YouTube may be the best known mainstream video hosting sites on the Web, but it's certainly not winning any awards for the visual quality of its content. YouTube's creators have said that higher resolution videos are on the way, but until then there are a handful of other services that do a much better job at making your uploaded video look a little less Webby.

There's another problem at hand too--size. Video files are big, and a lot of the most popular services place tedious size restrictions. Those restrictions mean you are either going to have to compress your video through third party software before uploading, or make smaller, lower quality source recordings to begin with.  read more »

Panasonic will be bringing together its two divisions in new product initiatives, with plasma video displays for cell phones being one of them while AT&T’s recently unveiled Mobile TV service being the other. Today, we shall look at the former, as the very word ‘plasma’ evokes a sense of wonder among buyers as they know this technology is superior to LCD displays in many aspects, albeit taxing the pockets a whole lot more. With Pioneer and Fujitsu already bowing out of the plasma business, it makes perfect sense for Panasonic to strive even harder to capture customers from those companies. It seems that Panasonic’s latest plan would be to include miniature plasma displays in future cell phones - something I look forward to with great anticipation.  read more »

Camcorders are not very handy. Sure theyve gotten smaller and now theres more features on them than the space shuttle, but they are still too bulky to be carried around inconspicuously all day long, waiting for that perfect video moment. The very small Flip Video camcorder is aiming to change all that and, considering its flogged over 1 million units in the US since last November, its UK debut in a few weeks could mark a craze on this side of the pond too. It doesnt hurt that over there it costs just $150 (75). Here, though, it will cost 99, which is still pretty reasonable Ive been playing with the Flip Video Ultra for the past couple of days to see what all the fuss is about and to be honest, its been a lot of fun. So what is it? Its a camcorder around the same size as a fat mobile phone like the Nokia N95 or something similar that records video onto 2GB of Flash memory. It measures 4.17 x 2.16 x 1.25in and can record up to 60 minutes of 640 x 480 resolution MPEG-4 video at 30fps. It sports a USB arm for attaching directly to laptops or PCs and contains software that allows you to view and edit what youve shot. It also enables you to upload those videos to YouTube or other social networking sites. The trick to the Flip Video along with the size - is that its really, really simple to use. For instance, it comes not with an instruction manual, but an instruction leaflet. And even then, theres not a lot on it. This is the kind of device that not even parents and grandparents could screw up when asked to film the kids birthday party. Of course, all of this simplicity is possible because, well, there are no features. This is the camcorder equivalent of one of those Kodak disposable cameras: just point and shoot. Flip boasts a lens on the front, a bright but small 1.5in display on the back, a TV-out port and just 8 buttons in total: Power, Play, Delete, Record and 4 way navigation. It runs off two AA batteries. So what's it like to use?  read more »

The latest PS3 firmware update is cementing the fact that the PS3 is the most capable Blu-ray player on the market. Firmware 2.30 is due out next week - in Japan first - and adds support for DTS-HD Master Audio and DTS-HD High Resolution Audio, bringing what DTS calls studio-quality audio to your HD movies. This is joyous news indeed for home cinema buffs. DTS-HD Master Audio delivers audio at a very high variable rate of 24.5Mbits per second (Mbps), which is a lot higher than found on DVDs.  read more »

April 4, 2008 With around half the world's population expected to be carrying a mobile phone by the end of this year, it's hard to believe that its just 35 years since the first ever public cell phone call was made. Yesterday marked the anniversary of the historical call made on the streets of New York by portable cell phone inventor Martin Cooper, then general manager of Motorolas Communications Systems Division... Tags: Mobile Phone , Motorola Related Articles: New GSM Diverter promises call cost reductions fo small business New software enables FREE international phone calls with any mobile phone through Skype More than idle chit-chat: the mobile phone is a girl’s new best friend Samsung debuts mobile phone with Speech-to-Text Capabilities The MINI Cooper D Backpacks, Lunch Boxes and Cells?  read more »

A new company named ZZZPhone wants apply to mobile phones the build-to-order business model successfully implemented by giant PC maker Dell and later on adopted by other leading retailers such as Nike iD. With this level of customization, the company claims it has developed a $149-mobile phone loaded with more features compared to the $739 Nokia N95 handset model! It can even compete with Apple iPhone without paying as much. All these enhancements are possible to get at very low prices because this American company claims to have assembly plants in China, near the factories of leading handset manufacturers such as Nokia, Samsung and Motorola. All phones can be customized at the website http://www.zzzphone.com . Starting from a base model, users have the power to combine different features such as touchscreen, dual SIM card slots, GPS navigation, 7 MP camera at the back of the phone, front-facing camera, 4 GB memory and even a flashlight!  read more »

Steve Jobs announced an update to the Apple TV at Macworld San Francisco this week as well as iTunes Movie Rentals , which were already rumored to be part of his Macworld keynote speech . Jobs admitted that Apple's online video plan had been a disappointment and that users didn't take to watching online video the way Apple had expected. When Jobs first announced the Apple TV last January, Apple's initial video plan was too complicated for many people. Getting a movie or TV show onto your Apple TV required customers to buy the video from the iTunes Store, download it to their computer, then sync/stream the file using an Apple TV. Although Apple has already sold 7 million movies, Jobs said: "Thats more than everyone else put together, but it did not meet our expectations." Apple plans on overhauling their strategy by making 2 major changes: Adding a new online movie rental service Updating the Apple TV's software so that viewers can stream movies direct from the internet sans (that's Middle English for without ) computer. Jobs thinks that viewers would prefer to rent movies, not buy them. As a result, the new Apple TV software will allow users to rent first run films from every major movie studio including Fox, WB, Paramount, Universal and Sony in HD. Jobs called it "A better way to provide movies to our customers." Blockbuster and Netflix can't be happy right now.  read more »

Apple is getting ready to launch a portable gaming device this year. Many of you already own it. It's called the iPhone. The Register is running a rumor piece that posits that the iPhone 3G will be announced before WWDC, opening up space in the keynote for Jobs to introduce an entirely new device. This theory is based mostly on reports that inventory of current model iPhones is low. Surely this means that Apple will be announcing the iPhone 3G soon? Think of all the lost sales! Apple has thought of the lost sales, I'm sure — sales they'll quickly make up next month if they have ample iPhone 3G stock on the shelves waiting to be slurped by shoppers. No one is going to not buy an iPhone today who wouldn't also buy a better model in a month from now (or at least not enough people to matter). Remember, WWDC is less than a month away. The next part of the rumor follows: What would Apple announce at WWDC that would supplant the announcement of the iPhone 3G?  read more »

The Samsung i780 Smartphone comes complete with Windows Mobile 6 Professional (touch screen), 3G with HSDPA up to 3.6 mbps, AGPS, Wi-Fi and a QWERTY keyboard.  read more »

I can't seem to not feel guilty when I throw out a banana peel, let alone a cell phone which is probably why I have six old cell phones hiding in my closet!  read more »