HP’s V5020u camcorder – ideal for shaky hands

HP’s V5020u camcorder may look a bit minuscule in the image above, but it does actually have a lot going on under the proverbial hood.

It boasts full HD 1080p video recording with a resolution of 1920×1080, a built-in gyroscope for image stabilisation, 10x digital zoom, 5 megapixel sensor, a motion detector, 2-inch LCD and an SDHC memory card slot.

It’s available next month for $159 (about £100).

Roll up, roll up – it’s Sony’s flexible e-paper

Looks like there’s finally a solution to end getting print all over yours hands when reading the newspaper.

Placed alongside some fancy 3DTV’s at Sony’s Dealer Conversion in Japan was a prototype of their flexible electronic paper display.

Details are as slim as the display itself – which can reportedly be rolled up like a real newspaper. Sony Insider claims though that e-paper has used glass substrate in the past but this new technology uses plastic substrate which is lighter and more flexible.

Google, in an instant

Google has come up with a way to please the one billion visitors they receive a week – give them the information they desire instantly.

No longer will Google waits for you to hit ‘enter’ – it now starts updating the results page Instantly as you type. UK, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Spain and the United States are the first set of countries to receive Google Instant – which is due to roll out any day now – while Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer 8 are the first supported browsers. Mobile users will have to wait until the fall.

Google’s boffins say that instance search will save over 350 million man hours over the course of a year. Check out this amusing video using a Bob Dylan song as an example.

Nokia N8 makes a date

Nokia’s N8 “multimedia powerhouse” Symbian^3  phone will be available from the “last week of September” in the UK if you pre-order it from Nokia’s website. If fancy trotting down to the high street though, then you’ll have to wait a couple of days – it won’t be available until 1^st October.

The phone’s camera has been getting a lot of praise – it’s 12 megapixel and can record in HD. Videos can be edited using a unique, built-in editing suite and then played back with Dolby Digital Plus surround sound.

“The Nokia N8 is perfect for creating and sharing great content in high-definition, using HDMI out to connect to your TV as well as hot-USB swap. We’re making it fun and easy to capture and share memorable moments on the go,” says Mark Loughran from Nokia UK.

It’ll set you back £429 SIM free or on contract from £35 per month.

IBM creates World’s fastest microprocessor

In ten years time people will probably laugh at IBM’s record breaking z196 Processor, but for now it’s the World’s fastest microprocessor clocking in at an impressive 5.2Ghz.

IBM sunk more than $1.5 billion into research and development to produce the four-core chip. It contains 1.4 billion transistors on a 512-square millimeter (mm) surface.

IBM says that this world record-breaking speed is “necessary for businesses managing huge workloads, such as banks and retailers”.

So it’s not for PC-fan boys to run Crysis 2 and Rage with? Oh.

Apple shows off Apple TV and 2010 range

This week is going to be a busy one for the world of technology – the IFA is taking place in Germany and Apple has just shown off their new 2010 models of the Nano, Shuffle iPod Touch and their new Apple TV gizmo.

There isn’t much to say about the new Shuffle so we’ll get that out of the way first. It has a 15 hour battery, the button has made a comeback and is now on the front of the device, it comes in five colours and will be available from next week. $49 will bag you a 2GB model.

The Nano has had the biggest overhaul and has turned the most heads. It now has a touch screen which replaces the click wheel and it’s 46% smaller and 42% lighter. It comes in seven colours and has a 24 hour battery. It’s not all good news though – there’s no camera and no video playback. And although it has a time and date function, there’s no alarm feature…because it doesn’t have a speaker. Prices are set at $149 for 8GB or $179 for 16GB.

As predicted by many, the new iPod Touch is simply an thinner iPhone 4 minus the phone features. That means it’ll feature a retina display from the iPhone 4, an Apple A4 core, 3-axis gyroscope and FaceTime support due to the addition of a front camera. It’ll be arriving in US stores next week at a price of $229 for 8GB, $299 for 32GB, and $399 for 64GB. No 16GB or 128GB models it would seem.

If anything, Apple TV is inexpensive. The tiny black box will only cost $99. It sits under your TV and allows you to stream TV shows and movies onto your picturebox in 720p. Apple says that 720p works best for picture quality and bandwidth. Round the back you’ll find a HDMI port, Ethernet, optical audio, USB sockets and it also has 802.11n WiFi. TV shows from ABC and Fox will cost 99 cents at time,while HD movies will cost $4.99. Other services set to appear include YouTube, Netflix, photo sharing site Flickr and Mobile Me. Rotten Tomatoes will be providing information for the movie database. The device also comes with a white-coloured remote that resembles an elongated Shuffle.

Apple claimed during their conference that the iPod Touch is now the #1 gaming device outselling the Nintendo DS and PSP combined. This however does seem a little hard to swallow – at last count 132 million Nintendo DS handhelds have been sold compared to 120 million iPod Touch units.

Nintendo should be worried though, especially if Epic’s new iPhone engine – which can be seen for yourself by downloading the Epic Citadel demo – is anything to go by. You can read a little bit more about that over on Kotaku.

Party ipad

Purveyors of fine Apple peripherals Griffin have filed a copyright patent for the most ambitious looking iPad / iPhone dock yet – one that turns your iPad or iPhone 4 into a fully fledged game console.

The sleek looking dock contains four joypads and can be connect to a TV. It’s simple to set up and comes with three PartyDock mini-games and one full game. Additional PartyDock games can be downloaded from iTunes – only these games are compatible with it, so there’s no chance of playing Doodle Jump or Angry Birds on your TV just yet.

For details such as price and release date, keep an eye on the official website.

Ciclotte takes us for a ride

It has been a year since the quirky looking Ciclotte exercise bike was first shown, but that last year has been well spent – it has started to go into production.

The price tag instantly tells us that this isn’t for the mass market – it’s a reported $10,000. For that price you get to pick a colour (full carbon, silver or purple) while the bike itself has an epicycloid crank system, a magnetized main wheel to generate resistance, a steel and carbon frame, adjustable seat and handlebars, and a touchscreen interface.

Obviously, it looks quite cool too. Check the “lifestyle” photos on the official website.

Control freaks

The first iControlPad has rolled off the production line. If you can’t guess by the photo above, it’s an add-on designed to give the iPhone a proper joypad. There’s also a variant planned that’ll have an extra battery built-in to give your phone a boosted battery life.

There’s a video detailing how it was designed on YouTube. Plenty more details, including images of prototypes, can be found on the official site.

Don’t simply expect to stroll into your nearest iPhone accessory retailer and buy one though; the first run is said to be limited to 3,000 units and may have to be pre-ordered.

$50 tablet revealed for India

Allgo’s Stamp - an Android 2.1 tablet being currently created in India – isn’t particularly powerful or flashy but if it ever makes it out it’ll be dirt cheap. Why? Because it only costs $50 to maufacture.

The Stamp is the latest of a long line of devices designed to bring low-cost computing technology to the masses of India. It features Wi-Fi, USB and an ethernet port and has a 7-inch 800X480 pixel resistive touch screen display. A lengthy list of supported software can be found on Allgo’s official website.

There’s a video of a working prototype on YouTube too.  The prototype is at such an early stage that it doesn’t even have casing yet, so don’t expect it to be hitting shelves – Indian or otherwise – anytime soon.

Pocketbook packs a punch

Just about every company going has got a tablet or e-book reader in the pipeline.  In fact, PocketBook has no less than five different e-readers out soon, one of which is powered by Android.

The ProBook 602 and 902 “entry level” units and have 6-inch screens while the ProBook 603 and 903 “premium models” have a bigger 9.7-inch screens. All models will feature 2GB of internal storage, a Linux-based OS, and include WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity. Only the premium units will have 3G connectivity and a Wacom touchscreen.

It’s the PocketBook IQ that’s being blessed as Android (2.0, if you’re wondering) and will be advertised as an entertainment device. The case comes in three different colours and it has a 7-inch TFT color touchscreen, WiFi and Bluetooth.

All units will be available next month.

PlayStation 3 finally hacked?

The PlayStation 3 has enjoyed many pirate-free years, but if the rumours are true then those days are over. An unknown company has apparently created a USB modchip going by the name of PSJailbreak which once inserted lets gamers install software onto the PS3’s HDD.

Potential pirates won’t even need to buy a Blu-Ray disk burner to get copied games. The hack works by streaming game data either from the internal HDD or via USB flash drives/hard disk drives.

Videos have appeared on YouTube from companies such as OzModChips who have been sent the USB modchip. The USB device appears to be activated when the system is booted by holding down the power followed by the eject button, which suggests that it’s derived from debug equipment used by Sony themselves. OzModChips says that their nameless packages have been sent from a company based in Hong Kong.

Even more worrying for Sony is that the PSJailbreak will reportedly work on any model on PlayStation 3 with any firmware.

We should know within the next few days if this is just one elaborate hoax or not. Unfortunately for Sony though, it would appear that it isn’t the case.