Author: matt buchanan

When AT&T announced it’s allowing SlingPlayer for the iPhone to stream video over 3G, CEO Ralph de la Vega said that Sling “revise[d] the app to make it more bandwidth sensitive.” Sling told Ars they didn’t change anything. Updated.

Sling told Ars “AT&T never discussed any specific requirements with us” and that they’ve always had the code in there to optimize bandwidth. So, it sounds like AT&T was caught making an odd bit of misstatement. Why say Sling made changes to the app to make it more bandwidth friendly, if Sling didn’t?

Well, a more mild explanation is that AT&T moves slow. They say they’ve been testing the app for months, and there’s no doubt Sling’s made improvements over that longer period of time, and AT&T just now got around to approving it.

On other hand, there’s definitely an incentive for AT&T to phrase it the way they did. This way, it wasn’t AT&T’s fault for keeping it off their fragile network, it was Sling’s fault for not optimizing it correctly until now. Hrmmmm.

Update: Just got off the phone with the Sling dudes, and it looks like the milder explanation I proposed is the case: “We’ve been working with AT&T pretty closely over the last 3-6 months, particularly over the last 1-2 months, and we’re always improving.” In fact, Sling says they now have a “closer relationship with AT&T than any other operators” because they’ve had to work with them.

Question though: Sling’s been on other AT&T phones for a while, so why did iPhone get the shaft? Well, they say, “Things get amplified on iPhone because of the people using it and the kind of product it is,” and “the reality is that it’s the only platform we have to go through approval process,” so they needed to “reach out to all the partners and work with all if them,” versus the direct deployment model they’ve used on other platforms.

The upshot, they say, is that is wanting to “to treat all their phones equally.” Naturally, I turned around and asked AT&T if that meant tethering was coming soon for the iPhone. “Nothing new to say.” Oh well. [Ars]

Amazon’s ebook pricing structure has crumbled. Hachette’s the third major publisher to push for the agency model, following MacMillan and HarperCollins: They’ll set the ebook prices (higher, natch) and the bookseller takes a cut. The $9.99 ebook? Poof.

It looks the pricing model reportedly first proposed by Apple to publishers—from $12.99 to $14.99 as a suggested price for harcover bestsellers, though the publisher will set whatever price they want—is the way things are indeed going to shape up, so Steve Jobs wasn’t idly riffing when he said the price difference between Kindle and iBooks would go away. MacMillan CEO John Sargent has specifically mentioned those same pricepoints as their baseline, so you can expect every other publisher will hew to that.

With a majority of the major publishers now going to the agency model, it’s logical that the final two, Penguin and Simon & Schuster, won’t be far behind, especially since they’re a part of Steve’s team. (HarperCollins hasn’t officially switched, but Rupert Murdoch said on their earnings call they’re renegotiating to that, so I’m counting it.) Three out of five, we’re calling it: Amazon’s dream of a flat $9.99 for ebooks has flatlined.

Amazon’s price advantage over iBooks, also evaporated. Even though Amazon won’t take losses on ebooks anymore to sell them cheaply, it’s a bad situation for them, because they lose that marketshare-building advantage. (That is, Amazon’s happy to spend $50 subsidizing cheap books to hook you into Kindle for life. If, eventually, they’re the only game in town, like iTunes was for music, then they’d have the power to push back against publishers anyway.)

Amazon has two months before the iPad launches. They better move fast. [Media Bistro via MediaMemo]

In former VP Dick Brass‘s stabbing assault on Microsoft, he pointed to how his tablet projects were strangled to death by competing groups inside the company. So it’s interesting to see the record of infighting go back further.

First, Microsoft didn’t give Brass as many engineers as he wanted—just six, instead of the 20 he wanted. (He did manage to snag two guys worked at Xerox’s nigh-mythical PARC, the birthplace of the GUI that inspired the Macintosh.) Consequently, the team ran into issues like handwriting recognition that only worked half the time, and a confusing interface, according to user tests.

BusinessWeek also reported back then that Office group wanted to focus on their own applications, even though the tablet group knew having software ready to go was key. Bill Gates went for the weak compromise, an add-on pack with tablet-specific features. This seems to support Brass’s allegations in the NYT op/ed that the VP of Office at the time “refused to modify the popular Office applications to work properly with the tablet.” Ironically, the person who shut down Brass appears to be Steven Sinofsky, current president of Windows—the guy who turned the division around and gave us Windows 7.

But the problem now isn’t that Microsoft doomed their tablet PCs to failure 7 years ago, it’s that they still haven’t solved their tablet problems today. [BusinessWeek]

A tiny but significant factoid in Sony’s earnings report from the WSJ: “Sony loses about six cents for every dollar of PS3 hardware sales.”

Educated guesser of component prices iSuppli had deduced that Sony was finally eking out a little bit of profit on every PS3 Slim they sold, thanks to lower costs, but apparently, not the case! They’re hoping to cut production costs by 15 percent by March 2011. Hey, at least PS3 sales were up 44 percent. On the other hand, no one’s buying the PSP Go. Sony cut their sales estimates by third for the year.

Sony did actually make money this quarter—the first time in a year—but it was by essentially ravaging the company to cut over $3 billion in costs: A fifth of its plants are gone, along with 20,000 jobs. [WSJ]

The strap that comes in the box with your camera sucks. It’s thin, so it digs into shoulder if you’re lugging heavy gear, and fails to be super versatile. The Lumaloop’s a sling-style camera strap that’s designed to be better.

Price

$60

Sling Shooting

There are three major differences between Lumaloop and your standard strap: The way it attaches to your camera, the way you wear it, and how you draw your camera to fire. It’s not the first sting-style strap* but it has a few unique bits.

A standard strap typically attaches to your camera at two points mounted on either side of the top of your camera, so you can hang it around your neck or your shoulder. Lumaloop gives you the option to plug in to either of those two points, or to the bottom of the camera via the threaded mount you’d use for like a tripod. The camera connects to the strap via breakaway lanyard attachment, so you can easily detach it in a pinch, which is one of its unique characteristics. It’s sturdy though: My main camera for testing was a Nikon D3s, and a handful of lenses—notably this monster, the 70-200mm F2.8 VRII—so I stuck with the threaded bottom mount for weight reasons.

While you can technically wear any camera strap sling-style—across your chest—if it’s long enough, that’s specifically how LumaLoop was designed to be worn, complete with a fat shoulder pad. The weight’s more evenly distributed, and it felt much better that way after hours of continuous shooting at the iPad keynote. Also, it made it easier to set the camera down to rest between shots at the keynote (holding up 8 pounds of camera gets tiring eventually), since I knew the camera was securely attached to me.

Update: By popular—or rather, Jason’s—demand, here’s a video showing it in action, so you can get a better sense of it:

The basic design of the strap is—surprise—a loop. Threaded on that is a sliding clip, where your camera’s landyard attachment plugs in. So, when you’re not at the ready, your camera hangs down to the side, almost like a pistol in a holster, minus the holster. When you’re ready to shoot, as you draw the camera up to eye level, the clip effortlessly slides along the strap up to where you’re pulling it. Which I think is faster than if you’ve got it just hanging from your shoulder, since it’s one smooth motion from rest to shooting.

The negatives? If you’re using the bottom mount, there’s no good way to use vertical grip controls, like on the D3s. You also have to position the strap just right when you slip it on, making sure the camera’s sliding clip has room to move on the strap, otherwise it’s not gonna go very far when you try to pull it up from your waist to shoot. Also, it’s expensive, frankly, at $60—especially when you see this tutorial to make your own for $15.

Still, it’s a better strap than anything that comes in a camera box, and it was really fantastic to use in the field. If you don’t wanna buy one, you should at least consider making one.

The most comfortable way to lug a giant camera with giant lenses


Fast shooting


Flexible attachments


Makes vertical controls tough to get to when bottom-mounted


Pricey

[Lumaloop]

*BTW, I invited Black Rapid, who makes the similar R-Strap to send me a unit to review and compare to Lumaloop, but they declined.

A small, but interesting note: Apple’s published an “App Store Tip” for developers that it’ll reject apps which “use location-based information primarily to enable mobile advertisers to deliver targeted ads based on a user’s location.” It’s not to protect you.

Instead, what Mac and iPhone developer Craig Hockenberry almost certainly correctly surmises, “Looks like Apple is going to keep location-based advertising to themselves.”

Let’s step back for a second. Apple, as you might know, spent $275 million on the mobile ad company Quattro, after previously trying to acquire AdMob (before it was snatched by Google). The CEO of Quattro is now VP of Mobile Advertising at Apple. Apple has now openly declared itself a mobile devices company. And according to BusinessWeek, Apple’s working on “ways to overhaul mobile advertising in the same way they had revolutionized music players and phones.” Apple is serious about mobile advertising. That’s point one.

Point two is that the vast majority of downloaded apps for the iPhone are free. The way to make money off of them is through ads—AdMob’s done a decent job of getting ads into iPhone apps (which, it was speculated, is why Apple wanted to keep it away from Google). Right now, those ads are mostly, but not exclusively, banners and splash ads. A related point is that there’s no Flash on the iPhone, so there’s no way to do the kind dynamic ads that Flash allows.

The obvious presumption is that Apple wants to control the entire experience of using the iPhone (and iPad), all the way down to the ads you see, and wants to make the mobile ad experience better, not just for users, but for advertisers. (And of course, take a slice of the ad revenue.) So it’s not too much of a stretch to see Apple’s ad platform in the future being the best way to deliver ads in apps, which might offer perks like, say, location-based targeted advertising, or more dynamic ads than you can do now on an iPhone. It’s also not crazy to think Apple’s way is going to be the only way to get some of those features, like location-based ads. (The pro-Apple argument being they can ensure the ads are fully integrated and don’t disrupt the experience of using the phone, blah blah.)

Obviously, the iPad’s another huge advertising opportunity on top of the iPhone, so it makes even more sense to play in mobile ads. It might not shake down that way (the key word in the warning not to use Core Location for ads is primarily, so maybe there’s leeway), with Apple asserting such a tight grip on ads on its platforms, but it wouldn’t be shocking either, if Apple suddenly gives itself an overwhelming advantage in the field. [Apple via Dylan Beadle via Craig Hockenberry]

Want to know what freshly developed apps for the iPad are going to feel like? Looking through Apple’s iPad User Experience Guidelines is surprisingly revealing.

Some of the key points Apple’s pushing on app developers for the iPad, and how Apple thinks their apps should behave:

• They want apps to work no matter how you hold the iPad: “Your application should encourage people to interact with iPad from any side by providing a great experience in all orientations.”

• They don’t want applications to just be bigger: “The best iPad applications give people innovative ways to interact with content while they perform a clearly defined, finite task. Resist the temptation to fill the large screen with features that are not directly related to the main task. In particular, you should not view the large iPad screen as an invitation to bring back all the functionality you pruned from your iPhone application.” That’s some straight talk.

• They’re super into the sharing thing: “Think of ways people might want to use your application with others. Expand your thinking to include both the physical sharing of a single device and the virtual sharing of data.”

• The oddly “realistic” bookshelf in iBooks isn’t a fluke: “Consider a more real-world vision of your application. For example, on iPhone, Contacts is a streamlined list, but on iPad, Contacts is an address book with a beautifully tangible look and feel.”

• Multi-finger gestures will abound: “The large iPad screen provides great scope for multifinger gestures, including gestures made by more than one person.”

• It shouldn’t feel like a computer, even if the iPad lets you do computer-y things with files now: “Although iPad applications can allow people to create and manipulate files and share them with a computer (when the device is docked), this does not mean that people should have a sense of the file system on iPad.”

Starting to get a sense of things, and how apps are going to feel vs. their iPhone counterparts? There’s more guidelines, like on how to use popovers, over at UX Mag. [Apple, UXMag]

There are two major camps for internet radio: Pandora and Slacker. Team Pandora’s been setup on webOS for a while, but now Slacker fans can get theirs on every webOS phone.

Slacker Radio Announces Mobile App for Palm webOS Smartphones

Slacker Radio for the Palm webOS Offers Free Personalized Radio Stations and New Music Discovery On-the-Go

SAN DIEGO, CA – February 4, 2010 – Slacker, Inc. today announced the Slacker Radio Mobile app for Palm Pre, Palm Pre Plus, Palm Pixi and Palm Pixi Plus smartphones. Music lovers in the United States and Canada can now listen to their favorite Slacker Radio stations on their Palm webOS smartphone. The free Slacker Radio app is now available at the Palm webOS App Catalog or by visiting http://www.slacker.com from a Palm webOS smartphone*.

Palm webOS smartphone owners now have the ability to enjoy the Slacker music experience, including custom music stations based on their favorite artist or mix of artists, over 120 expert-programmed Slacker genre, seasonal and spotlight stations and over 10,000 artist stations. Additional application features include an intuitive interface and the ability for listeners to personalize each station based on their music tastes.

With a music catalog that is nearly four times the leading competitor, Slacker gives listeners the ultimate music discovery resource by providing artist biographi es, album reviews and “peek ahead” artist and album previews. In addition to marking songs as favorites, listeners can also ban songs and artists to create perfect custom radio stations on their phones.

“Slacker offers music lovers an effortless way to discover and enjoy music on their computers, smartphones or through their home entertainment devices,” said Jonathan Sasse, senior vice president of marketing at Slacker. “Our free app for Palm webOS enables music fans play their favorite Slacker Radio stations wherever they go.”

Slacker Radio for Palm webOS:
– Music library featuring millions of songs
– High-quality stereo playback from any available wireless connection
– Create custom artist stations based on artists or songs
– Over 120 professionally programmed and customizable genre stations
– View artist biographies and photos
– View album art and read reviews
– “Peek Ahead” artist and album preview
– Rate songs as favorites
– Ban songs and artists from stations

Pricing and Availability

The free Slacker Radio application is available through the Palm webOS mobile platform App Catalog or by visiting http://www.slacker.com from the webOS browser.

About Slacker, Inc.

Slacker is the world’s first Personal Radio company offering “Your Radio Everywhere.” Slacker enables music lovers to play highly personalized music online at the Slacker web site or on the go with Slacker Personal Radio players and mobile phones. Slacker mobile applications are currently available for Palm webOS, Android, iPhone and BlackBerry smartphones. For more information visit http://www.Slacker.com/everywhere.

For regular Slacker updates follow us at http://www.Twitter.com/SlackerRadio, become a Fan on Facebook at http://www.Facebook.com/SlackerRadio or visit http://www.Slacker.com.

[Slacker]

“Unlike other companies, Microsoft never developed a true system for innovation.” Dick Brass, a former VP at Microsoft, lays out in a scathing NYT op/ed how the company has destroyed its ability to “bring us the future.” It’s insanely fascinating.

His anecdotes, from this time running the Tablet PC division at Microsoft—you know, the kind of computer that Bill Gates believed was the future—are chilling, revealing the destructive level of competition between some divisions. For instance, someone in his group developed ClearType, Microsoft’s font smoothing tech that was developed to sell ebooks, but other groups at Microsoft freaked out and actively sabotaged the project, or tried to steal it from the tablet division, which is why it took 10 years to actually make it out into the world.

His other example is ridiculous too: The head of Office believed so strongly in the keyboard and mouse (and so hated the tablet idea), he refused to develop a version optimized for tablets. Which is the exact opposite of what Apple showed last week, obviously, with a fully redesigned, multitouch version of iWork for the iPad. And it’s the lack of software that doomed tablets from Microsoft.

Lastly, Brass blames a dated corporate culture that’s afraid to take the risk of building integrated hardware and software products, a thought relic from the ’70s, when hardware was risky. And if you look, Microsoft’s best products lately are from the Entertainment & Devices division, where they’ve designed and built the hardware themselves: Xbox 360 and Zune HD. In fact, E&D is the one consumer division—not simply the labs—where you can safely say that innovation keeps on rolling, largely because J. Allard was allowed to insulate it from the rest of Microsoft for so long.

But here’s a question: How do you turn around a ship that big, especially if it’s sinking? [NYT via Gartenberg]

Mike Nash, Microsoft’s VP of Windows Platform Strategy had a pretty heady resume at Microsoft—he was the first product manager on Windows NT marketing, among other creds over 19 years there—but he’s bailing for Amazon, to join the Kindle team. He specialized in building ecosystems, and taken in conjunction with Amazon’s purchase of multitouch firm Touchco, suggests something’s happening in a major way over in Kindleland. [ZDNet]

A list of things wrong with this shirt: 1. Batman has speakers, very excellent ones, built into his cowl. 2. They are wireless. 3. He uses a Zune HD. [Mysoti via Fashionably Geek]

Ker-BOOM. That’s the thundering explosion of Amazon purchasing Touchco, a little company that makes incredibly cheap, infinitely multitouchable displays, and merging it into their Kindle division. Kindle Touch. It actually sounds kind of nice.

Touchco’s touchscreen tech is designed to be cheap—under $10 a square foot—using a resistive display tech called interpolating force-sensitive resistance. What makes it more special is that unlike most resistive touchscreens, it’s pressure sensitive, and can detect an infinite number of simultaneous touches. Plus, it’s totally transparent (old school resistive touchscreen layers dim brightness and dull colors) and designed to work with full color LCD screens. (Bits has more on Touchco.)

You know, the kind of gorgeous screen that’s perfect for magazines, textbooks, and interactive content. The stuff that E-Ink Kindles can’t do right now, but that a certain other reader announced last week can. So! A full color Kindle Touch. Just think about it.

Like we’ve been saying: The Great Publishing War is just getting started. [NYT]

Your mom’s probably rented a DVD from Redbox—those hulking vending machines lurking outside of grocery stories, lending out DVDs for a buck a day. Walmart’s not thrilled with them, and now blocking new release purchases in bulk.

Part of the reason Redbox is able to offer rentals for cheap of the latest movies is that it works outside of the studio system when studios who won’t sell it discs to distribute for same-day release. According to Adams Media Research, it buys about 40 percent of its movies from big box retailers. So, Walmart and Target have reacted by cutting the number of new releases you can buy at a time to just five copies. They care because kiosk rentals could be worth over a billion dollars this year—why should they subsidize their profits?

What’s that mean for Redbox? They might have to deal directly with the studios—who they’re currently suing for better access to movies—and all you have to do is look at how they’re manhandling Netflix to see what they think about cheap rentals screwing with profitable release windows. [BusinessWeek, Image via Valerie Everett/Flickr]

ScrollMotion’s been tapped to transmogrify textbooks published by McGraw-Hill, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and every standardized test-taking student’s favorite, Kaplan. The WSJ says that education was indeed a “focal point” in the iPad’s development, which we reported months ago.

If you’re over-analyzed the iPad keynote as much as we have, by now you’ve probably gotten the distinct sense that something felt like it was missing. One of those things, apparently, were Apple’s ideas about re-inventing the textbook. (Not to mention magazines. And, mayyyybe, something more.)

To see where this is going in the more immediate future, you can probably just look at what ScrollMotion already does for iPhone and iPod touch apps, since they’re doing the heavy lifting getting these textbooks onto the iPad—they take digital versions of books from publishers and integrate features like search, page numbering and interactive elements. Hey, why read about the moon landing when you can watch it, right on your “book”?

The stuff we heard iPad announcement last week? Clearly, tip o’ the iceberg. Oh, and I wonder how Amazon feels about this. Goodbye margin-sapping used books—I’m pretty sure that’s how the publishers feel. How do I feel? I wonder if the GRE would’ve been more fun to study for on an iPad. “Oooo, Mini Squadron!” [WSJ]

It leaked earlier today, but we’re still pretty struck by Olympus’s latest micro four thirds camera, the E-PL1. Why? It has a built-in flash (finally!). And it’s $600, making it the cheapest micro four thirds camera around.

The E-PL1 takes the opposite tack of the E-P2, stepping down a rung. So, you’re probably wondering what you give up to shave off that couple hundred bucks. Shockingly little. It’s got the same sensor as every other micro four thirds camera. But it’s not as solidly built as the E-P1 or E-P2, trading metal for polycarbonite (but that makes it lighter), and you lose some of the controls on the back, which are shifted from dial to a d-pad + menu, so they’re slower to get to. Oh, and sound for video is cut back to mono, but you can attach a stereo mic to the accessory port. I’d venture, too, that it’s a little uglier than its more retro predecessors, since it’s boxier in an unpleasant way though it is, to be fair, even smaller.

Besides the pop-up flash and the price, the other major new thing is a revamped intelligent auto mode, which walks beginners through taking more advanced photos using plainfolks language and simple sliders for settings in the menu. For instance, white balance is shown as a scale between blue and orange, and live view adjusts the preview in real time. Aperture becomes a setting to “blur” or “sharpen” the background. Nikon’s done this with the D3000, but I think the E-PL1 might be even easier to follow.

Finally, we’ve got a pair of new lenses, a superwide 9-18mm, (35mm equivalent to 18-36mm) and a 14-150mm (35mm equivalent to 28-300mm), both with a variable aperture of f4-5.6. We care about them because they focus noticeably faster than the existing glass for the PEN series of cameras, and because they’re almost totally silent, which makes them much better for shooting HD video (which now has a dedicated button).

If you’re going to look for something more upscale—like with a full-metal build—in the micro four thirds realm, the GF1 remains your best bet (BTW, Mark’s review is a great intro to micro four thirds), but I can think of little reason to reach out for the Olympus’s more expensive micro four thirds cams at this point, or at least when the E-PL1 hits the shelves in March for $600. Look out, cheap DSLRs.

POWERFULLY SIMPLE: INTRODUCING THE INCREDIBLE 
OLYMPUS PEN E-PL1 CAMERA

Simple Operation + High-Quality 12 Megapixel Images + HD Video + 
In-Camera Creativity + Interchangeable Lenses =
Total Compact Multimedia Package

CENTER VALLEY, Pa., February 3, 2010 – The new Olympus PEN® E-PL1 is truly greater than the sum of its parts, with a surprisingly small camera body packed with technology normally found in bigger, bulkier and heavier professional Digital Single Lens Reflex (DSLR) cameras and High-Definition (HD) camcorders. This third-generation PEN is built for shutterbugs who always wanted better pictures and considered a DSLR, but were intimidated by the bulky size and complex interface. The new camera’s simple design and easy interface enable consumers to easily create amazing images never dreamt possible. It will make you wonder how Olympus managed to put all of these powerful features inside such a compact camera for only $599.99.

The E-PL1 equals an affordable and powerfully simple all-in-one package that travels with you to capture life in the high quality that your memories deserve.

“Many of today’s consumers want a camera with the professional still image quality of a DSLR and HD video in a compact body that’s as easy to use as a point-and-shoot,” said John Knaur, senior marketing manager, Digital SLR, Olympus Imaging America Inc. “Thanks in part to an image sensor that’s approximately eight times larger in size than what’s inside the average point-and-shoot camera, the E-PL1 delivers outstanding high-quality images. Add the flexibility of high-quality interchangeable lenses, the convenience of a built-in pop-up flash, in-camera creative features and technology designed to produce images effortlessly, and the E-PL1 is the total consumer-friendly, multimedia package.”

EASILY PEN YOUR STORY WITH A BRAND NEW PEN

This third generation of the Olympus PEN series combines powerful features in an easy-to-use package that will make capturing your life more fun. The new direct record button makes taking videos easier than ever and the new Live Guide functionality makes it simple to learn photography techniques without requiring the skills of a pro shooter.

New Direct Button for HD Movies
Recording HD movies with the E-PL1 is simple, thanks to an easy-to-reach red “direct button” (red record button) on the back of the camera body. If you’re about to snap a photo and you realize a video would capture the spirit of the scene even better, simply press the record button and instantly you’re capturing videos! Easily toggle back and forth between capturing stills and videos by using your index finger to press the shutter button or your thumb to press the red record button. Having the ability to shoot still images and videos opens up a world of imaging possibilities.

New Live Guide Sets the Scene Before You Shoot
The E-PL1’s new Live Guide interface simplifies great photography and gets the results you desire at the touch of a button. Want more vivid or muted color in your shot? Want warmer or cooler color? Want a brighter or darker subject, or a sharper or softer background? Or maybe you want to capture the fast-moving action of your subject with a little artistic blur, or perhaps freeze the action? Simply select Live Guide and press the up and down arrows on the back of the camera to slide through numerous photographic effects. Make adjustments and watch the LCD as the effects are made live – before the image is captured! Don’t worry about learning technical things like f-stops, shutter speed and white balance; jump right in by composing, adjusting exposure and more before the shot is taken.

Seeing the results before snapping the image ensures you are getting the shots you want, and it will change the way you photograph. Shooting Tips are also included with Live Guide, so you can leave the manual at home.

Automate Everything
Live Guide is just the start of automated technologies on the E-PL1 designed to free you up to focus on your subjects instead of focusing on your camera’s settings.

19 Scene-Select Modes: From portraits to sunset shots, the E-PL1 is equipped with 19 Scene-Select modes for effortless picture taking, including Fireworks, Sunset, Children, Macro and Panorama, to name a few. Capturing beautiful portraits is easy with the ePortrait Mode that enables you to smooth your subject’s complexion.

Intelligent Auto (iAuto) Mode: When you don’t want to use the scene-select modes, the iAuto mode automatically identifies what you’re shooting and adjusts settings for you to capture the best result depending on the situation.

Face Detection: Reduce the chance of blurred subjects in images by recognizing up to eight faces, tracking them within the image area, and automatically focusing and optimizing exposure for sharp portraits.

In-Camera Panorama: Capture three images and stitch them together to create one amazing, seamless panoramic picture. Or use the included OLYMPUS [ib] software to stitch up to 10 images together for the ultimate panorama.

iEnhance: With this mode the warm yellow and orange colors of a sunset are heightened to a dramatically lifelike color that’s truer to what you see with the naked eye. iEnhance can be used in any mode, and automatically engages when using iAuto to enrich color in any subject.

Share: Just connect the camera to an HDTV with an optional HDMI cable and use your TV remote to control playback functions and navigate the camera’s menus from the comfort of your personal front-row seat. The E-PL1 records to SDHC (Class 6 recommended) media cards that can be plugged directly into many devices and accommodate large files, including videos.

New Powerfully Simple Pop-Up Flash
The E-PL1 is the first camera in the Olympus PEN series with a built-in pop-up flash that makes it easy to illuminate low-light subjects, reduce red-eye and fill in dark areas. The camera is also compatible with a range of optional external flashes, including the Olympus FL-36R and FL-50R, which can be controlled wirelessly by the E-PL1 so you can dynamically control lighting as your photography skills grow.

PRO-QUALITY IMAGES

How do professional photographers capture the stunning images you see in the pages of glossy magazines and coffee-table books? Talent matters, of course, but you also need the right equipment. Rest assured that the E-PL1 has everything you need to produce vibrant, professional-quality images: a large image sensor, in-body Image Stabilization, Imager Autofocus, the proven Olympus Dust Reduction System and the TruePic™ V Image Processor.

Big Sensor, Not a Big Body
At the heart of the E-PL1 is a large-size image sensor that’s the same sensor as the one inside the Olympus E-30 and E-620 DSLR models. The only difference between this sensor and what the pros use is that this big sensor is inside the much smaller body of the E-PL1. This high-performance 12.3-megapixel Live MOS image sensor (eight times larger than the average point-and-shoot camera sensor) delivers excellent dynamic range, accurate color fidelity, and a state-of-the-art amplifier circuit to reduce noise and capture fine image details in both highlight and shadow areas.

Stabilize All of Your Lenses
Instead of selling more expensive lenses that have image stabilization inside them, Olympus takes a different approach by having image stabilization built right into the body of the E-PL1. This means that any lens (Micro Four Thirds™, Four Thirds and any third-party lens) attached to the E-PL1 will deliver blur-free images thanks to three modes of In-body Image Stabilization that automatically compensate for camera shake, including in low-light situations or when shooting without a tripod. Since the PEN cameras are the world’s smallest interchangeable-lens cameras with image stabilization built inside the body, you can take the E-PL1 with you and capture great images, and it won’t weigh you down.

Track Your Subjects Wherever They Roam
The E-PL1’s Continuous Autofocus (C-AF) Tracking and Autofocus (AF) Target Registration locks your subject into focus and constantly adjusts focus and brightness whether you or your subject is moving. With this mode, a simple push of the shutter release enables you to keep moving subjects in focus – tracking them from left to right and from front to back – within the frame, automatically ensuring that even active subjects, like kids playing sports, are captured clearly.

The E-PL1’s Imager Autofocus in Live View enables you to compose, focus and capture the shot quickly and easily without ever taking your eyes off the camera’s large, 2.7-inch full-color, high-contrast HyperCrystal LCD for an easy, seamless viewing experience when shooting still images or videos. The LCD also provides a wide viewing angle of 176 degrees, which ensures that images can be composed from even the most obscure angles.

This Camera Leaves Others in the Dust
If you’re just starting out with a camera that has interchangeable lenses, you don’t have to worry about dust spots on your sensor ruining the perfect image every time you change lenses. Spend more time shooting with the E-PL1 and less time worrying about dust with the proven Olympus Dust Reduction System that produces spot-free photos with the exclusive Supersonic Wave Filter™, a patented ultrasonic technology that vibrates to remove dust and other particles from the front of the image sensor, capturing them on a special adhesive membrane every time the camera is turned on.

True-to-Life Color
The E-PL1’s Live MOS image sensor is complemented by Olympus’ TruePic™ V Image Processor, which produces clear and colorful photos using all the pixel information for each image to provide the best digital images possible. The image processor is noted for accurate natural color, true-to-life flesh tones, brilliant blue skies and precise tonal expression; it also lowers image noise in photos shot at higher ISO settings (ISO 100 to ISO 3200), enabling great results in low-light situations.

EASILY EXPAND YOUR CREATIVE HORIZONS WITH BUILT-IN EFFECTS

Express yourself with in-camera creative features. Professional images are rarely unedited images. Video and still image pros use computer-editing software to render their images with effects that set their shots apart from the pack. Olympus appreciates that you may not have hours to spend retouching your images at the computer, so the E-PL1 incorporates editing effects inside the camera to save you time. Whether you apply in-camera creative effects while shooting an image, or apply them later to images captured without the effects, all are inside the E-PL1, so you can achieve dramatic results on the go without a computer or editing software.

The E-PL1 has six in-camera Art Filters, including a new filter called Gentle Sepia. This filter gives your images and videos a soft, warm sepia cast similar to historical images from the early days of photography. The sepia tones are softer and the blacks are a true black, unlike traditional sepia images. The new filter joins Pop Art, Soft Focus, Pin Hole, Grainy Film and Diorama (the filter that makes everything look as small as the E-PL1).

With the E-PL1’s Multiple Exposure function available for still image capture, you are free to tell a visual story your way. The image capture options enable you to shoot one shot, then another and combine them in real time, or capture both shots separately and combine them within the camera later. Take a shot of your significant other, and overlay your self-portrait on top to figure out what your kids will look like. If you have kids already, overlay your kid’s face on top of a shot of his or her favorite cartoon character for laughs. Your ability to manipulate space and time makes this new creative multimedia device a veritable time machine.

You often can achieve greater photographic expression by framing a scene in a unique way. The E-PL1 provides four aspect ratios that serve as masks to frame your image to the desired proportions, including the standard 4:3 aspect ratio that is suited to an 8 x 10-inch enlargement; the 16:9 aspect ratio that will display beautifully on a widescreen television; and other popular aspect ratios, such as 3:2 and 6:6. The Multi-Aspect Shooting further expresses your creative vision when combined with in-camera Art Filters and Multiple Exposures.

With the E-PL1, you have your own living library of still images, HD video and audio to remix at your command. In playback mode, you can seamlessly mix stills and movies inside the camera to create a multimedia slideshow, and dub in one of three built-in dramatic background music options to provide a soundtrack for your cinematic creation. With so many creative options, there’s no limit to what you can create. Choose whether or not you want to play back just pictures, just movies or a combination; also control playing back the whole movie or just a clip.

OPEN SYSTEM EASILY GROWS WITH YOUR ABILITY

With a basic point-and-shoot camera, you get one lens built into the camera. One lens, that’s it. And it’s likely a small lens, which doesn’t allow a lot of light through to hit the image sensor. So, you may have a difficult time in low-light conditions. And without the option of adding more lenses, you’re limited to what that one point-and-shoot lens can do. The E-PL1 solves these issues by accepting a variety of lenses to maximize its functionality. Whether shooting still images or HD video, you can add everything from an extreme wide-angle fisheye lens to a super-telephoto lens for a wide range of expressive options.

The M. ZUIKO DIGITAL Micro Four Thirds lenses are designed to be more compact and portable like the E-PL1. Choose from the ED 14-42mm f3.5/5.6 zoom lens (28-84mm equivalent in 35mm cameras) sold with the E-PL1, the ED 17mm f2.8 lens (34mm equivalent), the new super wide-angle zoom ED 9-18mm f4.0-5.6 lens (18-36mm equivalent) or the high-power wide to telephoto zoom ED 14-150mm f4.0-5.6 lens (28-300mm equivalent).

If you want to have even more options, the MMF-2 Four Thirds System Lens Adapter makes the E-PL1 compatible with all Olympus ZUIKO Digital Specific™ lenses and other Four Thirds System lenses from Sigma, Panasonic and Leica. Olympus OM film-based lenses can be attached to the E-PL1 with the MF-2 OM Lens Adapter, and there are third-party adapters developed for lenses from most other manufacturers.

SOFTWARE AND ACCESSORY OPTIONS WHEN YOU’RE READY

The E-PL1 incorporates an accessory port for connecting the optional VF-2 live-finder, a detachable electronic viewfinder, or the new optional SEMA-1 external microphone adapter set (which includes the EMA-1 adapter, the ME-51S stereo microphone and a cord) for those who want to capture enhanced audio with any microphone that has a 3.5mm plug. These optional accessories easily slide into the camera’s accessory port and hot shoe.

Consumers who wish to hold the E-PL1 up to their eye rather than use the LCD will appreciate that the optional VF-2, which provides 1.15x magnification and a 100 percent field of view with sharp resolution, brightness and contrast. The viewfinder refreshes quickly to minimize image ghosting on fast-moving subjects. It also rotates up to 90 degrees to enable photographers to look down into it, which is useful when shooting subjects from challenging angles. The built-in diopter adjustment and high magnification offer easy viewing with and without glasses.

The E-PL1 offers OLYMPUS [ib] software that includes photography workflow, browsing, editing and unique photo-organizing functions. You can organize your photos by person with automatic face-recognition technology, by location with a Geotagging function or by event. You can easily view photos on an HDTV or on the camera’s LCD with the Photo Surfing or Slideshow functions. The name [ib] stands for image bridging, image browsing and image brightening. The software will be available for Windows operating systems only.

Underwater Housing for Aquatic Adventures
The new camera’s compact design makes it the perfect companion for all of your dive trips. The PT-EP01 underwater case has been specially customized for the Olympus E-PL1 and is waterproof to a depth of 40 meters (approximately 130 feet). With its durable, high-quality polycarbonate construction, this Olympus housing protects the camera from water while also cushioning it from knocks and bumps on land. The housing enables viewing from either the camera’s LCD screen or an optional electronic viewfinder. The flash connectors allow optional use of up to two UFL-2 underwater flash units via fiber optic cable. A nonremovable front lens port accommodates multiple Micro Four Thirds lenses.

New Exterior Design, Same PEN DNA
The E-PL1 streamlines the Olympus Micro Four Thirds PEN series form and is available in three new body colors, including Black, Champagne Gold and Slate Blue. Thanks to its compact size (4.51″ W x 2.84″ H x 1.63″ D excluding protrusions) and light 10.4-ounce body, the E-PL1 won’t weigh you down when you’re on the go.

AVAILABILITY

The Olympus E-PL1 will be available in March 2010. It includes the E-PL1 Body, M. ZUIKO DIGITAL ED 14-42mm f3.5/5.6 Zoom, USB Cable, Video Cable, Li-Ion Battery Pack (BLS-1), Li-Ion Battery Charger (BCS-1), Shoulder Strap, OLYMPUS [ib] software CD-ROM, Manuals and Registration card.

U.S. Pricing / Product Configurations
E-PL1 Body with M. ZUIKO DIGITAL ED 14-42mm f3.5/5.6 Zoom Lens
Estimated Street Price: $599.99

[Olympus]

This is a still image of an AT-AT walker. But! If you go here using any WebKit browser (Safari, Chrome), it dances to life. Like a Flash animation, except it’s not. It’s pure CSS3. Point taken. [Anthony Calzadilla via DF]