a year, or two years. You get the point. Well, the iPhone was announced pretty much exactly 6 months ago (even if it didn’t hit until much later.) I would bet money that Apple had this product ready to roll months ago, and AT&T likely pulled all their cards (and cash) in order to give them a few months of exclusivity with the iPhone before a strikingly-similar product such as this became available.

Adding ammo to this theory is the fact that the iPod Touch is rolling out WORLDWIDE in a few weeks, meaning it could likely come out in other countries where no such carrier shenanigans exist around the same time as the iPhone.

And I’d say it is pretty much a sure thing that a 16 gig version of the iPhone is just… around… the… corner… (although we’ll honestly probably have to wait until MacWorld, or at least until they unload all the clearance stock of the 4 gig version.)

Seth Porges writes on future technology and its role in personal electronics for his column, The Futurist. It appears every Thursday and an archive of past columns is available here.

Nokia just announced a new American-ized N-95 (the one on the right side in the photo). The big deal is that it is optimized to latch onto our GSM 3G networks, so you can get your HSDPA or EDGE on stateside (it does the dance with both AT&T and T-Mobile.) It also has a few cosmetic changes—like the camera lens, as you can see. It’ll hit the states in September, and the price is an iPhone-esque $699 (mainly because it’ll only be sold unlocked, without carrier subsidies.)

Click the jump to see more side-by-side of these two cross-continental twins.

http://crunchgear.com/2007/08/29/the-futurist-the-n-gage-lives-but-can-it-survive/
In hindsight, the original N-Gage was doomed from the start. It’s games were simply spectacular for a mobile phone, but the device itself was bulky, had a pretty small screen, and looked more like a Choco Taco than either a phone or gaming handheld. A Nokia executive today said that they feel a company needs to ship 6 million devices in order to create a financially sustainable gaming ecosystem. Worldwide, Finland pushed 3 million of the tacos, leaving them far short of their goals

Still, the N-Gage, which was always more popular overseas than in the US, never really died. It’s had a sustained presence at trade shows and, remarkably, N-Gage Arena, the device’s online gaming platform, has been continuously running the whole time.

“We’re just really dedicated to gaming,” Gregg Sauter, Nokia’s Director of Games Publishing told me. “Look at the value of the games businesss — it’s a 30 billion dollar business. If you look at where money and margins are, this is big time entertainment.”

So how does Nokia intend to turn N-Gage — the little mobile platform that refused to die–into the dominant mobile phone-based gaming platform?

MULTI-PHONE SUPPORT

If you wanted to play an N-Gage game before, you were forced to use a single phone–the N-Gage. Considering that Nokia alone makes dozens of models, this seriously restricted their available market. Instead of N-Gage existing as a hardware device, it is now a gaming platform that works on any N-Series phone. There are tens of millions of these babies scattered around the world, meaning they’ve got a fine built-in base.

Of course, while nearly everybody who bought an old N-Gage likely also plopped down for some games, most people with N70s probably don’t care too much about gaming. Still, Nokia is confident that the sheer mass of units should create a large enough market. “About 50% of N-Series usesrs are involved in gaming,” Sauter said. “As we look at who is buying mobile games today, about 5% of users in general are purchasing games. But if you look at Series 60 users, its 20% percent or more.”

PUBLISHER SUPPORT:

The reason the PS2 kicked GameCube’s butt may partially have to do with superior hardware, but it also had far better third-party publisher support. The fact is, if any gaming platform is to survive and thrive, it needs publisher support. This is particularly true with Nokia, which lacks the first-party gaming history of Nintendo, which could concievably survive off Mario and Zelda alone.

Nokia’s got some gaming heavy hitters in their roster of friendly publishers. Guys like EA, THQ, Gameloft, and Capcom are all on board. Considering that it couldn’t have been the N-Gage’s proven track record of commercial success that convinced them, I’m curious as to how they managed it. Either way–they did it, and that’s what matters.

LIBERATION FROM CARTRIDGES

The N-Gage used to use SD card-like cartidges. Considering that an N-Series phone is a 3G, highspeed device, this is a bit antiquated. WIth new N-Gage games, while that cartridge option is still on the table for publishers, most games are now to be downloaded over the air. This will give publishers greater freedom to create both games that were too massive and amazing for tiny cartridges (MMORPGs, for instance), as well as tiny casual games that are likely too cheap to throw on one (Snakes II: The Revenge.)

I also have confirmation that there will be at least one online game that wil feature both PC and N-Gage-based versions that interact in the same world. So play at home, then continue where you left off when you hop on the bus.

COPING WITH BAD BUTTONS

Playing games on most mobiles means juggling tiny buttons that were made for dialing numbers, not shooting bad guys. As gross as the old N-Gage was, its dedicated gaming buttons and controller-like feel made playing a snap. By turning N-Gage into a cross-phone platform, they’ve lost some of that ease. Still, Nokia is intent on at least partially remedying the situation. According to Sauter, this includes disabling buttons that aren’t used in the current game you are playing (no more accidentally calling mom when you meant to kick a goal), and integrating touchscreens that will be prominent in future Nokia phones in a Nintendo DS-like fashion.

So will N-Gage the platform succeed where N-Gage the phone failed? That depends. They’ve got publisher support and are liberated from the one-phone-only jail the platform lived in before, but the secret to its success may be Nokia opening it up to other manufacturers. While this is obviously a possibility, especially considering that more non-Nokia phones are using Symbian these days, I just hope it won’t take another few years of for them to realize it.

Big news here in London. It’s no secret Nokia’s moving more into the content providing phase these days: offering mapping services, games, and a music store. In order to keep their scattered offerings under one umbrella, they’ve announced the upcoming launch of Ovi. A sort of cross-platform portal, Ovi will let users log on from either their Nokia phone or interneted PC to download their music (to phone or PC), N-Gage (!) games, and nav maps.

Today it’s mostly just a concept, but it keeps their offerings together, and allows them to easily roll out more content down the line.

And that word Ovi? It’s Finnish for door. Naturally.

Photos by Peter Ha

N-Gage had some decent games. The main problem with the old platform, of course, was that you had to buy one very specific Choco-Tacoy phone. They only pushed about 3 million of these suckers out the door in the entire world, which meant they were far shy of the terminal velocity needed to create a profitable gaming ecosystem. Well, there are already tens of millions of N-Series phones scattered throughout the world–Not a bad place to start out their new platform, eh? And because some of these N-Series phones have as much as 8-gigs of memory, they are relying on more of a download-and-play style system, rather than the old cartridge-based days of yore. Games will cost from 6 to 10 euros a pop (that’s 90 to 170 dollars, with current exchange rates), and will be available for daily or weekly rental or totally free demo play.

Remarkably, Nokia has kept the N-Gage Arena online gaming service alive this whole time, so N-Gage fanatics should be happy for the update.

And, of course, all of this downloading will come through the brand-new Ovi platform.

Here are a few of the upcoming titles -Peter Ha

And a list of content providers

Photos and video by Peter Ha

We love the Nokia N-Series. If you can handle a bulky pocket and don’t insist on a real keyboard (or multi-touch screen), there really is no better way of of converging everything you’d ever want to do in your pocket. Enter the N81. It hits in two versions: One’s got 8-gig of flash, the other relies on your microSD card. Both have got stereo speakers, killer music format support (MP3, AAC, WMA, etc…), suppot for N-Gage games (!), an FM reciever, a sweet “Navi Wheel”, and play video via RealPlayer. All in all: Very nice! No clue on price, but you can bet it won’t be cheap (especially since Nokia is a fan of selling non-contract GSM phones, which means no carrier subsidy.)

Nokia chose to introduce us to this sweet sucker using a boy band-style song. Oh, and look for it in Q4. Hands on pics after the jump.

The N-95 gets 8-gigs of memory, and a few (mostly cosmetic) updates today, like a nice black shell, and some other minor body mods. Still, the lack of any real internal innovation shouldn’t be too troublesome–the N95 is already a bit ahead of it’s time, if you ask me, but considering that the original came out before the most-hyped phone in history, and their entire reponse at the top-of-the-line appears to be a few gigs and a black coat–now that’s a bit worrisome. As I said: The N95 doesn’t necessarily NEED anything new to be an insanely amazing phone, but a black cover won’t do much to suck from the hype teet. Of course, the whole media machine is a bit burnt out on phones, so they’d probably have to throw in some teleporting and wireless power action to really accomplish that. And it hits in Q4.

Oh, and the President of Nokia just said that his favorite album was Signals, by Rush. I love the Finns. I really do.