A New Eye View

Video cameras are everywhere, as is editing equipment and home made movies. Well, here’s a new twist on home video, a few ways to play with “special” effects like the pros (sort of).

First there is Garden Watch Cam. The name says it all. The camera can be set up in your yard and takes long videos of your plants as they grow. You can now have your own professional nature show and watch flowers bloom from bulbs to full plants. Speed it up for sure, but the Garden Cam keeps you from having to sit outside with a normal handheld for weeks.

For a less professional, but nicely ridiculous concept, there’s the Pet’s Eye View Camera. The camera takes photos instead of video, but hey, you still get a unique angle and look don’t you? And isn’t that the point anyway?

Under the Sea

Personal camcorders continue to gain in quality and function, and that goes for their accessories as well.

Canon has recently released information on its WP-V1 underwater housing for it’s new HD Vixia H20 and HF200 camcorders.  It looks a lot prettier than underwater cases we’ve seen before, but it’s just as expensive.  At nearly $600 you should be prepared to film a lot of fish or swim lessons for that kind of cash.

The cash doesn’t make the idea any less appealing though.  Think of the possibilities in kids home movies or super on the cheap independent filming.  There’s only so much land on the planet, most of earth is water anyway.

Building a Picture

Lego has partenered with Digital Blue to bring the world a new line of tech gadgets, all adorned with the lego touch.  That’s right, MP3 players, walkie talkies, and cameras all built from lego bricks.

The gadgets supposedly come out this summer and are aimed at kids, but that doesn’t mean kids are gonna be the only ones buyin.  Legos are always awesome.

Unfortunately these newest gadgets are just that, gadgets.  Despite the sweetness of the design you can’t redesign anything yourself.  The bricks don’t come apart, they just stick together forever and look cool.

A Reading Voice

Scanners are incredible, color photos, signatures, articles, all can be duplicated.  Yet, can a scanner go beyond the visual? Beyond saving a file to creating one?  The answer is yes.

The Book Reader V100 is up and running and ready to create MP3 files out of the written word.  It’s a simple and silent way to create your own books on tape.  I can’t say anything about how nice the digital voice will be to the ears, but it’s a start.  Think of the possibilities?  Get me a scanner that can copy my comics into video files and then you’ll really have something .

Camera Capability

We hope one day that the country will be completely wireless, wifi everywhere.  First America then the world.  Well Sony’s newest camera is preparing for that particular revolution.

The Cyber Shot G3 is the first digital camera to be wifi enabled.  Basically you can upload photos to the net right from the camera, very much like cell phone shots today, but better image quality.  For now you’ll have to have access to a wifi hot spot, but one day you’ll be able to upload pictures from anywhere.  It kind of kills any chance you have to “sleep on it” before posting a possibly unfortunate picture, but hey, it’s the price we pay.

Turnable Transformation

I’ve heard nothing sounds like vinyl.  I wouldn’t know, I kind of missed that musical revolution.  Vinyl remains in style though, I know it looks cool, and now Numark has created a marriage of the past and the present in musical technology.

Numark’s TTi Turntable comes with a USB connection and dock for your ipod.  This is perhaps the quickest and easiest way to transfer music straight from any old (or new) vinyl albums to your ipod library in MP3 format.  (Software is included with purchase).

I can’t attest to sound quality, or what is lost in translation, but a straight transfer sure beats having to buy the tracks all over again on itunes if you want to take them on the go.

History in the Making

It’s a new day.  A new President, a new government, a new inauguration, new photos.

Barack Obama is now officially the first President to have an official portrait taken with a digital camera.  Talk about a leap forward.  The pic was taken by new White House photographer Pete Souza.  It’s just a small step forward in the craziness that is our digital age, but hey, it’s gotta be some sort of omen for things to come.

Happy inauguration day everyone .

School of Tech

Mobile technology will one day play a major role in learning, says a new study on the untapped potential of mobile learning by The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop (Yes, the Sesame Street People) .

Called “Pockets of Potential:Using Mobile Technologies to Promote Children’s Learning,” the study outlines a national mobile learning strategy and calls upon the incoming Obama administration to invest in digital learning and teacher training.
 Among the recommendations are to build a digital teacher corps and to change school policies which ban cell phone use in schools to enable them to be used within appropriate boundaries for learning.

 “Mobile devices are part of the fabric of children’s lives today: they are here to stay,” said Dr. Michael Levine, Executive Director of The Joan Ganz Cooney Center. “It is no longer a question of whether we should use these devices to support learning, but how and when to use them. Sesame Street introduced children to the educational potential of television.  A new generation of mobile media content can become a force for learning and discovery in the next decade.”

Present Day Picasso

Paint has come a long way from paint brush pens to Squeezable 3D options and mess less Color Wonder stuff options continue to exceed all of our most basic needs.  But what about us tech people?

Well, aside from the all out professional drawing boards and photoshops of the world a new concept for digital painting brings all the wonders of the real thing to the screen.

Virtuo, a digital toolset could help all of us beginners get a feel for the art without the mess (and we’d look a lot cooler than using that color wonder stuff).  The concept is basically a digital pallet with pens, brushes, the whole deal, just no need for paper.  Use real painting skills on a less than real canvas.

Too bad it’s just a concept now, but it still look pretty sweet.

New Snapshots

In this digital age we’re all about instant gratification, so it makes sense that, like the Polaroid before it, instant photos on the go are making a comeback in the Tomy camera.  It comes at an especially important time as Polaroid film begins to disappear from shelves everywhere.

Introduced through Zink, the company that makes “zero ink printers”  the Tomy is a digital camera with printer attached.  Print little mini photos on the go as you go where ever you go.  There is the question of print quality, but part of the fun of polaroids was there unique lack of quality.  I’m keen on an updated digital idea, and the pictures make the cameras look really cute too.