Digital

Students of music history, historians and music lovers alike can't help but be moved by the sight of an original manuscript by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Now, thanks to a Library of Congress partnership with five other institutions, folks can get up close and personal with some of the world's most valued music manuscripts from the comfort of their own living rooms. A new free-to-view online portal brings together digitized copies of manuscript scores and first and early editions of works by composers such as Johann Sebastian Bach, Richard Wagner, Ludwig van Beethoven, Claude Debussy, Georges Bizet, Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky. Read More

China recently launched the state-sponsored Tianditu.cn or "Map World," the country's homegrown answer to Google Maps. While it's an impressive initial effort, the mapping system does resemble Google's a little too much, and it also performs poorly once you navigate outside of Chinese borders. Read More

Leica used Photokina 2010 to unveil its beautifully crafted limited edition LEICA M9 ‘Titanium’ digital camera. Created in collaboration with chief designer of the Volkswagen Group, Walter de’Silva, the camera is a reinterpretation of the classic LEICA M9. The special edition is strictly limited to 500 cameras worldwide. Read More

Anyone who’s had a look at our Yez concept car story will know that the Chinese Government haven’t taken any half measures with Expo 2010 in Shanghai. In an absolutely frightening display of power and wealth it splashed out roughly US$60 billion on the event – that’s more than the GDP of two thirds of the world’s nations. China’s foreign currency reserves currently amount to the greatest fortune ever assembled anywhere at any time on planet earth – US$2.5 trillion – and they're only just getting started with accumulating wealth. The theme of the Shanghai expo is “Better City – Better Life” and, while a lot of the focus is on technological inventions and advancements, the goal of the Chinese Pavilion is to show the past, present and future. There is no better illustration of this than the centerpiece of the Pavilion – a stunning digital tapestry that takes one of China’s most famous paintings and updates it for the 21st Century. If you were impressed by the beautiful moving scroll that wowed audiences at the Beijing Olympics opening and closing ceremonies in 2008, then prepare to be blown away all over again. Read More

Sanyo's new pocket camera clearly takes aim at the Flip, while at the same time liberally borrowing inspiration from its success. The design moves away from previous Xacti gun-shaped designs and adopts a more Flip-like form factor, even including the signature pop-out USB connector from which Flip takes its name. Assuming that Sanyo didn't infringe on any patents here, we're excited that the company sees the value and marketability of simple cameras with few buttons. That was the common appeal of the Flip, and that same simplicity might help Sanyo take a bite out of the pocket-camera/camcorder market. Read More

Roland has given key models in its home digital piano family a more authentic, natural sound and feel. Four instruments now benefit from the company's updated SuperNATURAL Piano sound engine for improved velocity response, note decay and key-range behavior as well as more realistic ivory and ebony keys. Read More

Sometimes a laptop just won’t cut it when taking notes - particularly when jotting down diagrams or hastily scribbling sketches. Enter the CyberPad A4 from Adesso that converts your handwritten notes and graphics into usable digital information. Through the use of the bundled software (Adobe Photoshop Elements 7.0 for Windows and 6.0 for Mac OS X), Adesso says it is the only solution that links handwriting and graphics to the PC, providing a digital reproduction for future reference. Read More

The basis of most 3D systems is to "trick" our eyes into believing that an image shown on a flat screen has three dimensions, but what if you could throw away the screen entirely! It sounds simply too far-fetched and impossible to choreograph, but that's exactly what researchers MIT's SENSEable City Lab and Aerospace Robotics and Embedded Systems Laboratory (ARES Lab) have created with Flyfire - a cloud of LED-carrying micro-helicopters controlled in synchrony to show unique animated light displays in three-dimensional space. Read More

If you’ve ever tried to get that perfect shot of a race car, athlete, wild animal, or any other fast-moving subject, you know how hard it can be - what are the odds that you’ll hit the shutter release button at just the right instant? You could try videotaping it and grabbing a still afterward, but chances are it will be grainy and blurry. It’s a common problem, but it might have just been solved. Medical researchers have developed a digital photographic technique that allows users to simultaneously shoot high-speed (slow motion) video and high-resolution stills, via the same sensor on the same camera. Read More