Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on May 14, 2008 by CyberNet.

Yesterday as Ryan was pulling up a map of how to get to O’Hare Airport in Chicago for our upcoming trip, he happened to notice a “more” button up at the top of the page. He clicked on it and a menu appeared with the option to enable photos and/or Wikipedia. He turned to me surprised, and asked if that had always been there and he just hadn’t noticed or if it was new. As it turns out, it is in fact new and Google had just launched these features.

There’s no end in site to the features that Google can add to Google Maps. If you choose to enable photos, you’ll see various geo-tagged photos appear on the map, thanks to Panoramio, a service Google acquired last year. If there’s a Wikipedia article about a place on the map (a city, landmark, etc.), a “W” will appear. Clicking on it will pull up a snippet of the article right on the map, but you can also click “view full article” and then you’ll be taken to Wikipedia.

Another feature that Google has made easier to access is real estate listings. Previously you could view these listings by clicking on “My Maps” and selecting to view the Real Estate Content, but now you just click “show search options” which is next to the search field at the top of the page. A drop-down menu appears and then you’ll be able to click on Real Estate. Other options you’ll find in the drop-down menu for searching include businesses, locations, user-created content, and mapped web pages.

When Google Maps first launched, I don’t think anyone ever imagined that so much information would be able to be accessed by one site. It’s now jam-packed with tons of features, and you know Google will only continue to add more.

Source: Google Operating System

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Considering their rather poor battery life, what’s the worst extra you could possibly add to a netbook? A DVD player, you say? We’d agree.

Which is why Mouse Computer’s (heard of ’em?) new LB-F1500W is a mystery. Alongside the standard netbook specs (Atom processor, 160GB HD, 1GB RAM) sits a dual layer DVD burner, ready spin optical discs and thirstily suck at the battery. At least Mouse had the courtesy to fit a large capacity six-cell battery, although the claimed 5.2 hours operating time surely only applies when the DVD player isn’t used.

When Apple took the optical drive out of the MacBook Air, the world (or the world of tech writers at least) gasped and whined. But it proved to be a smart decision, and you could always hook up an external drive.

Sure, netbooks are almost all the same these days, and some differentiation is nice, but DVD seems dumb. It comes at a price, too — the LB-F1500W will cost a whopping ¥64,000, or $720. There is one thing that could make this useful, though — a DVD drive makes it easy to install other operating systems. The machine ships with Windows XP home, but assuming that there are hardware drivers available, the optical drive would make installing OS X a breeze.

Product page [Mouse via Crave via Jersey Boy]

We’re not sure what’s going in France at the moment but a bevy of new 12 megapixel Panasonic Lumix cameras have broken loose with or without corporate approval. Let’s start with the rugged €399 DMC-FT1 (pictured). It features a 12 megapixel (1/2.33-inches) with a 28-128mm optically stabilized 4.6x zoom Leica lens and a 2.7-inch LCD. It’ll survive drops of up to 1.5 meters, water to a depth of 3 meters, while surviving storage in the dustiest of apartments. It’ll even shoot 720p video in “AVCHD Lite” format… whatever that is. Next up are the €429 DMC-TZ7 and its £329 DMC-TZ6 little buddy. The TZ7 couples a 12x optically stabilized zoom (25-300mm) with the ability to shoot 720p HD video in that same AVCHD Lite format and reviewable on a biggie (but relatively common) 3-inch LCD.

Also outed is the €299 FX550 with 5x zoom, 720p video capture, and a 3-inch touchscreen buzzing along with haptic feedback. It’ll even handle aperture and shutter priority modes in addition to manual exposure for those who wish to push their amateur credentials to the edge. The €299 DMC-FX40 dials things back with a skinnier chassis and smaller 2.5-inch LCD while ditching the manual stuff. Check ’em all in the gallery.

[Via 1001 Noisy Cameras]

Read — FT1
Read — TZ7
Read — TZ6
Read — DMC-FX550
Read — DMC-FX40

Filed under: Digital Cameras

Panasonic’s DMC-FT1, TZ7, TZ6, FX550, and FX40 cameras outed by French authority originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 27 Jan 2009 04:26:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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While we’re still waiting for our electronic broadsheet (hell, we’ll settle for a tabloid) it looks like folks in Toshima will be seeing quite a bit of the e-paper as they hit the streets of this Tokyo ward. In a test conducted by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, the signage has been installed in the proximity of the Toshima Life and Industry Plaza, where a wireless network was established to provide updates in case of an emergency. There are currently two signs: one in the lobby of the post office measures over three meters across and sports 240 x 768 resolution (the paper has 4mm pixels), and holds down power consumption at about 24W. Stationed at the Higashi-Ikebukuro bus stop, the second sign is 60 x 40 centimeters with 144 x 96 resolution, and power consumption here is about 9W. The test will run until January 29th, after which point the city will have to rely upon its usual civil defense repertoire — which is believed to include the vigilant eye of Honda’s 49-foot ASIMO.

Filed under: Displays

E-paper signs being tested in Tokyo for disaster prevention originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 27 Jan 2009 03:38:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Emo Labs didn’t stir up too much commotion while CES was going on, but apparently it did have a tiny presence in Vegas. The crew at Technologizer was able to listen to a sneak preview of the startup’s Edge Motion technology, and if the demo is indicative of the end result, we could be onto something special. Much like NXT’s SoundVu tech that seemed to fizzle out about as quickly as it hit the scene in 2005, this system creates a so-called invisible speaker by “using arrays of motors to wiggle the edges of a clear membrane.” Gurus at the company are hoping to have it integrated into panels of TVs by the end of this year, though it’ll be a bit longer before the same can happen on space-constrained laptops.

Filed under: Home Entertainment

Emo Labs concocts its own invisible speaker technology originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 27 Jan 2009 02:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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