Archive for February, 2007

More precisely, according to an eMarketer market study, the companies advertising on the Internet are rushing to be in front of the English and French Internet users. Much more than for Italian, Spanish and German users.

The exact origin of this difference is not well explained, but the advertising companies probably believe more in these two countries. All in all, the 136 million Internet users market of these five countries start to be large enough to be compared to the USA.

In the spotlight: Sony Alpha 900 Canon EOS 5D Mk II Download Nero for free Azureus configuration

It seems clear that if you have interest in a video game that is not just out to the market (even if it is only a few months old), the addition of a new wide LCD display can be source of endless troubles. You may not find the game using all the nice display surface you just gave it. Only on solution: Tips from WideScreenGamingForum.

Long list with many details.

Steven Walton, of LegionHardware, has been doing a very interesting comparison. He’s interested in getting the best possible CPU for a gamer willing to pay around $220 for his CPU. This is a nice price point because it seems to be around what most gamers are ready to pay to have a fast machine, and not too high (to avoid paying too much for little more performance).

I’ll let you check the details (benchmarks for memory, CPU performance and PC games), but the comparison tells that the Intel CPU is still the best bang for your buck, but the difference is quite small.

If he had to choose, Steven Walton says he would go for the Intel CPU. I admit easily (I already wrote here about that) that I don’t wont to come back to a monopolistic position for Intel, so I’d choose AMD and the Athlon64 X2 instead. But the choice is yours (my next machine will wait a few more weeks).

A photographer is hidden behind the FloFlo pseudo. She went to Northern India in December 2006 and she brought a few interesting phtoos organized as mini-slide-shows. The initial sorting allowed to separate some photograph of animal (wild or not) and snapshots of the Indian daily life (from a great country were colour is present everywhere in life).

Floflo’s web site

Australia environment minister Malcolm Turnbull is seriously considering banning the common traditionnal incandescent bulb in order to significantly reduces energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.

Even without a ban, you could also think about reducing your own personnal electricity bill by switching to low energy compact fluorescent lamps.

Source: BBC news.

For me, the CompactDrive PD70X is still a marvellous machine when you want to copy your flash memory cards onto portable hard disc storage. It still owns the speed record and it behaves like a camel when it comes to electric energy.

Today, I learned a few interesting informations that I want to share with the other owners:

• The HyperDrive HD80 (best distributed in the USA) seems to use the same electronics core and share the same firmwares
• Some users have had difficulties with 2+GB cards
• A new firmware version (2.2) is available from the German site (Resolves compatibility issues with certain Lexar CF cards; Fixes bug in usage of fragmented non-contiguous hard disk space (requires reformatting of hard drive); It is still unclear if this solves all the 2GB/4GB card problems)
• The new firmware increases the battery charge time (to better compatibility with most recent large capacity batteries)
• The PD70X is now officially considered by its manufacturer as a product having reached end of life and will no longer receive new firmware upgrades (but people will certainly keep checking the HyperDrive firmwares since up to now it was a successful bet)

A good product reaching end-of-life. Many advices from people wishing to replace their fastest Portable Hard Drive Storage. I remarked (but I cannot give my own opinion here):

• HyperDrive HD80 (internally and externally similar to PD70X; probably condemned in the short term, too)
• HyperDrive SPACE (well received by the press; very positive article in March 2007 Chasseur d’Images)
• NeXto CF Ultra

Thanks Jérôme.

Again, I come back to the issue of free fonts of great quality. DaFont holds links to hundreds of character fonts readily downlodable for both Mac and PC. Usually, this leads to a bunch of crap fonts. Here, the top 100 list is really of impressive quality. Waltograph is copying Walt Disney’s signature, Evanescence is both sophisticated and elegant, Loki Cola will remind you of some cola brand, Shanghai is the archetypical Chinese font, and all the others are really pleasant.

Now, what is often left aside in most font libraries is the presence (or lack) of accented letters. DaFont tells you clearly which ones have those internationally-needed letters and adds also the Euro sign to it.

It’s pleasant to merely go sight-seeing.

Apparently, Sony is preparing to roll out a number of new digital cameras on the 27th of February. But Engadget already got the scoop.

When you deal with high-end graphic cards (high-end both in terms of performance and price), you soon discover that you are spaeking about racing machines eating a lot of energy, needing a very efficient cooling solution and usually bragging about their performance through the sound of noisy fans.

Here comes the announcement expected for very soon now of AMD-ATI X1950 pro graphic cards promised by PowerColor. They would be passively cooled (meaning no fan, no noise, but merely a high-tech high-efficiency radiator). It could become the most powerful graphics solution on the market in the “no noise” category. Since the graphic cards often are the biggest source of noise in the gamers PC, that would mean Revolution.

Source: SPCR and many others.

Believe it or not, this is what Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, just told to financial analysts. He was trying to explain why the actual sales are already considered as much lower than the initial MS estimation. Apaprently, the most exotic countries (China, Russia, South East Asia) are on the list of the accused. But wouldn’t it be possible that the reason lies in selling Vista at an horrendous price while bringing only a cute new interface and potential problems with a rights management technology that will lead to more problems than solutions for the average user?

The solution (according to Steve): A re-inforced fight against piracy and a stricter WGA system. It’s only the beginning…

Canon is presenting today a new high-end product under the name of 1D-mkIII.

Here are the main features:

• 10.1 Megapixel CMOS sensor (1.3x factor): Going to today’s standard
• 10 fps continuous shooting for up to 110 frames: Did you say high-end?
• Dual DIGIC III processors: Real processing power
• New AF system with 19 cross style sensors
• EOS Integrated Cleaning System: Canon is now bringing the 400D system to the full SLR line
• ISO 3200 (expandable to ISO 6400): You can expect a good sensor to reach this
• 3.0â€� LCD: Big and with Live View for PC-controlled operation
• Improved viewfinder
• Price around $3999
• Availability: April 2007

Definitely a big camera. Definitely what some pros were expecting.

Side note: It may indicate that the Canon EOS 40D will not be arriving this month, if this is the only announcement before PMA next month. Rumours still being just that: rumours.