Category: Tech Buzz Page 7 of 10

Sony RX 100 Mark 3 Review

On August 12, 2014

August 12, 2014
Sony has once again dazzled the world of digital photography, by unveiling third generation of its RX-100 compact camera – RX 100 Mark III.The success of the original RX 100 camera was primarily because of its “easy to fit in pocket” camera body and SLR like functionality. But the third generation RX-100 Mark III camera just set the bar higher, by introducing Electronic ViewFinder (EVF), improved lens, extended sensitivity range and dozens of enhancements that have made this camera just incredible. At a price of $800, enthusiasts who are willing to pay more for a faster lens wouldn’t be disappointed with its superior image and video quality.

What’s In
One of the major highlights of RX 100 Mark III is that Sony has managed to fit an electronic viewfinder in the full metal body of RX100 III even though it is only 2.5mm thicker & 9g heavier than its predecessors. When not in use, the EVF tucks away neatly and pops up by pushing a little button on the side. Its OLED display is bright & colorful, with a decent 1440k-dot resolution. The EVF is 0.38 inches in size, while most cameras use 0.2 inches EVF. To take selfies, the 3 inches LCD can be flipped to 180 degrees, which makes it easy to take pictures at awkward angles. Another major change in the camera is in the lens. Mark III features a Carl Zeiss VarioSonnar T* optic f1.8-2.8, 24-70mm zoom lens that lets it capture the picture perfectly. This addition also allows clicking photos in murkier conditions, low light and less than ideal conditions when zoomed all the way in. For people who use DSLR’s, this camera comes as a pleasant surprise as it produces excellent background defocus, displays areas of high contrast as well as a zebra display to indicate areas likely to burn out.

What’s not
RX-100 III does not include touch functionality which may be a disappointment for some, though dedicated controls and dials have been added to enhance the experience. It does not feature flash hot shoe/ accessory shoe which has been circumvented with the addition of EVF.

Performance
The camera is equipped with Sony’s latest Bionz X processing engine, that has enabled sensitivity in the range up to ISO 25,600, with enhanced features like lock-on tracking, auto focus and adjustable autofocus area size. It helps produce clean images with improved noise reduction. Its 20.2 million pixel count and Exmor CMOS sensor have remained unchanged that produce outstanding results. The camera focuses very quickly and it takes a second or two to turn on.

While some might complain about its flip-up LCD screen, its improved lens and capabilities do make up for it. Even with addition of features like EVF, the camera is small enough to be carried around in pocket. The camera offers necessary buttons, dedicated mode dial, video record button, a scroll wheel and integrated Wi-Fi mode. Wi-Fi feature helps transmit images to devices like smartphones and laptops. To use Wi-Fi, you need to download Sony PlayMemories App for android or iOS that lets you remotely trigger the camera or send photos to smartphones for sharing. With up to 320 shots per charge, the battery life of RX-100 III is quite impressive for a camera this compact.

Conclusion
RX100 III is an appealing camera and is one of the best in its class. Its excellent image quality and performance combined with its optical zoom lens make it the best compact camera in the market. This camera allows for amazing picture experience with high aperture lens and a big sensor, and wouldn’t disappoint those looking to buy it. It might be an expensive buy but the extended features and functionality it has will most likely beat other cameras in the same class.

Facebook’s Revenue & User Base Increases in Q2

By centexitguy

On July 31, 2014

In Tech Buzz

July 31, 2014

Facebook, the popular social networking platform, has just announced an over $2.91Billion in revenue for the second quarter of 2014. Facebook has shown an impressive performance and its sky rocketing growth is showing no signs of slowing down. Facebook’s second quarter has shown successful growth, after a momentary dip in its first quarter, and its revenue is at an astronomical gain of 61% over the same period last year. Facebook has also beaten Wall Street’s estimates of $2.81 Billion in revenue and a huge increase in the amount of user data has been observed which Facebook can store and analyze. Facebook’s user base has continued to grow, with monthly active users having risen to 1.32 Billion out of which 1.07 Billion are mobile users. The number of daily active users currently is 829 million while 654 million users are daily using Facebook on mobile.

The company’s emphasis on mobile presence has been gaining momentum in the recent years and mobile advertizing sales have accounted for 62% of its revenue. Facebook has been cashing on the fact that it has good advertizing solutions and a huge customer base. With the addition of video advertizing and improvement in quality of promotions targeted for phones and tablets, Facebook has managed to increase profits due to the increasing number of mobile users. The average price per ad has increased by 123% which goes to show the massive user base of Facebook. Due to huge traffic to the website, the advertizers get higher returns on their investment which enables them to pay more money for future advertizements and thus increase Facebook’s revenue.

Facebook is growing its share in the global mobile advertizing market, which is expected to be up by almost 85% this year. To get a greater slicing of the advertizing budgets, the company also plans to take on TV by buying a video technology company. Facebook Audience Network was also launched to profit from advertizements on other companies’ apps by using the Facebook user data to improve their targeting. Facebook has allowed advertizers to use their user data and the company is in the process of acquiring LiveRail, a startup, to serve video ads on third parties publisher’s sites. Facebook’s mobile and video networks allow for a greater generation of revenue and Facebook can probably extend its third party ad network, much like the Google and Yahoo.

Google Buys Songza

By centexitguy

On July 20, 2014

In Tech Buzz

July 21, 2014

Google has officially announced its acquisition of the music streaming service, Songza, for an estimated $39 million to take on giant players like Pandora Media Inc, Spotify and Apple, and to compete in the world of digital music streaming.

Streaming music business is heating up after Apple reportedly bought Beats for $3 billion that creates expert-curated playlists. It was touted that Apple would be soon the fastest growing segment in online streaming market and now, Google’s buyout of Songza, can be a major concern for Apple Inc. and further heighten the rivalry between them. The online streaming business is going to face a stiff competition where iTunes, iHeart Radio and Spotify are already competing for market leadership. Pandora’s dominance over streaming services is likely to take a major beating with this merger as well.

Songza, a 4 year old music intelligence firm, uses contextual curation to build playlists and recommendations to give the right music at the right time to the user and adapts to a user’s musical preferences. The app generates playlists to match the user’s mood at particular times of day and with activities like waking up, working out, commuting, entertaining or unwinding. Such clever data mining is invaluable for Google.

Google’s interest in Songza intensified after it embraced the fact that it had failed to adapt to the streaming business and similar services started gaining pace with other companies. Songza’s playlist creation services are free along with advertizing, which will provide Google with a free music service and the fact that it doesn’t have to invest in creating such a technology altogether will give it an edge. Songza’s 5.5 million user base isn’t that impressive as compared to Pandora that has around 76 million active users, but as of now Google wants to focus more on the product’s features. Owing to its brand appeal, Songza is expected to get enormous potential audience in the meantime.

Songza’s representatives are delighted with this merger and are confident about its future. Songza’s employees will join Google and work from their base in NY. For the time being Songza is likely to remain an independent app and no immediate changes will be made while the company’s technology will be incorporated into Google Play Music, YouTube and other products. However, a few changes like speedy and smarter searching to enhance user experience will be made.

This move by Google is strategic and aims to hold the reins of streaming music business. With high aspirations from Songza, Google hopes to re-invent the music business again.

Google To Shut Down Orkut In September

By centexitguy

On July 14, 2014

In Tech Buzz

July 14, 2014

The giant social networking site Orkut, named after its creator a Google employee Orkut Büyükkökten, is officially set for its closure on September 30 this year. Orkut was Google’s first initiative to start a social networking website and was officially launched in 2004, gaining immediate popularity and users all over the world.

In the last few years however, with the upcoming of many other social platforms like Facebook, Google+, Youtube and Blogger, which were widely preferred social networking sites, it was becoming clear that Orkut was not having much of a future. Facebook with an estimated 1.28 billion users is quickly becoming the largest networking site on the net. Orkut however has chosen not to disclose its number of users but it seems Orkut is not fortunate enough to survive the enormous competition. More and more users have multiple accounts on different social networking sites and Orkut is losing popularity.

Google has now confirmed that they would focus their energy and resources on more innovative ideas and have decided to shut down Orkut. In order to help make the transition easier, Google Takeout will help the existing users to export their profile information, photos and community posts from Orkut before the site shuts down completely. The site will also stop registering any new users from July onwards and existing users will no longer be able to log in or export photos to Google+ and any APIs tools related to it after the site goes down. Google play and Apple App Store will remove the Orkut app from their stores as well.

To mark its legacy though, Google will create an archive of Orkut’s online communities. The users will have an option to opt out of it by removing their accounts from Google. Employees currently working on Orkut will most probably be shifted to projects on Google+.

Skype 5.0 For iPhone

By centexitguy

On June 30, 2014

In Tech Buzz

June 30, 2014

The latest version of Skype (Skype 5.0) promises to live up to user expectations. With many changes being made to the user interface and a host of other features added, iPhone users can hope to have a great experience as they use the app on their smartphone.

Majority of the changes that have been incorporated in Skype 5.0 are based on feedback from customers and are related to application’s interface and navigation. In newer version of Skype, measures have been taken to enhance performance when it comes to users syncing their chats from other platforms.

While using an iPhone, there is a certain set of features in Skype that customers make use of more often. With version 5.0, care has been taken to have those features and displays at the forefront of the application. Everything else can be made use of through a ribbon navigation bar that sits at the top of the app. The additions and changes in Skype 5.0 in comparison to its previous versions is sure to benefit iOS users, and transform the way they use the app.

Skype’s product marketing manager, Eric Lin, was quoted as saying, “This app is really remastered for you and the way you use Skype. We take our users and our user feedback very seriously here, and pretty much every choice that we made when we created this application was really based on feedback. The new Skype for iPhone is rebuilt from the ground up, it’s a 100 percent rewrite, and the entire time we were writing this we had a laser focus on performance.”

Lin did admit that previous versions of Skype had a lot of performance issues when it came to iOS users. But that will change now with the new version that has come up. A user will no more have to wait for prolonged periods of time before the chats from desktop are synced on to the mobile Skype application every time it is launched. The notifications will sync at a faster rate; users can also see the read status of messages that were a part of desktop conversations.

Group chats however, could take a bit longer to sync. This is mainly because the switch from legacy systems to the new backend is still in progress. Lin explains that; “That is a backend procedure that users will see updated throughout the coming months. We moved some conversations to the new system before we moved other conversations. You alone probably have hundreds of existing conversations, and then you multiply that times our over 300 million monthly users and that’s a lot of conversations to move.”

Skype 5.0 for iPhone users promises to make text conversations, especially group chats, easier, faster, and convenient like never before.