Daily Technology News

(Credit: Sony)

In 2007, Sony extended the previously TV-only Bravia moniker to cover its flagship all-in-one home theater systems for the first time. The branding extension must’ve been a success, because a new round of Bravia home-theater-in-a-box systems (HTIBs) is on deck for 2008. All four 2008 Bravia models will include the following baseline features. (Where applicable, we’ve taken the liberty of translating many of the terms from Sony-ese into English.)

• Single chassis DVD receiver: The amplifier/receiver includes a built-in 5-disc CD/DVD changer, with built-in support for standard Dolby and DTS surround modes.
• HDMI output: DVDs can be upscaled to 1080p resolution when connected to compatible HDTVs.
• 5.1 surround sound: Each system includes five satellite speakers and a subwoofer.
• Bravia Theatre Sync: Sony’s implementation of HDMI-CEC lets the system interact with compatible Sony TVs when they’re connected via HDMI, automating some processes such as input switching.
• Digital Cinema Auto Calibration (DCAC): This is simply the company’s name for the built-in system that customizes the speaker levels to the particular sonics of your room.
• Dialogue Audio Enhancer: Otherwise known as “midnight mode,” this feature normalizes volume levels for late-night viewing.
• DM Port compatibility: All Bravia systems include support for Sony’s proprietary DM Port accessories: the TDM-NC1 Wi-Fi music streamer, the TDM-NW1 Sony Walkman MP3 player dock, and the TDM-BT1 Bluetooth adapter, all of which must be purchased separately.
• Outboard iPod dock: The fourth DM Port accessory, the TDM-IP1 iPod dock, is included.
• Wireless rear speakers: Each Bravia model includes an option to set up the two rear speakers wirelessly. (Whether the wireless speaker accessory is included or needs to be purchased separately varies from model to model.)
• S-AIR compatibility: New for 2008, the Bravia systems are compatible with Sony’s proprietary S-AIR wireless technology, meaning they can stream music to a small speaker system (the AIR-SA10) located elsewhere in the home. (Whether the AIR-SA10 and its companion transmitter is included or needs to be purchased separately varies from model to model.)

Specific details for each system are as follows:

Key features of the Sony DAV-HDX275 (shown above):

• Option to add a rear wireless speaker kit (WAHT-SA10)
• Option to add S-AIR transmitter (EZW-T100) with S-AIR Air Stations (AIR-SA10)
• Available in March for $300

Sony DAV-HDX279W

(Credit: Sony)

Key step-up features of the Sony DAV-HDX279W:

• Includes the rear wireless speaker kit (WAHT-SA10)
• Option to add S-AIR Air Station receiver/speaker (AIR-SA10)
• Available in March for $400

Sony Bravia DAV-HDX277WC

(Credit: Sony)

Key step-up features of the Sony DAV-HDX277WC:

• Includes one S-AIR Air Station receiver/speaker (AIR-SA10)
• Option to add wireless rear speaker kit (WAHT-SA10)
• Available in March for $400

Sony Bravia DAV-HDX576WF

(Credit: Sony)

Key step-up features of the Sony DAV-HDX576WF:

• Includes one S-AIR Air Station receiver/speaker (AIR-SA10)
• Includes wireless rear speaker kit (WAHT-SA10)
• Height adjustable floor standing speakers
• Available in March for $500

Unlike Panasonic and Samsung, Sony’s 2008 line-up doesn’t include a system with a built-in Blu-ray player. Instead, the company is offering some more traditional component-based HTIBs designed to be paired with its standalone Blu-ray players or the PlayStation 3.

Assistant Editor Jeff Bakalar contributed to this story.

Intel has introduced ?Skulltrail? as a special designed mother board for people that need a little bit extra CPU and graphic power. The board offers two CPU sockets and support both SLI and Crossfire. The processor you should get for this is the Core 2 Extreme QX 9775 and with two of these and maybe two Geforce 9800GX2 card you should have enough power to play the most games out there. The processor has 12 MB L2-cache, 1600FSB and runs on 3,2 GHz but can be clocked a lot if you want. The Mainboard will be on 650 bucks which is acceptable with todays low dollar value. If you plan to get two processors you should however prepare yourself to completely empty your wallet. If you plan to get this rig you should also use a 64-bit OS so that you can get past the 4 GB memory boarder.

I was in a pinch a few weeks ago, and Google’s Picasa software saved my skin. But now my warm glow of gratitude has begun wearing off, replaced by a simmering annoyance with camera makers for their profusion of proprietary raw formats.

Let me explain. I was covering the Photo Marketing Association trade show in Las Vegas, toting my Canon EOS Rebel XT camera to photograph products and people. For my personal photography I usually shoot in raw format to maximize the detail and flexibility, but for work purposes I use JPEG because it’s faster to process and CNET News.com graphics are too small to require top resolution.

This screenshot shows a raw image from an Olympus E-3 SLR in Google’s Picasa software. At right is the low-resolution JPEG preview, at left the garbled view after an incorrect decoding Google’s support for the E-3 is on the way.

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET Networks)

But I had a brief moment of panic when I discovered, on a tight deadline, that I’d photographed a Sony full-frame SLR press conference and accompanying photo gallery in raw only. I wasn’t happy, because I hadn’t installed any software for processing raw images on my laptop. I briefly considered downloading a trial version of Adobe Systems’ Photoshop Lightroom, which I use at home, but dreaded the time it would take to get myself to a network connection and install the software.

Then I remembered that Picasa supports some raw formats. Sure enough, it did the trick–after I made my usual end run around Canon, which annoyingly doesn’t include a mass storage driver on its cameras, requiring me to retrieve raw files using a separate flash card reader.

Picasa lacked some editing tools I like in Lightroom (and now Apple’s Aperture 2.0, too), but I wasn’t about to complain.

Until Wednesday.

That’s when I received an Olympus E-3 that I’ll be testing on an upcoming vacation.
The camera has been out since November, but Picasa still doesn’t support its raw images.

Raw-support challenges

Picasa showed the low-resolution JPEG preview fine, but as soon as I clicked on the thumbnail, the photo became a speckly mess of pixel gibberish.

For its part, Google said Thursday that E-3 raw support is coming. “We’re in the process of testing it and plan to support it soon,” the company said in a statement. Picasa uses Dave Coffin’s freely available dcraw software, which supports the E-3, but Google said it makes its own modifications “to make it run faster.”

It’s no surprise Google employs outside software for the complicated task. Olympus told me it leaves programmers on their own to reverse-engineer raw formats: “When asked, we will provide sample raw files to companies, but it is up to them to figure out what to do with them. Our raw format is not difficult, and anyone with any experience with graphic file formats will figure it out in a matter of seconds.”

For photographers, there are unpleasant consequences of camera makers’ opacity and non-standardization. Programmers from Adobe Systems, Apple, and other companies must toil constantly to support new cameras, and camera makers must develop and support their own software. And the obstreperous nature of raw can curtail the innovation of other programmers, too.

For example, software that can embed location data known as geotags in raw files is much rarer than software that supports JPEGs. Adding metadata such as titles, captions, ratings, and tags is another risky operation; Microsoft Vista can do this, but relies on camera makers to supply software to support their various raw formats.

A programmer’s plight
Sachin Garg, a programmer in India, is another example. He’s been working on software that can compress raw files more efficiently–about 20 percent to 60 percent more than those already compressed by the camera.

Programmer Sachin Garg

(Credit: Sachin Garg)

That’s work that conceivably could be useful for those of us with vast archives of raw images, but Garg said the difficulties of working with raw files makes it tough.

“I have started with Nikon’s NEF (raw format), and it’s a mess. What makes it worse is that even for this single format, there are variations based on each camera, and camera’s firmware version,” Garg said. “I have managed to read and compress the file, but re-creating the original file again is giving me nightmares.”

And that’s just one popular format. There are also cameras from Canon, Olympus, Fujifilm, Pentax, Sony, Panasonic, Samsung, Hasselblad, and others to contend with.

“It’s a much different ball game to write an algorithm (than just) trying to put it in a practically usable application,” Garg said. He understands the camera makers’ situation, though. “Looking at each format, one can see the technical reasons why different camera makers are doing things differently and that adopting a common standard can possibly limit the innovations they introduce in newer cameras.”

One possible alternative to the raw plight could be HD Photo, which Microsoft is trying to standardize as JPEG XR, a higher-end alternative to conventional JPEG. My guess is that this file format stands a reasonable chance of catching on–especially given the warm response from Adobe and more recently Canon–but even then it’s more likely only to intercept photographers just moving beyond JPEG rather than replacing raw.

That’s because HD Photo/JPEG XR requires the camera to process the image for de-mosaicking, noise reduction, sharpening, and white balance, all of which are “baked” into the image. For the folks who want total flexibility, they’ll stick with raw.

DNG to the rescue?

A more likely alternative is Adobe Digital Negative (DNG) format, a raw format whose specifications are openly shared if not a neutral industry standard. Adobe explicitly created DNG to deal with the raw format “tower of Babel.”

But larger camera makers have been reluctant to embrace DNG. It’s hard to get firm answers on exactly why not; I’d imagine a variety of factors are involved, ranging from not wanting to be reliant on Adobe or a fixed format to inadequacies of DNG to fully represent raw images. And Pentax, whose SLRs support both DNG and its own PEF raw format, told me that most customers shooting raw use PEF, so users apparently need more convincing, too.

Maybe Adobe just needs to do a little more marketing, standardize DNG, or come up with an improved version 2.0. But for now, the raw format mess shows no signs of being tidied up.

Now available with Sirius

(Credit: USTelematics)

The connected car got a little more connected today as USTelematics, maker of the Voyager in-car IPTV/ media player/ web browser/ mobile wifi router, announced that it had signed up Sirius as a content partner. The deal means that owners of the Voyager will be able to access Sirius channels through a subscription, even if their car stereo is not equipped with a satellite radio receiver. (They will, of course, have had to invest the $800-$2100 for a Voyager system in the first place.) For Sirius, which has been struggling to get approval for its proposed merger with XM Satellite Radio for over a year, the tie-up is another example of how it is branching out from its core in-car business of delivering radio channels via car stereo. At this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, it unveiled its Travel Link service, which offers live traffic, weather information, gas station prices, sports scores, and movie times to the car, while earlier this month, XM unveiled a new in-car weather service, which will debut on the 2009 Acura RL and TSX. It is a pretty safe bet that we can expect to see more creative offerings from Sirius and XM as they try to compete with the forthcoming reality of the internet-connected car.

It seems to be the latest fad among the SAP crowd. First, Shai Agassi raises $200 million for Project Better Place, which hopes to install electric charging stations and kick start the electric car industry.

Now Hasso Plattner, SAP’s founder, has raised a fund, approximately worth $45 million, to invest in start-ups in South Africa, according to publications in that country. A portion of the funds will go to clean-tech companies. Originally from Germany, Plattner currently owns golf courses in South Africa.

Like many nations (Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Spain, the U.S., China, and Japan), South Africa has set its sights on being a center for clean-technology development. It has universities, a government interested in creating high-tech exports, and quite a bit of sun. That’s important if you want to experiment with solar. South Africa also has a lot of experience in making liquid car fuel out of coal. During the Apartheid era, it was tough for the country to get oil. Thus, it erected Fischer-Tropsch plants. With oil trading around $100 a barrel, some believe that liquid fuel from coal could become popular. (The emissions on liquid coal, however, are not good.)

So far, however, South Africa’s main tech exports have been emigrants such as Elon Musk (Tesla Motors, SpaceX, PayPal) and Lyndon Rive (Solar City).

History never repeats itself exactly but rereading Kevin Johnson’s memo updating the troops on Microsoft’s bid to buy Yahoo, I was struck by the contrast with another software mega-merger saga that dominated headlines 13 years earlier.

As we reported on Friday, Johnson, who heads up Microsoft’s Platforms & Services division, detailed how a combination with Yahoo would have a tonic impact. Online advertising customers would gain a viable alternative to Google while Microsoft would carve out a bigger piece of a nearly $80 billion market.

Gerstner: Money was no object

(Credit: IBM)

In June 1995, IBM stunned Lotus with a unsolicited $3 billion buyout bid. At the time, Lotus was in a world of hurt. Sales of the company’s franchise product–its office applications suite–were slumping thanks to stepped-up competition from Microsoft. CEO Jim Manzi knew that the company’s future depended on Lotus Notes, the hot groupware product spearheaded by the company’s star developer, Ray Ozzie.

Unfortunately for Lotus, sales of Notes weren’t climbing fast enough to compensate for the accelerating sales slump elsewhere at Lotus. So when IBM launched its unsolicited tender officer, Lou Gerstner expected a welcoming response.

Manzi instead gave Big Lou the middle finger.

And so what followed was a week full of back-and-forth statements and head feints as the real negotiations played out in the back rooms. At one point, Gerstner got on his plane to pay a special call on Ozzie, whose team of developers worked outside the corporate headquarters in the Boston suburb of Beverly, Mass. (The biggest historical irony in all this is that Ozzie is now the go-to technology luminary at Microsoft.)

Whatever charm Gerstner used to convince Ozzie to stick around, it worked–that and a corporate decision by IBM to up its offer by a half billion dollars. Suddenly, Manzi was all smiles for the cameras, touting the combination with Big Blue as a big win for customers, shareholders, and employees. (Amazing how the same script winds up getting used time and again.)

I’ve often since wondered how Lotus might have fared if it remained an independent company. Would Notes really prove to be Lotus’ savior? Impossible to say, but my back-of-the-envelope recollection is that Microsoft was marshaling its muscle behind its own groupware product. Bill Gates wasn’t strong enough to shove around Gerstner, but he had already shown himself capable of outmaneuvering Manzi’s Lotus. My guess is that Lotus would have wound up no differently than WorldPerfect, a one-time software powerhouse also brought low by Microsoft.

Jerry Yang knows the history of the software business. In the absence of a white knight emerging, he doesn’t have a lot of good cards. So for the time being, playing hard to get may the best way to coax a higher bid out of an unwanted suitor. After all, it worked for Manzi.

With Quadro FX 3600M, Nvidia offers a graphic solution for the more demanding and professional users which works with graphics and video production. The solution is thecompanies new top model in its class. Here are some of the specs:

• 512 MB GDDR3
• 256-bit
• 51,2 GB/s memory bandwidth
• Max 70 Watt effect usage
• MXM v2.1A type-III
• OpenGL 2.-1 and DirectX 10 (SM 4.0)-support
• Cuda-support

The first machines on the market with this card will be HP Compaq 8710w og Dells Precision M6300.

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The Leica M8, the company’s first digital rangefinder camera, costs $5,500 without a lens.

(Credit: Leica)

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nLeica Camera, the German manufacturer of high-prestige but high-price photography equipment, has replaced its top executive, Steven Lee. n

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n”The supervisory board of Leica Camera AG today removed Steven K. Lee as member and chairman of the board of management of Leica Camera AG with immediate effect,” the company said in a brief statement Friday. n

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nThe board also named Andreas Kaufmann to be chairman of Leica Camera’s board of management until February 28, 2009. He and Andreas Lobejaeger will lead the company jointly, the company said. n

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nLeica was an influential brand in the 20th century, pioneering the use of 35mm film and supplying cameras to notable figures such as Henri Cartier-Bresson. However, the company has had some missteps making the transition from film to digital photography. n

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nLeica has a cultlike following for its equipment, and the company sets prices accordingly. The M8, its first digital member of its decades-old M family, costs about $5,500 with no lens. And though its core components are upgradable, the price tag for a new shutter and LCD cover upgrade announced recently is $1,775–about the price of an entire Nikon D300 SLR. n

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nAccording to a Leica representative quoted in Amateur Photographer, one of Kaufmann’s first priorities will be to “review all options for the M system’s future.” n

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nIn an interview earlier this month with Amateur Photographer, Lee hinted that Leica is working on an M8 upgrade that would give it a full-frame image sensor, which is the size of a 35mm film image. Leica’s M8 today, as well as most entry-level and midrange SLRs, use sensors about two thirds that size. n

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(Via 1001 Noisy Cameras.)

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SAN JOSE, Calif.–Silicon Valley is sparking a revolution in alternative-fuel autos, but it may take awhile–too long perhaps–to effect change in Detroit, according to a panel of auto executives.

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A group of electric and traditional carmakers spoke here Friday at the Joint Venture Silicon Valley conference about innovation, why alternative carmakers are attracted to the Valley, and whether nimble upstarts can overshadow the big Detroit automakers. The consensus was that Silicon Valley is commanding the attention of the auto world, whether it will dominate or not.

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“We’re not going to take over China or Detroit, but every carmaker has an outpost here and is watching what people are doing,” said Felix Kramer, founder of nonprofit plug-in hybrid initiative CalCars. “This can be a real incubation area for new technology in automotive.”

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To be sure, Silicon Valley is rife with change when it comes to the merger of technology and autos.

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Volkswagen, for example, recently funded Stanford University in order to develop a new car lab whose mission is to study “cutting-edge research in safety, comfort, and fun for the consumer driving the car,” said Sebastian Thrun, while speaking at an artificial intelligence conference Thursday night. The lab, which will open later this year, will focus on new technologies such as computer-assisted driving–for instance, a car that could park itself. Eventually, self-driving or smart cars could help make driving more efficient and safe, Thrun said.

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“When kids can drive themselves to soccer, and do away with the soccer parent, humanity will be better off,” Thrun said. n n

Elon Musk’s Tesla Motors, also based in Silicon Valley, is delivering its first production models of an electric two-seater roadster, for a price of nearly $100,000. It eventually plans to sell a four-door electric car for about half the price and then even more affordable models later.

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Another Palo Alto upstart called Project Better Place, founded by former SAP executive Shai Agassi, recently announced that it will team with Renault and Nissan car companies, along with the Israeli government, to develop electric cars and electric-battery stations in that nation. It has raised $200 million to produce lithium-ion batteries and the facilities to recharge those batteries–and its cars are expected to be ready by 2011.

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Google, based in Mountain View, also recently announced Recharge It, a project to convert hybrids to plug-in hybrids and test vehicle-to-grid technology, in which the vehicle’s battery powers the electrical grid. Milpitas-based OEMtek is charging people $12,500 to convert their Toyota Prius into a more efficient car (getting 100 miles per gallon vs. 45 miles per gallon) with a larger battery.

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San Dimas-based AC Propulsion, which makes an all-electric Scion eBox for $70,000, is also opening up an office in Palo Alto to service customers here, according to Tom Gage, CEO of AC Propulsion who spoke on the panel. (Gage drives an eBox, an electric car that gets 120 miles on one charge. The company’s first customer was actor Tom Hanks.) AC Propulsion also supplies technology to Tesla Motors.

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So why is Silicon Valley such a hotbed for alternative cars? It’s the customers.

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“The driving public here is among the most enlightened in environmental and policy issues,” Gage said.

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CalCars’ Kramer, added to the sentiment: “The plug-in hybrid is the first thing to come here because of popular demand,” he said, referring to the movement behind CalCars, Ourpower.org, and Google’s plug-in effort. “There’s a different customer here in the Valley, and that’s why we favor this area.”

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Backing up his point, 30 percent of the people in the audience said in a poll that they drove a hybrid to the conference.

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Byron Shaw, managing director of the Advanced Technology Office at General Motors and who’s based here, spoke on the panel about the goals of GM, which is one of the first major car companies to say that it will develop a plug-in hybrid. Shaw said that the company plans to introduce the first rendition of the plug-in Chevy Volt in 2010 along with similar versions for the Saturn. He said that GM will also sell a bevy of alternative-fuel vehicles in the next decade, including electric cars, fuel cell cars, and vehicle-to-grid plug-ins.

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“There’s an opportunity to bring Silicon Valley and the auto industry together because the two don’t always march to the same drum,” he said. “We have a wealth of experience of building vehicles, but there are things changing that now, such as the conventional cost of fossil fuels. In the same way Silicon Valley has driven down costs of technology, it may happen with the auto industry, too.”

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That said, GM is slower than the technology industry, he said, and the company is driven by a fickle consumer. One consideration, for example, is that the battery for a hybrid plug-in must operate well in cold climates like Minnesota as well as warmer places like Phoenix. “The supply base just isn’t there for electric vehicles,” he said.

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AC Propulsion’s Gage said that after working in Detroit for eight years, he’s seen that car companies can change for the consumer, but it will be especially challenging in the alternative fuel market.

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“It’s a major transformation for the car companies,” he said, “the power train is different; fuel sources are different. We have to start small and build a market base, and it has to appeal to consumers. To come back to this, Silicon Valley is more advanced in this area. Grassroots efforts will continue.”

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CalCars’ Kramer went further with his criticism.

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“They’re being too slow. It’s a major wedge for climate change. They need to learn about versioning–getting cars on the road and seeing what people like,” Kramer said. n n

The panelists finished by predicting how many cars would be electric or plug-in hybrid by 2028. Two of the men, Shaw and Kramer, forecast that it would be 80 percent of cars on the road by then. Gage was more conservative at only 20 percent. The question is: Will that be enough to turn the tide of global warming?

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