CES 2008

The hard-working folks at http://www.dpreview.com have gone to Las Vegas for

CES 2008. What did they find in their January 7, 2008 report?

Panasonic has announced a digital camera with integrated WiFi and a deal with T-

Mobile for access to 802.11 hotspots nationwide. No details on whether the

camera will work with ordinary home WiFi networks, but presumably it will.

They have a deal with Google's Picasa service for automatic uploads. Perhaps

we are finally coming to the end of the era when camera nerds expect to take

their point and shoot camera home and monkey around with the PC before showing

off photos (ordinary folks already enjoy the luxury of PC-free photography by

using camera phones).

Casio has introduced a couple of point and shoot cameras with a 28mm equivalent

perspective at the wide angle end of the zoom. It is unclear why point and

shoots have trapped folks in the 35mm pseudo-wide ghetto for so long, but nice

to see that Casio is offering an escape.

Sony has a revision to its low-end A100 digital SLR. This one is the A200 and

uses a 10 MP APS-sized CCD (not CMOS).

Casio offers a bizarre hybrid camera and HD camcorder. The EX-F1 can record 60

fps at full HD resolution or 1200 frames per second at 336x96. This could be

an interesting tool for people interested in analyzing motion.

Looking at other news reports, Bill Gates apparently gave an uninteresting keynote speech (http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/index.php?topic_id=57885 ).

For those of us wrangling with the 25 MB RAW images from the Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III, Intel's announcement of a batch of 16 new processors is welcome. These are based on a process with feature sizes as small as 45 nanometers (compare to 2004 when 90 nanometers was all the rage).

My favorite camera phone, the Samsung SGH-G800, seems to have been officially introduced in the U.S. This thing is a standard 5 MP point and shoot digital camera with optical zoom lens, glued to a mobile phone. It uses HSDPA for connectivity (10-100X faster service than an iPhone). Presumably we will see this available from AT&T or T-Mobile.

Smartparts introduced a 32-inch digital picture frame with a low 1366x768 resolution (HD resolution is 1920x1080). http://smartpartsproducts.com has more details (also perhaps the world's crummiest Web interface (click on "digital picture frames" and then look at the horizontal scroll bar)).

There are a bunch of hard drive-based camcorders (much less annoying transfer process to a computer than a tape-based camcorder). The latest and greatest have disk drives up to 120 GB and face detection software for the autofocus system. Prices start at about $450 if you don't need high-def. If you're clumsy, Panasonic is going to be selling an SD-card based waterproof camcorder, good down to 5 feet. Panasonic showed a 32 GB SD card prototype, intended for this and other SD-card based camcorders (will also be good for the 1Ds Mark III, which has an SD slot).

Speaking of hard drives, Samsung introduced a 500 GB notebook drive that is only 9.5mm high, fitting into standard slim notebooks (more useful than Hitachi's recently introduced 500 GB notebook drive).

I walked around CES and thought I would point to some things I thought would be interesting to people.

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<a href="http://www.eye.fi/a-wireless-memory-card/"> Eye-Fi</a> a 2GB SD card that also will wirelessly connect to a specified wi fi network and upload your bits to the net.

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There was also an impressive new display from samsung upon which to show your images -- It was a <a href=http://www.eye.fi/a-wireless-memory-card/">150 inch plasma display</a> from Panasonic that had 8 megapixel resolution.

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Also hitachi, panasonic and etc. Also had amazingly thin LCD and Plasma Displays.