Archives for March 2007
Sony Ericsson W660i to debut in Q3
Reuben Lee | Mar 19, 2007
Sony Ericsson's latest 3G-enabled Walkman phone, the W660i, is slated for launch in Asia in the third quarter of this year. According to a company representative, mobile users in Singapore can expect to see the handset on retail shelves come July.
The Japanese-Swedish phone maker is touting the W660i as a stylish 3G candy bar with a premium design and material. It is available in Record Black and Rose Red, and features a unique raised finishing on the camera side as well as a slim 14.5mm profile. The Walkman cellular also comes with Bluetooth A2DP stereo, Walkman 2.0 player, FM radio, a 2-megapixel camera, a 2-inch display and picture blogging capabilities. It is bundled with a 512MB Memory Stick Micro card.
Click here for the full photo gallery of the W660i.
LiteOn Bracelet Phone
Juniper Foo | Mar 19, 2007
Nokia's been there, done that with concept phones that wrap around the wrist. So has BenQ-Siemens. Even DoCoMo's has had its Wristomo, a wristwatch that unfolds into a cell phone. Bearing that in mind, Hong Kong designer Tao Ma's Bracelet Phone isn't all that novel. However, he does get brownie points for an idea that's more jewelry than phone, allowing you to elegantly accessorize without being obvious it's a mobile. Everything's hidden, from the power button to the charging port, call answer and hang up buttons, and volume controls. Even the 10 button numbers are disguised as jewels. Did we also mention there's MP3 with matching earbuds included? According to Tao Ma, the bracelet vibrates when there are incoming messages. But to read or pick up a call, you have to remove the bracelet and there's no display screen to boot. Plus, based on the artist rendering, talking on it can be a mite tricky. But who're we kidding? Owning one will make you the green-eyed envy of the Paris Hilton crowd. Just point us in the right direction once this is out!
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Via Yanko Design
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Vertus Fluid Mask: Cut out images like a duck to water
Edvarcl Heng | Mar 19, 2007
One of the favorite tricks that camera-toting dads like to fiddle with, is to change a picture of the kids at the beach to them spacewalking in their swimwear. But there's a lot of hard work involved, like painstakingly lassoing the kids' outline in a photo-editing program before deleting the background of the beach and swapping it with outer space. And when it comes to perfect outlining, it can take hours, especially when there are a gazillion individual hair strands to etch around.
So imagine our incredulous gasps, when we saw a demonstrator load a portrait shot of a shaggy-haired man in a forest into Photoshop, and wiped out the background with some quick strokes of a brush tool. It looked brilliant. The software is Fluid Mask and it is available as a plug-in only for Adobe Photoshop programs at the moment. According to Steve Nelson, marketing manager for Vertus, Fluid Mask is able to make short work of masking as it analyzes pictures in three ways: By contrast, color and pixel edges. "In fact, it helps the computer look at pictures the way the human eye does," he added.
During a software demo, Fluid Mask first evaluated and mapped out areas in a picture with similar properties. Next, the user moves a brush over the mosaic to delete most of the background. Finally, another brush tool is broadly traced over the general edge of the subject to be isolated. The software will then process the final image and remove the background right up to the edge. The result? Even at 600x magnification, we could see that hair strands were finely outlined. Impressive.
Read more CeBIT tidbits here
More screen shots of Fluid Mask here
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iPod shuffle with Bluetooth?
Edvarcl Heng | Mar 17, 2007
Dubbed the G107, this little clip-on is made by Gajah International. While the clip mechanism is not exactly cutting edge in terms of design aesthetics, it's still a useful device for simple fuss-free music enjoyment. The Bluetooth factor comes into play when a phone call rings in. The G107 mutes the music and becomes a stereo headset for the duration of the call.
Like the shuffle, the G107 does not have a display. But what it does have are synthesized voice feedbacks. Press a button and the G107 would tell you exactly what you did, though not the why. Specs:
- Format support: MP3, WMA, WAV
- Capacities: 128MB, 256MB, 512MB, 1GB, 2GB
- 58 x 20 x 23mm
- Rated audio playback time: 7 hours
- Rated talktime: 3.5 hours
Read more CeBIT tidbits here
Hook up a monitor without a graphics card
Edvarcl Heng | Mar 17, 2007
The new Samsung UMPC may be grabbing the headlines and the gawks at the Samsung booth, but it is the SyncMaster 2040UX (20-inch) and the 940UX (19-inch) that really got our jaws dropping. Special firmware within the monitor allows it to interpret video signals through the USB connection, and get this; it does not require a graphics card to process it. We like to think it's fuss-free Nvidia… erm, nirvana.
The trump card of the 2040UX and the 940UX is that an additional UXs can be daisy-chained to the first one, up to six UXs in all. Or if you can have six UXs connected directly to the PC itself. Picture quality is acceptable for simple stuff like word processing, but stuff like playing Doom 3 on it would be out of the question, since the USB connection creates a bottleneck with its paltry 480Mbps of data transfer rate.
Read more CeBIT tidbits here
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