Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

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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Music lovers holding a Verizon subscription will better be able to say “I can hear you now” to their favorite musical artists, as Rhapsody and Verizon team up to offer users with certain V Cast phones DRM-free PC downloads. In obvious competition with iTunes, Rhapsody is still behind in the numbers game (about 5 million in their online library as opposed to iTunes 8 million), however, the bonus of not being stuck with DRM puts them ahead in many people’s minds. This way, you can play the music on any PC, MP3 player, or other digital device. Bonus.

So how much is it going to cost you? The songs are going at 99 cents each, and most albums will be $9.99. You’ll also find a Windows-only download utility that will import your music directly into iTunes, RealPlayer, or the Rhapsody client; Mac users will get their songs in a ZIP file. Select Verizon Wireless V Cast phones (including the upcoming Chocolate 3, the new Dare, the Samsung Glyde, the Juke, the RIZR Z6tv, and the RAZR V9m) can purchase tunes from Rhapsody over the air, and get an MP3 “master” PC download in the bargain.

If you jump on the ball, Verizon is running a special through July 4th: The first 100,000 people to sign up with the MP3 store will get their first album free.  And hey...free is always good.

Via [Yahoo! Tech]

Local television stations are shedding highly-paid, experienced journalists; the evening newscasts on broadcast networks keep on losing viewers; cable news continues erasing the line separating news and loud, crass opinion.

Such is the state of television journalism in 2008.

It’s all old news in the news business: digitally-empowered consumers choosing to customize their news, technology lowering the barriers of entry for those who want to call themselves journalists. YouTube’s new Citizen News channel will give more ammunition to those who claim traditional media is dying. The top website for user-generated video now wants to aggregate all its amateur news video and reporting onto one location, with a news manager, Olivia, supposedly vetting the content. “You YouTubers out there are changing the world of journalism,” she says in the channel’s opening video. “You’re using your voices not only to report the news as you see it, but to engage and dialogue with one another, to tell stories that might not otherwise be heard.”

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SanDisk has upped the notch in memory card storage with the release of its new high-capacity microSD, microSDHC and Memory Stick Micro (M2) which all belong in their new Mobile Ultra card series. These flash mobile memory cards boast of 2GB, 4GB and 8GB capacities as well as offering fast loading speeds and accelerated transfer rates.

SanDisk said that their new Mobile Ultra flash memory card series will fit well with budding mobile phone photographers and videographers, thanks to their high-storage capacity and the ability to easily transfer photos and videos to PC’s. SanDisk has packed their Mobile Ultra memory cards with a MobileMate Micro Reader that users can plug into the USB port of their machines which allows for those fast data transfers. This also goes for users who habitually transfer their digital media into social media or video-sharing sites.

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The iriver D5 multimedia e-dictionary has made it to the US market and is now available at the iriver online store. Available in either a 2GB or 4GB model, the D5 is available in black or white and retails for $299 and $349 respectively.

For those prices, you’ll get features that include a 3-inch 480 x 272 TFT display, 52-key QWERTY keyboard, digital audio support, playback support for AVI video, digital photo support for JPG, GIF and BMP files, a text viewer, FM radio and voice recorder. As for the dictionaries, the D5 offers English-English, Korean-English, Korean-Japanese and Korean-Chinese.

The D5’s price may seem a bit on the expensive side, but if electronic dictionary is your kind of gadget, you might find it reasonable since you’ll get the portable media features as well.

Product [iriver] Via [Pocketables]

The latest portable media player from iriver, the P10 may seem just like your ordinary portable media player with its 4.3-inch LCD with an 800 x 480 resolution, 33GB internal memory, as well as WMV and Mpeg video support. But aside from being a cool looking player, the P10 can also be used as an e-book reader with support for PDF, Word and Excel files. So, you can listen to music while reading your favorite novel in e-book format. In addition, the P10 also features a GUI that recognized handwriting similar to the Palm Pilot’s handwriting recognition technology, aside from having several dictionaries that include English, Chinese and Japanese languages.

The iriver P10 portable media player will be available in a DMB-less Basic version for around $310 and the Pro version with DMB for around $387. Unfortunately for us living outside of Korea, the P10 will most likely have to remain on our wish list for a while.

Via [Akihabara News]

If you’ve ever wanted to bring your collection of digital files with you wherever you go, the Mvix MVU-2500U portable media player might be the answer to your needs. ThMVU-2500U uses 2.5-inch PATA / IDE hard drives with support for up to 250GB, which is actually more than enough to contain 100 DVD quality movies. Mvix is touting their new media decoder as a perfect media device for people on the move, giving them the ability to bring their entire collection of HD-quality movies.

The MVU-2500U measure in at 5 x 3 x 0.5-inches and works like an external USB 2.0 hard drive when connected to a PC. The MVU2500U can store digital video in 480p, 720p and 1080i standards, as well as support files encoded in MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4, DVD, DivX, Xvid, BivX, and VCD in both NTSC and PAL systems. As an added convenience, the media decoder comes with an IR remote control. The Mvix MVU-2500U will be available in the US beginning this month.

Product [MvixUSA] Read [PR Web]

The courtship began in December with heady bids, chocolate kisses, and flowers. Blockbuster, the movie rental leader was set to hitch Circuit City to it’s star. Making its overtures public on Monday with an offering reportedly worth nearly 1 billion dollars. There were talks of crossing platforms with Circuit City renting movies and Blockbuster selling home electronics. And a day later there were talks that it would never happen. According to published reports, questions about how Blockbuster, a company valued at less then their initial offer to Circuit City would finance such a deal arose. My guess was late fees (I swear I returned that copy of A New Hope and I will fight those charges to the death!) but apparently the pot just didn’t have the gold. So in this post possible merger world how will these companies survive?

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