Sony has said it will recall eight models of its Cyber-shot digital cameras after finding a defect in the liquid crystal display screen.

The problem is caused by a glitch with the image sensor, which may mean the screen does not display images correctly, Sony said.

The recall applies to models sold worldwide between September 2003 and January 2005.

The electronics giant will repair for free only cameras that show signs of the problems, according to Sony spokesman Chisato Kitsukawa.

The recall applies to models DSC-F88, DSC-M1, DSC-T1, DSC-T11, DSC-T3, DSC-T33, DSC-U40 and DSC-U50.

Well i hoped to be posting a Zune review today but instead i'm still waiting for Parcel2Go.com to get their act together and get it to me. Just been waiting nearly 2 weeks now

No doubt i'll be posting more about this company in the future,

This is a research paper from Jupiter Research, Interesting view point... i can only watch low quality  web type footage of a short time. Normally you can get away with poor sound or poor visuals but not both. I doubt i could stand watching a hour of poor footage.

---

Jeff Jarvis provides more evidence that the future of "television" is being remade on the web, mostly by amateurs, hackers, and struggling artists.

Online video in 2006 feels like the Web in 1994. It's all pretty rough, but a lot of it is very creative. Much of the stuff that's being created for the web by the mainstream media has a raw, experimental quality that we're not used to from big organizations.

Jeff's story of producing his segment for CBS versus producing a segment for Amanda Congdon's webcast hints that the eventual impact of web video on television will be greater than the impact of the Web on print.

One of the most significant parts of all of this is that amateurs can produce higher-quality video than is possible with standard Grown-Up TV production techniques. The technology is necessary but not sufficient. Production processes have to be re-invented for the low-overhead, small-screen, short-subject, random-access, bandwidth-thrifty web. We're still in inventing a new grammar of online video, just as Desi Arnaz (yes, Desi!) invented multi-camera production techniques late in the early days of television.

I've had great sucess with my SPVM5000 and my Polstar GPS for navigation using Pocket Streets and TomTom and my SPVC600 for Geoblogging with Sharpspace

A company called Benefon has launched a cell phone with a built in GPS receiver — nothing new there. However, this particular GPS cell phone, called the Twig, does something extra. It can send your GPS coordinates to another Twig owner and then that person can navigate directly to you using the preloaded navigation software. Sounds like this could save a lot of time and effort when trying to explain to theyour drunk mates which pub your in. The phone will cost £330 in the UK, or about $625.

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/11/01/ce_giants_punt_wihd/

Six big-name consumer electronics companies have come together to thrash out a wireless alternative to the HDMI cabling standard that may also tread on the toes of next-generation Wi-Fi technology.

The WirelessHD specification is described as a "high-speed wireless, multi-gigabit technology in the unlicensed 60GHz band [with] smart antenna technology to overcome line-of-sight constraints", co-founders Sony, Samsung, LG, Panasonic, NEC, Toshiba and SiBEAM said. Connections will be secure to keep content safe from duplication, and while the technology will be capable of supporting uncompressed HD video and audio, it will also host device-control data. Initial versions of the WiHD specification will support data rates of 2-5Gbps, but the technology will be capable of pushing 20Gbps, the founders said.

The consortium's members want to get a spec in place by Spring 2007, at which point companies will be able to build modules to allow their HD TVs, DVD players, Blu-ray Disc machines, HD DVD units, DVRs, camcorders etc to beam content back and forth.

Right now, the focus is very much "wireless display connectivity", as the WiHD group puts it. That's exactly what HDMI is about, albeit in a wired context. The founders didn't indicate the technology's range, but there's surely the potential for streaming from, say, a player to a screen in another room. If WiHD can do that, it stands as a rival to 802.11n Wi-Fi. ®

HMDI Evolves : http://blog.kking.co.uk/blog/_archives/2006/7/31/2181105.html

Microsoft's Zune music player and online content store combo is "way off launch" in Europe and the UK, the company has admitted. The "earliest date" it might appear here? The end of 2007, or possibly even 2008, a Microsoft executive has revealed.

"The earliest date it will be in the UK is towards the end of 2007. However, it could easily be 2008," Microsoft media and entertainment alliance manager Dene Schonknecht said, according to UK trade paper New Media Age.

----

I'm so glad I ordered mine from the US I'll have it by the 20th :-)

UK copyright law should be changed to include a ‘private right to copy’ that protects users of ipod and other MP3 players, according to a new report published today (Sunday) by the Institute for Public Policy Research (ippr). The UK’s current copyright laws mean that millions of Brits break the law each year when they copy their CDs onto their computers.

ippr says that the forthcoming review of Intellectual Property, set up by Chancellor Gordon Brown and chaired by Andrew Gowers, should update the 300-year-old copyright laws to take account of the changes in the way people want to listen to music, watch films and read books.

ippr recommends a legal ‘private right to copy’ that would allow people to make copies of CDs, or DVDs for personal us. The report says a new right would legalise the actions of millions of Britons without any significant harm to the copyright holders.

The report, Public Innovation: Intellectual property in a digital age, also recommends that:

Adobe have released yet another new technology( excuse me but it looks a lot like Audition, Sorry I mean Cool Edit Pro , Whoops don't you mean Sound Edit 16  on Adobe Labs. So yes you've guessed its a sound editing tool at heart, Adobe Soundbooth is a rebranding exercise for yet another on of their products.

View the Introducing Adobe Soundbooth getting started guide for more information and download Soundbooth.

Global Big Brother, we get closer to 1984 every day, Stop the ID fraud - stop the government stealing your identity
---
US, EU sketch plans for global immigration database by By Mark Ballard

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/10/25/global_immigration_db/

The US is to corral "like-minded" nations behind a global immigration database after proving with a trial link to British computers that such an ambitious, global plan is technically feasible. Allies of the US have joined it in talks to formulate an international policy framework that would allow the sharing of immigration databases, effectively creating a global border control.

Their aim is to stop criminals and other undesirable migrants at a vast, biometric border that is likely to include, at the very least, the EU countries, Australia, and Canada. Troy Potter, biometrics programme manager for the US Department of Homeland Security's biometric border control programme, told The Register only those countries "of like mind" would be allowed to join the scheme: "People with similar goals, aspirations, laws and ability to implement such a scheme.

"It's about keeping out folks from countries, to have more of a global border per se," he said. "Shouldn't like-minded countries be told when someone's been kept out of the US? That's a necessary next step [because] immigration has become a worldwide issue.

Frank Paul, head of large scale IT systems at the European Commission, hinted to an audience at the Biometrics 2006 conference last week about EU support for such a scheme. "We trust everyone enrolled in the US and they trust everyone in the EU system. Then I don't see why the systems shouldn't be linked in the future," he said.

Terrorists would be the prime target of the system. Terrorism had been the reason the US government gave for setting up US-VISIT, the immigration database for which Potter is biometric manager. The US database had yet to snare a terrorist, and the Department of Homeland Security has since been advertising it as a means of keeping foreign murderers out of the country. An international agreement for sharing immigration data would also target criminals and "habitual immigration violators", Potter said.

"If there's a murderer in another country we would rather not have that murderer in the US, especially if they are on the run," he said.

But he stressed the system would not finger normal people, or "Joe Public". People's privacy would have to be respected, he said.

"We would violate the privacy laws of individual countries if we shared data as we wanted to," said Potter, but added: "The last thing we want is for someone who has changed their ways and then we keep harassing them."

It could take years for the US and its allies to form an agreement that deals with all the emerging privacy and legal concerns about sharing immigration data. Other developments at the Department for Homeland Security could complicate matters further. It is developing a permanent link between immigration and criminal databases, while US law enforcers also want links to civil databases so they can get a full biographical history of people who catch their interest.

"There are fine lines and that's where these agreements are not going to be easy. But this is not routine data sharing on everyone. This is not big brother," said Potter. Similar concerns have slowed the progress of the European Visa Immigration System (VIS). A continent-wide version of the US plan, legislation to allow the VIS is stuck between the European Parliament and member states in the Council of Ministers. The concern is that European efforts to share information for immigration are being subsumed into a broader security effort that has no legal obligation to Europe's proud data protection authorities. This has created tension between member states and the European Parliament over other controversial data sharing arrangements - the US trawling of passenger name records and secret snooping on banking data handled by SWIFT being two recent examples. In neither case is the EU's authority to impose data protection laws that would protect citizens from being caught up in the zealous hunt for terrorists being conducted by the security agencies. The European VIS is being built by European Commission civil servants anyway, and will be completed in 2007. There will simply not be any legal basis for the system to be switched on. The US faces the same problem, said Potter: "

The policy and legal framework is not in place to do routine data sharing between countries. but that's something we were discussing." The UK's Home Office and US Department of Homeland Security have already trialled a link between their immigration databases, which Potter said was successful. "It was a technical trial. It showed we could share data between countries if agreements were there so we could do it," he said. "Our biometrics were compatible...when the legal and policy framework catches up, we can do it." ®

While looking at Technorati I saw this "Sony claims Xbox 360 requires HD DVD, etc., thus costs $700"

Sony telling porkie pies in their marketing....tut tut tut

"Thanks to Sony's heavy handed tactics, popular game importer Lik-Sang is closing its doors. All Lik-Sang customers are having their orders cancelled and refunded. Any attempt to place a new order redirects your web browser to the news of Lik-Sang's demise."

From the announcement: "'Today is Sony Europe victory about PSP, tomorrow is Sony Europe's ongoing pressure about PlayStation 3. With this precedent set, next week could already be the stage for complaints from Sony America about the same thing, or from other console manufacturers about other consoles to other regions, or even from any publisher about any specific software title to any country they don't see fit. It's the beginning of the end... of the World as we know it', stated Pascal Clarysse, formerly known as the Marketing Manager of Lik-Sang.com. 'Blame it on Sony. That's the latest dark spot in their shameful track record as gaming industry leader. The Empire finally won, a few dominating retailers from the UK probably will rejoice the news, but everybody else in the gaming world lost something today.'"

Many thanks to Sony for ruining it for the rest of us. I hope that your business model makes up for the customer goodwill you're setting on fire today. Now where am I going to put my down payment on a Wii

Now that I been running Media Centre Edition for a few months I have got a good collection of recorded programmes on my hard drive, so I turned on the google-fu and looked for a program to convert the Media Centre dvr-ms file format (MPEG2 with metadata) into something more manageable like a Wmv or Divx. Whiule divx doesn't support the dvr-ms format there are a number of bits of source code out there for converting dvr-ms to wmv. But before i got to the source I came across a utility DCUT for Media Centre Edition. The utilty intergates into the MCE and appers under 'More Programes' which is what you would expect as it has been written as a side project by a Microsoft Developer.It allows you not only to edit the dvr-ms files but also compress them to wmv format. Result I have got lots of lovely edited files and saved a shed load of space. Plus Dcut's conversion process runs with low priority, and doesn't adversely affect other MCE functions. So you can go one watching and recording while to slowly converts in the background.

Daniel Giambalvo you rock


Download Dcut for Media Centre Edition

Screenshoots of Dcut 0.95.1

Wot NO Outlook Mail....till next week eeek

Well I've got to say at least they did seem to response 24hours after they said they would "next working day" which would have been Friday. But it would nice of Microsoft to have told there paying customers that they were going to have "maintenance" and not an outage.  If it was a outage i wouldn't mind 'shit happens' but "maintenance" is normally planned and there is no excuse for not telling the customer there are not going to have Outlook services till next week, ok I can log into the web interface but it not as easy when your in a hotel room on expensive wifi, you want to be able to sync and go.

I like the bit about the refund of the support call...

Below is the email I recieved.

---

My name is (BLANK). I am from the Microsoft Office technical support team. This is regarding the case number (NOT TELL). I have taken the ownership of this case and I will be working with you on this case.

The msn server is undergoing server maintenance that is the reason for this issue on your computer. The servers are updated one by one.

Due to this reason you will not be able to use msn accounts in outlook. However you would be able to use the web-mail service of MSN.

So please bear with us till next week. We would send you a mail and communicate to you when the maintenance is done. Sorry for this inconvenience caused to you.

If you have used your free incident for this support it will be returned back to you and if you have charged for this issue it will be refunded. We will keep this case open for next week and keep you updated on the status of the issue.

Thanks for using Microsoft Product Support Services!

-----

 

 

 

Yesterday I decided to take the plunge and try Abobe Lightroom.. Thanks Gee  It's avalible in two flavours PC and Mac.

The advertising says that its been built from the ground up by photographers for photographers, helping solve your unique workflow problems. Well I've got to say that it really does take the effort out of coverting, touching up, add metadata, archiving etc. These are all jobs that I had to do is different packages and it brings them all under one roof in a interface that isn't just easy to understand its logical too with the library, develop and print tabs these are all features that are understandable as people have been using them for years in photography.and with the addition of the web tab getting your pictures online couldn't be easier. Example of the added metadata. This was metadata I put in for the copyright for my Flickr account

This is a screen grab of the interface taken while I was touching up some images of AutoClav 1.1  from Infest 06 in Bradford. Click on the image to expand it.

While I was walking around Homebase I saw this and thought I'd better blog it from www.dyson.com and not from www.root6.com.

Dyson's product is here
and if you like a bit of Rock root 6 is here

I've been away for the last week in Boston, MA and New York, I've got to recommend Boston in fall the colours of the trees were amazing and you just know that the snow is coming in a few weeks. While we were in Boston I we went to see see MTI Films in Providence, you guys Rock!.[1] They make a product called Control Dallies hopefully we'll be able to do some crazy things with this great product.

[1] (c) James Clarke.

Another web leak of Microsoft's next version of Windows Mobile - codenamed 'Crossbow' - pictures have popped up on the web to show the upcoming operating system's vista style graphics.

Crossbow is due to ship to OEMs in Q4 to allow them plenty of time to get devices ready for the OS' introduction in late Q1/early Q2 2007. Crossbow is expected to give gadgets more a better telephony experience and to improve its messaging technology.

Then in Q4 2007, and Microsoft will release 'Photon', the follow up to Crossbow, to developers.

article and screenshots on MSMobile News http://www.msmobilenews.com/page/1489/

Early/leaked images from Cubase SX4, now its looking like Ableton Live and as ever the loyal fanbase at cubase.net already has tens of pages of people saying how much it's going to suck...good boys.....control room patching is here and channel strip is here,

I went to Avid in Tweksbury yesterday and came across a great bit of Corporate branding .... I wondering if you can upgrade to Speed Bump HD

Nvidia is have announced the world's first DirectX 10-compliant graphics chip, the GeForce 8800 (codenamed G80), shipping in the middle of November. However, despite the advantage of early launch, demand for GPU will depend on penetration rate of the Windows Vista OS and availability of new PC games supporting DirectX 10.

Updates include the Shader Model 4.0 support, DirectX 10 will improve visualization and rendering capabilities utilised in PC games, it also see a reduction in CPU overhead,. It means that content developers will get additional space to write bad code and waste cycles.

Nvidia expressed the doubt that ATI's next-generation R600 chip, which is also expected to support DirectX 10, may appear in the market before 2007. Nevertheless, ATI will continue benefit from its close relationships with Microsoft around the Xbox 360.

Since DirectX 10 is positioned as a Vista-only solution, with presumably no ability to work with previous Windows versions, Nvidia's move to launch the GeForce 8800 in November should rather be considered as a symbolic step.

So far, Microsoft only promised that Windows Vista will run DirectX 9.0, allowing to later upgrade it to DirectX 10 via Windows Update. When Microsoft releases a DirectX 10-capable OS, ATI will perhaps catch up.

Calls to 0870 numbers and infomation lines at an outlandish 9p per minute for telephone calls that are usually answered by a computer, 0870 might be best described as the international dialling code for rip-off Britain.

A web designer has complied a list to circumvent that national-rate numbers and is sharing the numbers. On his website www.saynoto0870.com currently it lists 5,000 firms that publicise expensive numbers that often cost three times the cost of a call to a landline number. All you have to do is enter a company name and the website reveals a local geographical number and sometimes even details of a free phone line for a business. So enjoy the cheap 0870 calls.

BBC director general Mark Thompson and Microsoft's Bill Gates have signed an agreement to work on exploring opportunities for the delivery and consumption of BBC content.

Ricky Gervais is to quit producing podcasts joking he had to "knock it on the head before everyone hates us. I was trying something out. I wanted to see if I could cut out the middle man and make podcasting a commercial concern."
-----
Sorry Ricky everyone hates you already...stopping podcast isn't going to change that.

EFF says Microsoft's Zune will not play protected Windows Media Audio and Video purchased or "rented" from Napster 2.0, Rhapsody, Yahoo! Unlimited, Movielink, Cinemanow, or any other online media service.

 It seems that all of the 'PlaysforSure' media that has been sold and is currently being sold will not play on the Zune. In addition, Microsoft has now advocated violating the DMCA in order to transfer files to the player. Microsoft Zune architect J Allard was quoted as saying there's 'Lots of DVD ripping software out there that encodes to those formats, so the most popular formats out there, whether it's MPEG-4 or H.264, we'll support those.'"

full article http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004910.php

Ben Heckendorn has re-configured his console into a laptop form-factor. With a resolution of 1,280 x 720, it's HD ready. Portable XBOX 360.

pictures: http://benheck.com/Games/Xbox360/x360_page_5.htm

BT has unveiled plans to launch a podcasting site. It has teamed up with the Podshow Network. UK version ...   more »

Can I have one for christmas.... hc5000

http://global.mitsubishielectric.com/bu/projectors/products/homeuse/hc5000/index_b.html

with a price of  below £2000

Last night I got Tuner Not Found error messages when trying to view and TV in Media Center 2005. This was after installing and windows express update. I looked at the update and it had installed .Net 2.0 for some reason it had turned off some services and now wouldn't restart them without an error message I used the following steps to fix these services, and once I did this, live TV started working again in Media Center 2005 with Update Rollup 2.  

1. Click on the Start menu, choose Run and type cmd, cut and paste each line and hit return after each line.
   

regsvr32.exe atl.dll
%windir%\ehome\ehrecvr.exe /unregServer
%windir%\ehome\ehsched.exe /unregServer
%windir%\ehome\ehrecvr.exe /service
%windir%\ehome\ehsched.exe /service

A program called Fairuse4wm has been posted on the net and is apparently capable of breaching Microsoft's Digital Rights Management (DRM) system.

FairUse4WM is a GUI version of drmdbg that supports individualization version .3930 and some WM11 versions.

Basic requirements
1. Only works on individualized DRM file
2. Requires WM10 or WM11. Won't work on WM9.

The announcement affects laptop computers - the iBook G4 and Powerbook G4 - sold between October 2003 and August 2006.

"We discovered that some Sony batteries in previous models of PowerPC-based iBooks and PowerBooks do not meet Apple's standards for safety and performance," Apple said in a statement.

Computer model name	Battery model number	Battery serial numbers
12-inch iBook G4	A1061	ZZ338 through ZZ427 3K429 through 3K611 6C510 through 6C626
12-inch PowerBook G4	A1079	ZZ411 through ZZ427 3K428 through 3K611
15-inch PowerBook G4	A1078 and A1148	3K425 through 3K601 6N530 through 6N551 6N601

Remedy: Consumers should stop using the recalled batteries immediately and contact Apple to arrange for a replacement battery, free of charge. After removing the recalled battery from their iBook or PowerBook, consumers should plug in the AC adapter to power the computer until a replacement battery arrives.

Consumer Contact: : Contact Apple at (800) 275-2273 between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. CT Monday through Sunday or log on to Apple’s Web site at http://support.apple.com/batteryprogram to check the battery’s serial number and request a replacement battery.

Well it seems my blog was getting a little popular and I exceeded my bandwidth allocation, so I've upgrade my site and we are back rocking and rolling.

http://tapir.cs.ucl.ac.uk/bittau-wep.pdf

Worried about continued toWEP at home, this new research finally provides a crack that's usable, within a few hours.  You'd need access via another connection to a host already on the internet, some carefully selected hardware and this new software, but you can in about 2 hours read all the traffic, and connect to and use the network. Time to change encryption

Friend Roy did post:

Microsoft have just pulled their joker out of the hat before the Playstation3 launch. After learning from the original xbox hackers and
giving the 360 a mediacentre, (they did Actually credit the xbox hackers in their launch video), they've now announced that they will not only allow homebrew content on the 360, they are encouraging it!

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=10458

And Sony must be sick to their stomach as they were the most well known company for doing this with their PS1 Net Yaroze project.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_Yaroze

Today is the PC's 25th Birthday, 25 years ago IBM displayed their 5150 to the public, oh what have you done!

pple has asked owners of its 15in MacBook Pro notebook who bought their machine between February and May 2006 to ...   more »

While talking in the office James mentioned that there was going to be yet another leap in the HDMI Standard, ...   more »