Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

Trying to lure in customers to replace their DVDs or HD DVDs with Blu-rays, Paramount is offering ten bucks per title to do just that. Although Paramount and Dreamwork titles are involved in the offer, it isn’t good for just any Paramount movie.

According to HighDefDigest, the promotion will start with the release of Transformers on Blu-ray coming in just a few days on September 2nd. Hopefully you won’t mind messing up those boxes a bit though, since you need to include the proof-of-purchase tabs from both the DVD and the Blu-ray disk, along with the promotional certificate from inside eligible Blu-ray movies.  You also have to buy your Blu-rays before December 31, 2009 and have your rebate envelope postmarked before January 31, 2010.

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In private beta testing mode since January, the England-based ProofHQ has just opened it’s program up to the the public. What makes it so appealing to so many is the obvious allowance for collaboration. ProofHQ makes this simple with the use of several formats on the web. Blogs, social media applications...users are able to comment and give feedback on a project that can be seen by anyone working on it by using embeddable objects.

There is no cost for this new personal version, unless you want to upgrade to a more advanced package that offers more storage.  The free package only allows for five proofs a months (50 megabytes of storage), and the upgrades run anywhere from $29 to $99 a month. However, you can get a feel for it to see what you think by taking advantage of their 14 day free trial offer. It is both PC and Mac compatible. 

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Amazon just announced the acquisition of the start-up book sharing company Shelfari. They are on a roll with literary-related purchases, as just earlier this month, they bought AbeBooks, an online seller of rare and used works.  Now, what makes this Shelfari purchase a tad more interesting is the fact that one of their main competitors is LibraryThing.  And AbeBooks just happens to own 40% of LibraryThing.  Keeping it in the family Amazon.

LibraryThing however, is not seeming to have that much respect for the Shelfari site. Just yesterday they wrote on their site that Shelfari is a “clone” and that it is “..somewhat less intellectual, less featureful”, among other zingers. And there they are practically cousins. 

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Believe it or not, I know many die-hard fans of the old Polaroid camera that were sad to see it go. Well, it looks like there just may be some cause for rejoicing if the new survey put out by Polaroid is any indication. They were recently asking for feedback from readers of Amateur Photographer to help design their new digital camera with built in printer.

Not too much is known at this point about the new camera other than the fact that like the Pogo Instant Mobile Printer, it will implement Bluetooth technology and a USB connection to print photos. Polaroid was asking opinions on whether they should include options such as an external battery, a hotshoe for an external flash, and a higher pixel count than their previous version.  One of the other differences between the PoGo Printer and the Polaroid PoGo ProSeries camera (as it is slated to be called) is the fact that the camera’s photos will print out at 4x3 as opposed to 2x3.

It is scheduled to hit the market next year and be marketed mainly to “professional and business users”. There is also going to be a lower-end (ie less expensive as well) ZINK-enabled camera that prints 2x3 inch prints coming out around the same time as well.

Via [Yahoo! Tech]

Supposedly confirmed as of a few days ago, however we are still awaiting official word from Canon on their newest baby, due any day now. Complete specs, (translated from Chinese) are here for the time being. Apparently there had been a big bru-ha-ha when a photo hit the internet apparently taken by the new Canon according to it’s metadata (and the info right on the web page itself), on what many believe to be a Media Temple client page. This being a big oops, since they are a web dev for high profile clients such as Sony, Adobe, ABC and others. The others, in some people’s mind’s, could include Canon. Thus, a page that had Canon photos which was leaked onto the net before it was discovered and subsequently password protected.

The Canon 50D is pictured here with what’s sure to be a kit lens option, the EF-S 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 IS lens. A short list of what is most likely going to be key features is as follows:

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Get ready, here comes Kodak into the TV set-top box market. Due to hit stores in September, their Theatre HD Player is a Wi-Fi equipped TV set-top box that can stream music, videos, and photos from any computer that is connected to the same network right to your HDTV. It offers 720 playback, HDMI and component output ports, and a USB port.

Sounds decent, right? Sure. Until you take a look at the price tag and then compare it to what is already on the market and comparable. We have the PlayStation 3 and AppleTV. These two alone offer the exact same features and more. The Theatre HD Player will run you $300.  Now, while a 40GB PS3 is a little pricier at $400; it also has a Blu-ray player and the obvious video game console included. The AppleTV costs less than the Theatre HD at $229, and it even allows you to store media.

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Finishing up it’s two-day convention in San Fransisco yesterday, YPulse National Mashup is a yearly event that brings together youth media and marketing professionals from brands, agencies, and the non-profit sector to share practices for reaching today’s totally wired youth. And this year’s findings were a rather obvious one for anyone walking around any school, mall, or other teen gathering place. Teens are becoming more and more mobile and cell companies, advertisers, and other media companies plan to be sure to capitalize on this.

And capitalize on it they will indeed be able to.  It’s estimated that teens wield a whopping $200 billion annually in discretionary spending. Yep, you read that correctly, and it wasn’t a typo. Two-hundred BILLION. Today’s kids must be charging much more for lawn-mowing services than back in the day, or else get one heck of an allowance.

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In days past, photographers had to rely on their memory to answer the question “where did I take this shot?”. Not so any more. Geotagging is fast becoming popular in the days of digital photography. By definition, Geotagging is the process of adding a form of geospatial geographical identification metadata to your images. It can also be added to other media like websites or RSS feeds. This metadata almost always consists of latitude and longitude coordinates; although it can sometimes also include things like altitude, bearing, or even location names depending on how specific you want to get.

Geotagging can also be useful if you are looking for location-specific information. For example, you are trying to find images taken near Red Rock Canyon. You simply enter the latitude and longitude coordinates into a Geotagging-enabled image search engine. There you go! These same search engines can also be used to locate location-based news, websites and more.

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In an attempt to be more proactive rather than simply reactive, the MPAA has recently approved the DreamStream system and its 2048-bit “military strength” anti-piracy encryption technology to protect content streamed to viewers online.

First introduced to the MPAA in March of 2008 by Laura Tunberg, MGM’s former vice president of intellectual property enforcement, it was since reviewed by the MPAA and found it to be a viable means for securing digital content. Chief development officer for DreamStream, Ulf Diebel, is excited by this acknowledgment of their product.

“We are very excited to have the MPAA stand behind our technology.”

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Good news for those not quite ready to take the plunge to purchase the new Nikon D700, but tiring of some of the problems they may have been experiencing with their D3 or D300; Nikon has made some more adjustments. The latest in the D3 firmware upgrades include some nifty function button customization options, although before you get too excited… no these are not the same ones featured on the D700.  There were also some adjustments to the AF and white balance mode, as well as the playback mode.

A major concern for many users of both the D3 and D300 was one that has come to be known as “Dead Battery Syndrome”, wherein the battery indicator would incorrectly register an empty battery. Nikon fixed this issue as well. 

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