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Logitech HD Pro Webcam C910 with 1080p Video

Logitech HD Pro Webcam C910
High definition video up to 1080p, a wide-angle lens and autofocus for picture quality that’s simply amazing. Video chat, blog, stream and upload to Facebook in just one click. The term ‘webcam’ doesn’t quite do it justice. Logitech Fluid Crystal Technology gives you smooth, fluid video. Crystal clear images. Rich colors.

Image-Perfect Tuning: World-class optics, lighting compensation and image processing make your videos, video calls and photos more breathtaking.

Auto Everything: Automatic adjustments for brightness, contrast, color saturation, colors, focus and face tracking make high-quality video calling and recording a breeze.

Internet-Ready Camera: Camcorder-quality videos, digital camera-quality stills and studio-level sound make online video sharing and communications faster, easier and more beautiful.

	HD Pro Webcam C910 Noteworthy Features
•	Full HD 1080p video recording
•	Fluid HD 720p video calls in 16:9 widescreen
•	Precision Carl Zeiss optics and autofocus for razor-sharp video and brilliant 10MP photos
•	Noise-cancelling dual mics for HD-quality stereo audio—a first for HD webcams
•	Convenient cable management system reduces clutter
•	1-click video upload to Facebook and YouTube
•	Easy HD calling on included Logitech Vid HD and most major IM services

Enlarge Easy Full HD video recording and sharing Keep everyone up-to-date with stunning Full HD 1080p videos in 16:9 widescreen Post your videos to YouTube and Facebook with just one click Polish your videos before they goes viral with included Magix video and photo editor Learn more Enlarge Fluid HD 720p video calling Connect with everyone you care about in smoother HD clarity and detail Call in 720p widescreen with a standard broadband Internet connection on included Logitech Vid HD and nearly every major IM service Learn more Enlarge Crystal-clear video and brilliant photos Smooth autofocus and the precision Carl Zeiss pro lens keep your video calls and clips rich and sharp Take and share brilliant HD-quality 10 MP photos (software-enhanced) 5 MP HD sensor gives you 16X higher image resolution than built-in VGA webcams Look your best with auto light correction for dim and harsh lighting Enlarge Speak in HD-quality stereo Dual built-in premium microphones let friends hear you in rich stereo Background noise is filtered out so you’re clearly heard

Enlarge HD video calling on more computers Enjoy the smoothest HD video calls on more PCs with more video frames per second than other HD webcams Use your dual core PC to get the same fluid HD video calling as a quad core PC, thanks to Logitech More HD Technology Learn more Enlarge Sleek looks for desktops and notebooks Flat-panel design blends nicely with your setup Balanced shape sits snugly and securely on any display Universal clip attaches easily to ultra-thin notebooks or LCD monitors Enlarge Comes with full Logitech video effects Have fun with effects like Video Masks you can make from any photo—transform your video image into animals, celebrities or even your family pet.

Compatibility

Package contents Webcam with 5-foot cable Logitech webcam software with Logitech Vid HD User documentation 2-year limited hardware warranty

Works with Windows XP (SP2 or higher), Windows Vista or Windows 7 or (32-bit or 64-bit) Basic requirements: 1 GHz 512 MB RAM or more 200 MB hard drive space Internet connection USB 1.1 port (2.0 recommended)

For HD 720p video calling (on Logitech Vid HD) and Full HD 1080p video recording: 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 2 GB RAM 200 MB hard drive space USB 2.0 port 1 Mbps upload speed or higher 1280 x 720 screen resolution

Price: $ 99.99 Click here to buy

Facebook in blue why is it?

This is original design of Facebook when it was called thefacebook.com – you were required to have an .edu email address to even open an account on Facebook.

This is Facebook now – open for all and 500 million people are using it already.

Facebook has gone through some major redesigns in the past few years but one part that has more or less stayed the same in all those years is the site’s blue color.

Everything is so blue about Facebook right from the sign-up page to the logo, their mobile app and even the site pop-ups that have shades of blue. Why?

I was recently listening to an episode of Twig where host Leo Laporte pointed to this New Yorker story on Mark Zuckerberg that seems to explain why Facebook is all blue in color.

The young Facebook founder is color blind but can see blue:

Colors don’t matter much to Zuckerberg; a few years ago, he took an online test and realized that he was red-green color-blind. Blue is Facebook’s dominant color, because, as he said, “blue is the richest color for me – I can see all of blue.”

Facebook is not the only Internet brand the loves blue. An interesting study by Color Lovers has revealed that blue is the most popular and dominant color among the top 100 sites in the world followed by the red color.

Update: Emil Kostov sends this note on why Facebook maybe sticking with blue:

It is part of their well planned Marketing plan. Most colors distract and make the human eye focus on them while blue act as a transparent palette for 65% of time spending watching the main background aka index space. It is well known also that blue color is the nirvana for the brain, as well green. Well, their choice make the competition envy most of the time.

Via Labnol

Facebook Pages That May Embarrass You

There’s a new kind of ‘scam’ on Facebook that won’t do you any harm but it is likely to embarrass you in public. I have lately seen some of my tech-savvy friends on Facebook fall for such scams and you should be careful as well.

The scam work something like this. You land on a unsuspecting Facebook page and there’s a pop-up saying that you need to confirm that you are an adult in order to view the underlying content. You click confirm and the dialog disappears.

The problem is that the ‘pop-up’ you just clicked was not actually a pop-up but some sort of a hidden script that executes itself as soon as you hit the ‘Confirm’ button.

The script, in most cases, will automatically post a link on your Facebook wall thus broadcasting to the world that you just tried visiting an ‘adult’ site. This will almost create a viral effect because now your other friends will be eager to see that page and some of them may fall in the trap as well.

Careful!

Via Labnol

XBox 360 PC Wireless Gaming Receiver

The Xbox 360 Wireless Gaming Receiver for Windows lets you take your quality, wireless gaming experiences that you enjoy on your console and experience them on your Windows gaming platform.

Product Features

Price: Click here to buy

Windows Phone 7 Essential Apps Launch

The Windows Phone 7 section of the Zune Marketplace looks a bit like a barren wasteland at the moment, but there’ll be worthy apps aplenty ready for next month’s launch. Here are your first priority downloads.

There are still more apps to be announced before launch, and obviously the huge ramp-up will continue as the devices gain popularity. But as of right now, this is your must list. Not surprisingly—given the Xbox Live connection—it’s relatively game-heavy.

Bye Bye:

You might be tired of tower defense games by this point. Don’t be. Because as you can see, this one’s 3D animations and perspective-shifting use of accelerometer make it a must-try.

Fruit Ninja: One of our favorites for the iPhone and iPad will be on WP7 at launch, so limber up those fingers for some pineapple-slicing action.

The Harvest:

It’s a cool-looking, graphics intensive RPG Microsoft’s got on its hands. But more importantly, it’s an exclusive cool-looking, graphics intensive RPG. Meaning your only chance to slay this particular alien horde is on WP7.

Sims 3: EA played coy for a while when it came to WP7 development, but thank goodness they’re along for the ride—and bringing the venerable Sims franchise with them.

Three Zombie Games: What can I say? I’m a sucker for all things BRAINS. And between Zombie Attack!, Zombies!!!!, and Age of Zombies it looks like I should be getting my fill.

Netflix: Netflix will be there from the start, along with Watch Instantly functionality—which is going to look pretty sweet on those WP7 displays. Even more ways to clear out my queue!

Slacker: Don’t worry; Pandora’s on its way. But in the meantime, it’s worth giving Slacker a try—especially if you don’t want to bother with a Zune Pass.

AT&T U-Verse Mobile:

Here’s a neat trick: even if you’re not a U-Verse customer, you’ll have full access to U-Verse TV content for $ 10 a month. And if you are a U-Verse customer, you get all the same viewing options along with the ability to manage your DVR.

Twitter:

We were a little worried about Twitter when it didn’t show up on our WP7 in-depth look in July, but it’ll be there on November 8th, complete with the ability to locate nearby tweets with GPS and the ability to poke around without signing in to a Twitter account.

GoVoice
Windows Phone 7 doesn’t have an official Google Voice app, but third-party enabler GoVoice is already in the Zune Marketplace. In any incarnation—even for three bucks, as in this case—Google Voice is downright crucial.

IMDb:
Want to know why Windows Phone 7 has a real shot? Look no further than the WP7 IMDb treatment. Matt’s assessment—that it’s “holy crap nice lookin’”—gets a strong second from me.

eBay:

Microsoft’s been stressing that what they lack in quantity of apps they’ll make up for in quality. That’s good news for auction fanatics, who are going to be treated to a very slick-looking interface that lets you search, bid, and buy from your device.

Fandango: Fandango feels like one of those apps that’s table stakes at this point, so it’s good to see it here—although the clock’s still ticking on Foursquare, Pandora, Amazon, and other essentials.

Via Gizmodo

Windows 7: The Missing Manual

Original manual for Windows 7.

Product Description

Review:

The book is written in Pogue’s clear, easy-to-read, and entertaining style. Through it all, he maintains his sense of humor. It covers most everyone from the most basic beginner to the the advanced super user, although the most sophisticated users won’t need much from this book. But even for them, it includes some handy pointers and reference material.

It provides a complete Windows 7 manual, with everything from how to install (Appendix A), to Windows basics (using Windows, file management and search, and setting your desktop) to finding and installing programs, to connecting to and using the Internet, to advanced features like joining a domain and VPN. And it covers everything else in between.

New features like Libraries and Jump Lists are covered nicely. He even describes the Library problems where you can’t add a network location to a Library without making that folder available off-line. He correctly points out that this copies that entire folder onto the local hard drive, so you probably don’t want to do this.

I especially liked that when features were missing from a particular version of Windows 7, Pogue points that out. He also points out when a feature is available only on certain versions. For example, Aero is not available in Windows 7 Starter Edition, and he points that out when talking about Aero.

The book provides special help for people transitioning from XP and Vista. When he can, Pogue compares things to the way they used to be in XP and/or Vista. For example, he explains how the Start menu and taskbar have changed from both earlier versions.

He also offers handy sidebars with tips and other related information throughout the book. For example, in the section that teaches you about faxing, he has a sidebar on how to create your own fax cover page.

One of my favorite features of the book are the extraordinarily useful keyboard shortcuts. He provides shortcuts for every situation that has one. In addition, he provides a full keyboard reference in Appendix D.

This is truly the Missing Manual for Windows 7. It is not, however, a reference manual. It’s designed to be read like a book. And it’s a really good book.

Price: $ 39.99 Click here to buy

The Kinect You Need to Know

Basic principle: to construct a peripheral that would allow users to control a video game using nothing but an advanced motion-detecting camera.

One team was comprised of Microsoft employees, the other, we’re told, was run by Hidden Path, a studio made up of many former Microsoft employees (and who would go on to release the excellent Defense Grid).

These guys weren’t working with “exotic gyroscopic and accelerometer-based controller prototypes”. They were working on a proto-Kinect.

The internal team was looking at technology developed by 3DV, a company Microsoft would in 2009 actually purchase, the other tech from PrimeSense, who would eventually go on to provide the brains behind Kinect. But that’s now.

Back then, the technologies went head-to-head, their teams given a brief to present a selection of tech demos to be presented to Moore, who would make the ultimate decision whether to show them at E3 2007 or not.

Some of the demos revealed to Kotaku included “air drumming”, a game where you hit balls (similar to one of Kinect’s earliest demonstrations), painting, basketball shooting, a lightsaber fighting game and a number of interface ideas and visualisation tricks, like a Minority Report-type menu system and a tool that could make the user look like they were in an iPod commercial.

Some demos performed well (the Minority Report stuff), others not so well (the drumming), but one concept in particular really stole the show. It came from the 3DV team, and had a working title of “Ghost Grid”, because it was able to generate a 3D “mesh” of everything the camera could see and incorporate it into a virtual environment, with your real-world actions influencing the on-screen world via a modelled physics system.

Rendering the player as a “ghost” (described as being similar in on-screen appearance to the silhouette in Punch-Out, only capturing the outline of the actual player), this meant that the player could interact with virtual objects and environments in a manner that current Kinect hardware can only dream of.

To give you an idea of how this worked, imagine Kinect’s ball-whacking demo. Only, instead of reacting to a single type of object flying at you along a pre-determined path, you could properly interact with a whole range of items at varying speeds and locations. Something pushed slowly would roll/move away slowly. A brick wall built around the player could be smashed down brick by brick. You could even “pick up” a virtual item, and either use it or throw it away, the speed at which you flung it being recreated in the game world.

This demo would work with a single player or, if somebody else joined in, would work just as well with two, the prototype hardware was – unlike the “neutered” Kinect shipping later this year – able to easily handle the physics of two players interacting with the game world.

While impressive, our sources tell us that though it was an amazing experience to take part in, it did not demo well for the bystander. Which considering it was vying for a chance to be shown off at a trade show with the world’s media watching was a problem. With the remaining demo concepts all also plagued by technical problems (or the fact they just turned out a bit rubbish), it was decided that for 2007 the technology simply wasn’t quite there, and so proto-Kinect was not shown off.

Peter Moore left the company shortly after E3 2007, and upon his leaving, the projects drifted apart as well, with Mattrick having to issue a “call to arms” to get things back on track once he’d taken over from Moore, a process that would eventually lead to Project Natal and the Kinect many of you are putting through its paces today.

We can only wonder, then, what would have happened had Moore stuck around a bit longer and these teams continued their research. Would Kinect have been out sooner, beating Sony’s PlayStation Move to market?

It’s also interesting to consider just what Kinect could have been capable of had internal hardware not been sacrificed for cost; a beefier Kinect may have been more expensive, but if it could have pulled off the kind of interactivity found in “Ghost Grid”, would that have been worth it?

We’ve checked with Microsoft to see if they can provide any more details on these early prototypes, and will update if we hear back. Likewise, we reached out to Peter Moore for further information, but was told he could “not comment on non-public events that occurred while I was at Microsoft”.

Via Gizmodo

Steampunk Skeleton

Maybe you’re into the whole DIY bit of the Steampunk movement but you’re not quite ready to replace your ribs with copper tubing and your lungs with bellows. That’s where we come in. We’ve made a Steampunk cosplay t-shirt that lets you reveal your inner self without exposing any actual vital organs.

Sure it doesn’t look quite as cool as being a steam-powered cyborg, but the pluses are that there’s no worrying about pressure gauges and less oxidation this way. Trust me. When you gotta get in there and scrub the tarnish off of the thoracic vertebrae, you’re going to need a second set of hands. It’s even worse than trying to dry your back. Especially if your hands are modded, too.

Shoes That Can Walk By Themselves

Some people like it so much they do it faster. Other people try to avoid it as much as they can. These motorized shoes are for the walking haters, because the shoes can walk on their own. The self-walking shoes were made by an Instructables intern who drew inspiration from tiny wind-up shoes. He attached a wooden pivot arm to both shoes and powered it with a servo motor to get it moving. It’s an interesting concept that makes you wonder if someone can combine these auto walking shoes with the auto lacing ones, so we can finally reach the dream of having fully automatic shoes.

Via Gizmodo

How to Transform Google On Your iPhone

Just wish Apple handled sync, the web, and openness a bit better? You can’t have it all, but if you want to bring more Google paradigms to your iPhone, here’s how to do it.

Despite the title, this isn’t just about Google transforming your iPhone but really any iOS device you might own. If you’re an iPad or iPod touch owner, we’ve got you covered too. That said, let’s take a look at the ways you can bring more Google to your device.

Google Sync for iOS will let you push your contacts, calendars, and mail to your iPhone (or other iOS device). The functionality is similar to what you’d get with MobileMe, except it works through the Microsoft Exchange protocol. Google Sync requires iOS 3.0 or higher, but iOS 4.0 or higher will let you add multiple Exchange so you’ll want to make sure you’ve upgraded if you need multiple exchange accounts on your device. The setup instructions get pretty detailed so we’re not going to get into them here, but it’s definitely not a hard process. Google walks you through the process, step by step and you’ll be pushing your mail, contacts, and calendars in just a few minutes.

Like most Google apps, you can access your Google Docs through the web browser, but if you want to start saving them to your iPhone and have a native app experience you should grab a copy of GoodReader. While it’s not the only Google Docs option in the app store, it’s inexpensive ($ 2 for iPhone, $ 2 for iPad) and comes with a lot of added functionality. In addition to syncing Google Docs you can pull documents from tons of other sources, like WebDAV and Dropbox. It makes for a great document reader and allows annotations on PDFs. Getting your Google Docs is really simple. You just open Good Reader, tap Web Downloads, tap Connect to Servers, tap Google Docs and then enter your Google account information. Once you do that it’ll save your Google Docs as a file location and you can download your documents right to your iOS device.

Although it probably goes without saying, you can’t really have a Google-ified iPhone without the Google Mobile app. If you’re not familiar with it, Google Mobile gives you quick access to popular Google services but also makes searching a lot easier by allowing you to use your voice and location. It also includes Google Goggles, which lets you take a photo and use it as a search query. For example, take a picture of a book you like or a nearby restaurant and Google will find it. If you want to bring up any previous searches, Google Mobile tracks your search history so you can quickly find things again. It’s free in the iTunes App Store and brings a ton of great search functionality missing in iOS.

When and if Google Voice will ever find its way to iOS in app form is anyone’s guess, but that doesn’t keep you from making use of many of its features on your iPhone right now. You no longer need an invitation to sign up and it’s free to use. With the service you get a single number that can ring everywhere and an online voicemail box that includes (somewhat poorly but often funny) transcribed messages. It’ll also let you screen and block callers, which can be a huge benefit if you’re hounded by telemarketers. You can even transfer your existing number to Google Voice (although it’s worth noting that you might have difficulty transferring it away from Google Voice if you do). All of these features are available just by using the service. Hopefully more will come in the future if Apple and Google can get the Google Voice app into the iTunes App Store, but if you want a little extra right now you can always check out GVMobile. It’s $ 3 in the iTunes App Store

For simplicity’s sake, it’s worth noting that the Google webapps—accessible through Mobile Safari—are really good. Google has also added instant search to iOS (and other mobile devices) so you don’t want to discount their usefulness. You can always save an iPhone bookmark to your home screen for quick access of any Google webapps you frequently use. While native apps can be great, Google really does an excellent job with their mobile browser-based offerings. Using them feels pretty much identical to any native app anyway. Got any great ways of added more Google to your iOS device? Let’s hear ‘em in the comments.

Via Gizmodo