Sony has Eye for interaction
Sony has released its long-awaited PlayStation Eye, a digital camera that lets players interact with some games using body motions. The Eye, for the PlayStation 3, is Sony’s answer to Live Vision, Microsoft’s camera for its Xbox 360 game console. The Eye has twice the resolution of its predecessor, the EyeToy. Both the PlayStation Eye and Xbox Live Vision sell for about $40. The PlayStation Eye comes with four tiny omnidirectional microphones that pick up spoken words even in a noisy room. Software titles that can be used with the camera include “SingStar,” a karaoke-style game that lets you create and share your own music videos; “Eye of Judgment,” an interactive card game in which creatures jump out of printed cards; and “Aquatopia,” which turns your display into an interactive fish tank. These creatures react to your motions and, thankfully, never have to be fed.
Way-smart memory card
Eye-Fi has created a memory card with a built-in Wi-Fi transmitter that will automatically upload your photos to any of 17 photo sites when you are within range of a designated wireless network. The 2-gigabyte SD memory card has a small antenna and Wi-Fi service inside. For setup, the card must be in the supplied card reader and formatted to recognize the right network. If you use a photo-sharing site such as Shutterfly, Flickr or Facebook, the card will send photos over the Internet to Eye-Fi, which then formats them for the site you use. It also automates sign-in and passwords so that your photos seem to appear magically. The $100 Eye-Fi card and reader is available online from Amazon, and Wal-Mart.
Motorola rejiggers newest Q phone
Motorola’s Moto Q line of smartphones has a new entry, the Q Global, also called the Q9h. This one has been redesigned to make services easy to activate with dedicated keys, so it takes one click to get to e-mail, the calendar, music, the Internet, the camera (both still and video) and the phone. The Q9h, which is available from AT&T for $199 with a two-year contract, uses Windows Mobile as its operating system. It can sync your e-mail with Microsoft Outlook on your PC, and you can transfer Office documents between a PC and the device. Dataviz’s Documents to Go is included to handle viewing and editing files on the phone. The keyboard has rounded keys that Motorola asserts will make typing easier, even for those with large thumbs.
Computer servers for home storage
It may not be the sexiest part of computing, but storage is becoming increasingly critical as masses of photo, music and video files accumulate. Microsoft thinks it’s time families had help storing it all with computer servers intended for the home. Powered by Microsoft’s Windows Home Server software, Hewlett-Packard’s MediaSmart Server is one of the first such servers. It plugs into a home network router and comes with either 500 gigabytes ($599) or 1 terabyte ($749) of hard-disk storage, with room for terabytes more. The software is intended to make it a snap to schedule automatic backups of the computers on the network, and it lets owners share photos and files directly from the machine. Additional software allows families to monitor home-security cameras and create mini-websites and blogs that reside on the server. Windows Home Servers cannot share programs, however, and can still be somewhat complicated to set up. (One trial run required a call to tech support.) Maybe even Microsoft can’t make mass storage simple – or sexy.
