Digital Home Thoughts - News & Reviews for the Digital Home

I'm thrilled to announce the newest member of the Thoughts Media family: Android Thoughts. As you can guess, this site will be covering Android in all it's forms - phones, slates, etc. The site is being led by none other than our very own Jon Westfall; he'll be handling all editorial duties on the site, similar to how Apple Thoughts works. Android has exploded in popularity over the past 12 months, surpassing even the mighty iPhone in terms of daily activations according to some. It made sense to cover Android as part of what we do here at Thoughts Media, but I wanted to find someone who was passionate and interested in all things Android...and that person is Jon Westfall. Please go read his welcome message on the site to find out how Android Thoughts was born - and subscribe to the RSS feed and Twitter stream. And, above all, if you're interested in Android as a platform, contribute, share, comment, and become a part of that new community.

"After the overt teasing, leaking, and then more leaking, Microsoft's finally ready to spit out the details on its Arc Touch Mouse, which at the end of the day is really just... a mouse. As we've seen, the peripheral has an incredibly unique design -- the flat device arches its back to click into a mountain shape, which actually ends up powering the little rodent up. So, where does the whole "touch" factor come into play? Well, very similarly to the Mad Catz Eclipse mouse, the Arc Touch has a capacitive touch strip with sensor pads between the mouse buttons that can be used for scrolling and customizable shortcuts."

Engadget have the news that this funky mouse by Microsoft will be out in December, probably in time for the Christmas shopping season I suspect. They have also posted the above video showing how it works, and how it gets its name of the Arc Touch Mouse. It's definitely a novel design, I just hope that switching it on and off doesn't break it over time.

"Panasonic has announced its newest 8GB and 16GB SDHC UHS-I memory cards. UHS-I is the new standard for higher-speed Bus interface defined by the SD Association as part of the SD Memory Card Specification Ver.3.01, which provides up to 104MB/s performance."

Alright, so there's no pricing information yet, but like with all Panasonic SD cards based on the latest standards, they will be expensive, with promised speeds of 60MB/s. The announcement of the new speed standard has slipped under my radar, but now we have SDHC and SDXC standards to track, and the speed standards of Class 2-10 and UHS-I 1 to keep tabs on as well. Can the SD Association get their act together and get everything together in one standard for the future? Thanks!

Nikon USA has launched their own online store - which is an interesting move. I wasn't even aware that Canon had their own online store until I searched - my instinct is to always shop via online stores that I'm familiar with. I wonder why Nikon wants to compete with their channel partners that are selling the products?

"Datacolor, a global leader in color management solutions, today announced SpyderLensCal, a reliable method of measuring the focus performance on camera and lens combinations that delivers razor-sharp focusing using modern DSLR autofocus micro-adjustment."

Datacolor, a company who makes a range of solutions for colour workflow purposes, has announced a product to help with calibrating your autofocus DSLR lenses. This is somewhat like the products from LensAlign, but far cheaper: At US$59, it's cheaper than the LensAlign Lite by $20, and more than $100 and $200 less for the regular and long lens kits of the LensAlign. Still, it does look far more simplistic than the LensAlign version, but since I have not tried them, I have no idea if a simpler and cheaper product can do an equally good job here. The SpyderLensCal will ship sometime in the middle of September 2010.

Product Category: Photo book

Where to Buy: Photobook Canada

Price: $127.78 CAD as configured (prices start at $110 CAD for a 40 page book)

Pros:

• Incredible paper quality with the upgraded paper option;
• Impressive print quality on the cover and inside pages;
• Reasonably easy to use software.

Cons:

• Severe accuracy problems with front and back cover images;
• Tech support is somewhat lacking;
• Expensive, even with a discount coupon.

Summary: If you read my photo book review round up, you'll know that Photobook Canada fared quite well; with their upgraded paper option, the paper was superb, and the print and cover quality were excellent. At the time, they didn't support spine printing, and I further docked marks because the image on the back was printed right at the edge of the cover - but I was nevertheless impressed with the final product. Within a few weeks of my review going live, Photobook Canada launched version 5.0 of their photo book software, and guess what missing feature it added? Spine printing! Read more...

Want to win one of two 1 TB hard drives? Then jump over to this YouTube video and read the contest rules. Enjoy!

"That's all going to change starting next year. This time it's the masses that get the upgrade first. While Nehalem launched with expensive motherboards and expensive processors, the next tock in Intel's architecture cadence is aimed right at the middle of the market. This time, the ultra high end users will have to wait - if you want affordable quad-core, if you want the successor to Lynnfield, Sandy Bridge is it."

The huge force that is Intel continues moving along at a steady pace. While AMD is fighting back with its Bobcat and Bulldozer chips, Intel's Sandy Bridge seems to be a continuation of moves first seen with the Core i3 and i5 processors. Processing power is increasing, as expected, but the integrated graphics are what have caught my eye. While integrated graphics offered low power consumption and great 3D performance at a great price, its 3D capabilities were laughable at best. While Sandy Bridge will not be toppling the discrete GPU market, it is edging into the lower end and that means that the lowest bar for computing will offer something worthwhile. Programs like Google Earth will run even more smoothly, and 3D accelerated browsers are right around the corner. We might be watching the next push in computing fads!

"Olympus has announced a special "all black" kit for their E-P2 Micro Four Thirds camera, and also released two new lenses while they were at it."

So Olympus has announced what essentially is a vanity kit for their E-P2 camera, and more interestingly, two new lenses. The new all-black kit doesn't come with the detacheable EVF, which I find more important than having all black accessories, but hey, I guess vanity has a price, and in this case it is a grand.

The two new lenses are telephoto zooms; there's the US$300 40-150/4-5.6 (to mimick the now very standard consumer 70-300mm zoom) and the US$900 (!) 75-300/4.8-6.7. While Olympus touts the latter as the smallest "600mm" lens, I can't help but think that for the price and the slow aperture, Olympus has made one too many compromise in making it smaller, but not small; compare Nikon's new 55-300/4-5.6 at 3.1" by 4.84" against the Olympus at 2.76" by 4.57". The Nikkor needs to make space for the VR motors as well as cover a larger imaging circle, and costs less than half the price. This is probably why all manufacturers are scrambling towards mirrorless I guess; potentially cheaper construction yet higher sale prices! Photos of the lenses after the break. Read more...

"Amazon's third major iteration of its flagship reading device, the Kindle, comes out of the gate looking strong: the new graphite finish (just like its big brother, the Kindle DX) with a slimmer, lighter form factor, plus a bumped refresh rate for its E Ink screen. Best of all, the WiFi only and 3G readers have newly lowered prices (though they're still not exactly bargain basement level). We've spent the past few days putting the tinier Kindle through the paces to see just how much Amazon's improved it."

If you liked the graphite coloring and improved screen of the Kindle DX, but balked at the rather hefty physical size and price tag, take a look at the "latest generation" versions of Amazon's 6-inch display models: the "Kindle" (WiFi only), at $139.00, and the "Kindle 3G" (Free 3G + Wifi), at $189. Both units are physically smaller than their predecessors (and are extremely thin, as shown by the above comparison to a pencil!), feature the new screen technology, and may be ordered for mid-September (2010) delivery. Both also feature four "Experimental Features" - such as "Read-to-Me" and a "New WebKit-Based Browser" - but only the Kindle 3G offers the option of a white case at this time. Read the Engadget review for some interesting hands-on usage comments, along with their usual nice selection of photos.