JVC are already one of my favourite camcorder companies, not least because they eliminated the devil that is mini-DV tapes and all the crap that goes with them.
The Everio range broke new ground when JVC scooped out tape mechanisms and all the other things that have broken on me in the past, and replaced them with a hard disk drive. So simple, so good. Now, the latest addition to the range has been launched in the UK, boosting the average quality of existing models by introducing a 3-CCD image device: one for red, blue and green. What you get is a 5MP camcorder that can take 16:9 widescreen DVD quality movies in native resolution. Photos also get a life to 2560 x 1920 pixels. The 30GB HDD inside allows you to store up to seven hours of DVD movie-quality video or 10 hours of DVD camcorder-quality video.
That’s 22 single-sided DVD camcorder discs. It weighs just over 1lb with battery and lens cap and will set you back a shade under £750.
Oregon Scientific hired famous (to someone) designer, Stefano Giovannoni, to come up with their latest of their 123423523452345998 weather monitoring clocks. The guy is a sci-fi fanatic, and you can see the influence on the front panel's Star War-ish design. It reads off indoor and outdoor temperature, humidity, a forecast for the day, and your X-wing's remaining shield power. The atomic clock is self setting, and sleepyheads will want to note that the snooze lasts only 8-minutes. (When someone makes a 2-hour snooze button, I'll be happier.) – Brian Lam
The two sexy Victoria's secret ladies, Allesandra Ambrosio and Gisele Bundchen, were caught backstage at a Victoria's Secret event woman-handling some Apple hardware. This picture is excruciatingly confusing for Apple fanboys. What are they supposed to look at, the women, or the black and white Apple MacBooks? Their brains—and pants—asplode at the possibilities.
By the way Leonardo, stay away from Gisele. She's already got half my last name, which means I'm halfway there to legally being her husband. – Jason Chen
Is this the new GSM Treo 700 that's coming in Europe? Or is it a completely new model? We're not sure, but the guy who posted these pics has a few things to say about this Palm OS-based Treo.
He says there's no right shift key, it has 64MB of internal memory, it's the same size as the Treo 650, and it feels good in his hand.
Another posting on the same site says they changed the battery since the 650 so it's thinner, it has the same camera as the 650, and stereo speakers(?) to listen to music. The Palm OS version is 5.49106 compared to the Treo 650's 5.40017. It's somehow related to the Japanese mobile company Access that bought out PalmSource. – Jason Chen
Two more anorexic phones are heading to the T-Mob, as the FCC has just cleared them for departure. The Samsung T629 is a slider with a microSD slot and 70MB of internal storage. It has a 2-megapixel camera and probably won't have TV-out capabilities like the Samsung D840 it's based off of, seeing as T-Mobile has nothing going in the mobile TV area.
The T519 is a candybar phone that looks similar to the Moto SLVR, but is 7mm thick and has 80MB of internal storage and probably a microSD slot as well. This one, like the T629, has a 2 megapixel camera for snapping pics. – Jason Chen
Pics of the so far unannounced Sony DSC-T50 surfaced on i4u from an anonymous tipster. The T50 has the general form factor of the T-series, but features a 7.2 megapixel sensor and 3x optical zoom, combined with "Super SteadyShot". There's also a built in slideshow with music feature for annoying friends and family.
The T50 should be available in October in silver, black and red. – Jason Chen
The Eclipse II we saw at E3 from Saitek is finally shipping. The keyboard features a backlight, similar to the ones people love on the MacBook Pro laptops, but in three different colors: purple, red and blue. There's a dimmer switch on the keyboard to switch colors and adjust the intensity.
In addition to the lighting, the 'board comes with four large rubber feet so it doesn't go sliding, and an integrated wrist-rest for carpal-tunnel prevention. Available now for £35. It should hold you over until the Microsoft Ultimate Keyboard is released. – Jason Chen
This DVD-HDD Hybridcam is only available in Japan as part of their "Wooo" line, but damn if it doesn't make us say Wooo too. The disc accepts 8cm DVDs as well as SD cards for removable memory. However, it has a bonus of having an 8GB hard disk in there in order to seamlessly transition to disk when the removable disc runs out of space.
The 1/3" CCD imager has 3310K gross pixels and 2180K effective pixels in 4:3 video recording mode, and 3.05 megapixels in still mode. The lens has a focal length of 6.1-61mm, a maximum aperture of F1.8-3.0, and a filter diameter of 37mm. With a 10x optical zoom and a 2.7" LCD, numerous manual control options, and onboard features like a video flash and external microphone jack, the DZ-HS303 offers an unusually extensive array of features for a consumer DVD camcorder.
Compared to Sony's hard drive-only camcorders, like their upcoming DCR-SR80, which have 60GB, Hitachi's offering comes up a bit short. However, for those who still need the convenience of being able to swap in and out discs, the DZ-HS303 is available in Japan August 30th for
No rebooting with Boot Camp and no Parallels software required to make these Cider-enhanced Windows games run on Mac. The only requirement is for game developers to include the Cider software in their game-builds for Windows, and Cider will handle all the translation between Windows and OS X. No major rebuild and development required on the game-developer's part.
One thing that makes Cider different is that the game is effectively "wrapped" with TransGaming's technology. Users pop in a disc, install the game, and run it just as they would a standard Mac OS X application. But instead of Mac OS X, the game remains a Windows application. Cider, meanwhile, translates on the fly the Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that the game needs to call in order to work.
Interesting, but Mac games are already slower than their windows counterparts (Like World of Warcraft for example), and if there's going to be interpreting between the two APIs that may slow it down even more. Cider's people say that users may see "10 to 15 percent lower frame rates" compared to native OS X games. We'll wait and see whether Cider will be more practical than just rebooting into Windows via Boot Camp. – Jason Chen
Gang members in Port Elizbeth, South Africa are using cameraphones for a different purpose. In the past we have heard of criminals being caught by cameraphoning bystanders, but this is a whole new ballgame. The criminals are photographing possible victims inside of banks who withdraw a lot of money. They are then sending the photo to another gang member outside who will stalk the person and eventually rob them. The police officials are urging banks to enforce a no cellphone policy.
Come on! First they get rid of cellphones in gyms, killing off my voyeur porn business, and now banks! My site, banktellerbabes.com is destined for failure! On a serious note, it is kind of shitty that criminals are finally getting smarter when it comes to theft. What happened to the good 'ole days of purse snatching or the yank & shank? Image courtesy of Livingroom.org– Travis Hudson
The Red Ferret guys said it right. Aren't all mousepads roll-up versions? Regardless this mousepad is designed for the heavy travelers who desperately need the company of a mousepad but think that regular mousepads take up too much room. This £10 pad lies on the desk, pulls out when needed and sucks back up when you are ready to store it away. Notice my italicizing of the word sucks in the previous sentence? It was foreshadowing because the final verdict: this mousepad sucks. – Travis Hudson
Over in Japan, Kyosho has announced the upcoming availability of an enhanced, roided-up version of its Manoi AT01 robot, the Manoi PF01. Compared to the previous Manoi, this version will be better in every aspect: taller, heavier and with more bells and whistles than ever before to keep you entertained. Part of this is because of the adoption of a new type of battery. Unlike the old Nickel Hyride battery that is more common, this Manoi will use a Lithium Polymer batter, which provides not only longer battery life, but is lighter, too. Isn't that special?
The Manoi PF01 will be available in Japan this November, but no pricing details are known right now. – Nicholas Deleon
Here is a quick and handy way to mount almost any cellphone into a car cup holder. All you need is an angle brace, three neoprene washers, a threaded rod, cable ties, one of those cheapy universal cellphone belt clips, a cup holder and plaster of paris. It may seem like a lot, but a majority of these things can be found around the house. Basically you are creating an angled mount for the cellphone and sticking it in a cup filled with plaster of paris. If you are handy enough you could ditch the cup/plaster and use the angled brace to mount it somewhere else in your car. Or you could just get a Bluetooth headset, but who am I to tell you how to use your cell on the move. – Travis Hudson
More a gimmick or Halloween prop than anything, the Dr. Who Cyberman Helmet changes has three voice settings and makes you look like a Cyberman from Dr. Who—we've never actually seen the show. The product's okay, but the review was so cute we couldn't not show it. This is the same reviewer Susi from Shiny Shiny that reviewed the Oakley O-ROKRs. – Jason Chen
Oh god, oh god, oh god. I am wetting my pants over here. (No, I'm not a satellite radio fanboy, I promise) This is the Soloist Universal Media Dock. It's beautiful, isn't it? This dock will utilize the universal dock adapter that SIRIUS has began using on their current Sportster 4 receivers and all future receivers to come. In addition to working with SIRIUS receivers this dock also has an auxiliary input for any other music playing devices—iPod, anyone?
The Soloist dock has NXT SurfaceSound flat speakers and a 10-watt-per-channel Tripath amp for all of your rocking needs. It also includes an alarm clock feature. It should be available in September for £80—what a deal! Don't worry, we will have a hands-on review as soon as possible. – Travis Hudson
Surely everyone out there accidentally detonates their MP3 player from time to time, right? I know I do. The YoTank MP3 player cases are milled from solid blocks of aluminum and can stand a RPG or mortar shell explosion 85 percent of the time. Jokes aside this is actually a good invention for our troops serving overseas that treasure their MP3 players. They make cases for the iPod nano, video, mini and the Creative Zen Vision:M. Prices range from £20 to £40. – Travis Hudson
Here's a variation on that Virtual Keyboard that's been floating around for a few years: the Virtual Piano from Digital Information Development (DID) uses a highly portable red semiconductor laser module to project a keyboard onto any surface. The device then automagically detects the position of your hands and plays the resulting music through an onboard speaker, but if it's anything like the Virtual Keyboard, it's flaky.
There is good reason why the Virtual Keyboard took so long to get to market, and when it finally did, it was not the huge hit its developers had hoped. There's no touch sensitivity and it feels just like what it is: typing on a table. This is an even bigger drawback when you're talking about playing music. We're thinking this Virtual Piano is another one of those devices that's much more impressive as demoware than as an actual product. – Charlie White
A lithium-ion battery testers says that, the 7,000-cell battery found in the electric-powered Tesla roadster may lead to failure problems in the future. "If there are 7,000 cells, and there's one in ten million failures, you do the math in terms of how many vehicles are going to have a cell problem," said the tester, Dan Doughty. The problem is, of course, exploding batteries. Since the Tesla is gaining traction as being the first affordable electric car (the family sedan for model year 2008 should be around £25,000), images of exploding cars piling up on America's highways, filling the evening news are just slightly unsettling. – Nicholas Deleon
During our latest coverage of the Zune, we'd been getting a sneaking feeling that the Microsoft MP3 player wouldn't have Video. They haven't been talking about video, their plans for video, and all the neat things they could be doing with video—it's all been audio. But the lack of video does come as a surprise with the Zune's bigger-than-the-5G-iPod display.
In this he-said-she-said chain, we're hearing that Bloomberg TV is saying the New York Post is claiming Microsoft is pushing their video on the Zune off launch, and only challenging Apple on the audio front this year. And of course, Apple fan sites are already rubbing it in:
With the news of Zune not having video features at launch, you could already begin laughing at what the media had prematurely labeled as Microsoft's iPod-Killer. It's vaporware, all over again.
We've still got hope for the Microsoft player. – Jason Chen
Every once in a while we'll post a rather risque babe shot here at the Giz. Some of the more squeamish or lawsuit-prone beatches at your workplace might become uncomfortable if they steal a glance at your screen while reading one of these posts, so we have the perfect solution to that problem: Work Friendly, a website that lets you enter the URL of that favorite but sometimes not-safe-for-work site, takes out the images and makes it look exactly like an innocent Microsoft Word document on your screen.
Notice the graphic above, showing a Gizmodo post I wrote yesterday that was accompanied by a rather erotic photo of a muddied-up babe, which some readers said earned them dirty looks from prudish colleagues. Looks pretty tame now, doesn't it? Now you're getting it. There's even a Boss Key that substitutes corporate-looking text for whatever it was you were reading that might've been objectionable. Great way to read the Giz on the sly. – Charlie White
JVC are already one of my favourite camcorder companies, not least because they eliminated the devil that is mini-DV tapes and all the crap that goes with them. 
Editor and Contributor | Martin Lynch
Contributor | Tamlin Magee
