While I had already seen the light field camera and taken my first picture at AsiaD in Hong Kong back in October, at the Consumer Electronics Show I got a full hour to play around with it.

The demo was part of an event the start-up had at the Wynn hotel, where journalists and a few of the company’s fans could get some face time with the device, which is just starting to ship to customers.

Taking pictures actually did take some getting used to, which surprised me, but it was a lot of fun once I got the hang of it.

Here are some of my more successful efforts. Again, for those who haven’t yet played around with one of Lytro’s “living pictures,” just click anywhere in the frame to put that part of the image into focus.

In this shot, try focusing on the nearest gold ball to get a glimpse of the camera and photographer, and then click on the phone in the back to see it come into focus:

This one is a shot of a MacBook Air keyboard:

And this is a close-up of an iPhone’s home screen:

The product is available for order directly from Lytro’s Web site, with an 8 gigabyte version (enough for around 350 pictures) selling for $399. A 16GB version is priced at $499.

Canon PowerShot G1 X
The Canon PowerShot G1 X follows the PowerShot G12, which will stay in Canon’s product lineup; the G1 X adds the largest sensor to date for a Canon PowerShot model. Bodywise, it’s not as chunky as a DSLR, but it’s larger than the PowerShot G12, and still has a pretty solid composite-material body, weighing in at 19 ounces and measuring 4.98 x 2.93 x 2.12 inches.

The camera uses a 1.5-inch, 14.3 megapixel high-sensitivity CMOS sensor, which is 6.3 times larger than the G12’s sensor. A representative for Canon says it works especially well in low light.

Interchangeable lenses aren’t an option — the G1 X does have a 28mm-to-112mm (4x) optical zoom lens — and for hobbyists, this will be just fine. But for fans of the Canon 5D, 7D, and 60D, the lack of lens options could be what makes them stay true to their DSLRs.

The G1 X also captures 1080p HD video, with optical zooming and auto-focus features. It’s got a pop-up flash, and a fully rotating view screen. While some consumers might prefer not to have an extra view-screen “arm” hanging off the camera, regular video shooters might prefer this to an embedded view screen.

The Canon G1 X will cost $799, and is expected to hit the market at the end of February.

FujiFilm X-Pro 1
Fujifilm’s new flagship product will stoke the fires of your inner photo freak, but will likely leave a big, gaping hole in your wallet.

Fujifilm is touting a brand-new proprietary sensor that is supposed to set this device apart from other cameras. In fact, the new sensor is establishing the X-Pro 1 as the new flagship camera of Fujifilm. The X-Pro 1 has a 16.3 megapixel CMOS sensor, sized 23.6 mm x 15.6 mm. Fujifilm says this new sensor allows for the removal of additional low-pass filters within the camera, and still captures high-resolution images and true colors.

The X-Pro 1 supports three interchangeable lenses, captures 1080p HD video, and has a hybrid multi-iew finder that switches between electronic and optical view.

The body of the camera has a vintage look, which camera buffs will appreciate, and it’s palpably heavier than Fujifilm’s X100 camera.

With the X-Pro 1, Fujifilm is targeting an advanced photographer, and likely one that is focused on taking still images, rather than video. The price point hasn’t been set yet, but it will likely retail for more than the FinePix X100, which retails for $1,200. Fujifilm is aiming for a March 2012 launch of the X-Pro 1.

Nikon 1 Series
The belle of the CES ball this year was Nikon’s D4 camera, which won various awards throughout the week. But the D4 is geared toward professionals — and costs $6,000.

For consumers, the Nikon “1″ series cameras may be the way to go. These cameras actually hit the market last October, but were still getting attention at last week’s big show in Las Vegas.

The Nikon 1 V1, at $849, is slightly bigger than the J1, and has an electronic viewfinder and one other feature that I feel is a real bonus. Otherwise, the V1 and J1 are almost identical. The 1 series cameras are not full-fledged DLSRs, but offer some of the same advanced functionality, and support interchangeable lenses. They pack in a 10.1 megapixel, 13.2 mm x 8.8 mm high-speed AF CMOS sensor, and have a 2.7x lens focal length. Like many digital cameras on the market, they capture 1080p HD video.

There’s one dial on the back for toggling between the four functions of the camera: Still images, video, motion snapshot and smart photo selection. For some users, this makes the V1 and J1 simpler to navigate than other compact cameras; others might not like some of the limits on customization. Bounce-flash accessories, like the SB-N5 speedlight for the V1, are available for purchase, and offer a bit more illumination than built-in pop-up lights.

But there’s one small feature on the Nikon 1 V1 that makes a big difference, in my opinion — the external audio input. Very few point-and-shoots or DSLRs come with a microphone jack; in order to capture good, isolated sound on many cameras, you’d have to slide an accessory into the “hot shoe” at the top of the camera. With the Nikon 1 V1, you could attach a stereo mic and stop apologizing for the bad audio and ambient noise in your videos.

The Nikon 1 V1 retails for $849; the Nikon 1 J1 costs $699.

Just as the annual Consumer Electronics Show kicks off this week, according to a report from the NPD Group: Consumer electronics sales during this past holiday period dropped six percent from last year.

That should be some not-so-welcome news for the vendors at the Las Vegas gadget confab, which is seeking to show off new wares to excite said consumers.

Those offerings had better step it up, from a look at the NPD Weekly Tracking Service, which noted that the decline was coming off another decline from a year ago.

While 2011′s drop was not as bad as 2010′s, it’s not the right direction, although the tally did not include some of the more explosive device categories being prominently featured at CES, such as tablets.

Said NPD: “Total consumer technology sales (excluding cell phones, tablets, e-readers, and video games) fell 5.9 percent to around $9.5 billion for the 5 weeks ending December 24, a slight improvement over the 6.2 percent decline in 2010.”

Sales of personal computers and televisions fell 4 percent, with flat unit volumes.

“2010 was the first year in quite awhile where the real drags on the core CE marketplace were not TVs and PCs,” said Stephen Baker, VP of industry analysis at NPD, in a press release. “Revenue for those two segments outperformed while the rest of the market dropped by more than 7 percent. The accelerated rate of decline in older technology categories such as DVD, GPS and MP3 players put a ceiling on how well the industry could perform during the holiday.”

Consumers did snap up flat-panel TVs, with screen sizes of 50 inches and higher rising by 32 percent in unit sales.

And the rocky 3-D TV business also grew by more than 100 percent, with TVs with “3D capability accounting for more than one in every five dollars spent on TVs during the holiday.”

Also up: Home theater systems (10 percent) and stand-alone streaming devices (65 percent).

But those increases did not stem the overall negative tide.

For other sectors, here’s the damage to holiday revenue in percentage change from 2011 dollars spent:

Blu-ray players: Down 17 percent.

Camcorders: Down 42.5 percent.

Digital picture frames: Down 37.5 percent.

GPS: Down 32.6 percent.

HDD: Down 25.1 percent.

Mice and keyboards: Down 7.1 percent.

MP3 players: Down 20.5 percent.

Multifunction printers: Down 9.9 percent.

Point-and-shoot cameras: Down 20.8 percent.

MORE CES NEWS:

• Complete coverage
• HP’s Former CTO: Ultrabooks Are Nothing New, webOS Still Has Life Yet
• Walt Shows Off CES Gadgets for Fox Business News (Video)
• What Kind of Web Video Plans Does Sony Have? (Video)
• Fujitsu Seeking Way Into Crowded U.S. Smartphone Market
• Why Rhapsody Is (Probably) Bigger Than Spotify — In the U.S.
• Microsoft Beefing Up CeBit Presence Even as It Pulls Back on CES
• Inside the CES Lost & Found
• FCC Chairman Has New Tablet, but Same Script: More Spectrum!
• Verizon Wireless: We Want to Connect Five Devices for Every Subscriber
• Ultrabooks From HP and Lenovo That Are (Kinda, Sorta) Different
• Walt and Katie Take a Tour of CES (Video)
• Schmidt-Storm Alert: The Google Chairman Didn’t Like Your Question
• T-Mobile Expands Bobsled Messaging Service
• Intel Shows Just How It Plans to Get Into Phones (Video)
• Motorola CEO: We’re Going to Release Fewer Phones This Year
• Kinect Helps Keep Aging Xbox at the Top of Its Game
• More From T-Mobile CEO: On Pricing, LTE and That Ever-Elusive iPhone
• Exclusive: New Boss Acknowledges Windows Phone Still Has “Awareness Problem”
• And You Thought Jawbone UP Was Going to Miss the CES Party!
• Interview: T-Mobile CEO Says No Second AT&T Deal Out There
• Grover Is at CES and I Am Missing It
• BlueStacks Bringing Android Apps to Windows 8
• Why the Future of TV Won’t Be Here Soon
• Nvidia’s Tegra 3 Tries to Save Battery in All Sorts of Different Ways
• Dynamic Dual Coverage: Ballmer’s Last Act in Vegas and the BCS Championship in 3-D
• Microsoft Phoning In Its Last CES Keynote
• Myspace — Yes, Myspace — Says It’s Going to Sell You Web TV
• Samsung Unveils “Super” 55-Inch OLED TV
• Nokia Unveils That LTE Windows Phone It’s Been Dying to Share
• Steve Ballmer Gives Ralph De La Vega a Very … Vigorous Greeting (Video)
• Interview: AT&T’s De La Vega on LTE, Tablets and Life After T-Mobile
• AT&T’s De La Vega: Shared Data Plans Still in the Works
• LG: 55-Inch Glasses-Free 3-D Screen Is on the Way
• LG Pushes 4G Smartphone Through Verizon: The LG Spectrum
• Live: AT&T’s Vegas Act Stars LTE and, Making Her Return to the Stage, Nokia
• CES Notebook: The Constant Search for Power and Vegas’ Worst-kept Secret
• Belkin Bringing Mobile TV to Lots of Cellphones, Will Anyone Tune In?
• Acer Introduces “World’s Thinnest” Ultrabook and a “Me-Too” Cloud Service
• There Better Be Some Cool Stuff at CES, Because CE Holiday Sales Data Bytes!
• CES 2012: Snooki and Bieber Are In, Gaga Is Out!
• Coming to a Smartphone Near You: Gorilla Glass 2
• RIM Hopes Next PlayBook OS Will Impress at CES
• Ultrabooks, the Ultra-Fancy New Name for Laptops
• At CES, Expect More Gadgets Telling You to Get Off the Couch
• Intel to Detail Its Phone Plans at CES Next Month
• Microsoft Pulling Out of CES After Upcoming Show
• Intel to Detail Its Phone Plans at CES Next Month
• Dell Will Drop the Flashy Vegas Act for CES This Year
• Ultrabook Conga Line Preps for CES 2012

We know there are good reasons why Apple just named Instagram as its iPhone App of the Year.

But what if you’re just a regular camera user looking for a mobile app that mimics the DSLR experience? Then you may want to check out Mattebox, which just became available in the App Store.

The iOS app offers a wide variety of options for setting up your smartphone for smart photo-taking, as well as post-production features for professional-level imagery.

As you can see from some of the images here, the interface shows focal distance (in the upper right-hand corner), which tells users how far or close a subject is; shutter speed is at the bottom of the screen and one-tap white-balancing is at right. The lock on the left indicates that the focus and exposure are locked — so users can adjust their framing but maintain the same settings, if they’d like — and the app uses a slide-down button on the right to take the photo, which feels a little bit more intuitive then moving to the bottom of the phone to snap a shot.

After a user has taken a photo, there are five adjustment controls — white balance, exposure, contrast, saturation, and vignette — and a “crop” button within the app. And for filter freaks, there are a handful of those, too, including Faded 35mm, Contrast Lovers, Square and Soft and Red Filter. Plus, a user can save an unlimited number of favorite settings, combined with a filter.

The app’s creator, Chicago-based Ben Syverson (whose previous projects include the Lou Zoom app from rock guitarist Lou Reed), says he created Mattebox to serve as a one-stop app for all photo-shooting and filter needs. The independent software developer says he has about two dozen camera apps on his phone, but felt that none of them gave him the control and simplicity of a plastic camera.

I wouldn’t call Mattebox incredibly simple for most consumers, but for professional or “prosumer” photographers who are used to the settings of a DSLR, it does pack many of those features into a nicely designed app.

One drawback is that there are no explainers within the app for all of the functions, though Syverson points out that there are video tutorials on the Mattebox.net Web site. Another sticking point for some users might be the lack of social-sharing options, which may be worked into a later version.

Mattebox costs $4.99, pricey compared to the free photo apps that are available. But Syverson believes this is a small price to pay for a mobile-phone experience not unlike Lightroom or Aperture, and thinks serious photo-takers won’t care about the cost.

Syverson says his goal is to introduce cloud storage on the Mattebox.net site, to provide seamless sharing and storage options; he’s also planning a version of Mattebox for Mac desktops, and an Aperture plugin.

It made a splash then, but two of the three products featured by Gaga at January’s CES — a digital camera and a pair of camera-glasses — still haven’t made it to market.

And it’s unclear if one of them ever will.

The glasses, called the GL20 Camera Glasses (GL indicates the Lady Gaga “Grey Label” brand), were introduced alongside the GL10 Instant Mobile Bluetooth printer and the GL30 Instant Digital camera, which is designed in the style of old Polaroid cameras.

The printer became available for preorder in May, as planned, although it was listed at $20 more than Polaroid’s original $150 target price for retail. Polaroid Chief Technology Officer Jon Pollock explained in July that the company, like many electronics companies, has faced supply problems due to the massive earthquake in Japan.

The GL30 camera is now scheduled to launch in retail outlets in 2012. Citing consumer demand for the Gaga-hyped camera, Polaroid in November introduced the Z340 Instant Digital Camera, which has similar features and capabilities, as an alternative.

But the Gaga goggles — which were arguably the coolest element, capturing images and instantly uploading them to the device’s LCD lenses for display — still haven’t made it to market. Polaroid had previously said the gadget would arrive in the third or fourth quarter of this year at an undetermined price.

Polaroid has declined to offer insight into the delay, or to say whether store shelves will ever see the glasses. A spokeswoman for the company issued the following statement: “Polaroid and Lady Gaga are looking forward to giving consumers even more ways to restore creativity to images, both digital and printed, with additional Grey Label products in the near future. As the GL20 Camera Glasses are unlike anything seen before, additional time is needed to ensure that consumers will receive a product that exceeds expectations.”

A representative for Lady Gaga declined to comment.

To be fair, it’s not uncommon for products unveiled at CES to come to market later than expected. But for Polaroid, the delays are another ding in its armor as it struggles in the face of new digital-imaging technologies. The company has said it hoped the installment of Lady Gaga as creative director two years ago would give Polaroid a needed boost in terms of creativity and innovation.

People close to the situation have said that Lady Gaga has been “very involved” in the design and creation of the Grey Label gadgets. But, in this case, it seems that even superstar status can’t propel a product to market.

The free update will allow users to control the console using their voice and gestures, or even their Windows Phone (if they have one).

In addition, Microsoft will begin to add more than 40 content providers to the console to increase the catalog of live and streamed TV, movies and music.

Microsoft has announced nearly all of these details previously, including some of its content partners, so today’s announcement serves as a reminder now that the final product is ready to go.

Last week, I met up with Michael Suraci, Xbox’s director of marketing, to get a preview of the updates.

According to Suraci, Kinect, the motion sensor that launched last year, is a central part of the update. When it was introduced, it seemed that all it was good for was dance games, but clearly Microsoft had much bigger plans for the camera and the microphone.

Now users can speak naturally to the Xbox, which tears down a number of barriers to family members in the household that weren’t comfortable with the clunky controller. If Microsoft pulls it off, it could teach people that televisions are meant to be talked to, just as Apple has taught people that screens are meant to be touched.

An unknown subset of the nearly 60 million Xbox owners worldwide that have purchased Kinect will be able to use all the new features in the update.

But everyone will have access to many of the updates.

One major improvement is in navigation. For example, the old interface required the user to decide which category they wanted to go into. For example, games, video or music. Then, they had to choose the application, like Netflix, ESPN or Zune.

In the new user interface, the person can search across all of the categories and apps.

As Suraci demonstrates in the video, a user can say: “Xbox: Bing, ‘Fast and the Furious.’”

The results show all of the content that matches that criteria across games, music, video and other categories. The style of the user interface will be recognizable to anyone using a Windows Phone. The format will also be carried over to the upcoming Windows 8 update.

During Suraci’s demonstration, the software got confused a couple of times, but still, searching by voice will be much faster than typing in a string of words, letter-by-letter, using the controller to scroll through the alphabet.

Going forward, the Xbox could replace the need for a second set-top box in the household, but as Peter Kafka has mentioned before, it’s not a service for customers looking to cut the cord. In order to stream live TV, or watch movies, you’ll either have to pay for a subscription — like Verizon FiOS or Comcast’s Xfinity — or pay a la carte.

On Tuesday’s launch, the amount of content that will be available in the U.S. will be somewhat disappointing. But later in December and in early 2012, you will start to see integrations with Verizon FiOS, YouTube, HBO GO and Xfinity On Demand, TMZ, UFC, Wal-Mart’s Vudu service and others.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111204/heres-how-microsoft-is-adding-voice-control-and-gestures-to-the-xbox-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111105/living-photo-magic-with-lytro-the-full-asiad-demo/ http://allthingsd.com/20111105/living-photo-magic-with-lytro-the-full-asiad-demo/#comments Sun, 06 Nov 2011 03:40:36 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=140937

Photo credit: Eric Cheng / Lytro

We are now posting the full videos from the recent AsiaD conference, which took place in Hong Kong in October.

Over the next two weeks, we’re going to follow the schedule of the actual event. Up now: Lytro, a groundbreaking camera that uses a new technology called light field photography to create “living pictures” that can be refocused after they are taken, in addition to other cool stuff (see a gyrating Walt Mossberg above).

There is no question that this demo of Lytro was one of the highlights of AsiaD.

Founded by Ren Ng in 2006, the result is demonstrated by Chairman Charles Chi and Director of Photography Eric Cheng onstage with Walt:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111105/living-photo-magic-with-lytro-the-full-asiad-demo/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111026/cameras-act-like-a-pro-but-are-as-easy-as-pie/ http://allthingsd.com/20111026/cameras-act-like-a-pro-but-are-as-easy-as-pie/#comments Wed, 26 Oct 2011 23:30:32 +0000 Geoffrey A. Fowler http://allthingsd.com/?p=137112 Digital cameras are a pain in the neck — literally.

Every time I lug around my camera, which tips the scale at three pounds with its zoom lens, I feel as if I am swinging a fragile barbell on a strap around my neck.

For years, hobbyist digital photographers had two options: heavy SLR cameras that can capture creative effects, and pocket-sized point-and-shoots that take pedestrian photos. Now, camera makers are exploring a genre of cameras that seeks a happy medium between size and capability. Necks can relax now.

Nikon and Sony recently have introduced new models in this emerging category: the Nikon J1 and Sony NEX-5N. The devices offer many of the features of much larger cameras in a form that might slip into a purse or cargo pants pocket. Sony and Nikon make a range of small detachable lenses for these cameras so users can switch between zoom and wider-angle shots, just like those on full-sized SLR cameras. Even with the biggest lenses attached, they weigh only slightly more than a pound.

Coming in at about $700 each for packages that include a lens, these marvels of miniaturization cost $100 more than an entry-level digital SLR kit. But after testing them, I liked the Sony NEX-5N enough to contemplate making it my new walk-about camera. The Nikon J1 took some great photos, but offered less creative control.

An apple pie as seen in a photo taken by the Nikon J1.

The same pie as seen in a photo taken by the Sony NEX-5N, which has a simple way to make only the pie appear in focus, for example.

Both cameras dispense with the internal mirror and the old-fashioned viewfinder that SLRs use. Instead, they show you what you’re photographing via large LCD screens. (Sony sells a $350 viewfinder add-on if you like to squint.)

One reason these cameras take better photos than point-and-shoots is that they have much larger sensors, which record more light. Nikon created a whole new kind of midrange sensor for its new “1″ line, which are similar to what other camera makers call “micro four-thirds.” Sony managed to stuff a midsize SLR sensor into the small NEX-5N.

The image quality of both cameras was excellent. Though the Sony’s photos had a higher resolution, the Nikon’s had slightly richer tones. Both can take stunning, Blu-ray-quality video.

Larger sensors allow the cameras to tap the creative capabilities of lenses. They can take photos in low light without a flash or let users select which elements are in sharp focus and which are blurry (known as “depth of field”).

The differences between the two are in the controls. The Sony NEX-5N comes with a large touch screen to access settings and controls, including a main screen to select the focus point of the image. The intuitive interface offers a simple way to manipulate the depth of field — without having to know the science of aperture (involving the amount of light that reaches a sensor) and shutter speed, which is required on most digital SLRs.

I took a photo of an apple pie in sharp focus with the background blurry by moving a slider on the touch screen to “background defocus” and then clicking on the part of the pie I wanted in focus.

The Nikon J1 doesn’t have a touch screen, requiring users to control the camera through a series of hard buttons. Adjusting depth of field requires the user to understand aperture, and even if you do, the settings to adjust the specific focus point are buried inside several menus, and aren’t turned on by default.

Nikon’s philosophy is that users stepping up from a point-and-shoot would prefer to trust its software. One feature is called “smart photo selector,” which takes advantage of the camera’s ultra-fast focus and shutter speed to take a series of photos and then selects what it thinks are the best shot and four possible best-shot candidates, based on composition, facial recognition and motion. This feature is appealing if you don’t want to think about your photo settings, but want to know what other options might have looked like.

The Sony NEX-5N has a set-it-and-forget-it, “intelligent auto” shooting mode, and also a host of features that solve common photo frustrations. An “anti-motion blur” option keeps dinner-party photos from looking fuzzy or being filled with film noise by quickly taking six photos and merging them into one better photo.

Another mode merges several shots into what’s known as an HDR (high-dynamic range) photo that can merge the most interesting bits from the foreground and background when they are of different brightness levels. The NEX-5N even has a simple panorama option that automates taking very wide shots both for print and in 3-D (for compatible TVs).

The Nikon J1′s most interesting artistic option creates a “motion snapshot,” which blends a still image and about one second of movie footage into a slow-motion video accompanied by music. It is cute, but not useful enough to make the J1 a top choice.

Neither camera came with two features that should now be standard in such expensive gadgets: automatic tagging the GPS location where photos are taken, and the ability to wirelessly upload images.

While the Nikon J1, which features a clean retro-style design, won the most oohs and ahhs from friends, the Sony NEX-5N, whose larger sensor requires slightly larger and clunkier lenses, made it easier to figure out how to make photos more interesting.

Walt Mossberg and Mossberg’s Mailbox will return next week. Write to Geoffrey Fowler at geoffrey.fowler@wsj.com.

---

Quick Snapshot

Nikon J1

Nikon J1

• Price: $650, including10-30 mm lens

• Sensor: 13.2 mm x 8.8 mm

• Resolution: 10.1 megapixels

• Flash: Built-in

• Weight: 9.8 oz

---

Sony NEX-5N

Sony NEX-5N

• Price: $700, including18-55 mm lens

• Sensor: 23.5 mm x 15.6 mm

• Resolution: 16.1 megapixels

• Flash: Add-on comes with camera

• Weight: 9.5 oz

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111026/cameras-act-like-a-pro-but-are-as-easy-as-pie/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111019/lytro-demo-at-asiad-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20111019/lytro-demo-at-asiad-video/#comments Thu, 20 Oct 2011 05:32:18 +0000 Beth Callaghan http://allthingsd.com/?p=134596 Lytro, founded by Ren Ng in 2006, has built a whole new kind of camera that works by recording all available light in any particular scene. Chairman Charles Chi and Director of Photography Eric Cheng demonstrated the groundbreaking light field camera on stage Thursday morning at AsiaD. Video below:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111019/lytro-demo-at-asiad-video/feed/ 10 http://allthingsd.com/20111019/lytro-light-field-camera-revealed/ http://allthingsd.com/20111019/lytro-light-field-camera-revealed/#comments Wed, 19 Oct 2011 17:59:27 +0000 Drake Martinet http://allthingsd.com/?p=133747 Today in San Francisco, digital camera and imaging start-up Lytro is unveiling a consumer digital camera that it claims will be the biggest technological jump since we started talking megapixels over 20 years ago.

In case you haven’t been following along, here’s a quick rundown of what’s expected today:

Lytro, founded by Ren Ng in 2006, is an outgrowth of his Stanford University PhD research into what is called “light field photography.”

Without getting too technical, a light field camera captures light all throughout the scene in front of the lens, as opposed to the cameras consumers are used to, which bring a particular thing into focus first.

The result is an image that can be focused after it is taken, and, Lytro claims, a camera that is faster from power-up to capture, and has exceptional performance in low light, even without a flash.

Lytro claims it has spent the last five years and nearly $50 million from several of Silicon Valley’s heaviest-weight VC firms working to pack all that technology into a camera small enough to compete with the myriad point-and-shoots currently available.

Join us as we see for the first time if Lytro has gotten the picture.

View the slideshow

Liveblog:

11:17 am: They’ve let us into the event. No action yet, just a bunch of tech reporters tweeting away.

11:32 am: We’re underway. CEO and founder of Lytro Ren Ng is coming up now.

11:33 am: Lytro grew out of Ng’s Stanford PhD work in light field imaging.

11:33 am: Ng starts with some stats on digital cameras.

He says that at the end of the day, both film and regular digital cameras record the same data — a flat image.

11:34 am: “The light field is all the light traveling in all directions at every point in space,” says Ng.

11:35 am: Still on the tech, Ng says his focus at Stanford was on miniaturizing the camera technology. At the time, the only light field cameras were huge arrays of cameras in labs.

11:37 am: We’re on the history of his research now — Ng says the first camera he built was a one-off medium format camera.

11:39 am: The important takeaway here is that this camera is as much about the computer science behind it as it is about the optics and the hardware.

11:41 am: Ng moves on to the features of this technology for the user.

11:42 am: 1. Shoot first, focus after. 2. Ability for third parties to interact with the picture after it is put online.

11:43 am: Ng shows what appears to be a screenshot of his Facebook page, with a Lytro interactive image embedded.

11:44 am: Ng says that all Lytro images can also be viewed in an “immersive 3-D.”

11:45 am: Now we get to see the camera. It’s called the “Lytro.”

11:45 am: 8x optical zoom, with an f 2.0 aperture.

11:47 am: It’s an 11 “megaray” camera — which means it captures 11 million rays of light, says Ng.

11:49 am: It’s a metal rectangular tube, maybe 4 inches long. The lens is at one end and the small touch screen at the other. It’s unlike any camera design I’ve ever seen.

11:50 am: Ng says another benefit of the camera is how fast it turns on.

11:51 am: The camera doesn’t need to focus before it shoots, so time from activation to capture seems pretty instant.

11:52 am: Now he’s going to take a picture of the room — we’re being posed, no joke.

11:52 am: They will come in 3 colors — redish, blueish and grayish.

11:53 am: Ng is plugging in the camera, showcasing the software that comes with it. The camera uses micro USB.

11:54 am: Liveblogging solo here, but there are a few pictures I’m putting up on twitter (@withdrake).

11:55 am: Software seems to be pretty snappy. All the pictures are square format.

11:56 am: Ng says you can refocus the image on the camera, in the computer software, or on the web, wherever you embed the image.

He says you can post to Facebook from inside the Lytro computer software.

11:58 am: Ng just posted something to Facebook from the software. Facebook friends can zoom and refocus the image right in Facebook.

11:59 am: The camera will come in 8GB and 16GB versions.

11:59 am: 8GB version can capture 350 light field images.

12:00 pm: Ng says that the camera will ship in early 2012.

12:01 pm: Now he’s dancing around price.

12:02 pm: It will be $399 for the 8GB version.

We’re wrapped up. Moving on to the demo station. … See gallery of pictures above.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111019/lytro-light-field-camera-revealed/feed/ 13 http://allthingsd.com/20111011/the-iphone-finds-its-voice/ http://allthingsd.com/20111011/the-iphone-finds-its-voice/#comments Wed, 12 Oct 2011 01:03:27 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://allthingsd.com/?p=131271

Sometimes, as we all know, looks can be deceiving. While Apple’s latest iPhone doesn’t look different, and may not be the kind of blockbuster people expect from the late Steve Jobs’s company, it thinks different, to quote one of Apple’s old ad slogans. Inside its familiar-looking body there lurks a nascent artificial-intelligence system that has to be tried to be believed.

Apple’s fifth-generation iPhone, the $199 iPhone 4S, goes on sale Friday with a new operating system and a new cloud-synchronization service called iCloud. But, while its insides have been significantly improved, the phone’s exterior design is identical to that of last year’s iPhone 4, which Apple says is the best-selling smartphone in the world.

IPhone 4S’s 8-megapixel camera takes the best photos seen on a phone.

I’ve been testing the 4S for about a week to see how it differs from the previous model. I also evaluated the key features added by the new operating system, called iOS 5, including a new, free text-messaging service; deep integration with Twitter; and the ability to edit photos right on the phone. This new software will be available as a free upgrade for owners of the iPhone 4 and the 2009-vintage iPhone 3GS, as well as for Apple’s iPad tablet and its iPod Touch.

Apple’s Siri system can answer spoken restaurant requests.

I focused on the handful of new features unique to the 4S, notably the new voice-controlled artificial-intelligence system called Siri; a brilliant new camera for stills and videos; and faster, 4G-class download speeds. The iPhone is now available from Sprint, AT&T and Verizon, but I tested the AT&T version, because it is the only one which offers the faster download speeds.

The standout feature, not available in other iPhones, or in any other phone I’ve seen, is Siri. It answers questions and provides information using natural language and an intelligent understanding, not just of words, but of context and colloquial phrasing. It isn’t perfect, and is labeled a beta, but it has great potential and worked pretty well for me, despite some glitches.

Despite Siri, the iPhone 4S isn’t a dramatic game-changer like some previous iPhones. Some new features are catch-ups to competitors. I sense Apple chose to focus more on software and cloud service than on hardware. But, in my tests, the iPhone 4S performed very well. It’s a better iPhone for the same $199 entry price, at a time when some competitors are pricing their flagship smartphones starting at $299.

…and queries about calorie counts.

While some analysts and commentators were disappointed the new iPhone didn’t offer an external redesign, consumers so far don’t seem to care. Apple announced Monday that pre-orders for the iPhone 4S hit one million in the first 24 hours, a record that was 67% higher than the previous single-day high set by the iPhone 4 last year.

My advice is that owners of the iPhone 4 needn’t rush to upgrade; they can get the new operating system. But owners of older iPhone models, or those with basic phones, will find this latest iPhone a pleasure and a good value.

Artificial Intelligence

Some other phones, including earlier iPhones, have rudimentary voice recognition, for limited terms and responses. But Siri does much more. It offers too much to fully describe here, but it isn’t a simple voice-command system. It understands a wide variety of ways to ask a question, grasps the context, and returns useful information in a friendly way, either audibly or by displaying results on the screen. It learns your voice as it goes along.

It starts up when you either hold down the home button—even from the phone’s lock screen—or when you place the phone up to your ear when you’re not making a phone call.

Siri can find information in Wikipedia, Yelp and Wolfram Alpha. It successfully answered when I asked it, “Who’s the president of Iran?” (though it misunderstood me the first time) and “Who stars in ‘Boardwalk Empire?’ ” When I asked for a “French restaurant in Bethesda, Maryland,” it instantly returned a list from Yelp, ranked by user reviews.

In my tests, I was able to dictate emails and text messages, even in the car over Bluetooth, without looking at the screen. Accuracy wasn’t perfect—about 20% of the time I had to try twice to get all the words correct. But, in most cases, Siri didn’t make more errors than I do typing on a virtual keyboard.

Siri can read incoming text messages and let you reply via voice. If the message is about a date, Siri will even consult your calendar and tell you if you’re busy at that time, and then remember to return to the message reply.

The system understands multiple, colloquial forms of a question. I asked, “Will the weather get worse today?” and Siri answered, “I don’t think the weather is going to get worse” and displayed a weather chart. You can check stock prices, addresses, map directions and much more. It also answers in a friendly fashion, saying things like “Coming right up” or “I’m not sure what you said, Walt.” And it has some cute answers built in. When I asked it “What’s the best phone?” it said, “Wait… there are other phones?”

Siri has limitations, in addition to imperfect accuracy. It can’t read the contents of email. It can’t provide flight information or movie times. But Apple says it intends to link Siri to more databases over time. Also, Siri can reveal private data you’d rather it didn’t unless you adjust your passcode permissions.

Hardware

The iPhone 4S now comes with the same, dual-core processor found in the iPad 2. I didn’t notice a dramatic speed gain, but the phone operated rapidly and surely, with smooth scrolling and swiping.

There is now an 8-megapixel rear camera, with a greatly improved sensor, a new five-element lens and a wider aperture. Other phones boast 8-megapixel cameras, but the 4S takes the best pictures and high-definition videos I have seen on a phone. The colors were gorgeous, everything was sharp and the camera can detect up to 10 faces. Plus, it’s fast, both in taking the first shot and subsequent pictures.

Also, Apple finally has matched some competitors by allowing you to quickly get to the camera, even when the phone is locked, by just pressing the home button twice; and by letting you use the volume button to snap the picture. (These features are part of the free software and aren’t unique to the 4S.)

When combined with the new software feature that allows editing right on the phone, the iPhone 4S offers a camera experience I find unmatched on any other phone.

Though the 4S isn’t labeled as a 4G phone, and the Verizon and Sprint models can’t use those carriers’ 4G networks, the AT&T model, in my tests, achieved 4G speeds in areas where AT&T has deployed its 4G network.

In numerous tests at three different locations in the Washington suburbs, I averaged download speeds of nearly 7 megabits per second—better than in prior tests on Sprint and T-Mobile 4G phones. By contrast, a colleague’s tests of the Verizon version of the iPhone 4S yielded average download speeds of less than 1 mbps.

All models of the iPhone 4S are “world phones,” meaning even the Verizon and Sprint versions, which use a technology rare outside the U.S., can switch to the global standard cellphone technology and be used in most other countries.

Apple claims to have improved voice-call reception in the iPhone 4S, allowing the phone to switch between two antennas to pick up the best signal. But my AT&T model dropped too many calls, just as earlier AT&T iPhones do. My colleague’s Verizon iPhone 4S dropped none.

But ask Siri about, say booking a flight from Dulles to San Francisco and Siri says ‘sorry.’

In my tests, voice quality was very good, even on conference calls and over Bluetooth in the car. Apple says the 4S has as good or better battery life than the prior model. While I didn’t run a formal battery test, the phone lasted all day, every day, even when I was doing heavy testing and, thus, using it more than I typically would.

Also, there is a 64-gigabyte model of the iPhone 4S, for $399. A 32 GB version is, as in the past, $299.

Software

Apple claims the new iOS 5 operating system has 200 new features. These include some catch-ups, like a pull-down panel that combines your notifications of alerts and reminders, and new messages, plus a stock ticker and weather info. Also, like some other phones, the new system will allow you to swipe on an alert and go to the content, even if the phone is locked.

You can Tweet from within many apps, like photos, maps and the Web browser. The new, free, texting system, called iMessage—similar to BlackBerry Messenger service—lets you text to anyone with an iOS5 device, and automatically detects if they have one.

A new Reminders app seems like any other task list, but, on the iPhone 4 and 4S, it allows you to use location instead of time to trigger a reminder. For instance, you can tell it to remind you to call your spouse when you leave work. If it knows your work address, it will trigger the reminder when it detects you’ve left.

Perhaps the nicest feature is on-phone photo editing, which allows you to crop, and auto-enhance any photo. In my tests, it worked great.

Bottom line

The iPhone 4S is one of Apple’s less dramatic updates, but, when combined with the Siri, iOS 5 and iCloud features, it presents an attractive new offering to smartphone users. Some may be content to skip the new hardware and just enjoy the software and cloud features with older models. But those buying the phone will likely be happy with it.

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• New Apple Software Adds Features to Older Phones

Full Apple Coverage »

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111011/the-iphone-finds-its-voice/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111004/i-am-number-4s-no-sparkly-iphone-5-disappoints-apple-fans-and-wall-street/ http://allthingsd.com/20111004/i-am-number-4s-no-sparkly-iphone-5-disappoints-apple-fans-and-wall-street/#comments Tue, 04 Oct 2011 19:08:46 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=128335

Apple rolled out a new iPhone today. Sort of.

Except it did not have a bigger, flatter screen. It did not have a sleeker, thinner body. It would not need all new polypropylene sleeves and other fancy accessories.

In other words, it was not an iPhone 5.

Oops, after all the breathless stories about this ideal and groundbreaking new device and predictions — including here — that this was the name of whatever Apple was releasing.

In fact, everyone was using that moniker for it, from local television news to vendors to my mother.

Instead, the tech giant launched the new iPhone 4S, which has a faster processor, an improved camera and Siri voice control feature, at a cheaper price.

Very slick, as usual, and full of cool Apple bells and whistles.

Still. Prolonged sighs could be felt all over the blogosphere and on Twitter, where Steve Brown tweeted me: “Can I be bummed now?!?”

You may.

Better still, Davin Bentti wrote: “The ‘S’ stands for ‘Steve, come back!’”

He was referring to the missing Apple icon Steve Jobs, who recently turned over leadership at the company to new CEO Tim Cook. Jobs’s Apple event performances are legendary.

Wall Street also had its iPhone 5 bubble burst, with investors shunning Apple stock. Shares are down almost five percent now.

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• October iPhone Event to Be Held on Apple Campus
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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111004/i-am-number-4s-no-sparkly-iphone-5-disappoints-apple-fans-and-wall-street/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110906/computers-can-see-you-if-you-have-a-mug-shot/ http://allthingsd.com/20110906/computers-can-see-you-if-you-have-a-mug-shot/#comments Tue, 06 Sep 2011 11:30:22 +0000 Carl Bialik http://allthingsd.com/?p=117024 When rioters wreaked havoc on some U.K. cities last month, police deployed facial-recognition technology to try to identify some of the participants. But many experts say the software isn’t yet good enough to be of much use in interpreting grainy security footage, despite a recent study that suggested facial-recognition software is highly accurate in controlled settings.

Facial-recognition software is controversial. When Facebook Inc. began using the technology to automatically suggest tags for people in photos on the social-networking site, some users were outraged at what they viewed as a potential invasion of privacy. Some also worried about the potential for misidentifying people, especially in photos where subjects aren’t facing the camera head-on.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110906/computers-can-see-you-if-you-have-a-mug-shot/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110812/october-oc-to-ber-repeat-after-me-apple-iphone-5-to-launch-in-october/ http://allthingsd.com/20110812/october-oc-to-ber-repeat-after-me-apple-iphone-5-to-launch-in-october/#comments Fri, 12 Aug 2011 23:51:08 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=109505

Maybe because it is a Friday in August, it’s natural that the Apple iPhone 5 rumors would get jacked up again.

Today, it was an erroneous report that Apple would hold a media event on Sept. 7, which was soon countered by another post by Jim Dalrymple of The Loop that said the company would not.

The second is the right one, because — as John Paczkowski has previously written — October is when Apple plans to launch its next-gen iPhone.

Several sources we have rechecked with today underscored that the later time frame — some had thought Apple would launch its latest products sometime in September, as they had done in previous years — was accurate.

There are always a myriad of rumors around the exact dates of basic events for Apple, a company which attracts an unusual amount of attention from consumers and the media, unlike any other tech company.

As we noted in our report, which many have also written about, “the iPhone 5 will use the faster A5 processor on which the iPad 2 runs, a Qualcomm dual mode GSM/CDMA baseband, and a higher resolution eight-megapixel rear camera.”

Apple will also unveil its iCloud offering to consumers then too, which it has already released to developers in beta.

So for now, we’d like everyone to go back to their beach chairs and chillax to the haunting work of one of Apple’s favorite bands — U2 — called, of course, “October”:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110812/october-oc-to-ber-repeat-after-me-apple-iphone-5-to-launch-in-october/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110802/viral-video-our-nations-capital-in-real-time/ http://allthingsd.com/20110802/viral-video-our-nations-capital-in-real-time/#comments Tue, 02 Aug 2011 07:56:54 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=105205 Here is a terrific video by Drew Geraci, in which he uses a time-lapse camera to capture life in Washington, D.C.

Since the last week of ridonkulous budget wrangling has made us all feel that the nation’s capital is mired in nonmovement, this video makes you feel like the city is still alive.

Enjoy:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110802/viral-video-our-nations-capital-in-real-time/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110627/t-mobile-and-htc-team-up-on-high-end-android-phone-for-shutterbugs/ http://allthingsd.com/20110627/t-mobile-and-htc-team-up-on-high-end-android-phone-for-shutterbugs/#comments Tue, 28 Jun 2011 04:00:18 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=91634 While the name suggests that the T-Mobile MyTouch 4G Slide is just another high-end Android phone, its photography features could let the device stand out from the pack.

The new device, which T-Mobile plans to ship sometime next month, packs a number of hardware and software features for the photo enthusiast, including an 8-megapixel camera, a wide-aperture lens, no shutter lag and a dedicated hardware button that lets users skip the lock screen and go straight from sleep mode to taking pictures. That last feature is a popular option on Windows Phone 7 and Apple is working to add something similar with iOS 5.

Overall, the phone is designed to earn a place in the hearts of smartphone buyers, who increasingly count on their phones to serve as their primary point-and-shoot camera.

“Knowing that the best camera is the one you’ve got with you, we set out to create a new best-in-class smartphone that allows our customers to leave their cameras at home,” T-Mobile Senior VP Andrew Sherrard said in a statement. “Our newest myTouch device takes capturing and sharing memories to a new level by combining high-quality smartphone hardware with features that customers would expect from a top-of-the-line digital camera.”

The device is also capable uploading images directly to Facebook, Picasa and Flickr and of recording 1080p high-definition. The myTouch 4G Slide also comes with several photo programs, including one that takes panoramic photos and another that allows several photos to be taken in a single burst.

On the non-photo side, the phone comes in two colors (black and khaki) and packs a slide-out keyboard, Android 2.3 (Gingerbread), a 1.2 GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon chip and a 3.7-inch screen.

T-Mobile has yet to announce pricing or exact availability for the device.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110627/t-mobile-and-htc-team-up-on-high-end-android-phone-for-shutterbugs/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110620/buyers-remorse-this-is-the-real-decision-engine/ http://allthingsd.com/20110620/buyers-remorse-this-is-the-real-decision-engine/#comments Mon, 20 Jun 2011 12:00:51 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://allthingsd.com/?p=88019 Ever wonder if you should buy a new digital camera or wait for a better one just around the corner?

Even worse, did you buy the brand-new HDTV right before 3-D came out?

A new electronics shopping service is launching today to eliminate buyer’s remorse by providing consumers with enough information to help them make a better decision.

The Seattle-based Decide.com is the brainchild of the folks behind Farecast.com, which helped predict whether it was the right time to buy an airline ticket or if a price drop was coming.

Farecast, which was purchased by Microsoft three years ago for $115 million, is now Bing Travel.

Similarly, Decide.com is trying to provide the same information for the consumer electronics industry, which often moves too fast for the average person to keep up.

The concept plays off the same fears that Best Buy’s new Buy Back promotion is addressing. The promotion, which allows you to return products for the latest model for a fee, is the subject of a hysterical TV commercial.

In one scene, a man is happily receiving his new 3-D TV, only to find out that 4-D is coming soon — no glasses needed! The man slaps himself, while his daughter runs around the yard, teasing: “You got the wrong TV, sillyhead!”

Decide’s CEO Mike Fridgen said on average six new laptops and one new TV come out every day, and a camera comes out every other day. “We are the only site that says ‘wait,’ there’s a newer model available at a cheaper price.”

The site is designed to help with deciphering product cycles and pricing trends.

Decide’s VP of Product and Market Michael Paulson said 20 percent of prices fluctuate daily, and it’s just as likely for prices to go up as down because of dynamic pricing models.

By keeping track of this information for the past two years, Decide has gathered 60 terabytes of data to be able to predict with some accuracy when a new model is coming out or when the price might change.

For example, on Amazon the Canon PowerShot G11 gets nearly five stars and costs $650. Fridgen says there’s no obvious reason not to buy it. But if you check Decide.com, you’ll find out that it’s already been on the market for 19 months and that a newer model is available now for only $450. With 78 percent confidence, it believes the price will hold steady.

Decide.com also aggregates information from news and rumor sites, which provide information on when products are coming.

The company anticipates making money through referral fees to e-commerce sites, where people will make purchases.

Right now, Fridgen says retailers are a little scared of the idea because it may suggest that a consumer should wait; however, he believes that it will ultimately benefit retailers because customers will be happier with their purchases and be less likely to make returns.

The company was co-founded by Oren Etzioni, who is also a computer science professor at the University of Washington. It has raised $8.5 million from Maveron, which was started by Starbucks’ Howard Schultz, and Madrona Venture Group, which was founded by one of the original investors in Amazon.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110620/buyers-remorse-this-is-the-real-decision-engine/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110608/digital-grilled-cheese-d9-poll-results-are-in-the-kara-edges-out-the-walt/ http://allthingsd.com/20110608/digital-grilled-cheese-d9-poll-results-are-in-the-kara-edges-out-the-walt/#comments Wed, 08 Jun 2011 21:34:28 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=84445

Personally, I preferred “The Walt” over “The Kara.”

But the attendees of the ninth D: All Things Digital conference seemed to like the grilled cheese sandwich made of “sharp” cheddar more than “experienced” gruyere.

In sampling by hungry D9 folks, 53 percent selected “The Kara” (sharp cheddar on potato bread with tomato basil soup) and 47 percent chose “The Walt” (experienced gruyere on white wheat with wild mushroom soup).

That’s according to founder Jonathan Kaplan, who demoed his new company called Melt.

With Melt, the focus is on grilled cheese, in an unusual mashup of smartphones, automation and comfort food.

You can order with Melt’s mobile app or from the Web and have your grilled cheese choice ready for you when you want it in a minute in his casual, fast-food restaurants.

The first stores open in San Francisco in August, but there are many more to come via many millions of dollars in funding from Sequoia Capital.

Obviously, grilled cheese is a very orthogonal move for Kaplan, who brought the world the ground-breaking Flip video camera.

Bought by Cisco for $590 million in 2009, the networking giant closed the unit down in April and killed the Flip. Kaplan still does not know why, he said onstage.

While I still mourn the Flip, I can say that the grilled cheese is pretty tasty.

Here’s a video of the Melt in action at D9 in a demo by Kaplan, as well as a video interview he did with Katie Boehret at the Science Fair booth at the conference:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110608/digital-grilled-cheese-d9-poll-results-are-in-the-kara-edges-out-the-walt/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110513/itc-judge-sides-with-kodak-in-apple-suit/ http://allthingsd.com/20110513/itc-judge-sides-with-kodak-in-apple-suit/#comments Fri, 13 May 2011 15:46:52 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=62950

Kodak scored an early win in its ongoing IP skirmish with Apple this week when an International Trade Commission judge found in its favor, ruling that Kodak’s digital camera technology did not infringe upon Apple’s patents.

ITC Judge Robert Rogers said late Thursday that the patents at issue in the case–U.S. Patent No. 6,031,934: “Computer vision system for subject characterization” and U.S. Patent No. RE38,911: “Modular digital image processing via an image processing chain with modifiable parameter controls”–have not been infringed. He also found one to be invalid.

The full ITC still needs to formally accept or reject Rogers’ decision, so this isn’t yet a done deal. But things are certainly looking good for Kodak.

Earlier this year, it sued Apple and Research in Motion claiming the companies are infringing its technology for previewing photos and processing images of different resolutions.

A full ITC Commission decision on that isn’t expected until late June, but if it goes Kodak’s way, the company could be in for a windfall. Kodak Chairman and CEO Antonio Perez has said victory in that case could generate as much as $1 billion in royalties.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110513/itc-judge-sides-with-kodak-in-apple-suit/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110511/samsung-sh100-wireless-digital-camera-review/ http://allthingsd.com/20110511/samsung-sh100-wireless-digital-camera-review/#comments Thu, 12 May 2011 01:02:31 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://ptech.allthingsd.com/?p=1901 The pocket-size, point-and-shoot digital camera was once a standard part of many consumers’ electronic tool kit. But it has been challenged by smartphones with better and better built-in cameras and photo apps. While they lack some photographic capabilities, like physical zoom lenses, phones are carried everywhere all the time. Plus, they are wirelessly connected to email and the Web, where digital pictures often wind up.

Now, Samsung has introduced a pocket camera that aims to erode the advantages of smartphones—even though the company also produces phones. This new camera, the SH100, has Wi-Fi built in. This isn’t the first camera with built-in Wi-Fi, but Samsung hopes to better capitalize on it. It also competes with the add-on memory card called Eye-Fi, that brings Wi-Fi abilities to almost any camera. It has easy, preconfigured uploading to Facebook, YouTube, Picasa, email and other online destinations, plus a bunch of added wireless features, including cordless transfer of photos to a PC.

I’ve been testing the SH100. It carries a list price of $200 without a memory card but can be found at various merchants for as little as $150. Its wireless capability requires no contract or monthly payment.

My verdict is that the SH100 pretty much does what it promises as a wireless device, and takes very good photos and videos. Unlike on a cellphone, its wireless functions don’t work almost everywhere. Still, for those who would like some of the wireless ease of a phone in a better camera, it might be tempting.

The SH100 is a good-looking, pocket camera with a resolution of 14.2 megapixels, a 5x optical zoom and a wide-angle lens. Smartphones typically have much lower resolution and lack optical zoom lenses.

It has a large, 3-inch touch screen on the back, for framing and viewing shots, and for controlling its many functions. There are only four physical buttons—a home button, a power button, a playback button, and a combination shutter and zoom controller. Everything else is controlled by tapping on icons and menus on the screen.

The SH100 has zoom and wide-angle lenses.

The user interface has been designed to resemble the array of apps on a smartphone. Unfortunately, the SH100 uses a less expensive, and much less responsive, type of touch screen than is typically found on smartphones. So, tapping on icons, scrolling through menus and, especially, typing email addresses and wireless login details, can be a frustrating process for people trained now to use sensitive phone and tablet screens.

This was my biggest gripe about the SH100. In my tests, using its screen required extra pressure, multiple presses and corrections. Samsung implicitly acknowledges this by including a plastic stylus with the camera. Using the stylus makes things easier, but it’s another thing to carry and seems easy to lose.

Samsung says the SH100 is mainly about connectivity, and its photographic capabilities and features aren’t significantly different from those on its other point-and-shoot models. In my tests, it took sharp, vivid photos and videos, indoors and out. It has all the standard settings and effects I’ve seen in other point-and-shoot cameras, including auto and more manual modes, and various preconfigured settings for scenarios such as sunsets or beach photos.

One of its nicer features is something called Magic Frame, which merges a photo you take with a background. For instance, it can place your photo in a poster on the side of a bus-stop shelter, or on the screen of an old black-and-white TV. It also has a 3-D carousel view for browsing through your photos, and another mode where you can flip through pictures by tilting the camera.

The SH100 has a touch screen on the back for viewing photos and controlling functions.

But I mainly tested the camera as a wireless device, with mixed results. I was able to connect almost every time to noncommercial Wi-Fi networks in my home and office, and was easily able to post pictures to my accounts on Facebook and Picasa, and videos to my YouTube account. I also was easily able to email photos. This required a one-time setup process for each online account.

But there were some issues. In one instance, during a meeting with Samsung officials to show me the camera, it wouldn’t work with my office Wi-Fi, though my test unit later did fine in the office. Also, when uploading to Facebook, the camera installs a Facebook app called MashupSocial, which you may or may not want.

More important, the camera’s Wi-Fi won’t work with many commercial Wi-Fi hot spots, such as those in coffee shops or airports, that require a login process via a browser, because it lacks a browser. To compensate, Samsung includes a free three-month trial subscription to Boingo, a service that automates logins to some of these services. After the trial ends, Boingo costs $8 a month, but it is optional.

Also, the camera can’t automatically send any photo you snap. You can only choose to send photos when you are in playback mode. And this is a manual process. You also can’t queue up photos you take outside of W-Fi range for later instant uploading when you get near a compatible Wi-Fi network.

To save battery life, the camera doesn’t remain connected to Wi-Fi. It connects only when you choose to transmit, and then disconnects. This is a relatively slow process. Samsung says the SH100′s battery can shoot more than 200 pictures on a single charge, but that battery life degrades if you use Wi-Fi a lot.

I also successfully tested a couple of other wireless features. I was able to wirelessly transmit photos from the camera to a Windows PC using a special Samsung computer program called Auto Backup. (This doesn’t work on Macs.) I also was able to use a feature called Remote Viewfinder that lets you control the camera remotely from a Samsung smartphone. The camera can also wirelessly beam photos to a compatible TV, but I wasn’t able to test this.

If you’re willing to accept the wireless limitations of the SH100, and value its photographic advantages compared to a phone’s camera, it might offer the right balance for you.

Find all Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos at the All Things Digital website, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110511/samsung-sh100-wireless-digital-camera-review/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110412/video-after-cisco-sacrifices-his-baby-to-the-gods-of-wall-street-flip-founder-jon-kaplan-speaks/ http://allthingsd.com/20110412/video-after-cisco-sacrifices-his-baby-to-the-gods-of-wall-street-flip-founder-jon-kaplan-speaks/#comments Tue, 12 Apr 2011 20:08:28 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=42543

Right after BoomTown heard the sad news this morning that Cisco was jettisoning its Flip digital video camera division–part of a transparent effort to assure Wall Street that it was no longer serious about its wacky foray into the consumer market–I lobbed in a call to its founder Jonathan Kaplan to get him on video talking about the loss.

The Flip, of course, has been my go-to tool to harass and annoy Silicon Valley moguls, since it appeared on the scene many years ago. The technique for the simple device was to essentially stick it up someone’s nose until they cried “Uncle!” and told me what I wanted to know.

It’s not entirely clear why Cisco didn’t make more of an effort to sell Flip–I got three calls from big consumer Internet and electronics companies that would have been logical buyers this morning alone, all of whom said they would have seriously considered purchasing the iconic brand. It remains the top-selling camcorder in the U.S., with 21.6 percent of the market.

Cisco bought the start-up behind Flip, Pure Digital, in March of 2009 for $590 million in stock, and the product has sold many millions of units in its short and cruelly ended life.

The first commercially-branded Flips were, in fact, introduced at the third D: All Things Digital conference in 2005 by Kaplan, and he first talked with Cisco CEO John Chambers about selling the innovative Flip at D4 in 2008.

While Wall Street has been worried about the impact of smartphones, especially the iPhone, on Flip’s business–helped in part by Apple CEO Steve Jobs making that point in the photo here at a music event in the fall of 2009 (after which, Cisco defended Flip on Twitter)–it still boggles the mind why Cisco could not have found a new home for it, rather than lopping off all those jobs.

Flip has reportedly been profitable on a standalone basis, several sources said, although probably not when you glom all those shared Cisco corporate costs on top of its puny shoulders.

Flip’s axing, in fact, is clearly a lame attempt to get serious by Cisco–whose shares have been suffering of late–in order to assuage investors that it was focusing on its core business of networking after a series of consumer-facing experiments. While these consumer efforts were but a drop in the giant Cisco revenue bucket, killing them gets lot of ink.

Expect more such “We’re back!” announcements from Chambers and Cisco in the coming months, as it is part of the classic CEO Playbook 101.

Kaplan remained mum on all that in our chat in the Noe Valley Starbucks, which you can see below, along with my favorite Flip moment, where I got all up into Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s business. I also added two other videos I did when my various Flip cameras met new versions in 2008 and in 2010.

Big single tear–it’s just not the same with an iPhone:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110412/video-after-cisco-sacrifices-his-baby-to-the-gods-of-wall-street-flip-founder-jon-kaplan-speaks/feed/ 10 http://allthingsd.com/20110411/htc-aims-to-make-better-sense-of-android-with-improved-software/ http://allthingsd.com/20110411/htc-aims-to-make-better-sense-of-android-with-improved-software/#comments Mon, 11 Apr 2011 11:00:24 +0000 Ina Fried http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/?p=6187 Despite all that it has done to build its brand over the past few years, Taiwan’s HTC is keenly aware that most Android phones look pretty similar when positioned next to one another on the shelves of a carrier’s retail store.

Chief Product Officer Kouji Kodera likens it a bit to trying to make your flat-screen television stand out from all of the others. Unlike a television, though, Kodera said that phone makers do have a way to make an impression.

That’s where the company’s Sense software comes in. With its latest HTC Sense software, the company is trying to do a mix of both things that get noticed in the store, as well as the little touches that give their products a lasting appeal.

In the first category would be changes HTC has made to make the home screen more interactive as well as additional options for the screen that show up when a phone is locked. With the new version of Sense, users have several home screen options–including one that makes it easier to jump to a task, such as mail or the camera–and another option that displays various pictures from the owner’s photo library. Kodera, a frequent traveler, said his favorite lock screen option is one that shows the weather wherever he is that day.

“Since I travel all over the place, weather is more interesting to me than anything else,” Kodera told Mobilized.

In the category of nice but less obvious touches are features such as the fact one can turn over a ringing HTC phone to silence it or the fact that the phones use light sensors to ring louder when in a pocket or purse and then get quieter once someone has taken action, such as grabbing the phone.

The efforts appear to be paying dividends. HTC recently passed both Nokia and Research In Motion in market capitalization, and recent sales are more than double what they were a year ago.

While some of the tweaks to Android are subtle, others are far more noticeable. One area of particular focus in the latest update to HTC Sense is the company’s camera software. In the past, HTC focused on making photos easier to share, whether via email or to social networks. Now it wants to make the photos being shared the ones that the photographer aimed to take. The new software aims to reduce the amount of time it takes for the picture to be taken–an issue known as shutter lag.

“With that lag you have, you usually miss the shot when you have things that are moving,” Kodera said. Those things, he noted are often the kids or pets people are trying to capture. “We are trying to make it easier for people to make better quality pictures.”

The new software is due to show up in the Sprint HTC Evo 3D as well as other new phones this year. HTC is planning a press event on Tuesday in London to show off its latest gear.

Perhaps the biggest customization the company has done is with the Cha Cha and Salsa phones, shown off at Mobile World Congress, that offer dedicated controls for Facebook.

The phones will show up first in Europe, though AT&T has said it will have devices with similar features, if not those exact models, in the second half of this year.

Another effort to target a niche is the company’s Wildfire S, a 3.2-inch Android device. Using a smaller screen makes the device cheaper, but also gives the company a chance to attract a greater percentage of women. The typical HTC phone attracts 70 percent male buyers, but with Wildfire S, Kodera said the goal is to make it more like 50-50.

Women, Kodera said, are “one of the markets we see we have an opportunity to develop.”

The company is also trying to expand its sales in emerging markets, though if the market is headed to $100 Android phones, HTC probably won’t be the first one there.

“We’ll be a little higher than the rock bottom of the market but we will slowly go into that market as it grows,” Kodera said.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110411/htc-aims-to-make-better-sense-of-android-with-improved-software/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110330/verizons-lte-network-for-voice/ http://allthingsd.com/20110330/verizons-lte-network-for-voice/#comments Thu, 31 Mar 2011 01:11:53 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://mailbox.allthingsd.com/?p=883 Q:

I live in an area where the cellular voice service is very poor. I was going to buy the Verizon ThunderBolt LTE phone since the network map indicates I am in the LTE (4G) coverage area, so I thought my call problems would be over with. But based on your article, it sounds like my voice calls would remain the same. Do you have any insight as to when voice will move to LTE?

A:

As I noted in the column, Verizon is using its fast new LTE 4G network for data only. It still routes voice calls over its older networks, which are highly rated for voice, but work poorly for you.

International standards for voice calling over LTE are still being developed. Verizon only made its first test voice call over LTE in February. The company says it hopes to offer LTE voice calling sometime next year.

Q:

I am interested in using the iPad for photo viewing and do not wish to download photos directly from the camera. My camera uses a CF memory card. Can the iPad camera connection kit be used with this card, or might a thumb drive be used for data downloads through this additional hardware?

A:

Apple’s $29 iPad camera connection kit can handle either direct USB transfer of photos via a cable from the camera, or photo transfers from an SD memory card. To my knowledge, it isn’t compatible with the CF type of memory card.

And although it does have a USB port, Apple has limited that port to handling cameras. In my tests, it wouldn’t work with thumb drives, though a reader recently wrote me saying you can make it work with such drives, at least for photos, if you use a techie workaround—a powered USB hub. I haven’t tested this.

Q:

Can I use my Toshiba laptop to connect an iPad and an iPhone?

A:

It depends on what you mean by “connect.” If you mean somehow linking or merging the two Apple devices, the answer is no. If you mean connecting each separately to the Toshiba for syncing and backup with iTunes, the answer is yes.

Whether you are using a Windows PC or a Mac, the same copy of iTunes can be used to manage multiple iPhones, iPads and iPods, and you can have different content on each.

You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox, and my other columns at the All Things Digital website, http://walt.allthingsd.com. Email mossberg@wsj.com

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110330/verizons-lte-network-for-voice/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20110321/risks-of-children-viewing-3-d-fading-into-the-background-in-time-for-nintendos-handheld-launch/ http://allthingsd.com/20110321/risks-of-children-viewing-3-d-fading-into-the-background-in-time-for-nintendos-handheld-launch/#comments Mon, 21 Mar 2011 13:00:32 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://emoney.allthingsd.com/?p=3676 With less than a week to go before Nintendo launches the 3DS in the U.S., safety concerns about whether children should view the three-dimensional images have largely disappeared–right before our eyes.

As recently as January, safety warnings about the new handheld gaming device were dominating headlines after the company issued warnings that the 3-D screens shouldn’t be viewed by children six or younger because it may harm their vision.

Now, U.S. eye specialists are even welcoming the technology, saying it could help catch vision problems that are hard to detect.

“The 3DS could be a godsend for identifying kids under 6 who need vision therapy,” Dr. Michael Duenas, associate director for health sciences and policy for the American Optometric Association told the AP.

Nintendo has a lot riding on the new handheld gaming device since it is the only new hardware it has coming in the near term. The device has already launched in Japan, and will go on sale in the U.S. on Sunday for $250.

The clamshell device is similar to the original 3DS that has been a long-term hit among children. In the new version, it has two screens with the top one having the ability to display 3-D images without the need for special glasses. The 3-D images can be turned off with the flip of a switch. When on, they look somewhat like a hologram.

Many of the device’s capabilities are similar to features found on the iPhone and other smartphones.

For example, the new 3DS has an online store, called the eShop, where users will be able to download games. It also has three cameras and a built-in gyro, so the device can be tilted and turned to affect game play. It will also have location-based features, where users can elect to receive new content from Nintendo or other 3DS users as they travel around.

The device can connect to Wi-Fi hotspots, even when in sleep mode, to collect this content or to function as a pedometer, which counts a user’s steps.

Some features won’t be available at launch, but will be released later through a software update.

At one point, the warnings that Nintendo issued about concerns over children viewing 3-D images seemed like a major impediment for the device.

Now, it’s being viewed as a potential way to identify early signs in kids who may have a vision disorder such as amblyopia, or “lazy eye,” which can cause problems with reading.

In an interview with CNBC in January, Nintendo’s President and COO of North America Reggie Fils-Aime downplayed the concerns: “The fact that the younger consumers are not to view 3-D images is not a big deal for us, and you can manipulate the device to only have 2-D visuals shown, so it will cater to all consumers. The 2-D screen is dramatically better than our current DS.”

Last week, Amazon.com said preorders of the 3DS have been robust. It said the best-selling game titles are Capcom’s Super Street Fighter IV, followed by Nintendo’s Pilotwings Resort and Sega’s Super Monkey Ball.

However, even with the upcoming launch on deck, the top handheld game releasing next week with the most preorders is not for the 3DS, but for Sony’s PlayStation Portable (PSP). The game is Dissidia duodecim Final Fantasy by Square Enix.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110321/risks-of-children-viewing-3-d-fading-into-the-background-in-time-for-nintendos-handheld-launch/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110314/when-does-it-pay-to-trade-up-your-technology/ http://allthingsd.com/20110314/when-does-it-pay-to-trade-up-your-technology/#comments Mon, 14 Mar 2011 11:00:54 +0000 Cristina Lourosa-Ricardo http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=37590 When Apple introduced its newest laptops last month, the company bragged about faster processors, dazzling graphics, new connectivity and a better camera. But all these improvements–to a series of computers that was already by most accounts pretty good–left some critics with a pointed question: Who really needs all that?

It’s a question that nags the tech industry with almost every new advancement. But experts say the pitch for faster, more tricked-out technology has reached a new peak.

Here, in four categories, is what you need–and what you don’t.

Broadband. Most Internet service providers now offer different levels of high-speed connectivity. If you want to stream TV shows or movies, play games or download big files, you may need more juice. Ditto if you have an entire household that’s trying to get online after dinner. Before you change plans, however, make sure you’re actually getting the speed that your provider promised. You can assess the speed of your current connection via a free test website such as Speakeasy.net or Speedtest.net.

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