Day: February 10, 2010

Stunning model Photographer Michael Paul Smith

Angry Norwegians in scuba gear chase after Google Street View car

Acer Aspire 1420P Tablet Notebook

source – netbooked.net

While we’re still waiting for the Acer Aspire 1420P tablet notebook to start shipping, it has now become available in France according to a store listing at Rue du Commerce priced at 499 Euros.

The Acer Aspire 1420P features a 11.6” 1366 x 768 display (multi-touch), Intel Celeron SU2300 processor, 3GB RAM, 250GB HDD, GMA 4500M HD graphics, Bluetooth, HDMI out and Windows 7 Home Premium. Specs will probably vary slightly in different reigons.

Source: Blogeee.net

Google Street View hits Vancouver ski slopes

source – Official Google Blog

The view from Whistler Mountain is something everyone should see: a range of rugged mountains, trails of snow, fir trees and placid lakes below. It’s changed since I lived there some years back — there are many more houses, and far better chairlifts — but what remains is the rare feeling of being free, in nature, about to tear into peak snow.

In time for the Games in Vancouver and Whistler, we’re thrilled to be bringing this view to the world through Street View on Google Maps. How were we able to gather imagery at 7,000 feet (2,000 meters)? The Street View team’s constant experimenting yielded a snowmobile decked out with cameras to capture slope-level imagery of several runs on Whistler Blackcomb Mountains. The view from the top of 7th Heaven chairlift on Blackcomb and from the peak of Whistler are among my favourites, as are the top of the Dave Murray downhill, where the men’s alpine skiing events will start, and the Peak 2 Peak gondola. (That’s Whistler’s new feat of engineering which takes skiers and riders from Whistler to Blackcomb.) With the Street View trike, we’ve also covered Whistler Village and Whistler Creekside at the mountains’ bases. There’s more about the snowmobile’s journey and this imagery on the Google Lat Long Blog.

This imagery and many other tools are now ready to ride on our new website with information about the Games, available in 40 languages. We’ve combined up-to-date medal counts, news, event results and event schedules with rich visuals: 3D models and Street View imagery of the competition venues, plus new aerial imagery of the Vancouver-Whistler area. It’s all in aniGoogle gadget, too. The site also connects you with real-time search results for the Games, local experts’ Favourite Places and a special Picasa Web Albums gallery of featured photos from Vancouver — some submitted by users and others from Google News. Whether you’re celebrating at home or in Vancouver, simply add a “wintergames2010” tag to your own photos in Picasa Web Albums, or use “wintergames2010” as the email subject if you’re uploading from your mobile phone, and we’ll feature the best ones.

As an extra treat for enthusiasts, check out the Google homepage from February 12 to 28 for a special doodle each day celebrating the Games. You can also get the most up-to-date medal counts, event results and schedules by doing a simple Google search. I’ll be following [men’s hockey] myself, and rooting for Team Canada.

Posted by Jonathan Lister, Managing Director and Head of Google Canada

Google Buzz – Screenshots

source – techcrunch.com author – MG Siegler

Now that the Google event is over, the company has started turning on Buzz for Gmail users. Here are some quick screenshots of it in action.

Google Buzz image
Company: Google
Website: buzz.google.com
Launch Date: February 9, 2010

Google Buzz is a social network and sharing product built by Google. Based within Google Profiles, Buzz offers a stream of status updates, pictures, links, and videos from your friends. You can… Learn More

Information provided by CrunchBase

A plastic film that turns any surface into a touchscreen

source – venturebeat.com author – Dean Takahashi

One of our most popular stories in recent days has been aboutDisplax, a company in Portugal that plans to start selling a plastic film that turns any surface into a touchscreen.

By July, Displax said it is planning to begin commercial sales of its “multitouch skin” which can be thinner than paper. The ideal is to spread a nanowire-laced plastic film over any flat or curved surface — glass, plastic or wood — so that it becomes interactive.

The problem with our interview with Miguel Fonseca, chief business officer at Displax, was that he omitted a key detail. While Displax makes the controller that enables multitouch contact with the plastic film, it doesn’t make that plastic film itself.

The film is actually a product created in 2004 by Visual Planet, a London-based company. Mike Cole, commercial director at Visual Planet, contacted us and let us know that the company’s ViP Interactive Foil has been shipping for a while and Displax is one of its resellers.

“I think the core message is that what they are claiming about being the first to develop a flexible foil base touch sensor is incorrect and most of the press has focused on this fact,” Cole wrote in an email. “They have developed a controller only. They tied in our technology in the release so they could promote theirs and make more of a splash.”

Cole said that ViP would be happy to sell its foil to Displax to be part of its “multitouch skin” solution, but there is no agreement in place right now to do so. The two companies have been good partners for some time, but there is a point of contention. Displax is making its own controller to enable multitouch skins that use the plastic film. The controller is sort of the brains that takes the signals from the film and translates them into input signals for a system. It’s not a trivial thing, but the plastic film seems like the more interesting invention.

Cole said that Visual Planet is planning on doing its own controller to go with the plastic film. Hence, these two companies are kind of on a collision course. After Cole brought this up to us, a spokesman for Displax emailed the following message in response.

Read on entire article here …

Handheld US rolls out rugged Algiz 7 tablet

source – engadget.com author – Donald Melanson

It’s been quite a while since an Algiz tablet last popped up on our radar, but Handheld US is now back with another model: the Algiz 7. In addition to a fresh new white enclosure, this one packs a 7-inch touchscreen display, along with a 1.6GHz Atom processor, 2GB of RAM, a 64GB SSD, and Windows 7 Professional for an OS. To help you out in the field, you’ll get a hot-swappable 2400 mAh dual battery pack, built-in GPS, and optional 3G — not to mention ruggedization to MIL-STD-810G standards. No word on a price just yet, but this one will apparently start shipping next month.

[Thanks, Mark S]

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