Samsung's 5 megapixel G800 gets launched, available next month

from Engadget by Chris Ziegler

Is it a phone, or is it a camera? Until recently, cameraphones were unquestionably still just phones with chintzy cams tacked on, but it looks like we're finally getting to the point where the lines are truly blurred. Samsung's new G800 slider is now official, packing a 5 megapixel autofocus camera in a rather attractive metallic form; that in itself isn't terribly notable, considering we already have a handful of 5 megapixel handsets on the market. What is notable, though, is the added bonus of a xenon flash and 3x optical (yes, optical) zoom. Heck, from the back, you can barely tell it's a phone at all. Add in the usual goodies like Bluetooth, HSDPA, and a generously sized QVGA display, and Samsung has a winner on its hands -- or at least it would have a winner if only it'd launch stateside. Our far luckier European brethren, meanwhile, can lay their hands on this sucker starting in November for a to-be-determined price. [Via Unwired View]

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Casio Exilim EX-V8 reviewed

from Engadget by Conrad Quilty-Harper

Steve's Digicams has a review up of Casio's Exilim V8, a slim 8.1 megapixel point-and-shoot featuring a 7x optical zoom, and a YouTube optimized H.264 video output. Key points of the review highlight the large 2.5-inch LCD on the back, decent movie recording quality -- it goes up to 848x480 at 30fps -- and some excellent camera shake / blur technologies, all crammed into an ultra compact case. On top of that it shoots some good photos, and has a relatively decent response time: in fact the only niggle Steve found was the fiddly controls. At only $299, sounds like a steal.

[Via Photography Blog]

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Vinod Khosla Shares His Portfolio

from Earth2Tech by Katie Fehrenbacher

Vinod Khosla gave a speech down at Sand Hill Road yesterday in which he offered the most detailed description of his portfolio companies that we've heard. Breaking it down into four categories — the war on oil, the war on coal, efficiency and materials — he discussed at least 32 portfolio companies that he hopes will shape the future of energy and fight climate change. He showed off a list of 26 companies in March.

As Khosla put it, "Hopefully we'll see a hundred portfolios like this. I'm happy to share all my strategies so we get more people," to have portfolios with a large amount of diverse energy companies. At the event, he used a PowerPoint slide to showcase his portfolio companies, and more recently posted a similar slide on his web site. Though the two slides are actually a bit different, here are some of the lesser-known companies from both lists: efficiency companies Seeo, Newco1 (is that a placeholder name?), and PAX Streamline (just called Streamline on this list); water companies Quos and NanoH2O; biofuel company Ethos (although a biofuel company called Kior was on the other list); and plastics companies eChromics (which he referred to as Soladigm on the other list) and Calera.

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My Listening Habits This Year

from A VC by Fred

Joelaz did this for me. It's spot on. This is my year in music. Wow. Thanks Joelaz!

Here's a link to a larger view of this.

UPDATE: Joelaz says you just give this service your last.fm login and you can get one of these for yourself.

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Flickr To Add Online Photo Editing Tools Via Picnik

From: TechCrunch: Michael Arrington

Fotoflexer may be my personal favorite among the many online photo editing tools, but Flickr has chosen Seattle-based Picnik to handle the long requested photo editing feature for Flickr users.

Currently, you can rotate photos on Flickr, but the editing stops there. When the new tools launch, users will be able to edit photos more extensively using the Picnik Flash based tools (see our review here).

The deal has been signed and implementation will occur sometime in the next few months, Flickr told me yesterday. Users will be presented with an edit option on the photo page. Clicking it takes the user to a new Flickr photo edit page, with the Picnik tools integrated via an iframe. After editing, users can add the edited photo to their Flickr account or, if they are a Flickr pro user, overwrite the original.

Business terms around the deal are not being disclosed at this time. Picnik is self funded to date.

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