The cameras, the DSC-TX9 and DSC-WX5, both sport a nifty feature called 3D Sweep Panorama, which lets you take panoramic pictures by pressing a button and sweeping your camera around. The super fast burst of frames captured get stitched together to automatically create the panoramas, which can then be viewed on compatible 3D tellies. Lame glasses are required.

Both cameras are 12.2 megapixel models. The TX9 has a 3.5 inch 921k resolution LCD touchscreen while the WX5 is smaller with a 2.8 inch LCD screen. They both boast, on their tiny screens, a feature called Sweep Multi Angle which lets you have a look at images moving in simulated 3D by tilting the cameras themselves. It captures 15 images at different angles and bungs them into one photo, making for a 3D effect.

They also work with the AVCHD format which is used in Sohy’s high def handycams, meaning the new cameras can record video in 1920 x 1080 HD resolutions in 60i at up to 17Mbps, as well as having Optical SteadyShot, so if you’ve got the shakes every day like us the cameras will try to de-wobble your photos. The TX9 will cost about $400 and the WX5 will cost about $300.

Source: Sony News

Still, everyone’s been pretty sketchy about exact details of what’s actually coming to Android Gingerbread. Until now.

Mobile-review.com’s Eldar Murtazin just went and spilled a boatload of interesting details about the upcoming Android Gingerbread release.  Don’t run searching for these details to his blog or his main site, you won’t find anything there yet.

Eldar did all the spilling in his Russian podcast “Digestiv”. It’s audio only, so Google Translate won’t help you much. If you do not speak Russian, you’ll have to trust me on this.

Her we go:

* Android 3.0 Gingerbread will be released in mid- October (around 15 -16th), 2010. First handsets shipping in November/December – for the Holiday Season.
* Minimum hardware requirements for Android 3.0 devices are: 1GHZ CPU, 512MB or RAM, displays from 3.5” and higher.  (We all, of course, heard that Android handsets with 2GHz CPU’s are coming)
* New 1280×760 resolution available for the devices with displays of 4” and higher. (Anyone thinking about Android tablets now? )
* Completely revamped user interface.
* Android’s split into 2 branches becomes official. 3.0 for top of the line/high end devices. Cheap, low-end mass market handsets will keep Android 2.1/2.2

Eldar also confirmed my musings about the death of third party User Interface shells like HTC Sense, MotoBlur, etc;. Android 3.0 basically kills the need for them.

Still, there’s some hope for third party vendors here – while Google takes over the UI on the high end, vendors get to keep their UI shells/improvements on mass market Android smartphones, running Eclair or Froyo.

This is the transforming Ville, a bike that can fold in half in order to become a shopping cart. It may not be a cart that can hold a week’s worth of groceries, but if you just need to get enough to fill two baskets, this is probably your deal.

Not only that, you have a bike with two baskets that enable you to bring home quite a bit. As someone who once used a bike as his primary form of transportation, it does help to have that basket on the bike, even if it does look a little dorky.

I also know the perils of having to chain up your bike, only to have some jerk beat up the front tire so it is bent out of shape. It would be nice to just take the bike in the store and use it as something to hold all the items I am intending to buy.

Yep, it really just makes sense to build a bicycle like this. Unfortunately, it is just a concept at this particular moment.

Over 500,000 new laptops could be affected by the problem, in what could well turn out to be a PR disaster for the consumer electronics giant. Models affected by the issue are the VPCCW25FG/B, VPCCW25FG/P and VPCCW25FG/W.

Back in 2006, Sony was forced to recall 9.6 million laptop batteries due to overheating problems, which cost the company a total of $250 million.

However, while numerous media outlets have been reporting this current problem as a ‘recall’, this issue has not yet reached that critical stage for the laptop manufacturer, with Sony vehemently denied reports that these new VAIO F11 and CW2 Series machines would need to be recalled and issuing a software update online.

BIOS issue

The overheating is caused by a bug in the basic input output system (BIOS) software which is embedded in the chips inside the laptop, but upgradeable by this type of software fix.

Sony clearly hopes that its latest free software update to more than half a million of its customers worldwide should do enough to fix the overheating issue with the new laptops.

The company had received 39 problem reports from users complaining about excessive heat coming from their Vaio computers and problems with the casing being distorted due to overheating. 26 of those complaints came from US users.

Sony has identified that the problem occurs when the laptop is nearly out of power and the user plugs in the battery charger. The company has notified registered Vaio users of the software fix issued this week.

Although it is still well behind the likes of Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and both Safari from Apple and Google Chrome, Opera is still a significant player in the browser market.

Opera 10.60 brings new features, but the headline is that Opera claim the latest iteration is ‘up to 50 per cent faster than the previous version.’

Fastest?

“With the final version of Opera 10.60, the browser scores more than 50 percent faster than its predecessor – which was the fastest browser on Earth – in key benchmark tests,” said Opera.

“This translates into a faster browsing experience for users on modern JavaScript-heavy sites such as Gmail and Facebook.”

WebM and geolocation

Also included are geolocation tools, built in video-playback with the WebM platform

“Geolocation eases the work of putting you on the map by determining your position,” adds Opera. “To ensure your privacy, you have full control over when this feature is used.

“Opera is first to give you built-in video playback with the open WebM format that gives you optimized video right in the browser on all platforms.

“Other Opera features such as offline applications let you work using web-based applications, without Internet connectivity.”

You can download Opera 10.6 from www.opera.com

Microsoft Office 2010 has finally hit release candidate, and Redmond has distributed the productivity suite to members of the technology adoption program (TAP). Although there are more “planned milestones,” the latest build won’t be available broadly, according to a Microsoft representative. Nevertheless, it’s only a matter of time before the RC build is widely distributed via BitTorrent. In the meantime, you can download the beta here.

In other Redmond news, an alleged roadmap (PDF) shows the software giant is pushing to release Windows 8 by July 2011. The document also pegs Office 2012 for a July 2012 release. The roadmap is rather extensive, so if it’s not legit, someone desperately needs a new hobby.

For what it’s worth, many previous dates are accurate and scattered reports nearly a year ago said Windows 8 would arrive in 2011. Microsoft has also been actively compiling post-RTM builds of Windows 7 since last year.

Source : Windows 8 News