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Panasonic has introduced a new Lumix digital camera that offers a 3-inch touchscreen LCD. According to Panasonic, this is the first touchscreen LCD that has been released for a Lumix digital camera model. The Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX500 also features a 25mm ultra-wide-angle Leica DC lens, 5x optical zoom and 10.1-megapixels.

The Lumix DMC-FX500 boasts of innovative features and intuitive design that will enable consumers to experience enriched digital photography and ultimately enable them to take better photos. Having two modes of operation, touch-screen and joystick, the Lumix DMC-FX500 can record HD video, adjust photo quality by touch using their finger or by using the Lumix stylus pen that comes with the Lumix FX500. Users can also set the auto-focus and exposure frames by touching the subject on screen while taking photos.

Other noteworthy and new features of the Lumix FX500 include Auto Focus tracking, intelligent auto mode, and the easy organization menu for viewing sets of photos. Photos can be scrolled through the their thumbnails which are located below the main window. Users can also edit the titles of the photos using an on-screen virtual keyboard.

The Panasonic Lumix FX500 comes in black and silver and will retail for $399.95 once it hits stores in May 2008.

Read [Market Wire]

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Panasonic has announced the Lumix TZ50, a Wi-Fi enabled digital camera that looks and performs like the previously released Lumix TZ5. The 10x optical zoom, the 3-inch LCD and the appearance of the Lumix TZ50 are reminiscent of the older Lumix TZ5. But that’s not saying that the Lumix TZ50 has nothing better to offer. The Lumix TZ50 is a powerful digital camera in itself besides having built-in Wi-Fi 802.11b/g.

With Wi-Fi capability the Lumix TZ50 will allow users to upload photos directly from their digital camera to the web for storing and sharing. But since, the Lumix TZ50 is currently available only in Japan, uploading site is limited to Panasonic’s Lumix Club site. Perhaps when, or if the TZ50 is released officially in the US, users will have more options for uploading photos, it is speculated that this will include Google’s Picasa, but we can also hope for Flickr. 

Aside from the Wi-Fi connectivity, the Lumix TZ50 also features a 28mm ELMAR Leica wide angle lens, bright 3-inch LCD with intelligent LCD function, 10.7-megapixel 1/2.5-inch CCD, high ISO sensitivity from 100-6400, various shooting modes, PictBridge compatibility, 50MB of internal memory and a memory card slot that supports SD, SDHC and Multimedia Card.

The Panasonic Lumix TX50 will be available in the Japanese market by May 18, 2008 with a price tag of ¥49,800 (around $500 US).

Via [Engadget] Read [Panasonic Japan (translated)]

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Posted Mar 19th 2008 6:05AM by Thomas Ricker
By now you’ve had a chance to sample the reviews on nVIDIA’s new flagship GeForce 9800 X2 graphics card right? Good, so did you happen to see the comments from bit-tech about heat? During their testing, bit-tech encountered “a number of heat-related crashes, hard locks and instabilities” with their ASUS Striker II Formula motherboard. They claim with 100% certainty that all the issues were related to the installation of the GeForce 9800 GX2. Apparently, the heat generated by the card coupled with 9800 GX2’s air-flow restricting footprint caused the motherboard to enter an automatic self-protect mode as board components exceeded 90 degrees Celsius (190-degrees Fahrenheit) — the GPUs never exceeded a reasonable 85 degrees Celsius. A fan placed directly above the motherboard’s south bridge (responsible for HDD controller, I/O, etc) fixed the problem. Consider yourselves warned.

Filed in archive Cameras by jim on March 19, 2008

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The latest, top of the Panasonic, "FX" line, has just been announced and it looks like a dream camera to me.

The slim line Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX500 has just about every feature necessary to satisfy everyone from the casual snap shooter to the most ardent photo-hobbyist.

For fans of wide angle photography, such as yours truly, this camera, with its 25-125mm lens, 35mm equivalent, should fill the bill nicely.

I'm eager for the results of the first tests to see how well the Leica F2.8 Vario Elmarit lens fares on barrel distortion, the bane of ultra wide angle lenses.

This camera has far too many advanced features, such as anti-shake, and loads of programmed modes to mention here, so check out this thorough run down of the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX500 digital camera and get ready to be amazed.

Take a camera with you whenever possible, and look around, you'll find a picture somewhere.

Source:www.panasonic.com

Polaroid had announced they were leaving the instant picture business and with that many people thought they would just quietly disappear. Well it seems that has been quite the opposite, just recently they had announced the ZINK printer and now they have announced the Freescape 4360 portable media player.

The Freescape 4360 features a 4.3-inch 16:9 widescreen display, 60GB of internal storage, Wi-Fi, FM tuner and TV-out. With a rechargeable Li-ion battery it will offer up to 16 hours for audio playback and 4 hours for video playback. The Freescape 4360 has support for MPEG4, WMA, WMV, MP3 and JPEG formats, with some speculation that there will be a future plugin for DivX. While the Freescape 4360 is not yet available, it is expected to retail for around $400.

Via [CrunchGear]

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Posted Mar 19th 2008 5:47AM by Richard Lawler
Filed under: HDTV, Home EntertainmentBest Buy is following Future Shop, Circuit City and others in reaching out to casualties of the format war. In this case, anyone who bought an HD DVD player from Best Buy before February 23, 2008 can request a complimentary $50 gift card for each player. For those too traumatized to even look at their discontinued hardware and software, Best Buy also announced it’s adding hd dvd players and media to its Trade-In Center program, starting March 21. No word on how much a player can net you, but once its updated, check BestBuyTradeIn.com to get an estimate and decide how much holding onto the past is worth.

[Thanks, Harmin C.]

Update: Best Buy just issued a press release with additional information about the more than $10 million in gift cards it plans to distribute, and details on how to make sure you get yours, check out the full PR after the break.
Best Buy Stands Behind Customers By Awarding More Than $10 Million in Gift Cards to HD-DVD Purchasers
Leading Consumer Electronics Retailer will Send $50 Gift Cards to Customers Who Purchased an HD-DVD Player from Best Buy in the U.S.

MINNEAPOLIS–(BUSINESS WIRE)–With Blu-ray declaring victory over HD-DVD in the high definition movie format war, Best Buy, the nation’s largest consumer electronics retailer, is giving $50 gift cards to customers who purchased an HD-DVD player or HD-DVD attachment from its U.S. stores before February 23, 2008. Customers will get a gift card for each player or HD-DVD attachment that they purchased. Through this program, Best Buy will distribute more than $10 million in gift cards to customers across the country.

“The DVD format war has divided our customers in a way we haven’t seen since Betamax took on VHS more than 20 years ago,” said Brian J. Dunn, president and chief operating officer for Best Buy. “At Best Buy, we understood and shared our customers’ frustrations as they were being asked to choose one format or the other. Now that the format war is over, we hope these gift cards will reassure our customers that we will help them make a smooth transition into the right technology for their needs.”

Most Best Buy customers won’t have to do anything to receive their gift card. As a demonstration of its commitment to its customers, Best Buy will proactively mail cards to all customers that the company can identify as having purchased an HD-DVD player. Members of the Best Buy Reward Zone program, customers who purchased Performance Service Plans (PSPs) or who made their purchase on BestBuy.com should look for their gift cards in the mail by May 1. Other customers who may not be easily identified can call (888) BEST BUY to receive their gift cards with proof of purchase through a credit card or their Best Buy receipt.

“The beauty of this offer is that it doesn’t require our customers to give up their HD-DVD player,” said Barry Judge, chief marketing officer for Best Buy. “We know that many people who purchased these players have HD-DVD movies that they would like to continue to watch. We’re telling our customers they can keep their players to play these movies as well as their older DVDs and use the $50 to treat themselves to anything else in our stores.”

HD-DVD players can actually deliver greatly enhanced video performance with standard DVDs by upconverting the video resolution.

Beginning on March 21, customers who do want to get rid of their HD-DVD players can visit Best Buy’s Online Trade-In Center at www.bestbuytradein.com. Visitors to the site will receive instant estimates of the value of their HD-DVD players and movies. Those who agree with the estimates can then ship their goods to the Trade-In Center free of charge by downloading a prepaid shipping label and will receive an additional gift card as payment for their trade-in. This service is open to HD-DVD owners regardless of where they bought their player.

For more information visit www.bestbuy.com/hddvd.

Posted Mar 19th 2008 4:34AM by Thomas Ricker
Filed under: Digital Cameras
Take Panasonic’s 9.1 megapixel TZ5 with 10x optical zoom and 3-inch LCD, slap in some 802.11b/g WiFi and what do you get? This, the Lumix DMC-TZ50. As with most WiFi cameras, the TZ50 can upload your pictures from any WiFi hotspot but is then locked into specific image sharing sites; in this case, Panny’s own Lumix Club. There is hope for a more open model, however, when the TZ50 goes global. After all, the Panasonic / T-Mobile WiFi demo we saw at CES tied images to Google’s Picasa. Ok, it’s not Flickr but it’s a start. Available May 16th in Japan for ¥49,800 or about $500.

[Via Impress]

Following yesterday’s round of rumors about SP1, it’s now officially available for download courtesy of the Microsoft web site. Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Five Language Standalone is the fancy name that it goes by, and it’s supposed to address “specific reliability and performance issues”, and has added support for new types of hardware (Blu-Ray drives?) So if your PC needs some serious updating, your are now free to do so.

Product [Microsoft]

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Posted Mar 18th 2008 5:51PM by Donald Melanson
Filed under: WirelessWhile some companies are busy exploring other options for bringing wireless connectivity to rural areas, Intel’s apparently been hard at work pushing plain old WiFi as far as they’re able to, and they’re reportedly now seeing some rather impressive results. According to Technology Review, the company’s so-called “rural connectivity platform” (or RCP) is able to beam WiFi signals from one antenna to another located more than 60 miles away, and at data rates up to 6.5 megabits per second, no less. To do that, Intel whipped up some software that effectively rewrites the way the two radios communicate with one another, in particular by eliminating the extra data sent confirming transmissions. Of course, those high-powered antennas also come into play considerably, but Intel says the entire system is both inexpensive (it’s aiming for below $500 when it starts selling it in India later this year) and low-power, with two or three radios in a link requiring just five or six watts.

[Via The Inquirer]

Posted Mar 18th 2008 3:16PM by Nilay Patel
Filed under: Desktops, Laptops
We’re not suggesting you put any stock in rumors, particularly from DigiTimes, but there’s something about the chatter that NVIDIA is in talks to acquire VIA that makes sense — or maybe we’re just blinded by our desire to see all that unnecessary capitalization finally come together. Still, whispers are just whispers, and while we can see NVIDIA trying to bolster its GPU offerings with VIA’s x86 CPU offerings — and perhaps snag some of that Crysis-capable Isaiah thunder — we’ll believe it when we see it. After all, the last we heard NVIDIA was set to buy AMD, remember?