Hasta La Gadget!

I managed to score a seat for President Obama’s Inauguration–and I brought along the new Sony DSC-T77 camera. I chose the DSC-T77 because it has an intuitive a touch-screen interface that made it easy to figure out various functions, (which was great, because I had never used the camera before).

After a harrowing 7 hours of travel via car, subway, and sneakers from northern Virginia, I managed to reach my seat, which was about 250 yards from the podium. The 10 .1-megapixel point-and-shoot took some great pictures, and I was able to use the camera’s touch screen to zoom in for a great view of the new president and other luminaries after took my shots.

I had been skeptical of touch-screen camera interfaces, but being able to touch the display and zoom in up to 8X was crucial. That way I knew exactly what I had in the shot very quickly and whether I had to take it again–clutch, especially at a historical moment like this one.

Hope you enjoy the shots–more after the jump.

Post by Dan Evans

The 2009 Detroit auto show (a.k.a. the North American International Auto Show) was a bit soft on mainstream car introductions compared to shows in years past. Still, Ford showed off its white bread-and-butter Taurus sedan, and Cadillac made its SRX tall wagon/crossover more SUV-like. And the non-Michigan autoamakers, such as Audi, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Lexus, and Toyota, all had great new cars, too.

All in all, there’s enough to easily compile a list of the 10 best mainstream (gasoline-burning, non-hybrid, non-electric) cars from the show. That’s apart from the 10 best green cars of the Detroit show. We omitted cars that might have been worthy in other years, such as the Ford Mustang Shelby GT500, a $45,000, 540-hp ode to go-fast-in-a-straight-line technology. And the most important car or car technology of the Detroit auto show wasn’t a car–it was Ford’s unveiling at the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show of a new version of Ford Sync that adds rudimentary navigation, no extra charge, to its already impressive features set of Bluetooth, voice command, and iPod / music player integration.

Detroit’s 10 best cars, after the jump.

Will Steve Jobs’ on-going health problems get Apple in hot water? According to a source cited by Bloomberg, US regulators at the Security Exchange Commission are investigating whether the company’s failure to disclose the CEO’s condition misled investors.

However, the same source also added that the investigation doesn’t mean that there’s evidence of wrongdoing on Apple’s part. SEC officials have thus far refused to confirm or deny the report.

Jobs, of course, stepped aside from the company last week, making his health a top priority. COO Tim Cook is filling in the company’s top spot until Jobs’ planned-return in June.

I’ve never been a fan of cord clutter. I switched to a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard in my office, and I’ve delighted in the clean look ever since. Cord clutter may be annoying in the office, but it’s downright dangerous in the kitchen. The kitchen–that place where …

Originally posted at Appliances and Kitchen Gadgets

The top two SLR makers have released relatively minor firmware revisions for three cameras, Nikon’s higher-end full-frame D3 and D700 and Canon’s prosumer-grade EOS 40D.

The fixes generally address rare and unusual problems. One notable fix for the D3 and D700 is for a problem which, as Nikon describes it, “in extremely rare cases, resulted in noticeable black dots in images captured with Long exp. NR (long exposure noise reduction) in the shooting menu set to On.” Canon fixed a black-dot issue of its own with the EOS 5D Mark II earlier this month, but Nikon’s issue sounds rarer.

Forthwith, the release notes:

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Originally posted at Underexposed