Digital Tech News - Digital Technology & Consumer Electronics

Nokia 8600 Luna Phone

According to Nokia, the Nokia 8600 Luna was "named in honor of Luna, the goddess of moonlight, who was represented by the Romans as a mysteriously captivating beauty encircled in a soft, yet radiant light." The Nokia 8600 Luna is made of glass and soft-touch stainless steel giving it a stylish look and feel. In a first for Nokia, a single micro-USB port takes care of charging, plus audio and data connectivity. The Luna cellphone also has a 2 megapixel camera.

YouTube Videos on Apple TV

This should help Apple sell more Apple TV units. The company has anounced that Apple TV owners will be able to watch YouTube videos on their TV with a free software update in mid-June. Using Apple TV’s interface and the Apple Remote, viewers can easily browse, find and watch free videos from YouTube at home. Thousands of the most current and popular YouTube videos will be available on Apple TV at launch in mid-June, with YouTube adding thousands more each week until the full YouTube catalog is available this fall.

Apple is also offering a new Apple TV build-to-order option with a 160GB hard drive which will offer four times the storage for up to 200 hours of video, 36,000 songs, 25,000 photos or a combination of each.

Samsung i620 Smartphone Slider

Samsung has made the first slider style smartphone with the new Samsung i620, which could be the follow-up to the i600, otherwise know as the Blackjack phone. The Samsung i620 has metallic colors, and a slide out QWERTY keypad that resembles the Blackjack's, but as you can see, the new smartphone as a whole is more sleek. So far this is a GSM tri-band smartphone aimed at Asia and Europe, but something tells me Samsung will be making a version for the U.S. market as well.

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates Interview Video from D5

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were interviewed by Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher at the All Things Digital conference in a laid back setting that brought back memories and made for some laughs as you'll see in the video highlights above. These two do not get together often, so this is truly a rare chance to hear them reflect on the past and talk tech. Watch the rest of the Steve Jobs and Bill Gates videos at D5, read some live blogging of the interview from Engadget and Gizmodo, and you'll feel like you were there.

 

Street View and Mapplets added to Google Maps

Although Amazon's A9 Maps Service is no longer available, let's give them credit for being the first to provide detailed street view maps. That said, Google Maps has a cool new Street View feature that provides users with innovative 360 degree street level views, and a Mapplets feature that provides developers with new tools for creating and sharing geographic content.

Street View is a new feature of Google Maps that enables users to view and navigate within 360 degree street level imagery of various cities in the US. Street View provides users with a rich, immersive browsing experience directly in Google Maps, enabling greater understanding of a specific location or area. Street View imagery will initially be available for maps of the San Francisco Bay Area, New York, Las Vegas, Denver and Miami, and will soon expand to other metropolitan areas. By clicking on the "Street View" button in Google Maps, users can navigate street level, panoramic imagery. With Street View users can virtually walk the streets of a city, check out a restaurant before arriving, and even zoom in on bus stops and street signs to make travel plans.

 

iTunes Plus and iTunes U Launched

Apple has launched iTunes Plus—DRM-free music tracks in high quality 256 kbps AAC encoding, so good that Apple says the audio quality is "virtually indistinguishable from the original recordings." The iTunes Plus tracks cost $1.29 per song, and include EMI’s digital catalog of recordings with singles and albums from Coldplay, The Rolling Stones, Norah Jones, Frank Sinatra, Joss Stone, Pink Floyd, John Coltrane and more than a dozen of Paul McCartney’s classic albums available on iTunes for the first time. As mentioned here before, iTunes customers can now easily upgrade their library of previously purchased EMI content to iTunes Plus tracks for just 30 cents a song and $3.00 for most albums.  iTunes Plus songs purchased from the iTunes Store will play on all iPods, Mac or Windows computers, widescreen TVs with Apple TV and soon iPhones, as well as many other digital music players.

Palm Foleo Mobile Companion

Palm, Inc. has a new tool for mobile computing called the Palm Foleo Mobile Companion. This compact, slim, and lightweight (2.5 pounds) Linux-based computer has built-in Wi-Fi, a USB port, video-out port, headphone jack, and slots for SD and compact flash cards for memory expansion.  Foleo's 10-inch screen and full-size keyboard allows you to email, edit and view Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF files, and browse the web, plus Foleo mobile companions work with Palm's Treo smartphones (Palm OS) and most smartphones based on Windows Mobile. Smartphones based on operating systems from Research in Motion, Apple, and Symbian may also be supported in time.  According to Palm, Foleo and its paired smartphone will stay synchronized throughout the day via Bluetooth or at the touch of a button. Foleo turns on and off instantly, which is good news for business users on-the-go. You can even view and edit email and office documents residing on a smartphone, and edits made on Foleo are automatically reflected on its paired smartphone and vice versa. The battery lasts up to a decent five hours of use.

Surface Computer Launched by Microsoft

If you've been following Jefferson Han's Perceptive Pixel Multi-Touch developments, you'll notice similarities with Microsoft's new Surface Computer which was announced today at the Wall Street Journal’s D: All Things Digital conference by Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer. Microsoft Surface is the first in a new category of surface computing products from Microsoft that "turns an ordinary tabletop into a vibrant, dynamic surface that provides effortless interaction with all forms of digital content through natural gestures, touch and physical objects." You won't be using the Surface computer at home any time soon, but Microsoft promises that by the end of this year you will be able to interact with Surface in hotels, retail establishments, restaurants and public entertainment venues including Harrah’s Entertainment Inc., Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc., and T-Mobile USA Inc.

Surface demo video below!
 

AIPTEK 720P GO-HD Camcorder

AIPTEK has launched the GO-HD true 720P HD camcorder which is priced at for just under $300. AIPTEK's GO-HD camcorder encompasses 720P (1280x720 pixel resolution / 16:9 aspect ratio) at 30 frames per second, and uses advanced H.264 codec technology that allows users to record about 4 hours of HD video clips on an 8GB High Capacity SD (HCSD) card.

Sony DVDirect VRD-MC5 for HD DVD Recording

If you were impressed by how the Sony DVDirect VRD-MC3 converts video tapes to DVD, Sony Japan has a follow-up in the DVDirect VRD-MC5. You can hook up your camcorder to the VRD-MC5 and create HD and SD-quality videos, and even do some video editing at the same time. The new VRD-MC5 features a 2.5" Color Screen, USB 2.0, and direct recording onto DVD from SD/SDHC, xD Picture Cards, and CompactFlash memory cards.