The Gizmophile

Hi everyone!  Back from a long hiatus.  I think it’s about I post something to keep the site somewhat alive.  What’s in store today?  Google’s Chrome OS.

I don’t know about you but for some reason, I’m not all that excited about it…yet.  Maybe I haven’t seen much of it to lean one way or the other.  But if what I’ve read so far comes close to being true, I won’t have to spend so much on upgrades just to run an OS live Vista.   Maybe I can resurrect some old PC parts lying around like my 1ghz Duron.    I suppose it makes sense if it’s going to be supporting cloud computing. Well I hope I see more news about this in the next few months.  Until then, here are a few article links you might want to read.

Introducing Google Chrome OS

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Don’t even think about buying the Panasonic SDR-H80K camcorder…  It’s a joke…

The resolution is at 704×480 versus the 720×480 offered in standard MiniDV and/or DVD video formats.

While it has worthwhile features, like optical image stabilization, 70x optical zoom, and SDHC flash memory compatibility…  It doesn’t compensate for the lack of 16 vertical lines of resolution.  Sure, you can futz with video editing software, and try to smooth out the jaggies…  But is it really worth it?  Most video editing software have pre-made templates for beginners and novices…  Why confuse those people with non-standard video resolution?

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I recently purchased and then promptly returned this camcorder, due to the quality of the recorded footage.

Stay tuned while I organize thoughts and research this camcorder, and the apparent interpolation of the pixels it captures.

To give you some idea of the quality of the footage, which was recorded to the internal 60GB HDD, take a photo and add the effect of mosaic, and reduce it to around .1 or .5 pixels in diameter.  Now, imagine that photo, but with motion, would you call that high definition?  If you attach an HDMI cable to this camcorder and plug it into say a Samsung LN40A650, you’d see this soft noise coupled with yellow/orange spots on a white wall with ample ambient light.

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This is one hell of a deal!  I’m pissed though since the 1 TB drive I bought for my Tivo just 6 months ago cost me 130 bucks.  Now you can get one for 75 bucks shipped.  I wish I could add another internal drive to my Tivo but I don’t think I watch enough shows to use up all 2 TB worth of recording capacity.

Here’s the link to the deal if you’re interested.

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Texas Fight App for the iPhone.

I don’t have an iPhone so this is no use to me but if you’re a Longhorn and got a fancy iPhone, give this app a try.  Now who’s going to make an app for us Blackberry users?  Anyone?

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