Hasselblad, the professional camera company, has just teamed up with Ferrari to paint their latest ‘entry level’ camera. When it comes to Hasselblad, entry level means a H4D-31 medium-format camera that is just slightly over €10,000, with the CFV-50 adding yet another option in the higher-than-high-end category. Prices are not confirmed, as Hasselblad says “You’ll have to speak with Ferrari on that”. Only 499 of these beauties will ever be produced, and czars you never knew existed are phoning in their orders from the Seychelles right now to their friends in the Prancing Horse Company. It’s like the Rolls-Royce of camera getting smacked with another Ferrari tag, thus doubling the price. Outrageous!

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Leica has announced their ‘new’ Leica V-Lux 2, which is actually a FZ100 rebadged with a red dot logo and some aroma. What’s under the body is a 14-Megapixel CMOS sensor that can be brought 24 times closer to the real action with the help of the superzoom” lens; along with 11fps burst mode, and 1080i AVCHD Full HD video recording which will make many people jelez. Expect some DSLR-qualities from this baby. The only odd thing about this is the hefty price of £675 ($1,053), which is rather odd. Just because of that red dot, Leica?

SOURCE via Leica

While rebadging is wise to cut development cost, sometimes it’s rather dull to see everything exactly the same, with no improvement. What’s more absurd is to sell it at a very high tad price. Here’s an example. The new Leica D-Lux 5, which is essentially a carbon copy of Panasonic’s LX5, slapped with a red dot. 1/1.63-inch CCD sensor capable of 10.1 megapixel stills, a 3.75 x DC Vario-Summicron lenses, and 720p AVCHD Lite video. Everything in the LX5 is in the D-Lux 5, except the price. £355 ($554) and it’s yours. Or you could buy Panasonic’s version, with less a red dot.

SOURCE via Leica

Panasonic has removed the curtain at Photokina to show to the rest of the world their latest baby, the Lumix GH2. There’s a 16 megapixel Live MOS sensor, SD / SDHC / SDXC memory card slot, Micro Four Thirds mount, 23 points of auto focus tracking, face detection and so on that will make you drool. ISO range from 160 to 12,800, hot shoe accessory mount, 3-inch twistable rear LCD, mini HDMI output, a 2.5mm remote / external microphone input and a 1080/60i movie mode, or record 1080/24p at 24Mbps (the highest in AVCHD format). What’s even special is the ability to take 3D photos with Panasonic’s new interchangeable 3D lens. Read more…

The handy LED TVs from VIZIO that were publicized at CES  earlier on is now shipping, as the 7-inch VMB070 is available at the company’s online store and Wal-mart stores everywhere. To remind you what it is, it’s a 1-inch thick, 1 pound 800×480 resolution LCD screen with edge LED lighting that can tune into 1080i or 720p ATSC broadcasts through a flip up antenna, and packs a battery with a claimed 3.5 hours of life and display video from a composite input or pictures via USB. You’ll have to wait for the step-up 9- and 10-inch models if features like ATSC M/H tuning for viewing on the go or HDMI inputs are a requirement but with its $159 MSRP some cuts may be excusable to avoid running down your cellphone / laptop battery.

SOURCE via Engadget

Seagate has updated its FreeAgent GoFlex external HDD range with the industry’s first 1.5TB portable external drive.  Entirely bus-powered – and so requiring no dual-USB cable or PSU – the new GoFlex comes as standard with the company’s USB 3.0 adapter, which is also backward compatible with USB 2.0. Read more…

After being MIA for quite some time, RIM’s long-rumoured tablet is getting cooked up, again. Wall Street Journal has a news report that says the tablet, Blackpad or SurfBook or whatever, will be launched by RIM as early as next week! Now if you look in the calendar, next week is the company’s Develop Conference in San Francisco. The QNX operating system is also sticking to this tablet. The only connectivity you’ll get from this brick would be through Wi-Fi, which means this thing won’t be sold with a data plan and contract.

The manufacturing wizards at Quanta are rumored to be on tap for manufacturing it with some sort of Marvell power under the hood, and even if the tablet ultimately fails Foleo-style, it could still be a huge launch: WSJ’s sources are also saying that RIM will end up migrating all of its phones to QNX in the long term.

SOURCE via Wall Street Journal

It’s been some time since we heard from Mr Woodscrew Jen-Hsun Huang. Over at NVIDIA’s GPU Technology Conference, he announced that the Tegra 3 is nearly complete, and a Tegra 4 is currently underway in the ‘drawing board’. This leads to his surprise announcement, that a new Tegra SOC will be introduced “every single year”. Funny that we hardly see Tegra 2 products on the market, and the only Tegra we see on the market is the Zune HD, and the gone-case Kin.

SOURCE via Engadget

Porsche knows better than anyone that it’ll take a miracle for owners of many older 911s to upgrade their classic rides, so rather than crying over it; they’ve figuring out a new way to milk stale customers instead. The head unit you see above is described as the “Classic Radio Navigation System,” and apparently, it’s designed to fit within the dashes of 911 motorcars built between 1963 and 1977. Simple plug-and-play stuff. In short, it offers a modern-day navigation experience within a radio that still fits the motif of those gorgeous pieces of iron, and at €595 ($776), it shouldn’t be a tough sell to any true collector. Word on the street has it that it’ll hit Porsche dealers next month, but no sounds of what kind of software is under the metal.

SOURCE via Porsche

Nvidia has announced in their GPU Technology Conference 2010 that the company has moved forward from Fermi, and is fondling with its successor codenamed Kepler. They expect production to go in end of this year and ship in 2011. That’s kind of harsh and a shocker. No delays this time? Kepler is based on a 28nm process, and will deliver an estimated 3 to 4 times the performance per watt compared to Fermi, besides running cooler than the hot headed Fermi.

But Nvidia does not only talk about Kepler. There’s another mate around, called Maxwell. Maxwell will come after Kepler, in 2013, supposedly bringing a sixteen-fold increase in parallel graphics-based computing just two years after that, including advanced features like the ability to autonomously process some content independent of a CPU.

SOURCE via Engadget