Digital World News

With the myriad of different features and options available on digital cameras, the camera section of your local electronics store is now almost as confusing as the TV aisle. It's easy to understand how a potential buyer might feel intimidated.

It's an exciting time for digital cameras, as many of them are adding more bells and whistles by the minute. You'll have to grasp some new features this spring, like the wide adoption of image stabilization technologies to fight blurry pictures, in-camera editing, and new ways of playing back your photos right on the camera, for sharing with friends.

But try not to be wooed by superficial features. A digicam that can make a revving engine sound every time its shutter closes might gain cool points for a little while, but that feature will be quickly forgotten if your graduation pictures are washed out and blurry.

To help choose, here's our annual digital camera buyer's guide. We aren't reviewing specific models here, but instead we're explaining the important features that mainstream buyers -- not serious hobbyists or professional photographers -- should be familiar with when shopping. We'll touch on both the basics, and the newest features.



Pick a Size, Any Size



Thanks to improvements in technology, the newest digital cameras are thin and light enough to slip into a pocket or small purse. These hipsters are called pocket cameras, and are usually less than an inch thick and less than four inches long. They earn points for style and are often available in colors, making them fashion accessories. But, unlike the smallest cameras of the film era, these digital compacts are packed with features and take pictures that can be as good as those from larger models.

If small isn't your bag, and you'd rather have a camera that's easier to hold without worrying about covering a tiny lens or flash with your thumb, point-and-shoot cameras will suit your needs. These cameras are generally bigger and heavier than pocket cameras, and they often are carried in a case or hung around your neck. They don't necessarily have more features than the pocket models, or take better pictures, but they often cost less.

Considerably larger are those cameras most popular with hobbyists and professionals -- often referred to as digital SLRs (single-lens reflex). The price tags for these models can reach the thousands of dollars, and they include many manual controls and add-on lenses. Though camera companies continue to market these types of cameras to average users, they are far more complex than the average pocket or point-and-shoot camera.



Megapixels



The number of megapixels, a measure of the maximum resolution that a camera can capture, tends to grab a lot of attention in the store. But it's important that you be wary of any camera that advertises a super high megapixel count -- more than eight megapixels -- with a low price tag, say, in the $200 to $300 range.

Companies reach these lower prices by combining high megapixels with smaller image sensors, resulting in pixels that are smaller and thus contain less image information. Like a big house without any charm or character, the images produced by these cameras can be severely lacking.

Look for cameras with about six megapixels, which camera companies say is about the entry level now for a good digicam. This is more than enough for any mainstream user, as higher megapixel counts usually only come in handy if you're blowing up a photo to a huge size or doing extensive editing, neither of which are things that average users usually do.



Zoom -- Optical Matters



When looking at a camera's zoom, ignore the digital zoom and overall zoom; focus instead on optical zoom. Digital refers only to computer-generated magnification, a work-around which makes pictures grainier. Optical refers to zoom as it relates to the physical movement of the camera lens. Overall zoom is a sneaky industry trick -- companies multiply digital and optical zoom to get a more impressive-sounding number (2x digital multiplied by 3x optical equals 6x overall zoom). Ignore this and concentrate only on optical zoom.



Speed



Early digital cameras were notoriously slow. They were slow to start up, slow to actually capture a shot, slow to record it in memory, and slow to be ready for the next shot. That meant you might miss action shots like the baby's first steps and the Little Leaguer's home run.

Today, luckily, most consumer cameras have gotten much faster. But we advise you to pick up the camera in the store and try to fire off several shots as quickly as you can. Bring along a friend who can move around while you try to photograph him. If action shots are important to you, this should help you choose the right model, even if it costs more.



Bigger and Better Screens



Since last year, many things about the digital camera have changed. Most notably -- and most regrettably, in our opinion -- is the loss of the optical viewfinder in most digital cameras. Instead of including a peep-hole and LCD screen for viewing the photo subject, moppier pictures.

Companies have made two improvements to balance out these problems: brighter, more glare-proof LCD screens and image stabilization technology, or anti-shake. Casio Inc.'s $300 EX-Z600, for example, offers an LCD screen that it claims is three times brighter than previous models. Sony Electronics Inc.'s $500 DSC-T9 includes built-in Super Steady-Shot optical image stabilization.



Stable Images -- Digital or Optical?



If you have the option, choose optical rather than digital image stabilization in your camera. This means that the camera physically corrects shaking, while digital stabilization -- like digital zoom -- changes the image with a computer, not with a physical feature in the camera. Many companies are using the blanket term "image stabilization" to describe their camera's anti-shake technology; be sure to get the full story.

Optical image stabilization usually costs more money, but if your camera lacks a viewfinder and you have a shaky hand, this might be a feature that's worth the investment. Some people will find that holding their breath while snapping the shutter button is all it takes, but it's good to have the option.



New Ways of Viewing



Many digital camera companies have started to acknowledge that we share our pictures with friends or family by passing around the camera, often right after snapping hundreds of pictures. This instant gratification is one of the most satisfying features of digital, especially with larger viewing screens, yet it's not uncommon for the camera owner to have to show each person how to skip ahead and back through photos.

To solve this problem, many cameras now offer slideshow or movie modes -- some even include music -- to make sharing easier. Without going near a computer, you can set your camera so that others can simply hold the camera and watch. This also prevents anyone from pressing buttons and accidentally deleting your images.



In-Camera Editing



Now that screens are larger, some cameras come with in-camera editing features, allowing you to edit out red eye, for instance, or stitch together multiple shots into a panorama. This avoids the need to edit on a computer, but it also can be cumbersome. If you think you might like in-camera editing, try it out in the store first.



Storing and Transferring Images



Many types of memory cards are available for use with your digital camera. These are now available in very high capacities; one gigabyte of memory will only cost you about $60, providing more memory for photos and digital videos, which most cameras are now capable of capturing.

Transferring images from your camera to your computer has always been somewhat of a hassle, including finding the camera's USB cord and attaching it to the computer and camera before transferring. Some cameras come with a dock, making the transfer process a little easier, but it's still a little cumbersome.

Cameras are starting to take advantage of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth (short-range wireless) technology to eliminate the extra step of wires or docks. The $400 Kodak EasyShare-One camera uses Wi-Fi to email images directly from the camera, using EasyShare Gallery, Kodak's online photo sharing software. More products like this will continue to hit the market throughout this year.



Battery Life



Be sure the camera can handle a typical day's worth of shooting on a single charge. For some consumers, that might involve only 20-50 shots. For others, that might be 100-200 pictures, on vacation. Read the manufacturer's claims for this, and reduce it by 20 percent, then compare it with your typical shooting volumes. If you do mostly indoor shots with flash, the battery capacity will be much less.

Whatever your situation, it's a good idea to buy a spare battery. Most cameras use costly proprietary batteries, but some models allow you to substitute common drugstore batteries in a pinch.

So be sure to do your homework, be skeptical of extra features with extra cheap price tags, and look into some of the new technology that is being offered in digital cameras. As features grow and prices come down, the consumer will keep winning.

Source From Digital World News Blog at http://digitalworldnews.blogspirit.com/

'PIX squeezes The Tube into its digital format
A new music video channel hits the digital airwaves today.

The network, called The Tube, is being launched locally on WPIX/Ch. 11's digital signal, which is free to people with digital televisions capable of getting Ch. 11.2.

Digital technology allows local stations to broadcast a second signal, thus the 11.2 designation.

Eventually, the 24-hour network will be rolled out to cable systems throughout the New York area.

Billed as the only 24-hour all-music channel, The Tube is being headed up by Les Garland, one of the original staffers at the start of MTV and VH1.

"The Tube distinguishes itself by offering top music programming, and our partnership affirms our commitment to providing the highest quality entertainment and enhanced content for our audience," Ch. 11 general manager Betty Ellen Berlamino said in a statement.

Source From Digital World News Blog at http://digitalworldnews.blogspirit.com/

Yahoo! Thursday announced the launch of Yahoo! Video, an online video destination that combines Yahoo! Search functionality with new features to upload, browse and establish communities.

Yahoo! currently hosts and serves music, news, sports, movies and TV videos. The new destination combines that service with content from across the Web that is searchable.

Users can also subscribe to specific "channels," which are groups of related videos, as well as participate in a social community by rating, reviewing and sharing videos. Content can be shared through Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Messenger, its instant messaging platform.

visit http://www.yahoo.com/

Source From Digital World News Blog at http://digitalworldnews.blogspirit.com/

The Pirate Bay (often abbreviated TPB) bills itself as the world's "largest BitTorrent tracker", and also acts as an index for .torrent files that it tracks. It was started by the Swedish anti-copyright organization Piratbyrån in early 2004, but since October 2004 has been a separate organization.

The server which runs Hypercube Tracking Software is located in Stockholm, Sweden. On June 1, 2005, The Pirate Bay updated its website in an effort to reduce bandwidth usage, which was reported to be at 2000 HTTP requests per second on each of the four servers, as well as create a more user friendly interface for the frontend of the website. On May 31, 2006, the site's servers were raided by Swedish police, taking it offline indefinitely. However, the replacement site up as of June 1 stated that The Pirate Bay would "BE UP AND FULLY FUNCTIONAL WITHIN A DAY OR TWO", and a Pirate Bay spokesperson claimed that the Pirate Bay would move to another country if necessary to continue service.

Legal threats
The Pirate Bay is known in the online file sharing community as one of the more prominent websites which distributes torrents that point to copyrighted material. In much of the world, offering such torrents would be illegal, but due to the nature of Swedish law, this is not the case. In July 2005, new anti-piracy legislation was enacted in Sweden; however, this did not affect The Pirate Bay which only offers .torrent files, which in and of themselves do not contain copyrighted material. The Pirate Bay is well known for the "legal" page it hosts featuring mockery of organizations sending copyright infringement notices and cease and desist letters to them.

A hardcopy of a reply from The Pirate Bay to Web Sheriff, in response to faxed legal threats, was sold on eBay June 8, 2005, for US $255.

May 2006 police raid
At around 11 a.m. [1] on May 31, 2006, a major raid against The Pirate Bay and people involved with the site took place, prompted by allegations of copyright violations.


"Site Down" message on 31 May, 2006.The raid, in which some 50 police officers participated, shut down the site and its servers were confiscated, as well as all other servers hosted at The Pirate Bay's Internet service provider, PRQ Inet.

Three people, aged 22, 24, and 28, were held by the police for questioning, but were released later in the evening.

Special attention has been brought to the fact that even though only the servers running The Pirate Bay were eligible for possible copyright violations, all servers in the server room were seized, even those running Piratbyrån, an independent organization fighting for file-sharing rights, as well as servers that are unrelated to The Pirate Bay or other filesharing activities.


"Site Down Hoax" message on 1 June, 2005.It is not clear why the raid was carried out at this particular time. The Swedish public broadcast network Sveriges Television cited unnamed sources claiming that the raid was prompted by political pressure from the United States.

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) wrote in a press release: "Since filing a criminal complaint in Sweden in November 2004, the film industry has worked vigorously with Swedish and U.S. government officials in Sweden to shut this illegal site down". Dan Glickman, CEO of MPAA, also stated that "Intellectual property theft is a problem for film industries all over the world and we are glad that the local government in Sweden has helped stop The Pirate Bay from continuing to enable rampant copyright theft on the Internet".

The closure message initially caused some minor confusion, because on June 1, 2005 The Pirate Bay had posted a remarkably similar message stating that they were permanently down since they had been raided by the Swedish Anti-Piracy Bureau and IFPI, which was later admitted as a prank. The BitTorrent community, once assured of the story's truth, quickly spread the announcement across online news sites, blogs, and discussion forums.


Picture from one of PRQ's "emptied" data centers. PRQ is the hosting company that hosts the Piratebay.org website.The Pirate Bay was brought back online on a temporary server, and now displays a "SITE DOWN" message, in which they confirm that the police were in possession of valid search warrants alleging either breach of copyright law or assisting such a breach. The Pirate Bay recently posted pictures of the alleged empty servers raided by the police.

Source From Digital World News Blog at http://digitalworldnews.blogspirit.com/

The “new” channel will occupy Prime’s dial position when it debuts in 5.6 million Canadian homes on June 1.

“(Prime) has been in its original incarnation for almost 10 years, and with a focus on the total stable of products (including the recent revamp of the Global Television Network), there’s a huge opportunity for specialty in Canada,” says Tim Kist, Winnipeg-based director of marketing for Global Television Specialty Networks.

Up to 70% of Prime’s schedule–long heavy on such ’70s and ’80s shows as MASH and The Golden Girls–will be refreshed with “iconic” shows including Seinfeld, Frasier and Beverly Hills 90210.

“It’s that era of show that has had a long run on TV, is now in syndication on one or two other channels, but nobody has gone back and taken a look at a lot broader range of those shows and put them all together back-to-back-to-back,” says Kist. “That carves us out as something distinct.”

TVtropolis will also feature the Canadian premieres of celebrity reality shows including Hogan Knows Best (chronicling wrestler Hulk Hogan’s life away from the ring), My Fair Brady (the life of Christopher “Peter Brady” Knight) and Celebrity Fit Club.

Some background information on TVtropolis:

TVTropolis is a Canadian cable television specialty channel, formerly known as Prime, which launched on June 1, 2006. It is currently owned by CanWest Global Communications (66.7%) and Rogers Communications (33.3%).

Programming
TVtropolis operates two feeds, East and West, using Eastern and Pacific time respectively. TVtropolis showcases hit series from the ‘80s and ‘90s such as Seinfeld, Frasier, Married... with Children, Due South and more as well as reality series featuring TV icons such as Hogan Knows Best, Celebrity Fit Club, My Fair Brady and Breaking Bonaduce.

History
Licensed in 1996, the network was originally launched as Prime on October 17, 1997. While the station did not explicitly market itself as a television channel for the "baby boomer" generation, programming was directed mainly towards men and women 50 years of age or older. Prime's schedule reflected a mix of general interest television, including home improvement and design series, along with classic television series such as M*A*S*H, All In The Family, Seinfeld and Frasier. It would also host repeat showings of Global and CH series, including The Apprentice, The Restaurant, The Price Is Right, Entertainment Tonight Canada, and Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. Prime's slogan was "Canada's Entertainment Network".


Programs
Beverly Hills 90210
Breaking Bonaduce
Canadian Case Files
Celebrity Fit Club
Counterstrike
Due South
Ellen
ET Canada
Frasier
From The Ground Up with Debbie Travis
Grace Under Fire
Hogan Knows Best
House and Home
Inside Hollywood
Lonesome Dove
Married... with Children
M*A*S*H
My Fair Brady
Ned and Stacey
Neon Rider
NewsRadio
Night Heat
Northern Mysteries
Seinfeld
Sirens
The Nanny
Urban Angel
Vanity Insanity
War Of The Wheels

Visit TVtropolis at http://www.tvtropolis.com/

Source From Digital World News Blog at http://digitalworldnews.blogspirit.com/

Most American consumers are satisfied with existing options for watching television and listening to music according to recent research from Ipsos.


The research firm found that online American consumers are generally cautious when it comes to trying out new ways to access digital content and most do not envision emerging options for accessing audio and video as replacing traditional options anytime soon.

The Ipsos survey found that, despite the hype surrounding ways to download music and television shows, only a minority of Americans are open to just-emerging ways of accessing digital video content via the Internet.

To learn more about how consumers felt, Ipsos presented survey respondents with a series of entertainment consumption methods and asked them whether they expect to do this more often, about the same amount, or less often a year from now.


For example, when asked about watching television only 6% said they would likely be watching more television on the internet this time next year. A significant percentage but only one-third the number of people who said they would be more likely to watch television the old fashioned way on live-tv! Three percent said they would be more likely to watch a sports games, events, or highlights on a mobile handheld device (e.g., iPod, cell phone)compared to five times that number (16%) who said they would be more likely to watching on live TV.


When it came to listening music, 25% said they'd be listening to more CD's next year versus 17% who said they'd be listening to more music on the internet.

“It’s pretty clear to us that most consumers lean toward the path of least resistance – involving the smallest amount of learning and behavior change,” says Todd Board, SVP of Ipsos Insight’s Technology & Communications practice. “Our findings also suggest that early experiences with content obtained from the Internet and consumed on portable devices has not been all that users had hoped for.”


Respondents were asked also asked about how seriously they would consider each of five hypothetical models for consuming video content – all involving Internet content access, and varying in terms of cost, duplication rights, and presence of advertising. About 10 percent of online American consumers said they are open to each of the five models.


“Among potential early adopters for web-driven video content, we already see differences in the priority placed on cost, absence of ads, and ability to make limited copies.” The findings also indicate a leaning toward several of the models among parents, perhaps because fewer trips to the video store might be welcome. Owners of portable MP3 players, DVRs (e.g., TiVo), and media hubs reported higher-than-average interest in most of the models.

The study suggests that a rapid shift from traditional ways of consuming media is not on the immediate horizon and that the change to an era where consumers will be consuming most of their media from the internet and on handheld devices is still a long way away. The research firm characterized the shift as more evolution than revolution.

Source From Digital World News Blog at http://digitalworldnews.blogspirit.com/

June 1, 2006 -- Photozig, Inc., located at NASA Research Park, today announced the commercial release of the Photozig(R) Albums v1.0 product line, the easy and fast solution to organize and share digital photos and short movies with efficient web connectivity.
Photozig Albums software transfers photos and movie clips from digital cameras, organizes them in the computer, creates slideshows with photos, movies, and music, generates personalized screensavers, emails photos to friends, and includes free online photo albums.

"You can easily find that special picture with quick search, tag photos, categorize albums, view digital photos in different ways, exchange full resolution images through the internet, drag/drop images from web browser to your computer, and much more," said Bruno Kajiyama, CEO of Photozig. "Imagine creating rich screensavers with your own pictures, which can be easily configured, providing much more personalized images on your desktop than free animated screensavers, or standard slide show programs."

The Photozig Albums family consists of three products: "Express" (basic digital photo organizer); "DeLuxe" (enhanced image views, sorting, and filtering); and "Premium" (extra video support).

Photozig Albums Express product is offered free of charge for a limited time, including built-in free photo editing software, free slideshow software, and photo organizer software. Photozig Albums DeLuxe and Premium products will be sold through RegNow, a Digital River, Inc. company (NASDAQ:DRIV).

Photozig Albums is based in part upon a research project, funded by the National Institute of Disability Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR), under grant H133S020030, particularly R&D findings related to enhancing usability and interface methods to facilitate assimilation for a broad range of users, and enabling easy organization of personal digital memories in a desktop computer.

Users can download photo software at www.photozig.com and unleash the possibilities of the best digital camera technology.

About Photozig, Inc.

Photozig mission is to provide "the best customer experience to save, organize, and share lifetime memories". Photozig develops easy-to-use tools, practical solutions, and time-saving features to facilitate the management, enhancement, and sharing of digital pictures and video. For more information, downloadable digital photo album, and free digital photo organizer software, go to www.photozig.com, or send an email to info@photozig.com.

Photozig is a registered trademark of Photozig, Inc.

Source From Digital World News Blog at http://digitalworldnews.blogspirit.com/