When employees at Pure Digital Technologies get caught watching user-generated videos at work, they don't have to worry. The clips come from their customers, shot on the Flip video cameras the company makes.
Three-dimensional TV is coming to a living room near you. But will the technology spur a consumer spending spree like digital and high-definition TV did before it? Or will 3D end up being the next big flop?
Every so often a camera comes along that gets (and deserves) high marks, but which I don't necessarily like as much as the rating would suggest. The latest object of such ambivalence is the Panasonic Lumix DMC-G1.
Panasonic's Lumix DMC-G1 offers interchangeable lenses, Nikon's Coolpix P6000 provides GPS--the feature sets on enthusiast compact cameras are all over the place these days.
For years, Nikon users had been asking their favored camera maker for a dSLR with a full-frame sensor (the same size as a 35mm frame of film).
Coming from a company known more for its plasma HDTVs, the Panasonic TC-32LX85 is a pleasant surprise in the 32-inch LCD category.
In case you haven't been paying close attention to the digital SLR market lately, there's been a shift toward CMOS sensors.
With its 14-megapixel CCD, flip-up LCD, sensor-shift image stabilizer, and built-in wireless flash controller, the feature-packed Sony Alpha DSLR-A350 seems like a cornucopia of photographic goodness for the budget shopper.
Plasma HDTVs seem almost passe these days, but in our experience they still produce generally better images than LCDs. The mid-price 50-inch Samsung PN50A550 reviewed here provides a typical example of what plasma can do right.
With its eye-catching, compact body and relatively low price, the Panasonic HDC-SD9 seems to be quite an attractive buy for a flash-based AVCHD camcorder.
When employees at Pure Digital Technologies get caught watching user-generated videos at work, they don't have to worry. The clips come from their customers, shot on the Flip video cameras the company makes.
Three-dimensional TV is coming to a living room near you. But will the technology spur a consumer spending spree like digital and high-definition TV did before it? Or will 3D end up being the next big flop?
Every so often a camera comes along that gets (and deserves) high marks, but which I don't necessarily like as much as the rating would suggest. The latest object of such ambivalence is the Panasonic Lumix DMC-G1.
Panasonic's Lumix DMC-G1 offers interchangeable lenses, Nikon's Coolpix P6000 provides GPS--the feature sets on enthusiast compact cameras are all over the place these days.
For years, Nikon users had been asking their favored camera maker for a dSLR with a full-frame sensor (the same size as a 35mm frame of film).
Coming from a company known more for its plasma HDTVs, the Panasonic TC-32LX85 is a pleasant surprise in the 32-inch LCD category.
In case you haven't been paying close attention to the digital SLR market lately, there's been a shift toward CMOS sensors.
With its 14-megapixel CCD, flip-up LCD, sensor-shift image stabilizer, and built-in wireless flash controller, the feature-packed Sony Alpha DSLR-A350 seems like a cornucopia of photographic goodness for the budget shopper.
Plasma HDTVs seem almost passe these days, but in our experience they still produce generally better images than LCDs. The mid-price 50-inch Samsung PN50A550 reviewed here provides a typical example of what plasma can do right.
With its eye-catching, compact body and relatively low price, the Panasonic HDC-SD9 seems to be quite an attractive buy for a flash-based AVCHD camcorder.
With its T series, Sony has an unfortunate habit of taking at least one step back for every two steps forward.
Canon's 1Ds series of cameras exists in a class of its own.
When you build the follow-up to a hot camera, how do you turn up the heat? When Nikon shipped the D200 a couple of years ago, its combination of speed and photo quality blew away the limited competition, and provided a powerful, relatively inexpensive alternative to Nikon's then top-of-the-line D2X.
No fewer than six of my friends and family received digital photo frames for Christmas last month. For the record, no, I was not the one to give them.
HP's Photosmart M537 is the archetypal budget camera. It's not particularly large or small, it doesn't look terribly shiny or sleek, and it doesn't have any notably unique features.
One of the best reasons to consider a megazoom is the fact that you get a big zoom range in a small package, so you don't have to carry around huge SLR lenses and, more importantly, you don't have to pay the huge prices for those SLR lenses.
Among that tiny segment of the population that cares about the latest HDTV technology, and the even tinier segment that can afford it, the introduction of Samsung's 81 series of flat-panel LCDs is kind of like early Christmas. The first widely distributed LCD HDTVs to incorporate LED backlights -- Sony sold a few Qualia 005s a couple years ago at $8,000 to $15,000 a pop -- the Samsungs promise amazing black levels, claiming a contrast ratio spec of 500,000:1.
As compact cameras continue to evolve into commodity items, camera makers have shifted the way they approach their entry-level dSLRs.
The company that invented the CD, the Walkman and the PlayStation will soon become an environmental pioneer, too: Sony says it will offer free recycling of all its products in the United States.
Sony Corp. said its first-quarter profit more than tripled, beating expectations, after strong digital camera sales and a softer yen far outweighed losses on the struggling PlayStation 3 game console.
Sharing a perch at the top of Sony's HD prosumer camcorder line, the Handycam HDR-SR7 manages to combine a raft of cutting-edge capabilities without forgetting that its primary function is capturing high-quality HD video.
Casio made its name in the digital camera world with its ultraslim Exilim Card cameras, and thin cameras - such as the Exilim EX-Z75 (part of the Exilim Zoom series) -- remain one of the company's specialties.
Affordable digital cameras have finally broken the 10-megapixel barrier. Business 2.0 Magazine picks three that will satisfy even the pickiest photographer.
Adam Baer spends his days testing and reviewing the latest gadgets for travelers who like to put something extra into their suitcases at vacation time.
Western companies will soon get a sneak peek at an unwelcome coming attraction: Chinese antitrust law. They're hoping it's not a horror show. A Shanghai court heard evidence in January in an antitr...
A lot of cameras in the crowded and competitive digital point-and-shoot market are all flash and no substance. They add all sorts of extra gimmicks such as fancy slide shows and colorful borders that don't actually contribute to the cameras' pictures.
The James Bond seduction is about to begin, so what better time to serve up a simple guide to the secrets of finding your own 007 elan?
Ah, the memories that a photo album can evoke. Here I am with my first digital camera, the Apple QuickTake 100, along with a serial cable and the Macintosh portable I had lugged up a 12,000-foot mo...
A century age high-tech travel meant a horseless carriage or steamship and a postcard that arrived home long after the traveler did.
One day last July, two naked men lowered themselves into a hot spring in Hakone, a Japanese tourist town known for its beautiful lake and views of Mount Fuji. One was a pallid, curly-haired 63-year...
THE DIGITAL CAMERA MARKET IS TRICKY THESE days. On the one hand, there are models so small they've earned the nickname "credit card" cameras. But an opposite trend has also been showing up at the l...
One day last July, two naked men lowered themselves into a hot spring in Hakone, a Japanese tourist town known for its beautiful lake and views of Mount Fuji.
Shopping for, say, a DVD player means sorting through a series of choices: price tags that range from $35 to $200, brand names you recognize and brands you've never heard of. But if you were able t...
ASK CANON CEO FUJIO MITARAI to explain how he turned a floundering Japanese electronics maker into one of the world's most profitable technology giants, and he's apt to tell you about an Internal Revenue Service auditor named Greg. It was 1966, and Mitarai had been put in charge of accounting at Canon's new U.S. subsidiary. In its first year the venture reported a profit of just $6,000, a sum so paltry it aroused suspicion at the IRS. After scouring Canon's books for a month and verifying that its U.S. earnings were every bit as meager as claimed, Greg, the agency's lead auditor, offered Mitarai some free advice: Deposit your accounts receivable in the bank, close the company, and go home.
Ask Canon CEO Fujio Mitarai to explain how he turned a floundering Japanese electronics maker into one of the world's most profitable technology giants, and he's apt to tell you about an Internal Revenue Service auditor named Greg. It was 1966, and Mitarai had been put in charge of accounting at Canon's new U.S. subsidiary. In its first year the venture reported a profit of just $6,000, a sum so paltry it aroused suspicion at the IRS. After scouring Canon's books for a month and verifying its U.S. earnings to be every bit as meager as claimed, Greg, the agency's lead auditor, offered Mitarai some free advice: Deposit your accounts receivable in the bank, close the company, and go home.
HERE'S CAUSE FOR HOLIDAY CHEER: PRICES FOR FLAT-PANEL TVs and computers have been falling like snowflakes. (If it seems to you as if prices are drifting up, perhaps it's because the elves have been...
Less than a decade ago, his company was just another anonymous Asian supplier of commodity parts. Since then, Jong-Yong Yun, the CEO of Samsung Electronics, has seen it become the world's biggest c...
Some of the biggest electronics manufacturers say they will repair a defective chip found on more than 80 models of digital cameras and other digital devices, but only if the chip becomes faulty, according to a report published Thursday.
The guts of a next-generation digital video camcorder are splayed on a worktable near Sun Woo Song's desk, although to a visitor's eye they might as well be the innards of a notebook computer or a ...
FORTUNE's Brent Schlender talked with Howard Stringer in New York City shortly after he was named Sony's CEO. Edited excerpts:
Nobuyuki Idei was in a quandary. It was mid-January 2005, and the weary Sony Corp. CEO had just received confirmation from his chief financial officer, Katsumi Ihara, of what many around headquarte...
Steve Jobs (yes, him again) was working his way methodically through one crowd-pleasing new feature after another at Apple Computer's early January new-product launch in San Francisco when he welco...
The Music Aficionado
POLITICIANS ARE FOND of asking, Are you better off now than you were four years ago? Well, let's see. The last time we endured a photo- finish presidential election, we weren't at war, gas cost les...
It's a classic theme of geek tragedy: A distraught mortal shakes his fists at the gods because he's just spent a thousand bucks for a fancy piece of digital gear, only to discover that a much bette...
GOOD $404
Late fall is always a deliciously happy time for technology fans, the season just before the holidays when consumer electronics companies come out with their latest gizmos and gadgets. You may thin...
It's a sunny Southern California evening in mid-October at the posh South Coast Plaza shopping center in Orange County, and Sony Corp. is throwing a bash. Were you to pass by the roped-off event on...
Around 40 years ago, the cameras that pros used--single-lens reflex numbers with interchangeable lenses--finally fell within a hobbyist's budget. Suddenly, the streets of Rome were overrun by folks...
It's hard to convince people that the Canon EOS Digital Rebel is a serious camera when you're drooling, grinning like a fool, making little "ooh, ahh" noises, and fondling its body like a mother c...
If you want to see the future of videogames, there's no place like the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo. Each May the industry's heavyweights roll out their latest marvels, displaying their vis...
There's a lonely spot at your local camera store: the section of counter with the point-and-shoot film cameras. "We take them out and dust them and place them back on the shelf," says a clerk at a ...
Which digital cameras are best? It depends on how you want to use them. There are four basic kinds.
Every once in a while a consumer technology emerges that goes beyond mere clever gadgetry and has the potential to fundamentally alter our habits and lifestyles. Examples: the VCR, the microwave ov...
As we bid adieu to 2002--and not a moment too soon!--let's pause to appreciate the products that brightened an otherwise dull year in personal technology. How tedious was 2002? My favorite new prod...
Burn, baby-boomer, burn! Boomers may weep with nostalgia when they see Verbatim's Digital Vinyl CD-R discs, which resemble 45-rpm records. (Youngsters may weep at their ungroovy prices, $12.99 for ...
Kunitake Ando is all smiles, as you would expect him to be, given that he presides over what is arguably the world's greatest and (next to Santa's workshop) most legendary toy factory. As president...
When he ran Canon's North American division, Fujio Mitarai enjoyed playing golf with Jack Welch at the Fairfield Country Club in Connecticut. He liked talking business with the then-CEO of General ...
Olympus D-40 Zoom On the serious side, Olympus' D-40 Zoom ($699) is a true four-megapixel digital camera with advanced features, like an all-glass lens and a seamless optical-digital zoom that's th...
On the one hand, it sounds ridiculous to say that film cameras are heading for extinction. Tens of millions of film cameras will be sold this year, compared with seven million or so digital cameras...
MP3/Audio player: Apple iPOD
Nikon's new Coolpix 775 point-and-shoot digital camera is a marvel of big-picture quality in a small, lightweight package that's easy to carry around. Although it lacks some of the more advanced fe...
We loved the Nikon CoolPix 990 digital camera for its innovative swiveling-lens design, its impressive 3.34-megapixel image quality, and its nice balance of point-and-shoot simplicity (for beginnin...
Attention, class. School hasn't even started yet, and already you have to answer some tough questions when it comes to technology. Yes, you need a computer at college, but which one? Windows or Mac...
FADE IN: This month's Academy Awards will celebrate the magic of moviemaking. Shortly thereafter, barring an unexpected settlement, the film industry will shout "Cut!" as actors and writers go on s...
From Swiss Army Knives to peanut butter and jelly in a single jar, there's a long and happy tradition of merging several products into one. So it's no surprise that electronics makers have taken to...
Early adopters of digital cameras often became surly adopters. That's because the first models were expensive and rarely performed as well as those $10 disposable cameras sold in drugstores. But in...
Digital, digital, digital. When it comes to cameras, it's all you hear about these days. Yes, it is amazing that you can see your photos instantly and then delete the ones that make you look...well...
It's time for the family picnic--time to do your duty. While everyone else is eating, drinking, and generally having a great time, you take photos. On Monday you drop the film at the drugstore; on ...
To complete this list of the world's most admired companies, FORTUNE consulted a select group of experts--senior executives and outside board members of companies in each of the industries included...
First things first: Do not call these cameras "disposable." True, you buy one pre-loaded with film, hand over the whole contraption to the shop that's developing your photos and never see the camer...
To select the world's most admired companies, FORTUNE went straight to those in the know: senior executives and outside directors in each industry, plus financial analysts who earn their living com...
Buying an easy-to-use camera ought to be a snap. But walk into a photo shop and you'll see that it just isn't so: There are more than 250 point-and-shoot models available, ranging in price from les...
Canon is unlike any other Japanese company. It never established keiretsu-style relationships with suppliers or a main bank. Its chairman, Ryuzaburo Kaku, is a born iconoclast, best known in Japan ...
Anyone interested in buying a camera these days will quickly figure out that there's good news and bad news in store. On the one hand, there are a lot of options out there. On the other hand, there...
Whether freezing a moment in sports history or capturing a child's first birthday, photography has long relied on chemical technology to capture an image on film. Now, photography is undergoing its...
As if Kodak's George Fisher didn't have enough problems. Over the past few weeks, his earnings tanked, his stock self-destructed, and he has been forced to announce layoffs numbering in the thousan...
Like a snapshot, Eastman Kodak long appeared frozen in time. The world's premier marketer of memories on photographic film and paper seemed a perfect fit for, say, 1958, the year Perry Como recorde...
HIGHLIGHT PRINTER Liven up those drab forms and reports. The Xerox 4850 Highlight Color Laser Printing System is the first printer to produce color documents in one pass, pumping out 50 pages per m...
PORTABLE CD-ROM Whoever said you can't take it with you hasn't seen Sony's mini CD-ROM technology. CD-ROM, or compact disk read-only memory, packs thousands of pages of information on laser-optical...
HOLD ON to your lens caps, shutterbugs. A storm of technological innovations and new products is gathering over the world of photography. When it breaks sometime in the 1990s, it will blow away muc...
REEBOK HAD a terrific idea: a basketball sneaker with inflatable air cushions for better ankle support. But the idea had a problem: how to inflate the air bags? Some at Reebok suggested an ugly box...
IMAGINE A NEW FORM of information storage that would hold encyclopedic amounts of data but could slip into a personal computer or workstation as easily as a floppy disk does -- and could be erased ...
If flakes of silicon are swirling about your head like snow during the final frenzy of holiday shopping, welcome to the blundering herd. Digital dilemmas! Electronic enigmas! Big-ticket blues! The ...
POLAROID is pouring champagne, and with good reason. The 50-year-old company is recovering from a serious midlife crisis. Consumers had grown disenchanted with instant photography, and Polaroid sal...
SO FAR 1986 has brought only embarrassment for Eastman Kodak. On January 9, a federal judge in Washington ordered the company out of the instant-photography business for violating seven Polaroid pa...
Without claiming that it's better than Beta, Sony Corp. introduced a new line of 8-mm video cameras and recorders aimed at the home market. The new Sony product is the smallest and lightest sound-e...
SONY CHAIRMAN Akio Morita bounded from his Mercedes, tilted his head back, and looked up at the huge Sony television screen overhead, about half the size of an American football field and bubbling ...
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