There’s a new camcorder for cyclist and adventurers alike. From the famous company that brought you the ContourGPS, this new camcorder is called the Contour+, aka Contour Plus. As usual, it’s a helmet cam from Contour, and this new imager captures 1080p video at 30fps, and also packs built-in GPS plus Bluetooth v2.1 — the latter’s for the wireless viewfinder app on iOS and, eventually, Android.
The Contour+ does indeed come with a mini HDMI-out port alongside the microSD slot on the back. you’ll also find an HDMI cable in the box to get you going. And of course, let’s not forget the new super-wide lens (still rotatable) that does 170 degrees for 960p and 720p recording, or 125 degrees for 1080p. Both modes best the camera’s predecessor, though the trade-off is the lack of dual-alignment lasers. If this isn’t a problem for you, then feel free to shell out $499.99 when it launches on May 18th.
There’s yet another new Micro Four Thirds shooter in town, and it’s from Panasonic, the company that gave us the famous Lumix DMC-GF2. This time, it’s the slightly bigger brother, the Lumix DMC-G3. Yes, this is the successor to the G2.
The G3 comes with a 16 megapixel sensor, support for 1080p AVCHD video recording with stereo audio, 4fps burst shooting at full resolution, and an articulating, 3-inch touchscreen that supplants some of the dials adorning the last-gen model.
In addition to all those specs, you can touch that display to focus on your subject, and slide your finger to tweak exposure, white balance, and depth of field — all in all, not unlike how you might interact with a smartphone camera. It seemed like they learn very fast about the latest trends.
Also, this new successor is said to weight ten percent less than the G2 at 11.8 ounces, all thanks to the aluminium-clad body.
Look for it in June for $700 in brown, red, and white — in addition to your garden-variety black.
It’s called ‘Silvermount’, will have the new 3D tri-gate transistors, and will be a System-on-chip (SOC) like all those ARM processors out there. Is Intel trying to enter the mobile market with their next generation Atom processors?
According to CNET, the new Atom processor, which is expected to land on 2013, is said to be designed specifically to take advantage of Intel’s 22nm technology and 3D transistors. As it stands, though, they boost the cost of wafers by two to three percent, so here’s hoping that premium comes down before the netbooks of the future hit the market, if netbook is still relevant by then.
Looks like VIA is kicking back again, after being quiet in the processor market. Things are heating up in the ARM market as people are racing into quad core SOC and higher clock speed, and it seemed that VIA is also interested in this piece of pie.
VIA is going to announce a new processor over at Computex in Taiwan, which is just around the corner. The processor is a quad-core x86 chips, and is named QuadCore ironically, probably because they ran out of ideas.
The new processors are manufactured using 40nm processes and combine four Isaiah cores on two dies resulting in a Thermal Design Power of 27.5 watts. Think of Intel Pentium D processors, but with better energy efficiency, and of course a turbo boost. That low TDP allows VIA to make the nebulous claim that its first QuadCore L4700 processor is 21 percent more energy efficient than its nearest competitor while offering “awesome” multitasking and multimedia playback performance, though there’s no hard evidence to that.
Initially available at 1.2GHz, the 64-bit native processor features adaptive overclocking (which is similar to Intel Turbo Boost) for dynamic clock adjustments up to 1.46GHz, a 4MB L2 cache, and 1333MHz front-side bus.
The QuadCores will be pin-to-pin compatible with VIA Eden, C7, Nano E-Series, and Eden X2 processors when they begin shipping in bulk in Q3.
Android has been around in Malaysia for few years now, but up till now Android users do not have access to the paid category of the Android Market. Android users in Malaysia are restricted to only free apps from Android Market. But shortly after Google opens its office in Malaysia, we now can rejoice, as that is no longer the case.
From now on, users in Malaysia are able to purchase Android paid apps right from their devices as Google has included our country in the updated list of countries that support paid apps from Android Market. As you can see above, the apps are priced at US Dollar and the payment can be made through credit cards to purchase them. Too bad that there is no direct carrier billing options for our country but still, this is a great step forward for Android Market here in Malaysia.
Microsoft Malaysia has launched a new Office Web Apps, which is free for everyone. This new service contains basic functionality of the popular productivity suite (Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote), which allows you to access your documents from just about anywhere with an internet connection. Well, cloud means that everything must be online of course.
Office Web Apps is a part of the Microsoft Windows Live service and is entirely web-based. All you need to start sharing your documents is a Windows Live ID and an internet connection which you can point to http://office.live.com and you’re good to go.
As part of the whole Microsoft Windows Live service, Web Apps is integrated with Hotmail as well as Windows Live Sky Drive, giving you 25GB of online space which you can use to share documents, pictures and everything in between. Office Web Apps also supports mass collaboration on documents, very much like using the OneNote program on your computer.
There’s an upcoming new game that is developed based on the Alien films and its universe. But who said that? Well, it’s tweeted by… get this… a UK member of parliament! Wow, I never know politicians play games.
Ed Vaizey went to have a visit to Creative Assembly, the firm that developed the famous Total War game.
His tweet reads: “Great visit to Creative Assembly one of UK’s best developers. Now hiring for new blockbuster based on Alien”
Sega have told CVG that the new Alien title will be “a peer to Dead Space 2,” and is currently only confirmed for consoles. It would be very surprising to see the Total War developers move away from PC development, however. Should we give them a ‘boo’?
Sega boss Mike Hayes has told CVG that Creative Assembly have been “given the direction to win awards.”
“This is very much a triple-A project,” he says, “We want this to be a peer to the likes of Dead Space 2.”
Eurogamer say that The Creative Assembly are planning to grow their studio to work on the new title and confirm that development is already underway, though it won’t be ready to show at E3.
Apparently development will be handled by the team behind console hack and slash, Viking: Battle for Asgard. The game will be based on the first Alien film, which suggests more tension and scares than the mass bug shoot of Aliens.
Now how do they all relate? It’s most probably not an official alien game, like how Starcraft used to get its inspiration from the same film too, but The Creative Assembly is owned by Sega, who published Rebellion’s Aliens vs. Predator reboot last year, and are behind Gearbox’s upcoming Aliens: Colonial Marines. They have the rights to the Alien franchise.
So how will this turn out? If it’s that epic like Dead Space 2, then I’m all for it.
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