Sony is rolling out firmware 1.80 for its PlayStation 3. This latest update will add resolution upscaling capability for PlayStation and PlayStation 2 titles, as well as bring DVD playback to full 1080p resolution when viewed on compatible HDTVs. Further enhancements include Remote Play functionality for the PlayStation Portable (PSP), which allows users to access their PlayStation 3 consoles remotely from its portable little brother using any available wireless connection. Moreover, Sony is boosting the PS3 as a media hub for the front room, adding the ability to network the console with home PCs to stream media content on to TV sets.

In related news, VoIP service Jajah has made an update to its website that streamlines it for use on the PS3. As voipstage.com reports, Jajah lets you register with your “home phone number, then when you want to call someone you enter their number into your browser and Jajah will dial your phone and connect you directly”, doing away with headsets as it uses your existing handset (or mobile phone). The service is free between Jajah users.

BT (British Telecom) and Sony have teamed up to offer users of the electronics giant’s PlayStation Portable (PSP) a VoIP option that will enable them to place voice and video calls to other PSP owners and some BT phones. The service, which is then set to expand to allow calls to PCs, fixed lines and mobile phones, will use a new camera and microphone PSP accessory called Go Camera, to be released in the UK on 25 May.

BT is taking care of the software side of the deal, while also offering its 2000 UK hotspots infrastructure to which the initial service will be exclusive. BT said it expects to then sell the software to telecoms in another 100 countries

SANYO has introduced the Sanyo Xacti VPC-E1 6MP Waterproof MPEG4 Camcorder with 5x Optical Zoom , a waterproof camcorder aimed at active families, vacationers and water sports enthusiasts. Encased in a colorful compact design, the E1 can record high-quality MPEG-4 video (using the H.264 standard) and doubles as a 6-megapixel stills camera under water to a depth of five feet for up to one hour at a time. The device records to a standard SD memory card or high-capacity SDHC card (up to 10 hours of 640 x 480 pixel, 30 fps video on a 8GB card). Moreover, the Xacti E1 sports a flip-out 2.5-inch LCD color display, 5x optical zoom and an anti-shake digital image stabilizer. It measures 2.8 x 4.4 x 1.6 (W x H x D, in inches) weighing in at 8.3 oz. SANYO does away with the need of a bulky underwater housing and is counting on the easy, one hand operation of the camcorder to allow users to take it everywhere all year round: the beach and the lake for snorkeling and water-skiing enthusiasts, and the snowy slopes for skiers and snowboarders. And of course it is handy for recording all the fun at parties, children’s school or sports events and family outings.

The SANYO Xacti E1 will be available in the U.S.A. in a choice of blue, yellow and white colors in mid-June 2007 at $499.99 MSRP.

More Tech-Summer stuff here.

Casio has today announced it will launch the flagship EXILIM Zoom EX-Z1200, the first compact point&shoot camera to sport a 12.1 effective megapixels sensor. An update to the 10.1 megapixel EXILIM Zoom EX-Z1000, the new model has a 2.8-inch wide display and is said to offer an amazing level of detail allowing users to print high resolution photos in large sizes or when trimmed to show just one part of the image. According to Casio, the 3x optical zoom, high definition video capable EX-Z1200 incorporates “CCD-shift image stabilization and the latest EXILIM Engine 2.0 image processing module with motion analysis technology. These innovative features work together to help prevent blurry shots due to shaky hands, subject movement or poor focus when photographing moving subjects such as children or pets.”: the camera combines an auto-tracking AF system with face detection and motion analysis technologies, locking the focus to a subject’s face even if it’s moving.

No pricing has yet been announced for the EXILIM Zoom EX-Z1200.

Welcome to the second part of our special report. We left off with Apple representative Richard West talking about the importance of color calibration…

Next up was Jonathan Ferman, Business Development Manager, Media & Publishing for Adobe, going through some of the new features of the main applications in CS3. He started off with Bridge, Adobe’s asset management program, which managed to first draw blanks from the audience (a show of hands revealed that although all of the attendees used CS2 or at least a few of its programs, none used Bridge for asset management) and then chuckles when Ferman showed its “completely reworked and improved UI”: everything from functionality to colour scheme seems to have been lifted from Apple’s Aperture (down to the 100% magnification function, a square called Zoom in Bridge, more than reminiscent of the circular Loupe in Aperture). Inside Bridge are some new collaborative features like Version Cue, offering built-in support for workgroups and check-in and check-out functionality when multiple people are working on the same file/project, and Acrobat Connect, a flash-based mini-app that allows onscreen meetings and classes with remote assets-sharing capabilities.

Photoshop sports faster startup times and a reworked UI. Palettes have now been renamed Panels, and have been made more fluid and easily customizable. Panels work in a way that is similar to browser tabs, movable and switchable around the workspace, and new tools/name/icon views allow saving screen real estate to concentrate on the image and minimize the pixels taken over by the tool switches. A very cool feature is the quick selection tool, an improvement on the lasso tool to cut out elements of an image with stunning precision. The new tool takes into account not only edges, but also colour and even texture: and if that’s still not precise enough for you, a Refine Edge tool brings you into the finest details like hair and fabrics. The ease of use of this features was quite impressive. Perhaps the most interesting feature of all was the auto align pictures: you can now select a bunch of similar pictures, and PS will align them for you based on content, layering them in an onion skin fashion, and allow users to choose the best exposure by deleting or bringing parts of the layers to the front. Stitching panoramas with auto exposure correction via auto blending is also possible, all at a click of one button. 3D and video/audio are now supported, and fully editable, inside PhotoShop. 3D layers, wireframe views, lighting effects, frame by frame editing, music scoring, all in one place and with tight integration with the other programs of the Suite.

Dreamweaver is one of the Macromedia applications Adobe is bundling in CS3, and is now fully compatible and integrated with Photoshop. It boasts even better tools to check browser compatibility issues (offering solutions through a community-driven website) and CSS stylesheet manipulation, with presets for outputting the same content for web, print, and mobile devices alike. In particular, users are able to preview how their work will look on different handeld decives through Device Central, a fully featured emulator with a list of the latest phones from the main manufacturers (which Adobe promises to update regularly). From screen size to processor simulation, no detail is left off to replicate the user experience on different devices. And developing for different platforms is just a matter of clicking a button, Dreamweaver will do it automatically for you, adapting the content to your choice of device.

Square Group Ltd in association with Adobe, Apple and a slew of other partners organized an Adobe Creative Suite CS3 seminar at BFI Southbank in London last Tuesday, May 15, 2007. The seminar featured presentations from both Adobe and Apple about the new features of the many applications that make up Adobe’s new crown jewel, CS3, alongside demonstrations of related products from the likes of Eizo, Wacom, Extensis, HP and G-Tech. SourceCrowd was in attendance and can bring you an exclusive report from the event.
Before the seminar, attendees were able to peruse stands with a few interesting products on show. Eizo wowed the crowd with its stunning professional quality displays like the ColorEdge CE240W sporting hardware colour calibration, 14-bit color processing and easy profiling. Extensis was showcasing two of its software products for asset management: Suitcase Fusion, a font manager to organize, categorize and activate/deactivate fonts on the fly, and Portfolio, a complete multimedia files management tool. HP was showcasing the HP B9180 Photosmart Pro Printer, an eight-tanks pigment ink powerhouse which demonstrated stunning results on some of HP’s custom papers (especially impressive were the results on canvas-textured paper). Wacom had both the A4 Intuos3 graphic tablet and the Cintiq 21UX display available for hands-on demonstrations, making precise editing of pictures a breeze. Last but not least, G-Tech had the whole range of its external high speed hard drives solution on display. The elegant silver enclosures sport the latest in eSata and Firewire connections on the G-Raid2, G-Drive 250GB External FW400/USB2, G-Mini and G-Safe, with high-end fibre-channel RAID solutions also available in the G-Speed models.

Then it was finally time to immerse into the presentation!

The first speaker was Richard West, Apple Business Development Manager for the UK and Ireland. He started by stressing how important it is, in a multimedia communicational landscape, to put to good use the plethora of different ways that businesses have to reach clients, by customizing communications to target and focus on different markets. Adobe Creative Suite CS3, he argued, is the tool of choice to do so, allowing the use of a single creative process for multiple disciplines through its multiplicity of applications. Since output is so important to the designers and developers who use CS3, he then went on to demonstrate how colour calibration devices (in this case, the Pantone Huey Pro MEU113) can work in tandem with OS X ColorSync Utility (found in the Applications>Utilities folder) to prevent disparity between screen output versus print/web output. In particular he showed how it is possible to compare colour spaces graphically, and onscreen proofing of different colour spaces just by dragging and dropping images on the application. Microsoft’s Windows has “borrowed” the same functionality for its latest OS, implemented in Vista under the name Windows Colour System (located in the Control Panel).

Stay tuned for the second part of our report - coming soon!

Following this month’s beta testing release (see SourceCrowd’s report here), Microsoft has announced the highly anticipated XBox 360 game Halo 3 will be released on September 25, 2007 in the US (one day later in Europe). Hoping to drive games and consoles sales in the run-up to Christmas, Microsoft will launch the third chapter of the first-person shooter game in 3 versions: the basic game will cost $59.99, a limited edition retailing for $69.99 and a legendary edition for $129.99. Microsoft is set to mount a huge publicity campaign to boost the new game contender, hoping it will help in the console wars against Sony’s PS3 and Nintendo’s Wii.

Pre-order Halo 3 clicking here.

LG.Philips LCD announced it has developed the world’s first 14.1″ flexible color E-paper display, equivalent in size to an A4 sheet of paper and less than 300 micrometers(㎛) thick. The images displayed are said to be comparable in quality to printed pages. This new device is a further enhancement after the company’s black and white flexible E-paper display announced in May 2006. According to the LG.Philips website, the E-paper uses electronic ink from E-Ink Corp. to produce a maximum of 4,096 colors. It has a viewing angle of 180 degrees, allowing images to be viewed even when the display is bent.
This new colour version uses a substrate that arranges Thin-Film Transistors (TFT) on metal foil rather than glass, allowing it to recover its original shape after being bent.

Apple has today cut the UK prices for the iPod Shuffle mp3 players by 10%, lowering the entry-level diminutive gadget’s price point from GBP55 to GBP49. This move follows a similar trend set in April, when Apple had reduced the prices of its high-end video iPod range (SourceCrowd announcement here).

The iPod Shuffle is available in 5 colours with 1GB capacity and up to 12 hours of playback time, measuring only 1.62 × 1.07 × 0.41 inches.

Apple has updated its consumer line of MacBook laptops adding faster processors (Intel’s Core 2 Duo), bumping up the RAM to 1GB and offering larger hard drives. The popular 13.3″ laptops still come in the familiar three configurations, with two white models and a high end black one, built-in iSight, 802.11n wireless networking and OS X Tiger and iLife suite preloaded. The lineup with the new processors is as follows:

• 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 13.3″ White MacBook, 80GB hard drive, 1GB RAM, Intel Graphics 950, RRP $1099
• 2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 13.3″ White MacBook, 120GB hard drive, 1GB RAM. Intel Graphics 950, RRP$1299
• 2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 13.3″ Black MacBook, 160GB hard drive, 1GB RAM, Intel Graphics 950, RRP $1499

The new MacBooks are available for purchase now from the Apple Store
and other selected retailers.

Best price for Apple MacBook MA700LL/A 13.3″ Notebook PC (2.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 1 GB RAM, 80 GB Hard Drive, SuperDrive) - White

The Haier Elegance is a “lipstick case-sized” luxury GSM mobile phone which boasts the “smallest GSM phone with integrated mp3 player” tag. It measures a mere 9.1 x 3.5 x 1.8cm (3.5 inches long), sporting a black pearl reflective finish, built-in mp3 player with up to 1.128GB of space (through optional microSD card adding to the 128MB of space included), FM Stereo tuner, Voice Recorder, Photo viewer, stereo BlueTooth transmitter and full color OLED display. The diminutive phone promises 3 hours of talktime and 11 hours of music playback, not bad for a gadget people will buy for its looks and sleek design more than its practicality.

It is available in US dual band technology or European tri-band to conform to the different GSM standards and is ready for purchase worldwide through Haier’s online shop.

AMD has today launched its ATI Radeon HD 2000 series of graphic card. They feature, according to the company’s website, a series of “firsts” in the graphics market: second-generation Unified Shader Architecture (USA), a 512-bit memory bus designed for full performance high dynamic range (HDR) rendering, and new Unified Video Decoder (UVD) technology for high-fidelity HD media playback. The HD 2000 series also takes full advantage of DirectX 10 and Windows Vista’s features, as well as the latest OpenGL programs. The new chips have built-in Crossfire capability, allowing users to pair up 2 cards in PCI Express slots without the need of any additional hardware or cables. AMD’s guide design can include HDMI-out with audio, thus completing the process of transforming PCs into real media hubs in the modern home.

This HD revolution involves notebooks as well as desktops: the Mobility Radeon HD series features the same architecture in a package that uses smaller 65 nm process technology in order to achieve passive cooling and promises lower power consumption. At the same time, these powerful chips should relieve the main CPU from the more taxing graphic tasks, allowing next-gen HD content to be enjoyed on even the smaller, thin portable computers.

The Radeon HD 2000 series for desktops will be available in the next few days, with the first Mobility models set to launch in new laptops by the end of the month.

Low prices on nVidia and ATi graphics cards with next day delivery!

Canon USA is launching two new high-end PowerShot models, the 8MP 12x-zoom capable S5 IS and the ultra compact 8MP 4x zoom SD850 IS. Both models feature Image Stabilization (the IS badge after their name), face recognition AF and in-camera red-eye reduction.
The S5 IS is one of Canon’s bridge models, aimed at the prosumer enthusiast, and is styled like a small DSLR. It has an impressive 36-432 (35mm equivalent) focal length, 2.5in swivel LCD screen to frame the shots, push 1600 ISO mode for low-light photography, high quality widescreen 30fps movie mode, and uses SD cards for storage (32MB included). It has a retail price of $499.99 and will be available in July.

The SD850 IS Digital Elph packs a punch in a sleek compact design. It comes with a UA lens, a high-refractive element that according to Canon enhances picture quality while reducing lens size, features 35-140 (35mm equivalent) focal length, 2.5in LCD screen, 1600 ISO mode for low-light shooting conditions, widescreen 30fps VGA movie mode, and uses SD cards for storage (32MB included). It has a retail price of $399.99 and will be available in June.

eJamming AUDiiO is an online tool that allows you to connect to other musicians everywhere in the world and play your instruments together in an online jam session, all for free.

It was deemed one of the top 24 innovators by Fortune magazine, and that is no surprise when you realize the slew of possibilities it opens for both the learning and experienced musicians. Once you set up your account and download the beta (PC and Mac versions available), all that is left to do is to plug in your choice of instrument in your computer, and search for other like-minded musicians to jam with. In this respect eJamming works very much like any other social networking site.

One of the main problems faced by all computer musicians is the interface latency (the time intervening between the note played on your instrument and the processed sound coming out of your speakers). eJamming AUDiiO promises to reduce latency by measuring the relationship (distance, connection speed etc.) between the players connected in an online session, and imposing the minimal necessary delay on each instrument to synchronize the players. A comprehensive FAQ on the website guides you through the setup, and is full of tips to optimize the performance of your system to give a real “live” feel when playing.

eJamming AUDiiO is certainly one of the most interesting ideas to come out of the “Web 2.0″ user experience paradigm that we have seen so far.

Who said USB flash storage has to be dull and of strictly practical design? Surely Mimoco would not agree, as they add 4 Star Wars themed dongles to their line of stylish Mimobot USB Art Toy flash drives. These limited edition fashion statements let you store all your important files on a choice of Darth Vader, Chewbacca, Stormtrooper, and R2-D2 shaped devices. They come in 1GB, 2GB and 4GB densities (ranging from $79.95 to $169.95) and are available from Mimoco’s website.