Lottery winners: pay attention

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Behold a classic M-series camera body which takes all those expensive items of glassware that result in Leica owners being unable to feed their families. But instead of film, inside is a 10.3 MP sensor. And where the film-speed indicator used to be, you’ll find a 2.5-inch LCD screen. Available in UK sometime in November.

Oh — and the price? Er, a mere £2990. Including VAT, naturally.

“It comes”, says the NYT waspishly, “in black and silver; a rakish fashion photographer’s beret and turtleneck are not included”. Huh! The beret is the only thing some of us can afford.

Do I look fat in this LCD?

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Whatever next? According to Gizmodo…

Here’s a new camera from HP that’ll help you answer that age-old – but always tricky – question from your girlfriend: “Do these jeans make me look fat?” Instead of stepping onto a verbal landmine, take her picture with the 8.2MP Photosmart R927, one of several new digital cameras from HP that boasts a special “slimming feature.” Before you show her the picture, hit the slimming effect in the Design Gallery in playback, and she’ll look as much as 10 pounds thinner on the camera’s 3-inch LCD.

“It’s a pretty subtle change we’ve built into the camera,” Karl Wardrop, HP’s digital imaging product manager told the New York Post. “It’s not dramatic. It slims the center of photos and slightly widens the outside to maintain perspective. It’s like the (fun-house) mirror from the fair, but not as exaggerated.”

While there are many ways to slim (or fatten) a person’s physique in Photoshop and other image editing programs, HP is the first manufacturer to offer the effect in-camera. The R927 is available this month for $399.99. Boyfriends of the world can now breathe a sigh of relief.

En passant… I’ve been taking photographs forever — including a lot of portraits, and I’ve rarely encountered a subject who seemed to be satisfied with his/her image. My conclusion is that most people dislike how they look: and when you show them photographs of themselves they tend to shudder and look away. Odd…

Footnote… This in-camera-correction stuff looks like becoming a staple feature of point-and-shoot digital cameras. The Ricoh R4 Caplio, for example, has a ‘skew correction mode’ which automatically detects trapezoids in images and corrects the perspective so the object appears as if it had been shot ‘head on’. Useful when you’re photographing e.g. whiteboards from below.

A new electronic ‘reader’

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Interesting new attempt at an eBook reader device. The manufacturer claims that its Electronic Paper Display technology reads “just like normal paper” and is perceived as such by the human eye. Other claimed benefits include:

  • Easy navigation based upon reading behaviour.
  • Scalable text. You can change the font size of your text to suit your own reading comfort. (Format and DRM dependant.)

    • Price:$650. You can buy a lot of books from Amazon for that. And without any irritating DRM.

    Meanwhile there are rumours that Sony is about to have another go at the eReader market. Engadget has some pics.

    Parrot sketch

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    Alexander Cockburn, in quasi-sentimental mood..

    I was nearly 30 and yearned for escape. I could see English politics stretching drearily ahead. After Wilson’s return there would be James Callaghan. After Callaghan, Michael Foot. After Foot, Neal Kinnock. After Kinnock…One day in the late summer of 1972 I had occasion to be in the portion of south London known as Balham. It was hot, and the streets infinitely dreary. I must get away, I muttered to myself, like Razumov  talking to Councillor Mikulin  in Conrad’s Under Western Eyes.

    I turned in the direction of the subway station. A dingy sign caught my eye, in a sub-basement window. Parrot readings. I was puzzled. Surely it should be Tarot. I knocked, and the sibyl, in Indian saree, greeted me. She had tarot cards and a parrot, a method of divination with an ancient lineage in India. She dealt the cards. The parrot looked at them, then at me, then at the fortune teller. Some current of energy passed between them. The sybil  paused,  then in a low yet vibrant voice, bodied forth the future to me , disclosing what lay ahead in British public life. Her lips curved around the as yet unfamiliar words “New Labor”. Falteringly, raising her hands before her eyes in trembling dismay at the secret message of the cards, she described a man I know now to have been Tony Blair. I paid her double, then triple as, amid the advisory shrieks of the parrot, she poured out the shape of things to come.

    Within a week, obeying the promptings of the parrot, I had booked a flight to New York and a new life. Ahead of me lay a vast political landscape, seemingly of infinite richness and possibility. Never for a moment have I regretted my journey westward. That parrot in Balham had read the cards correctly. It is probably still alive, and I’m sure that if I were to return for another consultation, it would cry out, “I could have told you so”, and cackle heartily as it described the blasted expectations raised by Democrats stretching from Carter to Clinton…

    Thanks to Godfrey Boyle for spotting it.

    CrackedForSure

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    From Good Morning Silicon Valley…

    Unable to protect its PlaysForSure Digital Rights Management (DRM) software from FairUse4WM, a tool that renders its file-sharing restrictions impotent, Microsoft has filed suit against its creator, “Viodentia,” alleging he illegally accessed copyrighted Microsoft source code….

    Trouble is, they have no idea who he (or she) is!

    A true shaggy dog story

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    From BBC NEWS…

    A breakdown patrol man who came to the rescue of a woman motorist has managed to get her car started using her dog.

    Juliette Piesley, 39, had changed the battery in her electronic key fob but was then unable to start her car.

    When AA patrolman Kevin Gorman arrived at the scene in Addlestone, Surrey, he found its immobiliser chip was missing.

    Ms Piesley said her dog George had eaten something, and realising it was the chip, he put the dog in the front seat and started the car with the key.

    Mr Gorman said: “I was glad to get the car started for the member.

    “They will now have to take George [the dog] with them in the car until things take their natural course.

    “It is the first time that I have had to get a dog to help me to start a car.”

    PC on a stick

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    Time was you only got toffee apples on a stick. But now an outfit called MojoPac is claiming that its stuff enables you to take your entire computing environment with you on an iPod — or even a USB stick. Sadly, I do not have a Windows PC on which to try it, but my colleague Tony Hirst does, and I await his report with interest.

    Social networking for the discriminating customer

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    Well, that’s what it implies.

    Socialize with the people you know – and want to know – in a safe, ad free environment where you control who has access to your personal content.

    According to The Register, Wallop (where do they get these names from?) “was spun out from Microsoft’s IP ventures program and research department. Microsoft holds an equity stake in the company.” Apparently you have to be invited to become a member. How exclusive is that! Just like a Frat House in an Ivy League college. Wonder if they do online hazing?

    Conflict resolution

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    Here’s a good idea — a site that

    lets you enter shared bills and objectively know where you stand with your friends. When you’re on the go, you can record debts from your phone via SMS. The notion of borrowing is extended to include your personal library so you can track which things are lent out. There’s all sorts of cool features like auto-splitting bills, ties into amazon’s product lookup system for tracking your book collection, etc.

    Link via BoingBoing.

    Posted in Web