A ZOOM LENS YOU CAN DOWNLOAD
Although the iPhone has many features to offer, it lacks one particularly handy tool: a zoom lens for its camera.
That’s what makes Camera Zoom worth checking out. The app adds a 4X digital zoom to the iPhone.
The app is easy enough to use — just move a slider on the screen to the desired magnification and touch the camera picture. You can position the slider along any border of the screen, and photos are saved in your photo album.
Camera Zoom works like other digital zooms, basically by blowing up just a portion of the picture you see in the viewfinder. That does mean that the more you zoom, the more degraded the picture quality. Your shots will get an increasingly noisy grain and distorted colors as you approach maximum magnification. That noise becomes more pronounced in lower-light photos.
While you can get the same effect by blowing up and cropping a picture on your computer (maybe even with a slightly better result), Camera Zoom has one major advantage: it’s right in your camera.
PANASONIC’S PORTABLE BLU-RAY PLAYER
Mark this day in your calendar. On June 1, 2009, Blu-ray officially jumped the shark — and you can thank Panasonic for that.
On June 8, the consumer electronics company announced it was bringing to market the DMP-B15, the world’s first portable Blu-ray player. You read that right. Stunning high-def video and 5.1-surround sound on an 8.9-inch screen, with mini stereo speakers.
Let me file that under gizmos you don’t need. Nix that — US$800 gizmos you don’t need.
I bet even Panasonic views this product as more of a high-end engineering exercise than a truly viable product. Who needs hi-def at 9 inches? And sure, the B15 can also connect to your HDTV screen with an HDMI cable, but why not just get a standard Blu-ray player for half the price and be done with it?
Panasonic’s own DMP-BD60 does everything the portable player does: It can get you online and access BD Live content via Panasonic’s Viera Cast service, and it costs US$250. At that price, you can use the money you save opting out of the B15 to buy all those costly Blu-ray movies.
DEVICE PUTS A NEW SPIN ON WII SPORTS GAMES
Q: What’s this Wii MotionPlus I’ve been hearing about?
A: Wii MotionPlus is a small add-on that snaps onto the bottom of a Nintendo Wii Remote, increasing its ability to sense motion. It will be particularly useful for sports games, where hand and arm motion count. It contains a sensor that instantaneously measures the angular velocity (the rate at which an object turns) of a hand or arm. So, throwing a Frisbee is tricky, just like the real thing. According to Nintendo, you’ll be able to buy one for about US$20. Games in the works include Virtua Tennis 2009, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10, and EA Sports Grand Slam Tennis.
Q: How much do extra sets of controls cost?
A: About US$55, which includes a Wii Remote and Nunchuk.
Q: Which is the correct term — Wii Remote or Wiimote?
A: According to Nintendo, the official term is “Wii Remote” and it connects to the “Nunchuk.” According to
Google search results, “Wiimote” is a popular nickname.
A NEW VOICE FROM YAHOO
Yahoo has added its voice-enabled search program to its iPhone application.
Although the new capability will eventually arrive on an iPhone through an update, the impatient can go into the iTunes app store and download the free Yahoo feature to get the update right away.
Voice recognition, called oneSearch, is already available for BlackBerry, Nokia and Windows Mobile phones. The Google app for the iPhone also has voice recognition.
But all the other features found on the Yahoo iPhone app will not be available for the other phones. Yahoo has shelved its Yahoo Mobile for Smartphones that was intended as an all-in-one product to consolidate information, social networking and mail from several sites and aggregate it into a single window.
Individual widgets from the project will be released to different phones over time, the company said.
In the meantime, iPhone owners can have the complete Yahoo mobile browser experience. That currently includes a few flaws with voice recognition. In a test, it worked well for search, but it failed several times in organizing a customized page called My Interests.
Sept.16 to Sept. 22 The “anti-communist train” with then-president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) face plastered on the engine puffed along the “sugar railway” (糖業鐵路) in May 1955, drawing enthusiastic crowds at 103 stops covering nearly 1,200km. An estimated 1.58 million spectators were treated to propaganda films, plays and received free sugar products. By this time, the state-run Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台糖, Taisugar) had managed to connect the previously separate east-west lines established by Japanese-era sugar factories, allowing the anti-communist train to travel easily from Taichung to Pingtung’s Donggang Township (東港). Last Sunday’s feature (Taiwan in Time: The sugar express) covered the inauguration of the
The corruption cases surrounding former Taipei Mayor and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) head Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) are just one item in the endless cycle of noise and fuss obscuring Taiwan’s deep and urgent structural and social problems. Even the case itself, as James Baron observed in an excellent piece at the Diplomat last week, is only one manifestation of the greater problem of deep-rooted corruption in land development. Last week the government announced a program to permit 25,000 foreign university students, primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, to work in Taiwan after graduation for 2-4 years. That number is a
In a stark demonstration of how award-winning breakthroughs can come from the most unlikely directions, researchers have won an Ig Nobel prize for discovering that mammals can breathe through their anuses. After a series of tests on mice, rats and pigs, Japanese scientists found the animals absorb oxygen delivered through the rectum, work that underpins a clinical trial to see whether the procedure can treat respiratory failure. The team is among 10 recognized in this year’s Ig Nobel awards (see below for more), the irreverent accolades given for achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.” They are not
This Qing Dynasty trail takes hikers from renowned hot springs in the East Rift Valley, up to the top of the Coastal Mountain Range, and down to the Pacific Short vacations to eastern Taiwan often require choosing between the Rift Valley with its pineapple fields, rice paddies and broader range of amenities, or the less populated coastal route for its ocean scenery. For those who can’t decide, why not try both? The Antong Traversing Trail (安通越嶺道) provides just such an opportunity. Built 149 years ago, the trail linked up these two formerly isolated parts of the island by crossing over the Coastal Mountain Range. After decades of serving as a convenient path for local Amis, Han settlers, missionaries and smugglers, the trail fell into disuse once modern roadways were built