sony

Sony has revealed its follow-up to the PlayStation 2's EyeToy, and it looks pretty impressive for a glorified Webcam. The PlayStation Eye will let your PlayStation 3 watch and listen to you as you watch and listen to it. The Eye can capture VGA video at 60 frames per second, or QVGA (320 X 240) video at 120 frames per second. It records sound through a four-microphone array, and can save photos, videos, and audio clips to your PS3's hard drive with the included EyeCreate software.

The upcoming PS3 title The Eye of Judgment will take full use … Read more

The Wall Street Journal is reporting (subscription required for full story) that Ken Kutaragi, creator of Sony's PlayStation console line, has stepped down from his post at the company.

While it was originally expected to give Sony new momentum, PS3 sales were ultimately disappointing, and according to the Journal article, the company is now dealing with $2 billion in losses related to its video games division over the past year (ending March 31.)

Sony CEO Howard Stringer has famously been reshuffling the company's executive lineup since last fall.

UPDATE: Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. confirmed Kutaragi's departure to … Read more

The notebook battery recall isn't over yet.

Acer, the fast-growing Taiwanese PC maker, announced on Wednesday a voluntary recall of 27,000 lithium ion notebook batteries made by Sony. A danger exists that the batteries can short-circuit and burst into flames.

Millions of notebook batteries produced by Sony have been recalled since last year. Acer was one of the few major companies not impacted by the battery recall to date. Apple, Dell, Lenovo and Toshiba have all had to recall batteries.

The Acer TravelMate notebooks containing the batteries subject to the recall were sold from May 2004 through November … Read more

And then there were four: quadruplet Sony HD camcorders, that is. When they ship on June 27, the $1,200 Memory Stick Duo-based Handycam HDR-CX7 and $1,400 hard-disk-based HDR-SR7 will join the tape-based HDR-HC7 and DVD-based HDR-UX7 to provide consumers with an almost bewildering array of HD options.

They differ primarily by storage media. All use the same 1/2.9-inch, 3.2-megapixel ClearVid CMOS sensor, recording video at 2.3-megapixel (HD) or 1.7-megapixel (SD) resolution before downsampling and encoding to 1080i HD (1,920x540) or SD (720x480), respectively. They also shoot photos at native 2.3-megapixel (16:… Read more

Though CTIA has come and gone, there's still some news from the show that's worth mentioning. Aside from its gallery of new cell phones, such as the Z750 and the W580, the company also announced the Z750 would be the first cell phone to support the new Java Platform 8 (JP-8). JP-8, which is based on the Mobile Services Architecture (MSA) Java umbrella standard, not only brings a new set of applications to handsets such as the Z750, it aims to standardize Java development as a whole. At CTIA I got a chance to peek at what JP-8 … Read more

From the seller's site: "Sony's HDRHC5 HD DV Camcorder makes it easy to capture perfect Digital video, every time. Capture high definition (HD) and standard definition (SD) video to a MiniDV cassette. Record every detail of every moment, with the 10x optical/80x Digital zoom and Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar T* lens. As you record video, you'll also take still pictures at the same time with the 4.0 megapixel still image feature. Snap spectacular 2.3 megapixel photos while filming in dual record mode. The HDR-HC5 even slows down the audio."

Read the seller's … Read more

The vast choice of mobile phone accessories gives Crave a pounding headache. We rarely find something genuinely worth spending our hard-earned cash on. "Yet again, mobile phone companies are trying to sell us stuff we don't need," we think to our amalgamated Borg-self. But Sony Ericsson's MBR-100 might just change our mind(s).

This little electro-lozenge enables you to wirelessly blast tunes stored on your mobile phone through your hi-fi system or PC. A refreshing change from music screeching out of annoyingly crap 0.01W mobile phone loudspeakers, perhaps?

The MBR-100 is simple to connect. After … Read more

The "Dream Machine" as secret agent?

Sony may need to expand into new areas as some of its core businesses continue to suffer (read: iPod), but the spying game hardly seems like a natural fit. In fact, we have no idea why it would even want to develop a combo clock radio and spy cam like the one seen on Uber-Review, other than for the sheer novelty of it.

For one thing, there appears to be an endless supply of covert devices disguised as ordinary household items already on the market. Second, many companies have been specializing in … Read more

Sony Ericsson tends to be serious about Bluetooth and has never been satisfied with producing a simple line of wireless headsets. Granted, some of these products haven't made a whole lot of sense (remember the Bluetooth remote control car?).

Others, like the HCB 300 Bluetooth car kit are indeed functional. Yet the company's MBW-100 Bluetooth Watch is a little harder to classify. It goes beyond entertainment and definitely serves a purpose, but we're still not sure if it's really necessary.

When paired with a Bluetooth phone (it doesn't have to be a Sony Ericsson model), … Read more