The Sony Xperia S Offers a 12 Megapixel Camera for HD Video Recording

The Sony Xperia S offers a 12 megapixel camera for HD video recording and photo capture along wit ha front facing 720 pixel camera for video calls also. The handset has a large 4.3 inch High Definition display with LED backlit BRAVIA technology among its many attributes too.

The slim unibody touch screen handset is available in black or white and offers a stunning display through which you can access some amazing features all on your mobile. The powerful rear facing camera offers 12 megapixel resolution and is capable of recording video in full 1080 pixel High Definition respectively, via the touch of a button. Digital zoom is 16 times, perfect for getting a closer picture or from snapping when further away from your subject. There is also touch and auto focussing, red-eye reduction, both face detection and recognition and an LED flash. The low value (f/2.4) aperture means that the lens opening is larger and therefore allows more light in to reach the image sensor. Additionally, there is a CMOS Exmor R sensor which automatically enhances photos when taken in poor light conditions.

The Xperia S is powered by a 1.5 Gigahertz dual core processor to speedily offer you the Android 2.3 operating system, which is upgradable, and allows you to choose which shortcuts go where and more on your home screen. The Android Market app also allows you to download more applications to run on your handset, of which you can run more than one at any time. In addition to its internal storage of between 1 and 1.5 gigabytes of space, the memory card slot offers swappable storage of up to 32 gigabytes on eMMC also. The WebKit web browser provides a full browsing experience and supports all protocols, images and video in your hand, as well as offering bookmarking, Google search and Google Voice search for faster voice activated searching of the Web.

The phone also has great entertainment features offering both Video Unlimited and Music Unlimited formSony Entertainment Network which together provide a huge library of music and movies to download and enjoy. Additionally, the handset has a media browser and MTP technology for easy media file sharing and backup. For gamers the phone offers easy download of PlayStation games which can also be played in HD on a large HD television through the HDMI connection among other connectivity offered.

The Sony Xperia S is an impressive handset which looks as powerful as it is, offering not only fantastic hardware but also a fast and intuitive operating system which is further supported by great download capabilities. This is a perfect all-round handset for just about any user.

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What Is Mobile Video Encoding?

The late Steve Jobs caused quite a stir when he elected not to include Flash video support on the iPhone. Flash was and still is the most common file format for use in Internet Applications and online video clips. Jobs' reasoning was that Flash was resource-hungry, buggy, and frequently crashed. His logic was hard to argue with. Without Flash, what would be used in place of it for online videos viewed from a mobile device? In order to understand how video can be played on smart phones without the use of Flash, one must understand mobile video encoding.

What Is Mobile Video Encoding?

Picture a situation where someone has downloaded a video file that uses the AVI format. In this hypothetical scenario, the person in question doesn't have a media player capable of playing AVI files. To watch the video clip, he or she would have to re-encode it into a format that the media player can recognize. Mobile video encoding is simply a way to format a video file such that most any mobile device can play it. There are a number of tools one could use to do this, and just as many video format files available on the market.

Mobile Video Codecs

Codec is a shorthand term which stands for compression-decompression. It's a program that interprets a video or audio file so that the contents can be accessed. Common codecs include H.264, Ogg Theora, FLV, AVI, and WebM. The search for the perfect codec for mobile video delivery has been going on for the last few years, and there are plenty of candidates to become the new de facto format for online video. H.264 is the most popular at the moment, but WebM has been gaining popularity lately.

How To Encode Video For Mobile Devices

In order to upload a video to the web so that millions of people worldwide can watch it and enjoy it on any device, it has to be in a format that's universally recognized. Flash negates the possibility of viewers catching it on their iPhones. One would need to encode it using one of the many programs capable of transforming it into a format that any mobile player can understand. For a more thorough synopsis of the encoding process, consult one the many guides to codecs and encoding mobile video found on the web.

Final Thoughts

It's an exciting time to be alive in terms of mobility and technological innovation. Smart phones allow people to download and view media from any location. Mobile video is more lightweight, more compact, and just as crisp as the Flash-based content that dominated the PC era. The coming year will bring even more change as new codecs and formats vie for the attention of mobile device users. HTML5 video in particular is an intriguing new technology that's still in the early stages, but holds a lot of promise. Regardless of what happens, the encoding of mobile content will only continue to get better as the months pass.

Find out more about mobile video encoding.

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Video game playing tied to creativity, research shows

ScienceDaily (Nov. 2, 2011) — Both boys and girls who play video games tend to be more creative, regardless of whether the games are violent or nonviolent, according to new research by Michigan State University scholars.

A study of nearly 500 12-year-olds found that the more kids played video games, the more creative they were in tasks such as drawing pictures and writing stories. In contrast, use of cell phones, the Internet and computers (other than for video games) was unrelated to creativity, the study found.

Linda Jackson, professor of psychology and lead researcher on the project, said the study appears to be the first evidence-based demonstration of a relationship between technology use and creativity. About 72 percent of U.S. households play video or computer games, according to the Entertainment Software Association.

The MSU findings should motivate game designers to identify the aspects of video game activity that are responsible for the creative effects, Jackson said.

"Once they do that, video games can be designed to optimize the development of creativity while retaining their entertainment values such that a new generation of video games will blur the distinction between education and entertainment," Jackson said.

The researchers surveyed 491 middle-school students as part of MSU's Children and Technology Project, which is funded by the National Science Foundation. The survey assessed how often the students used different forms of technology and gauged their creativity with the widely used Torrance Test of Creativity-Figural.

The Torrance test involved tasks such as drawing an "interesting and exciting" picture from a curved shape, giving the picture a title and then writing a story about it.

In addition, the study found that boys played video games more than girls, and that boys favored games of violence and sports while girls favored games involving interaction with others (human or nonhuman).

Yet, regardless of gender, race or type of game played by the students, the study found a relation between video game playing and greater creativity.

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Journal Reference:

Linda A. Jackson, Edward A. Witt, Alexander Ivan Games, Hiram E. Fitzgerald, Alexander von Eye, Yong Zhao. Information technology use and creativity: Findings from the Children and Technology. Computers in Human Behavior, 2011 DOI: 10.1016/j.chb.2011.10.006

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Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

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Tactile technology for video games guaranteed to send shivers down your spine

ScienceDaily (Aug. 10, 2011) — A new tactile technology developed at Disney Research, Pittsburgh (DRP), called Surround Haptics, makes it possible for video game players and film viewers to feel a wide variety of sensations, from the smoothness of a finger being drawn against skin to the jolt of a collision.

The technology is based on rigorous psychophysical experiments and new models of tactile perception. Disney will demonstrate Surround Haptics Aug. 7-11 at the Emerging Technology Exhibition at SIGGRAPH 2011, the International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques in Vancouver.

In the demonstration developed in collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University and others, the technology will enhance a high-intensity driving simulator game in collaboration with Disney's Black Rock Studio. With players seated in a chair outfitted with inexpensive vibrating actuators, Surround Haptics will enable them to feel road imperfections and objects falling on the car, sense skidding, braking and acceleration, and experience ripples of sensation when cars collide or jump and land.

"Although we have only implemented Surround Haptics with a gaming chair to date, the technology can be easily embedded into clothing, gloves, sports equipment and mobile computing devices," said Ivan Poupyrev, senior research scientist at DRP, who invented and developed Surround Haptics with Ali Israr, also of DRP. "This technology has the capability of enhancing the perception of flying or falling, of shrinking or growing, of feeling bugs creeping on your skin. The possibilities are endless."

The DRP researchers have accomplished this feat by designing an algorithm for controlling an array of vibrating actuators in such a way as to create "virtual actuators" anywhere within the grid of actuators. A virtual actuator, Poupyrev said, can be created between any two physical actuators; the user has the illusion of feeling only the virtual actuator.

As a result, users don't feel the general buzzing or pulsing typical of most haptic devices today, but can feel discrete, continuous motions such as a finger tracing a pattern on skin.

The phenomenon of phantom sensations created by actuators has been known for more than 50 years, but its use in tactile displays has been limited because of an incomplete understanding of control mechanisms. DRP researchers were able to develop their control algorithm by systematically measuring users' ability to feel physical actuators vs. virtual actuators under a variety of stimulation levels. They then developed control models that were validated by further psychophysical experiments.

In addition to enhancing user experiences with interactive games, movies and music, Surround Haptics' underlying technology promises to provide new tactile means of communication for the blind, emergency workers, vehicle operators, athletes and others.

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Scientist creates a drivable version of classic OutRun video game

 A scientist has created a version of the classic OutRun driving video game, that can actually be driven on the road (Photo: University of California at Irvine)

Some people who spent their youth in the 80s miss that era, and wish that things now were like they were then. Well, those people might be interested in the University of California at Irvine's OutRun Project. With the ultimate aim of developing gaming therapy systems for people such as quadriplegics, scientists involved in the project have created a kind of combination electric golf cart and arcade-style video game console. Players can actually drive the cart down the road, while an augmented reality feature displays the real-life road on the screen in front of them, but in the form of Sega's classic 8-bit road racing game, OutRun.

Designed by UC Irvine research scientist Garnet Hertz, the cart features dual forward-looking video cameras that scan the environment in front of the car, while custom software analyzes their output, searching for anything that looks like a road. That software then displays the real-world road in real time on the gaming console's screen, in the graphics style of the original game.

It appears that the system doesn't recognize things like other vehicles or pedestrians, however, so it probably wouldn't be a good idea to take the cart out in the traffic.

While the OutRun Project itself looks like it was a lot of fun to work on, UCI researchers state that it has shown them "whole new ways of thinking about how game-based virtual worlds can be embodied into physical devices in order to create new experiences." This could in turn lead to new game-based therapies for people confined to electric wheelchairs, where they would actually play the game as their chair was in motion, instead of just sitting at a computer.

... and for all those people who wish the world was still like it was in 80s, Hertz is also proposing an iPhone augmented reality app that would let users see the world around them as if it were part of the retro OutRun world.

The video below shows the cart in motion, and provides more information on how it works.

Source: Dvice

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HD video demonstrated streaming over a light bulb

Harald Haas is a profressor at the University of Edinburgh and former project manager at Nokia Siemens Networks. He’s also the inventor of a new form of wireless data transfer that could mean an end to power-hungry base stations, patchy phone signals, and access to data capacity thousands of times greater than we rely on

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HD video demonstrated streaming over a light bulb

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Creators of world’s smallest stop-motion video make world’s largest with Nokia N8

Though it’s not necessarily a new phone, it looks like Nokia is still boasting about the N8?s 12-megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss lens . The company commissioned a promotional video that is indeed special. The video, entitled “Gulp,” broke the record as the world’s largest stop-motion video ever made. Created by the Sumo Science team at

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Creators of world’s smallest stop-motion video make world’s largest with Nokia N8

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GLMPS captures a video every time you take a picture

Despite not being fully-fledged cameras, camera phones are wildly popular photographic devices. From Droids and iPhones to the simplest clamshell, cell phones are constantly taking photos. Of course, they take videos, too, but photos are less involved. The moments leading up to the photo, however, are often more memorable than the photo itself. That is

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Google Hangouts Review - Google+'s Video Chatting Application

Recently, Google has opened to the public its Google+ service in a bid to finally get into the social networking game, after its complicated Wave and, to some extent, Buzz projects were unsuccessful. Google+ is very exciting in and of itself, but one of its coolest features is Google Hangouts, its group video chat service.

Bottom-line: Google Hangouts looks great and is both fun and easy to use. As with your Google+ status updates, you can choose which groups of people you want to invite to your Google Hangouts session, making it easy to start a video conference in seconds.

Pros:  Browser-based, so nearly anyone on any system or web browser can use Google Hangouts. It is incredibly intuitive so anyone can easily start using this video chatting service.  Voice and video quality are also great. The YouTube integration makes Google Hangouts fun to use.

Cons: The need for an invitation to Google+ to get started. If there’s a user being inappropriate during a hangout, they can be reported but not kicked out of the video chatting session. Also, on first use, you may need to update your plugins and restart your browser.

Price:  Free, but currently requires an invitation to Google+.

To get started with Google Hangout, users need to install the Google Voice and Video plugin. This lets you use video in Hangouts, Gmail, iGoogle, and Orkut (another social network owned by Google). The plugin takes around 30 seconds to install. After that, you’re all set to start using Google’s newest video chat service.

Each hangouts session can hold up to 10 people using video.

When creating a hangout, you can choose which group of contacts, or circles, you want to invite to your video chat. A post will then appear on all relevant streams letting people know that a hangout is happening and it will list all the people currently participating.

If you’ve invited less than 25 people, each will receive an invitation to the hangout. Also, if you invite users who are signed into Google+’s chat feature, they’ll receive a chat message with an invitation to the hangout. Users who have been invited to a hangout but try to start their own, receive a notification that there’s already a hangout going on. Then, they get asked whether they want to join the existing session or create their own. Each hangout has its own web-address that can be shared, making it easy to invite people to hangouts.

It’s worth keeping in mind that hangouts are created by one user, but everyone that’s invited can invite others to your video chat. Also, it’s impossible to kick people out of a hangout.

While Google Hangouts is not a business-specific tool, it’s a great alternative to Skype when it comes to hosting larger, but informal, video chats, especially since group video chat on Google is free but Skype charges for it.

My favorite Google Hangouts feature is the YouTube integration, since it lets everyone watch videos together in real-time. One drawback so far is that the video isn’t synced between users, so while the videos being watched are the same, they could be at a different place for each user.

Once one of the chatters clicks on the YouTube button, the group can choose the video they want to watch, by doing a simple search. When a video is being played, microphones are muted to avoid echoes, and those on the video chat need to click on the ‘push to talk’ button in order to be heard by other participants. Whenever this happens, the sound of the video goes down, so it doesn’t have to be paused for people to be heard. If the YouTube video is muted, the ‘push to talk’ button will disappear, and the microphone volume is activated again. If a user decides to unmute their microphone while a video is playing, the video will be muted.

I found it to be not only fun, but useful watching videos during a hangout. Users can upload videos and presentations relevant to their video chat to YouTube, and easily share them with all their participants. Best of all, even when watching a video, you can still see your video chat participants, as their image is displayed below the YouTube video. There’s no need to reshuffle your video chat screens in order to see all of your participants.

While there are other great video chat / conferencing tools around, Skype has managed to reign supreme in this arena up until now. But with its ease of use, lack of downloads, YouTube integration and great looks, Google Hangouts seems poised to take over Skype as the most popular video chat service in the market.

One of the main benefits of Google Hangouts is that as long as you (and those you’re talking to) are on Google+, you can start a video chat in just a few clicks, and in a matter of seconds. Skype requires people to download and install its software, and also to create an account. Since Google Hangouts works with Gmail, there are no additional user names or passwords to remember, as long as you have access to a Gmail login.

source from about.com