My last camera was a Nikon Coolpix S7c, great camera with a huge screen and takes great pictures. Whilst I was on Holiday in Phuket earlier this year I took a few video clips and whilst the quality was OK the sound was awful. It was time for an upgrade, so I decided on a Sanyo Xacti CG65.

I had been looking at the Sanyo Xacti range for years, the downside was always that I don’t want to sacrifice quality on still images, and with movies the capacity of SD cards was an issue until recently.

The Xacti uses SDHC cards, and it just so happens that I have a 8gb SDHC that I bought on eBay recently, this allows me 5 hours and 40 mins of video in the high quality TV mode, and a lot more in web mode.

Image quality for both video and stills is amazing, especially indoors where I really did not expect it to perform well. It has the ability to snap a still whist making a video, this is more useful than it sounds.

It’s too early to say what battery life will be like, but it’s looking good so far.

Connecting this to a computer is a snap, on my computers itunes opens up and offers to import the movies and stills, on computers without itunes it’s still easy as it can connects in card reader mode, or of course if you have a SDHC card reader in your computer you can just pop the card in.

I wont go into the technical specs because you can read that anywhere, and my opinion on specs is that they don’t mean anything when it comes to cameras, the proof is all in the images and videos.

Buy one, you wont be disapponted! In Thailand these are 9,900 Baht (140 UK pounds, 280 USD)

Also dubbed the wind up iPod, the Trevor Baylis Eco Media Player is a great gadget for camping trips, long car rides, or anyone who wants to avoid the inconvenience of a dead battery. This multimedia player can run for a good 40 green minutes off of one minute of winding. Besides winding, it can also be charged with a standard USB cable.

When fully charged it is claimed to be able to hold a charge capacity of up to 20 hours, but when put test is was found to be capable of 32 hours of audio playback and a surprising 17 hrs of video.

A few good steps up the evolutionary scale than the windable torch (which is also available through Trevor Baylis), the Eco Media Player incorporates various other functions such as music and video player, FM radio, photo viewer, voice recorder, flashlight, and it can be used to charge a cell phone.

If you don’t want to listen with headphones you can use the built in mono speaker. It also comes with 2 GB of space which makes it useful as a storage device as well.

Although it has been out for awhile, it has received little competition and still remains the best of its kind in the market. It has its downsides though, firstly it’s a bit expensive - £129.95 new. It’s also quite difficult to arrange the audio files since it doesn’t support ID3 tag sorting.

The Sony VAIO VGN-AR61ZU is a good desktop replacement notebook with great performance and entertainment capabilities.

This VAIO is an impressive notebook sporting a large 17in display while clocking in at high speeds with one of the new Intel’s Penryn processors - a Core 2 Duo T8300 running at 2.4 GHz and 4 GB of RAM.. But on the downside, it’s a bit expensive, heavy (4kg), and has a short battery life.

In terms of entertainment, this notebook is enough to keep you satisfied. Turning out 29fps, its GeForce 8600M chip will support the needs of most gamers as well. It also comes equipped with an internal TV tuner that allows the user to watch and record programmes with the Media Center PVR applications which is standard with the Windows Vista Ultimate Edition. Not to mention the internal Blue-ray DVD drive combined with the 1920 x 1200 high resolution display make a perfect combination for watching high-definition films.

The weakest point of this Vaio is a battery that lasts approximately 71 minutes. Seeing as it cannot be far from a power supply for long, it is not the most appropriate notebook for traveling. A larger touchpad would also have made it much easier to use. In fact, it’s hard to understand why Sony installed such a small touchpad on a notebook with so much space

Sony VAIOs have always been a bit spendy, and the VGN-AR61ZU is no different – priced at ₤1799. Nevertheless, it does offer reasonable performance and reliability for the price.

The Samsung R60+ 15.4in Notebook is a great bargain as far as costs go for laptops these days. It is priced at less than £450 (including VAT and delivery). However, the competition for 15.4in screens is pretty tough in terms of design, customization, features as well as prices that match these excellent standards. Consequently, the Samsung R60+ lags behind compared to manufacturers offering 15.4in screens such as Toshiba and HP, for examples.

The exterior and internals look aesthetically pleasing and are a glossy black which is typical of the Samsung style seen on its TVs, monitors, printers, MP3 players, etc… The downside is that one will never be able to avoid the scratches and fingerprints on the lid that are inevitable with regular use.

The larger chassis is amazingly thin and portable with a thickness varying from 31.1mm at the front and 35.8mm at the back rendering it quite sleek for its size. It’s weight isn’t too bad either - at approximately 2.68kg.

Suited especially for general word processing, web surfing and email, the Samsung R60+ makes a good office machine including a 1.4 GHz Intel Pentium Dual-Core T2310 chip accompanied with 1 GB of RAM.

The battery life is approximately 107 minutes and the hard drive is 80GB which, again, is reasonable for the price.

Not only are the ports and connectors are a bit sparse (containing only 3 USB ports available), but they’re also inconveniently located - with two at the rear and one on the left.

It’s 256MB ATI Radeon Xpress 1250 graphics processor doesn’t really measure up to gaming as it only managed to achieve 7 fps (frames per second) in a grueling games test.

The best feature for this budget notebook has to be the 250 GB SATA HDD which is providing a lot of storage and space for plenty of videos, photos and music.

With the HV20, Canon still sees HDV as a valuable format. The camcorder is priced at approximately $1000 which makes for a great bargain because of its many features although a bit heavyweight at 18ounces. This is Canon’s second tape- based high-definition camcorder.

The picture quality has sharp and brilliant colors while offering a wider spectrum of subdued color giving it an overall more professional touch.

The HV20 has super detail HDV which takes 1920-by-1080-pixel footage. It records to MiniDV tapes in high-definition or standard-definition footage. There are 8 scene modes as well as the normal auto and manual and the image effects include Vivid, Neutral, Low Sharpening, Soft Skin as well as a custom option.

When using the footage from the Canon HV20, even highly compressed web video looks sharper as compared to video from a standard-definition camcorder. However, more time is needed to render for the reason that editing high - definition footage needs a substantially powerful computer.

The separate button for backlight compensation and the integrated video light are neat bonuses. The camcorder doesn’t include a manual focus ring but instead uses a small wheel next to the lens which is quite easy to use.

The lens cover is motorized and is neatly embedded in the body sliding open and shut automatically when you power up or power down. This an added bonus as you avoid a lens cap intruding into you shot or accidentally getting yanked out.

The still-image shots and sound quality deserve high ranking marks and the battery lasts almost two hours which is an additional bonus for the Canon HV20.

It’s getting harder and harder to find CRT monitors these days. vThe advent of liquid crystal displays (LCD) pretty much sentenced those old bulky CRTs to the landfill. Some creative individuals are coming up with alternative applications for the devices and a fish tank is a great example.

LCDs had a lot to offer compared to their over-sized counterparts, such as reduced radiation emissions and much lower drain on power. LCDs are also better for the environment by saving power and also saving space, since they are composed of much fewer materials, like plastic, metal, and glass.

Now LCDs are being overtaken by OLED – Organic Light Emitting Diodes. OLEDs are bringing the beneficial qualities of power and space saving to even higher standards. The actual thickness of an OLED is between 100 to 500 nanometers – that’s 200 times thinner than a human hair. This is made possible mostly by virtue of the fact that OLEDs don’t require backlighting to function.

Besides being thin, they are also flexible and can be rolled up to store when not in use. Some of the disadvantages of OLEDs are that costs of manufacturing are high, it can be damaged by water, and the different colored diodes have varying life-spans. The shortest of them is blue, which is at least three times less than that of red and green. To overcome this obstacle Sony is collaborating with Idemitsu to develop a higher level of internal quantum efficiency (IQE) and consequently increase the lifespan of blue. So far they have achieved a 3.5% gain in IQE.

The UK government is now planning to keep a database of all the phone calls, emails and internet sessions of UK citizens, as part of the fight against crime and terrorism.

Before September 11th 2001 no UK government would dare try such a thing, but now the perceived threat of terrorism in the UK means that the people will probably stand for this.

This is not about the police, they already find it easy to get all this info, it’s about control of the people.

Take phone calls for example, all the UK phone companies have police liaison staff whose job is to provide police with information about phone calls, this can be used for intelligence gathering or for evidence.  The police may complain that the procedure required for getting data that can be used as evidence is slow due the the requirement of a court order, but there is a big difference between data that can be used for intelligence and investigation compared to data that can be used in evidence.  The later assumes that a case is going before a court anyway and we all know that cases can take years to get to court.

Slowly the rights of the individual are being taken away in the fight against terrorism, surely we need to stop and think about how real this threat really is?

Today I was having my car serviced whilst in Chiang Mai, so while it was being serviced I got a Tuk-Tuk over to Central Airport Plaza shopping mall. I did some shopping and had a bite to eat, whenthe time came to get a taxi back to the Toyota dealer I found that the Taxi drivers operating outside the shopping mall are operating a price fixing scam, and that included the so called “Meter Taxis”

There were 5 meter taxis there, all claimed that their meters do not work and wanted 100 baht to take me just over 1km, I declined and asked to be taken “on the meter” they just laughed at me, but not just me, they were cheating all the people both Thai and foreign visitors alike.

The Tuk Tuk drivers were in on the scam, they refuse to accept less than 100 baht even for a 1km journey.

Of course not all Taxi drivers in Chiang Mai are thieving scumbags, and the ones working from the Airport Shopping Plaza are giving them all bad name.

In Chiang Mai as in Bangkok you should stubbornly refuse to get into a meter taxi that won’t switch on the meter, if you accept their “offer” you can be sure it’s at least double the correct price.

Camera phones are changing the role of the traditional camera by adding an omnipresent touch engaging a newly personal awareness and unrelenting vigilance to the visually newsworthy making amateur photojournalists out of its users. Additionally reporting is evolving by quieter methods but with equally important practices under the radar of published news at the micro and macro variety.

The mundane is now elevated to the potential news level and sending camera phone photos to major news outlets are just one end of the wide range of everyday mass second-rate journalism via camera phones.

Camera phones are also revolutionizing the watchdog role of publishing institutions by providing an open medium for amateur photojournalists on a micro and macro scale. The innovation of the camera phone has also affected the entertainment industry by giving birth to a new generation of amateur paparazzis.

Newsworthy, noteworthy and photo-worthy covers an expansive continuum from the personal that are never shared to the intimately newsworthy moments. Camera phones have transformed journalism from the latest news headline to news shared between family members.

Camera phones capture the more fleeting and unexpected moments where the world can practically view news with the immediacy of an eyewitness. For example, during the recent cyclone in Burma the local people with camera phones were able to provide live photo and video footage of scenes that would normally pass by uncaptured.

Camera phones are also wearing away the power of totalitarian governments to control communications, and giving the outside world an inside look at the real situation that the citizens are facing. This is especially worrisome for the China officials as it gives much leverage for opposing political groups. In neighboring Burma, where the military dictators are even more strict, camera phones have provided the outside world with a firsthand look at the kind of violence and brutality that the regime uses to control the people. When the brutal crackdown on the monks took place 6 months ago, photos and videos of the demonstrators being beaten immediately surfaced all over the internet – largely taken by multimedia phones. When the government found out, they shut down the internet in the entire country for two weeks while attempting to confiscate as much of the footage as possible, but to little avail.

There’s an interesting device out there that not many people have heard of. It’s called the Neurophone and allows sounds to be perceived in the brain yet bypasses the ears. Among other applications, it can provide the deaf with an even more rich and stimulating means to experience sound.

Normally hearing takes place when vibrations in the inner ear are converted into electrical nerve signals and transmitted to the brain. But with the Neurophone, ultrasonic electrical signals can be transmitted to the brain via the skin. It turns out that ‘hearing with the skin’ has many advantages over hearing with the ears. For one, the neurophone is claimed to greatly reduce the element of distraction normally experienced when sounds register in the ears. It has also been reported to increase concentration and the ability to remember what is heard, making it a useful tool for learning languages or listening to audio books. The most interesting part, however, is that regular use of the device leads to the development of neural pathways associated with perceiving ultrasonic sounds. The development of these neural pathways, in turn, leads to harmonization between the left and right hemispheres of the brain, and imparts the listener with a greater sense of well being and resistance to stress.

The Neurophone was invented in theory by a young man named Flanagan at the age of 14. At 17 he was named one of the top ten scientists in the US by LIFE magazine. Although he encountered a lot of opposition, after 10 years he was finally granted a patent when he demonstrated the effectiveness of his invention on a deaf worker in the patent headquarters in 1968 (#3,393,279).  Since then it has undergone many innovations and now it even available online