Lytro’s new ray of light on photography
Photography takes the same kind of leap as black-and-white movies to colour or music from mono to multi-track with the Lytro – a camera that captures light rays and their direction, allowing incredible manipulation of images after they are taken.
The subject of the latest Personal Technology column, the Lytro is an amusement for now, but is likely to change photography radically in the long run.
Apple’s high-definition iPad unveiled
Apple has launched a third version of its iPad at a special event in San Francisco, with a new high-definition display being the main improvement.
The new iPad has a Retina display – its resolution is so dense the eye cannot discern individual pixels, an A5X chip with four cores or brains for faster graphics, an improved 5Mp rear camera and 4G LTE wireless connectivity. There is also an update to the Apple TV set-top box . Pricing remains the same and the iPad will be available in a number of countries on March 16. Review our live blog from the event after the jump.
Record labels GreenLight new music service
Corbis, the Bill Gates-owned company best known for licensing stock images to advertising agencies and other media organisations , is launching a music licensing service backed by the four major record labels.
The service is an extension of its GreenLight music licensing business, used by major advertising agencies. It is being aimed at the corporate market initially but could be extended to individual users who, for example, might want to add music to YouTube videos they upload.
Intel expands in data centre cloud
Intel has launched its next-generation server processor to boost its presence in data centres and cloud storage, while at the same time pooh-poohing an acquisition by rival Advanced Micro Devices in the same area.
At a launch event in San Francisco on Tuesday, Intel said the Xeon E5 product family represented up to an 80 per cent performance improvement over its previous generation. It said it was not impressed with the server technology of SeaMicro and declined to buy it before AMD announced a $334m deal last week.
TED2012: Ads worth spreading
While its talks give you a lot to chew on, there has been plenty of meat in the ad breaks as well at TED2012, which ends in Long Beach on Friday.
The conference about ideas worth spreading has announced the 10 award winners in its Ads Worth Spreading challenge, showing them in between talks and in an installation at the Google Garage.
TED2012: Flying robots at Mach 20
The main tech session of the 2012 TED conference is The Lab, about the “amazingness of invention”. None of your “secret keepers” and “beatboxers” here – they’re later in the day.
Instead, we have a roboticist, a materials engineer, a technologist, a techno-illusionist, the director of DARPA…and a muppet. A live blog from the event in Long Beach is after the jump.
TED2012: What’s the big idea?
It’s time for another TED here in Long Beach, California – the big-ideas conference, where people you’ve never ever heard of before give wonderful talks about things you neither knew nor thought possible, in front of an audience of incredibly famous people that you’re forbidden to name.
It’s the antithesis of the Oscars held a few miles away at the weekend, with both having a theatreful of big names, but deep thinking and world-changing ideas being honoured onstage here rather than the celebrities off-stage getting all the awards.
The great big Mobile World Congress Note
If you think the 5.3in-screen Samsung Galaxy Note is a little too large to fit in a pocket, then you will have a real problem with the 10.1in version just unveiled at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
Samsung has yet to make an official announcement about the phone, but a gargantuan poster to match the giant-sized device has appeared, and at this size, there seems no argument about whether it is a smartphone or a tablet this time.
As smartphones offer ‘good enough’ cameras for many people, makers of dedicated stills and video cameras are offering more features and appealing to niche audiences. This week we look at the equipment for those wanting to make films as they fall out of aeroplanes or shred the ski slopes.
Contour+ 3/5
I fear for my friend who uses the Color app on his iPhone to beam me live video as he follows and films his kids on the ski slopes in the equivalent of texting while driving.
The Nintendo 3DS put 3D gaming in consumers’ hands last year without the need for special glasses. Now Sony is launching its own take on next-generation portable gaming in the form of the PlayStation Vita, with its superior motion and touch controls, social networking features and cameras.
The notion of a dedicated handheld games console seems almost quaint in the age of the iPad and smartphone gaming. An extra nail in the coffin of such devices appeared to be hammered in a year ago, when Sony unveiled the Xperia Play, an Android phone with slide-out controllers that are very similar to those on a PlayStation 3 or PSP (PlayStation Portable).
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