Hasta La Gadget!

Canon’s just released a pair of new PIXMA printers that seem to rely on your lack of Photoshop knowledge. For the PIXMA MG5320 Wireless All-In-One and iP4920 Inkjet Photo Printers, functionality is pretty straight forward, but the outfit’s hoping to reel you with the promise that the pair brings “creativity to a whole new level.” That “enhanced creativity” comes in the form of “Fun Filter Effects,” a set of elementary photo filters, like Fish-Eye and Toy Camera, and the ability to add soft focus and blur backgrounds. What’s more, the MG5320 also allows you to print sans-PC from the company’s PIXMA Cloud Link. If fisheye functionality is enough to get your creative juices, and cash money, flowing, the iP4920 and MG5320 are now available for pre-order for $100 and $150, respectively, at the source links below. A rather uninspiring press release awaits you after the break.

Continue reading Canon PIXMA iP4920, MG5320 bring filters, ‘creativity’ to photo printing

Canon PIXMA iP4920, MG5320 bring filters, ‘creativity’ to photo printing originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 27 Jul 2011 20:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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How to solve the problem of controls cluttering up electronics devices? Simple: make the device the controller. That’s the simple but elegant solution employed by designer Hironao Tsuboi with the equally simply named Vol Speaker concept. The speaker is the knob — or maybe the knob is the speaker. However you choose to unravel this zen-like chicken and egg riddle, the result is pretty neat.

[Thanks, Arthur]

Speaker concept does away with the volume knob by becoming the volume knob originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 27 Jul 2011 19:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This article was written on January 01, 2008 by CyberNet.

–September 2007–

The month of September was all about Halo! It launched mid-September and turned into quite the money maker for Microsoft, bringing in $170 million in the first 24 hours.During the week prior to the launch of the popular Xbox 360 game, the ending of the game was leaked which caused quite the stir. Also in September came the big controversy over at Apple when Steve Jobs announced the iPod Touch, but also announced that the 8GB iPhone was receiving a major price cut — from $599 to $399. Oh, and then there was that whole situation with the ‘iBrick”.. remember that? Take a look at those headlines:

Halo 3 Launches

• Halo 3 Ending Leaked
• Replace Your Scratched Halo 3 Disc for Free
• Halo 3 Brings in $170 Million in the First 24 Hours

iTouch Launches/ iPhone Controversy

• Apple Announces iPod Touch and $399 8GB iPhone
• Jobs Declines iPhone Price Drop Refund
• Apple’s Motives Behind Price Cut Plans
• Free iPhone Unlocker Software Released
• Apple Warns iPhone Could Become iBrick
• Need an iPhone Relocker for your iBrick?

–October 2007–

We were seeing spots in October with the launch of Mac OS X 10.5 – Leopard. It officially launched on October 26th. Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal released his review of Apple’s Leopard operating system shortly before the official launch of it, and called it “Evolutionary not Revolutionary.” Another big date in October was Blog Action Day in which bloggers were encouraged to write about the environment.  We spent the whole day on October 15th writing about how the technology that we use affects the environment.

Leopard Launches!

• Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) Release Date in 10 Days
• Mac Market Share on the Rise
• Mossberg Calls Leopard Evolutionary not Revolutionary
• Vista vs. Leopard

Blog Action Day…

• How Much Energy does your TV Consume?
• Online Electricity Calculators
• Most Energy Efficient Gadgets
• Vista Computers Save about $75 per Year in Energy
• What is the Energy Star?
• How much Carbon Dioxide is your Computer Saving?

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:

ReplayTV PC Edition Scheduled To Launch In SeptemberMozilla Updates The Firefox 2 Release ScheduleNew Vista RC1 Release Date: September 7Halo 3 Pushes Xbox Sales to the Top!CyberNet’s Year In Review: October 2006

The Motorola handset becomes the latest Verizon smartphone to see Android 2.3 Gingerbread.

Originally posted at Android Atlas

Ultra-portables like the 2011 MacBook Air shun bulky features like an optical drive in favor of a sleek frame. Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired

Our notebooks, ultrabooks and desktop PCs are all getting thinner — thin enough that Kate Moss in her heroin-chic heyday could have sported something like the 13-inch MacBook Air down the runway and it wouldn’t have overwhelmed her almost nonexistent frame.

It’s no surprise. We’ve been seeing computers slim down ever since those giant room-sized computers that spawned the digital age, and the introduction of the first PCs in the decades that followed.

But for a while, we were continually adding features such as hard drive space, optical drives, SD card slots to our notebooks and PCs. Now, as storage migrates toward online servers, and media is more likely to be streamed rather than viewed from a DVD or Blu-ray disc, many of those onboard features are shrinking down, or getting nixed altogether.

Consumers are favoring size and portability over a heftier ‘do-it-all’ type machine.

“Size will most certainly be an important driver when consumers look for their next PC or notebook,” especially with tablets at the forefront of consumers’ minds todays, says Desiree Davis, Senior Manager with Resolve Market Research.

The skinny: In recent years, we’ve been seeing ultra-portable notebooks like Apple’s MacBook Airs ditch the optical drive so they can achieve a slim silhouette. The Mac Mini desktop also lost the optical drive in its latest iteration. And now, both MacRumors and TUAW are reporting that Apple is working on ultra-thin 15- and 17-inch notebooks as well, likely to fall under the MacBook Pro umbrella and hit the market around the holiday season. If this is true (and it definitely seems in line with Apple’s current product trends and general philosophy) and they’re as thin as the Airs, they likely won’t have an optical drive either.

We’re also seeing PCs begin to favor flash storage, typically in the form of SSDs that incorporate NAND-based flash memory, rather than thicker, weightier HDDs.

“There are simply fewer devices on the market that consumers want to carry that have room for hard disk drives. Their value to the on-the-go consumer is simply nonexistent,” says Davis.

Although SSDs are currently more expensive than comparable capacity HDDs, they offer more benefits than just their smaller form factor: they are quieter, less vulnerable to physical shock, have less latency, and quicker access time. We’re probably going to see them become more and more prevalent in notebooks and PCs.

The materials used to create modern computers and laptops also lends itself towards thinner design, especially in Apple’s case.

“The aluminum unibody structures of the new MacBooks (whether Air or non-Air) are significantly stronger than what manufacturers could make out of plastic. So Apple is able to create a super-thin product while still preserving the strength of a plastic counterpart,” Miroslav Djuric of iFixit.

Cloud storage is another factor that will allow computers to shed some pounds. There are a variety of cloud storage solutions that customers can use instead of loading up on files on their actual gadget.

With our music, photos, and documents fed into the cloud, the need for onboard storage becomes increasingly irrelevant and unnecessary. Google’s Chromebook, which takes that to the extreme, eliminates almost everything but your ability to connect to the Internet. Although a device like that isn’t quite ready for the mainstream yet, it’s clear that’s the direction we’re headed.

But is a thin computer always a good thing?

“The best way to have thin devices is to integrate as many components as possible on one single board,” says Djuric. “That really keeps the thickness as minimal as possible, but also affects the upgradeability, repairability, and features of the device.”

“These thinner devices also make for excellent throw-way devices,” Djuric added. That means consumers are more likely to toss it out when it gets old, rather than trying to fix or upgrade it. This could lead to environmental problems in the future, as these products build up in landfills, he said.

See Also:

• New Galaxy Tab 10.1 Thinner, Lighter Than iPad 2
• iPad 2 Glass Is Thinner But Stronger Than Original iPad’s
• Amazon to Launch Thinner, Sharper, Faster Kindle in August …
• ThinkPad Proves Big Things Come in Small Packages