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Hands on: Casio Exilim EX-F1

James Rivington — 1210346338

We were visited by a well-known highstreet Camera retailer today, which came down to show off all the brand new cameras it’ll be selling this summer.

Among the cameras they brought with them were compact models including the Canon 82 IS, the Panasonic DMC-TZ5, the Sony Cyber-shot W170 and the Olympus Mju 850.

But what we were most pleased to see was the Casio Exilim Pro EX-F1.

While not a DSLR, it’s still one of the most astounding digital cameras we’ve ever laid our hands on.

High res shooting

Because while this aims to be a top-notch 6MP (that’s a max resolution of 2,816 x 2,112) digital camera, it’s also masquerading as a semi-professional video camera – and doing a damn good job of it, too.

It can shoot video at up to 1,200 frames per second, which frankly, is astonishing. At that speed though, the images produced are severely compromised in terms of resolution, but even at 300fps (still very quick) the videos look fantastic.

The Exilim EX-F1’s high speed CMOS sensor is capable of snapping full-resolution photos at a rate of 60 every second. That means it’s almost impossible to not get a perfect snap of your baby’s first smile or your kitten jumping in the air.

Never miss a shot

The pre-record setting is handy for this also. We tried it out and when this feature is turned on, it will capture a burst of still photos before you’ve even pressed the shutter button. And that means that even if you’re slightly late hitting the button, you’ll still get that perfect pic.

We did a few test shots and found these two modes absolutely idiot proof. It’s very hard to not get the shot you want, which is both reassuring and immensely satisfying at the same time.

The EX-F1 also has a 12x optical zoom which is great for getting in nice and tight. Plus it’s got all the latest must-have camera features like face recognition, and a 2.8-inch LCD view screen.

Everyone on the TechRadar team thought it was a fantastic camera. But it’s not without its drawbacks.

Very heavy and bulky

For a start, it’s one of the biggest, most chunky digital cameras we’ve seen in recent years. It weighs nearly 700g and we measured it at 128x80x130mm. Anyone with particularly small hands will struggle to weird this shooter with any real skill.

So while we’d all love a brilliant digital camera like this one, that can also record video at full HD resolution, its back-breaking weight and awkward dimensions make it a bit of a dilemma. The price of over £500 only makes it an even tougher call.

Stay tuned for a full review soon.

Downloads blamed for Warner share slump

Marc Chacksfield — 1210345413

Warner Music Group, the company behind Muse, REM and Nickleback, has announced losses of around $34 million. This second quarter deficit is worse than the loss of $19 million it made a year ago.

The company has blamed the lower revenue on an increase in taxes and a decrease in CD sales, as more and more music buyers migrate online for their tunes. It has also cited illegal downloads as a reason the company is losing money.

Digital downloads up

Even though the company has made a loss, its digital revenue is up a whopping 48 per cent. The digital arm of its company now accounts for just over 20 per cent of sales. This equates to around $164 million.

Warner is also gaining money on the sale of mobile ringtones but even this combined with online sales hasn’t been enough to stop the slump.

To counteract the losses, Warners has announced it is to diversify revenue streams. According to The Guardian, it is to recoup money from ticket sales, merchandising and making deals with MySpace.

Weird Tech: 'Not using PayPal is like dealing heroin'

Julia Sagar — 1210345258

In a spectacular display of negative PR, eBay Australia’s vice president Simon Smith inadvertently compared sellers who don’t use the PayPal option to heroin dealers this week. Things went from bad to worse for the VP when he blurted out the ill-chosen metaphor during a public meeting about the future of the company.

The conference was called to appease Australian customers following the decision by the online auction company to only allow buyers to purchase goods via PayPal. Which just so happens to be owned by – yep – eBay.

Comparing its customers to drug dealers really should have been on the list of things not to say…

Facebook publicity stun floods Leeds

In other news, a mass water fight arranged on Facebook resulted in thousands of pounds-worth of damage to an award-winning public garden in Leeds earlier this week. Around 350 people stormed the Millennium Square garden on Bank Holiday Monday armed with water pistols, buckets and water balloons.

Leeds City Council said plants were trampled, turf ripped up and water features emptied and filled with foam. Organisers of the water fight have apologised for the damage - blaming an unexpected turnout from publicity on the social networking site - but will be holding the event again in 2009.

Terror at 33,000ft

And there was terror in the skies when a pilot narrowly avoided a mid-air collision at 33,000ft after allegedly "showing off" to a boy in the cockpit. According to the Times, the Air France flight from Manchester to Paris suddenly began ‘rocking and rolling’ like a fairground ride.

Passengers reported that a young boy later exited the cockpit with a "big smile on his face", moments before the pilot launched into an emergency 19,000ft climb to avoid another aircraft.

As this random protester spotted in the street would say: "What a moran". (That's moron, spelled by morons.)

Air France is launching an investigation.

Perhaps the pilot should take inspiration for an excuse from the Lancashire police helicopter pilot who claims he was blinded by the "beam from a laser pen" whilst helping chase a vehicle from the air. The BBC reported that the pilot was "forced to take evasive action" when the beam shone into his eyes. A 45-year-old man was arrested yesterday on suspicion of endangering the aircraft.

And finally…

Motorists in South China have gone high-tech in their efforts to shirk speeding fines. According to State media, drivers are dodging penalties with the help of machines that can switch the numbers on licence plates around in seconds.

If you live in the area, a basic remote-control device will set you back less than a British speeding fine (£60), with more advanced devices that flip the numbers in less than three seconds pegged at just over double that.

"The era of covering up the licence plate by hand has passed," a driver surnamed Zheng told Xinhua news agency.

How Kodak invented the digital camera in 1975

Audley Jarvis — 1210343688

A Kodak engineer credited with inventing the digital camera has revealed how bewildered company executives couldn’t understand why anyone would ever want to look at images on a TV screen when he first proposed the idea of a ‘filmless camera’ to them in 1975.

The hefty device was the brainchild of Kodak engineer Steve Sasson and his team from the Kodak Apparatus Division Research Laboratory. According to Sasson the finished article resembled “a rather odd-looking collection of digital circuits that we desperately tried to convince ourselves was a portable camera.”

Both hands required...

Although Sasson’s account of how his invention came into being was originally written late last year, it’s only now that the usual suspects from the online tech and gadget worlds are picking up on his revelations, helped no doubt by the rather striking pictures of the original camera that accompany it.

This so-called ‘portable’ digital device apparently borrowed its lens from a Super 8 movie camera, while a portable digital cassette recorder served as the equivalent of a modern-day memory card.

Rudimentary processor...

The device also sported a highly temperamental new type of CCD imaging area array, and an analogue-to-digital converter that was effectively “stolen from a digital voltmeter application”. To operate on the go, the device required no fewer than 16 nickel cadmium batteries.

According to Sasson, the camera used the CCD to capture a digital image and then stored this on the attached digital tape cassette recorder. The transfer process reportedly took 23 seconds to complete.

World’s first digital photo frame?

Once the image had been stored the cassette could be removed and transferred to a custom playback device – itself the size of a small suitcase – incorporating a custom frame store able to interpolate the 100 captured lines to 400 lines, thereby generating a standard NTSC video signal which was then sent to a TV set.

To call all of this ‘portable’ was indeed a creatively generous use of the term, however there’s no denying that Sasson and his team were well ahead of their time.

Indeed, when company executives at the ill-fated presentation asked Sasson how long it would be before his invention had a consumer potential, the inventor applied Moores Law and said 15-20 years.

Sony Ericsson – officially no fun

Gareth Beavis — 1210343375

Confusion reigned today at Sony Ericsson when it was announced at the launched of their flagship Taiwanese store they would be releasing a new series of mobile phones.

Dubbed the F-series - for fun - the range was printed on the list of mobile phone product prefixes.

But word from Sony Ericsson head office is they have no such product in the offing.

“We do not have an F-series in our portfolio,” says a spokesperson for SE. “We haven’t announced anything like this.”

Looking inward

The spokesperson also said there would be an internal investigation about the claim, though there was no word on whether the sign would be removed.

Sony have already released an F-prefixed phone - the F500i - back in 2004, though it is unknown whether any future ‘F’ models would be a continuation.

Softpedia reported the F-series unveiling, and included pics of the prefix sign, so see the proof for yourself.

New MartinLogan Spires

Dan George — 1210342140

MartinLogan, the American high-end electrostatic loudspeaker manufacturer, has launched a new upmarket model – the Spire. The new ‘panel’ loudspeaker follows the hybrid line most recently popularised by the company’s recent Source and Purity loudspeakers, which broke new price ground for the iconic manufacturer.

The new Spire, however, is a more high-end product, with deep, well extended bass and a host of acronyms to describe MarinLogan’s proprietary technology. It features a ‘CLS’ (Curvilinear Line Source) ‘XStat’ electrostatic panel, mounted in the firm’s rigid, extruded aluminium ‘AirFrame’ chassis.

Panel beater

The speaker’s treble and midrange are handled by a slim-line stator panel, which integrates with the ‘PowerForce’ bass system, to offer a full-range output. PowerForce comprises a 250mm aluminium bass driver coupled with a 200-watt amplifier to deliver bass down to a claimed 29Hz. This unit acts as the literal and figurative base for the panels and takes up approximately the same space as a case of wine.

Further key features include the ‘Vojtko’ crossover – derived from the Summit loudspeaker – which includes a parametric EQ knob (centred around 35Hz) to optimise the interaction between loudspeaker and room. The cabinet part of the panel speaker is offered in a range of wood finishes as standard, in addition to special ‘Custom Shop’ options. The Spire is ready now priced at £7,300.

Nvidia: Current CPU-GPU balance in PCs is 'obscene'

Jeremy Laird — 1210341913

Just forked out for a new rig with a fast processor on board? Then Nvidia has some very bad news for you. Your PC is "obscenely" imbalanced thanks to an overpriced, underperforming CPU - probably courtesy of Intel.

It's just the latest salvo in the burgeoning war of words between Nvidia and Intel this year. But what exactly is Nvidia getting at? Talking to TechRadar earlier this week, Nvidia's VP of Content Relations Roy Taylor outlined a developing strategy for leveraging Nvidia graphics technology to accelerate a wide range of PC applications. Very soon, the world will discover just how pathetic conventional CPUs really are.

If Taylor is correct, the initiative will deliver a massive, unprecedented boost in PC performance. We're not talking the 2x or 3x boosts in performance that the PC industry delivers on a regular basis. It could promise as much as 20x or even 100x the performance of todays multi-core CPUs. Yikes.

CUDA cometh

The basic premise is the use of Nvidia's CUDA programming platform (itself closely related to the C programming language) to unlock the increasingly programmable architecture of the latest graphics chips.

On paper, it's extremely plausible. In terms of raw parallel compute power, 3D chips put CPUs to shame. A good recent example is the new room-sized, high density computing cluster installed by Reading University.

Designed to tackle the impossibly complex task of climate modelling, it weighs in at no less than 20 TeraFlops. That sounds impressive until you realise that just a single example of Nvidia's next big GPU, due this summer, could deliver as much 1TFlop. So, a few four-way Nvidia GPU nodes will soon offer the same raw compute power as a supercomputer built using scores of CPU-based racks.

General purpose GPU

A little bit closer to home, one of the early applications Nvidia is promoting as a demonstration of the general purpose prowess of its GPUs is a video encoding application known as Elemental HD.

Downsizing a typical HD movie for an iPod using a conventional PC processor can take up to eight hours or more, even with a decent dual-core Intel chip. Nvidia says the same job can be done in just over 20 minutes on an 8800 series Nvidia graphics board.

"When you look at the question of whether you should transcode video on a GPU or CPU, when you consider it in performance-per-buck terms, it's currently obscenely the wrong way round," Taylor says.

And the solution is simple enough. Don't spend any more money overall. Just spend a little less money on your Intel CPU and a little more on your Nvidia GPU.

Hardware PhysX

What's more, Taylor says plans to support the recently acquired PhysX physics-simulation engine on Nvidia's GPUs are also nearing launch. Before the end of May, a total of eight games with GPU-based PhysX are due to announced. 30 to 40 such titles will be available this time next year.

So, that's it then. The game is up for the CPU and Intel alike? Not so fast. For starters, there's a good reason why CPUs don't deliver the raw compute power of contemporary GPUs.

CPU cores are big, complex beasts, designed to turn their hands to almost any task and make a decent fist of it while not excelling in any one area. GPUs, even the most recent and programmable examples, are still a lot less flexible. When they're good, they're great. When they're not, well, they simply won't do the job at all.

"At the moment general-purpose GPU applications are admittedly very high end. But increasingly people are asking why are scientific research industries including medicine and climate modelling are using GPUs," Taylor says.

The answer is the unbeatable bang-for-buck performance ratio that GPUs deliver. Taylor reckons Nvidia has a large number of partners with consumer-level applications lining up to key into its GPU technology. Several are due to be revealed later this summer.

Waiting game

Until then, however, it's impossible to say whether the benefits will be as spectacular as Nvidia claims. Likewise, we'll have to wait and see just how smoothly it all works. The only non-3D consumer application for GPUs that has been widely tested on the market so far is video decode assist. And that has been a distinctly hit and miss affair.

But even if Nvidia can deliver reliable, transparent hardware acceleration for a wide range of applications with its GPUs, it will still have a huge fight on its hands from Intel.

Intel's intriguing new GPU, known as Larrabee, is due out in late 2009 or early 2010. Apart from the fact that it will be based on an array of cut-down X86 processor cores, little is known about its detailed architecture. But as Intel's first serious effort to compete in the GPU market, it's a game-changing product.

For Taylor, of course, the Larrabee project merely confirms that the GPU is where the action is. “Why does Larrabee exist? Why is Intel coming for us? They're coming for us because they can see the performance advantage of our GPUs,” Taylor says.

He's probably right. It will be a fascinating contest.

MySpace introduces ‘data availability’

Marc Chacksfield — 1210340398

It’s always been difficult for the online social butterfly to keep abreast of updating their numerous web profiles. MySpace knows this and that is one of the reasons why the world’s biggest social-networking site, MySpace, has unlocked the data on its site for others to use.

Share and share alike

The ‘data availability’ project means that uploaded photos, friends’ lists and information can now be synched between websites. So, if you update MySpace, the other automatically updates too.

So far it's Yahoo-owned companies that have signed up to the deal, namely Yahoo, eBay, Photobucket and Twitter.

Altogether that makes an impressive 150 million internet users and according to the BBC, this is 85 per cent of the total US internet market. Any site that wants to sign up, however, can.

One notable absentee in all of this is Facebook. Speaking recently to the BBC, MySpace’s COO Amit Kapur had this to say about the site’s absence: “This project is open to any site out there that wants to work with us. We are happy to work with Facebook if they want to join up with our effort.”

Data gatherers

MySpace is the first website of its type to implement this type of data availability. By being the first they now put themselves at the forefront of data gathering; meaning the websites that sign on to the project will get their info from MySpace and not the other way around, something that will be no doubt vital to the website in the future.

Gear4 DUO brings satellite speakers to iPods

Patrick Goss — 1210339395

Gear4’s latest ipod speaker is actually fairly astounding - it isn’t a run of the mill docking station by dint of a detachable portable speaker system.

So while you can appreciate the sub-woofer in your own home, it is also possible to detach the bulky bit of kit and take the speakers with you on your merry way.

The Gear4 DUO, available in June, has a total output of 38W, which becomes 18W with just the satellite speaker, a rechargeable Lithium-ion cell and a handy extra battery compartment.

Original

In their own words: “The patented Seamless Sound Technology (SST) allows the Satellite Speaker to be effortlessly docked into the Bass Unit, where its built-in Lithium-ion battery will automatically recharge, making it permanently ready for portable use.

“So, whether you want a home or portable speaker, you’ll Never Miss A Beat!”

At least it’s got a spark of originality in the sea of samey iPod accessories

Do violent games automatically breed violent kids?

Tech Staff — 1210337696

A major study in the US has managed to find some sensible middle ground between the alarmists who claim that violent games automatically breed violent children and the see-no-evil, speak-no-evil, hear-no-evil defenders of violent video games as nothing more than a bit of harmless fun.

Funded by the US government to the tune of $1.5 million, the study was conducted by Dr Lawrence Kutner and Dr Cheryl Olson – a prominent husband and wife team from Harvard University who are also the co-founders and directors of the Harvard Medical School Centre for Mental Health and Media.

Far from being yet another two-bob exercise in finding the right facts to suit the argument of a particular side and fill out some newspaper column inches, Kutner and Olsen’s study was undertaken over two years from a purely academic point of view.

Different approach

In contrast to nearly all previous studies, the two authors rejected the idea of concentrated empirical tests and instead decided to speak directly and at length to their research subjects – approximately 1200 of them – to question them about their attitudes towards games – both violent and non-violent.

The conclusions the pair reached were first published in July 2007 in the Journal of Adolescent Health, and have since appeared in a number of other academic publications.

Their findings are also about to be published in a parent-friendly book entitled Grand Theft Childhood: the Surprising Truth about Violent Video Games.

The aim of the book, according to its authors, is to steer the focus away from hysterical headlines and instead offer parents practical advice on how to identify and limit the risks violent games may – or indeed may not – pose to their children.

One size doesn't necessarily fit all

Significantly, the book avoids a one-size-fits-all approach to the subject and instead focuses on the ways that different children will react differently to the same violent material.

It’s this non-universal approach to the subject that’s perhaps most significant. The failure to recognise that not all children react in the same way has been all-too-familiar fault with the vast majority of studies into the effects of violent video games in the past.

Sitting on the fence?

However, the study’s findings don’t always sit quite so neatly on the fence. In fact, the study did reveal how there is a correlation (but not necessarily a connection) between violent video games and aggressive behaviour in boys and girls.

Specifically, Drs Kutner and Olsen found that 51 per cent of boys who played mature-rated games (for age 17+) had been in a fight in the past year, compared to 28 per cent of non-mature-rated game players.

In girls the contrast was even higher, with 40 per cent of girls who played 17+ games having been in a fight in the past year, compared to just 14 per cent for non-mature players.

In a recent interview with GameCouch, Drs Kutner and Olsen hinted that there was no simple, universal explanation to why this was:

“The causes of aggressive behaviour are extremely complicated; teasing out the specific contribution of video games is near impossible, especially since kids who are already aggressive seem to prefer violent games and movies,” they said.

“Instead, we focused on identifying markers of risk: patterns of game play that were associated with problem behaviours that parents … could spot,” they added.