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Samsung Offers Motion Controlled Camera

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Like the way you can interact with and control your Wii or Xbox gaming systems just by a simple wave of your hand?

Now you can do pretty much the same thing with a Samsung digital camera!

Samsung has launched a point and shoot camera, called the MV900F, that offers a flip screen and the ability to zoom in and out or take photos simply by waving your hand. It also sports built in Wi-Fi so you can upload images from the camera directly to websites like Facebook.

The MV900F takes 16-megapixel pictures and 1080p video.  It also features an F/2.5 maximum aperture, which means it can capture quite a bit of light in low light settings.

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The Best HDTVs Ever Made Are (Finally) Back Again....

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For about 10 years or so the Pioneer Elite brand of HDTVs was considered the absolute cream of the crop; they were renowned for their deep blacks and great reproduction of colors.  But they came with a premium price tag (starting at about 5k and peaking at nearly 10k) and production of them was halted about 5 years ago.  The Pioneer Elite line was the HDTV you really wanted but knew you'd never be able to afford.

Now they're back (sort of) — every bit as amazing looking and insanely priced as ever.

Sharp has bought the rights to the "Elite" name and is using it on their ultra high-end series of LCD TVs.  The new active 3D 1080p Elite sets—available at 70 inches for $8500 or 60 for a mere $6000, are being praised as literally the best-looking LCD TVs ever created. But it's an odd setup. These HDTVs are really Sharp TVs—not Pioneer displays. The insides come from Sharp's factories, and even include the same Quattron image as other sets. You'll also find full array LED backlighting, local dimming, a claimed 720 Hz refresh rate, and the usual bevy of wireless-enabled apps (Netflix, YouTube and on and on...). So what's Pioneer lending? The official story is that the new Elites are a team effort, with Pioneer adding their video processing experience to help Sharp make a TV worthy of the Elite tag. It's really just a lot of marketing mumbo jumbo! But the TVs also look fantastic.

Secure Trade-In pays top dollar for your used phones and iPads, but even with our generous payouts you're still going to need to sell A LOT of electronics to pay for one of these babies.  But take our word for it (as owners of an ORIGINAL Elite HDTV way back in the day) they are SO worth every penny!

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Who is Mobile Karma?

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Since you're intently reading our blog at the moment, we're going to guess that you're familiar with Secure Trade-In and what we do!

But can you answer this question.... who is Mobile Karma?

Mobile Karma is the preeminent seller of used and new cellular phones, netbooks and laptops. By offering used phones, netbooks, and laptops Mobile Karma is encouraging the reuse of fully functional electronic devices and supporting a more sustainable form of corporate and consumer conduct. Mobile Karma also takes great care of and gives utmost attention to their products and customer service, so that when the time is right for consumers to buy a phone, netbook, and/or laptop Mobile Karma is ready to help!

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Vanishing or Invisible Keyboards to Come

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The QWERTY keyboard has been around a long time, and is the default layout for everything from typewriters (what are typewriters?) to smartphones and computer keyboards. But, with the advent of smartphones and their relatively small screens, the keyboard has come under increased scrutiny and pressure to change.

 

This past January, at the CES (International Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas, the Snapkeys company demonstrated its "imaginary" or "invisible" keyboard for phones and tablets. The layout, illustrated here, relies on grouping capital letters that stand on one point (I and V, for example), two points (M, N, X, etc.), those with a wide base (L, E, Z, U, S, G) and letters that form a complete circle (O, B, P, D, Q). 

 

Now it gets a bit trickier: To type each letter, you type in the one of the four quadrants where the letter is grouped, tapping once. After you begin to form a word by tapping through until the letter you want comes up, the software's predictive algorithm is said to do an amazing job of knowing which word you're spelling and fills in for you. After you memorize the grid in its visible mode, you simply turn it off and tap on the screen.

 

Ryan Ghassabian, a Snapkeys spokesman, says that the company is already in negotiations with several carriers to make the Snapkeys system available on Android handsets.

 

 

 

Another wildly ambitious approach to maximizing screen real estate while preserving the ability to distinguish keys by touch is Tactus, which has developed a new touchscreen where buttons physically morph up out of what seems like flat glass, then disappear when not needed. This trick is managed by incorporating tiny channels within the substrate, through which a liquid is pumped into button-shaped chambers, providing volume on demand. 

Judging from the video of Snapkey's imaginary keyboard, it looks as though it may have practical and technological advantages to the Tactus system, although it involves learning a new system of input versus the physically actuated QWERTY layout. 

 

Will we see one of these breakthrough technologies on a smart phone of our own in the foreseeable future? We wouldn't bet against it.

Celebrities Who Refuse to Use Cell Phones (No Kidding)

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The average joe can’t imagine life without a cell phone these days. But what if you’re a celebrity? If you have the money to afford a horde of personal assistants who can take messages for you and deal with the details of your daily life then you might not need a cell phone. Sure there are some celebrities out there who are completely addicted to their cell phones, but there are also a lot of famous people who just don’t see the need to carry a cell phone. After all, these are people that spend a large percentage of their lives trying to get away from the people who are trying to get a hold of them.

According to details from Hollywood insiders, the following celebrities don’t bother much with the use of the cell phone: funny-man Vince Vaughn, superstar Tom Cruise, rock legend Elton John, eccentric actor Christopher Walken and famed writer David Sedaris.  In fact, not one of these A-Listers even owns a cell phone.

We can neither confirm nor deny the ongoing rumors that, when turning their backs on cell phones, these technology adverse celebs sold their unwanted devices to Secure Trade-In.

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Face Detection Technology Leads Smartphone Photography

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With sensor technology becoming amazingly robust in smartphones--Nokia's huge 41-megapixel sensor this spring a prime example--mobile videography is pulling off feats from your pocket that shoulder-held cams only a few years old can barely compete with. With the advent of inexpensive stabilization devices, 16:9 High Def formats and even add-on prime  lenses, how long can it be till someone shoots a whole movie on an Apple or other smart phone just to prove it can be done?

 

Now, Face Detection technology adds yet another type of ammo to the smartphone photographer's arsenal.

 

Face detection has become the snapshot photographer’s invaluable assistant in ensuring tack-sharp faces, but soon it’ll be able to add two more job responsibilities to its resume: exposure metering and speedier autofocus. Two patents recently awarded to Apple show that future iOS cameras (perhaps the next iPhone?) will have standard camera features that rely much more on Face Detection technology. The first patent, titled “Dynamic exposure metering based on face detection“, allows the camera to automatically select faces as the primary target for metering. In more difficult situations — group shots or people standing in front of a crowd, for example — the camera will use factors such as “head proximity” to select the primary subject.

 

The second patent, titled “Auto focus speed enhancement using object recognition and resolution“, speeds up autofocus by using face detection to locate faces and then calculate their sizes. By comparing the sizes with a size-to-distance database, the camera can quickly select a focusing distance that brings the face(s) into focus.

 

We have no doubt these capabilities will soon extend into video, as well. It's just a matter of time. It seems that Moore's Law, which states that the processing power of integrated circuits will double every 18 months, continues to have a profound effect on smartphones as it does on computers. 

 

Then again, smartphones are computers. Duh.

President Obama Says "No" to Cell Phones at Some Campaign Events

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The Obama campaign has reportedly banned cell phones at small fundraisers held in private homes. The reasoning behind this unusual move is to avoid the recording of any blunders that might damage the president’s 2012 re-election hopes.

The story was broken by the Washington Post and it details how guests who paid $35,800 to meet the President at the New York City home of Blackstone Group COO Hamilton James were asked to drop their phones in a plastic bag at the door.

There would be no live Tweeting, uploading to YouTube, or Instagraming that evening. A campaign aide described the practice as standard operating procedure for fundraisers at private residences, although veterans of other campaigns said they’d never heard of the practice.

Some might call a move like this one "paranoid" but the Obama campaign has some reason to worry. The then-candidate’s off-the-cuff comments about rural voters captured on video at a San Francisco fundraising event in 2008, haunted Obama for the rest of his campaign. And the popularity of smart phones — which can take photos, record video and audio and send them instantaneously out to the world — has only increased since the last race.

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When the Soybean-Oil-Based-Rubber Hits the Road

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Being a green company, ReCellular keeps around 5 million cell phones and other devices out of landfills every year by re-cycling or re-furbishing them. Now, thanks to Goodyear, the massively petroleum-based tire manufacturing industry is getting much greener, too.

Goodyear recently announced it has made a breakthrough in the use of soybean oil in tires. The company’s Innovation Center has been testing soybean-oil based tires, while its Lawton, Oklahoma, tire plant has recorded improved mixing capabilities in the manufacturing process. “The company found that rubber compounds made with soybean oil blend more easily in the manufacturing process,” Goodyear says. “This can improve plant efficiency and reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.”

As the results all seem positive, Goodyear is getting help in the form of a two-year, $500,000 project grant from the United Soybean Board (USB). Goodyear will test prototype tires at its San Angelo, Texas, proving grounds, and will display a soybean oil tire at a USB event at Ford Motor Company’s Dearborn, Michigan, research center next month. Research also indicates that soybean oil may increase tread life by 10 percent and remove up to 7 million gallons of petroleum-based oil from the manufacturing process. “If indicators remain positive, Goodyear expects consumers will be able to purchase tires made with soybean oil as early as 2015,” the company says in a press release.

We think that's just great news: now you can go mobile on "greener" tires and re-purpose your older cell phone for cash as well…and when you'd like to save some green on a newer mobile phone, head on over to MobileKarma.Com.

Special Glasses Provide Movie Subtitles

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If you're deaf or have a hearing impairment, or for those who are not native speakers of English, seeing the latest summer blockbuster movie can be difficult. Few movies have subtitles these days, and movies theatres with closed captioning systems are rare too. Sony has created a pair of theatre glasses that are transparent except for where a tiny projector provides subtitles that are visible only to the wearer.

They're called Entertainment Access Glasses. The small display can be customized for size, distance, and language — so now anyone can go see any showing of any movie, regardless of whether their hearing is perfect or whether they can understand the language spoken in the movie.

The glasses are not widely available now, because they need to be programmed with movie subtitles on a case by case basis.  And because they need to hook into the theater's synchronizing system, they have to be kept by the theater itself rather than by the movie goer.

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Walking While Texting: Danger, Danger Will Robinson!

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Fans of the late 1960s television show Lost in Space often evoke belly laughs among themselves by aping the robot in the show who flailed his mechanical arms wildly when he detected a threat, warning his young charge with the famous line, "Danger, danger Will Robinson!"

 

With all the current examples of people texting away, oblivious to their surroundings, such as the guy who runs into a black bear in this video, maybe we NEED robots to warn us of peril when we've gone "mobile."

 

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The number of citizens wondering into ditches, on-coming cars, and each other while staring at electronics has “quadrupled”, according to the Associated Press. “Look up. Drivers aren’t always looking out for you,” reads a Delaware traffic safety sign, one of many states that are turning to the magic of PSA billboards as a substitute for state legislatures that have almost universally opposed laws criminalizing “distracted walking.” While the Internet is overflowing with hilarious bloopers, like this video, distracted walking is a serious problem, and is implicated in the 4.2% rise in pedestrian fatalities in 2010.

An estimated 1,152 people were sent to the emergency room last year, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission. The stories of distracted texting as saddening as they are hilarious. Some highlights from the data:

A 24-year-old woman who walked into a telephone pole while texting;

A 28-year-old man who was walking along a road when he fell into a ditch while talking on a cellphone

A 12-year-old boy who was looking at a video game when he was clipped by a pickup truck as he crossed the street

A 53-year-old woman who fell off a curb while texting and lacerated her face.

So, what's the solution? Do we need the state to impose stricter laws against texting while walking, as well as driving? Or do we need to promote awareness through public signage and a vigorous campaign warning of the dangers of distracted locomotion of all kinds?

 

Perhaps the motion sensors already built into smartphones could disable the function of the device for anything other than voice use?

We'd like to believe that common sense will prevail, but we'd like to know what YOU think. Hey, just be careful out there, will you? The life you save may be your own.

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