News: Toshiba Announces Sleek Consumer Line-up

Posted on February 6th, 2012

Unveiled today by Toshiba (New Zealand) Pty Limited, the range boasts a number of new, high-performance treats, including the latest …full story

News: Kiwi IT Firm Joins Top NZ Companies on German Stock Exchange

Posted on February 3rd, 2012

A Kiwi company founded in a bedroom eight years ago with just $10 start-up capital has now been listed on …full story

Sony Bloggie 3D Digital Video Recorder – Review

The Bloggie 3D is Sony’s latest assault on the personal digital camcorder market, dominated by Cisco’s now condemned Flip Mino HD.

And it may well be this fact that could present the Bloggie with its best chance of success.

The Bloggie 3D is certainly a capable pocket camcorder which adds a compelling new facet to the genre – the ability to film your own 3D content on the go. This is a great development for amateur or home-movie enthusiasts, as most 3D cameras still occupy the upper echelons of the video camera world.

The Bloggie captures 3D footage through two separate lenses, each with its own sensor, which record a slightly different angle of the same scene. The device then morphs the separate footage together to create 3D video, and even still photographs. The camera performs this task gallantly considering it is several times more compact and less expensive than top-end 3D cameras.

The real question however, is what to do with all the 3D gimmickry the camera ...full story

Posted by Tone on July 30th, 2011 in Cameras | | Tags: , , , , , , ,

Hands-on with the HP TouchPad

HP has announced a mid-August New Zealand launch for its first tablet computer and invited Tone for a quick play with the new slate.

Boasting a 9.7-inch screen and sleek glossy black finish, the Hp TouchPad is a handsome device of similar proportions to Apple’s iPad. In a market beginning to swell (Toshiba and Motorola have also released their own tablets locally in the past few weeks) the TouchPad’s biggest point of difference is its proprietary operating system, WebOS.

The result of HP acquiring handheld manufacturer Palm last year, WebOS will be the backbone of the company’s mobile strategy as a competitor to the iOS and Android systems.

Our initial taste of WebOS was roundly positive; the system, which will also drive HP’s forthcoming smartphone line, seems perfectly suited to the tablet experience. The interface differentiates itself sufficiently from its contemporaries while remaining intuitive to operate.

One of the system’s handy quirks is the way it handles applications, opening each on its own ‘card’, which can then be sorted and stacked on the home screen. This allows simple visual organisation of games, communications tools, office apps or any other classification you might wish to employ.

The ...full story

Posted by Tone on July 29th, 2011 in News | | Tags: , , , , ,

Furman AC210 E Compact Power Conditioner – Review

I read a quirky little analogy on the internet regarding power the other day which went along the lines of “If AC power was water, your AV components would be drinking from the sewer”. Like any good analogy I think this one is a tad melodramatic, but the fact remains that the power we get out of our mains sockets here in New Zealand, like most countries, is of inconsistent quality.

The AC210 E Compact Power Conditioner from California-based company Furman Sound claims to protect audio and video devices from “dirty” AC power, while also enhancing their performance for better picture and sound quality. To understand how it does this, first you need to understand why clean power is so important for your AV components.

When considering the overall image and sound quality of your home theatre system, it is a matter of making every link in the chain as strong as possible. Let’s take a movie on a 1080/24p Blu-ray disc as an example, since this is currently the highest quality source most ...full story

Posted by Tone on July 27th, 2011 in Gadgets, Hi-Fi | | Tags: , , , ,

Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH2 Hybrid Camera – Review

One look at Panasonic’s Lumix GH2 hybrid camera tells you everything that you need to know about it. The body has a distinctive shape, with a noticeable viewfinder bulge on the top and a big handgrip on the side, which means that this is a DSLR replacement, pure and simple.

It isn’t intended to be slim or stylish, just to do everything a DSLR can in a slightly smaller package. By the way, this is a genuine EVIL camera (Electronic Viewfinder Interchangeable Lens), not an electronic viewfinder-less model like Panasonic’s own GF2 or Samsung’s NX100, which rely on the LCD screen just like compact cameras.

From that chunky grip to the array of dedicated dials and conventional switches all over the top of the body, this is clearly a traditional design. However, this means users get easy access to the functions and settings they’ll use most often. On the other hand, there’s absolutely nothing dated about the internals or the features list because the GH2 comes with the works! The sensor is ...full story

Posted by Tone on July 23rd, 2011 in Cameras | | Tags: , , , , ,

The Lion has landed

Apple’s latest operating system update, Mac OS X Lion, has finally materialised in the company’s App Store.

The new system, which replaces Mac OS X 10.6.6 Snow Leopard, can be picked up online for $38 or in physical thumb stick form for $99 at Apple retailers.

Lion boasts some 250 new features, including multi-touch gesture support, system-wide full screen app support, a Mission Control screen to view everything running on the computer at once and integrated Mac App Store access.

Apple’s senior VP of worldwide product marketing, Philip Schiller, unsurprisingly reckons it’s the company’s best version of OS X to date.

“Lion makes upgrading a Mac easier than ever before; just launch the Mac App Store, buy Lion with your iTunes account, and the download and install process will begin automatically.”

Other fancy new baubles features include a resume function, which kicks off an app right where you left it before quitting and a new auto-save function coupled with an archiving Versions program which saves a history of changes to a document.

The system also looks to amplify the Apple’s wireless functions with a new AirDrop system to automatically establish a peer-to-peer network with ...full story

Posted by Tone on July 21st, 2011 in News | | Tags: , , , , ,

RSS co-creator arrested for journal downloads

The American programmer who helped create the RSS web feed format at the age of 14 has been arrested on multiple counts computing criminality relating to an online academic archive.

The US federal government this week indicted Aaron Swartz, once a part owner of the popular social news site reddit, on allegations of wire fraud, computer fraud, unlawfully obtaining information from and recklessly damaging a protected computer.

The alleged violations relate to Swartz’s dealings with the online service Journal Storage (or JSTOR), which provide full-text downloads of a range of academic publications; the programmer is accused of downloading 4.8 million documents in violation of the JSTOR terms of use.

The federal complaint alleges Swartz repeatedly used scripts to rapidly download the copyrighted material under fake usernames with intent to distribute the journals over file-sharing networks.

David Segal, a spokesperson for Demand Progress, a freedom of information advocacy group that Swartz co-founded, says the arrest does not make any sense.

“It’s like trying to put someone in jail for allegedly checking too many books out of the library.

“It’s even more strange because JSTOR has settled any claims against Aaron, explained they’ve ...full story

Posted by Tone on July 20th, 2011 in News | | Tags: , , , , , ,
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