A ZOOM LENS YOU CAN DOWNLOAD
Although the iPhone has many features to offer, it lacks one particularly handy tool: a zoom lens for its camera.
That’s what makes Camera Zoom worth checking out. The app adds a 4X digital zoom to the iPhone.
The app is easy enough to use — just move a slider on the screen to the desired magnification and touch the camera picture. You can position the slider along any border of the screen, and photos are saved in your photo album.
Camera Zoom works like other digital zooms, basically by blowing up just a portion of the picture you see in the viewfinder. That does mean that the more you zoom, the more degraded the picture quality. Your shots will get an increasingly noisy grain and distorted colors as you approach maximum magnification. That noise becomes more pronounced in lower-light photos.
While you can get the same effect by blowing up and cropping a picture on your computer (maybe even with a slightly better result), Camera Zoom has one major advantage: it’s right in your camera.
PANASONIC’S PORTABLE BLU-RAY PLAYER
Mark this day in your calendar. On June 1, 2009, Blu-ray officially jumped the shark — and you can thank Panasonic for that.
On June 8, the consumer electronics company announced it was bringing to market the DMP-B15, the world’s first portable Blu-ray player. You read that right. Stunning high-def video and 5.1-surround sound on an 8.9-inch screen, with mini stereo speakers.
Let me file that under gizmos you don’t need. Nix that — US$800 gizmos you don’t need.
I bet even Panasonic views this product as more of a high-end engineering exercise than a truly viable product. Who needs hi-def at 9 inches? And sure, the B15 can also connect to your HDTV screen with an HDMI cable, but why not just get a standard Blu-ray player for half the price and be done with it?
Panasonic’s own DMP-BD60 does everything the portable player does: It can get you online and access BD Live content via Panasonic’s Viera Cast service, and it costs US$250. At that price, you can use the money you save opting out of the B15 to buy all those costly Blu-ray movies.
DEVICE PUTS A NEW SPIN ON WII SPORTS GAMES
Q: What’s this Wii MotionPlus I’ve been hearing about?
A: Wii MotionPlus is a small add-on that snaps onto the bottom of a Nintendo Wii Remote, increasing its ability to sense motion. It will be particularly useful for sports games, where hand and arm motion count. It contains a sensor that instantaneously measures the angular velocity (the rate at which an object turns) of a hand or arm. So, throwing a Frisbee is tricky, just like the real thing. According to Nintendo, you’ll be able to buy one for about US$20. Games in the works include Virtua Tennis 2009, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10, and EA Sports Grand Slam Tennis.
Q: How much do extra sets of controls cost?
A: About US$55, which includes a Wii Remote and Nunchuk.
Q: Which is the correct term — Wii Remote or Wiimote?
A: According to Nintendo, the official term is “Wii Remote” and it connects to the “Nunchuk.” According to
Google search results, “Wiimote” is a popular nickname.
A NEW VOICE FROM YAHOO
Yahoo has added its voice-enabled search program to its iPhone application.
Although the new capability will eventually arrive on an iPhone through an update, the impatient can go into the iTunes app store and download the free Yahoo feature to get the update right away.
Voice recognition, called oneSearch, is already available for BlackBerry, Nokia and Windows Mobile phones. The Google app for the iPhone also has voice recognition.
But all the other features found on the Yahoo iPhone app will not be available for the other phones. Yahoo has shelved its Yahoo Mobile for Smartphones that was intended as an all-in-one product to consolidate information, social networking and mail from several sites and aggregate it into a single window.
Individual widgets from the project will be released to different phones over time, the company said.
In the meantime, iPhone owners can have the complete Yahoo mobile browser experience. That currently includes a few flaws with voice recognition. In a test, it worked well for search, but it failed several times in organizing a customized page called My Interests.
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