Le prochain RPG de la série des Tales of s'illustre encore une fois assez largement. Cette galerie ne nous en apprend pas vraiment davantage, puisqu'elle se contente souvent de nous illustrer des environnements déjà connus. Quelques images de séquences de combat sont également de la partie. Tales of Xillia est prévu pour cette année au Japon et n'a évidemment pas encore été annoncé en Europe.
Le 23 juin prochain, les PSP japonaises accueilleront avec joie un nouveau jeu Gundam qui répond au doux nom de Gundam Memories. Il ne semble pas nécessaire de vous expliquer le principe de base, mais au cas où, ça parle de mechas, de lasers et de missiles. En voici une nouvelle fournée d'images accompagnées d'artworks.
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Today, Panasonic announced the new LUMIX DMC-FZ35, a digital camera featuring AVCHD Lite, High Definition (HD) video recording capability, combined with a powerful 27mm wide-angle, 18x optical zoom LEICA DC lens.
A successor to the popular FZ28, the FZ35 packs enhanced creative features combined with the power to shoot HD videos, including motion zoom capabilities to take full advantage of the 18x zoom. The operational layout of the FZ35 includes a dedicated video record button, making it a true hybrid - a single model that performs seamlessly at capturing both still and motion images - while still providing smooth and easy operation in either mode.
“The LUMIX FZ35 is truly unique as it includes advanced features like HD Panasonic Consumer Electronics Company. “This model’s versatility makes it a great choice for a new or advanced user who wants a hybrid device that shoots high-quality still and motion images.”
For users looking for increased creativity while shooting both video and still images, the LUMIX FZ35 delivers. New manual controls and creative options, include:
- Creative Movie Mode - Allows the user to set the shutter speed and aperture manually to make even more impressive movies. Changing the shutter speed brings special effects to movies, which is especially suitable for shooting fast-moving subjects. The ability to control the aperture is convenient when there are several subjects at different distances.
- My Color Mode - This special option gives free reign to the user’s creativity. The color, brightness and saturation parameters can be freely adjusted while seeing how the adjustments affect the picture, live on the monitor.
- High Dynamic Mode - Helps to capture a scene with moderate exposure even though the scene may contain both bright and dark areas.
The 12.1 mega pixel-FZ35 features the upgraded POWER Optical Image Stabilizer (O.I.S.), which allows for double the repression power compared to the conventional image stabilization system, MEGA O.I.S., and ultra high-speed Auto Focus (AF) for capturing action scenes as they happen. Additionally, with the super-powerful 18x optical zoom lens, it is easy to capture subjects that are far away or take dramatic close-ups.
With the enhanced energy-efficient image processing LSI - the Venus Engine HD - the FZ35 has an extended battery life of approximately 470 pictures, making it the ideal choice for active photo enthusiasts. As with all Panasonic LUMIX cameras, the FZ35 features Intelligent Auto (iA) Mode, a suite of intuitive technologies including Face Detection, Intelligent Scene Selector, Intelligent Exposure and Face Recognition. With the improved Face Recognition, the FZ35 recognizes up to three faces simultaneously while taking photos and allows users to specify the age of the registered subject. When babies under 3 years-old are registered, the camera will automatically switch to Baby mode if the baby appears to be in the frame.
The LUMIX DMC-FZ35 will have a suggested retail price of $399.99 and will be available in September 2009 in black.
Source: Panasonic
The two-legged robot -- named D2V-ZN -- is to be introduced in October and sold from about $750, The Korea Times reported Monday.
"D2V-ZN can identify its owner with an embedded camera and take some pre-set orders after recognizing voices," D2E Robotics Chief Executive Officer Chung Kee-chull told the newspaper. "It will arguably be the smartest robot in the market. In addition, users can add new motions or functions to the model on their PCs with easy-to-use, customized graphic software. This is a programmable robot."
Chung, also a professor at Daeduk College in Taejon, said unlike current robots "our customers will be able to install new moves on their own."
"In other words," he told the Korea Times, "their imagination will be their only limit."
Chung said he is considering selling the robot through TV home-shopping channels in time for the Christmas season.
Copyright 2006 by United Press International
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Heady from the success of the iPhone and iPod, Apple is getting spanked with criticism, even mockery, by pundits who expected the company to change the world anew with its iPad tablet computer.
Critics and fans were rushing Thursday to fill the 60-day void between the unveiling of what Apple chief executive Steve Jobs hailed as a "revolutionary" device and the time the first models will begin shipping globally.
While some heralded the iPad as a powerful "Kindle killer" with multimedia capabilities that eclipse current electronic readers, others scoffed at adding to their lives a mobile gadget seemingly named for a feminine hygiene product.
"Clearly, women are not finding this name attractive," said analyst Rob Enderle of Enderle Group in Silicon Valley. "The name looks like a mistake a man would make. Steve should have spent more time talking to his wife and daughters."
Reaction by women echoed a video clip from an old Mad TV comedy television show skit about a fictitious high-tech tampon called an "iPad." The video has gone viral since Jobs uncloaked the iPad on Wednesday.
The mixed reaction to the color touchscreen tablet was reflected in two of the most popular gadget websites.
Gizmodo published an "Eight things that suck about the iPad" story while rival Ubergizmo crowned the device "the best tablet ever built."
Popular complaints included the lack of a camera, multi-tasking capabilities, a USB port, and support for videos made with Adobe Flash software.
Enderle recalled that "there is an extensive list of people who just pissed all over the iPhone when it launched.
"The iPad will advance a lot," he said. "Generation three will probably be the killer product."
It was a third generation iPhone, tied to an online store for fun applications, that catapulted the Apple smartphones to the top of the market and have brought billions of dollars to the firm's coffers.
"There are a number of things that have to come together to make this the 'Jesus Pad' people imagined," Enderle said. "The iPhone wasn't that great when it came out either."
Apple worked its marketing magic and built up hype and anticipation before the iPad unveiling, but has left two months for pundits, "fan boys," bloggers and others to nitpick a device that Jobs said must be held to be appreciated.
Still, some technology analysts predict the iPad will be the best-selling electronics device of 2010.
Unveiling the notebook-sized iPad, Jobs admitted he was taking a gamble by trying to carve out an entirely new device category between the laptop computer and the smartphone.
"We think we've got the goods," Jobs said. "We think we've done it."
Reviewers were mixed on whether the iPad will be a smash hit like the iPod, which controls over 70 percent of the market for MP3 players, or the iPhone, which completely transformed the smartphone arena.
The tech blog of Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung said that after months of pre-launch hype, "expectations for the new Apple product were so high they were difficult to fulfill."
Spain's El Pais said the iPad opens up a new avenue for content creators struggling to adapt to the digital era, while a Los Angeles newspaper referred to the device as a large iPhone without the phone.
Om Malik of tech blog GigaOm said the iPad is "made for the consumption of digital media: games, music, photos, videos, magazines, newspapers and e-books.
"The iPad's primary purpose is to help you consume the ever-expanding amount of digital content on offer," he said, calling it the "ideal device for today's world."
Claudine Beaumont, technology writer for Britain's Daily Telegraph, hailed the sleekness of the iPad, its reading software and virtual keyboard.
"It won't replace your laptop, but I think it may have sounded the death knell for notebook computers," she wrote.
MG Siegler of tech blog TechCrunch, after playing with the iPad, said "it felt like I was holding the future" but the iPad may not be a "must-have" device yet.
Users eager to judge for themselves will have to wait two months before the first iPads are shipped worldwide at an entry-level price of 499 dollars.
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Samsung Electronics announced today volume production of SSDs (solid state drives) that support the Serial ATA Revision 3.0 interface with data transmissions at six gigabits per second (6Gb/s). The new high-performance PM830 SSDs are available at up to 512 gigabyte (GB) densities.
Samsung's new high-speed SSDs are ideally suited for use in high-performance OEM notebooks and tablets. Sample production of the SATA 6Gb/s 512GB SSDs began in May, with Samsung Electronics. “The industry is expected to quickly embrace SATA 6Gb/s-based SSDs, which also will help increase market interest in 256GB and higher densities significantly,” he added.
The SATA 6Gb/s SSD shortens system boot-up time to about 10 seconds, while its high-performance allows users to download up to five DVD video files in less than a minute.
The 512GB SSD utilizes Samsung’s most advanced 20 nanometer (nm) class** 32Gigabit multi-level cell (MLC) NAND memory chip incorporating the toggle DDR interface. A proprietary NAND controller facilitates exceptional performance levels that take full advantage of the toggle DDR architecture and the SATA 6Gb/s interface. The new SSD doubles the performance of a SATA 3Gb/s drive, with sequential read speeds of 500 megabytes per second (MB/s) and sequential write speeds of 350MB/s.
The drive also features the industry’s highest level of security, which uses an AES 256-bit encryption algorithm to protect personal or corporate data from unauthorized access.
Samsung’s SATA 6Gb/s SSDs are available in 512GB, 256GB and 128GB densities. The new high-performance SSD line-up is targeted for use in premium OEM notebooks, and tablets.
According to market research firm IDC, the global outlook for client-side SSDs is expected to grow ten-fold from 11 million units in 2011 to 100 million units in 2015. Moreover, the use of NAND in 256GB SSDs is forecast to more than double from 19 percent of all NAND used in SSDs in 2011 to 42 percent in 2015. Further, demand for 512GB SSDs is expected to grow from a 0.3 percent portion in 2011 to eight percent in 2015, also underscoring the growing interest in higher density SSDs.
Engineering education needs to include a few rough spots to be worthwhile. An attempt to set an unofficial world record for how far a robot could walk failed the night of March 30, but the team will keep trying.
The Cornell Ranger, a robot developed by a team of students working with Andy Ruina, professor of theoretical and applied mechanics, fell down after about 4.75 laps -- about .95 kilometers ( .59 miles) -- around the running track in Barton Hall. An earlier version of the same robot had already set a record by free-walking a bit over 1 kilometer, about .62 miles. (Another robot has walked 2.5 kilometers (1.55 miles) on a treadmill, Ruina noted.)
Ruina was hoping for 10 or more kilometers, more than 6 miles, depending on how long the robot's battery charge would last. The Ranger, like other robots developed in Ruina's lab, is designed for maximum energy-efficiency. Although its four-legged design makes it look a bit like a walking sawhorse, it mimics human walking technique, using energy only to push off with its pivoting toes, but depending on gravity and forward motion to swing its legs forward.
The goal of the research, Ruina said, is not only to advance robotics but also to learn more about the mechanics of walking so the information can be applied to rehabilitation and prosthetics for humans.
After a promising start, the robot literally stubbed its toe after failing to tilt one of its feet upward as the leg came forward. With that, the team of students went into an intense diagnostic session, reviewing telemetry that showed the signals sent by the robot's computer controller to its motors and switches, watching video of the fall and taking new video as the robot was repeatedly tested. The problem was eventually diagnosed as a loose connection in the wires leading to a sensor that measures the angle of the legs relative to the ground.
"I'm actually sort of glad this happened," Ruina said as he watched the students cluster around a laptop to review the robot's programming. "They need to learn that failures are a part of engineering in the real world."
Source: Cornell University
