TechChase, Gondal (2026)

04/01/2016

PhaseOne's new XF 100MP camera breaks the 100-megapixel barrier

You thought the 50MP Canon EOS 5DS was impressive? The XF100MP doubles its resolution and its sensor size

A full frame camera is the ultimate dream for most enthusiasts, but for professionals it's very much at the lower end of the scale, just as 35mm SLRs were back in the days of film. Back then, when the subject and the job allowed a more leisurely approach, pros would switch to medium format film, shooting negatives measuring 60 x 60mm, or 60 x 45mm.

Today's full-frame cameras can deliver spectacular quality, make no mistake, but in the big-bucks world of high-end commercial photography, it's just not enough. That's why medium format digital isn't just hanging in there, it's on the up.

The XF 100MP is stupendously expensive at US$48,990 (about £33,000/AU$68,000) with a Schneider Kreuznach 80mm LS lens, but that looks a lot less crazy when you compare it to other business expenses, like buying a van or taking out a lease on business premises.

Bigger than full frame
What's interesting is the technology that's gone into it. The 100-megapixel CMOS sensor was developed in collaboration with Sony, and it's what PhaseOne calls 'medium format full frame' - it matches the negative size of old 645 film cameras (6cm x 4.5cm).

Strictly, the sensor size is somewhat less at 53.7 x 40.4mm, but this corresponds to the image area of 645 film once you allow for the rebate around the edges. It's enough to ensure that the increase in megapixels is matched by the increase in area, so there should be no penalty in noise levels and the XF 100MP should deliver a genuine two-fold increase in detail rendition.

Other specs include a DSLR-matching ISO range from ISO 50-12,800, 16-bit colour for ultimate quality (regular DSLRs stop at 14-bit raw files) and an amazing 15-stop dynamic range.

Viewing system and lenses
The XF 100MP uses a modular DSLR design, with a removable prism head and optional waist-level finder (just like 'old' medium format!) but with the option of full-time live view too - and the ability to tether the camera directly to a computer using PhaseOne's own Capture One Pro software.

Two sets of lenses are available - PhaseOne's own lenses, designed to operate in conjunction with the camera's focal plane shutter, and a set of Schneider Kreuznach optics with in-lens shutters to allow much faster flash synchronisation speeds for fashion and portrait photography.

You shouldn't expect to see any affordable medium format cameras any time soon, but it's interesting to see that the same tech that's driving DSLR and mirrorless image quality forwards is now doing the same for medium format too.

27/12/2015

The Five Best Things in Mobile for 2015

My five favorite things of 2015 don't include any phones. That's on purpose. There were a lot of good phones this year: the iPhone 6s, the Galaxy S6, the Moto X Pure Edition, the LG V10, the Huawei Mate S$693.30 at Amazon.

There are a few things I considered adding to this list, but they're not quite there yet, like VR. I considered Apple's 3D Touch, which is really neat, but hasn't had enough third-party uptake. I really wanted to put in USB-C, but it needs another year. But these five things hit the market with a bang this year.

1. T-Mobile/Sprint Competition
The Uncarrier was the great story of 2014, with T-Mobile roaring back to become a real LTE competitor in the U.S. Now we have T-Mobile and Sprint duking it out, thanks to a much-improved Sprint LTE network and Sprint's combative CEO, Marcelo Claure. The U.S. strategy of refusing to let the big carriers merge from four down to three is paying off handsomely, as they're all aggressively improving their networks and undercutting each others' prices. While we still pay more for our mobile data than people in many other countries, our situation's a lot better than it would be with fewer competitors.

2. Periscope and the Livestreaming Revolution
I mocked Meerkat when it first came out, but now I have to give a big nod to the democratization of livestreaming. A big part of my original mockery was because I had to shift paradigms; I grew up with the first generation of camgirls, and I really did see the current livestreaming moment as just more narcissism. Yes, it often is narcissism (see Martin Shkreli playing his guitar to teenagers), but it's also a major change in the way we're communicating online.

3. Windows 10, on everything except phones
Windows 10 on desktops, laptops and tablets is brilliant. Windows 10 cured the fungal diseases afflicting Windows 8.1 and has led Microsoft into a creative new world of 2-in-1s and convertibles, led by the excellent Surface Pro 4£958.99 at Amazon. Windows 10 is killing Apple and Google when it comes to offering comprehensive productivity solutions that are still portable, but don't compromise.

4. The Amazon Fire
The Amazon Fire$49.99 at Amazon, the first decent $50 tablet, is absolutely terrific, and marks a whole new product category. We've seen really cheap tablets for a while now, but they've almost all been very low-quality, gray-market imports. With the brilliant idea of a six-pack for $250, Amazon makes quality tablets an impulse buy, giving you one for every room of your house and every child in your family. Amazon has redeemed itself from the Fire Phone.

5. The Apple Pencil
The iPad Pro is a big iPad. But the Apple Pencil£84.97 at Laptops Direct is a quantum leap. It's ridiculously better than any other stylus on the market, even better than Wacom products. I'd venture that it's better than the Cintiq, although I know that's controversial. Now that Samsung seems to have inexplicably killed its formerly excellent Galaxy Note 10.1 line of tablets, the Pencil is the best portable note-taking and drawing implement out there.

27/12/2015

The Worst of Mobile 2015
1. Qualcomm's Snapdragon 810
After dominating the smartphone chip world almost as long as smartphone chips have existed, Qualcomm made a series of embarrassing flubs this year.

Its flagship Snapdragon 810 lacked the company's signature custom CPU cores, making it harder for Qualcomm to compete with Mediatek and Samsung. Early versions had notorious overheating problems, and later versions couldn't differentiate on performance compared to other industry leaders. While Qualcomm still makes the best modems in the business, it needs to come back hard with the Snapdragon 820 to regain the faith of major customers like Samsung.

2. Every Android Tablet Over $100
Yawn. While Windows 10 roared this year with a slew of different price points, form factors, and productivity features, Android snoozed. All we saw from major mid- to high-tier Android tablet manufacturers were incremental changes, none of them addressing why you would want an Android tablet rather than an iPad (with better entertainment apps) or a Windows tablet (with better productivity apps). Interesting tablets fell left and right. Nvidia had to recall the Shield, Samsung killed the Galaxy Note tablet line, and the Google Pixel C was almost unusably buggy, putting the capstone on a year in which Google seemed uncertain about Android's purpose.

3. All Smartwatches, Except the Pebble
Smartwatches are a perfect example of a product category that manufacturers are trying to foist on us without ever explaining why we might want them. Android Wear watches are too similar, have confusing UIs, and set your phone's battery on fire. The Apple Watch$699.99 at Apple Store has sold very well as a fashion item, but it also pretty much gutters out when you try to move its utility beyond notifications. At least the Pebble line embraces the fact that nobody knows what to do with these things beyond showing notifications.

4. The U.S. Handset Duopoly
In most of the world, smartphone makers compete vigorously at every price level. Huawei, Sony, Xiaomi, and local manufacturers like Micromax and Wileyfox all have their strengths. Not so here in the U.S., where the smartphone market is so dominated by Apple and Samsung that it freezes everyone else out. Apple and Samsung now own 87 percent of U.S. postpaid phone sales, up 6 percent from last year. That means we're getting fewer diverse options, less competition, and less innovation than other nations.

5. Windows 10 Mobile
What a shambling disaster. On phones, Microsoft is still a circular firing squad. New devices chief Panos Panay seemed unimpressed with the Lumia 950 and 950XL, which are getting very low-key launches in the U.S. The OS, meanwhile, is still extremely buggy. Another own goal in a series of own goals.

01/11/2015

Nissan Shows Off Futuristic 'IDS Concept' Electric Car
Nissan on Tuesday unveiled its vision of the future: the autonomous, zero-emissions IDS Concept car.

Presented at this week's Tokyo Motor Show, the vehicle integrates control and safety technologies with artificial intelligence for the next generation of self-driving cars. It's the first of what Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn hopes will be many vehicles equipped with this technology by the year 2020.

The sleek automobile comes in two modes: Manual Drive or Piloted Drive.

Manual puts the driver in control of what looks like a game console accessory. But you're not alone: the car's sensors continually monitor conditions, and offer assistance if necessary. The IDS Concept's built-in AI also communicates with the motorist, highlighting traffic conditions and the day's schedule.

Push the glowing blue Nissan button in the middle of the wheel to switch into Piloted Drive, relinquishing responsibility to the smart vehicle, which imitates the driver's style and preferences.
The Nissan IDS Concept is more than just a look-Ma-no-hands car, though. Move between driving styles and the vehicle moves with you: In Piloted mode (pictured), the steering wheel recedes into the center instrument panel and a large flat screen opens, and all four seats rotate slightly inward, making it easier to chat with passengers. Even the illuminated gas pedal shrinks into the footwell.

Back in Manual Drive, all seats are facing forward, you're holding the steering wheel at "10 and 2," and the interior lighting switches to blue to help stimulate concentration.

"In every situation, it is about giving the driver more choices and greater control," Ghosn said during the Tokyo Motor Show. "And the driver will remain the focus of our technology development efforts."

Nissan's concept car features exterior lighting and displays, which can let pedestrians know it's okay to cross the street, and signals to passing bicyclists that the vehicle sees them.

"A key point behind the Nissan IDS Concept is communication," design director Mitsunori Morita said in a statement. "For autonomous drive to become reality, as a society we have to consider not only communication between car and driver but also between cars and people."

The electric vehicle is fitted with a 60 kWh battery, and sports a low stance for better aerodynamics, allowing it to drive long distances on a single charge. Plus, sync the car with your smartphone to take advantage of Piloted Park and wireless charging technologies.

"Nissan Intelligent Driving improves a driver's ability to see, think and react," Ghosn said. "It compensates for human error, which causes more than 90 percent of all car accidents. As a result, time spent behind the wheel is safer, cleaner, more efficient and more fun."

A similar car is in the works at Mercedes. But Nissan also just showed off its Teatro for Dayz concept, a pint-sized electric car with an interior that can project different scenes based on mood, weather, or "vibe of the day." When parked, the Teatro's seats, headrests, door trim, and instrument panel can be turned into a moving screen.

20/10/2015

Intelligent Assistants: What Comes After Siri?

Intelligent Assistants—Siri, Google Now, Cortana and the like—have gone from curiosities and parlor tricks just a few years ago to essential tools that many people use in their daily lives. Last week, I dropped by the Intelligent Assistants Conference in New York, presented by Opus Research, and was impressed by the progress the software is making in a variety of industries, including financial, insurance, and medical companies building specific agents.

Opus Research founder Dan Miller explained how many of the core technologies, such as speech recognition, have been around for more than 20 years, but has recently seen some big improvements. But rather than seeing this as a revolution, he said "we're on an evolutionary path," with lots of products on a continuum with different capabilities. He noted that there are hundreds of enterprise intelligent assistants that can be used for a simple text-based conversation in plain English using a fixed data set, and for things like navigating a website or an FAQ. On the other end of the spectrum, there are probably only a few dozen "dynamic, human-feeling apps" that are more conversational and context aware.

Miller pointed to applications that won awards at the conference. Amtrak's Julie started off as an interactive voice-response phone service agent years ago, but now has evolved into an agent that works on the website to guide travelers through Amtrak.com, based on an agent from Next IT. Telefonica Mexico has an agent named Nico that has an avatar and also provides support via Twitter and Facebook, based on AgentBot's platform. ING Netherlands has Inge, an app that lets you check your bank account balance or transfer money via voice, using voice biometric technology from Nuance, to authenticate your identity.

Honorable mentions include healthcare applications, such as an app that helps you pick a health care plan. Other applications I heard of at the show include Domino's Pizza, which has an app called Dom that lets you use voice to order pizza; and BMW, which has an virtual agent as part of its Up2drive auto financing arm.

Nuance's Brett Beraneck talked about how the advances in deep learning neural networks have improved things like natural language understanding as well as voice recognition, and how this is now coming together to enable a lot more interest in the field. Nuance's Nina assistant was an early example, and since then it has grown to a lot of specific applications, ranging from interactive voice response systems at insurance companies to shopping apps. Each of these applications has a different personality, depending on what it is trying to help you do.

One big new feature he discussed was voice biometrics, in which your voice replaces a password. He talked about how companies such as ING in Europe are developing agents that not only used voice recognition and natural language processing, but were also beginning to use voice to recognize the person calling. He said this was both safer and more natural than a traditional password.

While recent studies have worried that voice recordings could fool such systems, Nuance noted that today's technology includes features aimed at picking up anomalies from recorded voice and pointed to other studies that took a different point of view. Besides, he said, designers can use different levels of voice biometrics for different functions, such as using simple recognition to check an account balance, but asking you to speak back a random sequence of words for significant money transfers.

Voice biometrics certainly seems to be gaining a bit of traction. At last week's Gartner Symposium, a session on "cool customer cases" in financial services included a Citibank app that used this feature.

MyWave has an assistant called Frank that is meant to be enabled by multiple businesses to allow you to interact with them in a more conversational way, rather than having each business develop its own. The first uses include a New Zealand bank and an app called Saveawatt designed to help you pick your electricity provider.

CEO Geraldine McBride explained that the company is trying to create assistants that bridge the gap between customers and service apps, with what it calls "customer-managed relationships" or CMR, a spin on traditional CRM applications. One big difference, she said, is that the customer is in charge of all of his or her data, rather than the business.

Another relatively new company, Expect Labs has a product called MindMeld that works as a backend to a number of companies that want to offer a voice interface to replace traditional interfaces and handle questions and answers. This could be used for a variety of applications, such as watching TV shows by just asking the name and having the system query multiple systems. (Amazon's Fire TV has some of these features, but isn't integrated with your cable set-top box, while one of the investors in Expect Labs is cable company Liberty Global.)

CEO Tim Tuttle explained that MindMeld tends to use the speech recognition already available in most devices and instead focuses on natural language understanding and building a knowledge graph of the available information. He said the firm is trying to scale the system to include more information from multiple sources, and to break down the hierarchies of different categories of information that are a part of most such systems. Really understanding questions means being able to understand intent across a variety of categories, he said.

One thing I heard from a number of attendees were statistics suggesting that about 10 percent of all Web searches are now done via intelligence agents. (AI pioneer Andrew Ng said this was true for voice search at Baidu last year and several people said this was now true at Google too, but I haven't heard any first-hand confirmation.)

Looking forward, Opus Research's Miller said there was still plenty of work to be done. The basic accuracy of the systems have plenty of room for improvement, particularly in moving from what you said to what you mean to what to do as a result. He mentioned a talk from Xerox PARC CEO Stephen Hoover at the conference, who said that the systems today are now up to 90 percent accurate at understanding what we mean, but that 10 percent is still a problem because it's what most people remember when dealing with a system. And Miller said there is room for better personalization, because if the system knows who it is talking to, it can give better results. For instance, he noted that Facebook knows who is using the system because you are logged in; and said that seamlessly doing this with more agents will become more important.

It's certainly a fascinating category, and I expect we all will be spending a lot more time talking to our phones and computers, and interacting with agents that aren't quite human. I find this one of the most intriguing trends in computing these days.

11/10/2015

BlackBerry May Give Up on Phones if Next One Flops

It's time to rally, BlackBerry fans. Because the Canadian phone maker is ready to ditch its phone business if it doesn't start making some money soon.

At the Code/Mobile conference on Thursday, BlackBerry CEO John Chen said the company is giving it another year to become profitable, or it may exit the smartphone handset business altogether, according to Re/Code.

Chen previously said he's prepared to exit the handset business, but didn't provide any specifics about timing.

The announcement comes after BlackBerry late last month confirmed plans to launch a flagship Android-powered sliding smartphone later this year called the Priv. Now, Chen says the Priv may be BlackBerry's last handset if the "business case" doesn't justify another one.

As for what it would take to make the business profitable, Chen told The Verge the magic number is 5 million smartphones sold a year. That's quite ambitious, considering BlackBerry sold just 800,000 phones in the most recent quarter.

Now, the company is hinging the future of its handset business on the Priv, which runs Google's Android mobile OS and features a sliding screen that slopes down on either side. Chen last month said the device is "named after BlackBerry's heritage and core mission of protecting our customers' privacy."

"Priv combines the best of BlackBerry security and productivity with the expansive mobile application ecosystem available on the Android platform," he added. While BlackBerry remains mum about specific details, recent rumors tip an 18-megapixel camera, Chromecast support, and the messaging app Hub.

07/10/2015

Is the time right for e-retailers to go app-only?

To go app-only or to still have a desktop presence? This seems to be the question on every e-tailer’s mind these days. The idea started gaining prominence when Myntra went app-only and shut down its website one fine day. Now there are rumours that Flipkart and other major e-retailers might soon follow Myntra’s footsteps. But is app-only really the way forward?

Most people seem to have a polarizing opinion on the topic. While some say it's a move in the right direction, some feel just the opposite. No, I am not a fan of app-only model. In fact, I have my own set of reservations against the idea, which I will discuss in the latter part of this article, but that said, I am not completely writing it off yet. Not every new business model wins love and appreciation right away as there's no fool-proof way to gauge public reaction or change in trends. For instance, in the case of mobile phones - in the pre-iphone era, everyone anticipated mobiles to get smaller in size, but then the iPhone launched, and the new smartphone trend changed everything.

Should we give app-only trend a fair chance? Of course. But before e-retailers rush to the trend, I’d like to place a couple of requests as a common consumer in front of them.

Don’t take away my freedom
Yes, I do love my smartphone and prefer doing everything on it—but shopping is not an optimized experience on its screen. I can’t see images of similar products in one go, I can’t read reviews of the products properly, and most importantly, whenever I make transactions via my smartphone, I erroneously key in wrong passwords and get my netbanking account locked. Yes, the latter is not entirely your fault but my own, but do you get the pain I go through while shopping via my mobile. I am sure there are many people like me out there. So, for us, please let the desktop site stay—at least, till when we get used to mobile shopping in its entirety.

Give me a seamless experience
Agreed, your smartphone app offers better experience compared to what I get when I browse your website on my mobile, but you know what I miss the most? The convenience of opening multiple tabs to view all dresses I like and then pick and choose only the best ones. Can you or your developers do something about it? Trust me, if you can actually work this out, your acceptance rate will shoot through the roof.

If e-retailers take care of the above-mentioned requests, I believe only then ‘app-only’ trend would make sense for consumers. Do you agree or disagree? Speak your heart out in the comments below.

06/10/2015

What to Expect at Microsoft's Oct. 6 Event?
Microsoft's mobile division needs a shot in the rear. Windows Phone is doing abysmally in the U.S., and not much better worldwide; for the second quarter of 2015, IDC estimated that the platform has a mere 2.6 percent market share.

Fortunately, its Surface business is doing better. Forbes estimated that the Surface lineup is now profitable, and the Surface convertible-tablet design is inspiring high-end imitators like the Lenovo Miix 700 and Apple iPad Pro.

The launch of Windows 10 offers new opportunities for Microsoft to push its mobile line forward, most notably with universal apps and Continuum—the idea that one full-featured app will be able to run across desktops, laptops, tablets and phones. And with BlackBerry perpetually stumbling, there are a lot of businesses out there looking for secure, manageable mobile solutions. Microsoft tried to position itself earlier this year as the mobile OS for business with the launch of the Lumia 640 (pictured), but it didn't have high-end devices to attract executives.

Tomorrow might change all that. Here's what we expect to see, and what Microsoft needs to accomplish.

New Windows Phones

What We'll See
There will definitely be at least three new Windows phones at the event—the Lumia 950, the Lumia 950 XL, and the Lumia 550. The 950 series will be the first Lumia flagships seen in the U.S. since early 2014, and they'll be priced accordingly (Windows Central has a good spec rundown of the Lumia 950 and 950XL.) They have 5.2- and 5.7-inch, 2,560-by-1,440 displays, respectively. The 950 has a Snapdragon 808 processor and a 20-megapixel main camera; the 950XL has a Snapdragon 810 and that 20-megapixel main camera. Spec-wise, both are comparable with current high-end devices like LG's G4 and V10 Android-phones, and the new Nexus 5X and 6P. Both will have docks that will let you connect a keyboard and mouse and use Microsoft's Office apps in a PC-like mode.

The 550 will come in at $99 or $149 unlocked and maintain Microsoft's current only strength in the mobile market, which is at the low end. According to a leaked slide, it has a 5-inch screen, 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 200-series processor, 5-megapixel camera, and 8GB of storage along with a MicroSD card slot.

The big question, for now, is whether there will be any midrange Lumias—the 600, 700, or 800 series. The Lumia 640 has been selling well for a Windows Phone here in the U.S. and has been Microsoft's workhorse for the year, but it's new enough that it may not be ready for an update yet.

What Microsoft Needs to Do
Here in the U.S., Microsoft has a horrible history of releasing its flagship phones as carrier exclusives and then having the carriers bury them. The era of successful carrier exclusives ended years ago. If Microsoft doesn't manage to get the Lumia 950 line onto at least three of the four major carriers with no shenanigans—no slightly variant, exclusive units like we saw with the 920 series—then we're just going to see sad history repeat itself.

Reassuring us that app developers are working on Windows phone would be a plus, too, but in the chicken-and-egg game of Windows Phone adoption in the U.S., I think distribution has been the tougher barrier. Microsoft needs to show it can get phones into all the stores.

New Windows Tablets

What We'll See
We anticipate one new Surface, not two, and it'll be a replacement for the 12-inch Surface Pro 3. While there have been rumors out there about a larger 14-inch Surface Pro, we think that's very unlikely. Microsoft will stick with its two form factors, the 10.8-inch Surface 3 and the 12-inch Surface Pro. The new Surface Pro 4 may have a nearly bezel-less, quad-HD display and better pressure-sensitive pen technology which Microsoft bought from Ntrig.

Microsoft will also bring out some other vendors such as Dell and HP, which will show off Surface-like products based on Intel's new Skylake or Atom x5/x7 processors.

What Microsoft Needs to Do
Microsoft needs to stay ahead of the curve of devices like the Lenovo Miix 700 and stay at the state of the art for convertible Windows tablets. The Miix 700 has very similar specs to the Surface Pro 3 (although it has a slower processor and Intel RealSense dual-camera support), but it's going to cost less. A higher screen resolution and the latest Skylake processor would make sure that Microsoft still sets the bar.

Other Gadgets

What We'll See
Rumors currently center around the Microsoft Band 2 and the Microsoft Treasure Tag, a little-known, still Nokia-branded gadget that lets you find stuff that gets lost.

What Microsoft Needs to Do
The Microsoft Band initially existed to make sure fitness device manufacturers supported Windows Phone and Microsoft Health. The Band 2 should show off any new Windows 10-compatible features that Microsoft would want to be included in other manufacturers' wearable products. With the Treasure Tag, meanwhile, Microsoft just needs to get the word "Nokia" out of its product line.

The event starts at 10 a.m. ET tomorrow (3 p.m. GMT), and we'll be there live.

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