You think your 4GB SD card for our digital camera is large? Well, it is, especially when compared with a few years ago when it was a big deal to have a 512MB one. But how about 160GB storage space for the camera? Now that's really large.

Digital Foci today introduced Photo Safe II, a portable photo storage device that can spare your laptop from a photo-shooting trip. » Read the rest of the entry..

Julia Brasil, a game art and design student at The Art Institute of California-San Francisco, is generally unimpressed with the lack of women in the gaming industry and female game characters who lack depth. Brasil hopes to do her part change that as the first-ever winner of Sony Online Entertainment's SOE Gamers in Real Life, or G.I.R.L., competition.

Earlier this month, Brasil, 20, beat out nearly 100 competitors to win a video gamer's dream package. Not only did she get a $10,000 scholarship toward her education, but she also landed a 10-week internship at the Sony Online Entertainment studio of her choice in Denver, San Diego, Seattle, or Austin, Texas.

The Brazilian-born student hopes her internship will help her narrow her career choices and bring to Sony the knowledge of a young, international woman gamer. » Read the rest of the entry..

Despite the best efforts of Apple and AT&T, it appears that the latest version of the iPhone has been unlocked via the same method as used on the original iPhone.

A Brazilian blog, TechGuru, posted the first report of it. Gizmodo checked it out, and said the method involves using a special SIM card adapter. It tricks the phone into thinking it's on an approved network.

"This method forges the International Mobile Subscriber Identity, making the phone believe it's working in the network in which it's supposed to work," Gizmodo writes. » Read the rest of the entry..

Until under-thirtysomethings outgrow them, direct-to-YouTube camcorders will continue to flourish. And everyone wants a piece of the pie that was pretty much baked by Flip Video, with products like its latest Mino. Some efforts seem rather cynical and halfhearted like Samsung's recent attempt to remarket an old design into a market ruled by a different aesthetic. Others, like Kodak's just-announced Zi6, seem promising. But Kodak also misses the point in a few ways. » Read the rest of the entry..

Well, maybe not quite 007. I mean, for one thing, could you imagine James Bond walking around with a huge flashlight sticking out of his back pocket? Well, maybe the Timothy Dalton 007, but he was never that cool to begin with. Dalton did redeem himself in my eyes with Hot Fuzz, however.

Anyway, before this becomes a huge diatribe about how Daniel Craig is second only to Sean Connery as the best Bond, let's get back to the issue at hand. Swann Communications, a company that specializes in security monitoring devices, today announced a covert surveillance tool, the FlashlightDVR. The tool combines a working flashlight (with three degrees of brightness), color camera and Digital Video Recorder (DVR) all in one. In addition to being able to take pics, the FlashlightDVR also records video in one of two ways. Either internally, via the included 128MB flash memory, or externally through an SD card which is sold separately. The DVR in the device uses MPEG4 and records at a resolution of 640x480. The recorded content can be transferred to a PC via the embedded USB port. The camera also includes a night-vision mode, which is appropriate if you're a Cheaters staff member waiting to record a late-night hookup. There is also a built-in mic if you need just that much more incriminating evidence. » Read the rest of the entry..

Updated 6/23/08 with information about the sensors. In an interesting turn, JVC's newest hard-disk-based HD camcorders--the Everio GZ-HD40, GZ-HD30, and GZ-HD10--will support AVCHD in addition to its traditional MPEG-2 formats. This is a great idea, at least for the interim, since it theoretically provides you with more flexibility in your video-editing options--especially if its AVCHD files aren't supported right out of the gate--and allows it to deliver high bit rate video beyond the 24Mbps maximum for AVCHD. Plus, the camcorders include FireWire (i.Link) interfaces, which many of today's models have dropped, for dealing with MPEG-2's HDV-compatible datastream. » Read the rest of the entry..

As it inevitably had to do, Sony today announced the flash-memory version of its HDR-SR11 hard-disk-based HD camcorder, replacing the older CX7. A tad smaller than the CX7 by one or two tenths of an inch in every dimension, it uses the same 12x zoom lens and 5.6-megapixel ClearVid CMOS sensor that drives the SR11 (and its line mates, the SR10 and SR12). Since it's smaller than the SR models, it uses the same 2.7-inch LCD as its predecessor. » Read the rest of the entry..

In an effort to improve upon the light sensitivity characteristics of its prosumer AVCHD camcorders, Panasonic has switched to a new three-chip MOS system dubbed "3MOS" for its newly announced HDC-SD100 and HDC-HS100 models. The company claims the new sensors provide about twice the photo-sensitive area as the CCDs used by its last-generation model, the HDC-SD9. However, Panasonic did not indicate the resolution of the chips; it's likely relatively low, as most three-chip solutions tend to be. As I guessed, the chips are fairly low resolution--520,000 pixels for 16:9 video--and they're tiny, 1/6-inch versions. The new models also have a new 12x zoom lens, extended over the 10x zoom in the SD9. (Since most of our complaints about the SD9 revolved around the lack of sharpness and poor low-light quality, I'm quite curious to see how the new models fare.) » Read the rest of the entry..

Time was, a MiniDV camcorder would set you back $300 minimum. Now you can scoop up a JVC GR-DA30 for a measly $119.99 (plus 10 bucks or so for shipping). It's a manufacturer-recertified unit with a less-than-stellar warranty, but it's also a pretty impressive camcorder for the money.

The GR-DA30 features a 30x optical zoom (!), a sliding 2.4-inch LCD on the rear of the body (!), and a battery JVC says will give you 115 minutes of shooting time (again, !). It also promises video-noise reduction in low-light environments, though I'm skeptical about that: I've yet to see a single-CCD camcorder that didn't produce considerable noise when the lighting is dim. » Read the rest of the entry..

We've seen our fair share of Internet video cameras in our time, and the one thing they all have in common is the fact they're all either rubbish, broken in some way or just plain ... sucky.

One Internet video camera that doesn't fall into any of these categories is the Y-cam. Not only is it flippin' gorgeous and built like a brick house, but it's also packed with features and extremely easy to set up--something rival camera manufacturers should note. » Read the rest of the entry..