Thursday, January 3, 2008

CameraPro iPhone App Brings Zoom, Grayscale and More to Camera [Apple]

CPicon.jpgCameraPro, a new application available through Installer, brings enhanced options to the otherwise bland iPhone camera. The best feature is digital zoom, which allows you to zoom in pretty close on your scene, albeit with reduced clarity.



Grayscale works too, and the images come out very clean. I found a problem with "burst" (an option to take pictures in rapid succession), as the pictures I took did not show up in my camera roll. Also, the resized image option just takes digitally zoomed pictures, and in one instance placed a smaller image into my large image. This is definitely some interesting proof-of-concept material, and I hope that Apple will include similar options in a future firmware update. Check out the gallery to see CameraPro in action.









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Pioneer Bragging About its "World's Thinnest" Plasma HDTV at CES 2008 [Thin TV Watch]



Big TV wars have gone on for ages, but the Thin TV wars are just starting up. I just found out that Pioneer is making a 9mm thick HD Plasma TV which it planned to reveal at CES 2008, but was inadvertently leaked by the BBC earlier this week (story now down.) Those dimensions mean the TV is thinner than a deck of cards and they're claiming "world's thinnest" although we've no idea of whether or not the Plasma will pack any of that top-line Kuro tech.



Also the weird silent film above shows that much of the set does look 9mm thick but there is a large portion which does look thicker. Although 20mm thin LCDs from Sharp and thin-border Toshiba LCDs impressed us last year, these could be the first to hit our shores. Sources close to the company confirmed the leak was real and not some the result of some BBC intern dreaming up gadgets for fun and hitting publish by mistake. More from the show, where we'll undoubtedly see more of this set. [Thanks Tipster X]









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Star Trek Car Air Horn: Proclaim Your Geekyness to the World at 118 dB [Star Trek]

star-trek-horn.jpgWhat geek can resist replacing their boring vehicle horn with a 5 trumpet Wolo 485 Star Trek Air Horn? With one push of a button, you can tell that dude who just cut you off to suck it with 118 dB of brain shattering power. The horns play the 5 most recognizable notes from the Star Trek theme — and hooking it up to your car is a simple matter of plugging it into your cigarette lighter and wiring the compressor directly to your vehicle's battery. No air tank or valve is needed. Now all you need is a custom Enterprise paint job. Available for $71. [Amazon via GeekAlerts]









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Apple's Final Cut Pro User Group Will Have Something Super Secret at Macworld [Updated] [Rumor]

AppleInsider reports that there will be something "super secret" unveiled at a January 16 Final Cut Pro group, held a day after Steve Jobs' January 15 Macworld keynote. What it is is unknown (obviously, because it's a secret), but will probably not be the next version of Final Cut Studio. It could be an updated Mac Pro with improved processors/memory/specs/whatever, but it's unlikely that it's going to be anything for the consumer audience. So unless you're waiting for an update to the high end Macs or some sort of Final Cut software feature update, you won't have much to look forward to. [Apple Insider]



Update: Crunchgear says the secret's out, and it's going to be integrated Redcode inside Final Cut Studio. This means there will be native Red support, editing that 4k video image at a lower resolution so you won't have to tax your box looking at 4k pixels whenever you're editing. [Crunchgear]









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Doraemon Voice Activated Air Pistol Remote: Finger Bang Indeed [Finger Bang]

doraemon_remote.jpgIf you love Doraemon, you will really love this voice activated remote control...controller. Just sync the air pistol up to your remotes and then put the gun on your finger. Every time you say "bang" you can turn on the tv, control the DVD player and more. When not in use, the finger gun rests comfortably on Doraemon's arm. The device can control up to four remotes —but my guess is that novelty value trumps the practical value big time on this one. It will probably be fun for about an hour before you hurl it across the room. Available for around $30. [Product Page via Tokyomango]









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Belkin FlyWire Wireless Video Cable Does 1080p Across Nothin' [Ces 2008]

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We saw this Belkin wireless high definition video streamer in a blurry shot, but had little clue what it was. Months ago, we saw an impressive demo by Aminom of true HD over wireless, up to 1080p using a standard called WHDI, but it was nothing more than parts you couldn't buy. No more. Belkin and Aminom just got together to make this 6 input wireless video device, although details aren't that forthcoming, this is how it works:



One set enables uncompressed 720p and 1080i video to be transmitted over the 5GHz wireless band, using 20MHz of bandwidth and reaching distances up to 100 feet with the same quality as HDMI cable. Two of the chipsets ganged together send 1080p video wirelessly, using 40MHz of bandwidth.


Range is a theoretical 100 feet. Now we have no idea if these inputs are HDMI, component or other, but I'm guessing the WHDI interface is at least HDMI for the simplicity of handling AV through a single cable, and given the size of the box, you don't really have room for 6 sets of component cables using 5 jacks each. More as it comes, at CES [Thanks tipster, previously on Giz: Belkin and Amimom]









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Pointui Skins Windows Mobile, Makes it Usable (Best WM Skin App Ever) [Software]



Pointui, the app that sits on top of Windows Mobile 5/6 in order to skin it into something actually usable. It's so awesome that I actually made a movie out of it, including Jesus-style subtitles, so that you guys can see just how awesome it is. (Have I said that it's awesome?) It fixes 50% of what's wrong with the surface of Windows Mobile right now, allowing you to get around the OS using finger swipes instead of a stylus. On your current hardware, no less. Who the fuck knew that Windows Mobile supported this?!



HTC did, for one, but their UI isn't quite as good as Pointui. In addition to enabling finger gestures, it also adds skinning on top of the standard Win Mo apps. Clicking the phone app, for instance, gets you a much prettier call log that aggregates calls from the same person into one entry (just like the iPhone). There are still other apps like email and calendar and tasks that aren't skinned—these just go into the regular WM app when active—but are much easier to get to.



The real winner is the system settings, which are made top level (instead of hidden under 3 layers of menus). It doesn't fix everything wrong with Windows Mobile, but it's free and it fixes a lot. We haven't gotten this excited about Windows Mobile in...ever. Holy crap. [Pointui]









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New App Brings Zoom, Grayscale and More to iPhone Camera [Apple]

CPicon.jpgCameraPro, a new application available through Installer, brings enhanced options to the otherwise bland iPhone camera. The best feature is digital zoom, which allows you to zoom in pretty close on your scene, albeit with reduced clarity. Grayscale works too, and the images come out very clean. I found a problem with "burst" (an option to take pictures in rapid succession), as the pictures I took did not show up in my camera roll. Also, the resized image option just takes digitally zoomed pictures, and in one instance placed a smaller image into my large image. This is definitely some interesting proof-of-concept material, and I hope that Apple will include similar options in a future firmware update. Check out the gallery to see CameraPro in action.









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Hypercolor Heat-Changing Toilet Shows Who's Been Assing it Up [Gadgets]

thermotoilet.jpgEven though we're comfortable with sitting on a toilet seat that someone just vacated (and vacated their bowels on), it still comes as a surprise just how warm that seat is—the ass must be a bit higher than 98 degrees. This thermochromic toilet seat, however, lets you know exactly how warm the seat is, with a bonus effect of showing you exactly which part of the seat was in contact with the previous occupant. As you can see from the picture, the man before was a widey. Almost as good as the hypercolor shirts of yore, which let us know of Kelly's extracurricular activities in a visual manner. [Canadian Design Resource via Boing Boing]









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