A worker adjusts glasses in an attempt to break the world record for the “Largest Champagne Fountain” in the shopping center Wijnegem near Antwerp, Jan. 25, 2008. The 7 metre (22.9 feet) high pyramid will contain more than 43,000 glasses and weigh 8,750 kg (19,290 pounds) to set a new record.

At the beginning of each year, the factory R.S. Owens & Company initiates a particularly important manufacturing order - the American Film Academy Award statuettes “Oscar”. 75 tin statues covered 24 - carat gold. Six weeks of work. 15 stages of production.

© Scanpix

The Japanese Fujitsu company introduces the F705i, a 3G mobile phone that is said to be the world’s thinnest with its impressive 13.7mm in thickness. The phone is also waterproof and can take a 30 minute dip at 1 meters depth without being damaged. It features a 1.3 megapixel camera with “Quick Zoom” and can be used as a videophone.

More photos of the Fujitsu F705i at Akihabara News.

Source: Geeky Gadgets

This is how it looks like …

Construction is planned to be finished by the beginning of the Summer Olympic Games of 2008.

While some had expected Google to come out with an iPhone-killing G-Phone, the company’s announcement in November of the Android mobile platform is something far more sweeping, and it has ramifications for IT.

To show that Android is no pipe dream, Google trotted out scores of partners in the initiative, including handset vendors, carriers and software providers. What’s most interesting is that the Linux-based platform will be open source (under the Apache license) and free of charge.

So, why is Google doing this? It aspires to get its applications into the mobile sphere, but right now there’s just too much platform fragmentation. Even Java on one handset is not like Java on another. Lacking a single, strong platform to build on, Google wants to create one. That’s why it isn’t coming out with its own hardware or tying Android to one carrier.

The cost of Android (there is none!) is going to make it attractive to both handset vendors and carriers. And there are no strings attached other than a very important agreement not to fragment the platform. Google will offer a suite of mobile applications for Android, but it won’t require that the apps be used. In theory, you could see Android handsets with Yahoo Mail and Live Search, but no Google services at all.

If Google delivers on its vision, the impact to consumers could be huge. The mass market is finally embracing more functionality in mobile devices, but at the same time, carriers and handset vendors are looking to cut costs. Android might bridge that gap. And Google has the corporate heft to prevent the market from fragmenting, so it could succeed where other Linux implementations have failed.

Is Google making a smart move? To answer that, consider a bit of alternative history. Suppose that Linux had been available at the time that Microsoft came out with Windows NT. Now suppose that IBM decided to offer Linux for free to PC vendors along with a core suite of applications. How different would the PC business be today? Oh, and there are a lot more phones out there than there are PCs.

But, of course, business users are not consumers, and corporate IT will have a different take on Android. Google will need to articulate why business users should embrace this platform. At the moment, a lot is missing for business deployment. There was no announcement that Android would support Exchange synchronization, be compatible with Office applications or allow central device management. Google’s mobile competitors already have solutions for these things that work well. Enterprise developers will want to keep an eye on Android, but it’s not something they’ll embrace in the short term.

Still, IT cannot ignore last year’s big developments in the mobile market. A year ago, neither Google nor Apple was a player, and today they are two of the most relevant and talked-about companies in the mobile world. Things are moving fast, and IT has to pay attention as the combatants fire one salvo after another.

Source: Computerworld

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Honestly -I’m onboard

The Samsung F490 has been launched a wek ago, but not at CES. As expected, the touch-based phone from Samsung looks pretty. The cellphone has a 3.2-inch 262,000 color touchscreen, 5 megapixel camera and supports HSDPA at 3.6Mbps. No release date yet for the US, but it looks like it will reach Europe first for a whopping $734 without contract.

Tri band GSM (900/1800/1900), UMTS 2100, HSDPA 3.6 Mbps 3.2&Prime 262K Color 16:9 Wide Full Touch Display with Haptics feedback Croix interface 5 mpx camera, video recording (MPEG4, QVGA at 15 fps) Front camera for video calls Video playback at 30 fps 130 MB of Internal memory Built-in mobile Google apps microSD card slot standard 3.5 mm headphone jack Bluetooth 2.0 (A2DP+AVRCP), USB 2.0 Dimensions: 115 x53.5 x11.8 mm Weight: 102g

[Gizmodo]

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Google’s Picasa site can show a map sprinkled with thumbnails of a photo album’s pictures.

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET Networks)

Readers of this blog will have inferred I’m a fan of geotagging–in fact, I’m trying to label all my photos with the tags that show where the picture was taken, even though the geotagging process is complicated.

I’m betting that much of the value of geotagging lies in the future, for example when I might have a harder time remembering which hike a particular picture came from. But can anything useful be done with those geotagged photos today?

Based on my scrutiny of a handful of sites–Google’s Picasa, Yahoo’s Flickr, SmugMug (the only fee-required site), Locr, and Everytrail–the answer is yes.

But as with other aspects of geotagging, today’s cartographically clever Web sites are likely to appeal chiefly to enthusiasts who have some patience and technical abilities. Just like we’re not at the stage where most cameras can add a location stamp as easily as they can add a timestamp, we’re not yet at the stage where most folks are going to start with an online map when they want to share their photos or reminisce.

Collectively, the sites I checked show the potential of geotagging–but also the rough spots. My top pick is Flickr, with Picasa and SmugMug tied for second place. But each site has different strengths and weaknesses, so look carefully before you make any commitments.

One of the main reasons I picked Flickr as tops is because the Flickr maps interface can sift data better. For example, you can see a high-level view of all your geotagged photos, and you can filter that view with parameters such as your photos, your friends’ or contacts’ photos, anyone’s photos, and most important in my opinion, specific tags. That’s a handy interface when trying to find photos of, say, Yosemite National Park, but you can’t remember which of several trips a particular photo is associated with.

Flickr displays pictures as unevocative pink dots, but the photos themselves are shown on a strip below.

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET Networks)

In contrast, Picasa and SmugMug draw maps that only reflect the contents of a particular group of photos–called galleries at SmugMug, albums at Picasa, and sets at Flickr. (Google Maps can show Picasa images of a particular area to Google account holders who install a Mapplet application, though.)

Flickr also lets you take a set-based view of a map, with a scattering of pink dots representing your pictures. Indeed, it’s probably the most likely way somebody might want to use a map to show off pictures of a recent trip, for example.

SmugMug, though, has what I found to be the slickest geotagging feature out there: fly-through slideshows of a gallery. With this ability, the site automatically shows a gallery’s sequence of photos, displaying thumbnails along the way on a map and a red line connecting them.

It’s a bit rough around the edges–I’m guessing because the technical difficulties of combining external Google Maps data with its own thumbnails–so it can be herky-jerky at times and with missing map elements. And for slideshows, thumbnails are hardly the best way to showcase sweeping vistas. But there’s no question in my mind that the feature imparts a sense of traveling through a place, a sensation that regular slideshows completely lack.

Where Picasa has the edge over Flickr and SmugMug is in showing thumbnails of each image on the map, not just a dot or pushpin, which I like better even though thumbnails can get pretty crowded. It also shows larger pop-up versions than Flickr does. And for people who are geotagging their photos through the Web site, I think Picasa’s interface is the best.

I also like the way Picasa, on an individual photo’s page, includes a map showing where it was taken. But in part that’s because there’s a big panel of verbiage to the right of the screen on which that kind of real estate is available. A more photo-oriented site might not have that space to spare.

SmugMug lets you tour a gallery of photos on a map–a cool if still rough-around-the-edges feature.

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET Networks)

Another major advantage of Flickr is its handling of location privacy–geoprivacy in Flickr parlance. Naturally you might not want to share with the world the location of your living room, and your pernickety aunt might be even touchier. Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield prohibited geotagging of images of a party at his house.

Happily, Flickr lets you set the geoprivacy of each image, though doing so is awkward. I’m glad the Organizr lets me change this setting, but why isn’t there a geoprivacy option in a photo’s privacy settings window or in the map that’s shown when you click the photo?

There are some other options out there that deserve a look. Google’s Panoramio has a reasonable approach to virtual tourism if not necessarily the best interface for storing your photos–it seems like a ripe candidate for some integration with Picasa.

Loc.alalize.us likewise is an entertaining way to browse geotagged photos; it’s a glitzy interface built on top of Flickr photos and Google Maps.

Like Panoramio, Locr, a German company, lets you upload your own photos. Like SmugMug, it’s got a slideshow ability, though its photos are large and its map, a strip on the left edge with pushpin locations, is more an afterthought. That makes for a nicer slideshow than SmugMug’s thumbnails, but there’s not too much of a sense of place to it. And I can’t help thinking when I see sites like Locr, though, that it must be tough building a critical mass of members when there are bigger photo-sharing sites already with major momentum.

For a journey-oriented site Everytrail lets people upload whole GPS track logs and label them with points of interest and photos. It’s also got a handy feature that can show others’ Panoramio pictures. It’s a good way to look at trips people have taken in a particular area.

Locr shows individual photos fine, but doesn’t handle groups with much aplomb.

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET Networks)

I found Everytrail’s interface a bit difficult and unintuitive at times, but it does have the advantage of being able to piggyback on Flickr: I successfully imported my bike trip Flickr set into an Everytrail map–though the klunkiness of the process was evident by the fact that I have three copies of each photo, and I can’t figure out how to get rid of the duplicates. Also, when I inadvertently uploaded the wrong day’s track log for a batch of photos, I had a hard time figuring out my error.

In the months that I’ve been trying this out, though, geotagging has been improving. I’m certain that these sites will improve as geotagging photos in the first place gets easier, more people try it, and programmers hammer away at the computational and user-interface challenges.

Another area with potential is software to deal with geotagging on computers. Mostly that’s limited today just to utilities to marry geographic data with image files. But the rudimentary geotagging support in Adobe Systems’ Lightroom and Apple’s Mac OS X 10.5, which both can show a photo’s location on a map, is a harbinger of things to come. Better geotagging abilities on people’s computers will fuel improvements on the Web and vice-versaSource: Extra Tech