Hasta La Gadget!

We had high hopes for the Pentax Optio I-10, a little compact camera that breaks out of the brushed metal box and delivers a style reminiscent of a ’70s SLR. Unfortunately, initial hands-on reports weren’t encouraging and, now that we’ve had a chance to read a full review, it seems this one lacks the performance to back-up its looks. Neutralday.com put this 12.1 megapixel, 5x zoom model through its paces and found that it delivers thoroughly average images in most situations, with highlights being its compact size and fast startup, but low-points including inaccurate auto-focus in low light and poor ISO performance. Ultimately it’s not a bad camera and we’re certainly not opposed to paying a little extra for a gadget that makes you feel warm inside, but if you’re strictly looking for the best performance you can save money by choosing a model without faux leatherette styling.

Pentax Optio I-10 reviewed: ‘perfectly average compact camera’ in a decidedly stylish case originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 26 Mar 2010 10:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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What’s a distinguished person of taste and refinement to do when smartphones nowadays are all so bulky and, well, ubiquitous? He or she should go take a look at Vertu‘s store, of course, which has today been populated for the first time with a new, even more exclusive Signature collection, composed of four models — one for each season. There’s a load of talk about delicate hand-crafting and latest technology with these, but the truth of the matter is that you’ll be buying one solely for the purpose of puling it out of your carefully pressed, kerchiefed Armani suit in the hope of impressing any and all nearby members of the opposite sex. What this phone will then say, nay, scream, about you is that you have the money to buy things that are neither functional nor physically appealing — the surest way to signal wealth and prestige. How much money? Try a million Yen for each handset, which roughly translates to $10,830.

Update: Our sage readers have noted a failure in our machine-translated pricing. The handsets in fact cost 20 million Yen a piece, which equates to $216,600. So sorry to have misled you if you were heading off to the bank to get that 10 grand.

Vertu reminds us it’s still alive with million-Yen phones, still tasteless as ever originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 26 Mar 2010 09:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A week after becoming a reality, Microsoft’s LifeCam HD-5000 webcam has been given the review treatment by Mobile + Netbook and, while it delivers what looks to be generally excellent quality video, it doesn’t score perfectly high marks. For one thing, this cam does not feature onboard hardware encoding, which resulted in 40 percent CPU utilization for this tester when recording at 720p on a Core i5 750 processor — ouch. This also means that the cam will not be usable for Skype HD, as that service requires onboard hardware encoding. But, other than some slow focus issues, the camera delivered quite good quality and color and, at just $50 MSRP (we’re seeing them for $40 online), it’s still quite a bargain.

Continue reading Microsoft’s budget 720p HD-5000 LifeCam reviewed (video)

Microsoft’s budget 720p HD-5000 LifeCam reviewed (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 26 Mar 2010 09:11:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This fantastic ad for the WebOS comes not from Palm, a company which has proven itself unable to make a compelling commercial for the Pre, but from a fan.

Heiko Thies is the fellow behind this video spot, which manages to be both exciting and slightly edgy. It also totally makes me want to buy a Pre.

The ad does what an ad should, especially when it is for a product as cool and capable as the Pre: It shows the phone in action. The jerky handheld camera is great, too, somehow setting it apart from the superslick iPhone ads.

We expect the shaky-cam made rotoscoping the animations tricky, though. It comes over like a cross between Minority Report and District 9, both great films already.

If Palm aired commercials like these — instead of the creepy lady commercials they ran last year — the company might have a chance of capturing the hearts and minds of geeks everywhere. Of course, it might have to do a few more things to stay alive, as early adopter and Epicenter editor John C. Abell argued last week.

Nice work, Heiko. I’m off to watch it again right now. Palm: Hire this guy right now.

Fan-made ad for Palm webOS by ThiesFX [YouTube via Mashable]

SweetSpotter is a quite ingenious application that adjusts the output of your stereo setup so you are always in the “sweet spot” using nothing but your webcam and some clever trickery.

The problem: Every pair of speakers has a sweet spot floating between and in front of them. If you plant your head (and therefore your ears) in this spot, you get the full stereo effect. With well made music, and good enough speakers, you will perceive voices and instruments placed in 3D space, or a “sound-stage”. Move out of this spot and the magic disappears in a 2D puff of noise.

Install SweetSpotter and you’ll always be in the right place. The software, from Sebastian Merchel and Stephan Groth at the Technische Universität Dresden, uses your computer’s webcam combined with face-detection to track your head. Armed with this information, SweetSpotter adjusts the volume and delay of each channel making sure the sound reaches your ears at the right time to maintain the effect.

Of course, it is limited to a computer with a webcam, but for laptop-listening why not fire it up? If you are running any flavor of Windows since XP, you can grab a free download and try it out. Or, of course, you could just put on some headphones.

SweetSpotter [TU Dresden via Engadget]