Red cameras encroach on Canon, Hasselblad turf

Red Digital Cinema Camera, a new maker of high-end digital movie cameras, is expanding its turf closer to traditional camera makers such as Canon and Hasselblad.

On Thursday, Red announced a new range of modular camera designs that it plans to deliver mostly over the coming year and a half that can take not just high-resolution video but also still images. The move comes just as Canon and Nikon have begun adding video support to their SLR (single-lens reflex) cameras.

Various new models from Red will be able to accept lenses from Canon, Nikon, and Mamiya, a move that could make them a more serious possibility for professional photographers, but the prices--thousands of dollars to tens of thousands--restrict this equipment to a very small market.
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Gift cards that double as tech gifts

Here's something we'd love to see our shops offer in Asia. US retailer Target has spiced up the prepaid gift card to double as a digital camera. How cool is that? Never mind that this probably features a camera sensor that's barely worth the bother. At 1.2 megapixels, your shots will be fuzzier than the fake Christmas snow at some of the malls out there. Still, the 8MB onboard memory is good for 50 snaps at that resolution, with Target bundling a USB cord, driver disk, instruction manual and a voucher for 40 free prints from its photo center. That's what we call a sweetener. Best of all, the minimum amount on the card starts at an affordable US$50.

Even US electronics store Best Buy appears to be getting into the act. Its gift card is a mini speaker as well, with a 3.5mm audio jack for connecting to a music player. Not too sure about the sound reproduction, but who's going to quibble with a credit card-sized speaker you can carry around in your wallet? Now that's what we call gift cards that double as actual gifts. Sweet.

Via Gearlog

Philips camera pill easy to swallow

Philips Research is out with a new intelligent camera pill that can be electronically preprogrammed to deliver targeted doses of medicine to patients with digestive disorders such as Crohn's disease, colitis, and colon cancer.

The device comes in the form of an 11 mm x 26 mm capsule that patients swallow with water, just like any other pill. It's designed to pass through the digestive tract of its own accord, meaning you just let nature take its course with this one. The iPill determines its location via a pH sensor that measures the acidity of the environment, which varies throughout the intestinal tract. The device then releases medicine from its drug reservoir via a microprocessor-controlled pump--either in a burst or a progressive release. Philips says the smart pill can also deliver medicine to multiple locations.

Announced at the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists' annual meeting and exposition this week in Atlanta, the capsule is also designed to measure data such as local temperature, and report measurements wirelessly to an external receiver unit.

While its drug delivery system appears promising, the Philips iPill is not the first camera pill to enter the picture. Among other such products, GivenImaging created the PillCam Colon Capsule Endoscope for viewing the colon, as well the PillCam ESO for the esophagus and the PillCam SB for the gastrointestinal tract.

Via CNET Crave

Eye-Fi celebrates one year with 4GB camera card

Eye-Fi, the maker of camera storage cards that can also beam photos directly to a computer or Web site via Wi-Fi, on Wednesday celebrated its first anniversary with a new special-edition product.

It's called the Eye-Fi Anniversary Edition, and it offers 4GB of storage space for US$129.

Like other cards, the new card wirelessly sends photos from a digital camera to a computer and to one of more than 25 online photo-sharing sites. However, it doesn't come with one year of hot-spot service, as found in the existing 2GB Eye-Fi Explore card. Eye-Fi's product line includes the Eye-Fi Home, Share, Anniversary Edition, and Explore cards, with prices ranging from US$79 to US$129.

The Eye-Fi Anniversary Edition is supposedly limited, so if you're a big fan, you probably need to move quickly.

Via CNET Crave

Specchio digital photo frame brings on the bling

Designer Martin Szekely is probably a fan of all things shiny, which is why his latest creation, the Specchio, has that bling factor to it. Under the modern styling and glossy facade lies a Wi-Fi-enabled digital photo frame.

According to Dvice, users can email pictures to the frame or link it up with their Flickr accounts to display photographs stored online. Other than showing off images, the Specchio is also a great decor piece for the living room, too. It will come with 200MB of internal memory and slots for commonly-used flash media such as CompactFlash and SD/SDHC cards. When you rotate the screen, the image will automatically change its orientation for optimized viewing.

Even though it's priced at US$460, Szekely's photo frame is currently out of stock. There may be other alternatives on the market, but we think none will look as good as the Specchio.

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