Archive for August, 2007

As if climbing up was not enough to create vertigo in some sky-scrappers, here comes an Italian architect, David Fischer, proposing to have a tower whose floors would rotate independently in a 68-floor tower.

This is in Dubai. This is not decided yet. But the local lack of architectural restraint make it very believable.

Thanks to Transnets.

The newest pro SLR camera from Olympus appeared shortly in Korea. So, you may find a few interesting bits at:

• slrclub.com
• bbs.danawa.com

Really not much to see, but this was probably not a mockup.

You may remark (or may not) the appearance of a new feature on this web site: on each individual post page, there is now a little list of similar articles. It is intended to help you discover new articles that you may not know but are related to the post your are reading at this time.

Have fun!

For the interested WordPress users, I can tell that to get this feature I used the “related_posts” plugin of Wasabi.

Panasonic had previosuly said that they wanted to seriously join the croud of camera manufacturers with a medium- to high-end Digital SLR. But up to now they did not disclose much.

But now, there is more to taste it: a preview of the Panasonic DMC-L10 at DPreview, an analysis at PopPhoto.com and a Panasonic Press Release at Photography Blog.

To my eyes, the most interesting or notable features are:

• Orientable 2.5″ LiveView rear LCD display (the most flexible of D-SLR rear displays)
• 10.1-Megapixel Live MOS Sensor in Four-Thirds (4/3) form factor (compatible with the wealth of 4/3 lenses)
• Supersonic Wave dust-cleaning for the sensor (this technology is expected to provide the best-in-class dust removal as proven by Olympus)
• Image stabilisation (Mega O.I.S.) included in the lenses (as for the standard LEICA D VARIO-ELMAR 14-50mm/F3.8-5.6)

You can bet that this camera will be helping a lot of point-and-shoot compact camera users to move to D-SLR level because of the right blend of ease-of-use and high-end performance.

Others articles about the DMC-L10 found on the web:

• ThinkCamera
• DigitLife
• DigitLife (opinion)

It is quite common for movies to have nearly the same colors even if they present completely different features. In this context, there is a study titled “Dark and Fleshy: The Color of Top Grossing Movies” presenting in details the color spectrum of Hollywood blockbusters.

The bootchart utility is able to produce a simple PNG image of the boot sequence of your GNU/Linux configuration. Installation is a snap:

sudo apt-get install bootchart

The result is a nice little thing like:

12 monochrome laser printers compared by Tom’s Hardware. These are not the printers that grab all media attention, but a mere B&W laser printer can reduce significantly your printing budget and they come at really low prices.

Acer, the Taiwanese PC company that so many people don’t know (because they tend to sell a lot of OEM computers under the name of more well-known brands) has been reaching 3rd rank in the PC makers by buying US PC maker/seller Gateway. They seem to be looking into a possible buy of Packard Bell to cover the European market too.

You should start remembering those names.

Michelle Roohani is not only an interesting photographer that I already mentionned here a few months ago, a good friend, but also able to stir things up a little. In a recent post titled “Suicide, a fundamental right“, she suceeded in promoting a quite interesting talk about a difficult philisophical subject. I think that it’s well worth spending a few minutes there. At least, for the comment thread.

This is really not complicated, many web sites (even subscription-based) want to be indexed by Google. To this end, they recognize the Google spider and give it priviliged access rights. Why not try to disguise yourself as the most well known search engine of the world? Simple: Modify your browser identification string? Simple, but not always working, of course.

Seen on uneasysilence.com.

After F.E.A.R., the First Person Shooter (FPS) PC game that impressed (because of its playability as much as because of the then-overblown hardware requirements), here comes an expansion pack (F.E.A.R. – Perseus Mandate) that will allow you to explore the same dark universe, to experience the same acceleration effects, and to fight many opponents.

Sierra Entertainment just published on a video to give us, video gamers, a taste of this pie:

Chemists and physicists are all very well aware of the importance of classifying atoms in the periodic table of elements. Internet users may discover that the presentation of the main web sites through another kind of periodic table would be useful.

Seen on WellingtonGrey

Google announced, soon after its buying of YouTube, that it wouold add some advertisment on the amateur video web site. This is now what they did. But it did not leave the software developers insensitive: TubeStop is a FireFox plug-in that hides or closes that ads in YouTube to keep the same pleasure without the ads…

The race for larger hard drives does nto slow down. Today, it is quite easy to find 500GB disks at a very reasonable cost (and remember that this is no less than half a tera-byte of data!)

I recently observed several interesting comparisons about this issue:

• In English: Tom’s Hardware (external disks)
• In French: Hardware.fr (internal SATA disks)

The recent launch of the Nikon D300 and Nikon D3 was made long with the announcement of new pro telephoto lenses. Very noticeable for lovers of nature photography (with a deep pocket): the super telephoto lenses. They open at f/2.8 and f/4, they are all stabiliszed (VR) :

• 400mm f/2.8G ED VR AF-S NIKKOR
• 500mm f/4G ED VR AF-S NIKKOR
• 600mm f/4G ED VR AF-S NIKKOR

(more…)

Those servers are central to validate the “Microsoft Genuine Advantage” service. In plain words, they provide the verification that you are really a registered user authorized by Microsoft. But these servers are currently down (some kind of network failure?) and Microsoft forecast about two days before going back to a normal situation. This simply means plenty of problems for the clients willing to authentify themselves, either because they just installed a Microsoft software, or because they upgrade one.

This is a new example of why I am against copy protection and DRM. Pirates will obviously not notice the event and won’t even be annoyed. But legal customers of Microsoft are stuck waiting for the repair of these servers in order to come back to normal use of their software. Clearly, copy protection is not a customer service, only a mean to a sales end.

Do you love watches? Are you a geek? You should love these surprising watches.

WebTime Series Elite is displaying time by the alignment of the colored polygons and the vertical scale:

Shinshoku prefers to use a colored light code:

Seiko’s e-Ink is more a prototype using flexible electronic ink or electronic paper to display time. There are two modes. One is rather clear and understandable; The other is more mysterious but very elegant.

The two first ones are available at the very surprising Tokyo Flash web site. But the last one is not available yet.

Last information: If you need to know the price, it’s that you can’t afford them. Anyway, they should sell as well as sodas during a hot Summer.

Complement: The INQUIRER Top 5 Tech Wristwatches.