Author: Darrell Etherington

Sony today unveiled a new NEX camera, the NEx-3N. The new body is the latest addition to the company’s celebrated lineup of mirrorless interchangeable lens cameras, and it manages to be the smallest and lightest camera available in that category to also house an APS-C sensor. The 16.1 megapixel CMOS sensor is right on par with those found in full-sized entry-level DSLRs, and allows the camera to snap photos up to ISO 16000, which means it should be a fairly strong low-light performer.

The NEX-3N ships with Sony’s new Auto Object Framing technology, which allows it to pick out macro or moving subjects in addition to one or two people, and re-compose pictures while preserving the original to give a photographer a host of shots to choose from a single exposure. The tech even boost the cropped image to full resolution automatically using Sony’s resolution-enhancing processing algorithm. The NEX-3N also inherits the BIONZ processor from the a99 full-frame, meaning it can handle selective noise reduction like the new a58 DSLT. It also has a 7.5cm LCD screen that flips up 180 degrees for expert selfies.

Design-wise, the NEX-3N is a departure from Sony’s existing lineup, thanks to a redesigned front grip that takes up less space than the one on the NEX-F3. Overall it looks more like Sony’s recent compact cameras, like the RX1 and the X100, and that’s a very good thing. Paired with the 16-50 f/3.5-5.6 retractable zoom lens (which will be available for the NEX-3N in a kit package), the whole thing presents a much smaller, more streamlined overall package that approaches true pocketability. Sony’s 16-50 retracts when not in use, making it much smaller than most kit zooms with the same range.

Judging by the reviews of Sony’s NEX line of ILC cameras, this should be quite the contender at $500 (with the 16-50mm) when it arrives in April. It’ll be available in both black and white versions.

Sony’s imaging department has been on a roll for a while now, and the company is doing a particularly good job of innovating with features at the top end and then making sure they percolate down the line, as with the Auto Object Framing tech being introduced here. With this entry-level NEX device, it isn’t doing much on the numbers side (the F3 has 16 megapixels and the same maximum ISO), but the outside redesign that shaves some precious space from the camera, along with the introduction of new consumer photog-friendly features, while keeping the price low, is likely a better strategy than improving a boring spec sheet.

Sony today announced a new entry-priced DSLT (Digital Single Lens Translucent) camera, the a58, priced at $600 bundled with a newly designed 18-55mm zoom kit lens, and coming to retail in April this year. The a58 pushes the needle forward for Sony’s DSLR-style interchangeable lens line, with a nice hop-on point for the company’s Translucent Mirror tech for consumers looking to get into more pro-style gear.

The 20.1 megapixel camera succeeds the widely respected Sony a57, which also used SLT to help it deliver fast burst mode photography with continuous focus lock. The a58 has a few new tricks up its sleeve, including a new sensor and new BIONZ processor, which allows it to selectively dial down digital image noise and sharpness in different parts of the same photograph, meaning it can preserve detail in lighted areas and make blacks much blacker in others, which should be particularly useful for nighttime photography.

There’s also a brand new OLED electronic viewfinder on board, which improves on the version in the original with improved color rendering and 100 percent field of view. But the biggest trick up the a58′s sleeve is the introduction of autofocus lock-on tech not only for human subjects, but also for objects. The Auto Object Framing tech is the next generation of Sony’s Auto Portrait Framing feature, and allows the camera to pick out people, moving objects or macro subjects and track those, keeping them in focus and also framing and cropping them for  alternate, re-composed shots alongside the originals.

The a58 uses Sony’s A-mount system lenses, and the company is also introducing new versions of those today. Three new A-mount lenses make their debut alongside the new body, including the DT 18-55mm F3.5-5.6 SAM II lens which is the new kit lens for the entry-level DSLT. It has the same AF motor as the previous generation, but should have quieter focusing performance, good for shooting video. The new design should also reduce flare and ghosting, Sony says. It will arrive in May for $220 as a standalone lens.

Also new to the line are the Carl Zeis Planar T* 50mm F1.4 ZA SSM lens, giving pros a nice, fast portrait and all-around lens designed for use with full-frame sensors, with dust and moisture resistance. This one arrives in May and will cost around $1500 when it does. Finally, Sony is also adding a new big pricey zoom, the 70-400mm F4-5.6 G SSM II telephoto, which has improved AF responsiveness and is designed to be used to track and capture fast-moving subjects for HD video. It’ll be $2200 or thereabouts when it arrives in July.

Sony’s camera division is doing very interesting things lately, and the a58 looks to be a nice improvement on the a57 and a near-perfect entry-point for consumers looking to step up to a DSLR-category device, but who are also looking for a host of features that should make handling the more powerful gear easier. With all the new bells and whistles, buyers should be able to get great pics out of the a58 without much of a learning curve.

Google unveiled is fabled Pixel Chromebook today, and the thing does indeed have what looks to be a gorgeous, high-resolution display. It also has a touchscreen, as rumored, and the list gets more confusing from there. 32GB (or 64GB) of onboard storage? ChromeOS? A 3:2 screen ratio? A $1299 starting price tag? Huh?

The device is meant to be upscale, Google admits, but for a machine aiming at power users, it’s a device surprisingly devoid of power features. ChromeOS is, for all its strengths, still essentially a browser, after all. This thing can’t run Photoshop, which you’d be able to do no problem if you spend $100 less and get a 13-inch MacBook Air. It can play back movies on that gorgeous screen, but not in as many file formats or with as much ease as you could manage with a Lenovo Yoga 13, also cheaper at $1,049. It can accept touch input, which could be exciting, but then again might not, and that’s hardly a feature worth risking a cool $1300 for.

Which isn’t to say the Pixel isn’t attractive. It’s a looker, to be sure, and something I’d definitely be interested in owning myself. The 1TB of Google Drive storage and the LTE radio on the $1449 model make for an attractive package, so long as you’re already deeply committed to Google’s cloud storage ecosystem. But a gadget blogger wanting something and an everyday consumer being willing to cough up over $1,000 for it are two entirely different things, and the Pixel has too many of those moments that make you tilt your head slightly to provide any chance at success in that regard.

ChromeOS is a risky proposition on a $249 laptop for most people. It’s still just too new, and too untested in a world where you’ll attract far fewer headaches just going with OS X or Windows. With a price tag that makes it almost an impulse buy, it’s an understandable risk. At $1299, it’s not.

ChromeOS is a risky proposition on a $249 laptop for most people

Google doesn’t always care about marketability for its first generation devices. It originally tried to sell the Nexus One direct for $529, a price many felt was too high, contributing to the eventual failure of that experiment. The Pixel is also introduced as “a laptop that brings together the best in hardware, software, and design to inspire future innovation” on Google’s website, meaning it probably isn’t intended to fly off the shelves, but more to light a fire under hardware partners and developers.

Still, announcing a consumer launch (including a retail partnership with Best Buy) for the Chromebook Pixel (a device that looks like the notebook world’s equivalent of a hastily assembled Lego project built from memory) just comes off as weird. I once lauded Google’s strategy in going for cheap, ubiquitous data network access with previous hardware launches, and I’m all for technical innovation that explores new territory. But I see no answer to the question of “Why?” when it comes to the Pixel.

Canon announced the launch of its MREAL system for “mixed reality” today, which includes a head-mounted display that allows wearers to combine virtual objects with the real world in 3D, which essentially sounds like a product designer’s dream. On the consumer side, augmented reality hasn’t done a great job of proving itself generally useful at this point, but in an industrial design setting, the payoff could be big, and that’s why Canon’s MREAL is priced at a professional-level $125,000.

The MREAL headset isn’t nearly as sleek as Google Glass, and instead of projecting info on transparent displays, it actually takes in video of your surroundings, runs it through a computer which supplies the virtual elements, and then delivers a live video feed to dual displays mounted in the visor strapped to a user’s face. It’s not light and all-day wearable like Glass, but it means the system can deliver extremely clear 3D computer-generated images that blend more realistically with a user’s actual surroundings, which is exactly what you want if you’re designing a coffee table for a specific living room space, for instance, or want to see what a car concept looks like under showroom lights before you build a physical model.

The $125,000 price tag and $25,000 annual maintenance fee might prohibit ordinary folks from picking up one of these, but the system’s impact could be felt at all levels, and in addition to being used by designers and engineers, might make its way to show floors for augmented reality consumer demonstrations. It also could make it easier for inventors pitching an idea to investors to provide a more realistic look at what a finished hardware product would look like, without building an actual prototype. If you’re making an iPhone case, the cost doesn’t really justify it, but if you’re a Lit Motors trying to sell the next generation of personal transportation, it begins to look like a much better bargain on the balance sheet.

Plus, this launch of innovative interactive design tools from an established player invites startups to try to build equivalent low-cost solutions to disrupt the market. I’d love to see a hardware prototyping app come out for Google Glass when third-party devs start building for it, which could potentially bring the cost of AR prototyping down to a more manageable, startup-friendly level.

Sony’s PlayStation 4 made its grand debut today in a presentation with all the theatrical flair to be expected from an electronics company that’s also a media company that’s also a producer and publisher of blockbuster video games. But the pomp hides a hurting heart: Sony’s FY 2012 financial results saw it swallow a $5.74 billion loss, with PS3, PSP and PS2 hardware sales all down versus the previous year. And Microsoft is playing the home media center card to perfection, hedging bets against a future where a dedicated gaming console isn’t the draw it once was.

Sony did more than unveil a next-gen gaming platform today: it answered the question of how it would adapt to this changing world. And the answer might not be what you were expecting: Sony made a point of saying it was moving away from the living room, and putting the gamer at the center of the new platform. The company then went on to talk for at least 10 minutes about hardware and specs, and after a brief interlude to discuss cloud gaming, launched into a series of gaming demos. Which, if you’ve ever seen gaming demo videos, delivered exactly what you’d expect. And that was not excitement.

There was another Killzone, which looked pretty much like the others with better graphics. There was a racing simulator that was supposedly about some innovative team play, but whose developer focused on showing suede textures more than anything else. Then there was Sucker Punch’s Infamous spinoff game about mutant, which is actually decently cool since I really liked the first two Infamous titles. There were some indie games, which were more interesting than the AAA titles if only because they offered a little variety. Then there were a bunch more games from usual suspects like Square Enix and Ubisoft, Blizzard with a Diablo III port, and Bungie’s latest. But overall the message was clear: Sony’s PS4 is an evolution, not an about-face, or a realization that being a game console might not mean what it used to mean.

Here’s a typical reaction to what Sony was showing off during the bulk of its presentation, in case you think I’m only expressing my own opinion:

All these games just look like tech demos for particle rendering. Are we sure it’s not called ParticleStation 4? #PlayStation2013—
Eric Leamen (@ericleamen) February 21, 2013

it’s so stark how different nintendo and sony prioritize. nintendo sees the game mechanics themselves, sony sees GRAPHIX—
Ellis Hamburger (@hamburger) February 21, 2013

Later they brought out the Move controller. That’s crazy, Sony. You’re crazy if you think the Move controller will be saved by the PS4 when across the aisle is the Kinect with its hands-free, truly innovative full body movie tracking. If you think people will build 3D sculptures with a wand with a ball on the end you’ve absolutely lost your mind. There’s something to be said for trying something different, but these are things that are already better done by existing tools, or by competitors. Cutting their losses would’ve been a better strategy with the Move.

What was missing from Sony was a discussion of anything that could’ve made it a more broadly appealing device. Sony needed the introduction of streaming media partners; cable and satellite providers willing to use it for IPTV delivery; integration that would make connections with mobile devices more than just a way to have a tiny screen for select, old games and some leftover social functions; at a bare minimum it needed a physical device, and a date beyond “Holiday 2013.” It (and we, as potential customers) needed way more than a falling back on graphics, eye candy and tech demos, which may have served the gaming industry well in the past, but which have done nothing to stem the rising tide of mobile platforms like iOS and Android.

Gaikai’s Dave Perry took the stage at the PS4 event today to describe how Gaikai would be adding cloud gaming elements to the PS4, which will make it possible to jump in and try games in the PlayStation store, make sharing with your friends a snap, and also invite spectators and get friends to help you by remotely taking over your game.

The PS Vita will also finally get a lot more useful, thanks to Remote Play. Perry said that the team has dramatically reduced transmission times, turning the PS4 into a server and the Vita into a client allowing for remote play of titles run on the PS4 direct to the Vita. It’s exactly like the Wii U, but with a controller you can walk away with and use as a standalone mobile console.

The ability to easily jump right into PS4 games and try out titles via streamed gaming is a huge addition for Sony, which had more limited demo capability in the PS3 PlayStation store which required sizeable downloads when it was even available (which wasn’t for every title). Inviting players to join and watch your game also includes the ability for spectators to chim with with on-screen comments as you play, and the ability to take over your controller to help you out if you run into trouble. It’s a much more social version of Nintendo’s handholding modes in recent releases.

Will gamers opt to call a friend, so to speak, instead of jumping on GameFAQs? That’s a good question, but clearly the company is doing everything it can to try and build a real social network, instead of the loosely affiliated group of often crude, sometimes racist anonymized gamers that made up the PlayStation Network of the past.

Sony had an event today and as expected, it introduced the PlayStation 4. The next-gen platform is designed to shift focus from the living room to the gamer, Sony said, and overall, PlayStation’s approach is meant to make it possible for gamers to play wherever they want, whenever they want.

PS4 lead system architect Mark Cerny talked about how the evolution of the PS4 came about, saying it began five years ago, earlier on in the life of the PS3. The PS3 was a first step, which was designed to connect to a variety of services, but it was limited because of how early it launched in that world, Cerny said.

“Much less value is found today in blast processing or a system-on-a-chip,” Cerny said. He suggested tech could interfere with design innovation. The tech remains important, he stressed, but the idea was to create a platform that was all about experience. Sound familiar? That’s because it’s a tune Apple and Steve Jobs started playing years ago when they realized the spec race was a nonstarter in the mobile phone world.

“By game creators, for game creators. It is a powerful and accessible system,” Cerny said on stage, suggesting that this time around there was a strong emphasis on ease of development, hence the use of a standard x86 PC CPU. The GPU is designed for use with “practical tasks,” he said, with the overall goal of making development a painless experience.

Essentially, the PS4 is an advanced, x86-based personal computer, which means that it should be easy for developers to build. All of this is clearly an answer to a major complaint from studios about the previous generation, which was infamously tricky to master from a software perspective.

Sony also unveiled a redesigned DualShock 4 controller, which has the Vita-style touchpad depicted in rumors, ad works with a 3D “stereo” camera accessory to track its movements in a loose approximation of what’s possible with Microsoft’s Xbox Kinect.

The hardware is clearly also borrowing some tricks from mobile games. It has save states that allow users to quickly freeze and resume gameplay, without having to save just by switching on and off the console. There’s also background downloading, which allows digital titles to be played before they’re even completely on your local drive.

Social is another key tentpole for the PS4, according to Cerny. He described a new function that allows you to quickly pause and upload gameplay videos as easily as you might have done with static screenshots in the past. There’s also spectator functionality for watching “celebrities” gaming, something which seems to have been borrowed from Twitter’s success with famous members. Networking will also be based around real names and profile pictures, instead of strictly on gamer tags and avatars, too, and all of this will plug into mobile apps to help gamers stay in touch.

Toronto’s Upverter is a startup that’s poised to effect change that could reshape the landscape of entrepreneurship. That’s not something you can say about most of the businesses we cover on a daily basis, whether or not they have good ideas. But it’s definitely true of Upverter, the company that’s hoping to build a cloud-based hardware engineering platform that can match and overtake its desktop-based counterparts within the next few years.

So what would that mean for the messy, expensive business of hardware prototyping and product creation? Nothing less than the beginning of a new era, according to Upverter CEO and co-founder Zak Homuth.

“The three of us that founded the company all kind of come from a mixed hardware/software background, we all studied electrical engineering, we all worked co-op jobs at startups all around the world, did a little bit of hardware and a little bit of software,” he explained in an interview. “And then we got together to try to improve the rate of innovation with hardware. We all ran away from it, because it was easier to build software than to build hardware, and we wanted to fix that, because we wanted to build hardware personally.”

The idea was to make tools that would allow Homuth and his co-founders to build a hardware company as their next startup venture, so they quit their jobs, sold their possessions to get some working capital and moved to Homuth’s parents basements, with the nascent idea of building an engineering platform that lives entirely in the cloud. For the fledgling startup, the question was whether or not they could build a GitHub for hardware, how cloud-based it could be, and whether that was something anyone even wanted. Flash forward four months.

“Then we got into Y Combinator, picked the company up, moved it down to Mountain View and got this shitty little townhouse across from YC,” he said. “By that time we’d figured out that the solution to the version control problem, the innovation problem, the crowdsourcing problem was to move it all to the cloud, and specifically the tools. Because if you move the tools to the cloud you make it possible to control the file format, so that you can do version control, you can control consumption, you can control the viewer.”

Upverter launched a very simple version to a very controlled group before coming out of YC, and then took that MVP-style product into something that could be used by the general public in September of 2011. “It couldn’t really do much,” Homuth admits. “But it was the line in the sand that allowed us to say ‘Does anybody wanted to do engineering this way, instead of the way you’ve been doing it for 30 years?’ and we got enough ‘yesses’ that we kept working on it.”

The company has since been tracking down money, building out its tools to a point where they actually compete with existing design tools, via a release just a few short months ago. Upverter has raised $650,000 so far from angel investors, including YouTube founding team member Christina Brodbeck, and Xobni co-founder Adam Smith, and that has managed to allow them to build a software tool that begins to be able to compete with existing tools. But there’s still a long way to go, Homuth says.

“It’s not at parity by any means, it can’t do everything that $100,000 software can do yet, but you can do non-zero stuff,” he said. “You can actually get stuff manufactured, you can actually simulate, you can actually manage a product’s life cycle, you can actually design. And that was step one in our three step plan to change engineering.”

Step two is to get the platform to parity with existing tools

Step two is to get the platform to that parity point, where it can compete with existing tools on an equal footing with legacy software. Getting to a point where they can design equally well in a browser as with a desktop tool is around six months away, according to Homuth, at which point Upverter will be able to start building out its sales and marketing team. Once it gets there, Upverter will have built in a little over three years what legacy CAD companies have taken 30 years to create. The next goal, beyond that, is to become the “Rosetta Stone of engineering,” meaning that no matter how you come at engineering, no matter what tools you’re using, it’ll translate and you can work with anyone else in the world on the same files and on the same projects.

Upverter’s ultimate goal is still at least a couple of years away, Homuth says, and the time it takes to get there will be dependent on what kind of money the startup can raise. He’s actively looking for fresh investment now, while also continuing to add to the 10,000-strong user base it has managed to attract so far.

The rise of Upverter means a potential explosion on the horizon for hardware startups, which is why the company is hosting a hardware hackathon with Y Combinator on February 23rd. Making hardware engineering collaborative, affordable and easy to access can have a tremendous impact on the cost of doing business and risks associated with creating new hardware, which is why Upverter achieving its goals could lead to a new revolution for hardware startups, incubators and investors alike.

If you happen to be one of those hardware startups, Upverter is offering free team accounts to TC readers. Just follow this link to sign up.

OTG, the restaurateur that made waves when it installed free access iPads in some of the world’s busiest international airport hubs last year, is improving its existing system with the deployment of a translation system that will allow it to provide translation of its restaurant menus in 13 different languages. The system is already live in test deployments at locations like Toronto’s Pearson airport, and CEO Rick Blatstein tells me it’s already having a positive impact on sales at OTG-run restaurants.

But the effort, which will soon encompass 20 languages and see wider deployment in more of the airports where OTG is already operating in North America, including LaGuardia and Minneapolis-St. Paul. Blatstein said that his company quickly saw the value in offering multi-lingual support after realizing that at Pearson, for example, English is the first language of only around 40 percent of travelers at any given time on average.

“We have all of our menus and everything translated and tested ahead of time so that when you push the flag of your language, it automatically translates that for you,” Blatstein said. The idea is to make travelers feel more at ease, since they’re able to communicate in their own language. Ordering can happen right from the iPad kiosks, meaning there’s no chance of encountering language barrier problems between travelers and serving staff.

OTG’s iPad deployment also provides travelers with access to Facebook, Twitter, flight status information, and more without charging them, with the aim of making air passengers feel less like a captive audience and more like a treasured guest when spending time in the airports that many frequent travelers likely know all too well. The translation service, applied at launch to restaurant offerings, is a first step according to Blatstein, and one that will eventually make its way to the company’s offerings outside of its restaurateur endeavors, too. Customers could soon order commercial goods from iPads in the language of their choice, Blatstein suggests, or set up accommodations or ground transit at their destination ahead of time.

Airports can maintain multi-lingual staff, and cater to the most common languages spoken at their hubs, but you can’t cater to all the various people from every neck of the woods at every location all of the time. But with an iPad-supplemented customer service model with built-in translation services, you actually might be able to be everything to everyone. OTG isn’t quite there yet, but it’s making big steps in that direction, and that could make air travel (or at least the parts in between) much more pleasant for all involved.

Apple has revealed that it was attacked by the same group that went after Facebook in a recent attempt to break that network’s security. The company says a “small number” of its employees’ Macs were affected, but there is “no evidence that any data left Apple,” according to a report by Reuters. The company will be issuing software to prevent customers from being attacked in the same manner, Apple said.

Apple’s report follows the news from Facebook on Friday that it was targeted by hackers apparently operating out of China. Facebook also reported that none of its users’ data was compromised through the attack. Apple is said to be workign with law enforcement on trying to find the source of the hacking attempt, and will be releasing a software tool aimed at its customers to help them protect their own Macs against the malware used by the unidentified assailant.

The goal for both Apple and Facebook, in being the source of these reports about attacks on their own companies is to be proactive and get out ahead of the news, in order to reassure customers that they’re doing everything possible to ensure the security of any data they hold. The object lesson of Sony’s PlayStation network breach, and the ensuing criticism and lawsuits that resulted from it being perceived as “slow” to notify outsiders of the attack is probably one cause of heightened transparency on the part of companies facing cyber-security threats.

For Apple, admitting to a security breach is a rare occurrence. The company acknowledged some 400 iTunes accounts were hacked back in 2010 in response to customer complaints, but this kind of pre-emptive move indicates that we’re likely dealing with a different level of security threat altogether. On the plus side, account data seems not to have been leaked, and this means authorities will have the help of two technology giants and their considerable resources in tracking the perpetrators down.