Webcams

Hoping to capitalize on over-protective pet owners (like myself!), Softbank is rolling out its innovative – and admittedly cute – Mimamori Camera. This clever pet monitoring system allows you to keep tabs on your pet remotely via your mobile phone, all in real time using a Japanese handset's 'TV call' function.  Read More

Microsoft is preparing the launch of an all-new Windows Live Messenger as part of its Wave 4 version of Windows Live. The range of new features will appeal to the modern online generation and are a significant step up over previous versions.  Read More

To take full advantage of stereo sound, many consumers will install their AV equipment to suit the room’s furniture – sound and vision pointing to the best seat in the house so you can take full advantage of that stereo “sweetspot”. That’s fine when you’re sitting watching a movie, but what happens you start playing the latest active games on Nintendo’s Wii, Sony’s PlayStation3 and Microsoft’s Project Natal? Researchers at the Technology University of Dresden, Germany, have the answer.  Read More

With many online video resources now encouraging HD uploads, what vloggers and podcasters need in order to finally ditch the grainy low quality affairs that have plagued our online experience for far too long is a high definition webcam. Microsoft has responded to the call with three new 720p HD webcams which TrueColor Technology which, the company claims, automatically adjusts picture quality to give optimum brightness and color whatever light is available.  Read More

Japanese manufacturer Green House has just released one of the most compact cameras you're ever likely to see. But you'll have to get in really close because the Mini Digi is so tiny that you might just miss it! Amazingly, it measures 2.5 x 1.8 x 1.2 inches, and weighs just under an ounce. So, for photographers who don't want to take their hefty DSLRs with them all the time, attaching a Mini Digi to your keychain could be a fun alternative.  Read More

In what would have to be one of the craftiest marketing ploys seen in recent times, UK company X2 Computing has announced the release of its new tablet PC named – you guessed it - the iTablet. Aiming to give the Apple iPad a run for its money, it features a 1.6GHz Intel processor, 250GB of memory and a 1.3MP webcam, the conveniently named tablet also offers support for Flash and the choice of Windows 7 and Linux operating systems.  Read More

The Video Electronics Standard Association (VESA) has unveiled the long awaited DisplayPort Version1.2 digital display interface that brings with it a host of enhanced features. Aside from a doubled data rate of 21.6Gbps and bi-directional USB data transfer of an impressive 720Mbps, the upgrade also offers multi – monitor support from a single plug, improved audio synchronization and support for Full HD 3D Stereoscopic displays.  Read More

First shown at the CEATEC trade show in October, Kohjinsha's dual screen laptop/netbook is now on sale in Japan. The combination of an ATI Radeon HD3200 graphics processor and an AMD Athlon Neo MV-40 1.6 GHz chip gives the DZ the power to offer independent or combined dual screen action. The first full dual screen laptop to the marketplace also benefits from a 160Gb SATA HDD, an integrated TV card and a multi-touch, gesture sensitive touch pad.  Read More

Cambridge University PhD student Qi Pan has designed software that creates textured 3D models in slightly more than a minute using a stationary camera, such as a webcam. Conventional off-line model reconstruction relies on a number of phases - there’s an image collection phase that can be quite quick, followed by a very slow reconstruction phase, which requires a long time to verify a model obtained from an image sequence is acceptable. This new software creates a 3D model on-line as the input sequence is being collected. As the user rotates the object in front of a camera, a partial model is reconstructed and displayed to the user.  Read More