screens

The Samsung YP-P2 has landed, and we have the photos to prove it. With its 3-inch touch screen, and a 480x272 video resolution capable of DVD-quality and 30 frames per second, the Samsung YP-P2 is a tough contender for the holiday's Flash-based PVP battle royale. Obviously, the P2 is aimed at the iPod Touch audience, but with recent video-worthy releases from SanDisk, Creative, and Microsoft--it's still anybody's game.

We'll have a full review done next week. Until then, you can ogle our Samsung YP-P2 photo gallery. The Samsung YP-P2 is available for $199 (4GB) and $249 ($… Read more

A lab at the University of Ghent has come up with electric, elastic wires.

Electric elastic wires-- it sounds like a band Peter Max would have hung out with in the late 60s, doesn?t it? Actually, these are electric interconnects that give consumer electronic devices a greater range of motion, according to the story in EE Times, which always does an admirable job of covering overseas trends. Thus, a manufacturer could build flexible displays or e-paper with greater reliability.

The group embedded 4-micron gold wires in a silicone film. The wire itself is horseshoe shaped, or in other words, … Read more

Our review of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard last Thursday lauded its lovely interface innovations but withheld judgment about the operating system's speed until we could put it through its paces.

Tests returned from CNET Labs on Saturday show that Leopard didn't perform noticeably faster than Mac OS 10.4.6 Tiger. (See the chart in CNET's review of Tiger.). Because Leopard's improved speeds of between 1 percent and 3 percent fall within the 5 percent margin of error, it's fair to call Leopard and Tiger even.

Lab tests explored Leopard's boot time, … Read more

I had a great dinner tonight with the Openbravo management team in Barcelona. As we walked up La Rambla from a decadent pre-dinner "meal" of lava-like hot chocolate, we headed into the parking garage to get our car.

The door to the parking payment machine was open as we got into the garage. The computer had malfunctioned and the parking attendant was rebooting it. I got there just in time to notice the operating system (used city-wide) that was causing this parking attendant grief:

Windows.

One can't even park anymore without getting the Blue Screen of Death.… Read more

Am I the only one who feels that this is long overdue for Nokia? Oh well, better late than never: The Symbian Series 60 has finally gone touch!

At the recent Symbian Smartphone Show held in London, the Finnish company showed off its new S60 touch-screen interface that adds several features to the handheld platform. It includes support for tactile feedback, the ability to run existing S60 apps without modification and detection of motion, orientation, proximity and light, as well as the ability to display Flash videos on the S60 browser.

The new technology is expected to be available to … Read more

Touch screen phones like LG's Prada, Samsung's Armani, and some other big seller seem to drive home the point that touch screens are here to stay, and are likely the future of the phone market. Typing accuracy isn't exactly the easiest feat when your digits hit the screen, since your fingers obscure part of the image. Mitsubishi Research Labs has a solution to provide the elegance of a touch screen interface without obscuring the screen. It calls it the 'transparent interface.' Rather than poking at the front of a screen idly, researchers placed sensors at the back … Read more

As if recent laws haven't made smokers feel like pariahs already, now they may have to start punching a timeclock too.

The "SmokeScreen" is a fingerprint-reading system that tracks smokers as they leave a building to sneak a cancer stick or two. Made by a U.K. company called IDScan, it's being targeted at clubs to monitor the comings and goings of patrons who presumably have paid their cover charges but are in dire need for a quick fix outside. Red Ferret says savvy club owners could even promote it as a status symbol, an "… Read more

If programs were people, the sleeker, trimmer-looking Camtasia Studio 5 would be the guy or gal who, after emerging from a months-long stint with a personal trainer, has now stretched out on the sand to enjoy the response.

Behind the scenes, TechSmith's Camtasia team has been pumping serious iron into a handful of new features for each of Camtasia's major recording, editing, producing, and playback functionalities. The final result is a more robust screen recording and producing app that's gained significant muscle without added fat. While there are still some flaws to work out, Camtasia Studio 5 offers streamlined performance for the same price as its predecessor--$299 new; $149 to upgrade.

Here's a look at the new and enhanced features in order of appearance.… Read more