It’s a particularly grim Monday outside, but no matter, as right here, we’ve got some cheery tech news for you, including an OS X friendly Kinect hack and the latest Android phone gossip. Read on through for it all in our roundup.
January, 2011
Is this the Samsung Galaxy Ace, or is it the Samsung Galaxy S mini? Mobile World Congress is right around the corner, and we’ll be reporting from the front line, is this the successor to the Samsung Galaxy S that Samsung will be announcing? Click through for the full, slightly pixelated (because it is so tiny) product shot.
The LG Optimus 2X was one of a bunch of steroid pumped Android phones on show at CES two weeks ago, and while it’s not set to go on sale for a few months yet, we’re already seeing its hardware bear fruit. HD fruit. The LG Optimus 2X is the first phone to pack in 1080p resolution video recording, and now a sample of it has hit the interwebs.
Our best iPhone apps column rounds up the coolest iPhone apps every week but sometimes one is so cool it deserves its own story. Trimensional fits the bill. The iPhone 4 3D scanning app uses the iPhone’s front camera to scan your face or any object you put in front of it. To scan in 3D you simply need to whack up the brightness on your iPhone then turn the lights right down, it uses the light and some clever algorithms to create a 3D model. Check out the video after the break to see the iPhone 4 3D scanner in action…
Another Kinect hack that pleases us greatly has popped up this morning. The Unknown Pleasures Kinect hack creates an interactive version of the Joy Division album cover on your TV screen with your body’s movement changing the depth and movement of the waves in the picture. It’s a creative and beautiful use of Kinect and you can see it in action after the break…
The Nikon D7000 is Nikon’s latest consumer-professional crossover camera, offering a raft of features at a price that won’t bankrupt. Though aimed at the amateur enthusiast photographer, the feature set allows for plenty of customisation should you want to get a little more hands-on. Amongst its feature list the D7000 offers a 16.2 megapixel sensor, full HD movie recording and image stabilisation, as well as dual SD card slots for maximum storage capacity. It is however not without fault. Let’s delve a little deeper into the features to find out where it shines and where it falls down, in our full Nikon D7000 review.
VideoSurf seems like voodoo magic, it’s essentially Shazam for video. The Videosurf mobile app analyses any video clip of a TV show or movie that you capture to identify the actor in the scene and offer up info from the web about them alongside related clips. We really want to have a go with it but right now it’s restricted to Verizon in the US on “select 4G smartphones” with no clue of when it’ll go international. Click through to see the VideoSurf video in action…
It seems Facebook just can’t resist changing things. It has announced on its developer blog that it will make “a user’s address and mobile phone number accessible as part of the User Graph object.” Translating that from Facebookeese, that means third-party applications such as Farmville will now be able to request a significant new chunk of your contact information. Facebook says: “Because this is sensitive information…permissions must be explicitly granted to your application by the user via our standard permission dialogs.”
We cannot see many good reasons why you’d want to do that. The permissions dialog box is not that clear though and some users are likely to grant permission without quite realising what they’ll be giving out. Click the headline and let us know: are you bothered by Facebook allowing apps to get at address and phone number details?
Out now | £free | Facebook