a blog about tech stuff and RustyG
Archive for December, 2009
iPhone Rumors aside, a 5MP camera sounds awesome!
0
With the iPhone rumors a stirr, since there is a scheduled event that normally takes place around January every year, I figured I would give you one that I thought was rather interesting and seemed a bit more plausible for a June/July 2010 release. I assume that they would talk about it in the January event, and make us wait till June, like they have before. The tidbits that I am hearing is about a new 5MP camera that would shoot 1080p video. Now I find this plausible because of the source of the current iPhone’s camera, OmniVision seems to say they will be supplying Apple with a lot of these cameras for a summer release. To be completely honest, I would be more than thrilled to know that I waited 2 years for the 4th gen iPhone and skipped the 3GS. I would be even happier if AT&T would get off their duff and make the iPhone use its 7.2Mbps connection, or at least have 4G ready by then, and would make it a perfect union of 4′s! With this camera, it looks like you will also be able to shoot 1080p video! Does that mean we will finally be able to watch our HD versions of our movies?? Because I have a lot of podcasts that I watch everyweek, but I have to watch them on my PC b/c my iPhone doesn’t do HD. How about it Apple, you could blow M$ out of the water with an iPhone HD. The only thing is, the iPhone screen is still a crummy 320×480. I guess if they did a 5MP camera, they would also have to up the screen resolution as well.. that’s my take on it.
Merry Christmas!!
via [ArsTechnica] & [TUAW]
Google Goggles announced and confirmed for the iPhone
02 years ago
Google announced Monday, Google goggles for the Android platform. What is Google goggles you ask? Let this video explain:
Basically it allows you to search via the camera on your phone. Google says you can search via a picture of a landmark, book cover, DVD/Blu-Ray cover, artwork and logos. Just simply take a photo of the item and it should bring up the appropriate search result. Now I have seen a review on the app on Verizon’s Motorola Droid on AppJudgement and it seems that it is currently a work in progress. It didn’t seem to work very well on the barcodes, but seemed to be fine on the covers. It will be very close to other apps like Yelp!, but won’t be the augmented reality like in yelp. It will help find some of your searches in nearby stores for price comparison though. This is awesome for the Android platform, but what about the iPhone? As of the other day, TechRadar said it has confirmation that the program will soon hit the iPhone as well! Awesome! Can’t wait to try this app out!
Vevo launched tonight, who cares?
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So yet another announcement is out today, VEVO. You ask, what is VEVO? Well V (for short) is a video music website. Basically think of YouTube, but with out all the dups and crappy vids of people who put still images together and put the music in the background, I hate those guys. Backed by Universal, YouTube and Google, they had a launch party tonight with Bono and Google CEO Eric Schmidt. There were some exclusives to service that were shown, but is hard to see what is going on, due to so much traffic hitting the website. I still keep getting a tempweb thingy….
To be completely honest, I have no faith in this being a successful venture by any means. Music videos have always had a place, and that used to be MTV, but now I think it’s mostly BETv and Fuze. Artists have always had a hard time, as well as labels monetizing their videos. Most of the newer CDs I get come with an extra DVD or video cd in which I can download the video to my computer.
I just call this one now, and say epic FAIL.
Boxee Beta and Boxee Box announced today!
02 years ago
by RustyG
in Technology
What is boxee?? Boxee is much like Hulu, but on SERIOUS CRACK. It plays a large amount of 
different types of videos and audio codecs. Basically think of a box that can play anything that you throw at it. For a small example: (Previously Hulu) Apple movie trailers, ABC, Blip.TV, CNET, CNN, CBS, Comedy Central, MTV Music in video and BBC iPlayer, Jamendo, Joost, Last.fm, NPR, SHOUTcast in audio. It even does CD/DVDs as well! It can do full 1080p via software acceleration and makes it fun to watch. You can basically turn your laptop or desktop in an awesome streaming media server with this thing!
So what’s the news? Today Boxee Beta was announced. Make sure to go over to Boxee.tv to go an try it out! The other thing that was announced was the Boxee Box! This thing looks like a sunken box, and is designed to be out of the ordinary. The photos show that there is only HDMI support and RCA stereo out. There is not any support for component. Two USB 2.0 ports and optical audio out as well. There was mentioned in the livestream that there will be wireless support if you don’t want to use the built in ethernet port already there.
D-Link is the hardware provider, but no clue yet as to what is all underneath the hood. This was all forseen back in early November and January of this year, but it is finally good to see some hard evidence. There is also talks of bringing the boxee experience to other popular devices that are already on the market; XBOX 360, do I hear a calling??? Microsoft missed out on the HD-DVD thing, so this could be a simple software update for them and this could keep them in the running for HD content on the box.
This is my first running into the boxee world, so I have d/l the beta and will be trying it out, I will wait with bated breath to see the box when it arrives on the shelf!
