Technofile: Ever wondered why, in this age of wireless mobiles and PCs, you still have to connect your digital camera to your PC with a cable?
Well, camera makers are waking up to this situation by packing their latest products with wireless solutions. The latest is Nikon.
This September sees the launch of the D200 professional range and the the 510 Euro Coolpix P1 and 407 Euro Coolpix P2, the company's first Wi-Fi-enabled cameras.
The upshot is being able to send images from the camera or its memory card wirelessly to a PC. The P1 can take eight mega-pixel images, while the P2 takes five.
Both feature a 3.5x zoom capability and powerful 36-126mm lens.
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The Berlin gadget fest mysteriously titled "IFA" this month has seen new products from Samsung, which is concentrating on products that feature integrated digital TV tuners. This is an area to watch as technology makers start to throw the ability to view TV and radio into almost everything bar the toaster. Also at IFA was Humax, the smart Koreans who are maxing out on combining high-definition LCD TVs and hard disk video recorders. Speaking of which, Hitachi has brought out a DVD recorder with built-in terabyte hard disk - which we will wait some time for in Europe.
Since scientists have said the whole of human knowledge would fit into a terabyte, having one in the living room will be a surreal experience!
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Surround sound fans will like Yamaha's budget version of its sound projector, the YSP-800, coming in at around €877. The unit can reproduce the soundscapes of concert halls, cinemas and stadiums.
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It's going to be impossible to escape the launch of the PlayStation Portable (PSP) over the next month, so you may as well grin and bear it. Which is exactly what many prospective owners will be doing, as the majority of sale units have been preordered, making it tough to actually buy the things in the shops. The mobile games machine and web browser will be a test of the emerging trend towards mobile media devices.
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Your mobile phone and digital cameras should pack an even heavier memory punch soon. Samsung (yes, them again) is trialling new 1 GB and 2GB MMC cards, which allow data transfer of up 52 megabytes a second, 20 times faster than previous MMC memory.
