The National Cristina Foundation

We received this post this week and we strongly support the National Cristina Foundation.

Look around. Your office, business, your basement. You don't have to look very hard. You have computer equipment you are not using any more. It still have value to others. Go to www.donatetechnology.com to find a local organization in need of what you have. It's easy!

the iFruit company Stock Price

As of today the price of the iFruit company stock has dropped about 22% since the high they reached in September 2012. As regular readers of this blog and our ePub know, we predicted this drop and told people to dump their iFruit stock and enjoy their profits.

From our perspective it was, and still is, a no-brainer to see the iFruit stock price fall so far. Without Steve Jobs steering the ship they are adrift. Their new products are derivative and poorly thought out. They are like MSFT, grasping at straws and trying to regain their former glory.

If you want real innovation and great designs look to Google and Samsung. They will be the big winners in the next year or so.

The iFruit Company Climbs to Number two

The sales numbers for smartphone sales for the third quarter of 2012 are in and the iFruit company showed a 1.5% sales increase. Of course Samsung and Android still dominate the market but it guess this means the iFruit marketing hype machine is doing it’s job. MSFT, BTW, is still a non-player with a microscopic market share.

Here’s the complete story from VentureBeat:

While Samsung is still sitting pretty at the top of the U.S. smartphone market, Apple just climbed to the second-place spot for the first time, according to the latest data from the research company ComScore.

For the three-month period from August to October, Apple climbed 1.5 percentage points to reach 17.8 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers, toppling LG to third-place.

Samsung still maintains a healthy lead with 26.3 percent of the market, after growing by .7 percentage points. But it’s clear that Apple is slowly, but surely, beginning to nip at Samsung’s heels.

All of the other top-five mobile vendors, including LG, Motorola, and HTC, fell in market share — which helped Apple reach that number-two spot. And of course, the release of the iPhone 5 in October likely helped Apple as well (though we’ll probably see bigger gains from that event in ComScore’s next report).

Overall, there are 121.3 million smartphone owners in the U.S., accounting for 51.9 percent of the mobile market. That’s 6 percent more smartphone owners than ComScore’s July numbers.

In terms of smartphone platforms, Android grew 1.4 points to 53.6 percent, while iOS grew .9 percent to 34.3 percent. RIM fell a whopping 1.7 points, and both Microsoft and Symbian fell slightly as well.

Pentax Sale Prices

We saw some sale prices on Pentax lenses at Adorama and the K-01 MILC this week. The lens prices are good but not great. The prices for the K-01 are actually very good IF you want a K-01. As we said earlier, the K-01 is an awesome camera with one enormous disadvantage: no viewfinder!

If you want to check out the prices go to:
http://www.pentaxforums.com/news/pentax-savings-deals-this-week.html

Cell Phone Connectivity

By Chuck Hajdu

In the past month and a half I have been doing a lot of traveling. In my travels I’ve had the opportunity to test several cell phones from multiple carriers with interesting results.

On my trips to Europe and the east coast of the US I carried multiple AT&T phones as well as two from Verizon Wireless. Regular readers of this blog and our ePub know what the mixed results of those trips were. The short version is that Verizon was much more reliable most of the time.

Last week LG sent us two different versions of their new LG Optimus G smartphone to test, one from AT&T and one from Sprint. So far in our preliminary testing the AT&T seems to have much better connectivity and the Sprint phone is lagging behind. We’ll publish ongoing reports as we test both devices and let our readers know what’s happening. Stay tuned!

Last Part of the Olympus TG-820 Review

By Chuck Hajdu

The sequential shooting capability of the TG-820 is very impressive. Switching from single shot to burst mode is very simple to select. You just scroll down on the options that are always displayed on the LCD and pick your mode. If you’r shooting a 12MP then you’ll have 5 frames per second and that should work most of the time. If you need more shots just select H1 or H2 for up to 60 fps and the camera automatically downshifts to 3MP. It’s very simple but very effective.

One of the new features is the IHS technology used in the CMOS sensor. It gives the TG-820 dSLR quality and provides greatly improved image quality. Olympus credits it with dramatically improved image quality with great low-light performance and fast autofocus. We must admit that we were very impressed with the performance, it actually is the best we’ve tested in a non-dSLR camera.

If you’re a video shooter then you’ll love the TG-820. It shoots true 1080 HD video and allows you to output directly to a monitor using the included cables. We shot a few short video clips and were very impressed with the quality.

We’re planning taking a once-in-a-lifetime cruise a few days after this issue goes to press and we will be taking the TG-820 with us. It’s a no-compromise camera that any photographer can and should have in their kit.

What we liked:
The retractable lens cover
The heft, size and weight instill confidence
Handling and controls are all very good
The easy of access for normal controls
The double locks on the battery/SD card door
Picture quality  and video quality are both excellent

What we didn’t like:
The flash is a bit too small and under-powered
Battery life could be better
No carabineer strap

Recommendation: The Olympus TOUGH TG-820 iHS is highly recommended as a great digital camera that will not let you down. It’s as tough as any camera we’ve tested and it’s ideal for adverse weather conditions.

Olympus TOUGH TG-820
MSRP is $299.99
www.olympusamerica.com

More of the Olympus TOUGH TG-820 Review

By Chuck Hajdu

The Olympus TOUGH TG-820 iHS camera that we're  reviewing is available in black, silver, red and blue colors and really looks great. It has a very solid feel that instills confidence that it really is tough.
The tough capabilities of this 12MP sensor camera are:

· Waterproof to 3 feet

· Shockproof fro 6.6 feet

· Freezeproof  down to 14 Degrees F

What’s in the box:

· TG-820 iHS Digital Camera

· USB Cable & Charger (F-2AC)

· Instruction Manual & Software CD

· Audio/Video Cable

· Wrist Strap

· Lithium-Ion Battery (LI-50B)

· Warranty Card

The basic specifications of the TG-820 are very impressive for a camera with it’s tough attributes:
CMOS: 12 Megapixel - CMOS, 1/2.3 size
Lens: 5.0-25.0mm (28-140mmequivalent in 35mm photography)
Zoom: 5X Optical, 4X Digital
Aperture: f3.9 (W) - 5.9 (T)
Shutter: Auto: 1/4-1/2000 (Night Scene: up to 4 Sec)
Storage: 46.8MB Internal, SD/SDHC/SDHC cards

Our first impression of the TG-820 was that it is a well designed, solidly built product. It has a much more solid feel that many of the competing products we’ve tested, especially the Pentax Optio W90 which felt much cheaper. One of the first things you’ll notice is that Olympus uses a retractable lens cover rather than just using a hardened piece of glass to protect the lens. We’re not sure how fine, blowing dust and sand will affect the cover so that may be something users in those environments need to be aware of.

The access door that you have to open to get access to the battery slot, the SD card slot and the HDMI and charging slots is very impressive. Unlike other designs we’ve seen on other cameras,  it requires the user to move two different release tabs, one horizontal and one vertical, in order to unlock the door. You have to unlock the horizontal “safety” tab in order to be able to move the vertical Lock/Unlock tab. Nothing can guarantee total safety but this is as close to fool-proof as any system we’ve ever seen. It should keep you from accidentally opening up the door while you’re underwater or in a bad weather situation.

The wrist strap that comes with the TG-820 is typical of the ones you will find supplied with most point-and-shoot cameras. It’s not what we have come to expect with tough cameras. The carabineer straps that Pentax uses are much better and we wish Olympus would switch to that style!