Hasselblad - the ultimate high-end camera maker - have released their new medium digital camera, the H3D-31. Photographyblog (appropriately enough) covers the Hasselblad press release, and gives us some specs. (Thanks to Engadget for linking)

It’s a 31 megapixel (no, there’s no decimal place in there)  digital, with a 48mm (full-frame for medium-format) sensor. It’s slightly cheaper than it’s 39 Megapixel bigger brother, at around USD$25k.

In related news, A-Data have released a 128GB solid-state disk with a SATA interface. (Via Engadget, too) Small enough to whack a dozen or two in a photography lab server, coupled with some rediculously fast SATA-RAID controllers.  I’m practicly drooling at the thought.  ‘Course, it could also be integrated into a smart-phone device. 

Hello, Nokia, are you paying attention? Yes, you need to put one of these and a nice fast processor (like an XScale @ 624mhz?) in your next smartphone, thanks.

Actually, my ideal smart phone would be having an upgraded version of Windows Mobile 5 (with WPF and .NET Compact Framework 3.0 support built in) an XScale or similarly fast processor, dedicated video hardware, 8GB+ storage, 3-4Mpx Camera + VGA Video Camera, and WCDMA (3G on 850Mhz) support.  Then they could set-loose some smart developers & designers and really kick some major backside in the smartphone department.

I’m still alive and well. Just been busy at work the last few days, and busy with other stuff the rest of the time.

Not that much to blog about in the last few days either - things have quietened down a bit since CES, and anything that I’ve seen is basicly just rehashing the same things over again. (Disagree? Put links in the comments, or write on your own blog and send a pingback to this post)

Also, while I’m here, I’ll mention the one good bit of news I heard in the past few days:

* Joined channel #anzgw
* Topic is 'ANZGW | She said yes ^_^’
* Set by Aeoth on Tue Jan 23 19:29:49

Congrats to Paul (Aeoth) and “Chixz0r”.

SecondLife has been getting a whole lot of press recently - even the “reputable” broadsheets and on the ABC too.

I think this UserFriendly strip sums it up pretty well.

Well, MSNBot’s activities havn’t improved any - it’s still a giant bandwidth hog.

I’ve now added MSNBot and the SearchPreview bot to robots.txt with “deny: /” (i.e: everything). December was relatively light, with
“only” 173MB of bandwidth used - by a bot.

However, so far this month, it’s used another 471MB. And I can tell you I haven’t added that much content!

It’s not so much the bandwidth usage that I object to - it’s that they’ve either got an inefficient or greedy bot.

Microsoft and the National Australia Day Councils are running a promotion called “Look up and Smile“. (via MSDN Australia)

Basically, Microsoft is purchasing a bunch of satellite time on Australia day, and taking large snapshots of Australia for their Live Maps service. People are being encouraged to do things that’ll be visible from space (so - I expect there’ll be large banners, and writing on the sand etc).

As part of it, there’s a photography competition - but make sure you read the fine print before you submit an entry.

“By submitting an entry, each entrant grants to the Sponsor and the National Australia Day Councils an exclusive, irrevocable royalty-free, transferable worldwide right, in all media (now known or later developed) to use, publish, alter or otherwise exploit their entry.”

So, if someone submits an entry - they can never: Publish the photo on their web site, print/sell/give the photo away to another party (friends, family, or the school newspaper). Even if Microsoft and the National Australia Day Councils decide not to use it/give you a prize.

Most people probably won’t be concerned about the fine print - after all, Microsoft and the National Australia Day Councils are hardly going to sue you for putting the photo up on flickr or sending it to your friends via email. Then again, stranger things have happened.

Also - how would you feel if Microsoft decided to use your image, or part of it in a major worldwide campaign (or distributing it in Windows or another product as a “sample” image), even if you didn’t win a prize.

Thanks, Microsoft, but no thanks.

I’m still running Windows Vista RC2 at home - and I decided to upgrade to the final version of Vista.

So, I go copy all the files I’ll need to keep onto another drive - no problems.

Now, Where do I find my MCE Schedule so I can back that up? It’s fairly large - about 22 different recurring schedules. I’m sure others have larger lists. 

Well, after a whole bunch of searching online - noone seems to have written about it - so I did some digging. Turns out, it’s all stored in %SYSTEMDRIVE%\Users\All Users\Microsoft\eHome\Logs- under Vista. I presume for XP it’d be under Documents & Settings in a similar space.

I’m going to copy out \Recording\Recordings.xml and see how it goes.

Wired has an article this month from Lawrence Lessig on “Net Neutrality” - I Blew It on Microsoft.  (via Slashdot)

It’s an interesting article, and Lessig goes into a lot of detail.  Good read.

Thankfully, someone (ActiveWin) has finally gone out and done a review of USB Drives that are capable of being used by ReadyBoost.  (via Neowin)

The performance specs they quote may not seem like much (wow, a 8 second saving in booting Vista - wow!) - it’s actual app performance that makes a huge difference.

I used a 1GB Sandisk Extreme III Compact Flash card as a ReadyBoost cache last year, and it actually makes things much faster. Of course, I’m using a fairly decent system (Core 2 Duo 6600, with 2GB DDR2 in Dual Channel) - but application start performance, and general responsiveness were improved significantly.

Looks like I’m not the only one who sees the iPhone as a pretty bad idea all-round (but damn, it’s generated a lot of commentary!).  Paul talks about the iPhone’s impact on the clueless fashion-nuts in Australia, as well as the Trademark issue.

Cory Doctrow points out a rather scathing article in the New York Times, and Cory makes some good points too.

Interestingly, despite Apple’s “I’m a Mac - I’m a PC” ads, they didn’t exactly get the most err… “Dynamic” person they could, to give Cingular’s side of the story at the Keynote. Well, I guess it’s not Apple’s fault - but I’m sure the Apple PR guys could have called up the Cingular PR guys and said “hey, get someone who doesn’t wear a grey suit to come up and give the presentation”, or atleast “Get your CEO to read from an autoprompter.”

Stan Sigman (Cingular CEO) sounds so like the stereotypical boring middle-management person. Heck, you can even play Buzz Word Bingo - try this on for size, in the first two minutes of being on stage: ”Contractual Agreement”, “deliver on the vision”, “exceeded my expectations”, “Partnering”.   He’s also got a very thick south-american accent. Nuu, Getin’, Bringin’, etc.  The guy really has very little presentation skills. I could do a better job, ffs.  If you want to torture yourself, go watch it here.

Now, enough about Apple.  I need to go shower.

Tomorrow: How Oracle really pisses me off.

Edit 8:30am: One last thing (honestly) - Gizmodo UK is reporting that the iPhone is set to cost between €899 and €999 Euros in Europe according to Amazon Germany - however it will have 3G support - When it launches next year .  (Via Neowin)
Anyone else thinking that AUD$1,600 or so is a tad too much to be paying for a phone with a fancy interface?

For years now, people have been predicting that The Next Big Thing from Apple would be an “iPhone” - combining an iPod media player, with a mobile (cell) phone.  Well, finally, at MacWorld this year - the adoring fans got their wish.  

Apple decided to make it into a “smart phone” - that is, it’s basicly combining all the funcionalities of a PDA (email, contacts, calendar, media, etc) and a phone.  It’s not a particularly new concept, there’s been versions of this for years now. Some running Palm’s PalmOS software (Palm Treo), but most others running a variant of Windows CE (HP, iMate, etc).

Instead of the typical route that others have gone - grabbing a PDA, shoving some phone parts into it, and writing a few extensions - Apple has decided to create a single integrated interface. Go check out the demo - if it actually works like in the demo, then it could actually be quite good. (Yeah, I made a positive comment about Apple. Mark this one down in your diaries - it’s not likely to happen again)

The thing is - the technology it’s running on, is already out of date, or is only just keeping up with the competition.

• Does it support WCDMA, or another form of 3G?
  No.
  
• Can you buy it, and stick a standard GSM SIM in it?
  Nope - it’s only available through a single US Carrier.  
  
• Does it have a nice high-resolution camera?
  Sure, by 2004 standards. 2Mpx isn’t shabby, but it’s not exactly something people are going to get worked up about now.
  
• Can you do Video Calling?
  Nope - plus you can’t do Video Calling on GSM (even with EDGE support).
  
• Can you do over-the-air purchasing of songs through iTunes
  Nope.
  
• Can you sync with your PC/Mac, using the built-in Wifi?
  Nope.
  
• Does it have a Hi-res screen?
  Nope, 320×480.  (My 10 month old Dell Axim X51v has a 480×640 in about the same size - enough for full-resolution TV shows)
  
• Does it have some revolutionary battery, or some power saving function that makes it last longer than the competition?
  Nope - it’s fairly bog-standard, again, by comparion with others.

Okay, so the picture is this: It’s basicly a run-of-the-mill smartphone with Apple software on it to make a pretty interface.  The one feature that it has, that others don’t - is the multi-touch interface — i.e using two fingers to zoom in and out - probably quite handy.

For many users of smart-phones, one good thing is that they can load in other software. Book readers, games, CRM software, databases, etc. The thing is, Apple isn’t going to let you do that - infact, you can’t load ANY software on the phone.  “Approved Developers” may get to do this, but not your average-joe hobbyist developer.

Why is this? Well - here’s an excerpt from a Newsweek interview with Steve Jobs:

“You don’t want your phone to be an open platform,” meaning that anyone can write applications for it and potentially gum up the provider’s network, says Jobs. “You need it to work when you need it to work. Cingular doesn’t want to see their West Coast network go down because some application messed up.”

Either Steve and his technical people have no f’ing clue - or they’ve got a very fragile mobile network in the US. 

- end of rant -