Camera Phones Plaza

Today you are invited to discover or recall the latest gadgets in technology, which marked our personal entertainment experience and work productivity during last year. They are all complex devices capable to perform intensive tasks, but coming in simple designs with user-friendly interfaces.

If we start with the communication sector, first gadget we will think of is, of course, the popular iPhone 3G, Apple’s latest release, which is the world’s first and only multi-touchscreen cell phone available for customers worldwide. This innovative technology introduced by Microsoft’s Surface table, allows you to control applications on your phone using your fingers for typing on the on-screen keyboard, glide through albums, scroll through pictures, and zoom web pages, all by touching the multi-touch display layer placed on a capacitive panel in charge with detecting your pressing via electrical fields. Your touch is then sent to the LCD screen under this layer, processed by special software, and interpreted as flicks, taps and pinches.



The on-screen keyboard is different than what you are used with. It adapts its keys and layout for different applications and 21 languages, according to the current mode.
Another technology used in the iPhone, as well as in other high-end handsets on the market, include the accelerometer sensor based on silicon springs that measure the silicon mass position using electrical current, which enables the phone to rotate its image automatically when turned sideways.



The Ambient Light Sensor detects changes in the light conditions and adjusts the display brightness automatically, while the Proximity Sensor feels when something larger than your fingers gets close, turning off the display to save power and to avoid accidental touches on the screen.



In the healthcare industry, Philips continues to be one of the major developers of latest gadgets in technology and medical solutions.
Starting this spring, nurses and physicians have access to a new portable high-end tablet called CliniScape, which keeps them up to date with each patient’s health condition, by providing real-time information about blood containers, medication and others, as well as enabling wireless connectivity with heartbeat or blood-pressure sensors, telephone headsets and dictation microphones.

More than that, using the 2MP digital camera built into the tablet, nurses can take pictures of the patients’ wounds.
CliniScape from Philips can be used as a mobile point of care device to access other medical applications including IntelliVue Clinical Information Portfolio and iSite PACS medical image and information management system.
To perform all these tasks, CliniScape tablet has a small form factor weighting just 1.8Kg, and features a 10-inch touchscreen display with pen input, smart swappable battery, Windows XP Tablet PC Edition or Windows Vista operating system, an Intel Core Solo 1.2GHz processor, 60GB HDD storage, 1GB DDR2 RAM memory, barcode reader, RFID reader, Bluetooth, one USB port, docking station, and drop/spill resistance.



Latest gadgets in technology from the education sector include 3 impressive devices, one of which is already famous - the XO laptop computer brought by the OLPC non-profit organization. The innovation here involves several elements working together to enable mobile learning for children anytime, in any place. It is characterized by flexibility, ultra-low-cost, power-efficiency, responsiveness and durability, while functioning as a wireless router that connects children, teachers and families remotely, to each other or to the World Wide Web.

XO laptops have 7.5-inch self-refreshing displays of 200DPI, with a resolution of 1200 x 900 pixels and 2 available modes: transmissive full-color and reflective high-resolution black/white for increased sunlight readability. It is an ultra-low-power consumer reaching 0.2W, and can be powered manually even by small hands.



Going further we get to the Teachermate Handheld Computer, a $50-small system coming to Latin American schools. It is the cheapest computer on the market designed like a gaming device, so that all kids to enjoy learning on it using math applications and basic literacy.
It runs with an ARM9 32-bit processor at 200MHz and integrates 500MB NAND Flash RAM memory, SD card slot, speaker, headphone jack, and a 16-bit LCD display. From a full charge, 5-years old children can operate it up to 3.5 hours. Teachers in a classroom can charge all Teachermates and synchronize scores using the Synch and Store Case, as well as update devices simultaneously.



TI Graphing Calculators from Texas Instruments are optimized for complex math-related calculations, sporting large 3.5-inch displays, mouse-like controls, and featuring spreadsheet capabilities and acceptance during SAT, ACT and AP tests. Preparation help comes from The Princeton Review and 25 minutes of free online homework help provided by Tutor.com. They measure 1.13 x 3.94 x 7.81 inches at 0.64 pounds, and power from 4 AAA batteries.
You can store in them up to 20MB of data transferred from a PC via the USB cable.



At the mobility chapter we have the MacBook Air, another Apple innovative product, which became the world’s thinnest laptop. We don’t have spectacular technologies here but just an amazing design idea used to create a portable computer covered in anodized aluminum, weighting 3 pounds at 0.16 x 0.76 inches. It has a 13.3-inch widescreen LED backlight display with a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels, multi-touch trackpad, and a full-size keyboard with backlight for low light environments. The ambient light sensor detects changes in light and adjusts brightness automatically.

In this case, Apple managed to produce the thinnest laptop in the world, without sacrifying power and standard computer capabilities.



Now let’s check to see what might be the most innovative fitness gadget. If you got the chance to read our article about the best MP3 player portable, you know I’ll mention the BODiBEAT - world’s first portable MP3 player, capable to match the songs it plays with your workout pace. It was created by Yamaha as a fitness companion using a heart rate monitor clipping to the ear, and based on a technology detecting impact during running, walking, and dancing, it plays the right songs with beats per minute that match your steps per minute. In order to do this, it categorizes the songs uploaded by you from the PC, according to the number of beats per minute.

Another important aspect is that, from a full charge, BODiBEAT operates for up to 12 hours, time during which you can set times, distances and calorie number, so the device to alert you when targets have been reached.



We announced that the world’s first brain controlled gaming headset is available in February, when we read about it on the official website and learned about its cool features. These cool features convinced us to include the EPOC gaming headset in this article covering the latest gadgets in technology, for the fact that it allows you to control games based on thoughts and emotions.
The company that created it is Emotiv, focused on bringing solutions built with brain computer interface technologies.

Their EPOC uses your electrical signals from around the brain, processes them, and translates these into “magical powers” and object manipulation. The headset understands immersion, meditation, excitement, frustration, tension, laugh, smile, crossed eye, wink, anger, shock, horizontal eye movement, grimace, pull, push, drop, lift, rotate, and the even the power of making things disappear in video games.

While wearing it, you can control your web camera and mouse cursor movement on the desktop. Imagine how exciting would be to use it while driving those evil GTA 4 Cars!



Before knowing more about Pleo toy gadget you need to know a few about what he represents. Camarasourus sauropod lived in North America during the Late Jurassic Period 150 million years ago and he measured about 18 meters in length, after reaching the adult age.

Pleo is such a dinosaur but just one week old. He was designed by Caleb Chung and manufactured at Ugobe by a team of robotics specialists, animators, technologists, scientists, biologists, and programmers. It integrates sensors and motors that enable him to learn and adapt to different environments.

Based on the artificial intelligence technology, he develops his own personality, feeling playful, scared, surprised, sad, awareness, hungry, and responding to your voice and touch as well. He is even ticklish.
Technologies and hardware components of Pleo include a camera for light and object detection, 2 microphones, binatural hearing, beat detection, touch sensors, surface detection, force-feedback sensors, orientation tilt sensor, infrared sensor in the mouth for object detection, infrared communication with other Pleo robots, miniUSB port for online downloads, and a 32-bit Atmel ARM 7 microprocessor.

Firmware updates for Pleo dinosaurs come via SD cards or USB transfers.



Now let me surprise you with some movie-like images from a real project of an upcoming gadget. This time, the innovation debuted at SID Display Week 2008 in the form of eyeglasses created by Microsivion using the UltraMiniature PicoP Display Engine.
How could you benefit from it? –By attending a conference remotely and adding your part of speech, walk through crowds while checking emails on the glasses, see where your friends are at specific moments by detecting them on the map, receive turn-by-turn directions, and even read virtual recipes while cooking.



Latest gadgets in technology from the design sector are many, but one of the most innovative and unique is PlanterSpeakers Hi Fi speakers? model created by Madison Fielding, an award-winning custom audio products manufacturer.
Terra Cotta Mini Planter is a speaker designed for both indoors and outdoors, fitting any décor with its support for growing natural flowers.

They are waterproof and made of durable materials, equipped with the 360-degree surround sound capability. Components include 6-inch coaxial Marine Speaker, 80Hz to 15KHz +/-3Db frequency response, high bass filter, 25W/RMS power handling, 20 to 50W/RMS recommended amplifier power, 90Db 1 W sensitivity, 8 Ohms impedance, and dimensions of 20 inches in height and 14 inches in width, at 15 lbs.

After knowing about these latest gadgets in technology, which cover only top aspects of this theme, it’s easy to give yourself the right answer to the question Why is technology important today?

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TI Nspire from Texas Instruments is a new handheld graphing calculator destined to math students who need a handy and powerful processing tool during courses.
The calculator features a large display, controls imitating a mouse experience, spreadsheet capabilities like when using a laptop computer, and all are permitted during SAT, ACT and AP tests.
Students can store their work on it as well as access free test preparation software from The Princeton Review and 25 minutes of free online homework help provided by Tutor.com.

"The TI-Nspire graphing calculator has proven its value in my classes," said Eric Butterbaugh, algebra and geometry teacher at Bread & Roses Integrated Arts High School in Harlem, New York. "What used to take days to teach, now takes moments because students can explore and test math relationships on their own. My students now have a deeper understanding of what I teach in the classroom and can apply it in different ways later."

Studies have shown that those who use graphing calculators for learning and during exams, have higher rates, and in addition, Texas Instruments provides several useful solutions such as the possibility to see multiple representations of a problem, individually or together on a single screen, dynamically link representations of a problem to see how changes to one affect others, grab and move graphed functions in real time to observe relationships and patterns, activate the handheld's Press-to-Test feature to block access to certain geometry features not allowed on exams, save and review work in documents, similar to a computer, use handhelds in college entrance and advanced placement exams, and benefit from the upcoming software called TI-Nspire Teacher Edition, an emulator and enhanced document editing tool.

Specifications highlight a dimension of 1.13 x 3.94 x 7.81 inches at 0.64 pounds, a 3.5-inch display with 16-level gray-scale, power required from 4 AAA batteries, 20MB memory for storage, 16MB operating memory, and USB port for computer connectivity.



"It's more critical than ever for students to succeed in math. In fact, statistics from the U.S. department of Labor show that by the time today's high school students graduate from college, more than 6 million jobs will require math, science or engineering skills - 24 percent more than just a
few years ago," said Melendy Lovett, president, Texas Instruments Education Technology. "TI strives to empower students with the tools to deepen their understanding of math concepts. We are excited to offer the TI-Nspire graphing calculator to better equip students to succeed in high school and
be well-prepared for college and beyond."



The price of TI graphing calculators with advanced math capabilities is available at a low price of just $150, and you can watch it in the video.

Nowadays, cell phones with Basic Printing Bluetooth Profile allow the users to print files from the handset using a printer to which they can connect wirelessly. You can find out if your model supports this functionality by looking through the cell phone’s specifications list for Bluetooth Printing. It’s cool to have it enabled, but to benefit from it you’d need also a printer model capable of this, and there are several available on the market you could choose from.



One example would be the Lexmark X4650 Wireless Home & Student 3-in-1 inkjet printer. It has an affordable price of $129.99 and several other features you can use, besides the wireless printing capability.

3-in-1 model like Lexmark X4650 wireless all in one printers, integrate a copier and a scanner in addition to the printer, so you practically can do different things with them, from revealing your pictures on a glossy paper, to copying important documents and scanning old photos to process them with special software on your computer. The printer connects to all your electronic gadgets via the wireless home network.



This printer uses the 4 color inkjet technology with Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black, as well as optional 6 Colour Photo Printing, and CIS with 36 bit depth scan technology. It has a printing speed of up to 25 pages per minute in Draft mono mode at a resolution of 1200 x 1200 dpi, and 18 pages per minutes in Draft color at 4800 x 1200 dpi. The copy speed reaches 15 copies per minute in one color and economic mode, and 10 copies per minute in multiple colors and draft.
It scans at 19200 x 19200 dpi and has a paper capacity of 100 pages. It is compatible with almost all operating systems and supports the following media types: Card Stock, Envelopes, Labels, Plain Paper, Transparencies, Banner (A4 or Letter), Hagaki Card, Iron-On Transfers, Photo Paper, and Heavy Weight Matte Paper.

The wireless connectivity is done via the 802.11g/b module and other ports are the USB 2.0 and the PictBridge support for direct connectivity between the model and digital cameras enabled with this standard. Digital cards compatible with the printer are: CompactFlash I & II, Sony Memory Stick, Memory Stick PRO, Secure Digital (SD) Card, MultiMediaCard (MMC), Microdrive, xD Card, Sony Memory Stick Duo (with adapter), Mini Secure Digital (Mini SD) Card (with adapter), Sony Memory Stick PRO Duo (with adapter), SanDisk TransFlash Memory Module (with adapter), RS-MMC (with adapter), xD Card Type M, Type H, MultiMediaCard (MMC) Mobile (with adapter), Micro Secure Digital (Micro SD) Card (with adapter), and Secure Digital High Capacity (SDHC) Card (with adapter).



Other features of the Lexmark X4650 include maximum 50 dB operating noise level, PrecisionSense technology in charge with detecting the type of paper used to adjust the resolution automatically, automatic cartridge alignment, 36-bit color scanner depth at 12-bit grayscale, Optical Character Recognition software for scanning hard copy text into a soft copy format, and direct PDF scanning.

It is advisable to read some printer reviews first to make a list of the best brands to choose from.

For small local area networks such as home environments, where you need to split the Internet access to all your personal computers, a wireless router like D-Link DIR-615 would be the best solution, as it functions as a standard wired router and wireless simultaneously. This means that if your family members or small office colleagues use 2 desktop PCs and 3 laptop computers, a wireless router gives Internet access to laptops via Wi-F, and to desktops via a standard network cable, or wirelessly if you have a wireless adapter. Wireless adapters can be cards integrated in the PC unit or devices attached via USB connectivity, and the latter ones look like classic USB drives.
After getting the adapters and the D-Link DIR-615 wireless router, you’ll need to configure the service set identifier and radio channel, which must be the same for all the computers in your small network.



D-Link is the world’s leading provider of routers and the DIR-615 model is a wireless N router type, which makes it ready for the upcoming wireless standard, allowing up to 248 Mbit/s data rates, a high increase from the existent 54 Mbit/s provided via the 802.11g standard. It accomplishes this by supporting multiple antennas at both the transmitter and receiver, and 40 MHz operation, which increases performance significantly, without needing extra bandwidth and power.

D-Link DIR-615 connects different devices wirelessly including gaming consoles, desktop computers, media players, and notebooks, while providing parental control for Internet activity supervising, network firewall protection, and backward compatibility with the 802.11g standard.

D-link wireless routers are easy to setup because they come with the friendly Quick Router Setup Wizard with step-by-step instruction, to setup the network in a few minutes, including the security level.

With Wi-Fi Protected Access and Wi-Fi Protected Access 2 programs, you can secure both an older wireless network and the ones using newest network cards, against serious weaknesses. These protection standards developed by the Wi-Fi Alliance use RC4 stream cipher encryption with 128-bit key and 48-bit initialization vector. The Temporal Key Integrity Protocol changes keys dynamically, every time the system is used, while the message authentication code makes it more difficult for intruders to break the network as it uses the complex Michael algorithm, which prevents even replay attacks with a frame counter.

More than these, D-Link DIR-615 has dual active firewalls called SPI and NAT, which raises the protection level. Stateful Packet Inspection is in charge with keeping track of travelling network connection and distinguish legitimate packets matching different connection types. The ones not matching known connection states are rejected automatically.



Maybe you’ve heard about the term “NAT router” before. It referrs at the process called network address translation or IP masquerading, which consists of modifying network address information in datagram packet headers durig traffic routing. The point is to remap a given address space into another. This protection methid, or hidding method, cause annoying problems in Peer 2 Peer network connections, so it requirres experienced configuration to not stay in your way. NAT routers hide private network addresses behind another’s public address’ IP address, so that, on exit, the IP packets appear to originate from the router.

The D-Link router supports IEEE 802.11n, 802.11g, 802.3 and 802.3u standards, providing 4 10/100 LAN ports and one 10/100 WAN port, 2 External Reverse SMA Antennas, access via Internet Explorer, Mozilla and other Java-enabled browsers, featuring power LED, status LED, and measuring 4.6 x 7.6 x 1.2 inches at 0.7 lbs.

It is available at $80.

Before continuing to read my article I want to provide you with a bigger picture of how far the digital camera technology has gone. The term is not referring only at those handheld devices we use to take pictures and record short videos, but also at those built into cell phones, cars, web cameras and even astronomical devices such as the Hubble Space Telescope.



One physical characteristic that differentiates them from the analog photo cameras is the LCD display you can watch the landscape on, before taking the picture, or on which you can select those photos you want to delete at a later time.
Digitizing refers at the conversion of analog information consisting of fluctuating waves, into 1 and 0 bits, and if analog cameras worked based on chemical and mechanical processes, digital models do it electronically, recording images on light-sensitive sensors.

First Camera Invented



First concept design, first prototype or first commercial digital camera? Let’s see!
The first concept came from Eugene F. Lally who demonstrated how to digitize signals from an array of discrete sensor elements, using a mosaic photo sensor. This project was destined for astronauts and should have provided onboard navigation data during missions in space. This system should have recorded still pictures of space objects together with stadiametric information.

While this happened in 1961, it took 11 years more for a camera patent without film to be published. In 1972, Willis Adcock came out with this new design, but no one has heard about it since then.
3 years later, in 1975, Kodak Eastman’s engineer Steven Sasson, tried to build a digital camera working with a CCD sensor provided by Fairchild Semiconductor.

The patent describes a 3.6Kg weight for a camera that could record black and white images on a cassette tape, at a resolution of 0.01MP, with 23 seconds capturing time. Again, it was an innovative idea that didn’t go into mass production, remaining at the prototype level.
The first camera invented, and here I am referring at the first model capable to record as a computerized file, came out in 1988 and was introduced by Fuji, under the name Fuji DS-1P. It featured 16MB SDRAM memory card made by Toshiba, a battery, 400K CCD, 16 MM f/5.6 fixed focus, and 1/60 to 1/2000 second shutter.



In 1990 people had the chance to buy the first commercially available model, 1990 Dycam Model 1 aka Logitech Fotoman, which had a CCD sensor, storage space and PC connectivity.
During the next years there appeared several other models with improvements including professional digital cameras, such as Kodak DCS-100 with 1.3MP and a high price of $13,000, Casio QV-10 with LCD display, Kodak DC-25 with CompactFlash, and the Ricoh RDC-1 with video recording.

How Does a Digital Camera Work?



The process is as follows: as you capture the image the light strikes the digital sensor array – like CCD and CMOS – which is made of millions of pixels, laid out in an array of rows and columns (example: 3000 x 1500 pixel resolution).
These tiny dots of light forming the image get through color filters above the sensors and then the sensor chip converts the image from light waves into analog electrical signal, which is then sent to the Analog-Digital Converter. Other electronic filters adjust the white balance, color and other parameters, after which it gets compressed and pixels that are in plus are dumped. Next, the digital image is stored in the buffer memory until it gets full and then written onto the storage media.



In the history of the camera, developing companies have tried to add more and more features to create the perfect model, and nowadays we find cool designed cameras, compact, lightweight and with innovative technologies such as the smile detector, which can be set so that your device to capture only when people’s smiles are detected.
When choosing a digital camera model, there are several factors you should take a look at first. These include the use – if you need to take professional artistic pictures or just to capture the funniest moments of your trips – and you’ll have to check SLR cameras which are bigger and more expensive. They can shoot fast-moving subjects allowing you to capture multiple images in a second. More megapixels means that the image printed on paper will be bigger and sharper. If you’d have to capture at long distances you’d surely need some model with larger zoom range, which makes the angle of view wider, allowing you to capture the subject or landscape closer. I am talking here, of course, about the optical zoom. The digital zoom lets you zoom more, but when you use this one, the picture quality lowers.



Sometimes, in bright conditions, you can’t distinguish the image on the LCD display, so a model with viewfinder is a great solution for this.
The ISO feature refers at how sensitive the camera is to light and the lower the ISO setting, the better the pictures captured in bright conditions are. In other environments you’ll need to adjust it and higher it, if the camera permits this. It is important to test the camera before you buy it and see how much it damages the resulting pictures when the ISO is too high.
One of the most important decisional factors is the image stabilizer. Don’t buy a digital camera that doesn’t feature it, because you won’t be able to get perfect pictures when your hand is shaking. You need blur-free pictures so try to look for image stabilizer or modes like Sports, Fast Shot or Burst.

On the same first place of importance is the shutter delay. When you press the button don’t wait a few seconds for the image to be captured. It has to happen in maximum 1 second and a half in daylight.

(Sources: reevoo; digicamhistory; InfoBorder; epi centre; Wikipedia; howstuffworks)