Nikon’s flagship P6000 point-and-shoot is official, and pretty much everything we heard. Besides long-awaited RAW support (not on Macs, sorry), the 13.5-megapixel shooter has built-in GPS geotagging, Nikon’s DSLR controls, manual pop-up flash (which is so fun to play with it’s almost worth the US$500 price of admission by itself) and other pro-ish features for more manual control. The lens is a 4x wide-angle, and it’ll do up to ISO 3200 at full resolution, or 6400 at three megapixels. The most oddball feature? An Ethernet jack. So it’s like a free trip to 2001 to boot. Here’s all the details and another shot.
Okay, the S60 actually has two buttons: power and the shutter. Everything else is done on the massive 3.5-inch touchscreen, but a lot of the functions are actually automagical–auto-scene selection, one-touch portrait zooming, which automatically zooms in and frames a portrait, and an autofocus and exposure lock. The camera also comes with a stylus for doodling dirty words on photos in a super-basic editor. Oh yeah, it’s actually a camera too: 10 megapixels, 5x optical zoom, up to ISO 3200 and image stabilisation. In lots of colours! It’ll be US$350 next month. Check out its totally smooth, knob- and button-free back.
Rounding out Nikon’s fall point-and-shoot lineup–feast your eyes on the headliners above–we’ve got four other pieces of camera newness:
If you’re interested in the recently announced Lenovo IdeaPad S10, and you’re in the US, we hope you like Windows XP. The US market won’t get the Linux option the rest of the sub-notebook’s customers will, but any self-respecting Linux user would wipe the drive and put their own favourite flavour on, right? [IT World]
Gus over at Lifehacker spotted this one, and frankly it’s too good a deal to pass up – Catch of the Day have the Windows XP version of the unstoppable Eee PC 700 for $299.
300 bucks for any computer is a steal, but considering how well received the Eee has been, you’d be a fool to miss this one.
And, as pointed over on Lifehacker, considering they’re advertising that the maximum you can order is 10 at a time, there’s probably not a shortage of stock in the COTD warehouses. The offer does end at midday tomorrow though, so if you’re going to buy, do it now.
[Catch of the Day via Lifehacker]
Forget the OLPC laptop, MIT’s new hotness is the US$12 desktop computer for developing countries based roughly on the NES. The goal is to create an equivalent of the Apple II from the ’80s for less fortunate students across the world, likely to complement the OLPC laptop initiative. The designers imagine schools with computer labs where kids could learn the basics that they could use later in life. And the good news for the students who may someday get these is that gaming is indeed part of the package. [Project Page via Baltimore Sun]
The Net Neutrality battles have created and unexpected but welcome side effect. In it’s ruling against Comcast last week, the FCC said in a round about way that unless a you are abusing your Internet connection then the carriers have no right to tell you how you can use it. This could conceivably also be applicable to mobile phone plans, and it could mean cheaper data plans for you.
The Night Coaster is a small device you keep on your bedside table to host anything you might need during the night, like eyeglasses or your cigarettes or keys for the handcuffs. The neat bit is that it has a motion sensor that makes the coaster glow as you reach over to it, but not enough to wake your partner, just enough so that you can get what you need quietly. I believe this would be a great low-cost gift for the wedding of a couple you don’t really care about that much. [Taylor Gifts via 7Gadgets via Geek.com]
Design Guy 1: Hey dude, I was watching A New Hope last night, and I had the best freakin’ idea. Design Guy 2: What? Build a Death Star? DG1: No, man. You remember those little robot wheelie things that run around the Death Star, making funny noises? DG2: Yeah, I think so. DG1: Well, what if we made an iPod dock that looked just like one of those things, except without the wheels, and with a silver grill around it? DG2: Are you high? DG1: On life! DG2: Let’s do it!
Traditional camera lenses have to have beefier optics to make up for the fact that the sensor is flat–but one reason why the human eye is such an efficient little cam at (576 megapixels! ISO 800!) is because our image sensors (err, retinas) are rounder to better capture the light transmitted by the lens on the other side of the sphere. Researchers at Northwestern and U. Chicago have found a way to create a traditional photo sensor that flexes without breaking, which means your cyborg glass eye of the future will be all the more lifelike.
