Apple today introduced Aperture 3, the next major release of its powerful photo editing and management software, with over 200 new features including Faces, Places and Brushes. Building on the innovative Faces and Places features introduced in iPhoto ’09, Aperture 3 makes it even easier and faster to organize large photo libraries. Aperture 3 introduces new tools to refine your photos including Brushes for painting image adjustments onto parts of your photo, and Adjustment Presets for applying professional photo effects with just one click. Stunning new slideshows let you share your work by weaving together photos, audio, text and HD video.

“Millions of people love using iPhoto to organize, edit and share their digital photos,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “Aperture 3 is designed for both professionals who edit and manage massive libraries of photos and iPhoto users who want to take their photos further with easy-to-use tools such as Brushes and Adjustment Presets.”

Aperture 3 allows you to organize large photo libraries with even more flexibility using Projects and the new Faces and Places. Faces uses face detection and recognition to find and organize your photos by the people in them. You can view faces across your entire photo library or view just the faces that appear in selected projects. In a new view that speeds up the organization process, Aperture 3 displays faces that have been detected but haven’t yet been named. Places lets you explore your photos based on where they were taken, and like in iPhoto, Places automatically reverse geocodes GPS data into user-friendly locations. In Aperture 3, you can assign locations by dragging-and-dropping photos onto a map or by using location information from GPS enabled cameras, tracking devices or your iPhone photos.

The new Brushes feature allows you to add professional touches to your photos by simply painting effects onto the image. Aperture 3 includes 15 Quick Brushes that perform the most popular tasks like Dodge, Burn, Polarize and Blur, without the complexity of layers or masks. Brushes can automatically detect edges in your images to let you apply or remove effects exactly where you want them. Aperture 3 includes dozens of Adjustment Presets that apply a specific style or look to the entire image with just a click. You can create your own custom presets or explore the techniques of other photographers by importing theirs.

Aperture 3 makes it easy to share your work with stunning slideshows that weave together photos, audio, text and HD video. You can select one of six Apple designed themes or choose your own transitions, background, borders and titles, and even add your own soundtrack. You can export your slideshows directly to iTunes to take with you on your iPhone or iPod touch. You can also share photographs as beautiful prints, create custom-designed hardcover books and publish to online photo sharing sites like Facebook and Flickr, right from Aperture 3.

Aperture 3 is available for a suggested retail price of $199 and existing Aperture users can upgrade for a suggested retail price of $99. A downloadable 30-day trial version is available Apple’s Website.

After introducing Radeon HD 5450 last week, ATI today launched second budget graphics card Radeon HD 5570 with DirectX 11 support for small form factor PCs. The new card brings full support for DirectX 11, as well as ATI Eyefinity multi-display technology and ATI Stream capabilities. The HD 5570 also supports 1080p HD video playback, HDMI 1.3a, Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio.

According to ATI, Radeon HD 5570 graphics card provides great game play in DirectX 11 titles such as Codemaster’s Colin McRae: DiRT 2, EA Phenomic’s BattleForge, GSC Game World’s S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Call of Pripyat and Battlefield: Bad Company 2 as well as DirectX 9, DirectX 10, DirectX 10.1 and OpenGL titles. The ATI Radeon HD 5570 delivers up to a 60 percent performance improvement over the closest competing product in its class.

The 1GB ATI Radeon HD 5570 with 400 Stream Processing Units, DDR3 memory, 650MHz engine clock speed, 900MHz memory clock speed and 28.8 GB/sec memory bandwidth is available now on Amazon for pre-order priced $89.99.

Canon today announced addition of four new PowerShot digital cameras, the PowerShot SX210 IS, PowerShot SD3500 IS, PowerShot SD1400 IS and PowerShot SD1300IS. The new cameras offer Smart Auto mode along with new Scene Modes and Image effects.

Canon PowerShot SX210 IS: The camera offers 14.1-megapixel sensor, 14x optical zoom, 3-inch LCD screen, 720p video recording, image stabilization, face detection and various scene modes. The SX210 IS will ship in three colors including black, purple and gold for $349.99. Canon PowerShot SX210 IS is available on Amazon for pre-order.

Canon PowerShot SD3500 IS: Offers 14.1-megapixel sensor, 3.5-inch touchscreen, 5x optical zoom, 720 video recording, Smart Auto, 22 scene modes and image stabilization. The touchscreen on the camera enables intuitive operations as users can customize their photo settings by simply dragging icons to their preferred on-screen location, then utilizing tap operation to switch between images during playback. The SD3500 IS will ship in black, silver and pink colors for $329.99 this month. Canon PowerShot SD3500 IS is available on Amazon for pre-order.

Canon PowerShot SD1400 IS: This super-slim camera offers 14.1-megapixel sensor, 4x optical zoom, 2.7-inch screen, 720p video recording, smart auto, 22 predefined setting and low light mode. The SD1400 IS will ship in pink, orange, silver and black colors for $249.99 this month. Canon PowerShot SD1400 IS is also available on Amazon for pre-order.

Canon PowerShot SD1300 IS: The last PowerShot camera announced today includes 12.1-megapixel sensor, 4x Optical zoom, image stabilization, smart auto, 18 predefined settings, 2.7-inch screen and low light mode. There is no HD video recording on the camera. The SD1300 IS will ship in silver, pink, green, blue and brown for $199.99 in February. You can pre-order Canon PowerShot SD1300 IS on Amazon.

Engadget has posted that Motorola DROID will be getting the Android 2.1 update soon. According to Engadget the update will being following features:

No word on when Verizon will actually release the update yet.

A French website Nowhere Else claims Apple will release new MacBook Pro models tomorrow. This information was given to the website by an anonymous source close to Apple. It has been rumored for past few weeks that Apple is planning to update their MacBook Pro lineup. It was previously believed that the company would announce the update at the Apple media event, which took place on 27th January.

Last week, someone posted benchmarking result on Geekbench of yet announced MacBook Pro model featuring 2.66GHz Intel Core i7 620M processor, further indicating that the release is imminent. If Apple launches the new MacBook Pro models tomorrow they will feature Intel’s new Core i5 and i7 processors offering over 25 percent performance improvement.

Credit Suisse analyst Bill Shope wrote in his research note that Apple is open to iPad price cut if the demand of the device is lower than expected, like the company did after iPhone launch in 2007. He wrote after his meeting with Apple executives “While it remains to be seen how much traction the iPad gets initially, management noted that it will remain nimble (pricing could change if the company is not attracting as many customers as anticipated)”. Shope also noted that Apple doesn’t believe iPad will cannibalize sales of products like iPhone, iPod or MacBooks.

In other iPad related news, VentureBeat claims that PA Semi the company Apple bought in 2008 to design its own processors wasn’t responsible for A4 chip. A very trusted source told Paul Boutin:

Apple use to design chipset for PowerPC processors and it is very likely that they started working on a custom ARM solution even before Apple bought PA Semi. Our sources say that PA Semi engineers are presently playing a very big role in Apple’s processor development plans and they might have been part of A4 development also.

Canon today officially announced new Rebel T2i DSLR with 18-megapixel APS-C CMOS sensor and Full HD video recording. The new features on T2i include 3.7 fps continuous shooting, ISO range of 100-6400 (expandable to 12,800), a 63-zone Dual Layer Metering System and DIGIC 4 image processor.

The Rebel T2i DSLR can capture 1080p (1920 x 1080) video at 30, 25 and 24 frames per second. In 720p (1280 x 720) or standard definition 640 x 480 it can capture video at up to 60 frames per second. For better sound quality when shooting video, the Rebel T2i includes an external stereo microphone jack and a built-in monaural microphone. The camera also has a HDMI port for video playback on HDTV.

Other features on Rebel T2i are 3-inch 3:2 LCD screen with 1040k dot resolution, +/-5 stops exposure compensation, UI support for Eye-Fi cards, Live mode, self cleaning sensor and SDXC support. You can get more information about the camera on Canon’s website.

The Canon EOS Rebel T2i Digital SLR camera will ship in early March, and will be sold in a body-only configuration for $799.99. It will also be offered in a kit version with Canon’s EF-s 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS zoom lens at an estimated retail price of $899.99. Canon Rebel T2i is available on Amazon for pre-order.

BenQ has launched V2220 21.5-inch LCD display, which the company claims is the thinnest in its class measuring just 15mm (0.59-inch). The display has edge-lit LED backlight and BenQ says that it offers 10,000,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio. However, its static (true) contrast ratio is 1000:1 like most other displays available today. Video Input on the display includes DVI, D-Sub and HDMI. The new V-series displays from BenQ will range from 18.5-inch to 24-inch in size and ship later this month. No word on price yet.

Sony announced the development of millimeter wireless intra-connection technology that can replace complicated wires and internal circuitry of electronic devices with wireless connections. The new technology offers high-speed wireless data transfer inside electronic products such as television sets. According to Sony, by replacing wires and internal circuitry (IC) with wireless connections, this technology enables a reduction in the size and cost of the IC and other components used in electronics products, delivering advantages such as size and cost-reduction and enhanced reliability of the final product.

This new wireless intra-connection system is based on millimeter-wave wireless data transfer technology. Millimeter-wave refers to electromagnetic waves with a frequency of 30GHz to 300GHz, and wavelength between 1mm to 10mm. With their high frequency, millimeter-waves are suited to ultra high-speed data transfer, while a further advantage is their ability to transfer data using only very small antennas. The high frequency technologies used in this system also draw on Sony's extensive expertise and years of experience in the field of wireless communications and broadcast products. Specifically, Sony has integrated highly energy efficient millimeter-wave circuits on 40nm-CMOS-LSIs (with an active footprint of just 0.13mm2 including both the transmitter and receiver), to realize high speed, 11Gbps data transfer over a distance of 14mm using antennas approximately 1mm in size.

This technology can one day bring even slimmer and lighter electronic devices to the market that are highly energy efficient.
[Via Engadget]

Verizon will get the second Android based Motorola handset called DEVOUR in March 2010. The DEVOUR will be the first Verizon phone to support MOTOBLUR, offering automatic content deliver to the home screen and easy to manage social network streams. The phone will also come with pre-loaded Google apps like Gmail, Google Talk, YouTube, Google Search and Google Maps with Google Maps Navigation.

The key features of the phone are 3.1-inch touchscreen, slide out QWERTY keypad, 3-megapixel camera, EVDO Rev.A support, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS and microSD card slot with 8GB card included. The phone will run Android 1.6 rather than the latest Android 2.1 to run MOTOBLUR, which doesn’t support latest Android release. Verizon will ship the phone is March and it will require $29.99 monthly Data Package for smartphones along with the usual Nationwide Talk plan. No word on price of the device yet.
[Via SlashGear]