I was talking about just DSLRs, and you're right, Fuji and Kodak also makes their own sensors, but they're both minor minor players in the DSLR field at this point.
Yup, way down in the releases they say that they'll be keeping the same mount, which makes sense, and which may signal a switch in Sony's corporate culture. Sony has a history of trying to impose their own formats on various sectors of the market, with disastrous recent results (ATRAC v. MP3, Memory Stick, and on and on, even back to Betamax). Perhaps the recent CEO switch is bearing some fruit.
KM will be making DSLRs and glass for Sony (they've been working together since last summer, apparently the first ones will simply be rebranded KM), their consumer point&shoot cameras do indeed appear dead. However, I think the real news here is that Sony may suddenly be a DSLR player. With KM expertise (the 7D and 5D are quite good) in making cameras (and their in-camera anti-shake patents) coupled with Sony's sensor experience (Sony makes the ccds for everybody save Canon), Sony will suddenly have a vertically integrated DSLR business, with proven and well known lens availability (a big barrier to acceptance of new DSLR by pros and prosumers). Canon is the only other company that matches this. That said, keep the -expletive deleted- memory stick out of 'em!
I'll third the recommendation of www.isc.ro. Also, it's worth noting that I believe Hasbro only has the North American rights to Scrabble, the rest of the world belongs to a British subsidary of Mattel (J.W. Spears). Many of the best players in the world play on ISC.
I'm a little disappointed that the Shuffle is USB only. Lots of mac users are stuck with Firewire and USB 1.1 (Apple didn't join the USB 2 party until pretty recently), the transfer speeds for 512 or (shudder) a gig of music will suck with USB 1.1. I really don't see as much difference between the Shuffle and it's competitors as I see between the iPod and other hd based players, and I was assuming that fast transfers would be the difference for mac users, but apparently it won't be for all but the most recent macs.
I find thunderbird less flaky than Mail, and it lets me send HTML emails. This release also got rid of an error that had been happening when Thunderbird was launched by a browser or other app. The only (for me) remaining wishes are sending pictures from iPhoto directly, and integration/syncing with Address Book (although iAddressX, which is indispesable, sort of alleviates that by keeping addresses easily accessable).
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I was talking about just DSLRs, and you're right, Fuji and Kodak also makes their own sensors, but they're both minor minor players in the DSLR field at this point.
Yup, way down in the releases they say that they'll be keeping the same mount, which makes sense, and which may signal a switch in Sony's corporate culture. Sony has a history of trying to impose their own formats on various sectors of the market, with disastrous recent results (ATRAC v. MP3, Memory Stick, and on and on, even back to Betamax). Perhaps the recent CEO switch is bearing some fruit.
KM will be making DSLRs and glass for Sony (they've been working together since last summer, apparently the first ones will simply be rebranded KM), their consumer point&shoot cameras do indeed appear dead. However, I think the real news here is that Sony may suddenly be a DSLR player. With KM expertise (the 7D and 5D are quite good) in making cameras (and their in-camera anti-shake patents) coupled with Sony's sensor experience (Sony makes the ccds for everybody save Canon), Sony will suddenly have a vertically integrated DSLR business, with proven and well known lens availability (a big barrier to acceptance of new DSLR by pros and prosumers). Canon is the only other company that matches this. That said, keep the -expletive deleted- memory stick out of 'em!
ISC is out of Romania, Hasbro only has rights to North America. Mattel is who you have to worry about re: isc.
I'll third the recommendation of www.isc.ro. Also, it's worth noting that I believe Hasbro only has the North American rights to Scrabble, the rest of the world belongs to a British subsidary of Mattel (J.W. Spears). Many of the best players in the world play on ISC.
I'm a little disappointed that the Shuffle is USB only. Lots of mac users are stuck with Firewire and USB 1.1 (Apple didn't join the USB 2 party until pretty recently), the transfer speeds for 512 or (shudder) a gig of music will suck with USB 1.1. I really don't see as much difference between the Shuffle and it's competitors as I see between the iPod and other hd based players, and I was assuming that fast transfers would be the difference for mac users, but apparently it won't be for all but the most recent macs.
Actually, there's a Java client for Mac OS X too, it's just (inexplicably) buried in the site at http://www.isc.ro/mac/
I find thunderbird less flaky than Mail, and it lets me send HTML emails. This release also got rid of an error that had been happening when Thunderbird was launched by a browser or other app. The only (for me) remaining wishes are sending pictures from iPhoto directly, and integration/syncing with Address Book (although iAddressX, which is indispesable, sort of alleviates that by keeping addresses easily accessable).