Photography is something which we are all familiar with, regardless of our personal abilities in the field. Taken from the Ancient Greek words ‘photos’ and ‘graphos’, meaning ‘light’ and ‘written’, a photographer is now a description which can be applied to any individual capable of operating a simple camera.

With so many cameras available, finding the one right for you is essential – but which are best?

1. The all-rounder

As a general rule, these cameras offer good levels of optical zoom (which is considered superior to digital zoom by almost all users) as well as a variety of functions and shooting modes. Variable flash settings and shutter speeds are a must and make these cameras just as effective in the hands of an amateur as in the hands of a professional.

The perfect example of this type of camera is the Panasonic FZ48. Boasting a 12.1 megapixel resolution alongside 24x optical zoom and Intelligent Resolution Technology, this camera can transform quick snaps into professional quality photographs and is even capable of full HD video recording.

2. The professional

Those with a more professional take on this popular hobby look for cameras like the Panasonic mentioned above, but with additional features. Usually the ability to change lenses is considered the best feature for those after a professional device and, once again, optical zoom is paramount.

A great example of this type of camera is the slightly larger Panasonic DMC-G3. Boasting an improved 16 megapixel resolution coupled with a 3 inch LED touch-screen display and full HD video recording, this Panasonic digital camera has a zoom range of 28-84mm through its 14-42 mm lens.

3. The amateur

For those after a simple camera capable of holiday snaps, the Samsung PL20 is ideal. Still featuring an impressive 14 megapixel resolution, this camera is easy to operate and has 5x optical zoom to help junior photographers focus their shots.

Fact detection and Perfect Portrait technologies are also incorporated and the memory is expandable via an SD card slot.

4. The vibrant

Nowadays, electronic devices such as digital cameras are just as much about style and fashion as they are about practicality. This means a wide variety of cameras are now available in bright and bold designs – offering customers a device which is both functional and vibrant.

Numerous manufacturers including Kodak, Panasonic, Samsung and Fujifilm offer bright versions of their popular compact cameras and the Fujifilm JX550 is even available in vibrant violet, whilst continuing to offer high specs.

5. The classic

Lastly, those after a classic camera can’t go wrong with the Sony Cybershot range. These cameras vary from the professional to the compact and offer great features and stylish designs.

The sleek and attractive shape makes these cameras the perfect possession for any individual and colour options are aplenty. Classic choices of black and silver are likely to remain popular with the majority of consumers, whilst bolder colours such as blue and pink feature alongside an elegant white colour that is embraced by the more daring buyer.

Top five digital cameras from Amateur to Pro is a post from: Gadgets and gizmos

Ten Secret Santa Gadgets That Don’t Suck is a post from: Gadgets and gizmos

The research, which was conducted by youth research firm Dubit on behalf of the film, TV, music and video industries, discovered that by age 11, 21 percent of children access illegal video and music file-sharing websites regularly. When they reach 12 years of age, 28 percent do so and by age 13, almost half (42 percent) regularly visit illegal film, TV and music sites. The study also revealed that 73 percent of kids are introduced to these illegal websites by their friends.

Child Psychologist Prof. Tanya Byron is supporting online safety group Childnet International to help teachers and parents teach kids about responsible internet use.

“The majority of parents will confidently tell their children that it is wrong to steal or shoplift in the real world, but it’s vital that they also help kids understand what is and isn’t acceptable behaviour online, and why it’s just as harmful,” said Professor Byron, giving out her reasons for starting the campaign. “The new leaflet and our conversation starters provide parents with concise, up-to-date information and practical advice to start conversations about responsible internet use with their children. These will not only help parents address the issue of illegal film, TV and music file-sharing with their children, but will help them to discuss online responsibility together.”

Childnet International’s Music Film, TV and the Internet guide was created with support from music and video industries in the United Kingdom to promote good digital censorship.

The question is, do you think 11 is early enough?

Study reveals that 28% of kids regularly visit illegal sites is a post from: Gadgets and gizmos

According to the firm’s study, 17 GB is the equivalent of streaming 12 hours of HD videos from BBC iPlayer, 12 days of streaming audio or downloading more than 11 movies per month.

The study revealed that 14 percent of home broadband connections are operating below the 2 Mb per second speed that is what is planned to be rolled out by the government in 2014.

“On average, residential fixed broadband customers are using 17 GB of data per month. This figure ranges from 10GB to 40 GB between operators,” read the report from Ofcom. “Data from the London Internet Exchange shows that traffic over its network routers, which interconnect the UK’s Internet Service Providers (ISPs), has increased seven fold in the past five years. While future demand for capacity is uncertain, if demand continues to increase at current rates ISPs will need to make further investment in their networks.”

Data revealed that 73 percent of businesses and homes in the UK enjoy 3G coverage from all five networks. However, only 13 percent of the UK is covered by the major networks. Users rely on 3G for its higher-speed data for services that include mobile internet.

The report also revealed that 97 percent of businesses and homes have enough signal from all four operators that offer 2G signals.

via: Ofcom

Brits consume 16 GB of data per month, study says is a post from: Gadgets and gizmos

Duane Jackson, a popular serial blogger, who is also a top cloud computing entrepreneur, believes that he has difficulty in spelling a number of words without the device to spell them. He was talking about the feature of smartphones that turns text speak into full words.

Jackson believes that the new feature of the iPhone 4S, Siri, which allows users to talk to their phone an not just on it, could result in eliminating the art of writing and typing.

“Firstly computers came along, and as a result teenagers do less actual writing with pen and paper, especially once they’re out of school – everything is typed,” said Jackson. “Now along comes Siri who lets them do everything by just speaking to their mobile. Soon they won’t even be typing!”

Jackson points out that the Siri personal assistant reacts to a number of requests – scheduling meetings, sending text messages, answering questions and placing phone calls, without having to touch a button.

“This not only means we don’t need the written word – it also means we don’t have to exercise our brains very much now to figure things out for ourselves,” Jackson added. He also said that the iPhone’s text expansion feature, which converts text speak to full words automatically, will see the form of language because when these messages are received on other platforms, they revert back to their original forms.

He warned people that when we improve on technology, we must also bear in mind its consequences. These labour-saving features may end up backfiring, and we will regress instead of advancing.

Do you think technology could turn all our brains into mush?

Tech entrepreneur thinks tech could be regressive, not progressive is a post from: Gadgets and gizmos

Upgrading itself was quite smooth, although time consuming. To install iOS5, you have to update to the latest version of iTunes. In all, it took over two hours to upgrade my iPad, although you might get faster results. I’ve seen a lot of reports online from people complaining that the upgrade deleted data or caused other problems. So far, the only glitch I’ve found is that some of my iBooks (those I imported from my PC) appear to be corrupted.

So, what’s new? Most obviously, there are new apps. The Reminders app is a nice little to-do list, which you can use to give you timed and dated reminders of tasks you need to do. It’s not integrated with the Calendar app, though, so you end up having two apps for managing tasks and deadlines.

There’s also a new Newsstand app for downloading magazines, which are sold as a new app category in the app store. I was expecting something like iBooks here for magazines, but the three publications I tried had very different interfaces. Newsstand behaves more like a way to discover magazine and news apps, than a reader for standardised magazine content.

There’s also a new messages app for exchanging text messages with other Apple devices that have the software installed. I haven’t been able to update other devices yet to test this with.

Apple’s included some new gestures for switching between apps. You can use four or five fingers together and pinch to return to the Home screen, and you can use four or five fingers together and swipe up to show the multitasking bar, or swipe left and right to switch between apps. The swiping between apps works well, but the other gestures feel slightly gimmicky and clumsy given the Home button gives one-click access to the Home screen, and two-click access to the multitasking bar. These gestures might feel more natural as I use them more.

Notifications are presented in a much better way now. I didn’t really get the most from my apps before because the way notifications were presented was so intrusive that I switched most notifications off. Now you can access a notifications panel at the top of the screen, and decide whether you want alerts for each app to appear in the middle of the screen or in a bar at the top.

Untethering devices has been a key goal in this update, and iCloud will help with that. It provides remote backup, and enables you to synchronise content across multiple devices. The free space available for remote backup is fairly limited at 5GB, so power users will probably have to pay for more or continue to synchronise with the PC. Most of the setup for iOS5 was performed on the iPad itself, rather than on the personal computer, and Apple says you can now activate an iPad without connecting it to a computer.

Throughout the operating system, there are small but useful changes that have been introduced. There are some nice improvements to ergonomics: you can use the volume button to take a picture and split the keyboard into two halves for thumb-typing. The tabbed browsing in Safari is much quicker than the old way of using multiple websites. The ability to download a web page to read offline later is a good response to the way people might want to use the iPad too. The basic photo editing tools are a nice addition, although not terribly sophisticated.

There are still a couple of things missing: I still can’t subscribe to a podcast on the iPad, and still can’t make smart playlists on the device, either. But Apple’s done a good job of picking up the major things people want, and moving towards a new cloud-based architecture. After all, if they delivered everything we wanted in iOS5, what would be left for iOS6?

This guest blog post is written by Sean McManus who is the author of the book iPad for the Older and Wiser. 

First impressions of iOS5 for the iPad is a post from: Gadgets and gizmos

Any public page that is not in a user’s native language can be translated by clicking on the “Translate” button on the post. Users will have the option to improve the generated translation as well.

“When someone clicks on the translate button on a public Page post, a Bing translation will appear in a popout window,” Facebook said in a statement. “People then have the opportunity to submit their own translation by opting-in to using inline translations. After their generated translation has received enough positive votes, it will replace the Bing translation and will appear each time someone clicks on the translate button associated with the post.”

The company is also aiming to improve its machine-based translations with the help of its users. When the Translate link is clicked, a pop-up window appears, inviting users to give a more accurate translation. After enabling the translation tool, users can just right click on the post and type their translation into the text field. If the translation gets enough positive votes, it could replace the original translation from Bing.

Administrators are also shown a “Manage Translations” link, where they are allowed to approve translations or offer their own. Users that give spammy or abusive translations can be blocked by the administrators.

via: Inside Facebook

Facebook rolls out “Translate” feature is a post from: Gadgets and gizmos

In a study conducted by the Business Software Alliance (BSA), it found that 13 percent of PC users in the world buy genuine software, while 40 percent of the world’s computer using population bought their computer software “mostly legally.”

The rest, or 47 percent, have pirated software installed in their computers. These software “thieves” have acquired their programs via illegal means, such as buying pirated copies on markets, or downloading it from P2P networks and other sources.

The research firm noted that a large majority of computer users in developing economies get their software via illegal means. Users usually purchase a single genuine program and install it on multiple devices, or download form P2P networks, despite their countries’ support for IP principles.

China leads all countries in the study, with 86 percent of is PC users acquiring software illegally most of the time. Chinese users account for 206 million PCs, twice as many as the second placer the United States.

“The survey makes it clear that the global software piracy epidemic is spreading fastest in China, which is now the world’s biggest market for new PCs,” said Robert Holleyman, president and chief executive of BSA.

The study involved 15,000 PC users who live in 32 countries.

via: AFP

Almost half of PCs in the world use pirated software is a post from: Gadgets and gizmos

Ebuyer’s Geek City research was calculated by giving each city a “Geek Score.” The Geek Score is determined by the percentage of “workers aged 16-64 with a certified qualification; how many technological job opportunities are on offer within the city; and which city holds the most people with high technological purchasing habits.” These calculations are determined using the company’s own analytics data, which are combined with data from external sources.

The result of the study shows that southern cities are getting the top spots. Cambridge gets a Geek Score of 24, making it the geekiest city in the country, while London gets the fourth spot with a Geek Score of 17.7. Oxford takes the eighth spot and Bradford takes the bottom spot with -12.1 Geek Score. The Geek Score shows that people living in Cambridge are more likely to buy gadgets, electronics and computers more than any other city in the UK.

Ebuyer also revealed that the Western Digital 2 TB internal hard disk drive was the most popular tech product in Cambridge during the first half of the year.

“In the past the term geek held negative connotations, however, this is the digital age where geeks simply rule. We would certainly like to see a few more geeks up North though,” said David Wood, commercial director for Ebuyer, about the findings.

Founded in 1999, Ebuyer.com is the leading online retailer for electronics. The company has supplied over 40 million products from its state-of-the-art facility in East Yorkshire. For more information about the study, visit their website.

Ebuyer.com reveals United Kingdom’s geekiest cities is a post from: Gadgets and gizmos

The increasing dominance of smartphones in developed markets and the simple way of downloading apps have improved the market for mobile voice over IP (mVoIP).

The role that voice calls plays within the mobile communications market will change as it will become available within other applications, such as social networking and games, according to Juniper Research’s Mobile Voice & Video Calling report. The alliance between a number of mVoIP providers and Facebook, and Microsoft’s acquisition of Skype are expected to greatly accelerate this trend.

“Services such as Apple’s FaceTime have brought mobile video calling to the public consciousness,” said Anthony Cox, an associate analyst at Juniper Research. However, the lack of a standardized approach and the unavailability of a route to monetize new IP-based mobile video calling may hold mobile video calling back from becoming a mass-market service in the future.

The research also found that mobile video calling services and mVoIP will develop faster in developed markets due to “the direct correlation between 3G and 4G roll outs and the take up of mobile VoIP and mobile video calling.” It also found that basic video calling services are offered by players for free to kick-start the market.

The Mobile Voice & Video Calling Whitepaper and more details of the study Mobile Voice & Video Calling: Strategic Opportunities & Business Models 2011-2016 can be downloaded from Jupiter Research’s website.

Mobile video calling users to exceed 130 million by 2016 is a post from: Gadgets and gizmos