3 Technology Link |
- Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ150
- Toyota unveils high-tech concept car ahead of show
- Review: iTunes Match wins cloud music war by wisp
- US closes 150 websites in counterfeit crackdown
- 73,000 Finnish web users’ details hacked: police
| Posted: 28 Nov 2011 06:13 PM PST
Panasonic Lumix FZ150 : AngleThe Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ150 offers a long 24x zoom range, 1080p video recording, and fast continuous shooting. It’s priced a little high compared to some competing cameras, like the less-expensive Canon PowerShot SX40 HS, but is still a very capable camera.
Panasonic Lumix FZ150 : TopPhysical controls are plentiful. The left of the lens also houses a dedicated switch to toggle between focus modes, and a focus button that makes it possible to set the size and location of the FZ150′s autofocus area.
Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ150 (Test Scene)Our standard test scene, as viewed through the lens of the FZ150.
Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ150 (100% Crop)This 100 percent center crop shows you the level of detail that the FZ150 is able to capture.
Panasonic Lumix FZ150 : BackThe menu system is familiar if you’ve picked up a Panasonic camera before. There are no frills or fancy images—just clean, clear text to control the functions of the camera.
Panasonic Lumix FZ150 : ScreenThe FZ150′s 3-inch LCD is hinged so that you can view it from any angle. It can fold flat against the back of the camera with the LCD hidden, which automatically activates the FZ150′s eye-level EVF. It isn’t the sharpest viewfinder in the world, packing only 201,600 pixels, roughly half that of the 460k-dot rear LCD.
Panasonic Lumix FZ150 : LeftAlthough the FZ150 isn’t the fastest camera to start up and take a shot—its large lens has to extend a bit, which slows this process—it is able to rattle off shots with ease once it gets going.
Panasonic Lumix FZ150 : RightThe 12-megapixel camera is capable of grabbing full-resolution images at 12 frames per second and recording HD video in 1080p60 format, setting it apart from other superzooms that have less ambitious video aspirations.
Panasonic Lumix FZ150 : AngleIf a superzoom with video and fast continuous shooting is what you’re after, than the FZ150 may be the perfect camera for you. It has a nice 25-600mm zoom range, able to handle almost any shooting situation, assuming that the lighting is decent. And it can rattle off shots faster than some D-SLRs, but that performance comes at a price. (c) 2011 3tlink.info Share and Enjoy• Facebook • Twitter • LinkedIn • Digg • Delicious • StumbleUpon • Reddit • Google Buzz • FriendFeed • MySpace • Add to favorites • Email • Print • PDF | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Toyota unveils high-tech concept car ahead of show Posted: 28 Nov 2011 05:49 PM PST Toyota’s president unveiled a futuristic concept car resembling a giant smartphone to demonstrate how Japan’s top automaker is trying to take the lead in technology at the upcoming Tokyo auto show.
Toyota Motor Corp. will also be showing an electric vehicle, set for launch next year, and a tiny version of the hit Prius gas-electric hybrid at the Tokyo Motor Show, which opens to the public this weekend. But the automaker’s president, Akio Toyoda, chose to focus on the experimental Fun-Vii, which he called “a smartphone on four wheels” at Monday’s preview of what Toyota is displaying at the show. The car works like a personal computer and allows drivers to connect with dealers and others with a tap of a touch-panel door. “A car must appeal to our emotions,” Toyoda said, using the Japanese term “waku waku doki doki,” referring to a heart aflutter with anticipation. Toyota’s booth will be a major attraction at the biannual Tokyo exhibition for the auto industry. Toyota said the Fun Vii was an example of what might be in the works in “20XX,” giving no dates. The Tokyo show has been scaled back in recent years as U.S. and European automakers increasingly look to China and other places where growth potential is greater. U.S. automaker Ford Motor Co. isn’t even taking part in the show. Toyota’s electric vehicle FT-EV III, still a concept or test model, doesn’t have a price yet, but is designed for short trips such as grocery shopping and work commutes, running 105 kilometers (65 miles) on one full charge. The new small hybrid will be named Aqua in Japan, where it goes on sale next month. Overseas dates are undecided. Outside Japan it will be sold as a Prius. Japan’s automakers, already battered by years of sales stagnation at home, took another hit from the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, which damaged part suppliers in northeastern Japan, and forced the car makers to cut back production. The forecast of demand for new passenger cars in Japan this year has been cut to 3.58 million vehicles from an earlier 3.78 million by the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association. Toru Hatano, auto analyst for IHS Automotive in Tokyo, believes fuel efficient hybrid models will be popular with Japanese consumers, and Toyota has an edge. “The biggest obstacle has to do with costs, and you need to boost vehicle numbers if you hope to bring down costs” he said. “Toyota has more hybrids on the market than do rivals, and that gives Toyota an advantage.” Toyota has sold more than 3.4 million hybrids worldwide so far. Honda Motor Co., which has also been aggressive with hybrid technology, has sold 770,000 hybrids worldwide. Toyota is also premiering a fuel-cell concept vehicle, FCV-R, at the show. Zero-emission fuel cell vehicles, which run on hydrogen, have been viewed as impractical because of costs. Toyota said the FCV-R is a “practical” fuel-cell, planned for 2015, but didn’t give its price. “I felt as though my heart was going to break,” Toyoda said of the turmoil after the March disaster. “It is precisely because we are in such times we must move forward with our dreams.” (c) 2011 3tlink.info Share and Enjoy• Facebook • Twitter • LinkedIn • Digg • Delicious • StumbleUpon • Reddit • Google Buzz • FriendFeed • MySpace • Add to favorites • Email • Print • PDF | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Review: iTunes Match wins cloud music war by wisp Posted: 28 Nov 2011 05:46 PM PST In recent weeks, Apple, Google and Amazon.com have each launched the missing puzzle piece in their wireless mobile music systems.
Apple enabled storage and delivery of your songs over the Internet through iTunes Match. Google started selling music digitally. Amazon shipped an electronic-books device, called the Kindle Fire, that does much more than books. With those additions, each system now lets you buy songs, store them on faraway computers called the cloud and retrieve them wirelessly on devices connected to the Internet. But which system do you want to live with? It’s a choice you can’t make lightly because these companies don’t play nice with each other. Once you’ve adopted one, it’s hard to switch. If this were the Music Cloud Wars, then Apple’s iTunes Match would be winning – but not by much. Here’s a quick primer, along with a few ways to get in and around their digital barriers. — iTunes Match. There’s a good chance you are familiar with iTunes. The software is on millions of computers, and many of you have iPods, iPhones or iPads that let you consume content bought through the iTunes online store. ITunes Match is a $25-a-year service on top of that. It sees everything you have in iTunes and matches it to copies Apple already has stored in the cloud. Songs not already there will be uploaded from your computer to a personal locker in the cloud. It’s alone among the three to let you download songs to iPhones and iPads wirelessly. That means a full copy of the song is stored for listening anytime, rather than streamed on demand over wireless networks, which can be spotty. There’s nothing more annoying than having your songs stop and start as your connection flutters. You can have up to 25,000 songs on the service, plus an unlimited number bought through iTunes – great for those with large music collections. Of course, most of you won’t fit 25,000 songs on your device, so streaming is an option for songs you haven’t downloaded yet. If there’s a tune you want to listen to offline, just tap an icon. It takes only a few seconds, and you can start listening before it’s done. One major caveat: You need an Apple device to use this, and specifically a newer one with Apple’s iOS 5 mobile software. You’re out of luck if you have a phone running Google’s Android system, for instance. — Google Music. Using Google’s free Music Manager program, you upload music you own into Google’s cloud. Unlike Apple, Google doesn’t have songs preloaded, so this can take hours or days. Google Music works best with an Android phone or tablet computer. You simply download the Google Music app to your device. Voila, your songs will be available for streaming. You can save songs for offline playback by “pinning” them with a digital push pin icon. The service stores up to 20,000 songs, not including those bought through a companion music store run by Google. That’s not as many as iTunes Match, but it’s free. I like Google’s music store because it offers plenty of bargains. I found Coldplay’s latest album, Mylo Xyloto, for $5 – half the price on iTunes. Google plans to release lots of free music, too. I also like that if you buy from Google’s music store, you can share the songs with friends on its Google Plus social network. They get one full listen for free – that’s something not available anywhere else. One downside: Google’s store isn’t as extensive as Apple’s or Amazon’s. For instance, it’s missing songs from Warner Music Group, which accounts for about 20 percent of music sold in the U.S. Google Music also isn’t a great option for users of Apple devices. Google found a way to make the system work on iPhones and iPads through Apple’s Safari Web browser. It has a surprising app-like feel because of the way menus respond to touch. But you won’t be able to store songs on your phone for offline use. There’s also a trick for Apple users to take advantage of music deals: Download the songs onto a computer, put the music in iTunes and upload the songs into Apple’s cloud through iTunes Match. It’s not pretty, but it works. — Amazon Cloud Drive. The new Kindle Fire completed Amazon’s music system, though it’s not required. It works fine on Android devices through the Amazon MP3 app. Released in March, Amazon’s cloud storage system is free for up to 5 gigabytes of storage – roughly 1,250 songs. If you bought Lady Gaga’s latest album, “Born This Way,” in a 99-cent promotion in May, you’ll have 20 GB of space – good for about 5,000 songs. Amazon’s uploader works about the same as Google’s. It could take hours or days to get your songs into the cloud. But once there, you can stream or download songs to the Kindle Fire or to Android devices. Like Google, Amazon sells songs and albums at a discount to iTunes, and its long-running music store has a selection comparable to iTunes. Amazon has also found a way to make its system work on Apple devices, using Safari as well, but that workaround is clunkier than Google’s and doesn’t support downloads either. One other downside to Amazon’s service is that you’ll likely have to pay for cloud storage, as you do with iTunes Match. Having 5 GB of storage for free is kind of meaningless because most mobile devices have that already. The Kindle Fire comes with 8 GB on board. For a limited time, you can get 20 GB of storage for $20 a year – and most music files won’t count against the total. — Although there are things to like about Google’s and Amazon’s systems, they both favor streaming, which isn’t how I want to listen to music when I’m not at a computer. Apple’s iTunes Match is fundamentally more oriented to work with downloading in mind, and it meshes well with your existing song library, either on your device or on your computer. The iTunes store is also set up better – showing what’s new and popular, and acting as a barometer of popular culture. Google promotes what’s free andAmazon emphasizes its bargains, but those picks aren’t always what I’m looking for. Ultimately it’s great to have cloud services out there. It has helped me organize my music collection and reconnected me with songs stuck in the recesses of my computer. In the end, though, these services ought to be as free and easy to access over multiple devices as email is. Instead, they come across as tools to get you to buy this or that device. And we shouldn’t be made to pay for a songonce and then again when we store it. Music in the cloud has promise, but it hasn’t fully delivered just yet. (c) 2011 3tlink.info Share and Enjoy• Facebook • Twitter • LinkedIn • Digg • Delicious • StumbleUpon • Reddit • Google Buzz • FriendFeed • MySpace • Add to favorites • Email • Print • PDF | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| US closes 150 websites in counterfeit crackdown Posted: 28 Nov 2011 05:44 PM PST US authorities said Monday they have shut down 150 websites offering counterfeit goods like sports jerseys and luxury handbags in an operation tied to the pre-Christmas shopping surge.
The shutdowns, launched last week on the eve of the “Black Friday” post-Thanksgiving shopping surge, hit websites that were mostly backed by China-based counterfeiters, according to John Morton, director of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which led the operation. ICE seized the domain names of the websites, posting a statement declaring the seizure on the website home pages. “In a day when many consumers are shopping on line, we have, working together, disrupted the sale of thousands and thousands of counterfeit goods,” said Lanny Breuer, assistant attorney general of the Department of Justice. Most of the shuttered websites were offering jerseys and other items of USprofessional football, basketball, and hockey teams. The counterfeit jerseys from one, NFLjerseyssupply.org, sold football jerseys for $46 that on official sites go for up to $115. Other sites offered brand-name sunglasses, Louis Vuitton handbags, Ugg boots among other products. “They are exactly the kinds of products that Americans are looking for,” said Breuer. The announcement of the seizure came on “Cyber Monday,” a day when online Christmas shopping has surged in recent years. Morton said that, as in last year’s operation, which shut down 58 websites, the operations were mainly overseas, “predominantly from China.” He also said some were backed by organized crime, but declined to give any details. “We’re all very concerned… about the connection to organized crime and the ability for the profits from these sorts of crimes fueling other criminal activities.” (c) 2011 3tlink.info Share and Enjoy• Facebook • Twitter • LinkedIn • Digg • Delicious • StumbleUpon • Reddit • Google Buzz • FriendFeed • MySpace • Add to favorites • Email • Print • PDF | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 73,000 Finnish web users’ details hacked: police Posted: 28 Nov 2011 05:41 PM PST The login details of 73,000 users of a popular Finnish family-oriented discussion forum were stolen and posted online in the latest in a series of widespread hacking attacks, police said Monday.
“We are aware of this incident and are investigating it as part of our wider investigation into the hacking attacks,” police investigator Timo Piiroinen told AFP. In the latest incident, usernames, passwords and email addresses were made public Monday morning via another Finnish discussion forum. Police warned netizens to ensure they had secure and separate passwords for their online services, particularly since some of the exposed login information also provided access to other sites. “We’ve been encouraging people to change their passwords and to have different passwords for different services, especially the more valuable ones,” Piiroinen explained. A group calling itself Anonymous Finland has previously claimed responsibility for a number of recent hacking incidents in the Nordic country, including hacking and publishing some 500,000 email accounts as well as nearly 15,000 passwords. The personal identification and contact details of some 16,000 Finns were also leaked online in a separate incident earlier claimed by Anonymous. However, the group of “hacktivists” said it had nothing to do with the latest data leak, adding in a tweet that it “had nothing against such websites (and) had no reason to hack them.” (c) 2011 3tlink.info Share and Enjoy• Facebook • Twitter • LinkedIn • Digg • Delicious • StumbleUpon • Reddit • Google Buzz • FriendFeed • MySpace • Add to favorites • Email • Print • PDF |
A presenter explains about Toyota Fun-Vii in Tokyo Monday, Nov. 28, 2011. Toyota Motor Corp. unveiled the futuristic concept car resembling a giant smartphone to demonstrate how Japan’s top automaker is trying to take the lead in technology at the upcoming Tokyo auto show, which opens to the public this weekend.
This screen shot provided by Amazon.com, shows a page from the Amazon Cloud Player. Released in March, Amazon's cloud storage system is free for up to 5 gigabytes of storage _ roughly 1,250 songs. If you bought Lady Gaga's latest album, "Born This Way," in a 99-cent promotion in May, you'll have 20 GB of space _ good for about 5,000 songs.
Counterfeit goods are on display during the announcement of the seizure of websites offering counterfeit goods like sports jerseys and luxury handbags in 2010 in Washington, DC. The shutdowns, launched last week on the eve of the “Black Friday” post-Thanksgiving shopping surge, hit websites that were mostly backed by China-based counterfeiters.
The login details of 73,000 users of a popular Finnish family-oriented discussion forum were stolen and posted online in the latest in a series of widespread hacking attacks, police said Monday.| You are subscribed to email updates from 3 Technology Link To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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