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The Moment It Clicks

As a photojournalist and commercial photographer, Joe McNally has few peers, so it's not surprising that his semi-autobigraphical book about quality and technique is exciting the photography world.

Read Mario Georgiou's full review!

miTouch & miCradle for Apple iPhone and iPod Touch

Dedicated automotive accessory makers, as opposed to general electronics accessory makers, tend to produce robust, well designed, purpose-built products. ProFit fits well.

Read Jack Reikel's full review!

Toshiba Tecra M9 Laptop

As laptops get smaller, lighter and more powerful, some of the big boys leading the way have spent some time carefully determining exactly what occasional business travelers actually need the most on the road.

Read Mario Georgiou's full review!

Qnext Unified Communication Suite

Too many instant messaging clients clutter our desktops. Why not use a single multimedia, multi-protocol client to access them all? We've been disappointed before, but Qnext actually seems to work properly.

Read Kate Em's full review!

Microsoft Office Small Business 2007

Don't believe for one minute that Microsoft doesn't know what it's doing. Believe instead that a company which has worked so hard to make its flagship product a worldwide standard can sometimes lose its way.

Read Howard Carson's full review!

Manfrotto 468MGRC0 Hydrostatic Ball Head

Despite the claims of some photography pundits, you certainly do need a stable shooting platform for your camera in many situations. OIS, IS and VR can't help you when shutter speeds drop to seconds.

Read Mario Georgiou's full review!

SpyEraser 2

Life gets thoroughly mucked up when the phone rings and someone at the other end tells you that your personal information has been stolen. Has your PC been acting funny lately? Someone may be watching you without your knowledge or permission.

Read Mark Goldstein's full review!

Canon PowerShot G9 Digital Camera

As good camera designs get better and the market leaders — Canon and Nikon mainly — vie for top spot, consumers, hobbyists, amateurs and professional photographers benefit from the competition. Is there a G9 in your future?

Read Howard Carson's full review!

Canon PowerShot A650 IS Digital Compact Camera

Canon keeps coming up with terrific little cameras which exceed our expectations. Looking for a digital compact camera packed with value, usability and image quality? Consider looking at Canon first.

Read Howard Carson's full review!

TrueGrain v1.1

There is an increasingly steady turn away from film and film effects of all types in favor of a completely digital look and feel. Emulation of classic film grain, a hallmark of so much great film over the years, has some interesting uses.

Read Mario Georgiou's full review!

The Adobe Photoshop Layers Book

With apologies to veteran Photoshop users who spend lots of time in the Channels palette, the Photoshop Layers features and functions are the most powerful photo editing controls available today. A serious Photoshop layers book is always welcome.

Read Mario Georgiou's full review!

ProcessScanner & ProcessLibrary.com

The Windows operating system is a playground for productivity, research, entertainment, gaming and just about anything else you can think of. It's also a place where bad things can happen. This utility helps clear up some of the worst issues.

Read Mark Goldstein's full review!

RBackup Remote Backup Software

If you're an entrepreneur looking for the right sort of Internet business, you could do a lot worse than the data backup and storage business. RBS offers a powerful turnkey package that is startlingly complete. Data backup really is smart business.

Read Jack Reikel's full review!

Nikon Coolpix P50 Digital Camera

Point & Shoot cameras come and go with the seasons. The problem is, some consumers have limited budgets. What's needed is a sturdy little camera that has some staying power in the form of rich, accurate color, a sharp lens, and lots of features.

Read Howard Carson's full review!

Photography & Video Shoulder Bags, Sling Packs, Backpacks, Waist Belt Systems and Rolling Bags - 2008 Product Roundup

We rounded up samples, talked to users, shopped and reviewed models from 30 makers. There are a lot of good designs to choose from. Find the bag that fits your needs.

Read Howard Carson's full review!

Canon DSLR: The Ultimate Photographer's Guide

Canon digital SLR camera users are well served by any reference book which blends technical guidance with creativity

Manfrotto 190XPROB Tripod

It's great to have the latest SLR camera and lens, but Pro or not, you'd also better have a reliable, versatile tripod

SpeedUpMyPC

Optimize program CPU priority, memory/RAM usage, Internet connection efficiency, and choose which startup programs to run when your PC boots up

Blackberry Pearl Premium Leather Flip Case

Slim, customized flip case and belt clip designed to compliment and protect the sleek Blackberry Pearl

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Samsung Announces New Cameras

Samsung have announced a number of new cameras. Their new NV100HD offers 14.7 megapixels, a 28mm Wide angle lens and can record 720p HD video. It also features a touch screen and has optical image stabilization. The new NV9 features a 5x optical zoom, 10.2 megapixel sensor and has the capability to play MP3 music files. The new Samsung L310W features a 13.6 megapixel camera and has a 28mm equivalent wide angle lens. Their S1070 compact digital camera, features a 10.2 megapixel sensor, a 3x optical zoom and a 2.7" LCD screen. The L201 is a 10.2 megapixel compact digital camera which feature Samsung's Auto Contrast Balance which will brighten dark areas in high-contrast and back-lit scenes. It can also charge batteries directly in the camera.

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Monday, June 09, 2008

Samsung Announce their i900 Omnia

Samsung i900 Omnia
Samsung have announced their Windows Mobile 6.1-powered i900 Omnia. The Omnia features quad-band GSM / GPRS / EDGE support, 7.2Mbps HSDPA, a built-in accelerometer, WiFi module, USB port, FM tuner, Bluetooth with A2DP, a 3.2-inch 400 x 240 resolution display and a 5-megapixel camera (with smile detection and geotagging).

Coming in 8GB and 16GB versions and further enhanced through support for MicroSD memory. Samsungs TouchWiz user interface will certainly add a little more for folks to consider making it a worthy adversary for the iPhone 3G.

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Monday, May 26, 2008

Samsung Announce 256GB SSD

Samsung MLC 256GB SSD drive
Solid State Drives are increasingly being looked at as the future of portable data storage, and Samsung have just raised the stakes by announcing a 256GB SSD. The NAND Flash memory based MLC 256GB SSD drive is a 2.5in SATA II drive that's only 9.5mm thick. It looks like the battle for the thinnest large capacity SSD in on.

The Drive is also very fast, with a purported data read rate of up to 200MB per second, and all this whilst consuming only 0.9Watts in active mode. Samsung will start mass producing it by the end of this year.

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Sunday, May 18, 2008

Samsung Show OLED Laptop Concept

Samsung AMOLED laptop concept
Samsung SDI - Sammy's display division - have shown a cool looking ultra-thin, AMOLED laptop concept. The display measures 12.1-inches and features a 1,280 x 768 resolution with infinite contrast. When combined with the apparently touch-sensitive keyboard it's definitely aimed at the more style conscious user.

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Wednesday, March 05, 2008

Samsung Ship First 500GB Laptop Drive

Samsung Announced at CEBIT that they have officially shipped their first 500GB Laptop Drives. The 2.5in Spinpoint M6 HDD is only 9.5mm high and uses three 167GB platters. Samsung have indicated that most notebooks could be easily fitted with two of these drives, hmmm ... A 1TB laptop sounds real sweet.

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Sunday, November 11, 2007

Samsung Halts Consumer Product Sales in Japan

In a moved born out of frustration with the closed nature of the market in Japan, Samsung has decided to halt sales of all of its consumer product lines there. Japan is notoriously difficult to trade in due to severe restrictions and protectionism.

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Sunday, July 08, 2007

Samsung Prices Dual Format HD Disc Player

Samsungs BD-UP5000 'Duo HD' unit which will have Certified HD DVD and Blu-ray playback, and which will be fully 1080P compliant, has been tentatively priced at around the £800 mark. This Unit will support online extras for HD DVD and Blu-ray via an Ethernet port and can output movies at 1080p in a cinema native 24 frames per second and can scale all the way up to 60fps for faster videos. I don't need a crystal ball to guess that there will be a price war, possibly bringing the price down even more.

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Saturday, April 14, 2007

Samsung Announces Dual Format HD Disc Player

Samsung announce the release of a Dual Format HD Disc Player. They follow LG in what I hope is something of a positive trend in offering a player which will play both Blu-ray and HD-DVD media. The BD-UP5000 will fully support both formats including, interactivity capabilities. For more infomation read the Official Press Release.

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Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Samsung Unveil 64GB SSD Drive

Samsungs new 1.8-inch 64GB SSD doubles the capacity of their current SLC NAND-based 32GB SSD, indications are that it's up to 60% faster too. Mass production of this 1.8-inch replacement for hard disks is expected to begin in Q2. Thanks to Engadget for this bit of news...

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Sunday, March 25, 2007

Samsung Shows 1080P LCDs With Triple HDMI Ports

With multiple devices now vying for the HDMI Inputs on your HDTV LCD, having those extra ports will prove a boon. Just think, You can get one of these baby's from Sammy, and plug in your HDTV Cable or Satellite box, your HD-DVD unit, and your new Blu-ray based Sony Playstation 3. Talk about spoilt for choice ... the new LCD units from Samsung are 40in, 46in and 52in and all feature 1080p native resolution screens with a high 15,000:1 contrast ratio.

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Monday, March 19, 2007

Samsung Unveil A Weatherproof TV

Did I just say weatherproof, maybe they're stretching the line a bit, but the images that are appearing for this new 42" weatherproof HD-ready TV seem to suggest more water than weatherproof. The Sanyo 42LM4WPR-E, as it is called, is not even 1080p but I'm certain that it'll cost as much as one... The Set features a brightness level of 500 cd/m², and a contrast ratio of 800 to 1. Pricing and availability are yet to be announced...

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Monday, March 12, 2007

Samsung Unveil Ultra Slim LCD Module

Samsung publicly demoed their new 1.29mm thin Ultra Slim LCD Module, which is primed to be used in their upcoming Ultra Edition II Mobiles. At about 0.4mm thinner than panels currently being produced, these modules will help drive the competition to new heights and thinness. Hmmm ... I wonder how flexible they are?

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Thursday, March 08, 2007

Samsung Debut New HDD Drives

Samsung have begun shipping their new NAND/HDD drives. These drives are purportedly five times more rugged than regular drives, and come with 128- to 256-MB NAND RAM to allow for faster start ups, faster application access and resume from sleep. The 2.5in drives come in 80GB, 120GB and 160GB capacities and should make many users happy.

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Tuesday, March 06, 2007

Google Phone Makes An Appearance


There are several blogs and news sites posting pictures of what looks to be another cool phone, but this time from Google and Samsung. The articles are worth a read and can be found at High Contrast and Engadget.

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Sunday, March 04, 2007

Samsung YP-K3 - Slim Cool

The Samsung YP-K3
I recently had a look at the Samsung YP-K3 and I was impressed by its slimline looks and easy to use interface. This music player is superb with a formfactor that is only slightly larger than that of an iPod Nano. I really like the look and feel of the unit with its cool blue LED's and it's capability to playback mp3's, WMA and OGG and Jpegs. The K3 also features a 160 x 128, 1.8-inch OLED display, FM Tuner and has up to 4GB of storage. It'll be a real contender for folks thinking about an alternative to the iPod Nano. Now, if they could only squeeze in a video capability ... for more info visit Samsung UK's K3 Product Page.

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Samsung Reveal 63" Full HD Plasma With Bluetooth

Samsung revealed 3 new plasmas this week, the 63in 63P71FHD, the 50in 50Q92HD, and the 42in 42Q92HD. These new models all feature 15,000:1 contrast ratios, a 'Daylight Filter' layer which passively reduces glare and an 'Ultra Daylight Mode' which dynamically adjusts the picture during daytime viewing. With specs like these I would be thinking very seriously about using my PC with any one of these units.

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Thursday, March 01, 2007

Samsung Release M55 Laptop With HD DVD Burner

Samsung has added an HD DVD burner to their M55 laptop. The M55 is already offered with Blu-ray and HD DVD players. The laptop also comes equipped with a Core 2 Duo T7200 processor, 2GB of RAM, a 120GB hard drive, a GeForce 7600 graphics card with 256MB of VRAM and the mandatory 1920x1200 17-inch display. Price is around $3,200.

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