Nikon has announced its fifth DSLR model since January with the new D5200, an update to the D5100 that includes features popular on Nikon’s more advanced D7000.
Unveiled on Tuesday, pricing has yet to be announced, but the camera is expected to ship by December.
“The new consumer-level DSLR shooter pulls a number of features from Nikon’s pricier D7000 camera, including its 39-point autofocus system (up from the 11 points found on the D5100) and 2016-pixel RGB metering sensor,” reports Digital Trends.
“Buyers of the new camera might want to consider investing in some beefy SDHC/SDXC cards and hefty external hard drive, with its new super-sized 24.1-megapixel APS-C sensor guaranteeing snap-happy photographers rapid memory usage with the large picture files the camera will be serving up,” suggests the post.
According to Nikon, the D5200 features a more intuitive user interface and shoots 1080p video at 60 fps. An optional WU-1a adapter offers remote shutter control and the ability to send photos wirelessly to iOS and Android devices.
The TFT LCD screen “flips out, twists and turns, making it more likely you’ll get the picture you’re after when shooting at arms’ length over the top of people’s heads,” notes the post.
“For those who prefer a dash of color with their camera bodies instead of the usual black, the Japanese camera giant is offering the D5200 in two other flavors — bronze and red.”
Microsoft has filed a patent application outlining a new way to use the Kinect motion controller that could allow content creators to limit content or help cable providers target ads based on viewers.
“The patent has the ominous title of ‘Content Distribution Regulation by Viewing User,'” Geek.com explains. “It details a system whereby the people sitting in view of a TV can be detected using cameras and sensors like those found in the Kinect motion controller.
“Once logged, the content provider can assess the audience and either choose to charge more for viewing the content or block access based on there being too many people.”
The post points out that cable providers could use the system to determine viewers’ ages in order to limit mature content or provide more relevant ads.
“But even so, this isn’t a system that would go down well with consumers, and how are they going to enforce its use? ‘This content can only be viewed with the Microsoft Kinect turned on’ is not a message I can see working as part of a content distribution system,” suggests the post.
“It’s no surprise the [Microsoft] team is continuing to figure out new ways to use the device, I just wish they were coming up with ideas that are a little less draconian.”
The new Nokia Lumia 820 and 920 smartphones, launching on Friday, run Microsoft’s new Windows Phone 8 operating system. The phones connect to AT&T’s 4G LTE network. Pre-orders through AT&T have already begun.
“The prices for these 4G LTE phones are particularly reasonable, and less than those rumored, with the Lumia 820 costing a mere $50, and the higher-specification Lumia 920 just $100; but you’ll have to sign your life away for two-years to take advantage,” reports Digital Trends.
“You can choose between a red, white, grey, black or yellow Lumia 920, while the Lumia 820 comes with a variety of rear covers for you to choose between,” according to the post.
The Lumia 920 features an 8.7-megapixel PureView camera, 4.5-inch 1280 x 768 touchscreen and a 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon processor. The 820 has a 4.3-inch screen with 480 x 800 pixel resolution.
Apps include Nokia Maps, Nokia Drive and Nokia City Lens.
“The Lumia 820 and Lumia 920 are exclusive to AT&T, but T-Mobile offers its own version of the 820, named the Lumia 810, and Verizon will also be getting in on the Windows Phone 8 fun with the Lumia 822,” explains the post. “They’re identical when it comes to features, but vary slightly in design.”
Google’s official Nexus 4 announcement did not shock anyone in the tech community, as the phone has been leaked for the past few weeks, but the phone looks and feels much better in person, writes The Verge.
The Nexus 4 “features a 4.7-inch 1280 x 768 IPS display, a 1.5GHz quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro processor — which Google claims is the fastest on the market — an 8 megapixel camera and a 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera, and up to 16GB of storage,” notes the post, adding that although it shares many features with the LG Optimus G, the Nexus 4 seems a much more polished and attractive phone.
One major drawback of the Nexus 4 is that it does not support 4G LTE technology. The phone does come as an unlocked HSPA+ device, but fails to rival the iPhone 5 in 4G LTE capability.
The Verge notes that the Nexus 4 screen is “terrific” and “not just in pixel density.” The screen uses LG’s G2 technology to integrate touch into the surface layer of glass. This allows the phone to be thin while bringing the display pixels close to the screen.
The phone, available for purchase November 13, runs on the new Android 4.2, which includes features like widget functionality on the lock screen, gesture typing, and “a completely redesigned UI focused on single-handed input,” according to the post.
“The device will sell for $299 with 8GB of storage, or $349 with 16GB. A T-Mobile version will sell unlocked for $199 on a two-year contract. Alongside the improved screen and faster CPU, the Nexus 4 has 2GB of RAM, Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n, NFC, Bluetooth, and built-in compatibility with Google’s latest accessory, the Wireless Charging Orb — an inductive charging dock.”
After eight years of competition, Microsoft’s Hotmail has been knocked off the top spot as most-used email service by Google’s Gmail.
Hotmail launched in 1996 as one of the first Web-based email services and was purchased the following year by Microsoft for an estimated $400 million.
“Hotmail has been continually revised, upgraded and refined by Microsoft, with the company even going so far as to introduce an ‘all-new’ update a year ago that mimicked many of the features that won users over to Google,” reports Digital Trends.
However, the update was not enough for the service to maintain dominance, as Gmail took the lead last month worldwide.
“This isn’t the first time that this shift has been reported; Google quietly boasted about it happening way back in June of this year, in the middle of a blog post about cloud computing when it announced that it had ‘more than 425 million active users globally,'” indicates the post, pointing out that comScore disagreed with Google’s numbers at the time.
But now it is official, as confirmed by third-party metrics. Digital Trends notes that Microsoft introducing Outlook.com as its Hotmail replacement in July could be a factor.
American email service use is slightly different than the global stats. Yahoo has 40.8 percent of the U.S. market, compared with Gmail’s 36.7 percent and Hotmail’s 18.9 percent.
Once an Internet giant, AOL has dwindled as dial-up subscribers dropped off and Time Warner dropped the company. Now, CEO Tim Armstrong and executives have unveiled a new plan for the company, which could signal a major comeback.
“That strategy involves pruning the company into three operational units: a membership and subscription group; a ‘content brands group’ (Huffington Post, TechCrunch, etc.); and an advertising group,” reports paidContent.
“The first group,” the article continues, “amounts to a legacy unit that will presumably be spun off or milked for cash while the other two units could drive AOL’s re-emergence as a powerful media entity. According to Armstrong, advertisers are looking for ‘fewer, bigger partners’ that can distribute their messages on a massive scale. If he is right, AOL is well-poised to offer ad buyers what they want through its network of content providers, partners and ad platforms.”
AOL’s ad networks and video platforms have seen impressive growth, giving the company its best results in seven years.
Armstrong anticipates AOL’s video revenue to rise to $100 million in 2012 from just $10 million two years ago. The company claims it has risen to No. 2 in overall video views, trailing only YouTube.
“Finally, AOL predicts that 2013 will see more and more TV dollars pouring into its sprawling video properties… and that video will eventually overtake display dollars,” paidContent writes.
“If these predictions are even partly correct, it means that AOL has a leg up in the emerging (and lucrative) video ad market and that it will have to be less preoccupied with the problem of mobile media consumption that keeps up other publishers up at night,” the article concludes.
Internet radio provider Pandora has gained 150 million registered users in the U.S. but hasn’t been able to make a profit due to prohibitive music licensing fees. The company is now suing the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) for “reasonable” fees.
“Pandora is seeking a blanket licensing fee that would cover all songs represented by the 435,000-member group,” Bloomberg reports.
Pandora and ASCAP had an experimental fee agreement from 2005 to 2010, which Pandora said was “effectively non-negotiable” and “ill-suited and not reasonable,” according to court papers. Following that arrangement, the two sides haven’t been able to reach another agreement, which leaves the decision to the U.S. District Court in New York.
However, ASCAP and the Radio Music Licensing Committee were able to come to a fee agreement, one that Pandora was not offered. The Radio Music Licensing Committee represents Clear Channel, which runs a rival Internet service called iHeartRadio.
“Pandora also claims that it’s entitled to lower rates because some large music publishers have announced they are withdrawing new media rights from ASCAP and negotiating licensing fees directly with Web radio services,” Bloomberg writes.
The proposed Internet Radio Fairness Act of 2012 could help to solve licensing disputes by requiring “music royalty rates for Web broadcasters to be comparable to what satellite radio and cable companies pay,” the article explains.
Last year, nearly half of Pandora’s revenues went to royalties — more than six times the percentage satellite radio Sirius XM paid. “For the six months that ended July 31, Pandora reported that its net loss increased to $25.6 million from $8.57 million a year earlier, while revenue rose 54 percent to $182 million,” notes the article.
Normally on opposing sides, top Silicon Valley companies are coming together with media giants and cable operators to resist the Federal Trade Commission’s proposed update to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.
Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Viacom, Disney, cable operators, a toy makers trade group and others have argued that the changes are so arduous that, “rather than enhance online protections for children, they threaten to deter companies from offering children’s Web sites and services altogether,” reports The New York Times.
“But the underlying concern, for both the industry and regulators,” the article continues, “is not so much about online products for children themselves. It is about the data collection and data mining mechanisms that facilitate digital marketing on apps and Web sites for children — and a debate over whether these practices could put children at greater risk.”
The update would institute persistent ID systems and require further parental permissions for data collection for ads.
Alan L. Friel, chairman of the media and technology practice at Edwards Wildman Palmer law firm, rebuts concerns that tracking is inherently bad.
“What is the harm we are trying to prevent here?” he asks. “We risk losing a lot of the really good educational and entertaining content if we make things too difficult for people to operate the sites or generate revenue from the sites.”
“The economic issue at stake is much bigger than just the narrow children’s audience,” suggests the article. “If the F.T.C. were to include customer code numbers among the information that requires a parent’s consent, industry analysts say, it might someday require companies to get similar consent for a practice that represents the backbone of digital marketing and advertising — using such code numbers to track the online activities of adults.”
During ShowEast’s International Day in Hollywood, Florida, media executives discussed the pressing need to convert from film to digital projection.
“I don’t know when the end [of film] will be, but it could be tomorrow,” said Mark Christiansen, executive VP of operations at Paramount Pictures. “It won’t be a studio decision… there simply won’t be stock.”
Christiansen explained that Fuji no longer takes film orders and Agfa has also stopped producing film, “to the best of my knowledge,” he said.
“That leaves Kodak,” Christiansen continued, noting the company’s battle with bankruptcy. “The judge could look at 35mm tomorrow and ask them to stop doing it. And they won’t have a choice.”
In Latin America, this evolution could be problematic with less than half of the region’s 10,000 screens being digital.
Speakers at the conference also discussed delivery methods, favoring satellite distribution over hard drives. However, physical delivery may get a second wind as capacity increases and prices decrease.
“We think satellite is the best choice for now,” said Randolph Blotky, chairman and CEO of Technology Convergence Partners. “Once they figure out how to deliver IP streams point to multipoint, you are going to see a lot of delivery that way.”
If you don’t know what a MOOC is, you soon will as massive open online courses continue to proliferate through higher education, attracting noteworthy numbers of students as well as top universities.
“I like to call this the year of disruption and the year is not over yet,” says Anant Agarwal, president of non-profit educational startup edX, which has 370,000 students enrolled this fall.
Another MOOC provider Coursera launched this January and has already attracted 1.7 million users, growing faster than Facebook according to founder and Stanford professor Andrew Ng.
“MOOCs have been around for a few years as collaborative techie learning events,” notes The New York Times, “but this is the year everyone wants in. Elite universities are partnering with Coursera at a furious pace. It now offers courses from 33 of the biggest names in postsecondary education, including Princeton, Brown, Columbia and Duke. In September, Google unleashed a MOOC-building online tool, and Stanford unveiled Class2Go with two courses.”
Many courses see a high number of signups, but a smaller number of certificates awarded as students drop off. There is also limited faculty interaction because of the volume of students, so users have to rely more heavily on other students for help.
“But the vibe is decidedly Facebook — build a profile, upload your photo — with tools for students to plan ‘meet-ups’ with Courserians in about 1,400 cities worldwide,” explains the article. “These gatherings may be bona fide study groups or social sessions. Membership may be many or sparse.”
The MOOCs also peer-source the grading; each student grades five others’ work and scores for each user are averaged out. Those who give inaccurate grades are flagged and their scores count for less. Cheating has been a concern, leading to proctored exams.
Piracy has turned its attention to the $10.1 billion mobile-app business. “The order of magnitude is tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars in losses per developer,” notes Carl Howe, VP of researcher Yankee Group, adding that sales might be 20-50 percent higher without piracy.
“There are lots of ways to steal an app; it usually involves copying its code and publishing it on an online forum or a legitimate app store,” writes Businessweek.
App piracy is different than other types of piracy because it often targets students or small firms that do not have the means or resources to pursue piracy.
The issue is especially problematic on Android, as according to Howe, Google’s “tools have been relatively ineffective because there are multiple Android stores, and Google can’t possibly control all the non-Google stores.”
Google hopes to combat the issue by offering encryption keys with paid applications to verify that the app matches the device from which it was purchased. This is intended to avoid copying the code and redistributing it to multiple devices.
Other app developers are turning to anti-tampering tools from companies like Arxan Technologies, which help monitor and fight piracy.
Many developers have switched to the freemium app model because it shows advertisements both to legitimate downloaders and to pirates. Other developers convince people to download the real version of the application by offering frequent updates.
Technology startup PredictGaze uses gaze detection, gesture recognition, and facial-feature recognition to control devices like televisions and cars. The company thinks that as front-facing cameras become more common on devices, gesture control will become a preferred method to operate electronics.
The product is currently being tested on an iOS game that allows users to control a monster using head motions.
It is also being tested in Japan to track customer interest in products. The technology determines the customer’s smile, gender, and time spent in front of a product, and can offer coupons if it feels it is losing a hesitant customer.
“The company’s technology combines machine-learning and computer-vision algorithms in software that can use a standard VGA camera to figure out where you’re looking, what your gender is, if you’re smiling, and more. It can also identify gestures — all of which can then be translated into actions taken by devices,” reports Technology Review.
Founder Ketan Banjara says PredictGaze’s technology is unique in its ability to bring together “face, gesture, and gaze” under one technology.
The technology can perform tasks such as pausing a video if it determines no one is watching, and can also turn the pages of an e-book by tracking the reader’s eyes.
Japan Display has developed a video-playing paper-like LCD that runs on low power. “The results could be of great use to device makers who want to simulate a paper-like experience while adding the capabilities of color video,” writes Technology Review.
A press release from Japan Display notes that “an optical property optimization adopting a newly-developed scattering layer” and a low power consumption method are integral aspects of the technology.
The technology’s Light Control Layer does not reflect light like most LCDs, but rather “the display collects light to some extent, in the direction of the user’s eyes, making it look similar to paper,” according to Japan Display.
The lower power consumption comes from the company’s Memory in Pixels technology. This technology retains signals when it displays still pictures, which saves energy.
Japan Display has developed one version of the technology that is bright, but has relatively low color purity, and another version that is dim, but has high color purity. The company is ready to market the bright, low color purity model, while it continues research and development on the high color purity display.
Swedish service Magine hopes to reshape cloud distribution to make television a streaming service through an iPad or in-TV application, reports paidContent.
The service, which is still in its beta form, offers 16 premium channels for free in Sweden. Users can rewind live streams, and can access shows for up to a month after they air.
“We transcode all the channels in real-time, then put it through DRM and upload it in real-time to our cloud storage, and out through any CDN,” explains co-founder Mattias Hjelmsted.
The service has the potential to replace set-top boxes, notes the article. Many people already have broadband or Wi-Fi devices that can handle the duties traditionally assigned to set-top boxes.
While the service is currently free, the company plans to start charging for its service once it removes the beta label.
Apple has sold three million units of the fourth-generation iPad and iPad mini since launching them on Friday, beating analysts’ expectations and setting a new sales record.
“We set a new launch weekend record and practically sold out of iPad minis,” notes CEO Tim Cook. “We’re working hard to build more quickly to meet the incredible demand.”
According to Apple, sales of the 7.9-inch mini and the fourth-gen iPad “easily topped the 1.5 million Wi-Fi only tablets sold during the third-generation iPad’s opening weekend in March,” reports the Wall Street Journal. “Apple will start shipping cellular-enabled versions of both new iPads in the U.S. within a few weeks.”
However, the company has been tight-lipped regarding the actual number of minis sold.
“ISI Group analyst Brian Marshall estimated iPad minis accounted for about two million of those initial iPad purchases over the past three days, putting sales well on their way toward meeting the research firm’s estimate of about five million iPad mini sales this December quarter,” explains the article.
The mini, which starts at $329, provides competition with rivals that offer 7-inch tablets running Google’s Android OS.
Nikon has announced its fifth DSLR model since January with the new D5200, an update to the D5100 that includes features popular on Nikon’s more advanced D7000.
