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Crunch time for Microsoft's Open XML standards bid

Government technocrats are meeting this week in Geneva to decide the fate of Microsoft's Office Open XML, a document format that backers say is worthy of an international standard but foes call a risk to people's liberties in the Digital Age.

The five-day conference will not directly result in a "yea" or "nay" on whether Open XML will be certified by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).

Instead, the "ballot resolution meeting" will allow representatives from national standards bodies one month to revise a previous vote from September, where Open XML was … Read more

Poll: Megapixels vs. camera sensitivity

LAS VEGAS--The camera companies keep telling me the megapixel race isn't over, but I'd like to see if you have a different opinion.

I'm one of those people who doesn't believe more megapixels necessarily makes for a better digital camera. Sure, at least theoretically having more megapixels permits larger prints and tighter cropping, but it also can impose penalties such as image noise, lousy low-light performance, smeary noise-reduction artifacts, and other drawbacks. There's a trade-off here.

So it's time to vote now for what you'd benefit from more in a camera: more megapixels … Read more

Kodak's new ultrazoom, high-ISO, and budget cameras

Kodak just announced four new digital cameras at PMA 2007. The different models range from budget snapshooters to photographer-minded ultrazooms, and none of them cost more than $300.

The Kodak EasyShare Z712 IS is the company's newest superzoom camera. With a 36- to 432mm-equivalent, optically stabilized lens, the 7-megapixel Z712 IS offers a generous 12X zoom power. Like most ultrazooms, the Z712 IS is modeled more after digital SLRs than snapshot cameras, with many more manual controls and a much bulkier design. The Z712 IS's 12X zoom isn't quite as impressive as the upcoming 15X Sony Cyber Shot DSC-H7 and DSC-H9, … Read more

A new how-do-you-do from BenQ

BenQ has just announced a new big-screen, high-ISO, compact snapshot camera, just in time for holiday shoppers to ask why the company is announcing a new product in mid-December. The X710 is a slim, 7.2-megapixel shooter with a big 3-inch LCD screen and a 30fps VGA movie mode that can hit ISO 4000 sensitivity for filming in low light. Of course, that setting will probably mean incredibly noisy, grainy movies that look like they come out of 1970s-era video tapes. Still shots can only go up to ISO 1200, which will still probably be pretty darn noisy. The … Read more